The Allman Brothers Band & Eric Clapton - Beacon Theatre, New York City, 3-20-2009

There aren't many cases of musical greats meeting up in a prolonged manner like this, so if you're a fan of the Allman Brothers Band and/or Eric Clapton, you should have this. 

In 1970, Clapton's short lived band Derek and the Dominos made the classic album "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs." Slide guitarist Duane Allman was a member of that band while still being a member of the Allman Brothers Band (ABB) at the same time. Clapton has said that he considered Duane to be kind of a musical soul mate. But tragically, Duane died less than a year after the release of that album, so further collaborations never came to pass.

Duane's brother Gregg Allman kept on with the Allman Brothers Band, to great success. Gregg had jammed some with Derek and the Dominos during the making of the "Layla" album. But the musical paths of Clapton and the ABB never really crossed paths again until two special nights in 2009, March 19th and 20th, at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. The ABB was doing a series of 15 shows at that venue that year, with a focus on remembering Duane Allman, and including lots of special guests who had a connection to him. Clapton joined in for about half the concert for both of those nights. He sang five songs, all from the "Layla" album, and played on three other songs led by the ABB.

I found a Rolling Stone Magazine article about the 2009 Beacon Theatre concerts, with some quotes from ABB lead guitarist Derek Trucks about the two Clapton shows. Here are some excerpts.

The ABB had made it a yearly tradition to do a long run of concerts at the Beacon every year. Trucks said that "since I joined the band, there was a rumor that Eric would play." When he finally showed up in 2009, "there was a palpable buzz in the place - and in the band, like there was unfinished business. For the Allmans, in a sense, it was something to prove. And it happened in the best spirit. ... It was a magical night." Trucks said that during "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" on March 20th, Clapton took a solo "that was a different side of him, that I hadn't seen. Where he normally would have gotten to his point, stayed and got out, he got in, stayed and realized he wasn't nearly finished. He kept plowing. There was a freedom and unhinged element to it that I really dug."

Derek Trucks Goes Behind the Allman Brothers’ Beacon Box Set – Rolling Stone

It's generally considered that Clapton collaboration on March 20th was the better one (something that the quote from Trucks above supports), so that's what I've included here. However, there was one song played by the ABB and Clapton on March 19th only, "Anyday." So I slipped that in after the track in which Clapton got introduced. Blues singer Susan Tedeschi also helped with the lead vocals on that song.

The entire performance here has been officially released. Normally, I don't post officially released stuff unless it's rare and/or I change or reorganize it in some important way. In this case, I'm doing it because this has only been available as part of the "Beacon Box," a box set containing no less than 47 CDs, with a cost of $500! Because of that, it seems very few people have this, or even know about it. 

Note, by the way, that key Allman Brothers Band member Dickey Betts isn't here, because he left the band around the year 2000. 

This album is an hour and 16 minutes long.

01 talk (Allman Brothers Band & Eric Clapton)
02 Anyday (Allman Brothers Band & Eric Clapton with Susan Tedeschi)
03 Key to the Highway (Allman Brothers Band & Eric Clapton)
04 Call It Stormy Monday (Allman Brothers Band & Eric Clapton)
05 Dreams (Allman Brothers Band & Eric Clapton)
06 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Allman Brothers Band & Eric Clapton)
07 Little Wing (Allman Brothers Band & Eric Clapton)
08 In Memory of Elizabeth Reed [Instrumental] (Allman Brothers Band & Eric Clapton)
09 talk (Allman Brothers Band & Eric Clapton)
10 Layla (Allman Brothers Band & Eric Clapton)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ME1HxaVK

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/5nfzUHZSbwPsf2X/file

The cover photo shows the ABB and Clapton on March 19, 2009. Left to right: Gregg Allman, Jaimoe, Marc Quinones, Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Butch Trucks, and Eric Clapton.

Sheryl Crow - Collide - Non-Album Tracks (2009-2010)

I continue to gradually make my way chronologically through Sheryl Crow's music career with stray tracks albums. Here's the next one.

This one happens to consist mostly of live performances, generally unreleased. The songs "Murder in My Heart," "Need a Little Love," "Collide," and "Lean on Me" are studio versions, generally from various artists compilations. The last two, "Our Love Is Fading" and "Got to Give It Up," are semi-released in that they're from DVDs, but not audio releases. The rest are all from concert bootlegs. However, the sound quality is high, at the soundboard level.

There were a couple of exceptions to that sound quality though. "Back in the U.S.A.," a duet between Crow and Elvis Costello of a Chuck Berry song, sounded rougher. However, I used the UVR5 audio editing program and that helped enough for me to decide to include it. I did the same with her cover of the Beatles song "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away." But while that sounds pretty good now, I decided it's still not up to snuff with the others, so I've only included it here as a bonus track.

There are lots of covers of classic songs here. There are only a few exceptions, like "Need a Little Love" and "Collide."

This album is 47 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 Murder in My Heart (Sheryl Crow)
02 Back in the U.S.A. [Edit] (Sheryl Crow & Elvis Costello)
03 One Love (Will.I.Am, Sheryl Crow & Herbie Hancock)
04 Can't Find My Way Home (Sheryl Crow & the Allman Brothers Band)
05 It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry (Sheryl Crow & the Allman Brothers Band)
06 My Sweet Lord (Sheryl Crow with Ben Harper)
07 Need a Little Love (Sheryl Crow & Hannah Montana)
08 Collide (Kid Rock & Sheryl Crow)
09 Lean On Me (Sheryl Crow, Keith Urban & Kid Rock)
10 All Down the Line (Sheryl Crow with Chuck Leavell & the Roots)
11 Our Love Is Fading (Sheryl Crow with Eric Clapton)
12 Got to Give It Up (Sheryl Crow)

You've Got to Hide Your Love Away [Edit] (Sheryl Crow)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15281198/SherylC_2009-2010_Cllide_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken in 2010, but I don't know other details.

Morgan James - Acoustic Cover Songs, Volume 7, 2020-2022

It's been a while since I've posted any albums by Morgan James, but I'm back with more. I'm glad to see from the download numbers that a lot of people appreciate her considerable vocal talents.

This is another album consisting entirely of cover versions done acoustically. It gets a bit confusing, because I first posted six albums of her acoustic covers from the years 1994 to 2020. Then, in 2020, due to being stuck at home thanks to the Covid pandemic, she did 100 covers in a row, which she called the Quanatunes series. I posted seven albums of that. This picks up where that left off, back to more acoustic covers that aren't specifically part of that Quarantunes series.

There's not much to say here that I didn't say with earlier volumes. Although I'll note that she was especially bold with her song selection this time, covering some of the most iconic songs of all time, including "Layla" and "Stairway to Heaven!" It's interesting to hear songs like that backed only by a single acoustic guitar.

I almost didn't include "Son of a Preacher Man," because it had some big problems. The song broke down in the middle, as she and her guitarist, her husband Doug Wamble, forgot how the bridge went. However, I did some heavy editing that snipped out the problem area. There still are some bits of Wamble talking that I don't like, but I couldn't remove them because it overlapped with her singing. The song also was cut off right at the end, but I found a way to patch in a final guitar strum to give it a decent finish. All of that is why the song has "[Edit]" in the title. 

By the way, I'm most of the way to having a Volume 8, but I'm still a few songs short.

This album is 47 minutes long.

Here's a list of the original artists for each song:

01 Chain of Fools - Aretha Franklin
02 Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
03 The Dark End of the Street - James Carr
04 The Middle - Jimmy Eat World
05 With or Without You - U2
06 Son of a Preacher Man [Edit] - Dusty Springfield
07 Simple Man - Lynyrd Skynyrd
08 Gethsemane - Jesus Christ Superstar Soundtrack
09 Better Man - Pearl Jam
10 Layla - Derek & the Dominos
11 Wild Horses - Rolling Stones
12 Sweet Bitter Love - Aretha Franklin

And here's the usual song list:

01 Chain of Fools (Morgan James)
02 Stairway to Heaven (Morgan James)
03 The Dark End of the Street (Morgan James)
04 The Middle (Morgan James)
05 With or Without You (Morgan James)
06 Son of a Preacher Man [Edit] (Morgan James)
07 Simple Man (Morgan James & Nicole Zuraitis)
08 Gethsemane (Morgan James)
09 Better Man (Morgan James & Nicole Zuraitis)
10 Layla (Morgan James & Nicole Zuraitis)
11 Wild Horses (Morgan James & Nicole Zuraitis)
12 Sweet Bitter Love (Morgan James)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15282129/MorganJ_2020-2022_AcoustcCoverSongsVolume7_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is of her performing in concert outdoors in Michigan in August 2022. I found some of the background distracting, so I cleaned it up using Photoshop.

The Grateful Dead - Equinox - Non-Album Tracks (1974-1979)

I'm puzzled why I haven't posted this until now, since it's been in my music collection for ages. But then again, I could say that about a lot of music. There's just too much good stuff out there that need posting here, in my opinion. That's definitely true of the Grateful Dead. I realized I've fallen behind posting albums from them, so I'll try harder to get on that.

Anyway, I already posted a lost album Grateful Dead album of sorts, from 1976. Those songs hang together, more or less, whereas this is more of a stray tracks grab-bag from a much wider time period. Nearly all are rare studio tracks, mostly originals, that fell by the wayside for one reason or another. This doesn't compare with their best stuff, but considering that they put some pretty dodgy songs on their late 1970s albums like "Shakedown Street," it's a shame some of these stayed in the vaults.

Generally speaking, from about 1969 to 1973, the Dead had an explosion of creativity, creating dozens of original songs, and covering dozens more. For the time period here, 1974 to 1979, they went back to more typical level of creativity, probably coming up with an average of about an album of new material, if you add in original songs on Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir solo projects. But the Dead as a whole played surprisingly few new cover songs during this time (although they kept playing lots of covers they knew from before). Just about the only one done in concert that I could find was "Let It Rock," originally by Chuck Berry. "Catfish John" and "K. C. Moan" are also covers, but were never or almost never played live during this time.

"Fire on the Mountain" need a little more explanation. The studio version first appeared on the Dead album "Shakedown Street" in 1978, and it became a classic, frequently played in concert. However, it was actually first written by lyricist Robert Hunter, which was common, and drummer Mickey Hart, which was not at all common for the band. Hunter usually wrote with Jerry Garcia, and this might be the only co-write with Hart. Hart attempted to record a second solo album in 1973 and then again in 1974, after putting out a solo album in 1972. However, that album was never released. Hart isn't much of a singer, so he rapped his way through this still unreleased early version, meant for that second solo album. I actually really like this rap version, done long before rap music was popular, although the usual way the Dead played it is great too. Not all members of the Dead played on this version, but he was joined by others, most importantly Jerry Garcia, so I stretched it a bit to credit it to the Dead.

Most of the other songs are studio outtakes that later appeared as bonus tracks. "K. C. Moan" and "This Time Forever" are from a rare acoustic concert. "Ollin Arageed" was only done when the band played in Egypt in 1978. "Hollywood Cantata" is an early version of "The Music Never Stopped," which came out on the "Blues for Allah" album in 1975, but it's different enough that I consider it a separate song. Garcia put out a solo album in 1974 called "Compliments." But it only had one original song (co-written with Robert Hunter, as usual), "Midnight Town." So I've included that here.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Fire on the Mountain [Rap Version] (Grateful Dead)
02 Let It Rock (Grateful Dead)
03 Midnight Town (Jerry Garcia)
04 Hollywood Cantata [Early Version of The Music Never Stopped] (Grateful Dead)
05 Showboat (Grateful Dead)
06 Catfish John (Grateful Dead)
07 K. C. Moan (Grateful Dead)
08 Equinox (Grateful Dead)
09 The Ascent [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
10 This Time Forever (Grateful Dead)
11 What'll You Raise (Grateful Dead)
12 Ollin Arageed (Grateful Dead with Hamza El Din)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15281159/TGratefulD_1974-1979_Equinx_atse.zip.html

Since I decided to name this album after the song "Equinox," I chose to do something different for the album cover. Instead of having a picture of the band members, I Googled the word "Equinox," and found this photo of the Milky Way visible at sunset at a science website. You also can see a shooting star underneath the "G" in "Grateful Dead."

Ike & Tina Turner - Hits a Go Go, Zurich, Switzerland, 12-14-1973

Tina Turner died four days ago as I write this in May 2023. She was 83 years old. I've been asked to post something in tribute. I'd already posted something from her solo career (a 1984 concert, check it out), so I went looking for something from her Ike and Tina Turner days. There isn't much in the way of rare or unreleased, but I did find a couple of things. I'm going to start with this one.

I found this concert on YouTube. The sound quality is excellent, and if you watch the video, the visual quality is excellent too. But it's frustrating in that I'm pretty sure the date is incorrect, and the location may be wrong too. What I do know is that this short performance was filmed for the TV show "Hits a Go Go." I can also tell from the set list that it's from 1973, since there are songs from that year but nothing from 1974 or since. But December 14, 1973 is the broadcast date. I don't know when it was actually filmed. And I found a pretty accurate concert list from a Tina Turner fan site, and it looks like she didn't play any concerts in Zurich, Switzerland, or anywhere else in Switzerland, in 1973. 

However, she did play some concerts in Germany in November 1973. So this could have been filmed there. This was broadcast on German TV, so it makes sense if it was filmed in Germany too. But the person who posted it claims it was filmed in Zurich, Switzerland. It's very possible the concert lists I've seen are incomplete, and that's true. Who knows. I watched the video, and there's nothing in it, like an emcee or credits, to give any clues. If anyone can pin this down any better, please let me know.

Anyway, given that this is a relatively short concert, it's frustrating that Tina Turner doesn't appear in the first five songs at all. The first and fifth songs are instrumentals. The second, third, and fourth songs are sung by the backing singers, the Ikettes. It was standard for them to sing some songs in Ike and Tina Turner concerts at the time, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. But once Tina Turner got on stage, she definitely shined.

There was only one problem. The last song, "I Want to Take You Higher," cut off as soon as the music came to an abrupt halt. So it was good no music was lost, but there was no audience response. So I patched in some cheering from some of the other songs.

This album is 40 minutes long.

01 El Burrito [Instrumental] (Ike & Tina Turner)
02 Everyday People (Ike & Tina Turner)
03 Will It Go Round in Circles (Ike & Tina Turner)
04 Listen to the Music (Ike & Tina Turner)
05 Standing on the Verge of Getting It On - Gimme Some Lovin' [Instrumental] (Ike & Tina Turner)
06 Sweet Soul Music (Ike & Tina Turner)
07 talk (Ike & Tina Turner)
08 River Deep, Mountain High (Ike & Tina Turner)
09 With a Little Help from My Friends (Ike & Tina Turner)
10 Proud Mary (Ike & Tina Turner)
11 A Love like Yours [Don't Come Knocking Everyday] (Ike & Tina Turner)
12 I Want to Take You Higher (Ike & Tina Turner)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15278217/IkenTinT_1973_HtsaGoGoZrichSwitzerland__12-14-1973_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot I took from the video of this concert. The "Hits a Go Go" text was also taken from a screenshot at the very start of the video. I added some more text with the same colors. For the band name at the top, I took that from an unrelated concert poster. 

Oh, and I purposefully didn't include Ike Turner in the picture, or say anything about him, because screw that wife-beating asshole. The less said about him, the better.

The Who - Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 9-29-1969

Having posted a BBC concert by the Who recently made me realize I haven't posted that much live music by them. So I'm going to post some more. This bootleg is a must-have if you're a Who fan.

In posting more live Who music, I want to fill in important gaps. 1968 is well covered with the official album "Live at the Fillmore East 1968" (which is excellent, by the way), and 1970 is well covered with the classic "Live at Leeds," plus "Live at Hull" and "Live at the Isle of Wight Festival." But there really isn't a live album from 1969, the year they did their "Tommy" concert album. 

I think if you want one 1969 Who concert, it should be this one. It was the first time they played "Tommy" in concert all the way through, and it's the only compete recording from 1969 (at least that's publicly available). The sound quality is also very good, since this is a soundboard. There were some audio issues, but I'm using a version improved by Prof. Stoned.

I also made some minor improvements. As far as the music goes, the only significant thing I did was an edit to the song "Eyesight to the Blind." There were a couple of vocals lines that sounded strangely muffled and distorted. So I patched in bits from the Who's Woodstock performance a month earlier to fix those. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title.

But I made more changes with all the banter between songs. Unfortunately, there's a noticeable hum through the entire recording. You can't really hear it during the actual songs, unless there are very quiet parts, so I didn't mess with the songs at all. But the hum was very noticeable and annoying to me during the banter. Happily though, I split the talking tracks into individual instruments using the UVR5 audio editing program, and I found that nearly all of the hum was on the drum track. Since there's no drumming for those tracks, I was able to wipe out the hum almost entirely. I also cut off a little dead air here and there, like guitar tuning, and an intro by an emcee in Dutch.

I must say that I'm a little bit sick of "Tommy." I think the Who have played it way too many times. It's nice to have this version when it was fresh, before they played it a zillion times. But also, note that there's 40 minutes of music before "Tommy" begins, and another 30 minutes after it ends. So you get basically an entire concert worth of music - an hour and ten minutes - and then 50 minutes of "Tommy" on top of that. 

I thought it was a bit weird that there was no banter and no clapping through all of the "Tommy" section. Even after big songs like "Pinball Wizard," there's seemingly no audience reaction. But I checked with other 1969 recordings like the Woodstock one, and it was exactly the same: the band played "Tommy" all the way through, and the audience held their applause until the end.

This album is a two hours and one minute long.

01 talk (Who)
02 Heaven and Hell (Who)
03 I Can't Explain (Who)
04 talk (Who)
05 Fortune Teller (Who)
06 Tattoo (Who)
07 talk (Who)
08 Young Man Blues (Who)
09 talk (Who)
10 A Quick One, While He's Away (Who)
11 talk (Who)
12 Substitute (Who)
13 Happy Jack (Who)
14 I'm a Boy (Who)
15 talk (Who)
16 Overture [Instrumental] (Who)
17 It's a Boy (Who)
18 1921 (Who)
19 Amazing Journey (Who)
20 Sparks [Instrumental] (Who)
21 Eyesight to the Blind [The Hawker] [Edit] (Who)
22 Christmas (Who)
23 The Acid Queen (Who)
24 Pinball Wizard (Who)
25 Do You Think It's Alright (Who)
26 Fiddle About (Who)
27 Tommy Can You Hear Me (Who)
28 There's a Doctor (Who)
29 Go to the Mirror (Who)
30 Smash the Mirror (Who)
31 Miracle Cure (Who)
32 Sally Simpson (Who)
33 I'm Free (Who)
34 Tommy's Holiday Camp (Who)
35 We're Not Gonna Take It - See Me, Feel Me (Who)
36 Summertime Blues (Who)
37 Shakin' All Over (Who)
38 talk (Who)
39 My Generation (Who)
40 See Me, Feel Me - Naked Eye - Pinball Wizard - Overture - Sparks (Who)

https://www.imagenetz.de/iE9YP

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7WvJW8dt

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/2kSCvctgvqKdBUt/file

I'm happy to say the cover photo comes from this exact concert. Or I should say "cover photos." I found two good photos from this concert, one of Roger Daltrey and the other of Pete Townshend. So I used Photoshop to combine them into one. But both are from this exact concert.

The Soft Boys - The Astoria, London, Britain, 1-13-1994

I recently commented here that I hadn't posted enough (a.k.a. any) live albums from the Soft Boys, so here's concert from them. The Soft Boys, Robyn Hitchcock's first band, broke in 1981. But they've reunited occasionally since then. This was part of a very brief reunion in 1994 to help promote the release of a best of compilation called "1976-81."

This was officially released, so the sound quality is great. But I'm posting it because it's long out of print. In fact, it was only ever released on cassette in a limited way. I don't even think anyone makes new cassettes anymore.

Although Hitchcock went on to have success with a solo career between 1981 and the year of this concert, 1994, this was strictly a reunion concert, with all the original members. Only Soft Boys songs were played. It's really nice to have this, because there are so few Soft Boys recordings from their main time together with this level of sound quality.

This album is 54 minutes long. I suspect this is edited down, especially since there's almost no banter between songs.

01 Wey Wey Hep Uh Hole (Soft Boys)
02 The Face of Death (Soft Boys)
03 Queen of Eyes (Soft Boys)
04 The Pigworker (Soft Boys)
05 Underwater Moonlight (Soft Boys)
06 Old Pervert (Soft Boys)
07 Hear My Brane (Soft Boys)
08 Where Are the Prawns (Soft Boys)
09 Insanely Jealous (Soft Boys)
10 Kingdom of Love (Soft Boys)
11 talk (Soft Boys)
12 Give It to the Soft Boys (Soft Boys)
13 Only the Stones Remain (Soft Boys)
14 Zipper in My Spine (Soft Boys)
15 talk (Soft Boys)
16 I Wanna Destroy You (Soft Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15274766/TSoftBys_1994_AstriaLondnBritain__1-13-1994_atse.zip.html

The original cover was a weird doodle by Hitchcock. But I found this nice image of a ticket from the exact concert here, so I decided to use that instead.

Download Links Update: All Links Working!

Good news! It was a big pain in the rear, but after several days of uploading zip files nearly every waking hour, I have all the download links working again. As I mentioned previously, about 350 Imagenetz links died for no apparent reason, so I had to replace them with Upload.ee links.

Although it was a hassle for me, this was actually a good thing in the long run, I think. I had to go through all my download zip files to figure out which ones were missing. As part of that process, I was able to figure out some cases were I had pointed to the wrong link, and I made sure that every album had a valid link. So this is probably the first time ever when I can say that 99 plus percent of the links should be correct and working. Before, when I was using ZippyShare, it was a constant game of whack-a-mole, with links dying due to inactivity or for no apparent reason at all. And in the month of two since then, all those Imagenetz links died. But I've been keeping an eye on the total number of Imagenetz links for the last week, and that has stayed stable. So, knock on wood, if that continues, all these links should last. 

In case you're curious, I now have about 850 Upload.ee links, 1050 Imagenetz links, and about 250 Mega links, for a total of about 2100 links. Next, I plan to replace the remaining Mega links with Upload.ee ones, because I still don't trust Mega with their harsh copyright violation policies. But I don't have to rush to do that, now that all the links are working.

Thanks again for your patience through this long process. Let's hope it's all over, with no more unpleasant surprises. By the way, now is a great time to go digging back through all the past albums I've posted, since all the music should actually be available for download.

Larkin Poe - Tip O' the Hat, Volume 8 - Various Cover Versions (2021-2023)

It feels like it's been a long time since I've posted any music from Larkin Poe. They've been busy, but I haven't come across anything with really high sound quality. And their acoustic cover versions series "Tip O' the Hat" seemed to have slowly petered out. But I'm glad to say that's no longer the case, with a few new songs in recent weeks, allowing me to finish off this volume. Let's hope they stay inspired to do more.

There's not much else to say. If you've been following this blog for a while, I hope you know this sisterly duo and have listened to other volumes in this series. As usual, they do acoustic versions of famous songs, although they have a few relative obscurities this time, such as "Sally's Song" (from the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack) and "O I Long to Feel Your Arms Around Me" by Father John Misty.

Note that I had previously been giving increasingly long titles to the album in this series. The last one was "Yet Additional Even Still More Further Tip O' the Hat." But that grew increasingly unweildy. To be honest, I didn't expect there to be this many volumes, and I hope there will be more to come. So I've resorted to simply "Volume 8" this time. 

"Money" is a relatively simple version, with just Rebecca Lovell on guitar and no Megan Lovell slide guitar solos as usual. That's probably because it's a very rare instance of Megan singing lead vocals. It also probably is from some earlier time, but it only appeared on-line for the first time in 2023, so that's where I've put it chronologically with the others.

Here are the original artists for each song:

01 Hideaway [Instrumental] - Freddie King
02 Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel
03 Bring It on Home to Me - Sam Cooke
04 Peter Gunn Theme [Instrumental] - Henry Mancini
05 Rockin' in the Free World - Neil Young
06 Sally's Song [Instrumental] - Danny Elfman
07 Total Eclipse of the Heart - Bonnie Tyler
08 Rich Girl - Hall & Oates
09 Start Me Up - Rolling Stones
10 The Joker - Steve Miller Band
11 Wind of Change - Scorpions
12 Money - Pink Floyd
13 O I Long to Feel Your Arms Around Me - Father John Misty
14 Never Been to Spain - Hoyt Axton / Three Dog Night
15 Don't Dream It's Over - Crowded House

And here's the usual song list:

01 Hideaway [Instrumental] (Larkin Poe)
02 Sledgehammer (Larkin Poe) (Larkin Poe)
03 Bring It on Home to Me (Larkin Poe)
04 Peter Gunn Theme [Instrumental] (Larkin Poe)
05 Rockin' in the Free World (Larkin Poe)
06 Sally's Song [Instrumental] (Larkin Poe)
07 Total Eclipse of the Heart (Larkin Poe)
08 Rich Girl (Larkin Poe)
09 Start Me Up (Larkin Poe)
10 The Joker (Larkin Poe)
11 Wind of Change (Larkin Poe)
12 Money (Larkin Poe)
13 O I Long to Feel Your Arms Around Me (Larkin Poe)
14 Never Been to Spain (Larkin Poe & Mark Agnesi)
15 Don't Dream It's Over (Larkin Poe)

This album is 46 minutes long.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15267699/LarkinP_2021d-2023_TpOtheHatVolum8_atse.zip.html

The cover appears to be a promo photo from around 2022 or 2023.

Download Links Update

I mentioned a few days ago, that one of the file sharing services I've started using recently, Imagenetz, has been letting me down. I've used that in the last month or two for over a 1,000 albums, but about 300 of the links have mysteriously died recently. 

I'm happy to say that I'm about halfway done replacing those with Upload.ee links, which seem more stable. I've pretty much fixed the links for all the really famous musical artists that had dead links. I anticipate finishing off the rest in the next few days.

The Velvet Underground - Max's Kansas City, New York City, 8-23-1970

I recently posted a couple of Velvet Underground (VU) concerts here, both from the End of Cole Ave. club in Dallas, and those have gotten a lot of downloads. (Although, oddly, way more people have downloaded the one from October 19, 1969 than the one from October 18, 1969. Their sound quality is similar, so if you like one you should like the other.) Just as a reminder, here are the download links to both:

October 18, 1969:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-velvet-underground-end-of-cole-ave_11.html

October 19, 1969:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-velvet-underground-end-of-cole-ave.html

Anyway, putting those together has put me in a Velvet Underground mood lately, so I've decided to do my best to try to improve some of their other live recordings. The next one I tackled in this Max's Kansas City show, so here it is. In my opinion, this version sounds significantly better than other versions.

The official album "Live at Max's Kansas City" is based on this concert. It was the very first official live VU album, being released in 1972. That's a bit odd in my opinion, because the sound quality was not great. But perhaps it was all that was at hand at the time. The concert was recorded by Brigid Polk (a.k.a. Brigid Berlin) who was a well known New York City high society socialite and associate of Andy Warhol. She recorded it on a mono portable cassette player, but perhaps it was an unusually good and expensive one, because the sound quality is very good for an audience recording. 

However, there were problems, and I've tried to fix them here. I've based this off the 2004 version, which is the only complete one. But actually it wasn't entirely complete, because the first minute or so of the song "Who Loves the Sun" was missing. But I got a lucky break with that. There's a bootleg of some band rehearsals from a couple of months earlier. The sound quality sucks for nearly all of the songs on that boot, except for two songs which sound much better, and one of those is a version of "Who Loves the Sun." So I used that version to patch in the missing first verse. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title.

I also used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the lead vocals of all the songs. I think that helped a lot. And I used that program to do a lot of work on all the talking tracks. The concert was recorded in the middle of a crowd, so there was a lot of ambient noise, and especially talking nearby. I managed to cut out some, but not all, of that noise, and boost the voice of Reed doing the talking from stage. Now, you can pretty easily hear nearly all of his comments, which often had been buried in muck on all the official versions. 

I also edited out some comments by people next to the recorder that were unusually loud. I believe the microphone was being held by none other than Johnathan Richman, who would later have success as the leader of the band the Modern Lovers. For instance, on the official live album version, his voice could be heard ordering a glass of wine at one point. But I cut all that out, because my goal was to try to make this sound more like a soundboard quality recording.

A more difficult problem was that, occasionally, some loud talking by crowd members occurred during the songs. I cleaned that up whenever I could. But this was particularly bad for the song "Candy Says." In the middle of the song, some guy began talking to someone else, possibly his date, about the movie "Patton," which was in the movie theaters at the time. One could clearly hear the two of them discuss their opinions about the movie, which ruined much of the song. I was able to wipe out most of that discussion using UVR5, whenever it happened during instrumental sections. But there were some points when that talking overlapped with the singing. For that, I patched in bits from other parts of the song, or, failing that, from the version of "Candy Says" on the October 18, 1969 End of Cole Ave. concert I posted recently. I also wiped out some crowd noise on the song "Femme Fatale" using some patch work, though the problem wasn't nearly as bad. So that's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

This happens to be the very last VU concert with Lou Reed (not counting much later reunions). The band continued on the next night and beyond, with band member Doug Yule on lead vocals. The last album with Reed, "Loaded," would be released a couple of months after this concert. But the band slowly lost more key members and then fizzled out altogether in 1973. However, you'd never know this was Reed's last concert from listening to this recording, as there were no public good-byes or final dramatic gestures. But perhaps we missed those, because I have my doubts that the last song here was the actual last song of the night. "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" seems like an odd choice for the last song, especially since "Sister Ray" was the band's usual closer. It's very possible that the recorder's cassette tape ran out, which was a common problem for tapers in that era.

This also was a concert without drummer Moe Tucker. She'd temporarily left the band in early 1970 for the duration of her first pregnancy. She was replaced on drums by Billy Yule, the younger brother of Doug Yule. Some VU fans knock this recording because of the lack of Tucker's unique drumming style, while also claiming that Reed lost his enthusiasm and thus didn't sound as good. But I disagree. I think the band kicked ass right until Reed left, at which point it ceased being the VU in my opinion, since he wrote and sang nearly all of the songs. Decide for yourself by listening to this.

This concert consisted of an early show and a late show. You can hear the band announce they were taking a break at the end of the song "Beginning to See the Light." There are two songs in the late show that were also played in the early show: "Sweet Jane" and "Lonesome Cowboy Bill."

This album is an hour and 26 minutes long.

01 talk (Velvet Underground)
02 I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground)
03 talk (Velvet Underground)
04 White Light-White Heat (Velvet Underground)
05 talk (Velvet Underground)
06 I'm Set Free (Velvet Underground)
07 talk (Velvet Underground)
08 Sweet Jane (Velvet Underground)
09 talk (Velvet Underground)
10 Lonesome Cowboy Bill (Velvet Underground)
11 talk (Velvet Underground)
12 New Age (Velvet Underground)
13 talk (Velvet Underground)
14 Beginning to See the Light (Velvet Underground)
15 Who Loves the Sun [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
16 Sweet Jane [Version 2] (Velvet Underground)
17 talk (Velvet Underground)
18 I'll Be Your Mirror (Velvet Underground)
19 talk (Velvet Underground)
20 Pale Blue Eyes (Velvet Underground)
21 talk (Velvet Underground)
22 Candy Says [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
23 talk (Velvet Underground)
24 Sunday Morning (Velvet Underground)
25 talk (Velvet Underground)
26 After Hours (Velvet Underground)
27 talk (Velvet Underground)
28 Femme Fatale [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
29 talk (Velvet Underground)
30 Some Kinda Love (Velvet Underground)
31 Lonesome Cowboy Bill [Version 2] (Velvet Underground)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264157/TVelvtUnd_1970a_MaxsKnsasCityNYC__8-23-1970_atse.zip.html

It's very hard to find any good photos of the band in concert, especially color ones. However, there was an ad for this series of shows, so I used that, cropped but otherwise unchanged. I cleaned it up some, and added the yellow background.

The Who - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: Grugahalle, Essen, Germany, 3-28-1981

I thought I was done with the Who and the BBC. But it turns out I have two more albums to share, starting with this one. Admittedly, this is only a BBC recording on a technicality. This actually was a short for the German TV show "Rockpalast," filmed in the expected location in Germany. But I found out that it was simultaneously broadcast on the BBC as well, something that happened occasionally with Rockpalast. So that makes this a BBC recording. More importantly, it's a lively concert with excellent sound quality.

Nowadays, I suppose the two Who albums done with drummer Kenny Jones ("Face Dances" in 1981 and "It's Hard" in 1982) don't get much love. The band's main songwriter Pete Townshend tends to dismiss them. But I think they get a bad rap. Townshend was in a very creative phase at the time, putting out solo albums and Who albums practically every year. Concert-wise, the band was probably better in 1981 than in 1982, when they were a little overcooked with lots of musicians on stage. 

This concert is a good mix of older, well-known songs with a few less well known ones from their latest album "Face Dances," like "The Quiet One" and "Don't Let Go the Coat."

This album is an hour and 35 minutes long.

UPDATE: On October 11, 2024, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same, but I renumbered this album from being "Volume 5" to "Volume 6" due to finding another BBC concert that took place before this one.

01 talk (Who)
02 Substitute (Who)
03 I Can't Explain (Who)
04 Baba O'Reily (Who)
05 talk (Who)
06 The Quiet One (Who)
07 talk (Who)
08 Don't Let Go the Coat (Who)
09 Sister Disco (Who)
10 talk (Who)
11 You Better You Bet (Who)
12 talk (Who)
13 Drowned (Who)
14 Behind Blue Eyes (Who)
15 talk (Who)
16 Another Tricky Day (Who)
17 Pinball Wizard (Who)
18 Who Are You (Who)
19 5.15 (Who)
20 My Generation (Who)
21 Won't Get Fooled Again (Who)
22 Summertime Blues (Who)
23 Twist and Shout (Who)
24 See Me, Feel Me (Who)
25 talk (Who)

https://www.imagenetz.de/mfh5b

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/awSXAagv

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Po4wQdiWWOyNSdu/file

I could have gone for a screenshot from a video of this concert, but the quality wasn't that great. Instead, I opted for this photo, of the band in Manchester, Britain, in March 1981.

Cliff Bennett - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1970

Here's the fourth and final volume of Cliff Bennett playing for the BBC. For the previous three, he stuck pretty consistently to a soul-influenced sound. But for this volume, while he still had a soulful voice, he caught up to the trends of the time, and went for more of a bluesy, hard rock sound. The AllMusic review of his music around this era compares it to Humble Pie, Savoy Brown, and Status Quo. So if you like them, you'll probably like this.

Bennett had previously been backed by the Rebel Rousers for most of his music career until this point. (He actually stopped using the Rebel Rousers name in 1968.) But he dropped them, and was billed just by the name of his new band, "Toe Fat." But as the AllMusic review says, "Unfortunately, although it met with widespread critical kudos, Toe Fat's debut was a resounding commercial flop, and may now be best remembered because of its curious, Hipgnosis-designed cover art, featuring toe-headed people lounging on a beach." 

Personally, I think the band really screwed up with their bizarre name - what the heck is "toe fat" anyway? And they also screwed up with their bizarre album covers. Their second cover was just as off putting as their first. AllMusic describes it like this: "a battle scene, pitting some species of alien lard against assorted roast chicken parts and a helpless bunch of grapes." Back in those pre-Internet days, it would have been hard for people to even figure out what kind of music Toe Fat played. But on the plus side, their obscurity then means this might be a surprise discovery for you now.

In case you're curious, here are the two album covers I speak of.

As an aside, note that the A-side of their first single was "Bad Side of Moon," and it's also included here. That was written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin and released by Toe Fat shortly before Elton John became famous.

Note that nearly every song has "[Edit]" in the title, because even in 1970 the BBC DJs talked over most of their songs. I did the usual thing, using the UVR5 audio editing program to wipe the talking and keep the music.

Toe Fat broke up in 1971 after two studio albums. Two band members joined Uriah Heep instead. Bennett went back to a solo career, sometimes with the reformed Rebel Rousers, sometimes not. But it seems his commercial fortunes dropped low enough for the BBC to lose interest in him, because I can't find any BBC sessions he did after this.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 That's My Love for You [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & Toe Fat)
02 Bad Side of the Moon [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & Toe Fat)
03 I Done Told You [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & Toe Fat)
04 Turns Out like the Rest [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & Toe Fat)
05 Idol [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & Toe Fat)
06 Gone [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & Toe Fat)
07 Three Times (Cliff Bennett & Toe Fat)
08 Midnight Sun [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & Toe Fat)
09 A New Way (Cliff Bennett & Toe Fat)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17175667/CLIFFBNNTT1970BBSessonsVlum4_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EPEBNgH2

I could only find a few black and white photos of the Toe Fat band. I took one of those, cropped it to just Bennett's head, then colorized it using the Palette program.  

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Peter, Paul & Mary - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: Tonight in Person, London, Britain, 10-4-1965

A few weeks back, a commenter (Sax and Guitar) at this blog said they'd seen a Peter, Paul and Mary BBC concert on YouTube, and it would be a good idea to post the music for it here. I found that video and discovered that it was from back when they were in their prime, and the sound quality is excellent. So here it is.

Chances are, you've heard of the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary to some degree. But if you haven't, here's the Wikipedia page on them:

Peter, Paul and Mary - Wikipedia 

In 1965, Peter, Paul and Mary were at or near their peak in popularity. But folk music was rapidly getting overtaken by folk-rock that year. Just one year later, musical trends would change drastically, and then change even more drastically in 1967, the year of psychedelia. So this was a great time for a BBC concert.

I don't know much about it, but it seems there was a BBC TV show called "Tonight in Person" that focused on folk music and ran from 1963 to 1967. If anyone has any music from the other shows in this series, please let me know. The show was only half an hour long. This is the combination of two back-to-back episodes, obviously taken from the same concert. The date I've used, October 4, 1965, is actually the date of the first episode. It must have been recorded some time before that, then edited down, but I'm going with this date (for now) since I don't know the actual date of the concert (or the exact location).

It's a solid concert, with no sonic flaws. Peter, Paul and Mary released live albums before this and after this, but there isn't one from around this time period.

This album is 58 minutes long.

UPDATE: On November 11, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I found a later volume in this series that I'd missed, so I added "Volume 1" to the title. That meant the cover art and mp3 tags changed too. 

01 When the Ship Comes In (Peter, Paul & Mary)
02 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
03 The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (Peter, Paul & Mary)
04 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
05 San Francisco Bay Blues (Peter, Paul & Mary)
06 For Lovin' Me (Peter, Paul & Mary)
07 Jesus Met the Woman (Peter, Paul & Mary)
08 Early Morning Rain (Peter, Paul & Mary)
09 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
10 Children Go Where I Send Thee (Peter, Paul & Mary)
11 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
12 The Whole Wide World Around (Peter, Paul & Mary)
13 Early in the Morning (Peter, Paul & Mary)
14 The Times They Are a-Changin' (Peter, Paul & Mary)
15 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
16 Hangman (Peter, Paul & Mary)
17 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
18 In My Dreams (Peter, Paul & Mary)
19 Puff, the Magic Dragon (Peter, Paul & Mary)
20 Rising of the Moon (Peter, Paul & Mary)
21 Great Day (Peter, Paul & Mary)
22 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
23 Blowin' in the Wind (Peter, Paul & Mary)
24 If I Had My Way (Peter, Paul & Mary)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Vs7DHptw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/M7FASBehYnXtx3s/file

I could have gone with a black and white screenshot from this exact concert. But I decided instead to use a color photo from "circa 1965" at an unknown date and location.

Ugh! A New Download Link Problem

Sigh! You've gotta be freakin' kidding me! If you've been following this blog, you'll know I had to replace all of the 2,000 plus download links here when ZippyShare died at the end of April 2023. I replaced a majority of those with Imagenetz links. Yesterday, I got some comments about newly dead links. That shouldn't be happening, since these new links no longer die from inactivity like ZippyShare links sometimes did. I investigated a bit, and found that over 300 Imagenetz links have died!

This is really strange. Imagenetz links are supposed to stay for a minimum of 500 days if there's no activity. That's clearly not the case. And it doesn't seem to be related to copyright issues either, since I haven't gotten any warnings and there's no clear pattern to which links are dying. I surmise it's just a case of links dying for no good reason whatsoever. This happened sometimes with ZippyShare links too. But over 300 in a month is very upsetting. I don't want to be constantly playing whack-a-mole with fixing links.

About 500 of the new links are with Upload.ee. As far as I can tell, those links don't seem to be dying, thank God. So I'm going to try to replace the newly dead Imagenetz links with Upload.ee ones, then cross my fingers and hope for the best. The problem with Upload.ee is that it has a very slow and clumsy interface. I can only upload three zip files at a time, whereas I could realistically do about 30 at a time with Imagenetz. So it may take me many days to fix all these links, and who knows, even more may die in the meanwhile.

If anyone has other suggestions on good file sharing services, please let me know. I've moved away from Mega, since they're too harsh on the copyright issue. (I still have a few hundred Mega links of all unreleased material, but I'd like to get rid of those eventually.) I don't want to put all my eggs in the Upload.ee basket. But if the Imagenetz links keep randomly dying, I should probably replace all those links eventually. Sigh!

Sheryl Crow - Rise Up - Non-Album Tracks (2008)

Sheryl Crow was quite a busy musician in 2008. She released the studio album "Detours," the Christmas album "Home from Christmas," then still had enough stray tracks on top of that for me to compile this album.

I have to admit that I'm not usually a fan of Christmas albums, though there are a few exceptions. So I took the three songs from her Christmas album that I liked the most and sprinkled them into this album.

A couple of songs, "Doctor My Eyes" and "Rise Up," are bonus tracks from the "Detours" album. Two more, "Evangeline" and "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," are live versions that have been officially released. 

Everything else is unreleased. "Cross Creek Road" is an outtake from the "Detours" session, with sound quality that would make you think it was released. The remaining two songs, "Fire and Rain" and "Crossroads," are from soundboard quality concert bootlegs.

Two more songs, "Higher Ground" and "Mean to Me," are only bonus tracks due to sound quality issues. They don't sound bad, but they're not as good as the rest.

This album is 39 minutes long, not including the two bonus tracks.

01 Doctor My Eyes (Sheryl Crow)
02 The Bells of St. Mary's (Sheryl Crow)
03 Evangeline (Levon Helm & Sheryl Crow)
04 Rise Up (Sheryl Crow)
05 White Christmas (Sheryl Crow)
06 Fire and Rain (James Taylor & Sheryl Crow)
07 Cross Creek Road (Sheryl Crow)
08 All through the Night (Sheryl Crow)
09 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding (Sheryl Crow)
10 Crossroads [Edit] (Eric Clapton & Sheryl Crow with John Mayer, Doyle Bramhall II & Robert Randolph)

Higher Ground (Sheryl Crow with Eric Clapton)
Mean to Me (Sheryl Crow)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15249629/SherylC_2008_RseUp_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken in Las Vegas in August 2008.

Bowie and Clapton Updates

Here's news of a couple of updates, so you won't miss them.

I've recently posted some albums where the sound quality was improved by a person with the nickname of Captain Acid. I imagine I'll post more like that, because he's done very good work. One of his edits is of a Derek and the Dominos concert I've already posted, at the Marquee Club in London, in August 1970. Here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/11/derek-dominos-marquee-club-london.html

It's one of my favorite concert recordings by the band, because the set list is different from most other live recordings by them, and because the sound quality is better than most of the others too. I've replaced the version I posted back in 2021 with the improved Captain Acid version. I also made some improvements to that. The sound quality is still a bit rough, but now I think it might be the best sounding live recording by the band other than the Fillmore East ones, which admittedly are a quantum leap better.

The second update I want to point out is from the David Bowie stray tracks album "Who Can I Be Now." I've only added two songs, but they're really good, unreleased Bowie originals: "I Am a Laser (The Gouster)" and "Shilling the Rubes." I'd had an incomplete version of one of them, but these are the complete versions, with excellent sound quality. Here's the link for that one:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/03/david-bowie-who-can-i-be-now-various.html

John Lennon - One to One Concert Rehearsal, Part 2, Butterfly Studios, New York City, 8-21-1972

Yesterday, I posted Part 1 of John Lennon's rehearsals for the One to One concert in 1972. Today, it's time for Part 2. If you like Part 1 at all, you'll definitely want Part 2.

I said most everything I wanted to say in my write-up for Part 1. A short summary is that Lennon only ever played one full-length concert in the decade of his solo career before his death in 1970, and that was the One to One concert in New York City at the end of August 1972. He rehearsed with the band Elephant's Memory for several days, and at least some of the rehearsals have been bootlegged. I've put this together from about four different bootleg sources. The sound quality was problematic at times, but my musical associate MZ made a bunch of improvements, and I made some edits too. In my opinion, it sounds pretty good now, though still not perfect.

In these rehearsals, Lennon played some of his best known solo songs at that time, and only reached back to play one Beatles song, "Come Together." I posted an unusual version of "Come Together" in Part 1. This is the more typical version. I also posted a version of "Give Peace a Chance" in Part 1 and another version here. The Part 1 version pretty much just had Lennon singing, whereas this one has a lot of group vocals. About half of the songs here are covers of hit songs from Lennon's childhood. He ultimately only did one in the concert, "Hound Dog." 

As I said in Part 1, although Lennon's wife Yoko Ono was and is an artistic and talented person, I am not a fan at all of her vocals when she's done her screaming style. So I generally didn't include the few Ono songs that were also done in these rehearsals. But I did include one in Part 1 and another one here, "We're All Water," in which I used the audio editing program UVR5 to wipe her vocals completely and treat the song like an instrumental. Sorry if that offends anyone, but I prefer it that way. There were some other instrumentals that I didn't include because they didn't sound that good to me. But I did include one here. I don't know if it had a name, so I've just called it "Blues Jam."

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Instant Karma [We All Shine On] (John Lennon)
02 Send Me Some Lovin' (John Lennon)
03 Mother (John Lennon)
04 Caribbean (John Lennon)
05 Honey Hush (John Lennon)
06 Come Together (John Lennon)
07 Don't Be Cruel - Hound Dog (John Lennon)
08 Blues Jam [Instrumental] (John Lennon)
09 Cold Turkey (John Lennon)
10 We're All Water [Instrumental] (John Lennon)
11 Roll Over Beethoven (John Lennon)
12 Well [Baby Please Don't Go] (John Lennon)
13 Give Peace a Chance [Group Vocal Version] (John Lennon)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15246023/JohnL_1972c_OnetOneConcetRehearslPart2ButtrflyStudiosNYC__8-21-1972__atse.zip.html

The cover photo is basically the same story as the cover for Part 1. It turns out there actually are a bunch of photos of Lennon from this rehearsal. However, all of them are in black and white. So I took one that I liked and colorized it using the Palette computer program.

John Lennon - One to One Concert Rehearsal, Part 1, Butterfly Studios, New York City, 8-21-1972

When it comes to posting albums on this blog, there's so much music that I want to post that I'm torn between trying to post more from musical artists where I've already posted some of their stuff, and introducing new artists. I've tried to do more of the former than the latter. For instance, I've posted a zillion solo Paul McCartney albums (okay, technically 25 - not quite a zillion yet), and no solo John Lennon albums yet. I feel bad about that imbalance, since I like them about equally. I don't want to dive all the way in with Lennon yet - for instance, I have a series of stray tracks albums planned - but this is a stand-alone thing that will have to suffice for now.

It's sad that Lennon died so young. I understand that he was planning his first concert tour as a solo artist shortly before he died in 1980. He did have a whole decade as a solo artist prior to that, but the last five of those years were spent away from the music industry. In those first five years, he played live for a few songs here and there, but the only full-length solo concerts he ever did were on August 30, 1972. He played an early show and late show as a benefit for the "One to One" charity. The early show was later officially released as the album "Live in New York City."

For Lennon's 1972 album with his wife Yoko Ono, "Some Time in New York City," he found an existing band called Elephant's Memory to back him up. They also backed him up for the "One to One" concert, going by the name "Plastic Ono Elephant's Memory Band" when collaborating with Lennon and/or Ono. They had several days of rehearsals, since they'd never done a full concert together. I'm a bit hazy on the details. I believe there were rehearsals at least on August 18th, 20th, and the 21st. I'm giving this the date of the 21st since that seems to be the culmination of the rehearsals, when most of the best recordings are from. But if anyone knows which songs were done on which days, please let me know.

Different bootlegs from the rehearsal sessions have leaked out over the years. They haven't been given the attention they deserve, in my opinion, especially since the amount of Lennon solo material is rather small due to his untimely death. I haven't seen any one bootleg that gathers all of the rehearsals together, so I compiled this together from about four different sources. There's so much that I broke it into two parts.

Maybe one reason these recordings haven't gotten more notice is due to poor sound quality. True, this doesn't sound amazing. But I did a lot of editing of the songs to make them sound better, especially by boosting the lead vocals. Then I passed the files to musical associate MZ. He did even more work. For instance, one problem was that the best versions of some songs came from old vinyl bootlegs that had pops and scratches. He systematically went through it all and removed over 100 pops alone. Then he made other changes, such as spectrum changes and fixing volume balance issues. The end result is very listenable, in my opinion, and a significant improvement over the bootleg versions that have been floating around. Kudos especially to MZ.

Another thing I did was separate the wheat from the chaff. There were some multiple takes that were redundant, as well as some instrumental jams that weren't that good, in my opinion, so those got cut. Also, I didn't include any song with Yoko Ono on lead vocals. I'm not saying she wasn't musically talented. She definitely was. However, her screaming style as a limited appeal, and it doesn't appeal to me. I'm reminded that a couple of decades ago, I used to shop at a certain record store that would put on a Yoko Ono album near closing time every night to get people to leave. It worked.

That said, there were a couple of Yoko Ono songs that I thought were good musically, except for the Ono vocals. So I used the UVR5 audio editing program to completely wipe her vocals, and present them as instrumentals. One is here, "Move On Fast." The other is on Volume 2. Sorry if that offends anyone, but I make these albums mainly for myself, and this is how I like it.

I have no idea what the proper chronological order of these songs is, especially since these came from multiple bootleg sources. So I shuffled the order a bit in order to mix Lennon's originals with the covers he did. Clearly, he was looking to do one or more rocking covers from the pre-Beatles days. Ultimately, he played only one in the concerts, "Hound Dog." But he did a whole bunch in these rehearsals. Between this album and Part 2, there are more "oldies" covers here than on his 1975 covers album "Rock 'n' Roll," and they're largely different songs. So this is worth listening to just for all the covers alone.

I'm including two versions of the song "Come Together," the sole Beatles song he did in the rehearsals. The version here is quite interesting, because he sang the song a whole octave lower than he usually did. The other version was sung the normal way, and is on Part 2. There also is a significantly different version of "Give Peace a Chance" on Part 2.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Come Together [Low Voice Version] (John Lennon)
02 Honky Tonk Blues [Instrumental] (John Lennon)
03 New York City [Edit] (John Lennon)
04 It's So Hard (John Lennon)
05 Honey Don't (John Lennon)
06 Ain't That a Shame (John Lennon)
07 Move On Fast [Instrumental Version] (John Lennon)
08 My Babe - Not Fade Away (John Lennon)
09 Woman Is the Nigger of the World (John Lennon)
10 Give Peace a Chance [Solo Vocal Version] (John Lennon)
11 Unchained Melody - It's Only Make Believe (John Lennon)
12 Well Well Well (John Lennon)
13 Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On - It'll Be Me (John Lennon)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15246025/JohnL_1972b_OnetOneConcetRehearslPart1ButtrflyStudiosNYC__8-21-1972__atse.zip.html

Luckily for my purposes, there are some photos of Lennon taken during these very rehearsals. They're all black and white, so I picked one I liked and colorized it using the Palette program.

Joan Osborne - Acoustic Grateful Dead Songs - StageIt, New York City, 11-21-2013

My plan is to post the rest of Joan Osborne's stray tracks albums, then start posting some other interesting albums I have of her music. But I was listening to this the other day, and couldn't resist wanting to post it out of order. It's a short Internet broadcast she did in which she played all Grateful Dead covers acoustically, with just a guitarist and keyboardist backing her up.

Osborne really knows Grateful Dead songs because she had the honor of being a lead vocalist for successor bands in 2003 (with the Dead) and 2006 (with Phil Lesh and Friends). She has a fantastic voice, as always, and really nails these versions. So this is a treat for fans of her music, Grateful Dead music, or both.

The sound quality is very good and clean. There was no audience, so no audience noise.

The one bummer about this recording is it seems they were playing to a time limit, judging by her comments between songs, and they had to keep it relatively short. The album is only 36 minutes long.

01 Mr. Charlie (Joan Osborne)
02 talk (Joan Osborne)
03 New Speedway Boogie (Joan Osborne)
04 talk (Joan Osborne)
05 Scarlet Begonias (Joan Osborne)
06 talk (Joan Osborne)
07 Alabama Getaway (Joan Osborne)
08 talk (Joan Osborne)
09 It Must Have Been the Roses (Joan Osborne)
10 talk (Joan Osborne)
11 I Know You Rider (Joan Osborne)
12 talk (Joan Osborne)
13 Ripple (Joan Osborne)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15240116/JoanO_2013_AcoustcGrateflDeadSngsStgeItNYC__11-21-2013_atse.zip.html

The cover is a screenshot taken from a video of this exact performance. I added some generic psychedelic art in the background at the top and bottom.

Cliff Bennett - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1967-1969

Here's Volume 3 of Cliff Bennett at the BBC.

The years 1967 to 1969 weren't so good for Bennett. He'd had a hit single in Britain in 1964, and another one in 1966. But his style of soul-based rock and roll quickly fell out of favor in 1967, with psychedelic music suddenly becoming the hot new trend. Bennett didn't really transition, but just kept making his soulful style of music.

He had a big chance for a hit single in 1968. Due to sharing managers with the Beatles, he was able to get an early version of the Beatles song "Back in the U.S.S.R." The Beatles didn't release it as a single (nor did they release any other singles from their 1968 double album, "The White Album"), and it was a great song done in a retro 1950s style that was right up Bennett's alley. But for whatever reason, his version didn't catch on. Nobody had a hit with it until the Beatles version was belatedly released as a single in 1976, when it was a Top Twenty Hit in Britain, finally.

Bennett kept releasing singles that didn't make the charts. However, the BBC still had faith in him, as you can see from all the songs from BBC sessions here. Many of these songs don't seem to have ever been released on record by him, such as "The Letter" and "Born to Be Wild."

As you'd expect from this time period, the BBC DJs talked over the music on many of the songs here. Those are all the ones with "[Edit]" in their names, which is all but three of them! As usual, I used an audio editing program to wipe the talking while keeping the music.

In 1970, Bennett would improve his musical fortunes a bit by being part of a new band called "Toe Fat." That'll be the subject of the fourth and final BBC volume for him.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 You Got It Made [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
02 Use Me [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
03 Soothe Me [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
04 One More Heartache [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
05 You're Breaking Me Up [And I m Wasting Away] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
06 Stop (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
07 Good Times [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
08 Iron Out the Rough Spots [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
09 The Letter [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
10 Where You Gonna Run To (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
11 I Got You, Babe [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
12 Back in the U. S. S. R. [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
13 Danger Zone [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
14 Born to Be Wild [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
15 Memphis Street [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
16 I'm Yours and I'm Hers [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17175663/CLIFFBNNTT1967-1969BBSessonsVlum3_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9CEaPuA3

Because Bennett's popularity went down in this period, I had a really tough time finding a black and white photo of him. I found one, and just one, where he was pictured as part of a group in 1968. I cropped the picture just to show him, exlarged it a lot, and colorized it using the Palette program.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

The Bee Gees - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 6-2-1989

I've posted three albums of BBC studio sessions by the Bee Gees, all from the late 1960s and early 1970s. I thought I was done with the Bee Gees at the BBC. But it turns out they did some concerts that were broadcast by the BBC over 15 years later. Here's the first such concert, which is unreleased.

Things changed drastically for the Bee Gees between their last BBC session in 1973 and this concert in 1989. They seemed to be fading into obscurity, but then found new life with disco music, and briefly became one of the biggest musical acts on the planet. Then disco went out of fashion, and suddenly it seemed everyone was sick of them. But they slowly clawed their way back into the charts in the 1980s. They never again were massively popular in the US, but by the time of this concert they restored much of their popularity in Britain and the rest of the world.

As you'd expect, this concert hits the high points from all the different phases of their career. Unfortunately, this is not the full concert though, as the BBC edited it down. According to the setlist.fm database, they also played "Giving Up the Ghost," "One," Tokyo Nights," "Juliet," "Run to Me," "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart," "House of Shame," "Stayin' Alive," and "You Win Again." 

When I saw that list of missed songs, my first thought was "No 'Stayin' Alive?! Are you kidding me?! That's one of the biggest hits of all time. Whoever edited that down for the BBC really blew it." So I decided that had to be added back in. I couldn't find this BBC version, but I found a concert they did in 1989 in Tokyo, Japan that was broadcasted on the radio and thus had similarly excellent sound to this BBC recording. It was pretty short and didn't have most of the other missing songs, but I did find "One" and "You Win Again" as well, so I've added those three to the end.

The Bee Gees have only released two official live albums, one in 1977 and the other in 1998. However, they've released several DVDs of live shows. One of them, "One for All Tour," features this 1989 tour, so you can find a more complete concert from this tour with that video.

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long. If you don't include the three non-BBC performances at the end, it's an hour long.

01 Ordinary People (Bee Gees)
02 talk (Bee Gees)
03 To Love Somebody (Bee Gees)
04 I Gotta Get a Message to You (Bee Gees)
05 Words (Bee Gees)
06 Lonely Days (Bee Gees)
07 talk (Bee Gees)
08 New York Mining Disaster 1941 (Bee Gees)
09 Holiday (Bee Gees)
10 Too Much Heaven (Bee Gees)
11 talk (Bee Gees)
12 Hearbreaker - Islands in the Stream (Bee Gees)
13 Saved by the Bell (Bee Gees)
14 World (Bee Gees)
15 talk (Bee Gees)
16 How Deep Is Your Love (Bee Gees)
17 It's My Neighbourhood (Bee Gees)
18 I Started a Joke (Bee Gees)
19 Massachusetts (Bee Gees)
20 Nights on Broadway (Bee Gees)
21 Jive Talkin' (Bee Gees)
22 You Should Be Dancing (Bee Gees)
23 One (Bee Gees)
24 You Win Again (Bee Gees)
25 Stayin' Alive (Bee Gees)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15236124/TBeeGs_1989_BBSessionsVolum4InConcrtWmbleyArenaLondnBritain__6-2-1989_atse.zip.html

The cover photo actually comes from the right venue, Wembley Arena in London, and from the right year, 1989. But I'm not sure if it's from this exact concert because they played there several times that year.

Eric Clapton - Rainbow Theatre, London, Britain, 1-13-1973, Early Show

First off, I want to make clear that Eric Clapton performed two concerts in one day, January 13, 1973, at the Rainbow Theatre in London. The late show was released as the album "Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert" later in 1973. Then an expanded version of that was released in 1995. But what I'm posting here is the early show, in soundboard quality that sounds just as good as the official album. So you may want to have this, even if you have the late show.

These two concerts were pivotal for Clapton's music career and his life in general, so a little history in needed. He fell into a bad heroin addiction after his classic album "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" was released in 1970. He didn't play in concert or release any new music in 1971 or 1972, with the exception of participating in the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. Pete Townshend of the Who heard of Clapton's addition problem, and even though Townshend didn't know Clapton that well, he knew Clapton was a major music talent and he wanted to help him recover from his addition and get back on his feet. Townshend helped gather a band of excellent musicians just for these two shows. Many in the band were current or former members of Traffic, such as Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Rick Grech, and Rebop Kwaku Baah. But Townshend and Ronnie Wood also played guitar. 

This band practiced for ten days, and put on a good show. Clapton was still addicted to heroin at the time, but he sang and played lead guitar surprisingly well, considering his condition. More importantly, the concerts did give him a kick in the pants. He merely had been hanging around his house, watching TV and getting high, but this got him back into music. He quit heroin over the course of the next year, in part due to working on a farm to get back in shape. Then he released the album "461 Ocean Boulevard" in 1974, which was a big success and lead to a long and successful solo career. He later said that seeing the faith that Townshend and the other musicians had in him gave him the confidence to overcome him addiction.

Unfortunately, Townshend didn't leave much of a musical mark in the concerts. He didn't sing any songs, and it seems he only stuck to playing rhythm guitar. However, he seemed to have been the band leader, as well as the emcee, doing most of the talking between songs. Steve Winwood though, had a larger musical role. Clapton sang nearly all the songs, but Winwood sang lead on "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," Presence of the Lord," and the Traffic song "Pearly Queen." So the concert was a bit like a reunion of Blind Faith, the 1969 band led by Clapton and Winwood. However, since Clapton hadn't released any new music since 1970, most of the songs were from the "Layla" album and Clapton's 1970 solo album "Eric Clapton."

As far as the recording goes, this is another bootleg I found that had been improved by the person nicknamed Captain Acid. I then made more changes to his version. I boosted the volume of the lead vocals for all the songs. But I especially boosted the vocals for the talking bits between songs, which were really low. I also cut out some guitar tuning and other dead air between songs.

Note that not all of the songs performed here are officially unreleased. The 1995 version of the official album contains 14 songs. Ten of them are from the late show, and four are from the early show. Two of those from the early show, "After Midnight" and "Bell Bottom Blues," were included because they were only done in the early show. Two others, "Layla" and "Little Wing," were played in both shows, but for some reason the early show versions were chosen. By the way, I read the liner notes to the 1995 version, and it weirdly implies there was only one concert. So I had to dig pretty deep to find which songs were from which show.

This concert is an hour and 30 minutes long.

01 talk (Eric Clapton)
02 Layla (Eric Clapton)
03 Badge (Eric Clapton)
04 Blues Power (Eric Clapton)
05 talk (Eric Clapton)
06 Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out (Eric Clapton)
07 Roll It Over (Eric Clapton)
08 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Eric Clapton)
09 talk (Eric Clapton)
10 Little Wing (Eric Clapton)
11 talk (Eric Clapton)
12 Bottle of Red Wine (Eric Clapton)
13 After Midnight (Eric Clapton)
14 Bell Bottom Blues (Eric Clapton)
15 talk (Eric Clapton)
16 Presence of the Lord (Eric Clapton)
17 Tell the Truth (Eric Clapton)
18 talk (Eric Clapton)
19 Pearly Queen (Eric Clapton)
20 Let It Rain (Eric Clapton)
21 Crossroads (Eric Clapton)

https://www.imagenetz.de/mo9SJ

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xkC9cgzX

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/jg3Efr0vehjxRo0/file 

The cover photo comes from one of these two Rainbow shows, but I'm not sure which one. From right to left, that's Ronnie Wood, Eric Clapton, Rick Grech, and Pete Townshend. Grech and Townshend were further to the side, but I used Photoshop to move them closer to Clapton.

The Lovin' Spoonful - Night Owl Cafe, New York City, 2-1965

I must say, I'm tickled pink to post this, because I was sure no worthy live recordings of the Lovin' Spoonful in their prime existed. But, low and behold, there is this one.

Some musical acts from way back when got lucky with having good live recordings that survived and others did not. For instance, the Byrds with their five original members from 1964 to 1967 were extremely popular, with two Number One hits, yet there doesn't seem to be any surviving live recordings of them other than some TV appearances here and there. I thought that was the case with the Lovin' Spoonful too. I'd looked high and low, and didn't find anything, except for some TV appearances just like the Byrds.

However, the other day, I came across this. It's a soundboard recording from the band's early days, right around the time they signed a record contract. They played lots of concerts at the Night Owl Cafe in Greenwich Village in New York City, and for some reason just this one set was recorded and has survived. Only the first ten tracks here are from that show. That includes a couple of their well known songs, "Good Time Music" and "Didn't Want to Have to Do It," but no hits per se. Most of these songs are cover versions that they never put on record.

Since that recording is rather short, only 25 minutes in total, I decided to fill out the album with some other live recordings. I decided to include all the songs they played for the Ed Sullivan Show. They often just lip-synced to their TV appearances, but for the Ed Sullivan Show they actually played live. Plus, the Ed Sullivan Show has a YouTube page where they've uploaded excellent sound quality versions of all of these. I edited these so the applause from one track leads into the next, making all three appearances sound like one continuous performance.

It so happens that the Lovin' Spoonful made three appearances on the Ed Sullivan, all in 1967. That's a nice complement to the Night Owl Cafe performance, because it mostly contains hits from a bit later in their career. I considered including more performances from other TV shows, but there isn't much that sounds really good. For instance, the only versions of the band's 1966 Number One hit "Summer in the City" I could find were lip-synced.

I did a little research on the Night Owl Cafe. It turns out that this was almost officially released in 1999. But all the band members approved the release except for their main singer and songwriter John Sebastian. So the release was nixed, but it was leaked out as a bootleg. Apparently, this is the only good live recording from the 1960s that the band members know of.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 talk (Lovin' Spoonful)
02 [Get Your Kicks On] Route 66 (Lovin' Spoonful)
03 Good Time Music (Lovin' Spoonful)
04 My Gal (Lovin' Spoonful)
05 Didn't Want to Have to Do It (Lovin' Spoonful)
06 Almost Grown (Lovin' Spoonful)
07 Bring It with You When You Come (Lovin' Spoonful)
08 talk (Lovin' Spoonful)
09 Alley Oop (Lovin' Spoonful)
10 My Baby's Gone (Lovin' Spoonful)
11 Nashville Cats (Lovin' Spoonful)
12 Darlin' Be Home Soon (Lovin' Spoonful)
13 Bald Headed Lena (Lovin' Spoonful)
14 Daydream (Lovin' Spoonful)
15 Do You Believe in Magic (Lovin' Spoonful)
16 Only Pretty, What a Pity (Lovin' Spoonful)
17 She Is Still a Mystery (Lovin' Spoonful)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15229202/TLovnSpnful_1965_NghtOwlCfeNYC__2-1965_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from an appearance on the British TV show "Ready Steady Go" in 1966. I removed a big sign behind the band with the TV show name on it.