Covered: Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart: 1959-1987

Next up for my Covered series highlighting the careers of great songwriters is the duo of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, usually just known as Boyce and Hart. These guys definitely knew how to write catchy songs. They were sometimes successful performing their own music, including having one big hit, but mostly they wrote songs for others.

Boyce was the first to have songwriting success. In 1959, when he was about 20 years old, he wrote the song "Be My Guest," and wanted rock star Fats Domino to sing it. He waited hours outside of Domino's hotel room, and got him to promise to listen to a demo of the song, which Domino actually did. It was a big hit later that year, selling over a million copies. 

Boyce and Hart first met later in 1959. Hart was the same age and was trying to make it as a singer, without much success. Not much happened for a few years, except for Boyce writing another big hit, "Pretty Little Angel Eyes" by Curtis Lee, in 1961. Gradually, Boyce and Hart started writing songs together. Their first big success as a duo was "Come a Little Bit Closer" by Jay & the Americans, which may or may not have reached Number One in the U.S. in 1964, depending on the chart. 

In late 1965, things really got cooking for Boyce and Hart when they got involved with the very start of the Monkees TV show. In fact, at first the duo practically was the Monkees! For the first season of the TV show, and the band's first album, they produced and recorded nearly all of the songs, using their own backing band, and wrote many of the songs as well. The actual Monkees starring in the show only replaced the guide vocals sung by the duo with their own for the final product. However, after the debut album came out, the band's musical supervisor Don Kirshner fired the duo, after claiming they were secretly using studio time for their own projects. That may well have been true. But they continued to write songs for the Monkees, despite no longer being involved with the production and recording. Every Monkees album released in the 1960s had at least one song by them, except for "Head."

Their success with the Monkees, including writing many of their biggest hits, gave them the prominence to have success as a recording duo. Their biggest hit on their own was "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight," which was released at the end of 1967. It didn't have a big chart peak, only reaching Number Eight in the U.S., but it sold a million copies, which was typical of songs at or near the very top. They also had two more songs make the U.S. Top Forty, "Out and About" and "Alice Long [You're Still My Favorite Girlfriend]." I've included all three of those, as well as one more song they performed together that I like, "We're All Going to the Same Place."

Commercially, the duo peaked in the late 1960s, when they were writing hit after hit for the Monkees, themselves, and other musical acts. But musical trends were changing fast, and their style didn't fit in so well with the 1970s and after. They still did have occasional successes - the last five songs here are from after 1970 - but not so many. And some of those songs I chose at the end were actually written much earlier but not hits until later. "Hurt So Bad," written by Teddy Randazzo, Bobby Weinstein, and Bobby Hart, was a hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials in 1965. But I chose a 1980 version that was a hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1980. Similarly, "Under the Moon of Love," written by Tommy Boyce and Curtis Lee, was a minor hit for Curtis Lee in 1961. But in 1976, the band Showaddywaddy had a Number One hit with it in Britain.

In the mid-1970s, Boyce and Hart joined Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz for a reunion of the Monkees, essentially replacing the two missing original Monkees members. They put out a new album in 1975, but for legal reasons they weren't allowed to call themselves the Monkees, so they went by the name "Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and Hart." But the earlier magic was gone, and their album didn't have much success. I chose not to include any songs from that album. In the 1970s, both Boyce and Hart tried releasing their own solo albums, but to even less success.

Hart is still alive as I write this in 2025. However, Boyce died in 1994. He was suffering from depression, and then had a brain aneurysm, which put him in a lot of pain. So he shot himself with a gun.

Here's a Wikipedia entry about the duo, if you want to know more: 

Boyce and Hart - Wikipedia 

Strangely, Boyce has his own Wikipedia entry, here, but Hart does not:

Tommy Boyce - Wikipedia 

This album is an hour and one minute long. 

01 Be My Guest (Fats Domino)
02 Pretty Little Angel Eyes (Curtis Lee)
03 Come a Little Bit Closer (Jay & the Americans)
04 Peaches 'N' Cream (Ikettes)
05 [Theme From] The Monkees (Monkees)
06 Action, Action, Action (Keith Allison)
07 [I'm Not Your] Stepping Stone (Paul Revere & the Raiders)
08 The Last Train to Clarksville (Monkees)
09 I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight (Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart)
10 She (Del Shannon)
11 Out and About (Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart)
12 Words (Monkees)
13 I Wanna Be Free (Keith Allison)
14 Alice Long [You're Still My Favorite Girlfriend] (Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart)
15 Valleri (Monkees)
16 We're All Going to the Same Place (Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart)
17 Tear Drop City (Monkees)
18 Something's Wrong with Me (Austin Roberts)
19 Keep On Singing (Helen Reddy)
20 Under the Moon of Love (Showaddywaddy)
21 Hurt So Bad (Linda Ronstadt)
22 Dominoes (Robbie Nevil)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YWEcVX4i

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/q01I8u3QJF4SfvS/file

I don't know the details of the cover photo, but based on the clothes, I'd guess it's from around 1967. That's Boyce on the left and Hart on the right (with the red jacket).

Ron Sexsmith - Reasons to Believe, Volume 7: 2013-2016

Man, I've been really painfully slow posting the rest of this series of non-album tracks by Ron Sexsmith. But I finish everything eventually. This is the seventh and second to last album in this series.

All but two of the songs here have been officially released. Tracks 1, 2, 3, and 5 are bonus tracks from the "Forever Endeavor" album, with track 5 appearing only on deluxe edition versions. The other songs are from a bunch of different sources, like various artists compilation albums, soundtracks, and appearances on other musical acts' albums. As usual, check out the mp3 tags for more details.

The two unreleased songs are "Sisters of Mercy," from a Leonard Cohen tribute concert in 2013, and "Wait until the Sun Comes Up," from a concert in 2014. 

As with past volumes, I want to mention that this series was the idea of Pete the Greek, and I wouldn't have done it without his instigation and continual help. 

This album is 47 minutes long.

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

01 Real Pandora - Ron Sexsmith
02 Least of My Worries - Ron Sexsmith
03 Wee Small Hours - Frank Sinatra
04 Pennies from Heaven - Bing Crosby
05 Life After a Broken Heart - Ron Sexsmith
06 Any Day Now - Breithaupt Brothers & Ron Sexsmith
07 Don't You - Marike Jager with Ron Sexsmith
08 Sisters of Mercy - Leonard Cohen
09 Wait until the Sun Comes Up - Ron Sexsmith & Oh Susanna (Suzie Ungerleider)
10 Circling Round the Drain - Ron Sexsmith
11 Half a Chance - Alex Cuba with Ron Sexsmith
12 Don't Wait - Mel Parsons with Ron Sexsmith
13 Off Somewhere - Lori Cullen & Ron Sexsmith
14 Rain - Flypaper Orchestra with Ron Sexsmith

Note that the last song, "Rain," appears to be "Pennies from Heaven" but with new lyrics written by members of the Flypaper Orchestra. 

Here's the usual song list:  

01 Real Pandora (Ron Sexsmith)
02 Least of My Worries (Ron Sexsmith)
03 Wee Small Hours (Ron Sexsmith)
04 Pennies from Heaven (Ron Sexsmith)
05 Life After a Broken Heart (Ron Sexsmith)
06 Any Day Now (Breithaupt Brothers & Ron Sexsmith)
07 Don't You (Marike Jager with Ron Sexsmith)
08 Sisters of Mercy (Ron Sexsmith)
09 Wait until the Sun Comes Up (Ron Sexsmith & Oh Susanna)
10 Circling Round the Drain (Ron Sexsmith)
11 Half a Chance (Alex Cuba with Ron Sexsmith)
12 Don't Wait (Mel Parsons with Ron Sexsmith)
13 Off Somewhere (Lori Cullen & Ron Sexsmith)
14 Rain (Flypaper Orchestra with Ron Sexsmith)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5yK5zB9N

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/YqT1PVLGkrlXSWO/file

All I know about the cover photo is that it's from 2015.

Rod Stewart - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: In Concert, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-29-2025

It can't be denied that Rod Stewart is an old man. At the time I'm writing this, over a month after the 2025 Glastonbury Festival, Stewart is 80 years old. And yet he was one of the big names of the festival because he keeps entertaining crowds like someone much younger. I was rather wary about hearing this concert, but it turns out he sounds just like he did decades ago. 

In terms of the set list, there are no big surprises here. It consists mostly of his big hits from the 1970s and 80s. He did three unexpected covers of classic songs, though: "Love Train," "Lady Marmalade" and "If You Don't Know Me by Now." The second one was done by his backing singers while he took a "tea break," and the last one was a duet with Mick Hucknall, lead singer of Simply Red.

Speaking of guests, near the end of the concert, he was joined on stage for two songs by Ronnie Wood, currently a member of the Rolling Stones but also a former band mate of Stewart's in the Faces. And for one song, both of them were joined by 1960s female singer Lulu. 

This album is an hour and 29 minutes long. 

01 Tonight I'm Yours [Don't Hurt Me] (Rod Stewart)
02 Having a Party (Rod Stewart)
03 Some Guys Have All the Luck (Rod Stewart)
04 talk (Rod Stewart)
05 Love Train (Rod Stewart)
06 The First Cut Is the Deepest (Rod Stewart)
07 Tonight's the Night [Gonna Be Alright] (Rod Stewart)
08 Forever Young (Rod Stewart)
09 Riverdance [Instrumental] (Rod Stewart)
10 Forever Young [Reprise] (Rod Stewart)
11 talk (Rod Stewart)
12 You Wear It Well (Rod Stewart)
13 Maggie May (Rod Stewart)
14 talk (Rod Stewart)
15 Young Turks (Rod Stewart)
16 talk (Rod Stewart)
17 I'd Rather Go Blind (Rod Stewart)
18 talk (Rod Stewart)
19 Da Ya Think I'm Sexy (Rod Stewart)
20 talk (Rod Stewart)
21 Lady Marmalade (Rod Stewart)
22 talk (Rod Stewart)
23 I Don't Want to Talk about It (Rod Stewart)
24 If You Don't Know Me by Now (Rod Stewart with Mick Hucknall)
25 Baby Jane (Rod Stewart)
26 talk (Rod Stewart)
27 Stay with Me (Rod Stewart with Ronnie Wood)
28 Hot Legs (Rod Stewart with Lulu & Ronnie Wood)
29 talk (Rod Stewart)
30 Sailing (Rod Stewart)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zFLyHF3D

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/1W66vKXqkwAL1qL/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert, showing Stewart with Ronnie Wood. 

Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers with Stevie Nicks - PBS Soundstage, Stephan C. O'Connell Center, Gainesville, FL, 9-21-2006

Here's an episode of the great TV show "PBS Soundstage" staring Tom P. and the Heartbreakers, from 2006.

(Note that I'm not using the full name of this artist due to concerns about copyright issues.)  

The star of the show was born and raised in Gainesville, Florida, and in fact most of his band was from there as well. So this concert was a rare homecoming, giving it extra emotional appeal. For the band's entire 2006 summer tour, they were assisted by Stevie Nicks, despite the fact that she was a big star in her own right. She has publicly stated more than once that she wishes she could have been a member of the Heartbreakers, so this tour was probably the closest she came to fulfilling that wish. She didn't sing any of her own songs, but sang back up on some of songs by the main act (including duet in which she sang on the original). 

This album is a lot longer than the typical hour-long episode of this TV show. That's because this is the full concert, from the DVD. It hasn't been released in any audio format, however. 

Note that this musical act did another episode of "PBS Soundstage," back in 2003. I've posted that one as well.

This album is an hour and 54 minutes long.

I'm not including the track list due to copyright issues. But you can find it in the mp3 download file. 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SrVC27H8

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/wtiqNcLva2nDKFG/file

The cover is from this exact concert.

Richard Thompson - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: 1988-1991

I had a weird dream last night (as I write this in October 2025). In the dream, I heard the song "Al Bowlly's in Heaven" by Richard Thompson, but I noticed a famous Queen song was basically the same song, just with different words and very different production. I don't think it's true that any Queen song resembles that one, but it was a fun was to be reminded what a fantastic song "Al Bowlly's in Heaven" is. And it also reminded me that it's time to post another Richard Thompson album. So here's the next BBC album from him. This one is a collection of BBC studio sessions, all solo acoustic.

Everything here remains unreleased. The first five songs are from an appearance on the Andy Kershaw Show in 1988. Tracks 6 through 9 are from another 1988 radio show, the Richard Skinner Show. "She Moved through the Fair" is a live cut from the "Folk on Two" radio show. The remaining songs, tracks 11 through 16 are from a 1992 radio show called "Kaleidoscope."

Unfortunately, "Al Bowlly's in Heaven" isn't on here, but it is on the "BBC Sessions, Volume 2" album I've posted here. That's probably the greatest song about war-related PTSD ever written. Most of the songs here are from his albums at the time, like 1988's "Amnesia" and 1991's "Rumour and Sigh." But there are a few rarities and older ones as well.

This album is 48 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On November 8, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I found an earlier volume in this series that I'd missed, so the volume number changed. That meant the title, cover art, and mp3 tags changed too. 

01 Killerman Gold Posse (Richard Thompson)
02 Waltzing's for Dreamers (Richard Thompson)
03 Pharoah (Richard Thompson)
04 Push and Shove (Richard Thompson)
05 Killing Jar (Richard Thompson)
06 Turning of the Tide (Richard Thompson)
07 talk (Richard Thompson)
08 Two Left Feet (Richard Thompson)
09 Valerie (Richard Thompson)
10 She Moved through the Fair (Richard Thompson)
11 I Feel So Good (Richard Thompson)
12 1952 Vincent Black Lightning (Richard Thompson)
13 The Choice Wife [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
14 I Misunderstood (Richard Thompson)
15 Don't Let a Thief Steal into Your Heart (Richard Thompson)
16 God Loves a Drunk (Richard Thompson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xJM8VVUy

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/wL8TMxaJTATURtx/file

The cover photo is from 1992. That's all I know about it. 

Olivia Newton-John - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: Only Olivia, BBC TV Theatre, London, Britain, 6-8-1977

Here's another BBC album by Olivia Newton-John. It's the third and last one I could find. This one makes up a single short concert, taken from a 1977 BBC TV special called "Only Olivia."

At the time of the concert, Newton-John wasn't nearly as popular in Britain as one might have suspected. She'd had some hits there in the early 1970s. But from 1974 to 1977, she only had two Top 40 hits in Britain, while she'd had 10 in the U.S. Some songs that were big in the U.S, such as "Have You Never Been Mellow," which reached Number Three, didn't chart in Britain at all. The one recent hit she'd had in Britain at the time of this special was "Sam," which made the Top Ten there in early 1977. So it's understandable why she would have wanted to do this BBC special to increase her profile there.

It seems not to have made much of a difference though, because the single she was promoting at the time, "Making a Good Thing Better," was another one that completely failed to even make the charts in Britain. But ultimately it didn't matter, because in 1978 she became a superstar worldwide with the release of the movie "Grease." Her next three singles in Britain, all from that movie, would be two Number Ones and one Number Two!

In the 1970s, there were lots of musical specials of TV, typically variety shows or one with a main star and lots of guest stars. But as the title says, this one was "only Olivia." Generally speaking, she sung her biggest hits until that time. However, one song, "Love Is Alive," is a cover of the 1976 hit single by Gary Wright, and she didn't put it on any of her studio albums. "Slow Dancing" was a song that she put on the album she was just releasing at the time ("Making a Good Thing Better"), but a version by Johnny Rivers also was becoming a big hit in the U.S. around the same time.

By the way, although I'm done posting BBC material by Newton-John, I found two more interesting unreleased albums from her in the course of finding these. I plan on posting them soon. 

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Let Me Be There - If You Love Me [Let Me Know] (Olivia Newton-John)
02 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
03 Have You Never Been Mellow (Olivia Newton-John)
04 Take Me Home, Country Roads (Olivia Newton-John)
05 Pony Ride (Olivia Newton-John)
06 Let It Shine (Olivia Newton-John)
07 Slow Dancing (Olivia Newton-John)
08 Love Is Alive (Olivia Newton-John)
09 Please Mr. Please (Olivia Newton-John)
10 Nevertheless - As Time Goes By (Olivia Newton-John)
11 Sam (Olivia Newton-John)
12 Making a Good Thing Better (Olivia Newton-John)
13 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
14 I Honestly Love You (Olivia Newton-John) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WB7bydAp

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/r3InxPp8BnTPH9j/file

The cover image is a screenshot taken from this exact concert. The font also was the one used for title of the TV show. 

Dr. Hook with Shel Silverstein - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 1-14-1979

Here's another episode of the "PBS Soundstage" TV show. This one primarily features the American band Dr. Hook. But it also has a significant solo spot for singer-songwriter Shel Silverstein.

From 1972 until 1980, Dr. Hook had quite a few hits in the U.S. So this was a good time for this episode, coming near the end of their hit-making era. Few bands are as closely tied to an outside songwriter as this band was with Shel Silverstein, so it's fitting that he was a part of this concert. In fact, all the songs for their first two albums consisted of songs written by Silverstein, and they covered many more of his songs from the rest of the 1970s.

Silverstein had an extremely varied and fascinating career as a writer, poet, songwriter, and author of children's books. But with so many interests, it seems he almost never performed his songs in concerts, although he put out many albums. So his appearance in this concert is probably the most prominent public performance that's available.

This concert is split into four parts. At the start and the end are sections featuring Dr. Hook. In the middle are two sections featuring Silverstein. Silverstein wrote many different types of songs, but he was particularly well known for both lewd songs and children's songs. Those two styles aren't meant to go together, for obvious reasons. So Silverstein did one of his lewd songs, "Show It at the Beach" about nude beaches, to an adult audience. But the rest of his songs here consisted of children's songs and were performed for a small audience made up entirely of little children, with some audience interaction. 

By the way, I already have two albums of Silverstein's songs ready for my Covered series. It's just a matter of getting around to posting them, since there's a big backlog of those albums. 

The last song, "Happy Trails," originally ended without any applause at the end, just silence. I thought that was strange. So I copied and pasted in some applause from earlier in the concert, to give it a satisfying ending. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title. 

This album is 52 minutes long. 

01 Walk Right In (Dr. Hook)
02 talk (Dr. Hook)
03 Ray's Yodel (Dr. Hook)
04 Only Sixteen (Dr. Hook)
05 What a Way to Go (Dr. Hook)
06 talk (Dr. Hook & Shel Silverstein)
07 Show It at the Beach (Shel Silverstein)
08 Boa Constrictor (Shel Silverstein)
09 talk (Shel Silverstein)
10 Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out (Shel Silverstein)
11 talk (Shel Silverstein)
12 Unicorn (Shel Silverstein)
13 A Little Bit More (Dr. Hook)
14 Red Winged Blackbird (Dr. Hook)
15 Everybody's Making It Big but Me (Dr. Hook)
16 Sharing the Night Together (Dr. Hook)
17 The Cover of 'Rolling Stone' (Dr. Hook)
18 Rolling in My Sweet Baby's Arms (Dr. Hook)
19 Happy Trails [Edit] (Dr. Hook)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6pc2daJ2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/JOrXX0CzKJ0VMpN/file

The cover photo of Ray Sawyer, one of the band's two lead singers, is a screenshot from this exact concert. The video the screenshot came from was pretty low-res, so I used the Krea AI program to improve the image quality.

Neil Young - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-28-2025

It's time for me to finally start posting the most wanted performances from the 2025 Glastonbury Festival. Since everything I'll be posting is available with great sound quality because it was broadcast by the BBC, I'll be posting these as BBC albums. In my poll about this festival, the number one most wanted performance was by Neil Young. So here it is.

At the time of this concert, Young was 79 years old. I heard one of his concert recordings from a couple of years prior to this, and that made he concerned that his voice was starting to go. But I'm glad to say he still sings and plays lead guitar like a younger version of himself.

Young, with his latest band, the Chrome Hearts, played no songs from his most recent albums. However, his set wasn't a "best of" either, despite performing for a huge crowd that didn't buy tickets just to see him. He did play some favorites, but he also played some relative obscurities, for instance "Be the Rain" and "Sun Green" from his 2003 album "Greendale." And stylistically, he went from solo acoustic at times to long, jammy full-band songs at other times. All in all, it was a solid show.

This album is an hour and 49 minutes long. 

01 talk (Neil Young)
02 Sugar Mountain (Neil Young)
03 Be the Rain (Neil Young)
04 When You Dance, I Can Really Love (Neil Young)
05 Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young)
06 Fuckin' Up (Neil Young)
07 talk (Neil Young)
08 Hey Hey, My My [Into the Black] (Neil Young)
09 The Needle and the Damage Done (Neil Young)
10 Harvest Moon (Neil Young)
11 talk (Neil Young)
12 Looking Forward (Neil Young)
13 talk (Neil Young)
14 Sun Green (Neil Young)
15 talk (Neil Young)
16 Love and Only Love (Neil Young)
17 Like a Hurricane (Neil Young)
18 Name of Love (Neil Young)
19 Old Man (Neil Young)
20 talk (Neil Young)
21 Rockin' in the Free World (Neil Young)
22 talk (Neil Young)
23 Throw Your Hatred Down (Neil Young)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bdi3M4vH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yrbxyXlVIXDgR8q/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. 

Olivia Newton-John - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1974-1981

Here's the second album of singer Olivia Newton-John performing for the BBC. Like the first one, it consists of various sessions, although this one happens to be entirely made of TV show appearances, not radio shows.

Newton-John's fame grew bigger and bigger as the 1970s went on. However, most of the music here comes before 1978, when she became a superstar due to her leading role in the hit movie "Grease." 

The first ten songs all come from 1974. It seems she spent most of the year in Britain, staying there long enough to have her own short-lived BBC TV show called "Moods of Love." It only consisted of four half-hour episodes, but each one was chockablock with songs she sang that she never put on record. Unfortunately, it seems the BBC wiped the recordings (as they so often did back then). Only a few songs from it could still be found on YouTube, and I couldn't use all of those due to sound quality issues. Tracks 5, 6, and 7 here come from her show, which include duets with Cliff Richard and Neil Sedaka.

Here's a link to a fan's webpage about the show, if you want to get frustrated seeing the names of all the song performances that apparently got lost:

Moods Of Love - UK show 

The first two songs are from a show called "Clunk Click." The next two are from "Presenting Nana Mouskouri." One of those, "Sing," features a duet of Newton-John with Mouskouri. Furthermore, she made some appearances on Cliff Richard's BBC TV show that year, "It's Cliff Richard." Those are tracks 8 through 10, and include two more duets with Richard.

Tracks 11 and 12 are from a 1977 appearance on "The Val Doonican Show." If You Love Me (Let Me Know)" was a hit for Newton-John with her being the only one singing lead. But she did a duet version of it with Val Doonican here. Track 13 is from another 1977 show. Track 14 is from the "Top of the Pops" TV show (not to be confused with the radio show of the same name). Normally, performances on this show were lip-synced. However, in this case, Newton-John sang live lead vocals over a prerecorded backing track, so I included it. 

The last song is "Physical" from 1981. By this time, she was such a big star that she probably didn't feel the need to appear on BBC TV or radio much anymore. So we don't get versions of many of her big hits from the late 1970s and 1980s. But luckily we do get this one, which was the biggest hit of her career, thanks to an appearance on the TV show "Stars."

Note that some of the songs here were never recorded for any of her albums or singles, especially most of the duets.

There is one more BBC album coming from her, a 1977 concert. It comes third since this one chronologically starts earlier.

There are two bonus tracks. There's nothing wrong with them, except there already are other versions of those songs. ("Sam" from this volume and "Take Me Home, Country Roads" from Volume 1.)

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Someday (Olivia Newton-John)
02 Hands Across the Sea (Olivia Newton-John)
03 Amoureuse (Olivia Newton-John)
04 Sing (Olivia Newton-John & Nana Mouskori)
05 Tea Cosy (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
06 Sing Me (Olivia Newton-John & Neil Sedaka)
07 Nevertheless (Olivia Newton-John)
08 I Honestly Love You (Olivia Newton-John)
09 I’m Leaving It All Up to You (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
10 All I Have to Do Is Dream (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
11 Sam (Olivia Newton-John)
12 If You Love Me [Let Me Know] (Olivia Newton-John & Val Doonican)
13 Let It Shine (Olivia Newton-John)
14 A Little More Love [Live Lead Vocals Only] (Olivia Newton-John)
15 Physical (Olivia Newton-John)

Sam (Olivia Newton-John)
Take Me Home, Country Roads (Olivia Newton-John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BxmDJZwW

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Y0O1cVwP00MbQ6x/file

The cover image is a screenshot taken from a video of her 1978 performance of "A Little More Love" on the "Top of the Pops" TV show.

Love Affair - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1970-1973

Here is the second and last BBC album from the British band Love Affair. 

In 1968 and 1969, the time period dealt with in Volume 1, Love Affair had a handful of hits in Britain, with the biggest being the Number One hit "Everlasting Love." 

The band had an excellent lead vocalist in Steve Ellis. However, he grew dissatisfied with the direction the band was taking. They had tried to move away from their pop style to more of a rocking style, but their next single bombed. So he left for a solo career right at the start of 1970. He was replaced by August Eadon. I assume that's Eagon singing on the cover art and singing on most of these songs.

Unfortunately, after the change of singers, none of the band's singles made the charts in Britain. The only partial exception was "Lincoln County." While it didn't chart in Britain, at least it nearly reached the Top Ten in New Zealand. 

Still, the band was so popular from before that they kept getting sessions on the "Top of the Pops" radio show. Virtually everything here comes from that show, with the exception of "Gypsy," which is from an appearance on the "Disco 2" BBC TV show. (That was an early version of "The Old Grey Whistle Test.") The bonus track is from that show as well.

Also, most everything here is unreleased. The only exceptions are the songs "Bad Girl" and "She's Not There." Those appeared on the obscure various artists compilation album "British Beat Collection, Volume Four: Rare British Broadcasts The Beat Era, 1966-1970." As for the rest, that's all due once again to my awesome secret source, a musical friend who keeps sending me Top of the Pops material.

As with most Top of the Pops broadcasts from this time, the BBC DJs had a habit of talking over the music. So I did my usual thing, using the UVR5 audio editing program to keep the music but get rid of the DJ chatter. Those are all the songs with "[Edit]" in their titles. 

Note that not everything here is technically from Love Affair. As I mentioned above, the band's former lead vocalist Steve Ellis left for a solo career at the start of 1970. Although he released music in 1970 and 1971, it seems he wasn't invited to the Top of the Pops radio show those years. But he did a session for it in 1972 and another in 1973. So I've included those here as well, chronologically interspersed with more Love Affair sessions.

The bonus track "Bad Girl" is a bonus track mainly because this album already includes a different version of that same song. And that one has slightly better sound quality.

This album is 55 minutes long, not including the bonus track. 

01 Lincoln County [Edit] (Love Affair)
02 Bad Girl [Edit] (Love Affair)
03 She's Not There [Edit] (Love Affair)
04 Long Way Home [Edit] (Love Affair)
05 That's My Home [Edit] (Love Affair)
06 Gypsy [Edit] (Love Affair)
07 I Put a Spell on You (Love Affair)
08 Fool on the Hill [Edit] (Love Affair)
09 Help [Get Me Some Help] [Edit] (Love Affair)
10 Morning Paper (Ellis)
11 El Doomo (Ellis)
12 Good to Be Alive (Ellis)
13 Let Me Dance (Love Affair)
14 Liar (Love Affair)
15 Goodbye Boredom (Ellis)
16 Open Road (Ellis)

Bad Girl [Edit] (Love Affair) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BfZ35J1m

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/c3ZFe0I8cwu2EDm/file

The cover photo was taken at the Revolution Club in London at some point in 1970.

Heart - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 7-28-2005

Here's an unusually long episode of the "PBS Soundstage" TV show, featuring the band Heart, from 2005.

The actual TV show edited down performances to fit an hour long time slow. But this is sourced from a DVD, so it includes the entire concert. It includes all of Heart's best known songs, as well as some that were relatively new at the time. Just a year prior to this concert, the band released their first studio album in over ten years, "Jupiters Darling." It was well received by critics, perhaps because they skipped their 1980s "adult contemporary" sound, and went back to more of their 1970s classic rock sound. The following songs come from that album: "Oldest Story in the World," "The Perfect Goodbye," "Lost Angel," "Fallen Ones," "Make Me," "Things," and "Enough."

Ever since Heart was formed in the 1970s, they've had a strong fondness for the band Led Zeppelin, and often covered their songs. I've even put together an entire album of Heart covers of Led Zeppelin songs, which I've posted at this blog. This continues on this concert, with no less than three Led Zeppelin covers: "The Battle of Evermore," "Black Dog," and "Misty Mountain Hop."

This album is an hour and 48 minutes long. 

01 talk (Heart)
02 Sand (Heart)
03 talk (Heart)
04 Kick It Out (Heart)
05 Straight On (Heart)
06 talk (Heart)
07 Oldest Story in the World (Heart)
08 The Perfect Goodbye (Heart)
09 These Dreams (Heart)
10 The Battle of Evermore (Heart)
11 talk (Heart)
12 Love Song (Heart)
13 talk (Heart)
14 Lost Angel (Heart)
15 talk (Heart)
16 Magic Man (Heart)
17 Crazy on You (Heart)
18 Bebe le Strange (Heart)
19 talk (Heart)
20 Fallen Ones (Heart)
21 Make Me (Heart)
22 talk (Heart)
23 Even It Up (Heart)
24 talk (Heart)
25 Dog and Butterfly (Heart)
26 talk (Heart)
27 Alone (Heart)
28 Things (Heart)
29 Love Alive (Heart)
30 talk (Heart)
31 Enough (Heart)
32 Barracuda (Heart)
33 Black Dog (Heart)
34 Misty Mountain Hop (Heart)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4utbM8H8

alternate:

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

The cover photo is a screenshot taken from a video of this exact concert.

Glastonbury 2025 Poll Results

I can be a lazy bum sometimes, and dealing my Glastonbury Festival 2025 from a few weeks back has been one of those times. But I finally got off my butt to tally the poll results. As I said in the poll, I plan on posting the concerts for those musical acts that got a decent number of votes.

Here are the results: 

Neil Young               XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Rod Stewart              XXXXXXXX
St. Vincent              XXXXXXXX
Franz Ferdinand          XXXXXX
John Fogerty             XXXXXX
Pulp                     XXXXXX
Wet Leg                  XXXXXX
Alanis Morissette        XXXXX
Father John Misty        XXXXX
Brian Jonestown Massacre XXXX
Beth Gibbons             XXXX
Libertines               XXXX
Prodigy                  XXXX
Weezer                   XXXX
The 1975                 XXX
Amyl & the Sniffers      XXX
Black Uhuru              XXX
Brandi Carlile           XXX
Cymande                  XXX
Olivia Rodrigo           XXX
Nile Rodgers & Chic      XXX
Supergrass               XXX
Inhaler                  XX
Four Tet                 XX
English Teacher          XX
Lola Young               XX
Lorde                    XX
Osees                    XX
Raye                     XX
Anohni & the Johnsons    X
Biffy Clyro              X
Blossoms                 X
Caribou                  X
Faye Webster             X
Glass Beams              X
Gracie Abrams            X    
Japanese Breakfast       X
Kneecap                  X
Lucy Dakus               X
Maccabees                X
Noah Kahan               X
Nova Twins               X
Script                   X
Shed Seven               X
Sprints                  X
Wunderhorse              X

And here's what I plan to do. I hope to post the sets of all those musical acts that got at least three votes. That's assuming I listen to their music and find I don't dislike it though. As for the ones that got one or two votes, sorry, but that's not enough. 22 got three or more votes, so that's a lot of albums to post! I'll add this task to some other projects I'm working on, like posting albums from the winners of the previous BBC poll, PBS Soundstage episodes, rare Top of the Pops BBC sessions, Covered series, and so on. Thanks for taking part in this poll, and I hope you're satisfied with the results.

Covered: Henry Mancini: 1959-1998

I have so much material for Covered series albums that I'm going to try to make another concerted effort to post a lot more of them. So here's another, focusing on the songwriting of Henry Mancini.

Mancini is a bit of a left field choice for the Covered series, since he mostly composed instrumental music for movies, and is far removed from rock and roll. But he was responsible for so many classic songs that I feel I can't leave him out. The intro to his Wikipedia article sums him up well, stating that Mancini "was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flutist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995."

Mancini was born in 1924 and grew up in rural Pennsylvania. After graduating from high school, he studied at the prestigious Julliard School of Music in New York City for two years. But then he was drafted in the U.S. Army and fought in World War II from 1943 to 1945. After the war, he became a pianist and arranger for the Glenn Miller Orchestra (which continued despite the fact Miller died in World War II). In 1952, he got a job writing music for movies for Universal Pictures, a major movie studio in Hollywood. 

However, he didn't really become famous until after he left that company in 1958 to become an independent composer and arranger. One of his first jobs was writing the theme for a new TV show called "Peter Gunn." His song, the "Peter Gunn Theme," was a big hit for Duane Eddy, and has since become an often covered classic. It won an Emmy award and two Grammys, and put Mancini in high demand writing for more TV and movie projects.

Mancini typically only wrote music, usually instrumentals. But sometimes he would work with another songwriter who would write the lyrics. His next major hit, "Moon River," was such a case, with the lyrics written by famed songwriter Johnny Mercer. The version sung by actress Audrey Hepburn in the movie of the same name in 1961 went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song, as well as Grammys for Song of the Year and Record of the Year.

After that, Mancini kept steadily releasing music for decades, including scores for dozens of movies. He recorded over 90 albums on his own, from big band to jazz to light classical. He became, and remains, one of the biggest names in the "easy listening" genre. 

For this album, I tried to boil the selections down to just his very best known songs, so that even people who aren't typically into can easy listening style can enjoy this. For instance, I find it hard to believe there's anyone out there who doesn't enjoy hearing the highly creative "Pink Panther Theme." Like that song, the vast majority of songs here are instrumentals. "Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet" wasn't actually written by him, but his arrangement changed the song so drastically that I've included it here anyway.

Most of Mancini's best known songs date from the 1960s. After that decade, he switched more to arranging songs written by other people, though he did sometimes write his own material. Some of the songs near the end of this album are covers of songs from much earlier in his career. I generally tried to avoid Mancini's own versions, as I usually do with these Covered albums. But I have two songs by him here since I couldn't find good versions of those ones otherwise.

He was still composing and arranging, though less prolifically, when he died of pancreatic cancer in 1994 at the age of 70 years old. His music made such a cultural impact that in 2004 he was the subject of a U.S. postage stamp. 

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Peter Gunn Theme (Ray Anthony & His Orchestra)
02 Moon River (Audrey Hepburn)
03 Baby Elephant Walk (Lawrence Welk & His Orchestra)
04 Theme from Hatari (Henry Mancini & His Orchestra)
05 A Shot in the Dark (Shirley Scott)
06 The Shadows of Paris (Elsie Bianchi)
07 Pink Panther Theme (Those Fantabulous Strings)
08 Slow Hot Wind (Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66)
09 Two for the Road (Peggy Lee)
10 Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet [A Time for Us] (Johnny Mathis)
11 Send a Little Love My Way (Anne Murray)
12 Newhart (Henry Mancini)
13 Days of Wine and Roses (Ella Fitzgerald & Joe Pass)
14 Dreamsville (Dave Grusin with Diana Krall)
15 Charade (Monica Mancini)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YcfTBdHW

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/nDvHfXT0X64bFSQ/file

The cover photo dates from 1985. I don't know any other details.

Pinkerton's (Assorted) Colours - BBC Sessions (1966-1967)

Once again, I'm prioritizing posting BBC material that apparently hasn't even been bootlegged before. This is more material from the "Top of the Pops" BBC radio show that a musical associate has given me. In this case, it's sessions by the British pop group Pinkerton's Colours. 

First off, I have to address the band's often changing name. They were first formed in 1964 under the name "the Liberators." Then in 1965, they renamed themselves "Pinkerton's Assorted Colours." In early 1966, their first single under that name, "Mirror, Mirror," reached the Top Ten in Britain. That was their only big chart success however. After their second single, they shortened their name to just "Pinkerton's Colours." In 1968, they shortened their name yet again to simply "Pinkertons." But they still weren't done. In 1969, after some personnel changes, they changed their name to "Flying Machine." Under this name, they had a classic hit (only in the U.S.) with the song "Smile a Little Smile for Me." But that was their only success, and a year later they broke up for good.

Phew! Pick a name and stick with it! Sheesh. I'm calling them "Pinkerton's Colours" because that was their name for the vast majority of the time period dealt with here. 

Everything here is from Top of the Pops BBC sessions, which sound excellent, as they almost always do. Five of the songs here - tracks 4, 5, 9, 10, and 11 - were officially released on an obscure various artists collection ("British Beat Collection: The Beat Era Vol. 3"). The rest all come from my music friend's unreleased Top of the Pops collection. As is usually the case with Top of the Pops sessions from this era, BBC DJs spoke over the beginnings and ends of many of their songs. So I used the UVR5 audio editing program to get rid of that talking. In this case, seven out of the 11 songs here had that problem, all the ones with "[Edit]" in their titles.

I would have dearly loved to have ended this with a performance of "Smile a Little Smile for Me," since I think that's an excellent song. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any BBC performance of it. Perhaps that's because although it reached Number 5 in the charts in the U.S., it didn't make the charts in Britain at all. Unlike "Mirror, Mirror," which was written by a band member, "Smile" was written by professional songwriters Geoff Stephens and Tony Macaulay. I've already included it in my "Covered" album for Macaulay, and I'll also include a different version when I post a Covered album for Stephens.

I don't know much about this band. Here's their Wikipedia page, though it doesn't say a lot:

Pinkerton's Assorted Colours - Wikipedia 

Here also is the page for their rebirth as the Flying Machine:

The Flying Machine (band) - Wikipedia 

Their popularity didn't last long because musical trends were changing fast in 1967, and their pop style rapidly fell out of favor. They never were popular enough to release a full album. So some of the songs here were never recorded for a proper studio release, especially their cover versions of well known songs like "Summer in the City," "Richard Cory," and "You Keep Me Hangin' On."

This album is 27 minutes long. That's pretty short, but that's all the relevant material I could find.

01 The Power of Love [Edit] (Pinkerton's Colours)
02 Mirror, Mirror (Pinkerton's Colours)
03 Don't Stop Loving Me Baby (Pinkerton's Colours)
04 Magic Rocking Horse (Pinkerton's Colours)
05 Summer in the City [Edit] (Pinkerton's Colours)
06 Chains of Love (Pinkerton's Colours)
07 Richard Cory [Edit] (Pinkerton's Colours)
08 You Keep Me Hangin' On [Edit] (Pinkerton's Colours)
09 Mum and Dad [Edit] (Pinkerton's Colours)
10 I'll Always Love You [Edit] (Pinkerton's Colours)
11 On a Street Car [Edit] (Pinkerton's Colours)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WRW61iyJ

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/F8xIIuQQci9KviI/file 

I don't know much about this photo, except that it's from January 1966, right as their one big hit was rising in the charts.

Love Affair - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1968-1969

Up until recently, the only thing I knew about the band Love Affair was that they had a big hit in 1968 with the classic song "Everlasting Love." But it turns out I underestimated them because I'm an American and they were a British band that had much more success in Britain. They didn't even have a single hit in the U.S. Instead, soul singer Carl Carlton had the U.S. hit with "Everlasting Love" around the same time Love Affair took their version all the way to Number One in Britain. Furthermore, they have four more songs in or near the Top Ten in Britain in 1968 or 1969.

It seems that Love Affair is mostly forgotten today, but they were a big deal in Britain for those two years. They were considered pop idols, with screaming fans drowning them out during concerts, similar to what had happened to the Beatles. As a result of their popularity, they performed at a lot of BBC studio sessions, enough for two volumes.

The main reason I'm posting these albums is due to the same musical friend who has been sharing "Top of the Pops" BBC radio show sessions with me. It seems the vast majority of sessions he sent to me by this band not only haven't been officially released, they hadn't even been bootlegged until now. 

As usual for the time period, BBC DJ Brian Matthew talked over the beginnings and endings of many of the songs. So, like I usually do, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to wipe out his talking. That's why ten out of the 15 songs here have "[Edit]" in their titles.

Only five of the performances here have been officially released. Tracks 3, 4, and 15 come from the compilation album "Time Hasn't Changed Us - The Complete CBS Recordings." Tracks 2 and 14 come from different obscure various artists collection albums. 

Released or not, most everything here comes from the Top of the Pops BBC radio show. The only exceptions are tracks 3 and 4, from the BBC TV show "Colour Me Pop," and the last three songs, which are from a BBC studio session hosted by DJ Dave Lee Travis.

The band's biggest hit, "Everlasting Love," actually was released at the end of 1967. The band had two other big Top Ten hits in Britain in 1968: "Rainbow Valley" and "A Day without Love." But for whatever reason, only the first two songs here were performed in 1968. Everything else comes from 1969. I would guess that the band probably did some other BBC sessions in 1968 that have been lost. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a version of "Rainbow Valley" to include, although this album includes versions of all their other hits. Also note that I've included two versions of "Everlasting Love."

The band had a very good soulful sounding lead singer, Steve Ellis. However, he got frustrated with the way the band was pigeonholed as a pop group mostly covering songs written by professional songwriters, and wanted to expand into different styles. So he left the band for a solo career in early 1970. The band continued with a new lead singer, which will be the subject of Volume Two.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Everlasting Love (Love Affair)
02 I've Been Trying [Edit] (Love Affair)
03 All Along the Watchtower (Love Affair)
04 A Day in the Life [Instrumental] (Love Affair)
05 One Road [Edit] (Love Affair)
06 Everlasting Love [Edit] (Love Affair)
07 A Day without Love [Edit] (Love Affair)
08 Gone Are the Songs of Yesterday [Edit] (Love Affair)
09 Tinker Tailor [Edit] (Love Affair)
10 Bringing Back the Good Times [Edit] (Love Affair)
11 Rock Me Baby (Love Affair)
12 Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart (Love Affair)
13 Tale of Two Bitters [Edit] (Love Affair)
14 Baby I Know [Edit] (Love Affair)
15 Walk on Gilded Splinters [Edit] (Love Affair)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2W1EcTmA

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/pbSrRLoxOUXdK2p/file

The cover photo shows the band performing on a TV show in 1968.

Various Artists - Lowell George Tribute Concert, The Forum, Los Angeles, CA, 8-4-1979

Lowell George was the lead guitarist and a key songwriter for the band Little Feat throughout the 1970s. In 1979, the band split up due to creative differences, and George released a solo album. He announced plans to restart the band with a slightly different line-up. But on June 29, 1979, while on tour to support his solo album, he died of a heart attack related to an accidental heroin overdose. He was only 34 years old. Only a couple of months after his death, a tribute concert was held in Los Angeles to celebrate his life and his music. Here is what remains available from that concert.

I'm posting this album almost entirely due to the efforts of musical friend Lil Panda. A couple of days ago (as I write this in August 2025), he sent me this concert out of the blue. He'd found a video from the concert on YouTube. The sound quality was fundamentally good, but had issues. I asked him what he did to fix it, and this was his reply: "Phase correction, azimuth adjustment, de-clicking, music rebalance (different for almost every song... trial and error), the repair assistant (vocal work), and spectral repair." So, thanks to his work, this should sound much better than ever before.

Furthermore, I made some additional changes, since I'm more willing to make changes to bootlegs if I think it improves the overall recording. I noticed some minor drop-outs here and there, usually only a second or less of silence. I patched those up when I found them. That's why three of the songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. 

In addition, the video did something strange with the songs "Running on Empty" and "All That You Dream." If you watch the video, they're edited to seem complete, but in fact both of them were edited way down, to less than two minutes long each. By sheer luck, the only officially released performance from this concert is "All That You Dream," from the Little Feat album "Hoy Hoy," and it's the entire song. So I used that instead. For "Running on Empty," most of the song except for the first verse and some of the end was missing. I used a different live version of this song, from the 1979 No Nukes concerts that I've posted elsewhere on this blog, to fill in the missing part of the song. But there are some differences between the versions, so you might notice the edits. Still, I prefer that over having a weirdly short version. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title too.

In addition, I made another edit to all the songs. That's because the video usually cut the cheering at the ends of the songs short, to just a couple of seconds. It didn't sound right to me. So I did some copying and pasting of cheering from one song to another until all the songs had a decent amount of applause. 

I found a 1979 New York Times article about the concert, so I know a little bit about it. Here's the article link (though it may not work for you if you don't have a subscription):

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/06/archives/pop-coast-tribute-to-lowell-george.html 

According to the concert, the proceeds from the concert were given to George's family. The concert lasted almost three hours. In addition to the big names included in this album, some others also took part, like Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers, Eric Kaz, Craig Fuller, J. D. Souther, Ted Tempelman, and the Tower of Power. But the video here is less than an hour long, and a lot got cut out. Either their roles were cut entirely or they only had minor roles. For instance, Michael McDonald sang back up on one song here, and the Tower of Power horns played on a few of the songs. Generally speaking, Little Feat was the backing band. But I didn't include them in most of the song credits because that would have made the song names longer and I didn't know for sure who played on which song.

The article states that some big musical stars, like Bob Dylan and the Eagles, wanted to perform at the concert as well. However, the surviving Little Feat band members who organized the concert decided to keep it to just the other musicians who knew George well. There also was pressure to have more than one concert, since interest was extremely high, but they decided not to go that route either.

The concert was filmed and recorded with the idea of later releasing an album or film of it. But so far, only that one song mentioned above has been officially released, on a Little Feat album. I've read on social media that it is believed the rest of the film footage has been lost. So this is probably all we're ever going to get. I couldn't even find any information about what other songs were performed, though there must have been many since this is only about one-third of the entire concert.

Thanks again to Lil Panda for digging this up, improving it, and sending it to me. 

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 Tears, Tears and More Tears (Nicolette Larson)
02 Rhumba Girl (Nicolette Larson & Linda Ronstadt)
03 Oh Atlanta [Edit] (Little Feat with Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt & Nicolette Larson)
04 Runaway [Edit] (Bonnie Raitt with Michael McDonald)
05 Here, There and Everywhere (Emmylou Harris)
06 For a Dancer [Edit] (Jackson Browne)
07 Running on Empty [Edit] (Jackson Browne)
08 talk (Jackson Browne)
09 Your Bright Baby Blues (Jackson Browne)
10 Poor, Poor Pitiful Me (Linda Ronstadt with Nicolette Larson)
11 Blowin' Away (Linda Ronstadt & Bonnie Raitt)
12 All That You Dream (Linda Ronstadt with Nicolette Larson & Rosemary Butler)
13 Willin' (Linda Ronstadt with Emmylou Harris, Rosemary Butler & Nicolette Larson)
14 Dixie Chicken (Little Feat & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bLDhuADx

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/dwuvGZGMKED7Jiy/file

I had difficulty finding any decent photographs from this concert. There's an entire video of it on YouTube, as mentioned above, but the image quality is very low-res. I eventually found one image I was okay with, which I used as the cover. From right to left, it shows Nicolette Larson, Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, and Linda Ronstadt. Souther's prominent role is a bit ironic, since he doesn't feature in the actual music here, due to whatever songs he was in not making it to the video. It kind of looks like I edited the photo to squish everyone close together, but in fact that's how it was in the original.

The image was still in pretty poor shape, so I tried to use the Krea AI program to improve it. But I could only do so much, so it's still rough. I also couldn't change the lighting that turned most everything orange, though I tried to make it more colorful.

Olivia Newton-John - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1971-1974

As I've mentioned previously, I have a musical associate who has kindly passed on to me some recordings from the BBC radio show "Top of the Pops" that are otherwise extremely rare and often unbootlegged until now. He gave me some of those featuring Australian singer Olivia Newton-John from the early 1970s. So I tried to see if I could find enough material to make an entire BBC album out of it. To my surprise, I found enough for three volumes. Here's the first one.

I doubt Olivia Newton-John needs much in the way of an introduction, considering she's one of the best selling singers of all time, with over 100 million records sold. She first became a star in Britain in 1971 with the songs "If Not for You" and "Banks of the Ohio" both reaching the Top Ten there. So it's not surprising that's when she first starting performing for the BBC. The ultra-rare "Top of the Pops" I previously mentioned are tracks 1 through 5, plus 8 and 13. Some other songs appeared on that radio show, but I checked and they were the same as the record versions. Just playing the record versions became the general trend on that show around 1973, so there are no other performances from her after that year. 

Note that four of these seven had BBC DJ Brian Matthew talking over the music at times. So I did my usual thing and used the UVR5 audio editing program to get rid of the talking. That's why four songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

Those seven songs by themselves wouldn't be enough to make up an album. So I went digging to see what else I could come up with. I got lucky and found a fan site called "Only Olivia." Here's the URL:

https://www.onlyolivia.com/

It has information of probably every BBC TV show appearance she did, so I was easily able to find most of those on YouTube. That's why I found enough for two albums made up of radio and TV sessions, plus another one consisting of a concert. "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is from the Harry Secombe Show in 1972. "Close to You" is from a BBC TV movie called "The Case." Tracks 9 through 12 are from another BBC TV movie, "The New Fangled Wandering Minstrel Show." That one co-starred Newton-John with singer Georgie Fame, so that includes two duets by them. Note that for some of these songs, including all the ones from the BBC TV movies, were never released in any form on record.

The last three songs are from another BBC TV show, "Clunk Click," in 1974. Like everything else on this album, these performances are officially unreleased. For most of the songs other than the Top of the Pops and TV movie ones, there was audience applause. I used the MVSEP audio editing program to get rid of most of that, so those songs would fit in with the ones without applause.

The bonus track, "It Must Be Love," is a duet with singer Labi Siffre of a hit song he wrote. Unfortunately, the sound quality isn't as good as the rest, so that's why that one is a bonus track. That comes from a short-lived BBC TV show hosted by Newton-John called "Moods of Love," in 1974. There will be more about that show in the next volume.

This album is 44 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 Don't Move Away (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
02 Help Me Make It through the Night [Edit] (Olivia Newton-John)
03 Banks of the Ohio [Edit] (Olivia Newton-John)
04 Love Song [Edit] (Olivia Newton-John)
05 What Is Life [Edit] (Olivia Newton-John)
06 Take Me Home, Country Roads (Olivia Newton-John)
07 Close to You (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
08 Just a Little Too Much (Olivia Newton John)
09 All I Ever Need Is You (Olivia Newton-John)
10 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Olivia Newton-John & Georgie Fame)
11 Scarborough Fair (Olivia Newton-John)
12 Yeh Yeh (Olivia Newton-John & Georgie Fame)
13 Let Me Be There (Olivia Newton-John)
14 Long Live Love (Olivia Newton-John)
15 Have Love Will Travel (Olivia Newton-John)
16 Angel Eyes (Olivia Newton-John)

It Must Be Love (Olivia Newton-John & Labi Siffre) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qQ11Yavo

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/rgMCXfje6zrNTeU/file

The cover photo shows Olivia Newton-John while on the BBC TV show "Presenting Nana Mouskori," in 1974. A couple of performances from that show are on Volume 2 in this series.

Covered: Lee Hazlewood, Volume 2: 1968-2023

Here's Volume Two of my Covered Series albums highlighting the songs written by Lee Hazlewood.

A large percentage of the songs in Volume One were hits. That's much less the case here, since most of this deals with a far less portion of his career, basically from about 1970 onwards until his death (due to cancer) at the age of 78 in 2007.

The first song here, "Some Velvet Morning," was a hit, and is one of his best known songs. What a fascinating song it is. In 2003, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph placed the single at the Number 1 spot on their 50 Best Duets Ever list. Here's a portion from the article about that list: "These two weirdly complementary sides of Hazlewood's persona unite on 'Some Velvet Morning,' a standout track from Nancy and Lee. On that track, Hazlewood and Sinatra sound like they don't inhabit the same universe, let alone the same song. ... 'Some Velvet Morning' sounds like two songs spliced together by a madman, or an avant-garde short film in song form." 

In the late 1960s, Hazlewood and Sinatra were keeping their successful hit formula going. "Lady Bird" was another big hit song as a duet sung by them, although just to vary things up a bit I've included a version by Virgil Warner & Suzi Jane Hokom instead. (Hokom was Hazlewood's girlfriend in the late 1960s and into the early 1970s.) However, his fortunes changed drastically around 1970, when he decided to move to the Sweden. He ended up living there for ten years. He later claimed that he went there for several reasons, including so his son could avoid getting drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, tax trouble, and bailing out on a failing record company he had tried to run for a few years. One song here, "No Train to Stockholm," details some of his feelings about making that move.

Unfortunately, back in that era, the world was less connected, and going to Sweden was almost suicide for his music career. For instance, his highly successful collaboration with Nancy Sinatra mostly had to come to an end. However, they did reunite occasionally, for instance with an album called "Nancy and Lee Again" in 1972. That contained a Number Two hit in Britain, "Did You Ever." But I didn't included that song here because Hazlewood wasn't involved in writing it.

For much of the 1970s and 80s, he was semi-retired from the music business, although he did release his own albums from time to time. But as more time passed, his music was discovered by younger generations, and his music increasingly achieved a kind of cult status. That led to tribute albums, collaborations, and so on. He also revived his own performing career, including another album with Sinatra in 2004, and a well-regarded final album "Cake or Death," released in 2006, just one year before he died. The song "Baghdad Knights" is from that album.

A lot of the choices here are highly idiosyncratic, meaning someone else putting this together almost certainly would have made many different selections. I tried including at least a little bit of some of his different styles, including three songs he released in his own name, since I couldn't find good cover versions for those. 

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Some Velvet Morning (Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood)
02 You Turned My Head Around (Ann-Margret)
03 Sweet Ride (Dusty Springfield)
04 Lady Bird (Virgil Warner & Suzi Jane Hokom)
05 No Train to Stockholm (Lee Hazlewood)
06 For a Day like Today (Suzi Jane Hokom)
07 She Comes Running (Waylon Jennings)
08 Paris Summer (Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood)
09 Las Vegas (Lee Hazlewood)
10 Easy and Me (Kathryn Williams)
11 The Cheat (Jarvis Cocker & Richard Hawley)
12 It's Sunday Morning (Kid Loco with Tim Keegan)
13 Baghdad Knights (Lee Hazlewood)
14 The Night Before (Kristoffer & the Harbour Heads)
15 Your Sweet Love (Sungaze)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/15hZDJ7S

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/1jUKwWZhrurYWeZ/file

I don't know what year the cover photo is from. But I think it's from a little later than the cover photo for Volume 1, due to a little more grey in his hair.

Covered: Lee Hazlewood, Volume 1: 1956-1967

It's time to highlight another talented songwriter in my Covered series. This time, it's Lee Hazlewood. He's best known for writing hit songs for Nancy Sinatra, especially the huge hit "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'." But he did a lot more than that. He had a quirky style with songwriting, production, and his own singing so unique that he practically created his own musical genre. The intro paragraph to his Wikipedia entry states: "His collaborations with Sinatra as well as his solo output in the late 1960s and early 1970s have been praised as an essential contribution to a sound often described as 'cowboy psychedelia' or 'saccharine underground.'" I found enough interesting cover versions of his songs for two volumes.

Hazlewood had an unusual career, just like how he had an unusual sound. It seems he marched to the beat of his own drummer. Sometimes that meant big hits, sometimes obscure records. 

He was born in 1929, and mostly grew up in Texas. After serving in the military during the Korean War in the early 1950s, he began working as a DJ. This gave him a foot in the door into the music business. He soon started producing and well as selling songs he'd written. His first big hit was "The Fool" by Sanford Clark in 1956. After that, he had the most success in the late 1950s and early 1960s writing songs for guitarist Duane Eddy. His biggest success was with "Rebel-'Rouser," a Top Ten hit in the U.S. in 1958 and a true classic. He wrote a whole series of hits for Eddy, most (but not all) of them guitar-based instrumentals. I only included a few of those here because, in my opinion, most of them are similar to each other and don't really stand out.

Hazlewood's hits for Duane Eddy petered out by the end of 1963, probably due to a change in the public's musical tastes. That was right when the Beatles and the British Invasion hit it big. Hazlewood was so disappointed in the change that he took a break from the music business for most of 1964. 

But in 1965, his career resumed when he got a chance to work with Nancy Sinatra. She was both very beautiful and a talented singer. Plus she was the daughter of music legend Frank Sinatra. However, she'd had a series of nothing but failed singles from 1961 to 1965, and was in danger of being dropped from her record label. Then she began working with Hazlewood. He drastically changed her sound, including having her sing in a lower register, and with a more sultry style. Their first single in 1965 didn't do that well. But their second one was "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," which went to Number One in the U.S. singles charts and instantly turned Sinatra into a big star. That led to a whole series of hit songs he for Sinatra through the end of the 1960s.

The Sinatra collaboration turned Hazlewood into a minor star as well. That's because not only did he write and produce all her hits, he sang on some hit duets with her as well. It was a very odd combination, since Hazlewood had a low, gruff voice that typically wasn't found on hit records. But the clash with Sinatra's conventionally pretty voice somehow worked, in large part due to Hazlewood's songwriting and production.

The account of his career will continue with the second volume. Note that, on this volume, I generally stuck with the hit versions, even though that means a big cluster of Nancy Sinatra songs in the second half. Those versions are so distinctive and definitive that it seemed wrong to use different ones.

This album is 48 minutes long. 

01 The Fool (Sanford Clark)
02 Snake Eyed Mama (Don Cole with Al Casey)
03 Don't Look Now, but I've Got the Blues (B.B. King)
04 Rebel-'Rouser (Duane Eddy)
05 The Girl on Death Row (Lee Hazlewood with Duane Eddy & His Orchestra)
06 Shazam (Duane Eddy)
07 Guitars, Guitars, Guitars (Al Casey with the K-C-Ettes)
08 [Dance With] The Guitar Man (Duane Eddy)
09 Baja (Astronauts)
10 These Boots Are Made for Walkin' (Nancy Sinatra)
11 Friday's Child (Nancy Sinatra)
12 Need All the Help I Can Get (Suzi Jane Hokom)
13 How Does That Grab You, Darlin' (Nancy Sinatra)
14 Sugar Town (Nancy Sinatra)
15 Guitar on My Mind (Duane & Miriam Eddy)
16 Sand (Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood)
17 Summer Wine (Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood)
18 The Last of the Secret Agents (Nancy Sinatra)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HjpmSyrP

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/J50fzMok1feovMx/file

I had a hard time finding good color images of Hazlewood when he was young, so I had to resort using an album cover photo. The cover image was taken from a 1960 album called "Something Special."

k.d. lang - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 8-16-1993

Here's another episode of the great TV show "PBS Soundstage." This time, it's singer-songwriter k.d. lang from 1993. 

(By the way, note that for one year, the program used the name "Center Stage" instead of "Soundstage." This is one of the shows from that year. But I'm calling it "Soundstage" to be consistent with all of the other many years of the show.) 

This concert took place around the time of lang's peak popularity. The year before, she released the studio album "Ingenue." It sold over two million copies in the U.S., mainly due to the hit single "Constant Craving." At the time of this concert, she was still touring to support that album, even though it took place over a year later. 

1992 was also an eventful year for lang, because that year she came out as openly lesbian. The reason I mention that is due to the banter in track 5, where she teases she's about to announce her lesbian status for the first time. That was a joke, because surely the vast majority of fans in the audience knew that already, since it made news headlines at the time (and caused some country radio stations to stop playing her songs). And she did the same joke in all her concerts that year. I think she drew the joke out way, way too long (over two minutes), but whatever.

This concert has some song edits, because this was one of those episodes where some non-musical segments were included, and sometimes narrative talk ran over parts of songs. Also, more than the first half of the song "Crying" was missing. I found another soundboard bootleg from 1993 and used that to fill in the missing section, but it wasn't an ideal fit. You can probably still hear the transition. But those are the reasons some songs have "[Edit]" in the titles.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Luck in My Eyes (k.d. lang)
02 Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes (k.d. lang)
03 Save Me [Edit] (k.d. lang)
04 Still Thrives This Love (k.d. lang)
05 talk (k.d. lang)
06 Miss Chatelaine (k.d. lang)
07 The Mind of Love (k.d. lang)
08 Wash Me Clean (k.d. lang)
09 Ridin' the Rails (k.d. lang)
10 Trail of Broken Hearts (k.d. lang)
11 Big, Big Love (k.d. lang)
12 Constant Craving [Edit] (k.d. lang)
13 Crying [Edit] (k.d. lang)
14 Barefoot (k.d. lang)
15 Big Boned Gal (k.d. lang)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vSHoRMRh

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/LnGhJUNp7eLFaFX/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. 

Billy Joel - Cold Spring Harbor (Original Mix) (1971) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Billy Joel's 1971 debut album, "Cold Spring Harbor," has issues. It's a long and tangled tale. But the gist of it is because Joel was just starting his music career, he didn't have much control over the production of the album. And he had wound up signed to a marginal record label that did a lot of dumb things, including forcing a producer on him he didn't get along with, who produced his songs in ways he didn't want. But the worst thing of all was that the final master was accidentally sped up by three percent for all the songs! That may not sound like much, but it made his voice sound strangely high. Joel hated it with a passion, but there was nothing he could do. In retrospect, his voice was naturally higher at that time, since it was still changing in his early 20s, so that made the problem worse. He would sound noticeably different on his next album, just two years later.

Joel also signed a terrible record contract, though luckily it ended up being for just that debut album. That means that, even until now in 2025, he's had no control over that album. In 1983, after Joel became a superstar, the record company remixed the album to fix the speed problem. But they made lots of changes Joel didn't approve of as well, including hiring musicians to add new parts to some songs. The kicker though was that the version that finally got rereleased with those changes STILL hadn't fixed the speed problem! Seems like that was a clown car of a record company.

And that's how things still stand today, with the original version having issues, and the remix version having other issues, and both versions running too fast. In short, there's no good version of this album.

So guest poster Mike Solof decided to fix this. He took the original version and adjusted the speed of all the songs. But he also lowered the pitch of the songs by six to ten percent, depending on the song. That was an effort to make Joel's high voice at the time sound more like the voice he's had for all his other music. 

There's a lot more to the story behind this album and its problems. I recommend you watch the HBO Max Billy Joel documentary "And So It Goes," released just a week or so ago as I write this in August 2025. It has a whole section about it. Also, here's the Wikipedia article on the album, which explains a bit:

Cold Spring Harbor (album) - Wikipedia 

But mostly, check out the PDF Mike made that's included in the download file. It has some interesting quotes from Joel himself about the problems with the album and its remix, and Mike explains more about the things he did to fix those problems. 

This album is really a gem that has never gotten its due because of all the problems mentioned above. It's still not perfect, since some production choices can't be undone. But hopefully you'll be able to hear it in a brand new light with this improved version. 

This album is 33 minutes long.

01 She's Got a Way (Billy Joel)
02 You Can Make Me Free (Billy Joel)
03 Everybody Loves You Now (Billy Joel)
04 Why Judy Why (Billy Joel)
05 Falling of the Rain (Billy Joel)
06 Turn Around (Billy Joel)
07 You Look So Good to Me (Billy Joel)
08 Tomorrow Is Today (Billy Joel)
09 Nocturne [Instrumental] (Billy Joel)
10 Got to Begin Again (Billy Joel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/H7Kon97T

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/03UwPXPdpG7f1Bc/file 

This is the official cover of the album. However, that's in black and white. I used the Kolorize program to colorize it, since I wanted to make it a little different to show this is an alternate version.

Paul McCartney - Portland Building Ballroom, Nottingham University, Nottingham, Britain, 2-9-1972

Here's a timely post, if you're into bootleg collecting, like I am. Just a few days ago (as I write this on the last day of July 2025), a bootleg emerged on the Internet for the first time. Actually, this recording of this concert had been well known by Paul McCartney fans for a long time, because this was McCartney's very first concert with his new band Wings, since he'd been a member of the Beatles in the 1960s. But the audience recording had poor quality. The news is that a much, much better version has emerged, and that's the version I'm posting here.

Unfortunately, some people privately hoard interesting music recordings for whatever reason. (If you're one of those people, please share, before most of the interested people pass on!) In this case, somebody had a reel-to-reel recording of this concert, and didn't share it for decades. A reel-to-reel recording is still an audience recording, of lesser sound quality than most soundboard or FM radio bootlegs. But it also indicates a recording device of significantly better recording ability than the typical tape recorders people were sneaking into concerts at the time.

Earlier in July 2025, Beatles fans AdamBound and Juan Cena noticed this reel-to-reel recording was on sale. They bought it, then they improved it. For instance, they corrected the speed, as it ran a bit slow. Then they posted it at the Beatlegs forum, which is where I got it. In addition to sounding better than all previously known versions, it was seven minutes longer, including a second version of the song "Give Ireland Back to the Irish."

I made some additional changes to further improve the sound. One problem was that two songs were cut off right at the beginning, "Blue Moon of Kentucky" and "Bip Bop." Only a few seconds were lost in each case, as the recording person was a few seconds slow hitting the "record" button. I found another bootleg from just two days later, in Hull, Britain, and used that to patch in the missing seconds for each song. That's why those two have "[Edit]" in their titles. "Lucille" and "Long Tall Sally" each had drop outs that lasted a couple of seconds in the middle of the songs. I patched those up using music from elsewhere in the song. That's why those two are edited too.

Furthermore, I made three big changes to all the songs. One was that the voices on stage were quite low during all the banter between songs. I boosted those considerably, so now it's easy to hear what McCartney and his band mates had to say. Secondly, I used MVSEP to remove all the crowd noise during the songs while keeping them at the ends of songs. Third, I boosted the lead vocals relative to the instrumental parts when I thought that helped, which was for most songs. Thus, this album should sound even better. Still not a soundboard, but getting there.

The band performed two short sets. Clearly, the first part of the first set wasn't included in this recording. We know other songs were played, since McCartney made reference to playing "Lucille" for the second time, when there's only one version here. (There are two versions of "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" though. Since the band had just formed, they didn't know that many songs yet.) Aside from the first "Lucille," we don't know how many other songs were missed. But judging by other set lists from the days just after this concert, probably only a couple others, maybe a little more.

McCartney wanted his new band to get better performing some concerts before they dig really big concerts and faced the scrutiny of the press. So they came up with the idea of just spontaneously showing up at universities and giving concerts before any media hoopla could catch up with them. They chose universities because there was guaranteed to be an audience of interested young people gathered together there. This concert was performed during lunch time to a packed room of only about 700 to 800 people. That was a far cry from the huge stadiums McCartney performed when the Beatles went on tour!

There are a lot of very interesting stories connected to this concert. But I don't have to write about them here, because there's a lovely webpage all about this concert, which you can find here:

Wings concert at Nottingham University in Nottingham on Feb 9, 1972 (Lunchtime) 

It has lots of quotes from band members and audience members, photos, and much more. I strongly recommend checking it out. That same website has another interesting page about the events that led up to the concert:

Wings departs for their University Tour • The Paul McCartney Project 

This album is 54 minutes long. 

01 Blue Moon of Kentucky [Edit] (Paul McCartney)
02 talk (Paul McCartney)
03 Give Ireland Back to the Irish (Paul McCartney)
04 talk (Paul McCartney)
05 Help Me (Paul McCartney)
06 talk (Paul McCartney)
07 Thank You Darling (Paul McCartney)
08 talk (Paul McCartney)
09 Wild Life (Paul McCartney)
10 talk (Paul McCartney)
11 Bip Bop [Edit] (Paul McCartney)
12 talk (Paul McCartney)
13 Shuffle Blues (Paul McCartney)
14 talk (Paul McCartney)
15 The Mess (Paul McCartney)
16 talk (Paul McCartney)
17 My Love (Paul McCartney)
18 talk (Paul McCartney)
19 Give Ireland Back to the Irish [Second Version] (Paul McCartney)
20 talk (Paul McCartney)
21 Lucille [Edit] (Paul McCartney)
22 talk (Paul McCartney)
23 Long Tall Sally [Edit] (Paul McCartney)

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

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/D6OdYMft1UfMpef/file 

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. I could only find one photo known to be from this concert. It was in black and white, but I used the Kolorize program to colorize it. Then I used the Krea AI program to improve the quality.