Joe Jackson - Mike's Murder - Alternate Version (1983)

Here's another Joe Jackson album. This is a (hopefully) improved version of the obscure 1983 soundtrack to the movie "Mike's Murder." All the songs on the album were by Jackson, but it was promoted as a soundtrack album with Jackson's name only in very tiny print on the cover, and it was a movie that hardly anybody saw. On top of that, half the album was instrumental, including a song that went on for 11 minutes. So few treated it as his next album.

I've made some changes. For starters, I thought that 11 minute instrumental, "Zerrio," went on way too long. It expressed all its ideas in seven minutes, and then went on for another four pointless minutes, in my opinion. So I edited out the last four minutes.

The album was 35 minutes to begin with, and that edit shortened it still further. To compensate, I looked around for other stray studio tracks Jackson did around that time. I found two. Unfortunately both were instrumentals for a guy known (at the time) for his pop songs, not his instrumental prowess. I added them in, but I also changed the song order slightly, so one doesn't get a few instrumentals in a row.

01 Cosmopolitan (Joe Jackson)
02 'Round Midnight [Instrumental] (Joe Jackson)
03 1-2-3 Go [This Town's a Fairground] (Joe Jackson)
04 Laundromat Monday (Joe Jackson)
05 Zemio [Edit] [Instrumental] (Joe Jackson)
06 Memphis (Joe Jackson)
07 Moonlight (Joe Jackson)
08 Breakdown [Instrumental] (Joe Jackson)
09 Soul Makossa [Instrumental] [Live] (Joe Jackson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15260385/JoeJacks_1983_MikesMurderAlernate_atse.zip.html

I used the official album cover, but with one key change. As I mentioned, the cover only mentioned Jackson's name in very small letters. Apparently, the record cover soon realized this was a problem, because some versions came with a sticker slapped on the front with Jackson's name in big letters. I used that text, except I made it a part of the cover instead of a haphazardly placed sticker. Also, I removed the original small text of his name, since that had been made redundant.

Pink Floyd - See Emily Play - Non-Album Tracks (1967)

Pink Floyd is another great musical act that has a messed up discography, especially for its early years. Admittedly, the 2016 box set "The Early Years" did a great job of getting nearly all the vital early material officially released. However, it did a fairly poor job in terms of presenting the songs in a logical and most listenable order. It often seemed their main concern was cramming each CD about as full of music as they could.

That's admirable that they wanted to release so much stuff. But over the years I've come to believe that 30 to 50 minutes is a good album length. It lets the artist set a mood and make a statement (sometimes) without overstaying its welcome. When CDs became big in the 1980s, artists were freed from the maximum length vinyl could handle of about 50 minutes, and often filled up nearly all they could of the maximum 74 minute CD length. This led to a lot of bloat, with songs often going on for a minute or two longer than they should have, and other problems. Happily, in recent years, many musical artists have been going back to the earlier album lengths.

Pink Floyd's non-album tracks are better heard with that old album restriction, and with more thoughtful track selection and order. I'm planning on posting a series of albums that will do just that. I assume that anyone interested in downloading this already has "The Early Years." If you don't, go get it first!

First up is arranging Pink Floyd's early singles and related stray tracks. My challenge was to organize the 1967 material into how it might have appeared if it came out on an album in 1967 or 1968. The "problem" was "Nick's Boogie," an 11 minute instrumental. I stuck that on the end of what would be side A of the album, and then followed it up with some short poppy numbers, so one doesn't get too much instrumental weirdness all at once.

In 1965, Pink Floyd recorded a few songs that went unreleased at the time. In my opinion, some of them are underdeveloped and/or generic, and not worth repeated listens, unless you're a die-hard fan. But I liked three songs enough to include them. One song, "Butterfly," sounds exactly like a good 1967 Syd Barrett song. "Walk with Me Sydney" is the first known Roger Waters original with vocals shared between Barrett, Waters, and a girlfriend of one of the band members, while "I'm a King Bee" is a blues cover.

01 Butterfly (Pink Floyd)
02 Walk with Me Sydney (Pink Floyd with Juliette Gale)
03 I'm a King Bee (Pink Floyd)
04 Arnold Layne (Pink Floyd)
05 Candy and a Currant Bun (Pink Floyd)
06 Nick's Boogie [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
07 See Emily Play (Pink Floyd)
08 Apples and Oranges (Pink Floyd)
09 Paintbox (Pink Floyd)
10 Vegetable Man (Pink Floyd)
11 Experiment [Sunshine] [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
12 In the Beechwoods [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
13 Scream Thy Last Scream (Pink Floyd)
14 Reaction in G [Instrumental] [Live] (Pink Floyd)

Interstellar Overdrive [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15181714/PinkF_1965-1967_SeeEmlyPlay_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I wanted to use whatever the cover for the "See Emily Play' single was. But that turned out to be surprisingly boring for a psychedelic band, especially because it was in stark black and white. So I inverted it and added some color.

Eric Clapton - Acoustic Blues - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (2001-2006)

"Unplugged" is Clapton's biggest selling album by far, with sales of 26 million. So you'd think that he would have released something in a similar vein in all the years since then, but he hasn't. And Clapton's great musical love is the blues, so it would make perfect sense for him to put out some kind of acoustic blues album.

Even though he hasn't done that, he usually plays at least a few acoustic songs in his concerts. So I've gathered up a bunch of those from the early 2000s to make the acoustic blues album that he still should put out someday.

I got the idea because his 2004 album "Sessions for Robert J" has four acoustic songs on it. That was nice, but four is way too few. Then I discovered that there were a couple more on a DVD extra with the album. That still wasn't enough, so I went looking for other acoustic versions from around that time period and found some in high quality sound. Virtually all of the others are from concerts, but I edited out the crowd noise, as I usually do with albums like these.

There are a small number of songs where there are other musicians playing, most notably the first one, "Bell Bottom Blues." I love that song so much that I couldn't leave it off the album, since it is done in a semi-acoustic style. But the vast majority of songs are just Clapton with an acoustic guitar.

This album may not have much in the way of blistering solos, but it's great mood music. (Studies actually show that listening to sad music such as the blues helps cheer people up.)

01 Bell Bottom Blues (Eric Clapton)
02 Key to the Highway (Eric Clapton)
03 Me and the Devil Blues (Eric Clapton)
04 From Four until Late (Eric Clapton)
05 Stones in My Passway (Eric Clapton)
06 Love in Vain (Eric Clapton)
07 Ramblin' on My Mind (Eric Clapton)
08 Terraplane Blues (Eric Clapton)
09 Broken Hearted (Eric Clapton & John Mayer)
10 Back Home (Eric Clapton)
11 Outside Woman Blues (Eric Clapton)
12 Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out (Eric Clapton)
13 I Am Yours (Eric Clapton)
14 When You Got a Good Friend (Eric Clapton)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/b8jjPSo7

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/EqAYtaQup2wsrjl/file

The cover is of a photo of Clapton playing a custom Martin acoustic in 2004.

Eric Clapton - Pilgrim - Alternate Version (1998)

Sometimes, a musician you really like makes an album that's seriously flawed, and there's nothing you can do about it. But in this case, I did something about it. :)

Eric Clapton's album "Pilgim" was widely criticized when it came out in 1998. Most of the critiques focused on the production more than the songs. For instance, Wikipedia's article on the ablum quotes Allmusic critic Stephen Erlewine, who gave the album two out of five stars, and said:

"The problem lies in the production, which relies entirely on stiff mechanical drumbeats, gauzy synthesizers, and meandering instrumental interludes. These ingredients could result in a good record, as 'Change the World' demonstrated, but not here, due to [the album's] monotonous production. ... Clapton doesn't want to shake things up – his singing is startlingly mannered, even on emotionally turbulent numbers like 'My Father's Eyes' or 'Circus'. Even worse, he's content to take a back seat instrumentally, playing slight solos and fills as colorless as the electronic backdrops."

Wikipedia quotes a bunch of other critics who say similar things, and I have to agree. I'm a big fan of Clapton, but I only kept a couple of songs from the album in my music collection, mostly because I couldn't stand the production.

Luckily, I recently came across a couple of Clapton concert bootlegs where I noticed Clapton played many of the songs from the album, and the bootlegs had great soundboard quality, with almost no crowd noise. More importantly, Clapton played the songs in a very different way in concert. With a small band, there was no way to duplicate the overproduced sheen of the album. Hearing them in a different way is a revelation.

So what I've done is I've tried to duplicate the album as much as possible, including the same song order, but replacing the studio versions with live versions. I only kept on song from the album ("Fall like Rain") both because it was the one song that had decent production and because it apparently was never played in concert. I dropped three songs completely ("Sick and Tired," "Needs His Woman," and "Inside of Me") because they just weren't very good songs (and I couldn't find any live versions that might redeem them).

In coming up with alternate versions, I had to throw chronological consistency out the window. Some of these versions come from as early as 1992 and as late as 2005. But Clapton's sound has stayed almost exactly the same during that time, so you won't notice.

I debated whether to use a full band version of "My Father's Eyes" or the very different acoustic version done for the "Unplugged" acoustic show in 1992 (but not included on most versions of that album). I decided to go with the band version, but I stuck the acoustic version on the end of the album, so the listener can have both.

"Pilgrim" is a long album - over 70 minutes. My revised version ends up being basically the same length, even though I removed three songs and added one.

If you gave up on this album, give it another try. This really is something different, and a lot better. This is how the songs were meant to sound.

For the song "Born in Time," the only live version I could find was a duet between Clapton and the author of the song, Bob Dylan. That was fine with me, because I love Dylan, but there's one section of the song where Dylan takes over lead vocals, and there are a number of flubs, including the band hitting some very wrong notes. So I edited that part of the song out. There are still some parts where the dual lead vocals are sloppy due to Clapton and Dylan not being in sync, but even so, it's significantly better than the studio version.

01 My Father's Eyes (Eric Clapton)
02 River of Tears (Eric Clapton)
03 Pilgrim (Eric Clapton)
04 Broken Hearted (Eric Clapton & John Mayer)
05 One Chance (Eric Clapton)
06 Circus (Eric Clapton)
07 Going Down Slow (Eric Clapton)
08 Fall like Rain (Eric Clapton)
09 Born in Time (Eric Clapton & Bob Dylan)
10 She's Gone (Eric Clapton)
11 You Were There (Eric Clapton)
12 My Father's Eyes [Acoustic Version] (Eric Clapton)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15260154/EricC_1998_PlgrmAlternate_atse.zip.html

I used the same basic cover of the album, except I found a rare version where the text was much larger, and the background image is cropped differently. Since this is the alternate version, I figured it was only fitting to use the alternate cover.

Chiristine McVie - Christine Perfect (1970)

Here's another "almost" Fleetwood Mac album.

In 1967, Christine Perfect joined the British blues band "Chicken Shack." The band had a man who sang most of the songs, but she sang a few. Thanks almost entirely to her excellent vocals and piano work, the group had a couple of hit albums and a hit single in 1969, "I'd Rather Go Blind." Then she left and the group's sales plummeted.

Meanwhile, in 1968 she married John McVie, bassist in Fleetwood Mac. At first she kept her maiden name, but by 1971 and onwards she could become known as Christine McVie. Of course, she would go on to sell millions of records as a soft rock star. But between leaving Chicken Shack and officially joining Fleetwood Mac in 1971, she had a brief career as a solo artist, mostly still singing the blues.

She put out one album, simply called "Christine Perfect." Unfortunately, it was only okay. Some songs were good, but other sounds were slathered with strings, especially the song promoted as the lead single ("When You Say," which would be done in a much better version by Fleetwood Mac around the same time).

Originally, I only posted part of this album, and added some other of her solo songs, plus songs with the band Chicken Shack where she sang lead. But I listened to the original album again and decided the whole thing was worthy of posting.  McVie later deemed her 1970 album to be an embarrassment. But I think she was much too harsh. If nothing else, it's interesting to hear McVie's famous silky smooth pop voice singing the blues. 

This album is 37 minutes long. 

01 Crazy 'bout You Baby [Can't Hold Out Much Longer] (Christine McVie)
02 I'm on My Way (Christine McVie)
03 Let Me Go [Leave Me Alone] (Christine McVie)
04 Wait and See (Christine McVie)
05 Close to Me (Christine McVie)
06 I'd Rather Go Blind (Christine McVie)
07 When You Say (Christine McVie)
08 And That's Saying a Lot (Christine McVie)
09 No Road Is the Right Road (Christine McVie)
10 For You (Christine McVie)
11 I'm Too Far Gone [To Turn Around] (Christine McVie)
12 I Want You (Christine McVie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MdTrDsWT

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/gBDInlDMIEO76ap/file

The situation with her name, and the name of the album, is tricky. The album was repackaged with a new name and changed cover in the mid-1970s after she hit it big with Fleetwood Mac, to let people know this was in fact Christine McVie. I'm inclined to go with that, since she's so well known by that name for almost her entire career. So I'm referring to her for this release as the artist "Christine McVie," yet I'm also going with that rerelease in calling the album "Christine Perfect," to reflect the actual album name. 

I used a modified version of the original album art for the same reason. The major change is I turned her name "Christine Perfect" into "Christine McVie" while using the same font type and size in the same location. Also, all versions of the cover art were faded and dull. and the colors seemed off. I did some editing in Photoshop to improve the contrast and coloring.

In 2025, I improved the detail of the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Peter Green with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers - A Hard Road - Alternate Peter Green Version (1967)

I think it's safe to say that most Fleetwood Mac fans fall into one of two camps: those who love the Peter Green-led blues group of the late 1960s, and those who love the pop-rock group of the "Rumours" and after. Most fall into the second camp and probably don't even know or care about the Green years.

Personally, I like both phases of the group's career a lot, and I plan on featuring a lot of their music here. It makes sense to begin at the beginning, which in my opinion is a year before Fleetwood Mac was even formed.

Peter Green was the lead guitarist and sometime singer for John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers for most of 1967, while bassist John McVie was in that group too. Drummer Mick Fleetwood also joined and was with the other two in that group for about three months. Then all three of them left and formed Fleetwood Mac.

John Mayall's blues music has a limited appeal even among blues fans due to his voice. I'm afraid to say I'm one of those people who have a hard time listening to his albums because of that. He gives it his all, but he simply wasn't genetically gifted with a voice to sing the blues, in my opinion.

If you like Mayall's voice and all the rest, then great, please listen to the version of the 1967 "A Hard Road" album that already exists. But if you're like me and your real interest in this material is Peter Green, that try this album out. I gathered up all the songs that either were song by Green or were instrumentals featuring his guitar playing. There were only four songs like that on the album proper. But luckily there was a lot of other material recorded by the group while Green was in it. If you add that material in as well, it's enough for an album.

On top of that, there are some decent sounding live recordings from the Green era. (By the way, these are from the tail end of that era when Fleetwood had become the drummer as well.) I've included a couple of those songs that weren't the same as any of the studio tracks. Luckily, most of the sound issues with these live tracks had to do with the vocals, and these extra tracks are instrumentals.

If you add it all up, it comes to 51 minutes, which would have been too long for an album in that era.  But if we imagine the two live instrumentals as bonus material, it comes to 36 minutes, which was ideal for an album length back then.

This is a very unusual album for me. I believe it's the first and only time I've ever made an album specifically to avoid the main lead singer. But if you take away the Mayall-sung songs, what's left is  the first de facto Fleetwood Mac album!

Green should be considered one of the best British blues guitarists of all time, certainly up there with the likes of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. If you don't believe it, give this album a listen. And if you are fine with Mayall's voice, check out Green's work on all the other songs, especially more of the live versions.

01 You Don’t Love Me (Peter Green with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)
02 The Stumble [Instrumental] (Peter Green with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)
03 The Same Way (Peter Green with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)
04 The Supernatural [Instrumental] (Peter Green with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)
05 Evil Woman Blues (Peter Green with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)
06 Out of Reach (Peter Green with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)
07 Alabama Blues (Peter Green with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)
08 Curly [Instrumental] (Peter Green with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)
09 Rubber Duck [Instrumental] (Peter Green with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)
10 Greeny [Instrumental] (Peter Green with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)
11 Missing You (Peter Green with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)
12 The Stumble [Instrumental] [Live] (Peter Green with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)
13 San-Ho-Zay [Instrumental] [Live] (Peter Green with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)

Soul Dressing [Instrumental] (Peter B's with Peter Green)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Uivm4u8z

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/zWbt3cDlpKlXHTc/file

The cover art was tricky for me to make. I took the "Hard Road" cover and rearranged the words to highlight Green and downplay the others. I wanted to use a photo that emphasized Green in a similar way, with the rest of the group in the background. But finding any color pictures of the group from the Green era was really tough, and I much prefer color photos. I found one of Green alone from 1969, so I used that. But if anyone has a better photo to use, please let me know.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Long May You Run - Non-Album Tracks (1976)

The CSNY alternate universe album series continues with "Long May You Run." This one was a lot more difficult to make.

For the 1974 and 1975 CSNY albums, I was able to use mostly CSNY versions for the songs, thanks to so many of them being played on the 1974 CSNY tour. But by 1976, CSNY were working on a new batch of songs (with some exceptions, such as the title track).

What's intriguing is that CSNY recorded all sorts of songs together around this time, enough for a double album.

The songs recorded by them include:

Western Witches
Talk Too Much
Talk to Me
Last Hundred Years of Freedom
Let Me Down
After Hours
Separate Ways
No One Seems to Know
Traces
Beaucoup Yumbo
Will to Love
Time After Time
Treetop Flyer
Little Blind Fish
Mutiny
Taken at All
Dancer
plus, all eight songs that would come out on the Stills-Young "Long May You Run" album, except "Guardian Angel."

That's 24 songs already. In addition, it's likely that some more of the songs on the 1976 Crosby-Nash album "Whistling Down the Wire" were done by CSNY. Plus, there were other songs done live by Stills and Young when they toured that year, such as "Evening Coconut," "Too Far Gone," "Stringman," and "Campaigner," so those may have been contenders too.

The first six songs in that list have never been released in any form by any of CSNY, nor have any of them ever been played live. Furthermore, of the remaining songs, only six of the CSNY versions have become public.

As a result, despite all the potentially great material that must exist in somebody's private archives somewhere, I don't have enough to go on for a full album of just CSNY performed songs. So I've done the best I could. I figure that the Stills-Young album "Long May You Run" would never have existed if the CSNY album with that name came out instead, so I can break my usual rules and use some of the exact takes from that album. The only problem is, many of the songs on that album aren't very good. It was widely considered a disappointment when it came out, with critics suggesting that Stills and Young were keeping some of their best songs for their own projects, which undoubtedly was true.

To make matters even more difficult, Young was always the most prolific of the bunch, and he was especially prolific in the mid-1970s, so a majority of the songs in the list above are by him. In fact, a lack of good Crosby and Nash songs was one reason the CSNY project was cancelled, because they were under pressure to put out an album before starting a tour at a certain time.

I've done the best I could with the material I had to work with. But I'm mindful of the fact that if more of this material were ever released, one could make a very different album. And since so many songs were recorded by CSNY, even if some were clunkers, I'm sure there would have been plenty of songs to make a great album, one that contained songs that are still unreleased in any form today. Let's hope that this material gets released in the years to come.

I ended up using five songs from the Stills-Young album, but only one of them ("Guardian Angel") is the exact same take as on that album.

In 2020, Neil Young's "Archives, Volume II" box set was released. That contains the CSNY versions of "Midnight on the Bay" and "Ocean Girl." The only problem with that is "Ocean Girl" simply isn't a very good song, and the CSNY version didn't improve much on the previously known Stills-Young Band version. Since there were so many strong contenders here, I used "Midnight on the Bay," but relegated "Ocean Girl" to a bonus track.

The "Archives, Volume II" box set also has a great Stills-Young Band version of "Separate Ways," so I've used that instead of the Neil Young solo version I had here before. And it turns out there are two excellent CSNY versions of the song "Human Highway," one recorded in 1973 and one recorded in 1976. I've put the 1973 version on my earlier album in this series, also called "Human Highway." Because of that version being on that album, I feel CSNY wouldn't have put the same song on another album three years later. So the 1976 version is only included here as a bonus track.

Additionally, I came across more information that the Nash song "Mutiny" was recorded by CSNY, and it was considered an especially strong version. Unfortunately, the CSNY version hasn't been officially released or even bootlegged, and it's never been performed lived by Nash. So I've included the Crosby & Nash version from their 1976 album "Whistling Down the Wire."

01 Long May You Run (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
02 Make Love to You (Stills-Young Band)
03 Mutiny (Crosby & Nash)
04 Foolish Man (Crosby & Nash)
05 Midnight on the Bay (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
06 Black Coral (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
07 Taken at All (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
08 Separate Ways (Stills-Young Band)
09 Dancer (David Crosby)
10 Guardian Angel (Stills-Young Band)
11 Out of the Darkness (Crosby & Nash)

Human Highway [1976 Version] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
Ocean Girl (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16383857/CROSBSTLLSNSHYNG1976LngMyYuRn_atse.zip.html

The album cover is a picture of CSNY rehearsing in Young's backyard of his California in the mid-1970s. He had a stage that allowed them to play outside.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Hawaiian Sunrise - Non-Album Tracks (1974-1975)

I'm posting all three of my alternate universe mid-1970s CSNY studio albums at once, because I think it helps to see them as a whole entity. In addition to trying to avoid include some from solo albums of the era (unless they were done in CSNY versions), I've also avoided duplicating songs from album to album in this alternate universe.

This second album is arguably more contrived that the other two, "Human Highway" and "Long May You Run." Basically, from around 1973 to 1976, CSNY struggled to make a single group album, but personality issues kept getting in the way. In the beginning, the album was to be called "Human Highway," but by 1976 it was going to be called "Long May You Run." (That title went to a Stills-Young album that was released that year instead. There never really was a planned album with the title "Hawaiian Sunrise." But I've got enough material for three albums, and it seems like as good of a title as any.

Although I tried to avoid using tracks from solo albums of the time, I made one important exception here. "Through My Sails" came out on Neil Young's "Zuma" album in 1976 after it became clear the CSNY album wasn't going to happen, with all of CSNY performing on it. Strangely, despite it being a really great song in my opinion, Young has never performed the song in concert, and the "Zuma" version is the only version that exists. It's not clear when CSNY recorded this song, but it could have been from 1974 or 1975. Young recorded a solo demo of it in 1974.

A couple of the songs here are actually solo performances, but that's okay because CSN or CSNY albums usually have one or two of those on them anyway, such as "4 + 20" on the "Deja Vu" album.  Note that one such song, "Treetop Flyer," came out on Stills' archival release "Just Roll Tape- April 26, 1968." But if you read the fine print of that album's liner notes, it's the one song from the album that was recorded in the mid-1970s instead of 1968.

01 Pushed It Over the End (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
02 My Angel (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
03 Fieldworker (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
04 Carry Me (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
05 Traces (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
06 It's All Right (Crosby & Nash)
07 My Love Is a Gentle Thing (Stephen Stills)
08 Hawaiian Sunrise (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
09 Homeward through the Haze (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
10 Another Sleep Song (Crosby & Nash)
11 Treetop Flyer (Stephen Stills)
12 Through My Sails (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17363390/CROSBSTLLSNSHYNG1975HwiinSnrse_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1urwiMtE

For the album cover, I got lucky and found a beautiful photo of Crosby's boat "The Mayan" sailing on the ocean at either sunset or sunrise. I figure that's a fitting cover for an album called "Hawaiian Sunrise."

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Human Highway - Non-Album Tracks (1974)

The next installment in the alternate history of CSNY is "Human Highway," one of the great lost albums. Lots of people have tried to put together versions of this album. Except in my alternate history, CSNY didn't make just one album in their mid-1970s reunion phase, they made four! Studio albums in 1974, 1975, and 1976, plus a live album to document their 1974 tour. So this is just the first of those four.

Typically, when people compile a lost album like this, they try to be as accurate as possible to what could have been released. For instance, while there is no known definitive "Human Highway" song list, Nash has mentioned that there would have been ten songs on it. Thus, people limit the songs to 10.

My approach is different, since I'm most interested in making albums I'll enjoy listening to repeatedly than being as accurate as possible. I figure if CSNY (or some variant) did a song in this time period, and that version is not on, or is significantly different from, any songs on their officially released albums, that's fair game. Also, I limit myself to the typical length of an album in that era, and I have to have a good balance of C, S, N, and Y songs (with S and Y usually getting a little more, because they were more prolific).

Using that criteria, I came up with 14 songs for this album, with all of them done in either 1973 or 1974. (It would be weird in my opinion if CSNY really did stick to only 10 songs, because these 14 songs only total up to 40 minutes.)

Unfortunately, very few CSNY studio takes of songs from this period have been officially released, and only a little more has found its way to bootlegs. What really allows me to make not one but three studios albums for this time period is the fact that they went on tour in 1974, and played lots of new songs as a group. Furthermore, that tour was very well documented in the triple live album released in 2014, "CSNY 1974." Time and time again, what I've done is taken songs from that release and edited out the audience noise to make it sound like a studio track. But I've also done this for some other live performances if they are in soundboard quality.

I think the end result is a fantastic album that would have sold millions and caused some of the songs on it to have become well-known classics. If I had a time machine and the power to make any "lost album" get found, I think I'd pick these mid-1970s CSNY albums. I'm not going to go into the tangled history why these albums didn't come to be, since you can find that information elsewhere. Suffice to say it was the usual problem of clashing big egos and rock star excess. Luckily, there's enough music left behind to make a close approximation of what could have been.

In the rare cases where I didn't use a CSNY performance for this album, it was either because of balance or sound quality, or both. What I mean by "balance" is having the usual ratio of songs by each of the four of them. For instance, I didn't have enough Crosby songs, but luckily there was a excellent sounding demo of an unreleased song by him from 1974 to fill that gap. 

CSNY recorded the song "Human Highway" twice in the 1970s, once in 1973 and once in 1976. Neuk Young's "Archives, Volume 2" box set has the 1973 version, so I've used that here. I've included the 1976 version as a bonus track on my imagined 1976 CSNY album "Long May You Run."

01 First Things First (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 Little Blind Fish (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
03 Human Highway (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
04 And So It Goes (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
05 My Favorite Changes (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
06 Grave Concern (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
07 King of the Mountain (David Crosby)
08 Love Art Blues (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
09 See the Changes (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
10 Prison Song (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
11 Mellow My Mind (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
12 Time After Time (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
13 Myth of Sisyphus (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
14 New Mama (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17363387/CROSBSTLLSNSHYNG1974HmnHighwy_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MVPfbw7T

The album cover here uses a picture that was the actual photo they were going to use for the cover, taken in Hawaii. Someone else (sorry, I don't know who) ably added in the text.

Bob Dylan - Abandoned Love - Non-Album Tracks (1973-1976)

In the 1960s, Bob Dylan was a seeming non-stop songwriting machine. By the mid-1970s, his songwriting pace had slowed considerably. However, the songs he was writing remained very high quality, as anyone who has ever heard the 1975 album "Blood on the Tracks" can tell.

Putting this album together was mostly a case of selecting non-album songs from the time period that appeared on "Biograph" and "The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1 - 3." 

However, a few songs come from other sources. "Gwenevere," "Patty's Gone to Laredo," "Hollywood Angel" are from "The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings." However, despite that album title, they're all studio recordings.

"Patty's Gone to Laredo" has an interesting history. It's a Dylan original that first showed up in his unsuccessful 1978 movie "Renaldo and Clara." But only part of it was played in the background while actors were talking over it. This left Dylan fans intrigued yet frustrated. Finally, in 2019, a version was released on an archival album. But this was a rough version done for a tour rehearsal that had some issues. I edited it some to hopefully make it sound better. That's the same case with the original "Hollywood Angel." 

 "Rita May" was a 1975 B-side. "Spanish Is the Loving Tongue (1974 Version)" comes from the archival release "The Bootleg Series, Volume 14: More Blood, More Tracks." "Sign Language" was written by Dylan, but it was sung as a duet between him and Eric Clapton on Clapton's 1976 album "No Reason to Cry." Dylan apparently never did a version of his own. "Seven Days" is possibly the only song Dylan wrote in 1976. A live version appeared on "The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1 - 3," but instead I chose an unreleased demo version.

This album is 48 minutes long.

UPDATE: On January 1, 2024, I updated the mp3 download file. I added three songs that I decided fit better here than anywhere else: "Gwenevere," "Sign Language," and "Seven Days." Two of them are from 1976, so I changed the album title a bit.

01 Forever Young [Acoustic Version] (Bob Dylan)
02 Nobody 'Cept You (Bob Dylan)
03 Call Letter Blues (Bob Dylan)
04 Up to Me (Bob Dylan)
05 Spanish Is the Loving Tongue [1974 Version] (Bob Dylan)
06 Catfish (Bob Dylan)
07 Golden Loom (Bob Dylan)
08 Rita May [Single Version] (Bob Dylan)
09 Abandoned Love (Bob Dylan)
10 Gwenevere (Bob Dylan)
11 Hollywood Angel [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
12 Patty's Gone to Laredo [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
13 Sign Language (Eric Clapton & Bob Dylan)
14 Seven Days (Bob Dylan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16116308/BOBDYL1973-1976_AbndonedLve_atse.zip.html

For the cover, I selected a photo that was an alternate from the photo session for the cover of the 1976 "Desire" album.

Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers - Mary Jane's Last Dance - Non-Album Tracks (1992-1993)

Tom P. has put out a lot of great albums, but he could have put out even more. One "lost album" that few people seem to talk about is his 1993 album that never was. 

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

In 1992, Tom P. and the Heartbreakers returned to the studio to start recording a follow up to 1991's "Into the Great Wide Open." However, P. was having personal and musical problems with the drummer Stan Lynch, even though he's generally considered a talented drummer. (Already, the 1989 "Full Moon Fever" album was supposedly a P. solo album, but it was a de facto Heartbreakers album except for Lynch.) P. did some sessions with Lynch as the Heartbreakers and some without him technically not called the Heartbreakers, though the difference was essentially academic.

There were lots of good songs written, and the ones that have become public sound fine, but for whatever reason, P. wasn't satisfied. Instead of putting out an album, two of the songs went to a new greatest hits album (including what would become an all-time classic, "Mary Jane's Last Dance"). P. and his band continued recording, though without Lynch, who officially quit the band in 1994. Apparently, P. wrote tons of songs, and all that new material caused him to lose interest in most of the songs that started in 1992. His "Wildflowers" album came out in 1994, and it was a very solid album despite being 63 minutes long.

A bunch of the 1992 and 1993 songs came out on the 1995 retrospective "Playback," so the songs on "All the Rest," if it ever comes out, represent another lost album with little to no overlap with this album here.

In compiling this album, I focused almost entirely on studio tracks, most of which were originals. But two original songs from this time period are currently only available as live versions, so I added those in as well, with the audience noise minimized.

Note also that "Peace in L.A." is well known in its "Peace Mix" version, because that was included in "Playback." But that actually was the B-side. I've included the more straightforward A-side version of the song instead, which I think is similar but better.

This album is 43 minutes long.

UPDATE: In 2025, I added a newly available song, "What's the Matter with Louise." It is only available through the Amazon website, in relation to a new documentary about the band. Most information about this song states it's a "Wildflowers" outtake, but it actually was recorded in 1992.

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/p7K61bAD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/AS5tf0mHQwWorZX/file

For the cover art, I used the cover of the single for "Mary Jane's Last Dance."

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Winterland Reunion 1973 - Winterland, San Francisco, CA, 10-4-1973

Before I post the next album in my CSNY alternate universe series, I want to post this pivotal live show.

As I previously mentioned, CSNY had a big falling out in 1970 that kept them from working together with only a few exceptions for the next couple of years. Then, on October 4, 1973, Stills' band Manassas played a show at the Winterland in San Francisco, near where the other members of CSNY lived at the time. During the intermission of the show, Crosby and Nash came out to join Stills for an acoustic set. Then, halfway through the set, Young joined them as well. This would mark a new era of cooperation between the four of them that would culminate in a big 1974 concert tour (though, sadly, no studio album).

After the CSNY set ended, Manassas came back on stage for a second set. This has a bittersweet edge, because Manassas bassist Chris Hillman later said that when he saw CSNY get together that night, he knew that Manassas was finished, since CSNY would take priority for Stills. And sure enough, that's what happened. However, Manassas did perform some more shows before going their own way, including another Winterland show three days later when CSN again performed an acoustic set in the middle of the show (though this time without Young).

I don't like repeating the same song on an album. So what I've done here is present the entire October 7 CSN(Y) set. But then, at the start, I'd added in the different songs CSN performed during their October 4 set. I did make an exception in duplicating the song "Human Highway" though, because on October 4 CSN performed it with Stills singing lead, while on October 7 CSNY performed it with Young singing lead, so I figured that was different and interesting.

The first song I've put on this album, "Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom" (an early version with different lyrics) is actually the last song of the second Manassas set. Stills played most of it alone, then Crosby, Nash, and the rest of Manassas joined in at the end.

So the order of this doesn't make much sense chronologically, but I think it makes sense from a listening point of view, with Manassas giving way to CSN(Y) and then the highlight being the conclusion of CSNY playing together.

Between the two shows, there's almost two hours of CSN and then CSNY playing acoustically. To me, this is the sort of dream concert CSNY would have done regularly in the alternate universe where they were much more active with each other than they actually were. What's remarkable is that despite not having played together since 1971, CSN(Y) played six songs in a row in their short set that were unreleased at that time, with little to no rehearsal, yet they still sounded great (tracks 12 to 19).

This album is one hour and 16 minutes long.

01 Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
03 Southbound Train (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
04 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Human Highway (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 The Lee Shore (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 Blackbird (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 As I Come of Age (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
13 talk [Neil Young joins in] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
14 Roll Another Number [For the Road] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
15 Human Highway (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
16 New Mama (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
17 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
18 And So It Goes (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
19 Prison Song (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
20 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
21 Change Partners (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17363413/CROSBSTLLSNSHYNG1973WintrlndSnFrncscoCA__10-4-1973_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YcdMCSr9

Originally, I made the album cover from a still image of the video footage from this show. (It's available on YouTube, as well as the CSN and Manassas sets from October 4.) But the video quality was low. I later found a better photo that is from the concert. The only downside is that most of Graham Nash's face is obscured behind Neil Young's.

Gordon Lightfoot - BBC in Concert, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 6-4-1971

Gordon Lightfoot's career has curiously lacked live albums from his golden era of the 1960s and 1970s. He did release one live album in 1969, but it was early in his career and mostly had new songs on it, so it contained few of his classics.

In the early 1970s, the BBC has a TV series called "In Concert" that featured many great artists doing hour or half hour shows. Luckily, Lightfoot got a full hour. I found the video of his show (broadcast in early 1972 but recorded in June 1971), converted it to mp3, and cut it into individual tracks. (Unfortunately, I often had to cut the track right in the middle of the applause, since he had a habit of starting the next song while people were still clapping.)

For the show, Lightfoot is only accompanied by a bass player and lead guitarist, allowing one to hear his songs without the orchestration and/or drumming that sometimes occurred on his studio albums.

This album is an hour and four minutes long.

01 Summer Side of Life (Gordon Lightfoot)
02 Saturday Clothes (Gordon Lightfoot)
03 For Lovin' Me (Gordon Lightfoot)
04 Affair on Eighth Avenue (Gordon Lightfoot)
05 If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)
06 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
07 Steel Rail Blues (Gordon Lightfoot)
08 Your Love's Return (Gordon Lightfoot)
09 Ten Degrees and Getting Colder (Gordon Lightfoot)
10 Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
11 Farewell Nova Scotia (Gordon Lightfoot)
12 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
13 Miquel (Gordon Lightfoot)
14 Me and Bobby McGee (Gordon Lightfoot)
15 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
16 Nous Vivons Ensemble (Gordon Lightfoot)
17 Minstrel of the Dawn (Gordon Lightfoot)
18 Talking in Your Sleep (Gordon Lightfoot)
19 Canadian Railroad Trilogy (Gordon Lightfoot)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693281/GORDNLGHTFT1971_BBCncrtRoylAlbrtHll__6-4-1971_atse.zip.html

If you want to watch the show, just search for his name and "in concert" on YouTube. I made the album cover from a still shot taken from the video.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - Witching Hour - Non-Album Tracks (1973)

I've made nearly 20 studio albums in my alternate history of Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young. Out of all of them, I'm pretty sure this one is the biggest stretch to exist as an album. My alternate CSN(Y) albums generally have a lot of them together as a threesome or foursome. but this album only has three songs where a mere two of them are performing together.

I don't know the full story, but in the latter part of 1970, future famous singer Rita Coolidge got romantically involved with Stills, then soon left him for Nash. Crosby wrote the song "Cowboy Movie" about it. (Coolidge is the Indian girl.) That conflict, plus generally being overwhelmed by too much fame and drug use, meant there was very little combined CSN or CSNY activity from 1971 to late 1973.

So why did I make this CSNY album? In the early 1970s, CSNY were highly productive songwriters. Even though a lot of their material hasn't made it to the public yet, even in unreleased form, there are enough stray tracks from 1971 to 1973 to make up a good studio album. My goal was to gather up all their good songs from this period that weren't released on any of their official solo albums at the time. In fact, all but tour of these 14 versions are still unreleased (and only a couple more of them have been released in other versions). It's not really a "CSNY together" album, but I think it makes a good listen of songs that generally have been unjustly forgotten.

I made some notable edits on a couple of a songs that need some explaining. In 2009, Stills released the song "High and Dry" on an archival release of his Manassas era material. In fact, this is a medley of two musically related songs, "High and Dry" and "White Nigger." The title of this second song poses a problem! The Urban Dictionary defines "white nigger" to mean: "a white person who does not have the typical privileges associated with white people, and thus who is looked down on by 'normal' whites." So Stills didn't intend anything racist here, but instead it was supposed to be a typical "woe is me" blues sentiment. (Though it's hard to feel that sort of pity for him when he was rich and famous by that point.)

It was a different era than today. For instance, the famous rock critic Lester Bang actually used the term "white niggers" to describe "punks" before the phrase "punk music" caught on. Elvis Costello also used the term in his 1979 hit "Oliver's Army." ("All it takes is one itchy trigger, one more widow, one less white nigger.")

Even so, any use of the "N-word" today by a white guy such as Stills would understandably be seen as offensive by many people. So for the "Pieces" release, he took the entire "White Nigger" half of the medley and slathered it with fake crowd noise, no doubt to hide the embarrassing lyrics. One can tell, because there's a bootleg that has the exact same take of the song, only without the crowd noise.

I've gone a different route and simply edited out the offensive second half of that medley. But the officially released recording ends abruptly due to moving into the second song. So I took the very end of the medley, where it returns back to the tempo and chords of the "High and Dry" part, and edited in a better tail end for the song.

So that was one tricky song to deal with. Another tricky song is what's commonly known as "Mountain Song." In the early 1970s, a loose San Francisco-based musical grouping called "The Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra" (PERRO) played together in different formations on various musical projects. You can read about it at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Earth_Rock_and_Roll_Orchestra

In 1971, Crosby, Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, Paul Kantner and Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane, and David Freiberg of Quicksilver Messenger Service worked on "Mountain Song," but they never came close to a finished version. (Kantner would later release a very different version of it on a 1983 album, with him and Slick doing most of the lead vocals.) PERRO did four takes of the song that ended up on bootlegs. The versions were very rudimentary, with no soloing and generally just repeating of one phrase ("gonna make the mountains be my home") over and over again.

There was one promising take that had Crosby scatting over some complicated chord changes, but that ended after just a minute and a half. The version ended abruptly right when the song was about to move into the "gonna make the mountains be my home" part. So I edited the take with Crosby scatting to one of the takes that repeats that phrase. But I also cut the repetitions down to a reasonable amount, so the whole song is still less than four minutes long.

I was happy with the result, except for one thing: in the middle of the first part of the song, Crosby interjected over the music that he hasn't written more words, and he also juggled his talented scatting with calling out some of the chord changes as they were happening. (The others were clearly learning the song as they're playing it.) Luckily, there was another version of the song that went through the same chord changes, only without any of Crosby's scatting. So I patched in bits from that version to get rid of all of Crosby's talking.

So, yeah, I did a lot of meddling on this song, but I think the end result is much more listenable than any of the four bootleg versions. If you don't agree, you can find the unedited takes on various bootlegs or on YouTube.

It's a real shame that the song wasn't finished and released in the early 1970s, because it could have been a classic, especially if someone like Garcia had soloed on it. But it was probably left behind because it fell between the cracks of being a Crosby (or CSN) song, a Jefferson Airplane song, and a Grateful Dead song, and PERRO didn't finish an album for it to fit on.

In addition, I made a significant edit to the Stills song "Too Much Today." This extremely obscure song was played by him once on a French TV show in 1971 with a flutist joining in.  Unfortunately, after two verses the flutist is just starting a nice solo when the song gets cut off. That left the song only about a minute and a half long and feeling incomplete. So I edited it to repeat the first verse after the second verse, and then fade out with what little there was of the flute solo. I think it now sounds like a proper song instead of part of one.

I also edited about a minute and a half out of Crosby's "Is It Really Monday." I try not to do that very often, but this is mainly for my own listening enjoyment, and I felt the song dragged on too long.

This is a "Frankenstein" album of sorts, with individual pieces from all over that were never really meant to be together, but in my opinion it's a cohesive and enjoyable listen just the same, no doubt because all four of them were writing high-quality songs in the same general style.

Thankfully, in late 1973, CSNY got back together, both on stage and in the studio. So my next three alternate albums in this series will be very heavy with CSNY content on nearly all the songs.

Note that the sound quality of the two Young solo aren't quite up to my usual standards, coming from audience concert bootlegs. But I think the sound quality is worth it, given that they're good songs by him that haven't been officially released in any version yet.

01 Witching Hour (Stephen Stills)
02 Urge for Going (Crosby & Nash)
03 Come Along and Say You Will (Neil Young)
04 Everybody's Been Burned (Graham Nash)
05 I Am My Brother (Stephen Stills)
06 Is It Really Monday (David Crosby)
07 Sweet Joni (Neil Young)
08 High and Dry (Stephen Stills)
09 On the Line (Graham Nash)
10 Too Much Today (Stephen Stills)
11 Your Life Is What You Fill Your Day With (Crosby & Nash)
12 War Song (Neil Young with Graham Nash)
13 Thoroughfare Gap (Stephen Stills)
14 Mountain Song [Walking in the Mountains] (David Crosby & the PERRO)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17363393/CROSBSTLLSNSHYNG1973WtchngHur_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9jDWyB8x

Since this album is really each of CSNY playing separately instead of together, I made an album cover that pictures each of them separately. It was done in the spirit of the Beatles' "Let It Be" album cover, which also marked a group that was more four people going in different directions than an actual group at that point.

Joe Jackson - The Harder They Come - Non-Album Tracks (1980)

Joe Jackson is another artist I really like. I don't know of a lot of alternate albums one can make from his material (other than live stuff), but I do have a couple.

I particularly enjoy his earliest albums, when he had energetic yet witty and tuneful songs. It turns out one can make another album in the style of "Look Sharp!" if one gathers up various B-sides and live tracks. (As I usually do when adding live tracks with studio ones, I've generally edited the live tracks to remove the crowd noise.)

In 1980, Jackson put out a single with a cover version of "The Harder They Come" as the A-side. It was a minor hit, but I think it's mostly been forgotten due to it not appearing on any of his official albums at the time. I'm using this as the title of this alternate album, as well as using the single's cover art (with the minor change of removing the name of the B-sides and enlarging the remaining words to cover that up).

Seven of the 12 songs here are cover songs. But they're all done in the early Joe Jackson style and they sound like songs he could have written. I'm imaging this album could have come out in 1980, since all the songs are from 1979 or 1980 except for one, "Knock Me a Kiss," a B-side from 1981.

As it happens, the album is 36 minutes long, and only five seconds longer than his "Look Sharp!" album.

The songs "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Twenty Flight Rock" are cover versions. Unfortunately, the sound quality isn't that great, so I've only included those are bonus tracks. However, the sound on them is still pretty good, just not at the same level as the others.

01 The Harder They Come (Joe Jackson)
02 Out of Style (Joe Jackson)
03 Tilt (Joe Jackson)
04 Pressure Drop (Joe Jackson)
05 Come On (Joe Jackson)
06 Don't Ask Me (Joe Jackson)
07 You Got the Fever (Joe Jackson)
08 I Can't Give You Anything (Joe Jackson)
09 Enough Is Not Enough (Joe Jackson)
10 Knock Me a Kiss (Joe Jackson)
11 Ain't that a Shame (Joe Jackson)
12 Life Is a Bowl of Cherries (Joe Jackson)

Ain't Misbehavin'
Twenty Flight Rock

https://www.upload.ee/files/15906826/JoeJacks_1979d-1980_TheHardrTheyCome_atse.zip.html

The cover is the official cover for the "The Harder They Come" EP, but I made a change to replace three song titles in the bottom corner to just one song title.

The Rolling Stones - December's Children (And Everybody's) - Alternate Version (1965)

I continue with gathering the Rolling Stones' stray tracks.

For 1964, I had no make no less than three albums of stray tracks. With 1965, it's down to just one. But in my opinion, the quality is significantly higher. In 1964, the Stones were recording lots of covers of blues songs. But this album mostly contains songs they wrote themselves, including some big classics.

I made this an alternate version of "December's Children (And Everybody's)" - despite the unweildy title - because that was a 1965 US album that gathered up some stray tracks. But it's only a loose association, because a mere five of the 14 tracks here were on that album. Still, it gives me a title and album art to use.

01 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Rolling Stones)
02 The Spider and the Fly (Rolling Stones)
03 The Last Time (Rolling Stones)
04 Play with Fire (Rolling Stones)
05 Fannie Mae (Rolling Stones)
06 I'd Much Rather Be with the Boys (Rolling Stones)
07 One More Try (Rolling Stones)
08 Get Off of My Cloud (Rolling Stones)
09 The Singer Not the Song (Rolling Stones)
10 Look What You've Done (Rolling Stones)
11 As Tears Go By (Rolling Stones)
12 Blue Turns to Grey (Rolling Stones)
13 I'm All Right (Rolling Stones)
14 Crawdad (Rolling Stones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701034/TROLLNGSTNES1965c_DecmbrsChildrnAltrnate_atse.zip.html

The cover is exactly the same as the official album version. However, to differentiate things a bit, I tinted it blue.

Pete Townshend - Rael - Non-Album Tracks (1965-1968)

There are so many artists whose recorded output is messed up and needs a complete overhaul. I plan on posting a lot more of the Who, but I have many alternate Pete Townshend albums too.

Basically, Townshend has recorded tons of demos over the years, both songs later played by the Who and songs just for himself. He's released some over the years, mainly in his "Scoop" series, but there are plenty more still unreleased. An example of that would be three demos of good songs that finally were released in 2016 as part of a "super deluxe" re-release of the Who's "My Generation" album that were of songs that hadn't even been bootlegged before. And apparently that was only a small number of his personal favorites that he chose to release from that year alone. And in his case, "demos" aren't really demos, but usually sound like well produced songs.

But of all his demos that we know of, I believe I can make no less than seven albums of good songs not on any Who albums and also not on any of his official solo albums. This is the first.

Despite my blog title, this is an album that really shouldn't exist. Having a band member do a solo album wasn't really a thing yet in 1968. Besides, if Townshend had released a solo album in the late 1960s, it almost certainly wouldn't have had anything like this song list. We know he was working on a min-opera called "Rael" that was at least 20 minutes long, so that would have dominated it. A five minute version of that was done by the Who on the "Who Sell Out" album in 1967.

The rest of the album really is a grab bag of all the good Townshend songs from 1965 to 1968 that weren't done by the Who. There's a big change in styles from 1965 to 1968, so the songs are in loose chronological order. Only six of them have been officially released so far. Hopefully Townshend will someday release a lot more of his demos, and in less scattershot fashion. But until then, this makes a good listen of all the publicly available non-Who songs from before he focused all his attention on his "Tommy" rock opera.

Note that there was one song I didn't include - "Do the Strip," because I simply didn't think it was a good song. From the title alone, one can see it's a silly novelty dance number. However, for anyone who is a completist, I included it as an unnumbered bonus track. Apparently, at one point, the Who seriously considered recording it and releasing it as their next single. Lucky they didn't do that.

The song "Sand," only became available in April 2019 when an acetate of the song was put up for auction. A sample of over one minute was made public to drum up interest in the auction. That covered all of the first verse and chorus, but only one line of the second verse. So, after that one line, I repeated the rest of the first verse and chorus to make it sound like a full song. 

Note that this version is not the same as the version released as a bonus track on some rare editions of the 2019 Who album "WHO." It's very similar, and that version dates from around this time. In fact, it could be that version is this version, but with more instruments and vocals added. But there definitely is a fuller arrangement with that one. So I put that other version on a 1960s Who stray tracks album called "Ready Steady Who."

This album is 52 minutes, not including the bonus track.

UPDATE: On November 26, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. I added the songs "Kids, Do You Want Kids," "Inside Outside," and "I Always Say." I removed "Rael, Parts 1-9."  That's a Who song, so I put it on the Townshend album "Who Demos, Volume 3." I considered changing the album title, but I'm keeping it since there still is the song "Rael- That Motherland Feeling."

01 Things Have Changed (Pete Townshend)
02 As Children We Grew (Pete Townshend)
03 The Girls I Could've Had (Pete Townshend)
04 My Own Love (Pete Townshend)
05 Sand [Edit] (Pete Townshend)
06 King Rabbit (Pete Townshend)
07 Lazy Fat People (Pete Townshend)
08 Goin' Fishin' (Pete Townshend)
09 Kids, Do You Want Kids (Pete Townshend)
10 Inside Outside (Pete Townshend)
11 Kill My Appetite [Edit] (Pete Townshend)
12 Politician (Pete Townshend)
13 Rael- That Motherland Feeling (Pete Townshend)
14 Eel Pie Blues [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
15 Cookin' (Pete Townshend)
16 My Brother and I (Pete Townshend)
17 The Lone Ranger [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
18 I Always Say (Pete Townshend)

Do the Strip (Pete Townshend)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/f5HVMCC1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uVAP3zmYuKLyyXl/file

For the cover, I used a photo of Townshend from 1968. In January 2025, I upgraded it with Krea AI.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - As I Come of Age - Non-Album Tracks (1970)

The alternate universe where CSNY put out lots of albums continues. As I mentioned in a previous post, CSNY was so productive as a group in 1970 that they had material for two albums, on top of "Deja Vu" being released that year.

Here's the second one. Since putting out three albums in a single year would have been a lot, even for that era, I figure this would have come out in 1971, along with the "Four Way Street" live album.

My policy is not to repeat songs on the official albums, unless there's a significant difference. There are a lot of cases of that on this album. Many of the songs would come out on other albums, either around that time or later. But all these versions are different than those of solo albums, usually because they were done by all of CSNY instead of just one of them. What's more surprising is that there are four good songs here by all of CSNY that have never been released in any form.

I made a couple of key edits to one song. "30 Dollar Fine" is one of those songs that has never been previously released. Luckily, there's a bootleg with CSNY doing a five-minute version of it. The problem is, Still sings for about the first minute, and the rest is all instrumental, but with no soloing. Probably, they were just learning the song, because Stills quietly mumbles through the first verse. So I edited out the last two minutes, since the music gets boring without any soloing. I also edited the second verse into the place of the first, because I figure Stills singing the same words twice is better than quiet mumbling.

Actually, now that I think about it, "30 Dollar Fine" was finally officially released earlier this year, but on a Jimi Hendrix archival album called "Both Sides of the Sky." I didn't use that here because it's Stills and Hendrix on that version, not CSNY. Even so, I would use it if Stills and/or Hendrix were soloing all over it, but they there isn't any actual soloing from either of them on that version, only some guitar fills here and there. Stills sings alone on that version and, frankly, Hendrix doesn't do much.

Also, as I often do, I cut out the audience noise on live tracks to make them sound like studio tracks.

"Wonderin'," an obscure Neil Young song. It was done by CSNY in concert only a few times. Luckily, one of those times was the famous 1969 Woodstock concert, and the version included here was finally released as part of the entire Woodstock concert being released for the concert's 50th anniversary. "Wonderin'" is only a minute and a half long, so it's not much of a song. But I think it's quite interesting, because it's a rare case of Young singing lead with backing vocals by just Stills.

Sadly, CSNY had a big falling out in 1971 (except for Crosby and Nash, who formed a duo), so we'll have go to 1973 for their next album.

There are two bonus tracks here. There's nothing particularly wrong with them. However, there are a ton of Stills songs, and these are two more Stills songs. I thought having that many Stills songs on the album would upset the balance. They were the weakest of the Stills songs, in my opinion, though they're still pretty decent. (By the way, I did the exact same thing with the "Find the Cost of Freedom" album, making two Stills songs bonus tracks there too.)

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 The Treasure (Stephen Stills)
02 Tell Me Why (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
03 The Wall Song (David Crosby)
04 Simple Man (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
05 30 Dollar Fine (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
06 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
07 Ivory Tower (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
08 Wonderin' (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
09 Everyday We Live (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
10 Traction in the Rain (Crosby & Nash)
11 Birds (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
12 Question Why (Graham Nash)
13 As I Come of Age (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
14 Kids and Dogs (David Crosby)

I'll Be There (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
Right On Rock 'N' Roll (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16383335/CROSBSTLLSNSHYNG1970AsICmofAge_atse.zip.html

I made the cover using a photo of CSNY playing live at the Fillmore East in June 1970.

Elton John - BBC Sessions, Volume 10: Rossia Concert Hall, Moscow, Russia, 5-28-1979

To be honest, I'm not that big of an Elton John fan. I think part of it is because I'm more into guitar based music than piano, especially acoustic guitar. But also, I think a lot of his stuff is overproduced. Add to that the fact that I've heard his hits many times on the radio and elsewhere and I'm a little tired of them.

But it occurred to me recently that if I could hear his music stripped down to just him playing alone on the piano, I might be able to hear his music in a new way and appreciate it more. So I went looking for that sort of thing and found this bootleg. He was the first major Western musical artist to play in Russia (then the Soviet Union) in 1979. He did a few shows in St. Petersburg and then a few in Moscow, and this is from one of the Moscow shows (at the Rossia Hotel Concert Hall, on May 28), in soundboard quality.

John is joined by a drummer halfway through the show, but the drumming is fairly restrained until the last few songs, where it's fun to end on some more lively numbers. All in all this is a great show that has caused me to appreciate his music a lot more. Its over two hours of him going through most of his famous 1970s songs.

By the way, this concert was officially released in 2019 as "Live from Moscow," though it was a limited "record store day" release.  However, this release is about 40 minutes shorter, and the sound quality is no better. So I've stuck with the bootleg version here.

01 Your Song (Elton John)
02 Sixty Years On (Elton John)
03 Daniel (Elton John)
04 Skyline Pigeon (Elton John)
05 Take Me to the Pilot (Elton John)
06 Rocket Man [I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time] (Elton John)
07 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John)
08 Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Elton John)
09 Roy Rogers (Elton John)
10 Candle in the Wind (Elton John)
11 Ego (Elton John)
12 Where to Now St. Peter (Elton John)
13 He'll Have to Go (Elton John)
14 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Elton John)
15 Funeral for a Friend (Elton John)
16 Tonight (Elton John)
17 Better Off Dead (Elton John)
18 Idol (Elton John)
19 I Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself (Elton John)
20 I Feel like a Bullet [In the Gun of Robert Ford] (Elton John)
21 Bennie and the Jets (Elton John)
22 Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word (Elton John)
23 Part Time Love (Elton John)
24 Crazy Water (Elton John)
25 Song for Guy (Elton John)
26 Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting - Pinball Wizard (Elton John)
27 Crocodile Rock - Get Back - Back in the U.S.S.R. (Elton John)

https://www.imagenetz.de/avGsh

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3TkQf7Tt

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/P2fCLGmstMlqSIi/file
 
I made my own cover, using a photo of him playing in Moscow in that year.

The Rolling Stones - Little Red Rooster - Non-Album Tracks (1964)

This is the last of the three 1964 Rolling Stones albums I've made in order to gather up all their stray tracks from that year. "Not Fade Away" covered the early part of the year, and "12 X 5" was largely determined what was on that US album. This covers the later part of the year.

Normally, I don't include a song if it's on another album, but I made an exception here for "Heart of Stone." It's done in a very different manner than the version that would appear on "Out of Our Heads" a year later.

Six out of these 11 songs are still unreleased. One of these, "Hear It," is an instrumental that ends the album. On the version I used, the song came to an abrupt, unnatural end. I'm pretty sure the band assumed the song would have faded out by that point. So I faded it out myself.

This ends my collection of the 1964 stray tracks from the Stones. But note that I didn't quite include all of the songs the band did that year. My goal is to include all the songs I like, not all the songs, period. There's not much difference between the two things in this case, but in the 1980s and beyond there will be a big difference, since the band hit quite a few rough patches, IMHO.

I don't recall exactly, but I think there are about three or four songs from 1964 that I found by them and didn't use. One example is the song "I Know." It was written and recorded by the band, but the main singer is their manager Andrew Oldham (apparently - it certainly isn't Mick Jagger or Keith Richards), so it doesn't really sound like a Stones song. Besides, it's just not much of a song, period. Another song I didn't include was "Each and Everyday of the Year," which was recorded in 1964 and released on the rarities album "Metamorphosis" in 1975, but I don't think it's much of a song. There's also a bland instrumental I left out, "And Mr. Spector and Mr. Pitney Came Too."

01 Little Red Rooster (Rolling Stones)
02 Meet Me in the Bottom [Down in the Bottom] (Rolling Stones)
03 Reelin' and Rockin' (Rolling Stones)
04 Stewed and Keefed [Instrumental] (Rolling Stones)
05 Heart of Stone [Demo] (Rolling Stones)
06 Surprise, Surprise (Rolling Stones)
07 Crackin' Up (Rolling Stones)
08 Ain't That Lovin' You Baby (Rolling Stones)
09 Goodbye Girl (Rolling Stones)
10 Key to the Highway (Rolling Stones)
11 Da Doo Ron Ron (Rolling Stones)
12 And Mr. Spector and Mr. Pitney Came Too [Instrumental] (Rolling Stones with Gene Pitney)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701035/TROLLNGSTNES1964d_LttleRedRostr_atse.zip.html

For the cover, I once again used a cover of a single of the same name, with the art slightly modified. (Someone in some art department obviously seized on the use of the word "red" in "Little Red Rooster!")

The Rolling Stones - 12 X 5 - Alternate Version (1964)

This Rolling Stones album didn't require much changing by me. As bands typically did back in that era, the Stones were releasing more albums in the US than in Britain.

Their US album "12 X 5" ably gathers up a bunch of tracks. However, three of the songs of it were also used on one of the British albums, and I don't want any duplication. That left the album too short, plus, with the name "12 X 5" it needs to have 12 songs on it, not 9. Thus, I used three songs that were recorded a few months before the album came out, around the same time some of the other songs on the album were recorded.

Since this has the same title as the "12 X 5" US album, I'm using the same cover art. But I changed the record company logo to match the other ones in this series, and I put it in a less obtrusive spot.

01 Around and Around (Rolling Stones)
02 Confessin' the Blues (Rolling Stones)
03 Empty Heart (Rolling Stones)
04 Time Is on My Side [Organ Version] (Rolling Stones)
05 Good Times, Bad Times (Rolling Stones)
06 It's All Over Now (Rolling Stones)
07 2120 South Michigan Avenue [Instrumental] (Rolling Stones)
08 Congratulations (Rolling Stones)
09 If You Need Me (Rolling Stones)
10 [Walkin' Thru The] Sleepy City (Rolling Stones)
11 We're Wastin' Time (Rolling Stones)
12 We Were Falling in Love (Rolling Stones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15256573/TRollngS_1964c_12by5Alternate_atse.zip.html

The album cover is the official cover without any changes.

The Rolling Stones - Not Fade Away - Non-Album Tracks (1964)

Having just posted a Carpenters album, I need to post a real rock and roll album to try to restore my shattered musical credibility. ;)

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Rolling Stones are inadequately represented on their official British albums, and no year shows that more clearly than 1964. I'm assuming you own "The Rolling Stones," the only officially released British album that year. It turns out there are so many stray tracks that I've had to make THREE more albums for that year, all of them about the same length of the official one (which means 33 minutes, give or take a minute or two).

Here's the first of the three. This collects the stray tracks from the early part of the year. It's the usual mix of stray track sources, such as singles, BBC recordings, rarity collections, and so on. Three of the tracks are still unreleased, though you wouldn't know based on the song and sound quality. Although one song, "Andrew's Blues," has some rather explicit sexual language that easily explains why it still hasn't been released!

The tracks are in rough chronological order, with a few exceptions.

01 Not Fade Away (Rolling Stones)
02 Bye Bye Johnny (Rolling Stones)
03 Money [That's What I Want] (Rolling Stones)
04 You Better Move On (Rolling Stones)
05 Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind (Rolling Stones)
06 Try a Little Harder (Rolling Stones)
07 Cops and Robbers (Rolling Stones)
08 Andrew's Blues [Song for Andrew] (Rolling Stones with Gene Pitney)
09 Beautiful Delilah (Rolling Stones)
10 Don't Lie to Me (Rolling Stones)
11 High-Heeled Sneakers (Rolling Stones)
12 Tell Me Baby (Rolling Stones)
13 I'm Moving On (Rolling Stones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15256426/TRollngS_1964a_NotFdeAway_atse.zip.html

I named this album "Not Fade Away" in part so I could use the artwork from the single by that name for the cover art. There were several different versions to choose from, most of which looked bad. I was left to one by default. Of the one I chose, I removed the B-side information and increased to size of the words "Not Fade Away" to compensate for the empty space.