Woodstock '94, Winston Farm, Saugerties, NY, 8-12-1994 to 8-14-1994 - Day 1, Part 2: Live

The second full set I was able to find from the Woodstock '94 Festival is a performance from the band Live.

In my opinion, this band has an unfortunate name, because it's easily confused with either common meaning of the word "live," as in "live and let live" or "live performance." Here's the band's Wikipedia page if you want to know more:

Live (band) - Wikipedia

Bad name or not, they had great success in the 1990s. Their biggest year was 1994, due to the release of their album "Throwing Copper" in April. It went on to sell eight million copies in the U.S. 

Due to the massive success of that album, I was surprised their set took place in the middle of the first day, which is where lesser known acts were getting placed. Even though their "Throwing Copper" album was released in April and this concert wasn't until August, I surmised that most of the album's success must have come after this concert. I believe I'm correct, because the band's biggest hit, "Lightning Crashes," wasn't released as a single until one month after this festival. That said, "Lighting Crashes" and other hits from that album, such as "I Alone," were performed in this concert.

As I mentioned previously, I didn't find much music from the first day of the festival. The Live set is the only one from that day that I was able to find as a bootleg with excellent sound quality. That's probably due to the band having much more success than most of the other acts from the festival's first day.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Iris (Live)
02 Top (Live)
03 talk (Live)
04 The Beauty of Gray (Live)
05 Selling the Drama (Live)
06 talk (Live)
07 Shit Towne (Live)
08 talk (Live)
09 Lightning Crashes (Live)
10 I Alone (Live)
11 Operation Spirit (Live)
12 talk (Live)
13 White, Discussion (Live)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NSgcAEHQ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/FDhhLWgJuQ3rsCK/file

The cover photo of the band's lead singer Ed Kowalczyk is from this exact concert. It's a bit low res because it's a screenshot from a video.

Woodstock '94, Winston Farm, Saugerties, NY, 8-12-1994 to 8-14-1994 - Day 1, Part 1: Blues Traveler

I haven't been posting much here in the past couple of weeks, but that certainly isn't due to a lack of blog related activity on my part. A commenter here suggested I should post the 1994 Woodstock festival, which was simply called "Woodstock '94." I thought that was an excellent suggestion. So here it is!

This has to be the biggest music festival I've posted here in terms of the amount of music, bigger even than the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. I've found 36 hours of music from this festival that's worthy of posting, divided into 35 albums! I think this festival has been generally overlooked. I certainly overlooked it. I didn't realize how many great musical acts took part. There were two really big Woodstock anniversary festivals. This one took place in 1994, on the 25th anniversary of the legendary 1969 Woodstock Festival. Another big one took place in 1999. The 1999 one was a fiasco, with violence and mayhem. I think this one tends to get confused with that one. That happened with me before I started gathering together the music for this festival.

I think another reason this festival gets overlooked is that there hasn't been much in the way of official releases for it. The original Woodstock was quickly made into a hit album and movie. More albums from it followed, as compilations and by individual musical acts. Eventually, the entire festival was released in a massive box set. 

By contrast, very little has been released from Woodstock '94. A double album was released later in 1994. But not only was that a tiny release for such a massive festival, but it wasn't well done, with the songs seemingly chosen at random. A film about the festival was released, but only direct-to-video on VHS and Laserdisc. It's never come out on DVD, Blue-Ray, or any digital format. In recent years, Green Day officially released their entire Woodstock '94 set as part of a deluxe edition of their 1994 album "Dookie." But that's the only full set to be released so far. 

Luckily for us, the vast majority of the festival is available on bootleg today, with excellent sound quality. This is mainly because most of it was broadcast on a pay-per-view format on cable TV at the time. However, much of this seems to have fallen into a memory hole. It took me hours of searching to find what I found. I hope by posting what I have from the festival, I'll play at least a small role in bringing the music from the festival to a larger audience.

Woodstock '94 was originally planned to be just a two day long festival. I'll write more about the festival in general in a later post. If you want to know more ASAP, Wikipedia has a good entry about it:

Woodstock '94 - Wikipedia

It turned out so many bands were eager to play at the festival that the organizers added a third date, which came before the other two. But the musical acts slotted for the first day were generally much less famous, and that day wasn't included as part of the pay-per-view. So while I was able to find virtually all the sets from the other two days, I only found a few full sets from the first day.

I'm posting the albums from the festival in the chronological order they were performed (with a couple of exceptions of partial sets I've bundled together). The first musical act to have a surviving full set is Blues Traveler. Here's their Wikipedia page:

Blues Traveler - Wikipedia

They put out their first album in 1990, and they're still in existence today. But their clear popular peak was in 1994, the same year as this festival. However, that happened after this festival. In late 1990, they released the album "four," which contained the two hits "Run-Around" and "Hook." It sold six million copies. Because that album hadn't been released yet, the band wasn't well known at the time of this festival. That's why it only got a slot on the first day of the festival and relatively early in the day to boot.

I only found this music as a video on YouTube. As I often do, I converted the video to mp3s. I deemed the sound quality worthy of inclusion. However, the lead vocals were relatively low in the mix, so I fixed that with the UVR5 audio editing program.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Crash Burn (Blues Traveler)
02 talk (Blues Traveler)
03 Support Your Local Emperor (Blues Traveler)
04 But Anyway (Blues Traveler)
05 talk (Blues Traveler)
06 Low Rider - Go Outside and Drive (Blues Traveler)
07 The Star-Spangled Banner [Instrumental] (Blues Traveler)
08 Optimistic Thought (Blues Traveler)
09 talk (Blues Traveler)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16750818/VA-WODSTCK94_8-12-1994_01BlusTrvelr_atse.zip.html

The cover shows John Popper, the lead singer and expert harmonica player in the band. It's from this exact concert.

By the way, the text and related artwork at the top and bottom of the cover is based on the promotional artwork from the festival. For instance, the guitar neck with two birds sitting on it was the festival logo. (It was similar to the logo from the 1969 Woodstock Festival, which only had one bird.) The font type, font colors, and red background all come from the promotional artwork too.

Sara Bareilles - What's Not Inside - Songs from the Musical Waitress (2015-2019) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's a special album posting, courtesy of guest poster Mike Solof. A few weeks ago, we posted an album of cover versions by singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles. That was just a warm-up, to get newbies to appreciate the fact that she has a great singing voice. Here's the album that Mike was most interested in sharing.

Bareilles is best known for her hits "Love Song" and "Gravity" in 2007 and "Brave" in 2013. In 2015, she released an album of songs meant for a musical version of the 2007 Hollywood movie "Waitress." It was called "What's Inside: Songs from Waitress." This post does not include that album, but it includes all the important music related to her involvement in that musical. 

Probably the central focus here is a concert. She never toured in a way that matched the "Waitress" musical. But in 2015, she did exactly one concert like that. It was held at the New York City Center in New York City, on November 5, 2015. That concert is included here. This first song list is from that concert. It remains unreleased, but it was broadcast on the Internet at the time and bootlegged, so the sound quality is excellent.

But that's not all. Bareilles is very talkative, and there is a ton of between-song banter from that concert. So Mike made a "Music Only" version of the concert without any of the banter.

But wait, there's more. He also included an exact version of the concert, but as one huge mp3 for people who would prefer that. 

And there's still more. He included an .mp4 track of video footage of the entire concert. That's the first time this blog has included any video.

But wait, there's even more than that! In 2019, Bareilles released an album of songs related to the musical that didn't make the album, called "What's Not Inside - The Lost Songs from Waitress (Outtakes and Demos)." Since that's very obscure to find these days, Mike included that too.

On top of all that, Mike made a PDF file with lots more information and plenty of nice photos. So be sure to check that out.

Everything is included in one zip file. It's the largest file ever posted here, mostly due to the video of the concert. The total size is over 1 GB.

The full concert is an hour and 33 minutes long. The "music only" version of the concert is one hour long exactly. The 2019 EP is 22 minutes long.

Here's the track list to the full 2015 concert discussed above:

Songs from the Waitress Concert, New York City Center, New York City, 11-5-2015

01 What's Inside (Sara Bareilles)
02 Opening Up (Sara Bareilles)
03 talk (Sara Bareilles)
04 Door Number Three (Sara Bareilles)
05 talk (Sara Bareilles)
06 When He Sees Me [Dawn's Song] (Sara Bareilles)
07 talk (Sara Bareilles)
08 I Didn't Plan It [Becky's Song] (Sara Bareilles)
09 talk (Sara Bareilles)
10 Soft Place to Land (Sara Bareilles)
11 talk (Sara Bareilles)
12 Never Ever Getting Rid of Me (Sara Bareilles)
13 talk (Sara Bareilles)
14 Bad Idea (Sara Bareilles with Drew Gehling)
15 talk (Sara Bareilles)
16 You Matter to Me (Sara Bareilles with Drew Gehling)
17 talk (Sara Bareilles)
18 She Used to Be Mine (Sara Bareilles)
19 talk (Sara Bareilles)
20 Everything Changes (Sara Bareilles)
21 talk (Sara Bareilles)
22 King of Anything (Sara Bareilles)
23 Love Song (Sara Bareilles)
24 talk (Sara Bareilles)
25 Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay (Sara Bareilles)
26 talk (Sara Bareilles)
27 Brave (Sara Bareilles)
28 talk (Sara Bareilles)
29 Gravity [Acappella Version] (Sara Bareilles)
30 talk (Sara Bareilles)

Here's the track list from the "music only" version of that same concert:

01 What's Inside (Sara Bareilles)
02 Opening Up (Sara Bareilles)
03 Door Number Three (Sara Bareilles)
04 When He Sees Me [Dawn's Song] (Sara Bareilles)
05 I Didn't Plan It [Becky's Song] (Sara Bareilles)
06 Soft Place to Land (Sara Bareilles)
07 Never Ever Getting Rid of Me (Sara Bareilles)
08 Bad Idea (Sara Bareilles with Drew Gehling)
09 You Matter to Me (Sara Bareilles with Drew Gehling)
10 She Used to Be Mine (Sara Bareilles)
11 Everything Changes (Sara Bareilles)
12 King of Anything (Sara Bareilles)
13 Love Song (Sara Bareilles)
14 Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay (Sara Bareilles)
15 Brave (Sara Bareilles)
16 Gravity [Acappella Version] (Sara Bareilles)
17 talk (Sara Bareilles)

Finally, here's the song list from the EP "What's Not Inside - The Lost Songs from Waitress (Outtakes and Demos)," released in 2019.

01 Happy Enough (Sara Bareilles)
02 Door Number Three (Sara Bareilles)
03 Knocked Up You (Sara Bareilles)
04 Without a Believer (Sara Bareilles)
05 I Can't Wait (Sara Bareilles)
06 Falling in Love Pie (Sara Bareilles)
07 She Used to Be Mine (Sara Bareilles)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8MGBHV5B

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/TBdPA3Cy1Erfe0i/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/kZwNW

The cover art is taken from promotional material related to the 2015 "Waitress" musical. That's Bareilles holding the pie. The text and artwork at the top and bottom of the image is mostly based on a playbill for that musical. 

Neil Finn - Acoustic Radio Sessions, Volume 3: 2002-2014

This is the third and final album I'm posting of Neil Finn's acoustic radio sessions. The title says 2002 to 2014, but note that all but the last song is from the 2002 to 2004 time frame.

Unfortunately, when I posted Volume 2 in this series, it got taken down to due a copyright issue. I have since restored that post without the download link... but you may find a useful link in the comments section there. We'll see if this lasts. I was surprised that one was taken down, because all but two of the performances were unreleased. For this one, all but three of the performances are unreleased. But I guess one never knows, so grab it while you can.

This comes from the same source of the kind person who sent me a bunch of Crowded House related music a few years ago. I'm sure Finn has continued to perform more for the radio, but this is all I have from that source. If I come across more, perhaps there could be a Volume 4 someday. If anyone has the material to help with that, please send it along.

As I mentioned above, only three songs here have been officially released. Those are tracks 1, 11, and 12. Track 11 ("Won't Give In (Acoustic Version)") was a B-side, while the other two are from various artists compilations. Most of the rest come from appearances on the radio shows "Morning Becomes Eclectic" and "World Cafe."

The vast majority of the songs are originals. But the last two are interesting cover versions of classic songs by Marvin Gaye and Bob Marley. "Persuasion" is actually sung by Richard Thompson, with Neil Finn and Tim Finn only playing guitar. The song was originally written by Thompson as an instrumental and included in a movie soundtrack in 1991. But Neil Finn liked the song, added lyrics to it, and included it in his 1993 album "Before and After." Since then, Thompson has performed the song a lot, and always sings the Finn lyrics, like he does here.

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Private Universe (Neil Finn)
02 Faster than Light (Neil Finn)
03 Weather with You (Neil Finn)
04 Whaling (Neil Finn)
05 Secret God (Neil Finn)
06 The Climber (Neil Finn)
07 It's Only Natural (Finn Brothers [Neil Finn & Tim Finn])
08 Persuasion (Finn Brothers [Neil Finn & Tim Finn] & Richard Thompson)
09 Love Is All That Remains (Neil Finn)
10 Pineapple Head (Neil Finn)
11 Won't Give In [Acoustic Version] (Finn Brothers [Neil Finn & Tim Finn])
12 Sexual Healing (Neil Finn)
13 Waiting in Vain (Neil Finn)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cUvmyMU9

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/HzkcJgR8HAqaZg5/file

The cover photo is from a 2001 concert at the Palace Theatre (wherever that is).

Various Artists - Uncovered Ladies, Volumes 1 and 2 (1973-2021) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

You may be familiar with a series of Beatles albums guest poster Mike Solof has made of special mixes he's made to Beatles songs. Now, he's turned that same mixing talent to editing some of his favorite songs sung by women. At my advice, he's split these edits into two albums. The first one, called "The Knowns," consist of famous songs that he has mixed to strip down some of the music to expose other parts that often go underappreciated. The second album, "The Lesser Knowns," does the exact same thing, but for songs that probably many listeners are unfamiliar with. 

As is his usual style, Mike explains much more in his PDF file, which is included in the download files.

Volume 1 is 59 minutes long, and Volume 2 is one hour long.

VOLUME 1: THE KNOWNS

01 Ray of Light [Mike's Mix] (Madonna)
02 In Your Room [Mike's Mix] (Bangles)
03 We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together [Taylor's Version] [Mike's Mix] (Taylor Swift)
04 Girl like Me [Mike's Mix] (Shakira & Black Eyed Peas)
05 Lotta Love [Mike's Mix] (Nicolette Larson)
06 Black Velvet [Mike's Mix] (Alannah Myles)
07 Midnight Train to Georgia [Mike's Mix] (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
08 Royals [Mike's Mix] (Lorde)
09 Complicated [Mike's Mix] (Avril Lavigne)
10 Bring Me to Life [Second Version] [Mike's Mix] (Evanescence)
11 Precious Things [Mike's Mix] (Tori Amos)
12 Chuck E.'s in Love [Mike's Mix] (Rickie Lee Jones)
13 Tumbling Dice [Mike's Mix] (Linda Ronstadt)
14 It's Too Late [Mike's Mix] (Gloria Estefan)
15 Valerie [68 version] [Mike's Mix] (Amy Winehouse)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16704293/VA-UNCOVERDLDIESTheKnwns_atse.zip.html

VOLUME 2: THE LESSER KNOWNS

01 Funhouse [Mike's Mix] (P!NK)
02 Azelea Flowers [Mike's Mix] (Karine Polwart)
03 Cut the Cord [Mike's Mix] (Charlotte Martin)
04 Sunday Morning After [Mike's Mix] (Amanda Marshall)
05 Chickenman [Mike's Mix] (Indigo Girls)
06 Eye in the Sky [Mike's Mix] (Jonatha Broooke)
07 So You Say [Mike's Mix] (Manhattan Transfer)
08 Take to the Sky [Mike's Mix] (Janis Ian)
09 Happy Home [Mike's Mix] (Paula Cole)
10 99.9F [Mike's Mix] (Suzanne Vega)
11 Need You Now [Mike's Mix] (Lady Antebellum)
12 Tattooed Heart [Mike's Mix] (Ariana Grande)
13 Baby Hold On [Mike's Mix] (Dixie Chicks)
14 Extraordinary [Mike's Mix] (Liz Phair)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16704295/VA-UNCOVERDLDIESTheLssrKnwns_atse.zip.html

Mike picked the cover art for both of the covers here. Since the title of this album is "Uncovered Ladies," he wanted photos to match that theme. Since the first album consists of famous songs, he has one of them, Shakira, on the cover. Since the second album is of mostly unknown songs, the cover is an unknown sexy woman.

Various Artists - Children of the Americas Radiothon, United Nations Building, New York City, and Palace Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, 11-12-1988

Here's another big benefit concert with a bunch of different famous musical acts. But this one was unusual in a couple of ways. For one, it was held in two locations simultaneously and broadcast live over the radio. And for the other, it's quite an odd selection of acts. I like all of them, but it seems pretty random to me to have, say, Pat Benatar followed by Al Stewart, then followed by Midnight Oil, and so on, which is what happened here. But hey, it's all good music, with excellent sound quality.

This benefit concert certainly had a good cause, which was to fund non-profits helping poor children in Latin America. This was the second annual concert for this cause. I don't know anything about the first concert or subsequent ones. But we know about this one because it was broadcast live on the radio, and a bootleg recording of it survives.

I made many, many edits to make this listenable. The concert took the form of a radiothon, which is just like a telethon, except for the radio instead of TV. And if you're familiar with telethons at all, you know they're notorious for constantly asking for donations. That's what happened here. Between acts, and even during acts, there were emcees giving pleas to donate, with the donation phone number in particular repeated endlessly. Even the musical artists would sometimes mention the phone number between songs. I got rid of all that because it's all moot now, with the number obviously no longer working. I stripped this down to just the music and the banter relevant to the music.

I also did some edits to make this flow better. Oftentimes, as soon as a song wound end, the emcee's voice would come on with more pleas for donations. So I would patch in some more applause to give the songs a decent sounding ending. I didn't bother marking those edits with "[Edit]" in the song titles, 'cos I did it so much.

Some of the acts performed at the Palace Theatre in Los Angeles. Those were Jackson Browne, Midnight Oil, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY), plus earlier appearances by Graham Nash and David Crosby. All the other acts performed at the United Nations Building in New York City. Note that the crowd in Los Angeles sounds much larger than the one in New York City. I'm guessing only a few dozen were allowed into the United Nations Building for this, based on the clapping one can hear.  

The star attraction here was CSNY. They put out a new album in 1988, "American Dream," but Neil Young decided not to take part in a tour to support it. However, he did take part in a very limited number of concerts with CSN around this time. There was the Bridge Benefit in 1988 (which I have also posted here), the Bridge Benefit in 1989, and this. (There also were a couple more in 1987 and 1990 and 1991, if you want to go that far.)

It's quite possible that there was more to these two concerts that what was heard here. For instance, there was no introduction to the CSNY set, and I doubt they started with the new song "This Old House." It also seems odd that Midnight Oil would have been recruited but only played less than ten minutes of music. I'm guessing this is just the stuff that made it to the radio broadcast, and while music was broadcast from one location, we were probably missing the music taking place at the other location. If anyone has any more of it, please let me know.  

This album is two hours and 25 minutes long.

01 Teach Your Children (Graham Nash)
02 talk (Emcee)
03 I Love L.A. (Randy Newman)
04 Dixie Flyer (Randy Newman)
05 Sail Away (Randy Newman)
06 talk (Randy Newman)
07 Political Science (Randy Newman)
08 Short People (Randy Newman)
09 talk (Randy Newman)
10 I Want You to Hurt like I Do (Randy Newman)
11 talk (David Crosby)
12 Crow on the Cradle (Jackson Browne & Graham Nash)
13 talk (David Crosby)
14 talk (Jackson Browne)
15 Lives in the Balance (Jackson Browne with David Crosby & Graham Nash)
16 talk (Jackson Browne)
17 My Personal Revenge (Jackson Browne with Sangre Machuwa)
18 talk (Jackson Browne)
19 Fruita Almarga [Bitter Fruit] (Jackson Browne)
20 talk (Jackson Browne)
21 Lene Verde [Instrumental] (Jackson Browne with Sangre Machuwa)
22 talk (Graham Nash)
23 Rock Me on the Water (Jackson Browne with David Crosby & Graham Nash)
24 Powerful Stuff (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
25 talk (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
26 Look at That, Look at That (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
27 talk (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
28 She's Tough (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
29 talk (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
30 Wrap It Up (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
31 talk (Pat Benatar)
32 All Fired Up (Pat Benatar)
33 Run Between the Raindrops (Pat Benatar)
34 talk (Pat Benatar)
35 Let's Stay Together (Pat Benatar)
36 talk (Emcee)
37 Antarctica (Al Stewart)
38 talk (Al Stewart)
39 Princess Olivia (Al Stewart)
40 The Year of the Cat (Al Stewart)
41 talk (Graham Nash)
42 Wealth Is Virtue (Midnight Oil)
43 The Dead Heart (Midnight Oil)
44 This Old House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
45 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
46 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
47 Name of Love (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
48 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
49 Tracks in the Dust (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
50 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
51 Don't Say Goodbye (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
52 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
53 Southern Cross (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
54 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
55 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
56 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
57 My Country 'Tis of Thee (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with J. D. Souther)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/DQZ2b6A2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/z8t3Ajl7bhZ3NZF/file

I found the cover image from some promotional art related to this concert. It's a drawing of all the major stars that took part. In the top row, from left to right: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. In the bottom row, from left to right: Jackson Browne, Pat Benatar, Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil, and Randy Newman. The banner at the top was in the original, but I changed the text there, and added more text at the bottom. 

I couldn't find any actual photos from this concert, so I'm lucky to have found this.

More Trouble with Download Links

I've been using two download services, upload.ee, and imagenetz. Upload.ee, unfortunately, has some spam attached to it (though there are ways to get around that). But at least those download links endure. The imagenetz links, by contrast, keep mysteriously disappearing, even though they're supposed to endure just as much. Over the past year or so, I've been gradually replacing imagenetz links with upload.ee ones, every time to imagenetz links die. A few days ago, I discovered that nearly all of the remaining imagenetz links suddenly died! I went from having about 650 links down to just about 85!

So I've spent many hours in the past few days replacing all those dead imagenetz links with upload.ee ones. Now, nearly all the links at this blog are upload.ee ones. There are still about 200 imagenetz ones though. That's intentional, because upload.ee doesn't allow files larger than 200 MB. That's equal to about an hour and a half of mp3s. So all the albums I post longer than an hour and a half still use imagenetz ones. Unfortunately, those are likely to keep dying from time to time, so if you find any dead links, please let me know.

I do still want an alternate to upload.ee, so if anyone has any good suggestions, please let me know. In the meantime, keep in mind there are lots of ways to get around the spam problem. A good one is to use an ad blocker plug-in. That's what I do, so I've never encountered this spam at all. Another easy one is to use the Brave browser. It has an ad blocker built in that automatically gets rid of this spam problem. Yet another option is to use the free download management program J-Downloader, which also blocks the spam. Failing all that, you can also grab all the music here via the free file sharing program SoulseekQT.

Thanks for your patience with all these link troubles. Right now, 100 percent of the links should be working, so this is a good time to go back and grab stuff.

Various Artists - An All-Star Tribute to Johnny Cash, Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City, 4-6-1999

I've previously posted "All-Star Tribute" concerts for Paul Simon and Brian Wilson. I discovered they were part of a short-lived annual tradition at the TNT TV network. There are only a couple more, so I plan on posting them too. Here's the next one, an "All-Star Tribute" to country legend Johnny Cash.

In 1999, Cash's health was in serious decline. He wouldn't die until 2003, at the age of 71. But by 1999, he rarely gave public performances. As he mentioned in his stage comments here, he hadn't performed on stage in the past year and a half. After this, he would only make about half a dozen additional musical performances, none of them full concerts. So although he did sing at the very end of this concert, maybe with his health in mind he only sang two songs.

The rest of the concert featured an impressive roster of musical stars singing songs made famous by Cash. It should be noted that the biggest stars, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and U2, weren't actually there but videotaped musical performances that were played at the concert. 

Unfortunately, one person who couldn't sing at this concert was Cash's famous musical daughter Rosanne Cash. This concert happened to take place during a three-year time period in which Rosanne was unable to sing due to a polyp on her vocal chords. She did, however, give a brief speech.

Most of the concert was emceed by actor Jon Voight. However, some of the other banter was by singer-songwriter Larry Gatlin, actor Kevin Bacon, and actor Tim Robbins. There were some additional parts that I cut out. These were narrated video tributes to different stages of Cash's life. I cut those out because they were mainly meant to be seen, not heard.

Like the other "All-Star Tributes" in this series, this concert remains officially unreleased. I found the video of it on YouTube, then converted that to audio. The sound quality is excellent throughout.

This album is an hour and a half long.

01 Jackson - Orange Blossom Special (Sheryl Crow & Willie Nelson)
02 talk (Jon Voight)
03 I Guess Things Happen That Way (Chris Isaak)
04 Get Rhythm Intro (Chris Isaak)
05 Get Rhythm (Chris Isaak)
06 talk (Jon Voight & John Carter Cash)
07 talk (Willie Nelson)
08 I Still Miss Someone (Willie Nelson)
09 talk (Jon Voight)
10 talk (June Carter Cash)
11 Ring of Fire (June Carter Cash)
12 talk (Jon Voight)
13 Train of Love (Bob Dylan)
14 talk (Jon Voight)
15 The Man in Black (Mavericks)
16 talk (Jon Voight)
17 The Ballad of Ira Hayes (Kris Kristofferson)
18 talk (Kris Kristofferson)
19 Sunday Morning Coming Down (Trisha Yearwood with Kris Kristofferson)
20 talk (Larry Gatlin)
21 Ghost Riders in the Sky (Brooks & Dunn)
22 talk (Jon Voight)
23 Tennessee Flat Top Box (Lyle Lovett)
24 talk (Lyle Lovett)
25 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
26 Give My Love to Rose (Bruce Springsteen)
27 talk (Jon Voight)
28 Flesh and Blood (Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
29 talk (Kevin Bacon)
30 Delia's Gone (Wyclef Jean)
31 talk (Jon Voight)
32 talk (Dave Matthews)
33 Long Black Veil (Dave Matthews & Emmylou Harris)
34 talk (Jon Voight)
35 talk (Rosanne Cash)
36 talk (Marty Stuart)
37 Belshazzar (Marty Stuart with the Fairfield Four)
38 talk (Jon Voight & Bono)
39 Don't Take Your Guns to Town (U2)
40 talk (Jon Voight)
41 talk (Tim Robbins)
42 Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash)
43 talk (Johnny Cash)
44 I Walk the Line (Johnny Cash with June Carter Cash)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VysgekNb

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/FO4eXOKBVGBjELk/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/dmd9S

The cover shows John Mellencamp with Johnny Cash at this exact concert. Curiously, Mellencamp didn't appear in any of the songs. Perhaps he had a song or two that got cut out of the TV broadcast, or perhaps he had a non-performing role, I don't know. But I thought it was a good photo to show how Cash was honored.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 8: Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd was the eighth and final musical act to perform at the 1980 Knebworth Festival.

At this point, Pink Floyd was essentially David Gilmour plus backing musicians. The band's former leader Roger Waters left the band in 1983. But I think it says quite a lot that the Gilmour-led version of Pink Floyd was still so popular in 1990 that it was the closing act of this festival, over such big names as Phil Collins and Paul McCartney, and even the trio of Eric Clapton, Dire Straits, and Elton John playing together.

As I mentioned back in my write-up for Part 1 of this festival, most all of the music from this festival remains officially unreleased, aside from a highlights album and video. But the exception to this is this Pink Floyd set. It was first released in full as part of "The Later Years" box set. Then it later got a stand alone release. Even so, I'm including it here so the entire festival can appear in one place.

Pink Floyd toured all over the world from 1987 to 1989, in the wake of their "Momentary Lapse of Reason" album. However, they wouldn't do another big tour until 1994, after the release of their "Division Bell" album that year. In between, the only full concert they played was this one. 

On the band's classic 1973 album "Dark Side of the Moon," the wordless vocals for the song "The Great Gig in the Sky" were sung by Clare Torry. So it was a special treat when she assisted the band by singing that part in this concert. Beautiful and talented Candy Dulfer also played saxophone.

This album is an hour and one minute long.

01 talk by Tommy Vance (Pink Floyd)
02 Shine On You Crazy Diamond [Parts 1-5] (Pink Floyd)
03 The Great Gig in the Sky (Pink Floyd with Clare Torry)
04 talk (Pink Floyd)
05 Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd)
06 Sorrow (Pink Floyd)
07 Money (Pink Floyd)
08 Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd)
09 talk (Pink Floyd)
10 Run like Hell (Pink Floyd)
11 talk (Pink Floyd)

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zDzX4AZ7

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/NWoJW1HfISeoTcK/file

The cover photo of lead singer David Gilmour is from this exact concert.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 7: Paul McCartney

The seventh performance at the 1990 Knebworth Festival was by Paul McCartney.

McCartney didn't do any tours for all of the 1980s until the last few months. Then he went on a big world tour that lasted until the end of July 1990. So this was much like another stop on that tour, though playing to an even bigger crowd, of 120,000 people. 

The set list was composed of songs typical from his tour that year, though cut down to fit within the allotted time slot. That included two songs written by fellow ex-Beatle John Lennon, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Give Peace a Chance." Technically, he was promoting his 1989 album "Flowers in the Dirt," but he only played one song from it, "We Got Married." This concert was also the first time he played the Beatles song "Birthday" in concert.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 talk by Cathy McGowan & Timothy Dalton (Paul McCartney)
02 Coming Up (Paul McCartney)
03 Back in the U.S.S.R. (Paul McCartney)
04 I Saw Her Standing There (Paul McCartney)
05 talk (Paul McCartney)
06 We Got Married (Paul McCartney)
07 talk (Paul McCartney)
08 Birthday (Paul McCartney)
09 talk (Paul McCartney)
10 Let It Be (Paul McCartney)
11 talk (Paul McCartney)
12 Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney)
13 talk (Paul McCartney)
14 Someone Else I'd Like to Be (Paul McCartney)
15 talk (Paul McCartney)
16 Hey Jude (Paul McCartney)
17 talk (Paul McCartney)
18 Strawberry Fields Forever (Paul McCartney)
19 Give Peace a Chance (Paul McCartney)
20 talk (Paul McCartney)
21 Yesterday (Paul McCartney)
22 talk (Paul McCartney)
23 Can't Buy Me Love (Paul McCartney)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GS2fFQHm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/dIowcvXP5mBOUcI/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 6: Eric Clapton, Dire Straits & Elton John

The sixth performance at the 1990 Knebworth Festival was a rather unusual collaboration between Eric Clapton, Dire Straits, and Elton John.

Collaboration between these three famous musical forces was rare, but not unprecedented. In particular, Mark Knopfler, leader of Dire Straits, and Eric Clapton became good friends in the late 1980s and toured together a lot in 1987 to 1989. Elton John joined them for at least one full concert, in Tokyo, Japan, in 1988. 

Meanwhile, Dire Straits broke up in 1986, at the conclusion of the tour to promote their 1985 album "Brothers in Arms." They got back together for about five shows in 1988 and 1989, mostly benefit concerts, and usually with Clapton included. Then they did this festival, their only performance of 1990. A full reunion followed, leading to the band's final album, "On Every Street," in 1991. This concert didn't actually include all of Dire Straits. Mark Knopfler, John Illsey, and Alan Clark took part, but Guy Fletcher was missing. Instead, the band was rounded out by Clapton, Ray Cooper, and Phil Palmer. But still, it was considered a Dire Straits reunion.

The first four songs were sung by Clapton. Then Dire Straits joined in. One song played, "Think I Love You Too Much," was an original that never made it onto a Dire Straits (or Mark Knopfler) album, despite being a good song that got played a lot on the Dire Straits world tour in 1991 and 1992. This was the first time it was performed in concert. Elton John joined in for the last four songs, three of which were sung by him.

I don't recall any wind noise trouble with this performance. Also note that it's the longest set of the festival, because it was basically three big acts put together.

This album is an hour and 16 minutes long.

01 talk by Dave Dee (Eric Clapton)
02 Pretending (Eric Clapton)
03 Before You Accuse Me (Eric Clapton)
04 Old Love (Eric Clapton)
05 Tearing Us Apart (Eric Clapton)
06 Solid Rock (Eric Clapton & Dire Straits)
07 talk (Eric Clapton & Dire Straits)
08 I Think I Love You Too Much (Eric Clapton & Dire Straits)
09 Money for Nothing (Eric Clapton & Dire Straits)
10 talk (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
11 Sacrifice (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
12 Sad Songs [Say So Much] (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
13 Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
14 Sunshine of Your Love (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HoBf13LZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4oHFJrfaG2Kgn1R/file

For the cover, I wanted a photo of Clapton, Knopfler, and John together at this concert. I couldn't find any, since they were spread out on stage. However, I did find one of Clapton and John.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 5: Phil Collins & Genesis

The fifth performance at the 1990 Knebworth Festival was both Phil Collins and Genesis. Phil Collins did the first half as a solo artist and then the second half as part of Genesis.

By 1990, Phil Collins was massively popular. His album "...But Seriously," released late in 1989, was the best selling album in Britain in 1990, staying Number One in the charts for a stunning 15 weeks. It hit the top of the charts in the U.S. and most elsewhere too. Yet at the same time, he was continuing to be very successful as part of Genesis. At the time of this concert, their last album was "Invisible Touch," released in 1986 and another massive seller. The next Genesis album would come out in 1991. In between tours to support those albums, Genesis did almost no live performances. But they made an exception for their festival, since it was such a high profile gig.

By this point in the festival, it seems the wind died down. I don't remember any rustling noises in this set.

This album is an hour and one minute long.

01 talk by Rob Lowe (Phil Collins)
02 In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)
03 Colours - Drum Duet (Phil Collins)
04 talk (Phil Collins)
05 Another Day in Paradise (Phil Collins)
06 Sussudio (Phil Collins)
07 Mama (Genesis)
08 That's All (Genesis)
09 Throwing It All Away (Genesis)
10 talk (Genesis)
11 Turn It On Again - Somebody to Love - [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction - Twist and Shout (Genesis)
12 Reach Out, I'll Be There - Lovin' Feelin' - Pinball Wizard - Midnight Hour - Turn It On Again [Reprise] (Genesis) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/XAEy2mka

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/OnuN85P8jJcMiRb/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 4: Robert Plant with Jimmy Page

The fourth performance at the 1990 Knebworth Festival was given by Robert Plant. He was joined by his former Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page on the last three songs.

Robert Plant's solo career was going very well in 1990. In fact, he was the winner of the British music industry's Silver Clef award that year, which was one of the purposes of the concert. His fifth studio album, "Manic Nirvana," had been released three months prior to this concert.

Later in the 1990s, Plant and Page would collaborate quite a lot. They would get together for a live album ("Unledded") and a studio album ("Walking to Clarksdale"), and tour together from 1994 to 1998. However, in 1990, having Plant and Page appear on stage together was very rare, and was considered a big deal. They have taken part in limited Led Zeppelin reunions in 1985 (as part of Live Aid) and 1988 (at an Atlantic Records anniversary concert), and there had been some studio collaborations between them. I could be wrong, but I think this is the first time Page appeared on stage at a Plant solo concert. At least it was the first high profile one. They played three Led Zeppelin songs together to end the set.

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 talk by Gary Davis (Robert Plant)
02 Hurting Kind [I've Got My Eyes on You] (Robert Plant)
03 Immigrant Song (Robert Plant)
04 Tie Dye on the Highway (Robert Plant)
05 talk (Robert Plant)
06 Liar's Dance (Robert Plant)
07 Going to California (Robert Plant)
08 talk (Robert Plant)
09 Nirvana (Robert Plant)
10 Tall Cool One (Robert Plant)
11 talk (Robert Plant)
12 Misty Mountain Hop (Robert Plant with Jimmy Page)
13 Wearing and Tearing (Robert Plant with Jimmy Page)
14 talk (Robert Plant with Jimmy Page)
15 Rock and Roll (Robert Plant with Jimmy Page)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/sQg12KoA

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/pDI0g7HuYVcS4c4/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/exoqZ

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 3: Cliff Richard & the Shadows

The third act at the 1990 Knebworth Festival was Cliff Richard and the Shadows. I doubt Richard would have been invited to such a major festival in the U.S., where he was only a minor star, but he was one of the biggest stars in Britain.

Richard has an an on again and off again relationship with the Shadows. They were his backing band when he first found fame in the late 1950s. The Shadows were no ordinary backing band, because they went on to have many hits of their own, all instrumentals, including five Number One songs in Britain. The Shadows first broke up in the late 1960s. But they reunited with Richard in 1978, 1984, and again in 1989 and 1990, which included this concert. They would reunite with him a few times after this as well, with the final reunion in 2010.

There's some wind rustling noise in this set, especially during the applause and banter. But it's pretty minor stuff and hardly affects the actual songs.

 

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 talk by Mike Read (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
02 Move It (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
03 talk (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
04 Summer Holiday (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
05 The Young Ones (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
06 On the Beach (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
07 talk (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
08 Living Doll (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
09 Good Golly, Miss Molly (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
10 talk (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
11 Bachelor Boy (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
12 Fall in Love with You (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
13 Do You Wanna Dance (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
14 talk (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
15 In the Country (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
16 talk (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
17 It'll Be Me (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
18 talk (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
19 Shake, Rattle and Roll (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)
20 We Don't Talk Anymore (Cliff Richard & the Shadows)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WTyFwriM

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/d6LJSOAf27y2IHV/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. For most of the other covers from this festival I was able to use clear photos. But in this case, I took a screenshot from a video of this concert, so it's a bit low-res.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 2: Status Quo

Status Quo isn't a well known band in the United States, but they were consistently big hit makers in Britain from the 1960s to the 2000s. They were the second act at the 1990 Knebworth Festival.

There's not much else for me to say here, I think. If you like the band's style of boogie rock, you should enjoy this. 

The wind was a little stronger here than later in the concert, and you can really hear the wind rustling during some quiet parts, but the vast majority of this sounds perfectly fine.

This album is an hour and one minute long.

01 talk by Mark Goodyear (Status Quo)
02 Caroline (Status Quo)
03 talk (Status Quo)
04 Mystery Song - Railroad -  Most of the Time - Wild Side of Life (Status Quo)
05 Rollin' Home -  Again and Again - Slow Train (Status Quo)
06 Hold You Back (Status Quo)
07 talk (Status Quo)
08 Dirty Water (Status Quo)
09 Whatever You Want (Status Quo)
10 In the Army Now (Status Quo)
11 Rockin' All Over the World (Status Quo)
12 Don't Waste My Time (Status Quo)
13 Roadhouse Blues (Status Quo)
14 The Wanderer - Marguerita Time - Living on an Island (Status Quo)
15 Break the Rules - Something 'bout You Baby I Like - The Price of Love - Roadhouse Blues [Reprise] (Status Quo)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16684678/VA-1990KnbwrthFstivlKnbwrthHuseKnbwrthBrtin__6-30-1990_02SttsQuo.zip.html

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 1: Tears for Fears

The Knebworth Festival has been happening most every year in Knebworth, England, since 1974. The 1990 festival was the first one since 1986, and was a special one, because it was the location for the Silver Clef Award winners concert, the only time that happened at Knebworth. This is a British music industry annual award. In 1990, the Silver Clef winner was Robert Plant.

The musical acts that played in the 1990 festival were bigger names than all festivals there before or since: Tears for Fears, Status Quo, Cliff Richard, Robert Plant with Jimmy Page, Phil Collins and Genesis, Eric Clapton, Dire Straits, Elton John, Paul McCartney, and Pink Floyd! Unlike other festivals such as Live Aid, there were a lot fewer musical acts, but each one got to play an average of a little less than an hour, for a total of eight hours of music.

The organizers behind this festival realized it was a big deal, because they later released audio and video versions of the festival. However, these were only about two CDs worth of highlights. The vast majority of the music has remained unreleased. The only exception is the Pink Floyd set, which was later released in full. Luckily for us, though, the entire concert was broadcast by the BBC at the time. So I'm posting the full concert, thanks to people who recorded the broadcast.

One snag about the festival is that the weather was not good. The outdoors crowd got rained on from time to time. Worse, from a listener's point of view is that it was very windy. In these recordings, there are occasional comments by the performers about how windy it was. That meant that sometimes the wind blew against the microphones, causing rustling noises. I tried fixing this, but I barely made a dent. So I've decided to post it, windy noises and all. Luckily, the wind was only noticeable during the banter between songs and especially quiet parts of songs. It also was pretty infrequent. Don't consider it a big problem, more like a minor annoyance here and there.

In 1990, Tears for Fears were arguably at the peak of their popularity. In 1989, they released the album "The Seeds of Love," which went to Number One in Britain. Tears for Fears was a duo made up of Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal. After the 1990 tour supporting the album, Smith would leave, and not rejoin for another ten years.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 talk by Dave Dee (Tears for Fears)
02 Head Over Heels - Broken (Tears for Fears)
03 Change (Tears for Fears)
04 Pale Shelter (Tears for Fears)
05 talk (Tears for Fears)
06 Sowing the Seeds of Love (Tears for Fears)
07 All You Need Is Love (Tears for Fears)
08 talk (Tears for Fears)
09 Advice for the Young at Heart (Tears for Fears)
10 I've Got to Sing My Song (Tears for Fears with Oleta Adams)
11 talk (Tears for Fears)
12 Badman's Song (Tears for Fears)
13 talk (Tears for Fears)
14 Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Tears for Fears)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7JGf9mjC

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/WNOHS7S5fKT8s72/file

The cover photo of Tears for Fears is from this exact concert.

Judy Collins - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, London, Britain, 7-3-1974

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a "BBC Sessions, Volume 1" album by Judy Collins here. But after a few days, it got taken down due to copyright issues. That surprised me, because I'm pretty sure it was all unreleased material. So we'll see if we get in trouble with this one. If so, Judy Collins music must be banned in general, because this is all unreleased too.

This comes from a BBC TV show called "In Concert." (This is confusing, because the BBC has tended to call all sorts of radio and TV programs "In Concert.) This particular show by that name ran from 1971 to 1974. I've posted a bunch of other concerts from the series, but I only recently found this one.

As I often do, I found this on YouTube. I converted the video to audio, then broke it into mp3s. So I believe this is the first time this has been shared as music files.

It's a short concert, as all the ones from that TV show are. But Collins filled it with most of her best known songs at that point in her career. Collins bootlegs are extremely few and far between, so let's hope this stays posted.

This album is 33 minutes long.

01 Chelsea Morning (Judy Collins)
02 talk (Judy Collins)
03 Both Sides Now (Judy Collins)
04 talk (Judy Collins)
05 My Father (Judy Collins)
06 The Hostage (Judy Collins)
07 talk (Judy Collins)
08 Suzanne (Judy Collins)
09 Who Knows Where the Time Goes (Judy Collins)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6L2TPtkZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/0nPEsMglLSzYdrR/file

The cover is a screenshot from this exact concert. For the text, I also used the same font and colors as the opening credits. However, I added the bottom line of text, and came up with my own color for that. In February 2025, I upgraded the image with the Krea AI program.

Joan Baez - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, BBC Television Theatre Shepherd's Bush, London, Britain, 6-5-1965

The BBC didn't typically air full concerts until about 1970, so we're lucky to have this decently long concert by Joan Baez all the way back in 1965. This is officially unreleased, but the sound quality is excellent.

I'm not sure what this is from exactly. The BBC did air a folk music TV show around this time called "Tonight In Person," but I believe the Baez show for that took place in Scotland and has a different set list. (If anyone has the audio, please pass it along.) It sounds like a complete concert to me, including banter between songs, but perhaps some songs were cut out, I don't know. 

Baez put out live albums in 1962 and 1963, but then not another until 1969. So this fills a gap. It also is a good time for a concert, since she was hitting a peak of popularity, aided by her well known romance with Bob Dylan at the time.

I found this on YouTube. I converted it into audio and broke it into mp3s. So this has probably never been shared in audio format before.

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 Rambler Gambler (Joan Baez)
02 There but for Fortune (Joan Baez)
03 talk (Joan Baez)
04 Copper Kettle (Joan Baez)
05 talk (Joan Baez)
06 Mary Hamilton (Joan Baez)
07 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (Joan Baez)
08 talk (Joan Baez)
09 Troubled and I Don't Know Why (Joan Baez)
10 talk (Joan Baez)
11 We Shall Overcome (Joan Baez)
12 talk (Joan Baez)
13 With God on Our Side (Joan Baez)
14 Silver Dagger (Joan Baez)
15 Oh Freedom (Joan Baez)
16 talk (Joan Baez)
17 She's a Trouble Maker (Joan Baez)
18 talk (Joan Baez)
19 The Unquiet Grave (Joan Baez)
20 talk (Joan Baez)
21 It Ain't Me, Babe (Joan Baez)
22 talk (Joan Baez)
23 Isn't It Grand Boys (Joan Baez)
24 talk (Joan Baez)
25 500 miles (Joan Baez)
26 talk (Joan Baez)
27 Te Ador (Joan Baez)
28 Ate Amanha (Joan Baez)
29 talk (Joan Baez)
30 Plaisir d'Amour (Joan Baez)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16651234/JOANBZ1965BBSessonsVolum1InCncrtBBTvThetrShphrdsBshLndnBrtin__6-5-1965_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from a BBC TV show "circa 1965," so maybe it's this very one. It might be from something else though.

Flamin' Groovies - A Bucket of Brains - Non-Album Tracks (1971-1973)

I've been meaning to post more from Flamin' Groovies, but I have so much music to post that I never seem to get around to it. (Apparently they don't use the "the" in their name, though that's how I think of them.) I've only posted one concert so far. I have a series of stray tracks albums to post, but I haven't readied the cover art and such. Here's one I do have all ready to go though, so I'm going to post it a little out of order. 

Flamin' Groovies had a few fairly successful years, from about 1968 to 1971. But they had two leaders, Roy Loney and Cyril Jordan. Loney left in 1971, disenchanted by the music business and the failure of the band to break big. He was replaced by Chris Wilson, who became the new main lead singer. This bad would find more moderate success in the later 1970s, especially with the song "Shake Some Action," which would become an all-time power pop classic. But in the early 1970s, they had some lean years. This album roughly corresponds to that time.

Around the time the band lost Loney, they also lost their record contract. They signed to a new record company in 1972, and released two singles, "Slow Death" and "Married Woman." "Slow Death" in particular should have been a big hit. I love that song. It really should be considered a classic too, but not enough people know about it. It didn't even make the charts because it contained the word "morphine," so the BBC and other radio stations banned it. The band was planning to put out an album called "A Bucket of Brains," but after the two singles failed to gain any traction, their contract was cancelled.

It turns out the band did record a fair amount of songs in the 1971 to 1973 time frame, with many of them produced by British rocker Dave Edmunds. That included a 1973 version of "Shake Some Action," though in my opinion the longer version released in 1976 that would eventually be considered a classic is significantly better. Different versions of these songs would be released decades later, under the album names "A Bucket of Brains," "The Rockfield Session," and "Slow Death." I've compiled them all together here, and it's a good length for an album.

Here's a Wikipedia link that tells the story about this album that failed to exist at the time, here:

A Bucket of Brains - Wikipedia

 

I've added two bonus tracks. These are unreleased. They come from a French TV show where the band was filmed playing live in the studio, with no audience. The sound quality is excellent. However, they're different versions of songs already on the album, so that's why they're only bonus tracks.

 

This album is 48 minutes long, not including the two bonus tracks.

01 Slow Death (Flamin' Groovies)
02 Tallahassee Lassie (Flamin' Groovies)
03 Married Woman (Flamin' Groovies)
04 A Shot of Rhythm and Blues (Flamin' Groovies)
05 Little Queenie (Flamin' Groovies)
06 Sweet Little Rock and Roller (Flamin' Groovies)
07 Let Me Rock (Flamin' Groovies)
08 Dog Meat (Flamin' Groovies)
09 Blues from Phyllis (Flamin' Groovies)
10 Jumpin' Jack Flash (Flamin' Groovies)
11 Shake Some Action [1973 Version] (Flamin' Groovies)
12 When I Heard Your Name (Flamin' Groovies)
13 Roll Over Beethoven (Flamin' Groovies)

Little Queenie [French TV Version] (Flamin' Groovies)
Slow Death [French TV Version] (Flamin' Groovies)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16670410/FLAMNGROVIS1971-1973ABucktoBrans_atse.zip.html

The album cover is based on the 1972 single of the song "Slow Death." I removed the name of the B-side near the bottom, and changed the words "Slow Death" to "A Bucket of Brains" in the exact same location as the original.

Katrina & the Waves - Shepperton Film Studios, Shepperton, Britain, 12-29-1983

I have long felt that Katrina and the Waves are a very underrated 1980s new wave band. They had many more good songs besides their huge hit "Walking on Sunshine." I've already posted a concert by them, from 1985. This is a concert from 1983.

Frankly, I think that 1985 one is better than this one. It's longer, and has more key songs on it, helped by the fact that they'd released more music in the two years between that concert and this one. I'm mostly posting this because it's so very rare and needs to get into wider public circulation. This is from a professionally recorded concert done in a film studio, but in front of an audience. It was released as a bonus DVD on some versions of the 2003 archival album "The Original Recordings: 1983-1984."

 I had it on my SoulseekQT wish list for many months, and I finally was able to download it the other day. I converted it from video format to mp3s. The sound quality is excellent. There are very few live recordings of this band, period, and nothing from this early in their career. This is from a time where the band had released some music, including a single of "Walking on Sunshine," but they failed to make the charts anywhere. It wouldn't be until 1985 when "Walking on Sunshine" was re-released when they would find big success.

This album is 35 minutes long.

01 talk (Katrina & the Waves)
02 Que Te Quiero (Katrina & the Waves)
03 Game of Love (Katrina & the Waves)
04 Do You Want Crying (Katrina & the Waves)
05 Walking on Sunshine (Katrina & the Waves)
06 Don't Take Her Out of My World (Katrina & the Waves)
07 Mexico (Katrina & the Waves)
08 Brown Eyed Son (Katrina & the Waves)
09 Maniac House (Katrina & the Waves)
10 talk (Katrina & the Waves)
11 I Really Taught Me to Watusi (Katrina & the Waves)
12 talk (Katrina & the Waves)
13 Monkey Town (Katrina & the Waves)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16666484/KATRNANTWVES1983ShppertnFlmStdosShppertnBitin__12-29-1983_atse.zip.html

I didn't find any good photos of the band in concert from 1983 or even 1984. So this one shows lead singer Katrina Leskanich on the US TV show "American Bandstand" in July 1985.

Various Artists - Songs in the Key of Life - A Grammy Awards Tribute to Stevie Wonder, Nokia Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, 2-10-2015

Here's something a little different than my usual stuff. It's a tribute concert for Stevie Wonder. But because it's from relatively recently, 2015, it has a whole different bunch of musical acts performing songs for him than those that typically show up in these kinds of tribute concerts that I post. There are very big stars that I usually don't have on my blog, such as Beyonce, Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, and Ariana Grande. Whether you like those kinds of stars or not, they all performed classic Stevie Wonder songs, so it was very hard to go wrong. Plus, the concert ended with a short set by Stevie Wonder himself.

This concert was professionally recorded and broadcast on TV in 2015. I hasn't been officially released in any format as far as I know, not even on video. But I found the video of it on YouTube. The sound quality is excellent, so I did my usual thing of converting it to audio and cutting it into individual mp3s. 

I edited out some sections where there was talking while video montages of Wonder's life were shown on a big screen. That didn't translate well to just a listening experience. I also edited out some speeches that didn't have much do to with the songs performed. There also is some banter by famous people who weren't always introduced, or at least not introduced each time, like LL Cool J, Jamie Foxx, and Tyler Perry. So keep an eye on the song list for those details.

This album is an hour and 20 minutes long.

01 Fingertips, Part 2 (Beyonce)
02 Master Blaster [Jammin'] (Beyonce & Ed Sheeran)
03 Higher Ground (Beyonce, Ed Sheeran & Gary Clark Jr.)
04 talk (LL Cool J)
05 I Believe [When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever] (John Legend)
06 talk (Maya Rudolph)
07 talk (Lady Gaga)
08 I Wish (Lady Gaga)
09 talk (Jason Derulo)
10 Signed, Sealed, Delivered [I'm Yours] (Ariana Grande & Babyface)
11 talk (LL Cool J)
12 My Cheri Amour (Annie Lennox)
13 talk (Pharrell Williams)
14 Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing (Pharrell Williams & Ryan Tedder)
15 talk (Tony Bennett)
16 For Once in My Life (Tony Bennett)
17 I Was Made to Love Her (Ed Sheeran)
18 talk (Tyler Perry)
19 You Haven't Done Nuthin' (Band Perry)
20 talk (Mary Wilson)
21 talk (Janelle Monae, India.Arie & Jill Scott)
22 As (Janelle Monae, India.Arie & Jill Scott)
23 talk (Andrea Bocelli)
24 I Just Called to Say I Love You (Andrea Bocelli)
25 talk (Jennifer Hudson)
26 All in Love Is Fair (Jennifer Hudson)
27 talk (LL Cool J)
28 Isn't She Lovely (Ne-Yo with Aisha Wonder)
29 talk (Jamie Foxx)
30 Contusion [Instrumental] (Stevie Wonder)
31 Sir Duke (Stevie Wonder)
32 You Are the Sunshine of My Life (Stevie Wonder)
33 Overjoyed - Ribbon in the Sky (Stevie Wonder)
34 Superstition (Stevie Wonder)
35 talk (LL Cool J with the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr)
36 talk (Stevie Wonder)
37 Happy Birthday (Stevie Wonder & Everyone)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16667103/VA-2015SngsinthKyofLfeAGrmmyAwrdTrbteNkaThetrLsAnglsCA__2-10-2015_atse.zip.html

 The cover is from this exact concert. From left to right, that's Stevie Wonder on piano, Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga, and Jennifer Hudson.

Elton John - BBC Sessions, Volume 9: Wembley Pool, London, Britain, 11-3-1977

I thought I was all done posting BBC albums by Elton John. But the other day, I came across a BBC concert from 1977 I'd missed that was posted at a bootleg sharing site. It was too interesting to not post, especially with guest appearances by Kiki Dee and Stevie Wonder. So here it is. 

But note that by posting this, I've had to renumber all the Elton John BBC albums that come after this. So the former Volume 9 becomes Volume 10, the former Volume 10 becomes Volume 11, and so on. I just did all that renumbering, so feel free to redownload those if you don't want two Volume 9's.

This entire concert was professionally filmed by the BBC. Apparently, when this concert first happened, only about an hour of it was shown on BBC TV at the time. But over the years, more of it has come out here and there until this is probably the whole thing. A person named Emmanuel Hercules posted the entire video file, which is where I got this. He stitched it together from multiple sources. I converted it to audio format and then broke it into mp3s. The only critique I'd have of his nice work on this is that the audio from the different sources were sometimes at different volumes. But I think I've evened that out. The sound quality is generally excellent, roughly the same as the other 1970s BBC concerts.

This was kind of the end of Elton John's prime 1970s era. He was feeling burned out (and even attempted suicide roughly around this time). In this concert, which was a special one done for charity, he announced he would stop touring for a while. He was pretty low profile for the rest of the 1970s before coming back with more hits in the early 1980s (and beyond).

Regarding the two guest appearances, Kiki Dee did her usual thing, dueting with him on their Number One hit song "Don't Go Breaking My Heart." 

The Stevie Wonder appearance was rather disappointing, in my opinion. He joined Elton John on stage for the final number, "Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance)," which I think went on too long (13 minutes). He didn't do much except play some tambourine (as one can see on the video of this concert) and sing some backing vocals. It was almost certainly a spontaneous thing where he showed up on stage without even knowing the song. But the fact that he showed up on stage at all was a big deal. Wonder was probably at the peak of his popularity, but he was kind of in seclusion for most of the late 1970s, kind of like John Lennon doing the same thing around that time. He didn't play any full concerts in 1976, 1977, and 1978, and only made a few brief appearances like this one.

This concert is two hours and 19 minutes long.

01 talk (Elton John)
02 Better Off Dead (Elton John)
03 Daniel (Elton John)
04 talk (Elton John)
05 Roy Rogers (Elton John)
06 talk (Elton John)
07 The Goaldiggers Song (Elton John)
08 Where to Now St. Peter (Elton John)
09 talk (Elton John)
10 Shine On Through (Elton John)
11 Tonight (Elton John)
12 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Elton John)
13 talk (Elton John)
14 Island Girl (Elton John)
15 talk (Elton John)
16 Candle in the Wind (Elton John)
17 talk (Elton John)
18 One Horse Town (Elton John)
19 Bennie and the Jets (Elton John)
20 Rocket Man [I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time] (Elton John)
21 talk (Elton John)
22 Cage the Songbird (Elton John)
23 talk (Elton John)
24 Levon (Elton John)
25 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John)
26 talk (Elton John)
27 [Gotta Get A] Meal Ticket (Elton John)
28 talk (Elton John)
29 Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word (Elton John)
30 Philadelphia Freedom (Elton John)
31 Funeral for a Friend - Love Lies Bleeding (Elton John)
32 talk (Elton John)
33 Your Song (Elton John)
34 talk (Elton John)
35 Don't Go Breaking My Heart (Elton John & Kiki Dee)
36 talk (Elton John)
37 Bite Your Lip [Get Up and Dance] (Elton John with Stevie Wonder)

https://www.imagenetz.de/eVDcZ

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ELABVJPf

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5pss76sEXbFmSSK/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

The Aerovons - Resurrection - Alternate Version (1969)

Here's an interesting rarity. If you've heard of the Aerovons, I'd be impressed. They're an obscure 1960s band that worshipped at the altar of the Beatles, on the Hollies pop side of things. I'm not saying this is a lost classic, but if you're interested in music that evokes that era, this one has it in spades.

The Aerovons hailed from St. Louis, Missouri of all places. They have a very interesting history, so I've included the liner notes from the official album in the download files. Long story short is they got an incredible opportunity to record a debut album at Abbey Road Studios in London, England. By chance, this happened right at the time the Beatles were recording their "Abbey Road" album in mid-1969. Not only were they able to meet and hang out with their idols, but they got to watch parts of the classic "Abbey Road" album get recorded.

Unfortunately, their fairy tale story didn't completely come true. A couple of their singles got released, but didn't bother the charts. As a result, the record company decided not to release their debut album, "Resurrection." The band broke up a short time later. Their album only came out decades later, in the early 2000s. 

This consists of my alternate version of that album. I've removed some songs, but also added some bonus tracks, including the A- and B-sides from the band's lead singer and songwriter Tom Hartman. It came out in 1971 in total obscurity. I believe it was the only thing he released outside of the Aerovons. 

In this case, I strongly believe less is more. The biggest problem with the Aerovons was that they were too influenced by their musical heroes, especially the Beatles. Oftentimes, you can play "spot the influence" on their songs. I removed some songs that were too derivative, in my opinion. The worst offender was a song that sounds so much like "Oh! Darling" by the Beatles that it annoys me to hear it.

Hartman quit the music business after that failed single mentioned above, and went to college instead. But he never stopped writing songs. In 2021, a new album billed to the Aerovons called "A Little More" was released. It's surprisingly good, probably stronger song for song than the 1969, and less derivative, though only 21 minutes long. If you like this, you should definitely check that out.

By the way, I stumbled across this article about the band that was published only last month (as I write this in May 2024), due to the "Resurrection" finally being released on vinyl. It's an interesting read, with photos:

After 55 Years, the Aerovons Are Finally the Next Big Thing (riverfronttimes.com)

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 World of You (Aerovons)
02 Resurrection (Aerovons)
03 With Her (Aerovons)
04 Quotes and Photos (Aerovons)
05 Words from a Song (Aerovons)
06 Bessy Goodheart (Aerovons)
07 Something of Yours (Aerovons)
08 She's Not Dead (Aerovons)
09 The Years (Aerovons)
10 Everything's Alright (Aerovons)
11 The Children (Aerovons)
12 The Train (Aerovons)
13 Song for Jane (Aerovons)
14 Here (Aerovons)
15 World of You [Demo] (Aerovons)
16 Sunshine Woman (Tom Hartman)
17 A Little More (Tom Hartman)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16651228/AEROVNS1969Rsrrcton_atse.zip.html

The cover is just the photo of the original cover, without any changes.

Various Artists - Come Together: A Night for John Lennon's Words and Music, Radio City Music Hall, New York City, 10-2-2001

I don't know much about why this particular John Lennon tribute concert happened when and where it did, with these musical artists taking part. I did find one mention that it was part of a series of tribute concerts shown on TV by the TNT channel. I do know that there are a lot of excellent performances here by talented and famous musicians. This was broadcast on TV at the time. I suspect it was edited down for television from a longer concert, because there's basically no moment wasted here, with tight edits from song to song.

Given this was a tribute to John Lennon, some key musicians were missing. Most importantly, the three other ex-Beatles Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, as well as Lennon's musically successful son Julian Lennon. But his other (much less commercially successful) son Sean Lennon did take part. In turns out the timing was pretty terrible, because George Harrison was dying of cancer and only lived one more month. 

Also, the timing was strange because this took place only three weeks after the 9/11 terror attack, with the nation still in shock. I'm sure that was hanging over this, though it wasn't directly mentioned.

As far as I know, everything here remains officially unreleased. I don't believe it's been shared as music files anywhere on the Internet either. I happened to randomly come across a video of it on YouTube. The sound quality was excellent, so I converted it to audio and chopped it up into individual mp3 files.

Normally, these kinds of concerts with lots of different acts are a mixed bag, with winners and losers. But in this case, nearly every performance here is a winner, in my opinion. The only rendition I don't like is "Imagine," a great song but way oversung by Yolanda Adams. Maybe it's because the songs are so great that artists rise to the occasion. For instance, I'm not a fan of Dave Matthews at all, but I was impressed with his version of "In My Life" here. 

The transitions between songs was done in a rather unusual way for this type of concert. Usually, one would expect an emcee introducing the artists performing each song. But there was virtually none of that here. In fact, basically the only between song "banter" here at all are recordings of John Lennon's voice from when he was alive in the 1960s and 1970s. (He was assassinated in 1980.) It worked surprisingly well for me. Weirdly, just about the only exception was Cyndi Lauper, who introduced her performance with some comments.

The sound quality was great overall. There was just one bummer: the last song faded out before it was over. I suspect the time limit for the TV came to an end, so the music went on as long as possible before the cut off moment. The fade out happened in the middle of a chorus. I extended that a bit by patching in an earlier chorus so now at least the fade out happens just after that chorus finishes.

By the way, right after I posted this, I found out a little more information about it. The TNT channel did some other tribute concerts in the years before this (Burt Bacharach's "One Amazing Night" in 1998, which has been officially released, 1998 for Johnny Cash, 1999 for Bob Marley, 2000 for Joni Mitchell, and 2001 for Brian Wilson. The 2001 I've posted here, and I'll try to get to the other unreleased ones. The series seems to have ended after that, though, as the TNT network changed its programming focus in mid-2001, according to Wikipedia. Beck and Marc Anthony were supposed to headline this concert, but didn't do so for some reason.

This album is an hour and four minutes long.

01 Imagine (Yolanda Adams & Billy Preston)
02 talk (John Lennon)
03 In My Life (Dave Matthews)
04 talk (John Lennon)
05 Revolution (Stone Temple Pilots)
06 talk (John Lennon)
07 Dear Prudence (Alanis Morissette)
08 Across the Universe (Moby, Sean Lennon & Rufus Wainwright)
09 talk (Cyndi Lauper)
10 Strawberry Fields Forever (Cyndi Lauper)
11 talk (John Lennon)
12 Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Marc Anthony)
13 Mother (Shelby Lynne)
14 Instant Karma (Nelly Furtado & Dave Stewart)
15 Jealous Guy (Lou Reed)
16 Nowhere Man (Natalie Merchant)
17 Come Together (Craig David)
18 talk (John Lennon & Sean Lennon)
19 This Boy (Sean Lennon, Rufus Wainwright & Robert Schwartzman)
20 Julia (Sean Lennon)
21 talk (John Lennon)
22 Give Peace a Chance - Power to the People (Everyone)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16651268/VA-2001CmeTgthrANghtfrJhnLnnnRdioCtyMsicHllNwYrkCty__10-2-2001_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. I had a choice of different photos. I went with this one, which shows the Stone Temple Pilots performing in front of a giant screen showing a psychedelic rendition of John Lennon.