The Bangles - Light My Way - Non-Album Tracks (1999-2018)

The Bangles essentially have had two careers. The first was their popular heyday, from when they started up in 1981 until when they broke up in 1988. They reformed in 1999 and have been together ever since, but at a less active level. They've only put out two new studio albums since reforming, and clearly the members have other priorities in their lives than being in the Bangles. However, they still have put out consistently excellent work in this second phase.

This album covers nearly all the stray tracks I could find from that second phase. I say "nearly" because I found so many acoustic versions of songs in 2002 and 2003 that I've got an album of that stuff that I'll post later. This is everything else.

Three more songs here are nice covers of Beatles songs ("Good Day Sunshine," "Yes It Is," and "Because.") The remainder consist of three more covers - "Pushin' Too Hard," "Go Where You Wanna Go," and "We Belong" - and four originals.

The last three songs are from 2018. They are from a various artists compilation of bands from the 1980s "Paisley Underground" doing covers of other bands from that same movement. I'm very psyched to see them do a cover of "Jet Fighter" by the Three O'Clock, since that long has been a favorite of mine, a song that should have been a hit in a better world.

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Get the Girl (Bangles)
02 Across the Universe (Bangles with George Martin)
03 Blackbird (Bangles with George Martin)
04 In My Life (Bangles with George Martin)
05 Pushin' Too Hard (Bangles)
06 Happily Ever Laughter (Bangles)
07 Run Away with Me (Bangles)
08 My Town (Bangles)
09 Good Day Sunshine (Bangles with Matthew Sweet)
10 Light My Way (Bangles)
11 Go Where You Wanna Go (Bangles)
12 We Belong (Bangles)
13 Yes It Is (Bangles)
14 Because (Bangles)
15 Talking in My Sleep (Bangles)
16 Jet Fighter (Bangles)
17 That's What You Always Say (Bangles)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700529/TBANGLS1999-2018_LghtMyWay_atse.zip.html

I made the album cover but I don't know where the photo comes from exactly. But it's probably from after 2009, when the band became a three piece.

Beck - The Vagabond - Non-Album Tracks (2000-2001)

I've posted eight Beck albums so far, all from the 1990s. That was his most prolific time of his career, and it took a lot of effort to organize his stray tracks. But the rest of his career since has been impressively prolific too, and I'm finally ready to move into the 2000s with him.

In 1999, Beck released his "Midnite Vultures" album, which was all highly produced, upbeat, dance music. A long tour followed well into 2000. It seems that once that ended, Beck had his fill of that type of music for a while, and switched back to a more acoustic style. So even this is a grab bag of whatever he happened to be doing at the time, I think it holds together pretty well stylistically.

Only four of the 13 songs here have been released officially. Three of those are from various artists compilations, and one ("The Vagabond") is a collaboration Beck did with Air that was put on an Air album. The rest are mostly cover versions, although "Creole Belle" is an obscure original and "Beautiful Way" is an original from the "Midnite Vultures" album that is totally transformed here because it's played solo with just an acoustic guitar.

Luckily, of the nine unreleased songs, only three come from concert bootlegs. The rest are from bootlegs of in-studio radio shows where there was no studio audience and the sound is nearly as good as a studio recording. The first two songs don't sound quite as good as the rest, since those are songs he only did once in concert and they come from an audience recording. By the way, Beck appears to have been really enjoying the music of Daniel Johnston at the time, because both of those are covers of Johnston songs, and he also does one other Johnston cover on this album ("Some Things Last a Long Time").

I'm still surprised I haven't gotten any flak yet from commenters about my song edits. I make these albums mostly for my own enjoyment, and I'm not shy to edit songs if I feel it will improve my listening experience. That's the case again here with the last song, "Funky Lil' Song." The song was over five minutes, and I liked it, but I felt it went on way too long, with the last two minutes just repeating what was done earlier and adding nothing. So I lopped those last two minutes off, right at a point where the recording luckily came to a complete stop for a moment.

01 Devil Town - Spirit World Rising (Beck)
02 Who's That Knockin' at My Window (Beck)
03 [I Heard That] Lonesome Whistle (Beck)
04 Go Easy (Beck)
05 Some Things Last a Long Time (Beck)
06 No Expectations (Beck & Beth Orton)
07 Creole Belle (Beck)
08 Stagolee (Beck)
09 Last Fair Deal Gone Down (Beck)
10 Win (Beck)
11 Beautiful Way [Acoustic Version] (Beck)
12 The Vagabond (Beck & Air)
13 Funky Lil' Song [Edit] (Beck)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15126540/BeckH_2000-2001_TheVgabond_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art from a 2000 Beck concert poster, and just changed the text at the bottom.

Kirsty MacColl - Perfect Day - Non-Album Tracks (1993-1995)

I'm trying to hurry through posting the rest of Kirsty MacColl's stray tracks albums, because I don't want to be posting music from too many different artists at once. I only have one more album to go after this one.

And this is a particularly good one. In my opinion, most musicians peak in their first decade as professionals and have a long, slow decline after that. But MacColl was steadily getting better for the entire duration of her career, until her tragic early death in 2000. This is part of that pattern. Had it actually been released as an album, I think it would have been just as solid as her other albums in the 1990s.

The songs here come from all the usual stray track sources: A-sides, B-sides, bonus tracks, and songs from box sets and soundtracks. The vast majority of the songs are written by MacColl, as usual. However, "Perfect Day" is a cover of a Lou Reed song, and "I Wanna Be Sedated" is a Ramones song.

"Moving Out" is an unreleased theme song for a short-lived British TV show. I made major edits to make the two parts I found on YouTube into one cohesive whole.

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 King Kong (Kirsty MacColl)
02 Count on Me (Kirsty MacColl)
03 Dear John (Kirsty MacColl)
04 Touch Me (Kirsty MacColl)
05 Fabulous Garden (Kirsty MacColl)
06 Caroline (Kirsty MacColl)
07 Irish Cousin (Kirsty MacColl)
08 Butcher Boy (Kirsty MacColl)
09 Moving Out [Edit] (Kirsty MacColl)
10 As Long as You Hold Me (Kirsty MacColl)
11 I Am Afraid (Kirsty MacColl)
12 I Wanna Be Sedated (Kirsty MacColl)
13 Perfect Day (Kirsty MacColl & Evan Dando)
14 Roll Em Easy (Kirsty MacColl)
15 Free World [Acoustic Version] (Kirsty MacColl)
16 Caroline [Acoustic Version] (Kirsty MacColl)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693442/KIRSTYMCCLL1993-1995_PrfctDy_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art from the cover of the "Perfect Day" single. But that song was a duet with Evan Dando, so I had to airbrush his name out of the picture.

Cat Stevens - Don't Be Shy - Non-Album Tracks (1969-1972)

I like a lot of Cat Stevens' music, but my favorite era from him by far is 1970 to 1972, covering his "Mona Bone Jakon," "Tea for the Tillerman," "Teaser and the Firecat" and "Catch Bull at Four" albums. Those are the albums of his that have sold the most, by far. Sometimes a musician is in "the zone" when just about anything they did was excellent, and he was in the zone then.

This album covers pretty much that exact same time period, 1969 to 1972. The stray tracks here aren't quite as solid as the four albums mentioned above, but they're pretty darn close, and contain some of his best songs, like "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out," and "I've Got a Thing about Seeing My Grandson Grow Old." If you like classic Cat Stevens music, you should have the songs on this album.

Aside from the first two songs here, which were an obscure single, and the last two, which were B-sides, none of the songs on this album were released until many years after they were recorded. Two of the songs, "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out" and "Don't Be Shy," were prominently featured in the movie "Harold and Maude," but there was no soundtrack released, and the songs didn't get an official release until they were included on a greatest hits album in 1984. Most of the rest didn't come out until a box set in 2001.

But even then, there still are three songs here that remain officially unreleased until this day. One, "But I Might Die Tonight," also appears on his 1971 "Tea for the Tillerman" album. However, this version was featured in a movie called "Deep End" the year before, and it's got a significantly different arrangement. I don't know why the other two unreleased songs ("Can This Be Love" and "The Fisherman" are still unreleased, because I think they're just as good as the others here.

There's one more original song from this time period that only shows up on bootleg which I have no included, called "It's So Good." Unfortunately, "It's So Bad" would be a better title. I think it's one of the worst songs he ever wrote, so I'm not even going to dignify it by including it as a bonus track.

By the way, if you enjoy this era of Stevens' music, definitely check out the other two albums by him that I've posted on this blog. They're excellent sounding acoustic demos.

Oh, also, I strongly recommend his 2017 album "The Laughing Apple." I'm not much of a fan of his music since his first retirement around 1979. He started putting out secular music again in 2006, but I don't think most of his new songs had that special something his songs from his peak era did. However, "The Laughing Apple" is a very big exception. It sounds exactly like it could have been released in 1972, which his songwriting and production just as good as it was back then, and his voice hasn't changed at all!  

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Where Are You (Cat Stevens)
02 The View from the Top (Cat Stevens)
03 If Only Mother Can See Me Now (Cat Stevens)
04 I've Got a Thing about Seeing My Grandson Grow Old (Cat Stevens)
05 Honey Man (Cat Stevens with Elton John)
06 Love Lives in the Sky [Land O' Freelove and Goodbye] (Cat Stevens)
07 I Want Some Sun (Cat Stevens)
08 The Joke (Cat Stevens)
09 But I Might Die Tonight [Deep End Version] (Cat Stevens)
10 Can This Be Love (Cat Stevens)
11 Fisherman Song (Cat Stevens)
12 Don't Be Shy (Cat Stevens)
13 If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out (Cat Stevens)
14 The Day They Make Me Tsar (Cat Stevens)
15 I Want to Live in a Wigwam (Cat Stevens)
16 Crab Dance [Instrumental] (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687666/CATSTVNS1969-1972_DntBShy_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art based on a photo of Stevens around 1970.

Elliott Smith - Trouble - Non-Album Tracks (2002-2003)

Finally! This is the sixth and last of the stray tracks albums I've put together for Elliott Smith. He has seven official studio albums (if you include "New Moon"), so six of these albums means he has nearly as many songs that didn't come out on album as those that did. And that's not including whatever stuff that still remains in the vaults and has never been bootlegged.

This album covers the last two years of his life, 2002 and 2003. I'm not sure if Smith died by murder or suicide (the official verdict remains unresolved), but he clearly had some particularly troubled final years, especially 2001 and 2002. However, he reported quit all drugs altogether for most of 2003, and was more musically active, which makes his death that much more tragic.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, Smith's career has been split between two record companies. The company with the rights to his music through 1997 has released a lot of previously unreleased material, but the one that has the rights to the rest of his music has not. So nearly all of the songs here remain officially unreleased.

Three of the songs are covers: "I'll Be Back," "Trouble," and "Concrete Jungle."

Although this is the end of my series of Smith stray tracks albums, I have a bunch of other albums by him that I plan to post here. Some of them are all-acoustic versions of his songs, and others are cover versions that he only did in concert.

01 Mr. Goodmorning (Elliott Smith)
02 Kill-Fuck [Instrumental] (Elliott Smith)
03 Everything's OK (Elliott Smith)
04 Something to Lose (Elliott Smith)
05 Stickman [Acoustic Version] (Elliott Smith)
06 See You in Heaven [Instrumental] (Elliott Smith)
07 I'll Be Back (Elliott Smith)
08 A Distorted Reality Is Now a Necessity to Be Free [Single Version] (Elliott Smith)
09 Trouble (Elliott Smith)
10 Suicide Machine (Elliott Smith)
11 Concrete Jungle (Elliott Smith)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687963/ELLITTSMTH2002-2003_Trble_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I used part of a concert poster from 2000. I resized Smith's name vertically to make it fit, and added in "Trouble" to the angle and devil robot talk bubbles.

Belle and Sebastian - Your Cover's Blown - Non-Album Tracks (2004-2006)

In my opinion, the peak era for Belle and Sebastian stretched from their start in 1996 until 2006, with the release of "The Life Pursuit" album. Since then, they've still done good stuff, but much less frequency, with all the band members spending a lot more time on solo projects. This stray tracks album covers the tail end of that era, so it has lots of excellent material on it.

Most of the songs here come from B-sides or EPs. Many of them were subsequently included on a compilation called "The Third Eye Centre," but that was strangely incomplete and skipped lots of good songs. You get them all here.

One song, "Portland, Oregon," is a Belle and Sebastian original that has never been officially released. It was only played in public once, during a concert in Portland, Oregon. Note that the band also has covered the Loretta Lynn song by the same name, but this is a totally different song.

01 Your Secrets (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Your Cover's Blown (Belle & Sebastian)
03 [I Believe In] Travellin’ Light (Belle & Sebastian)
04 Stop, Look and Listen (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Passion Fruit [Instrumental] (Belle & Sebastian)
06 The Eighth Station of the Cross Kebab House (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Portland, Oregon (Belle & Sebastian)
08 Whiskey in the Jar (Belle & Sebastian)
09 Meat and Potatoes (Belle & Sebastian)
10 The Life Pursuit (Belle & Sebastian)
11 Mr. Richard (Belle & Sebastian)
12 Baby Jane (Belle & Sebastian)
13 The Monkeys Are Breaking Out the Zoo (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15832466/BellenS_2004-2006_YourCoversBlwn_atse.zip.html

I found the cover art at the official Belle and Sebastian website. It shows the boy and dog that are the characters the band's name comes from. It has nothing to do with the title or the music, but I think it fits with the band's habit of having interesting, artistic covers.

David Bowie - Zion - Non-Album Tracks (1973-1974)

I must admit, this album of David Bowie stray tracks is a little thin compared to some previous ones I've posted here. In 1971 and 1972, Bowie had more good songs than he knew what to do with. But by 1973, he seems to have had trouble coming up with enough songs for his "Aladdin Sane" album. He had to use a couple of songs that predated his last two albums.

That said, this is still quality stuff, it's just on the short side, plus there's some repetition. The first two songs are a case in point of the repetition. On July 3, 1973, Bowie played a concert that was filmed and released as the movie "Ziggy Stardust: the Motion Picture." It was his last concert playing with his band the Spiders from Mars. However, the two encores with guitarist Jeff Beck weren't shown in the movie or released on the accompanying album, apparently because Beck was unhappy with his playing or his "uncool" appearance. This album starts out with these two encore songs, even though Bowie has done "The Jean Genie" and "Around and Around" a lot elsewhere, because I think the Beck guitar make them different. Plus, there's a version of "Love Me Do" included as part of a medley.

The rest of the songs here are more typical studio outtakes, some of them still unreleased. I included a version of "All the Young Dudes" on the last Bowie stray tracks album I put together, but I'm including it here again because that version was Bowie in 1972 singing guide vocals over what became the hit Mott the Hoople version. This is Bowie in 1973 doing an entirely different version that is arguably better.

Also note that there's a song on Bowie's 1974 "Diamond Dogs" album called "Candidate," and there's a song here called "Alternative Candidate." In fact, they are two totally different songs (and "Alternative Candidate" is the official name of this one). It's just that they were both dealing with the same candidate concept as part of Bowie's 1984-themed concept album.

I've added a couple of bonus tracks at the end. One is a medley of "Dodo" and "1984." The other is the US single version of the hit song "Rebel, Rebel." It has some pretty significant differences from the version that has become the commonly played one.

01 The Jean Genie - Love Me Do [Live] (David Bowie with Jeff Beck)
02 Around and Around [Live] (David Bowie with Jeff Beck)
03 Dodo (David Bowie with Lulu)
04 All the Young Dudes (David Bowie)
05 Zion [Tragic Moments] (David Bowie)
06 Amsterdam (David Bowie)
07 Growin' Up (David Bowie)
08 Alternative Candidate [Demo] (David Bowie)

1984 - Dodo (David Bowie)
Rebel Rebel [US Single Version] (David Bowie)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687941/DAVDBWE1973-1974_Zin_atse.zip.html

I stumbled across a watercolor painting by Lora Feldman of Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust phase, and I thought it would make a cool cover. So here it is, with some text added.

Neil Young - Folksinger (Acoustic Demos) (1964-1966)

In 1965, Neil Young recorded a bunch of acoustic demos. These wouldn't get released until many years later, on his "Archives" box set. I think that, together, they make up a nice "what if" album. What if Young got a record company to release these demos as an album in 1965? It certainly would have fitted in with other folkie albums at the time, such as albums by Gordon Lightfoot, Ian and Sylvia, Tim Hardin, Phil Ochs, and the like. So I've packaged the demos to be such an album, with the generic name "Folksinger."

The demos as presented on the "Archives" box set were released in raw form, meaning there usually is some extra audio before and after each song. This extra audio is completely superfluous in my opinion, with a little bit of unimportant talking (such as Young saying "One two three, one two three" before one song to help him get the timing right), plus some tuning up, some clicks, and some dead air. So I trimmed all that, probably cutting the length of the songs down by a couple of minutes.

The demos themselves are rather short in total for an entire album. I added one demo, "I Ain't Got the Blues," that was only available as an Internet download for buyers of the "Archives" box set and not on the box set itself.  I also added a couple of songs from 1964 that Young sung with his band at the time, the Squires. They're a little bit different in style than the other songs, but I like having them added in as the first two songs, because I'm not a fan of the other Squires songs, which are generally generic-sounding instrumentals. (And I'm not a big fan of his other early band, the Mynah Birds, which has some songs sung by future funk star Rick James (!) but none by Young.)

Who knows what other direction Young's career would have gone if such an album had been released in 1965 and been well received? Perhaps he would have had an interesting solo career that started earlier instead of joining Buffalo Springfield.

By the way, you might notice that the melody of one of the songs here, "The Ballad of Peggy Grover," was reused by Young for the song "Don't Cry No Tears" on his 1975 album "Zuma." 

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 I'll Love You Forever (Neil Young & the Squires)
02 I Wonder (Neil Young & the Squires)
03 Hello Lonely Woman (Neil Young & Comrie Smith)
04 There Goes My Babe (Neil Young & Comrie Smith)
05 Sugar Mountain (Neil Young)
06 The Ballad of Peggy Grover (Neil Young)
07 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Neil Young)
08 Casting Me Away from You (Neil Young & Comrie Smith)
09 Runaround Babe (Neil Young)
10 Extra, Extra (Neil Young)
11 I Ain't Got the Blues (Neil Young)
12 The Rent Is Always Due [Early Version of 'I Am a Child'] (Neil Young)
13 Flying on the Ground Is Wrong (Neil Young)
14 I'm Your Kind of Guy [Edit] (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15258803/NeilY_1964-1966_FolksingrAcoustcDemos_atse.zip.html

I made the album cover. The picture is of Young playing in a small club in 1965, so it's very fitting. It originally was in black and white, but I colorized it.

Robyn Hitchcock - Acoustic Covers, Volume 2: 1991-1995

If you've been following my many Robyn Hitchcock postings here, you'll know that I generally post two kinds of albums for him: non-album tracks, and acoustic versions of his full band studio albums. But there's a third kind, which is albums containing nothing but acoustic cover versions. I have a whole bunch of those to post, but I've posted so many of the other two as I chronologically work my way through his long career that this is only the second acoustic covers album here.

Hitchcock has great taste in his covers, in my opinion. On this collection alone, he covers Bob Dylan (twice), Roxy Music, R.E.M., the Beatles (three times!), Richard Thompson, John Lennon, the Kinks, the Velvet Underground, and Pink Floyd. Classic songs by classic artists. Hitchcock isn't a fantastic singer, but he makes each song his own, and it's neat to hear these songs in all acoustic versions.

For most of these, the sound quality is excellent, but for a few songs, it's merely good. If that's an issue for you, you might want to remove those songs. The sound quality in this series generally gets better as it gets closer to current day.

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

01 Linden Arden Stole the Highlights - Van Morrison
02 Nightfall - Incredible String Band
03 Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) (Acappella Version) - traditional / Harry Belafonte
04 Eight Miles High - Byrds
05 I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine - Bob Dylan
06 Visions of Johanna - Bob Dylan
07 Take a Chance with Me - Roxy Music
08 Man on the Moon - R.E.M.
09 Mrs. Robinson - Simon and Garfunkel
10 Stuck in the Middle with You - Stealer's Wheel
11 Sittin' on Top of the World (Solo Electric Version) - Mississippi Shieks
12 Yer Blues - Beatles
13 The Calvary Cross - Richard and Linda Thompson

Here's the usual song list:

01 Linden Arden Stole the Highlights (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Nightfall (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Day-O [The Banana Boat Song] [Acappella Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Eight Miles High [Acoustic Band Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Visions of Johanna (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Take a Chance with Me (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Man on the Moon (Robyn Hitchcock & Mike Mills)
09 Mrs. Robinson (Robyn Hitchcock & Mike Mills)
10 Stuck in the Middle with You (Robyn Hitchcock & Mike Mills)
11 Sittin' on Top of the World [Solo Electric Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Yer Blues (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 The Calvary Cross (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 Desolation Row (Robyn Hitchcock)

The Rattlin' Bog (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15271927/RobynH_1991-1995_AcousticCoversVolume2_atse.zip.html

I made the cover based on a photo from 1995.

Maria McKee - Acoustic Versions, Volume 1: 1989

Back in 2019, I posted an album of acoustic performances by Maria McKee. Writing this in November 2022, I've come across more acoustic versions, enough to split that album in two.

Maria McKee was the lead singer of the band Lone Justice from 1982 to 1987. Her solo career effectively started in 1989 with the release of her first solo album, simply called "Maria McKee." She had lots of songs she wanted to do in an acoustic format, because I have enough material from 1989 for this album plus a few more on "Volume 2."

I didn't include any versions of rare songs that happen to be done acoustically. I'm putting those on other McKee albums. This only consists of songs from her studio albums, or from Lone Justice albums, done in an acoustic style. McKee is such a powerful singer that it often is even more impressive hearing her nail these songs without lots of distracting instrumentation.

All the performances here are unreleased. They either come from bootlegs of concerts or radio shows. For the ones from concerts, I did my best to eliminate the sound of cheering so they'd fit in with the radio show ones with no crowd noise.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Am I the Only One [Who's Ever Felt This Way] (Maria McKee)
02 I've Forgotten What It Was in You [That Put the Need in Me] (Maria McKee)
03 Panic Beach (Maria McKee)
04 This Property Is Condemned (Maria McKee)
05 Shelter (Maria McKee)
06 Nobody's Child (Maria McKee)
07 To Miss Someone (Maria McKee)
08 Drinking in My Sunday Dress (Maria McKee)
09 Into the Mystic (Maria McKee)
10 Breathe (Maria McKee)
11 Hickory Wind (Maria McKee)
12 Troubled Waters (Maria McKee)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696638/MARIMCKE1989_AcustcVrsonsVolum1_atse.zip.html

The picture of McKee comes from the video of her playing "Rattlesnake Mama" in 1995. That's not very close to 1989 in time, but this was the cover of the album before I split it in two, so I thought I'd still use it.

Paul McCartney - Wings Over Europe - Expanded Version (1972-1973)

Here's something nice from Paul McCartney. Recently, he released deluxe versions of his early 1970s albums "Wild Life" and "Red Rose Speedway." If only you buy the rare super deluxe packaged version of both do you get an extra album called "Wings Over Europe." It's a compilation of the best soundboard recordings from live Paul McCartney shows from 1972 and 1973.

I had already had a live album I'd created myself that was nearly the exact same thing, drawn from the same four or five concerts where portions of each show had come out either officially or on bootleg. But I welcome the improved sound quality and consistency of this new official live album.

I wouldn't post this if it was just an exact copy of the recently released album, but I've added to it by including all the unique songs I had on my live album compilation that isn't on the official one. That means four songs from 1972: "Help Me," "Cotton Fields," "Say You Don't Mind," and "Sometimes I Can't Keep from Crying." I added those to the middle of the official album, since they aren't the kinds of songs that would either start or end a concert. (Three out of the four feature lead vocals by someone other than Paul McCartney, since Wings were almost a real band, and not just Paul's backing band, for a couple of years in the early 1970s.)

Additionally, I've added five songs from 1973: "When the Night," "Little Woman Love," C Moon," "Go Now," and "Live and Let Die." The official album only has one song that dates from 1973, "Big Barn Red." I generally kept the order of the official album, except I moved that one from being the very first song to putting it in a section at the end with all the other 1973 songs. Generally speaking, McCartney toured a lot in 1972 and played a wide variety of songs. (There are more I wouldn't or couldn't include because they either are only on poorly recorded audience bootlegs or they didn't get put on any bootlegs at all.) In 1973, he toured less, and only played a handful of new songs, which I have included here.

In 1972 and the first half of 1973, McCartney was trying to get his solo career started, generally by playing small venues at colleges in Britain and Europe without any advanced notice. In late 1973, he reestablished his critical and commercial reputation in a big way with the "Band on the Run" album, but he didn't tour for two solid years, until the second half of 1975. By then, everything had changed. He was huge, such as being on the cover of Time Magazine, and his concert tour was huge. So his 1972 and 1973 concerts occupy a unique and important part of his musical history.

The official "Wings Over Europe" album was already long, and with the nine extra songs I've added, it's even longer, at almost two hours. So enjoy all this high quality live music.

01 Eat at Home (Paul McCartney)
02 Smile Away (Paul McCartney)
03 Bip Bop (Paul McCartney)
04 Mumbo (Paul McCartney)
05 Blue Moon of Kentucky (Paul McCartney)
06 1882 (Paul McCartney)
07 I Would Only Smile (Denny Laine & Paul McCartney)
08 Give Ireland Back to the Irish (Paul McCartney)
09 The Mess (Paul McCartney)
10 Best Friend (Paul McCartney)
11 Help Me (Henry McCullough & Paul McCartney)
12 Soily (Paul McCartney)
13 I Am Your Singer (Paul McCartney)
14 Seaside Woman (Linda McCartney & Paul McCartney)
15 Wild Life (Paul McCartney)
16 Cotton Fields [The Cotton Song] (Paul McCartney)
17 Say You Don't Mind (Denny Laine & Paul McCartney)
18 Sometimes I Just Can’t Keep from Crying (Henry McCullough & Paul McCartney)
19 My Love (Paul McCartney)
20 Mary Had a Little Lamb (Paul McCartney)
21 Maybe I'm Amazed (Paul McCartney)
22 Hi, Hi, Hi (Paul McCartney)
23 Long Tall Sally (Paul McCartney)
24 Big Barn Bed (Paul McCartney)
25 When the Night (Paul McCartney)
26 Little Woman Love (Paul McCartney)
27 C Moon (Paul McCartney)
28 Little Woman Love [Reprise] (Paul McCartney)
29 Go Now (Denny Laine & Paul McCartney)
30 Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xR4Y18XW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/MgLY3W9BHhZEm9D/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/f23uE

The main image for the cover art comes from a painting on the side of the tour bus the band used during this time frame - it's just a section of a larger work. Additionally, the writing also comes from a different part of the tour bus. I copied and pasted that to fit it over the painting.

Also, by the way, I still don't like to call these recordings "Wings" recordings, since I like keeping all my Paul McCartney music in one folder with his name, and I don't consider Wings to be a real band, just a backing band. But in the song list above, for the few songs where Paul is not the lead singer, I've added in the name of the lead singer first.

Elliott Smith - Dancing on the Highway - Non-Album Tracks (2000-2001)

My series of Elliott Smith stray tracks albums continues. This one covers 2000 to 2001.

Once again, note just how many non-album songs Smith has. Nine of the 14 songs here still remain officially unreleased. Of the remaining five, two are from B-sides and the others are from obscure sources. All but three of the 14 songs are originals - the covers are "Figure 8," "Waterloo Sunset," and "Jealous Guy."

Most of the songs have excellent sound because they come from studio recordings (even though many come from bootlegs). Two are very songs that were only played rarely in concert: "Confusion" and "Blue Mood." The sound on those two are a little worse than the others, because they come from audience bootlegs instead of soundboards.

I have one more stray tracks album covering thee last two years of his life. But after that, I have a bunch of other nice albums of Smith rarities to share.

01 A Living Will (Elliott Smith)
02 Figure 8 (Elliott Smith)
03 Nighttime (Elliott Smith)
04 I Can't Answer You Anymore (Elliott Smith)
05 Confusion (Elliott Smith)
06 No Life (Elliott Smith)
07 Dancing on the Highway (Elliott Smith)
08 Let's Turn the Record Over (Elliott Smith)
09 Waterloo Sunset (Elliott Smith)
10 Jealous Guy (Elliott Smith)
11 Don't Go Down [Acoustic Version] (Elliott Smith)
12 Blue Mood (Elliott Smith)
13 Splitzville (Elliott Smith)
14 True Love (Elliott Smith)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15328319/EllittS_2000-2001_DancngonHighwy_atse.zip.html

I made the cover from a Smith concert poster.

Buffalo Springfield - Demos (1966-1968)

To finish off what I was talking about with Buffalo Springfield, here are the rest of the band's acoustic demos. My last post was an album of all the unique demos the band did, meaning songs that didn't appear in any other form elsewhere. These are all the demos that were done elsewhere.

These songs appear to be slightly more realized in the sense that I didn't have to edit any of the songs to extend them, as I did with three songs in the unique demos album. However, like that album, I edited out any talking before or after the songs. As I said with the last album, none of that studio chatter was interesting, usually just the announcing of what take it was, or that recording was starting.

Everything here comes from the 2001 Buffalo Springfield box set this time around. There are some other alternates of full band versions, and live versions, and so on, but this is the last of the demos. It makes for a 40-minute long album.

01 There Goes My Babe [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
02 Baby Don't Scold Me [Stephen Stills & Richie Furay Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Out of My Mind [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Neighbor Don't You Worry [Stephen Stills & Richie Furay Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
05 Flying on the Ground Is Wrong [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
06 We'll See [Stephen Stills & Richie Furay Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
07 Down, Down, Down [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
08 Sad Memory [Richie Furay Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
09 Runaround Babe [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
10 Hung Upside Down [Stephen Stills Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
11 Broken Arrow [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Nobody's Fool [Richie Furay Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
13 Expecting to Fly [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
14 Four Days Gone [Stephen Stills Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15904593/BuffaloS_1966-1968_Dmos_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used a concert poster from 1967. However, the poster was stretched vertically, so I had to make some compromises to fit it in a square space. Mainly, there was a picture of some kind of giant industrial machine in the middle, and I could only show a part of it.

Buffalo Springfield - Unique Demos (1966-1968)

I'm attempting to sort out all of Buffalo Springfield's stray tracks. It turns out they cut many acoustic demos that wound up on the 2001 box set (just titled "Buffalo Springfield"). About half of those demos are of songs done by the full band elsewhere, and about half are songs that apparently only were recorded in that demo form. This is the album of all of those unique demos.

Nearly everything here comes from the box set. I could have included a bunch of Neil Young demos from his "Archives" box set that were done in 1965, not long before Buffalo Springfield was formed. But I have other plans for an album of just those demos.

Similarly, I could have included some Stephen Stills songs from his "Just Roll Tape" album, which were recorded in early 1968. But that's arguably after Buffalo Springfield broke up. (It's hard to say when that happened, since the band was pretty much breaking up over and over ever since it was formed, and it had a long decline of fading away. The band's last concert was in May 1968, a month after "Just Roll Tape" was recorded, but Young was barely involved with the band by then.) However, I didn't include those either, because I think the "Just Roll Tape" is a strong album on its own, so there's no need to repeat material from that here.

The only song I added that's not on the box set is Stills doing a demo of "49 Reasons," an early version of the song "49 Bye-Byes" that would appear on the first Crosby, Stills and Nash album in 1969. This demo was made in early 1968 too, around the same time as "Just Roll Tape," but I'm including it here since it doesn't have a good home in my music collection elsewhere. (A few months later, Stills would do another demo of the same song, but with David Crosby taking part as well.)

If you've been following this blog closely, you may have noticed that I'm not shy about editing songs if I feel it will improve the song. I've made significant edits to four songs here, and all for the same reason. The four songs, "Come On," "Can't Keep Me Down," "I'm Your Kind of Guy," and "Words I Must Say," were all unusually short, about one minute long each. Some songs are meant to be that short, but in these cases I feel that's not true.

In fact, at the end of "Words I Must Say" one can hear the songwriter, Richie Furay, mutter, "There's a whole bunch of instruments. Then it repeats. That's all there is to the song." So I did just what he intended, and repeated the song, making a one-minute long song into a two-minute long song. But I don't mean I simply have the song play twice. I had to carefully edit the music so the guitar strumming never stops, and the first half seamlessly goes into the second half.

I did very similar things with "Come On," "I'm Your Kind of Guy," and "Can't Keep Me Down." Generally speaking, I repeated a verse and chorus at the end. In all cases, that turned a one-minute long song into a two-minute long one. I feel that turned song fragments into what sounds like full songs, making for a more satisfying listening experience. (Even after my edit, "I'm Your Kind of Guy" still ended up only one minute and forty second long.) If you don't like this sort of editing, you can still go back to the original versions found on the box set.

Oh, I also did a little more editing in that I cut out any talking before or after the demos. The makers of the box set generally kept all the studio talking in, but I didn't find any of it that interesting. Generally, it would be the engineer saying "Take one" or the like. If these had actually been released on album in the 1960s, I'm sure all of those little talking bits would have been removed.

Finally, I added two bonus tracks. The reason they're bonus tracks is because they're way out of time from the rest of the album. But I'm including them because I don't have any better place to put them in my music collection, and I'll bet that's the same for you. They are "Travelin'" a Stills demo dating all the way from 1962, and "High Flying Bird," just about the only song sung by Stills when he was briefly a part of the Au Go Go Singers folk group in 1964. Both songs come from Stills' box set "Carry On."

Neil Young has lots of recorded music from before his Buffalo Springfield days, most of which ended up on his "Archives" box set, but with Stills, as far as I know, only these two songs have been released. Musically, they fit in well with the rest of the demos on this album, although his voice sounds different, especially on the 1962 demo.

01 Come On [Stephen Stills Demo] [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
02 I'm Your Kind of Guy [Neil Young Demo] [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Can't Keep Me Down [Richie Furay Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Hello, I've Returned [Stephen Stills Demo] [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
05 High School Graduation [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
06 One More Sign [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
07 So You've Got a Lover [Stephen Stills Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
08 Round and Round and Round [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
09 Words I Must Say [Richie Furay Demo] [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
10 The Rent Is Always Due [Early Version of 'I Am a Child'] [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
11 My Angel [Stephen Stills Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
12 The Old Laughing Lady [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
13 49 Reasons [49 Bye-Byes] [Stephen Stills Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)

High Flying Bird (Stephen Stills & the Au Go Go Singers)
Travelin' [Demo] (Stephen Stills)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362444/BUFFLOSPRNGFLD1966-1968UniqueDmos_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Pc33hoh2

I made the cover art based on a 1968 poster by David Schiller. The poster is rectangular, so I had to make some big changes to fit it into a square space. That included shrinking and widening the tractor in the middle so it would fit within the rest. I also changed the background color from tan to light purple and added in the album title.

Kirsty MacColl - One Good Thing - Non-Album Tracks (1990-1992)

Here's the next in a series of stray tracks albums for Kirsty MacColl. This deals with the years 1990 to 1992.

There's not much to say here, except that nearly all the songs are B-sides from the era of her 1991 album "Electric Landlady." There are three other songs at the end, including one unreleased song, a great version of the Clash song "Train in Vain."

In my opinion, MacColl's music is extremely solid and consistent, with her non-album tracks often as strong as her album tracks. So if you like her stuff, you should like this.

This album is 40 minutes long.

01 Other People's Hearts (Kirsty MacColl)
02 Am I Right (Kirsty MacColl)
03 Complainte Pour Ste Catherine (Kirsty MacColl)
04 Miss Otis Regrets (Kirsty MacColl with the Pogues)
05 Just One of Those Things (Kirsty MacColl with the Pogues)
06 All the Tears that I Cried (Kirsty MacColl)
07 Don't Go Near the Water (Kirsty MacColl)
08 Darling, Let's Have Another Baby (Kirsty MacColl & Billy Bragg)
09 One Good Thing (Kirsty MacColl)
10 London Bridge Is Falling Down (Kirsty MacColl)
11 Walk Right Back (Kirsty MacColl)
12 Train in Vain [Stand by Me] (Kirsty MacColl)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693444/KIRSTYMCCLL1990-1992_OneGodThng_atse.zip.html

I made the cover from a photo of MacColl, but I don't know where or when it was taken.

Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers - Volume One - Extended Version (1984-1986)

In my last post, I said I would post more from Robert Plant and the Honeydrippers soon. Here were are, already! :)

As I said with that last post, I was inspired by a recent post at the "Albums Back from the Dead" blog to come up with more Honeydrippers music. The Honeydrippers only released one EP in 1984 called "Volume One" that had just five songs on it, for a total of 19 minutes. The "Albums Back from the Dead" took the approach of looking later in Robert Plant's career for more similar music to create a "Volume Two." I tried a different approach of sticking close to the time the EP came out, 1984 to 1986, to see if I could find more music done in a similar style.

I also commented on my last post that one needs to think of the Honeydrippers as Robert Plant and a bunch of other musicians playing rockabilly and other 1950's-styled music. That's because the big name musicians on the EP like Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck rarely played this type of music with Plant again.

(The Honeydrippers did play on Saturday Night Live shortly after the EP came out, but even then, the big name guitarist was Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats instead of Page or Beck. I've included one of the songs from that performance here, "Santa Claus Is Back in Town." The other song played was one of the songs from the EP that wasn't so different from the EP version, so I didn't include it.)

It turns out that Plant really loves this sort of music, and his history with the Honeydrippers name goes well beyond the EP, from 1981 to the 2000s. If you're interested in the whole story, I suggest reading this newspaper article about it:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/robert-plant-birthday-70-led-zeppelin-the-honeydrippers-a8499176.html

The rest of the songs here come from a grab bag of sources, two officially released and the rest from bootlegs. However, I was careful to only use bootlegs that are of the highest sound and performance quality. I got lucky in that there is a soundboard recording of Plant doing some rehearsals for a Honeydrippers segment of his 1985 concert tour. I selected all the songs that weren't on the EP. Additionally, Plant did a handful of concerts in 1986 playing this type of music in small clubs, but unfortunately I could only find two songs done live at that time in sufficiently high enough quality to be included here.

I hope you'll agree that the end result is 46 minutes of music just as good as the EP, instead of the mere 19 minutes of the EP. (A much later rerelease of the EP did add a bonus track, but it's just a live version of one of the songs from the EP, so I didn't include it because it isn't that different.)

I'm still far from done with Plant and the Honeydrippers, but that's enough for now.

Note that on September 27, 2019, I finally posted a "Volume Two." You can find a link to that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/09/robert-plant-honeydrippers-volume-two.html

01 I Get a Thrill (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
02 Sea of Love (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
03 I Got a Woman (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
04 Young Boy Blues (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
05 Rockin' at Midnight (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
06 Santa Claus Is Back in Town (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
07 Philadelphia Baby (Robert Plant)
08 Git It (Robert Plant)
09 [Everytime I Hear] That Mellow Saxophone (Robert Plant)
10 Honey Hush (Robert Plant)
11 She Walks Right In (Robert Plant)
12 Come On (Robert Plant)
13 Mess O' Blues (Robert Plant & Fairport Convention)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697037/ROBRTPLNT1984-1986_HonydripprsVolumOneAltrnte_atse.zip.html

I made the cover from a photo of Robert Plant and Brian Setzer (with guitar) playing as the Honeydrippers in the Saturday Night Live show in 1984.

Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers - Rolls Hall, Monmouth, Britain, 1-18-1985

This post was inspired by a post at the "Albums Back from the Dead" blog a few days ago. That blog posted a "Volume Two" to the frustratingly short "Volume One" 1984 EP by Robert Plant and the Honeydrippers, by scraping up more songs done by Plant in the same style over the years. I thought, "What a great idea!" and decided to take an even deeper dive into doing the same.

It turns out the Honeydrippers never did anything else, if you consider the group to be Plant, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Nile Rodgers, as it was on the EP. But if you consider the group to be Plant plus a rotating bunch of other people doing the same style of rockabilly and other fifties-styled music, then it turns out there's a bunch more. Some of it has used the Honeydrippers name and some hasn't, but that's mostly a technicality, since the type of music played is the main thing.

I was most surprised to discover there was exactly one concert done by the Honeydrippers in the months just after the EP came out. They used the name "the Skinnydippers" instead (probably to keep a low profile), and it was a different bunch of musicians, but what matters is the vocalist was Plant, and they covered the exact same sort of music. Their sole show was a benefit concert at a small club in the obscure town of Monmouth in Wales. (There's a video of the entire concert on YouTube - trying searching for Plant's name plus "secret gig." And by the way, whoever posted that is wrong in that the Butterfield Blues Band has nothing to do with the concert.)

I was surprised at how hard it was to find a recording of this concert, because when I did find it, I discovered that it's really good! For starters, the sound quality is excellent. It clearly is a soundboard, to the point that the audience can barely be heard between songs. The performance is excellent too, especially considering this particular band would never play before or after this. But the main attraction is the song list. Plant sings lots of songs that he's never sang in public at any other time. (The only song that doesn't fit the theme is a cover of an obscure Moby Grape song.)

There's only two minor snags with the recording. The first is the end of the song "Going Down" got abruptly cut off before the song ends. But the vast majority of the song is there. I faded the song out a short time before the cut off to make the ending less jarring. The second has to do with the performance of "Georgia on My Mind." The band started the song and made it through about two minutes before breaking down and stopping. Then the band tried again and nailed it the second time. I simply deleted the failed first attempt. Oh, and I also removed some dead air time between songs to make for a better listening experience. I kept the dialogue though, and put the longer bits on separate tracks.

By the way, there are exactly zero songs performed here that are also on the EP, even though it came out a few months earlier. I presume that's because he did most of those EP songs at lots of concerts, including all of his 1985 tour, and this concert was him having fun doing something completely different.

I plan on making more posts involving the Honeydrippers, because Plant obviously loves this kind of music and it shows that he has great fun when he sings it. Frankly, I enjoy him doing this sort of thing more than a lot of his "serious" solo career. But this is a good way to get started.

01 Move It (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
02 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
03 Jailhouse Rock (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
04 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
05 Going Down (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
06 Every Little Bit Hurts (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
07 Crosscut Saw (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
08 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
09 All Your Love [I Miss Loving] (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
10 I Need Your Loving Everyday (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
11 True Love (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
12 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
13 Georgia on My Mind (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
14 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
15 Mystery Train (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
16 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
17 Born Under a Bad Sign (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
18 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
19 Roll, Roll, Roll (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
20 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
21 The Young Ones (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
22 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
23 Save the Last Dance for Me (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
24 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
25 Can't Be So Bad (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
26 Great Balls of Fire (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
27 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
28 Little Sister (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HNXU57ZG

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ojG1VhJ6TTAbr8I/file

To make the cover, I considered using a still from the video of the actual Rolls Hall show, but the quality was way too low to look good. So I've used a photo of Plant at a concert in Houston in 1985 instead.

Buffalo Springfield - Stampede - Non-Album Tracks (1965-1968)

"Stampede" by Buffalo Springfield is one of those great lost albums that everyone likes to speculate about. Various people have put together their own versions of what "Stampede" would have sounded like. Soniclovenoize at his Albums that Never Were blog has put together a particularly good one, which you can find here:

https://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2016/07/buffalo-springfield-stampede.html

However, I wanted to go in a different direction. Had "Stampede" really been released in mid-1967, as planned, it would have consisted of lots of songs that ended up on "Buffalo Springfield Again," plus "For What's It's Worth." I'm not that interested in an album that consists mostly of songs i have elsewhere, just in a different configuration. Instead, my goal here was to gather up all the full band Buffalo Springfield songs that didn't make it onto any of their three albums released in the 1960s. Luckily, there's exactly one album's worth of such material.

Nearly all the songs here come from the great 2001 Buffalo Springfield box set, just called "Buffalo Springfield." But that box set had some surprising omissions, so I had to take a few songs from elsewhere. The version of "Down to the Wire" with Neil Young on vocals surprisingly only appears on Young's "Decade" compilation. (The box set has a version with Stephen Stills doing the lead vocals, but I think Young should sing it since he wrote it.) "Sell Out" and "Slowly Burning" came out on Young's "Archives" box set.

I originally put the instrumental "Slowly Burning" on an album of Young's stray tracks from the late 1960s and early 1970s. But upon further reflection, I'm considering it a Buffalo Springfield song and moving it here instead. It's a tricky case, since it's performed by Young and a bunch of studio musicians, with no other members of Buffalo Springfield on it. But virtually the same group of musicians played on "Expecting to Fly" and "Broken Arrow," and those are considered Buffalo Springfield songs. The truth is, Young started a solo album at that time, but gave up and handed those songs over to Buffalo Springfield instead. So "Slowly Burning" should be treated the same, especially as it was done in 1967, the same as those other two songs.

Finally, "Nobody's Fool" is a Buffalo Springfield song that I'll bet most people overlook. A demo of the song was released on the box set. However, a live version was done by the band in a 1967 concert (at the Teen and Twenty Club in Huntington Beach, California - the best live bootleg of the band, by far). I took that recording and removed the audience clapping to make it a de facto studio track.

If you add up all the songs here, it makes for a 38 minute long album, which is longer than any of the three studio albums released by the band. It's all great, must-have stuff.

On top of that, I've added a three bonus tracks. One is the nine-minute long version of "Bluebird." That was released on a 1973 greatest hits compilation. But one or more of the band members don't like it, so it wasn't included on the box set. It's great though, so I'm including it here to help rescue it from obscurity. It's only a bonus track since it's not a totally unique song, like all the others on this album.

The second bonus track is "In the Midnight Hour." It comes from the same 1967 concert as "Nobody's Fool." However, I'm only adding it as a bonus track for two reasons. One is that it's sung by drummer Dewey Martin, so it doesn't sound much like a song by the band. The other is that it's a generic cover of the big soul hit by Wilson Pickett. Frankly, it's a pretty forgettable version that I don't think adds much to the band's legacy. So you can keep it or not.

The third and last bonus track is "Baby, Don't Scold Me." It was on the original version of the band's self-titled first album released in late 1966, but it was replaced on that album by the big hit "For What It's Worth" on versions of the album starting in early 1967. In my musical collection, I have both of those songs on that album. But just in case you didn't do that, I've included it here so you can add it to that album or to this one.

This includes a very rare unreleased song called "Raga III." It's an instrumental that's really just a long guitar jam, but it's a good one. Apparently it was recorded at a club, but I hear no hint of any audience whatsoever, so I'm guessing it was recorded during a soundcheck or rehearsal.

By the way, you may have noticed that I didn't include any of the many acoustic demos on the box set, even though many of those are also unique songs not done elsewhere. That's because I have two future albums to post here covering those. Between the three albums I plan on posting, I think it makes for a much more logical ordering of the band's songs than the way they were presented on the box set.

01 Down to the Wire (Buffalo Springfield)
02 Neighbor Don't You Worry (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Kahuna Sunset [Instrumental] (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Down, Down, Down (Buffalo Springfield)
05 Buffalo Stomp [Raga] [Instrumental] (Buffalo Springfield)
06 Nobody's Fool (Buffalo Springfield)
07 Sell Out (Buffalo Springfield)
08 We'll See (Buffalo Springfield)
09 Slowly Burning [Instrumental] (Buffalo Springfield)
10 My Kind of Love (Buffalo Springfield)
11 No Sun Today (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Whatever Happened to Saturday Night (Buffalo Springfield)
13 Falcon Lake [Ash on the Floor] [Instrumental] (Buffalo Springfield)
14 What a Day (Buffalo Springfield)
15 Raga III [Instrumental] (Buffalo Springfield)

Baby, Don't Scold Me (Buffalo Springfield)
Bluebird [Extended Version] (Buffalo Springfield)
In the Midnight Hour (Buffalo Springfield)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362442/BUFFLOSPRNGFLD1966-1968Stmpede_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/f1akThJB

Although there never was an officially finalized track list for the "Stampede" album, the band did get together to take a photo for the cover. That cover is shown here. (One band member, Bruce Palmer, wasn't there for the photo since he'd been deported to Canada at the time, so a double stands in for him with a big hat over his head at the bottom of the photo.)

I used the Krea AI program to sharpen it up a bit.

Bob Dylan - Empire Burlesque - Alternate Version (1985)

Normally, I like posting albums in chronological order. With Dylan, I just posted something from 1965, and the next one should be from 1966. But here's something out of order, because I just put it together and I'm pretty happy about it.

Personally, I'm not a fan of Dylan's gospel period at the start of the 1980s, though he had some good songs here and there (as always). I thought he had a strong career revival from 1983 to 1985, but unfortunately it wasn't reflected well in the albums he put out then. 1983's "Infidels" was very good, but it could have been even better, due to all of the good to great songs he left off it. "Blind Willie McTell" is just the most obvious of the songs he failed to include - I have an entire album of "Infidels" outtakes I plan to post at a later date.

I thought "Empire Burlesque" was another good album from him, but unfortunately it suffered from bad production much more than "Infidels" did. "Infidels" had Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits as a guiding hand, but "Empire Burlesque" was largely self-produced by Dylan. Or at least it was for a while. At the last minute, either Dylan or his record company chickened out and brought in Arthur Baker to add overdubs to the album, to make it sound more contemporary and commercial. Baker came from a background of disco and hip-hop, and was best known for producing New Order and Hall and Oates. So while Baker succeeded in making the album sound like a generic 1985 one, this sound has not dated well.

Luckily, it turns out there's a way to remove Baker's overdubs from the album entirely. There's a bootleg containing mixes of most of the songs before Baker got involved. I simply replaced the official versions with these versions, with three exceptions.

The first exception is the first song, One this album, it's called "Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart." The recording comes from "The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased), 1961-1991," and it dates to the 1983 "Infidels" recording sessions. For some reason, Dylan didn't like this. He changed the song to "Tight Connection to My Heart" on "Empire Burlesque," but everything about the 1983 version is better, from the production to the performance to the lyrics.

The second exception is the song "When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky." The version I use here comes from the same "Bootleg Series." Unfortunately, the version Dylan put on "Empire Burlesque" kept the name, but drastically changed the production for the worse, turning it pretty much into a disco song that doesn't suit Dylan's style at all. The album is much improved simply by using the earlier versions of these two songs.

When I first posted this, I just used the official album version of the last song "Dark Eyes," because that was the only one available. But in 2021, the album "Bootleg Series, Volume 16: Springtime in New York" was released. It had a version, so I've used that one. Both versions are just Dylan and an acoustic guitar, so it doesn't make much difference, but I figure it's nice to have alternate versions of every song.

I could have added some extra songs, or swapped out songs, but I didn't. I do have some good extra songs from this time, but I plan on putting them on a different album. This is just the exact "Empire Burlesque" songs, but as they should have been released, without all the unnecessary extra production.

Does this reveal a previously unsuspected great Dylan album? Unfortunately, no. But it is a pretty good one that I think any Dylan fan should own and appreciate.

01 Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart [Tight Connection to My Heart] (Bob Dylan)
02 Seeing the Real You at Last (Bob Dylan)
03 I'll Remember You (Bob Dylan)
04 Clean Cut Kid (Bob Dylan)
05 Never Gonna Be the Same Again (Bob Dylan)
06 Trust Yourself (Bob Dylan)
07 Emotionally Yours (Bob Dylan)
08 When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky (Bob Dylan)
09 Something's Burning, Baby (Bob Dylan)
10 Dark Eyes (Bob Dylan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109373/BobD_1985_Empire_Burlesque_-_Alternate_Version_atse.zip.html

The cover looks similar to the official album cover, but it's not the same. It's based on a bootleg, and it has a different Dylan photo in the middle. I also changed the text of that bootleg to better fit what I did.

Robyn Hitchcock - Perspex Island - Acoustic Versions (1991)

If you've been following my Robyn Hitchcock posts at all, you should know the deal by now: I post various types of albums by him and some of them are all acoustic versions of songs from one of his albums. This is one of those, and the album in question is "Perspex Island."

This is a good album to have an all acoustic version of, because the early 1990s were a time when the production on Hitchcock's albums were a little off. A lot of people, including myself, felt the production was overdone. So it's nice to strip things way back and hear the songs in their simplest forms.

I was able to find acoustic versions for eight out of the 11 songs on "Perspex Island." There are three more songs here, because I was also able to find acoustic versions for three of the stray tracks from this time period, which I put together for my last Hitchcock album posting, "Kiss Yourself." The result is a 40-minute long album of more quality Hitchcock weirdness.

01 Oceanside (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 So You Think You're in Love (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Birds in Perspex (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Vegetation and Dimes (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Lysander (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 She Doesn't Exist (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Ride (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Earthly Paradise (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Chain Mary to the Bed [I Dreamed I Saw Julian Cope] (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Love in the Garden of Light [Solo Electric Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 Lobsterman (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15271973/RobynH_1991b_PerspexIslAcousticVersions_atse.zip.html

The cover art uses the art of the 1991 single "Dark Green Energy." Even though it was a B-side, apparently it had its own cover.  Some text was removed and other text was added.

Norah Jones - In the Dark - Non-Album Tracks (2001-2002)

I just posted an album by Sheryl Crow, and that reminded me that it's high time I post another album by Norah Jones, because the way I feel about Crow is exactly the same as how I feel about Jones except doubly so. Namely, for both artists, generally speaking, I find their stray tracks to be more interesting than their album tracks.

Jones has the reputation, which I think is deserved, of making jazzy, easy listening, mood music. It makes for good background music that you almost forget is playing. The problem is, Jones is a good songwriter, but not a great one. Her big hits have been written, or at least co-written, by others. Yet she fills her albums mostly with her own songs which are good for mood music, but rarely stand out on their own.

Luckily, there's a whole other Norah Jones career. It seems she's always up to lending her unique, sultry voice to other artists and to a wide variety of side projects. I like this Jones much better, because she still is great at setting a mood, but with a much better selection of songs.

This album is a case in point. If you look at the song list below, at least half of the songs are widely considered classics, and the rest are covers that are very much in the same vein. Her 2002 debut album "Come Away with Me" has sold nearly 30 million copies. I think that if this album would have been released as a follow up, it would have sold many, many millions too. But she's gone out of her way to avoid releasing a covers album, because she wants to be known as someone who does her own songs. Luckily, we can gather up her stray tracks and enjoy her as a covers artist too.

Furthermore, I added the a bonus track, "Que Sera, Sera." It's a live cover version from a bootleg. The sound quality is a little too rough to merit more than bonus track status. 

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Something Is Calling You (Norah Jones)
02 Healing Hands of Time (Jim Campilongo Band with Norah Jones)
03 I'll Be Your Baby Tonight (Norah Jones)
04 Crazy (Norah Jones)
05 Bessie Smith (Norah Jones)
06 Comes Love (Norah Jones)
07 Everybody's Crying Mercy (Norah Jones)
08 Help Me Make It through the Night (Norah Jones)
09 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Touch Acoustra with Norah Jones)
10 In the Dark (Norah Jones with Jools Holland)
11 Peace (Norah Jones)
12 Are You Lonesome Tonight (Norah Jones)

Que Sera, Sera (Norah Jones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696758/NORHJNS2001-2002_IntheDrk_atse.zip.html

The cover is based on a 2002 publicity photo.

Sheryl Crow - Resuscitation - Non-Album Tracks (1997-1998)

I've said the gist of this in my last Sheryl Crow album post, I think, but I'll repeat it anyway: she is an excellent singer, and a talented songwriter, but her songwriting is hit or miss. Sometimes she hits a home run, as with her hit songs. But all too often, her non-hits are just okay, playing it too safe in an "adult contemporary" way. I find her stray tracks more interesting, because she stretches herself out and does all kind of interesting songs.

This stray tracks album is a case in point. About five of the songs here are Crow originals, and in my opinion they're just as good as her album songs.

The rest are a wide variety of cover versions.She does all sorts of interesting covers, from Leonard Cohen ("Hallelujah") to Bob Dylan ("Highway 61 Revisited") to the Who ("Squeeze Box") and even to Sonny and Cher ("Baby Don't Go").

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Don't Make Me Wait Too Long (Sheryl Crow)
02 Hallelujah (Sheryl Crow)
03 One Less Bell to Answer (Sheryl Crow with Burt Bacharach)
04 Squeeze Box (Sheryl Crow)
05 Highway 61 Revisited (Sheryl Crow & Bob Dylan)
06 Resuscitation (Sheryl Crow)
07 Subway Ride (Sheryl Crow)
08 In Need (Sheryl Crow)
09 Carolina (Sheryl Crow)
10 Baby Don't Go (Dwight Yoakam & Sheryl Crow)
11 Good Morning Heartache (Sheryl Crow)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15104472/SherylC_1997-1998_Resuscitatin_atse.zip.html

The cover was made by Peter at the Albums I Wish Existed blog. I added some of the text. I'm psyched at how I made the album title look like it was on the wall.

The Indigo Girls - Center Stage - Acoustic Versions (1988-1989)

I like the Indigo Girls a lot, and I've already posted some albums of their stray tracks, with some being all original material and some being all cover versions. This starts a series of four albums that is different. It generally includes their most well-known songs, but in all acoustic versions, just Emily Saliers, Amy Ray, and two guitars.

Personally, although I enjoy hearing them rock out sometimes (the song "Land of Canaan" being a good example), I think they're usually at their best when they go the totally acoustic route. So consider this the first of a series of greatest hits albums, except with the songs stripped way back.

These albums wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for the Lifeblood website (www.lifeblood.net), which collects and makes easily available just about every Indigo Girls bootleg recording out there. I went through that website very carefully and focused on the in-person radio show appearances to make this album. Those can be a gold mine because they're recorded just about as well as any studio session. But often just the two Indigo Girls showed up at the radio stations with their acoustic guitars, rather than getting their entire band to come along and set up all their equipment. So these recordings allow one to hear the songs in a different way.

All the songs here date from 1988 and 1989, which was right when the Indigo Girls hit it big with their album "Indigo Girls." Most of the songs here are from that, although there are a few from elsewhere, including some early looks at a few songs from what would be their next album in 1990, "Nomads Indians Saints." There also are two songs here, "Cold as Ice" and "No Way to Treat a Friend," that remain officially unreleased to this day. (I have different versions of both on one of the stray tracks albums I've posted here already.)

Note that this album does not include their most well known song "Closer to Fine," even though it was released on their 1989. That's because the best all acoustic version of this I could find dates to 1990, so it will appear on the next album in this series.

01 Love's Recovery (Indigo Girls)
02 Cold as Ice (Indigo Girls)
03 Center Stage (Indigo Girls)
04 No Way to Treat a Friend (Indigo Girls)
05 Prince of Darkness (Indigo Girls)
06 Hand Me Downs (Indigo Girls)
07 Southland in the Springtime (Indigo Girls)
08 Welcome Me (Indigo Girls)
09 Secure Yourself (Indigo Girls)
10 Land of Canaan (Indigo Girls)
11 Kid Fears (Indigo Girls)
12 Crazy Game (Indigo Girls)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15852919/TIngidoGs_1988-1989_CenterStageAcousticVersions_atse.zip.html

The photo for the cover art is a publicity photo from 1989. I colorized it red and added the text.

Bob Dylan - Positively 4th Street - Non-Album Tracks (1965)

This album covers Bob Dylan's stray tracks from 1965. It's a mixed bag, with a lot of variety. There's a big hit ("Positively 4th Street") and some other rocking songs with a full band. But there also are some folky acoustic songs. To come up with a song order, I did a little research on when each song was recorded, and I present these in strict chronological order.

A few songs need some extra explanation. Four of the songs are duets of cover songs with Joan Baez. These come from the 18th CD on the 18 CD version of "The Bootleg Series, Vol. 12 - The Cutting Edge." I just posted some song edits from this CD that come from the second half of this CD. The first half is all duets with Baez. There are eight Dylan-Baez duets in all there. I deemed only four of them worthy of this album. The other four are all more snippets than full songs, of about a minute each, and/or they're not fully realized versions. Clearly, Dylan and Baez were fishing around to find songs they both knew how to sing, and sometimes they found a good one and sometimes they didn't.

Of the ones I kept, I made significant edits to two of them. "Young but Daily Growing" fades out in mid-verse. So I trimmed the end so it stops at a more satisfying point. For "Lost Highway," Dylan and Baez had some trouble remembering the last verse, and fumbled around before they figured it out. I edited out the fumbling.

While putting this album together, I was discovered to find that Dylan performed the song "Long Distance Operator" live in 1965. You may recognize the song because it was done by the Band in 1968 as part of "The Basement Tapes" done by Dylan and the Band released in 1975. But even though it's known as a Band song, it was written by Dylan and performed only a couple of times by him (with the Band backing him up) in 1965. Luckily, there is one decent live recording of Dylan doing the song, although the sound isn't great.

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 Farewell, Angelina (Bob Dylan)
02 You Don't Have to Do That [Acoustic Version] (Bob Dylan)
03 If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Bob Dylan)
04 Blues Stay Away from Me (Bob Dylan & Joan Baez)
05 Lost Highway (Bob Dylan & Joan Baez)
06 Young but Daily Growing (Bob Dylan & Joan Baez)
07 Wild Mountain Thyme (Bob Dylan & Joan Baez)
08 Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence (Bob Dylan)
09 Positively 4th Street (Bob Dylan)
10 Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window (Bob Dylan)
11 I Wanna Be Your Lover (Bob Dylan)
12 Jet Pilot (Bob Dylan)
13 Unnamed Instrumental (Bob Dylan)
14 Long Distance Operator [Live] (Bob Dylan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15105782/BobD_1965g_Positivly4thStreet_atse.zip.html

I made the album cover with a photo from 1965.

Bob Dylan - The Hotel Room Tapes - Various Song Edits (1966)

So far, I've mostly posted early Bob Dylan material, from 1961 to 1964. I've got a ton more Dylan stuff to post, and I'm trying to move through it all chronologically. Before I could tackle his 1965 to 1966 period though, I wanted to make some song edits to his 1966 "hotel room tapes," and now I have. I'll present these songs as part of a 1966 stray tracks album later, but I want to highlight them here while the edits I made are still fresh in my mind.

In 2015, the archival Dylan album "The Bootleg Series, Vol. 12 - The Cutting Edge" was released. You could buy it in various formats, but only if you bought the 18 (!) CD version would you get any of the songs on the 18th CD, which contains various raw and low-hi recordings made of Dylan in hotels in 1965 and 1966. The first half consists of duets with Joan Baez done in 1965. I'm only dealing here with the second half, which is of songs Dylan did in two hotel rooms in 1966, with guitarist Robbie Robertson accompanying him.

Most of these 1966 songs are really interesting. No doubt, most or all of them would have been included on Dylan's follow-up album to his classic "Blonde on Blonde." Except Dylan got in a motorcycle accident later in 1966, and in the wake of that he decided to do in a very different musical (and personal) direction. So these songs were left behind, and the only records we have of them are from these hotel room tapes.

However, there are problems with the recordings. For starters, the recording quality ranges from okay to terrible. (I didn't include one original song,"If You Want My Love," because the sound quality is so bad and hissy.) But also, the songs were brand new at the time, and Dylan generally didn't play them all the way through successfully, because didn't know them well yet. So what I've done is stitch the different performances together to get the best Dylan versions of these songs we'll probably ever have. I also tried to eliminate the many flubs and coughs and the like.

The first song, "What Kind of Friend Is This," is fairly unedited by me. Dylan makes it through the song without any flubs or stops, and the sound quality is pretty good. But the song came to a sudden end after just a little over two minutes. I decided there was no good way to fix that, so I left the end as it is.

"I Can't Leave Her Behind" needed much more editing. This is a very nice song, with Dylan using a sound and voice similar to his country-ish "Nashville Skyline" era a few years later. Unfortunately, the song was cut in two on the official "Cutting Edge" version. Dylan made it through the first verse fine. But when he got to the chorus, he flubbed the chords like five times, starting it again each time. I simply edited out the flubs to make it sound like he got it right the first time. Then the first take ended shortly after the chorus, so I stitched in the rest of the song from the second take. There were more flubs there, but I edited them out. The verse lyrics are different, so by combining the two takes, I believe one gets the full song.

By the way, I didn't do anything with the song "On a Rainy Afternoon" because if you listen to it closely, it's actually the same song as "I Can't Leave Her Behind." The lyrics are significantly different, but the chords and melody are basically the same. Plus, all that was recorded is a minute and a half snippet, so there's not much to work with.

"If I Was a King" is the only non-original here. It apparently actually is a variant of an obscure Scottish folk song called "If I Were King of the Forest" (not to be confused by a song from "The Wizard of Oz"). Dylan recorded the song in a hotel room in Scotland, so maybe the location inspired him to remember it and do it. The song was recorded well. (There were a couple of loud coughs, but luckily they were during pauses between singing, so I was able to patch in fixes for them.) The main problem with the song is that Dylan stopped the song right in the middle, after doing the first verse and chorus. Then, for the second take, he did the second verse and chorus, apparently taking the song to the end. So I stitched the two takes together. I also used some instrumental snippet later in the song to add in an introduction, since Dylan and Robertson talked over the intro while they were fumbling around to find the right chords.

"Positively Van Gogh" presented a big challenge for me. The official "Cutting Edge" CD included three takes of the song. The first take was short and of no use to me. The second take included four verses, but then it stopped. The third take picked up where the second one left off and had the fifth verse. However, Dylan moved the capo on his guitar between the second and third take, changing the key. I tried my best to merge the second and third takes, but it's really tough when the takes are in significantly different keys. I could use my music editing software to change the pitch, but the problem is, if you do that very much, the song of Dylan's voice changes quite noticeably, until it no longer sounds like him.

So what I did was lower the pitch on the second take and raise it on the third take, so the two could meet in the middle. I did that successfully, and I believe it makes a pretty seamless transition for the guitar. But there's a cost in that the sound of vocals do get altered some. You'll probably notice the change between the fourth and fifth verses. It's unfortunate, but it's either that or not getting the entire song put together as one performance. If anyone else knows how to merge these together in a less noticeable way, please let me know.

(Apparently there was a sixth verse, but Dylan only got halfway through it on yet another take that only exists on a bootleg, so there's no way to fully restore it.)

The final song here, "Don't Tell Him, Tell Me," had lots of hiss on the official "Cutting Edge" version, and only one take was included there. Luckily, I found a bootlegged version with much less hiss that contained three takes, so I used that instead. Unfortunately, the sound quality is still wanting. The overall sound is okay, but for some reason Dylan's voice comes through poorly, making it very difficult to hear his lyrics. I still think it's a nice song with a good melody though, so I worked on it anyway.

Of the three takes I found, the second and third ones were useful. The second take included all of a verse and chorus, but then it stopped. A different verse was included on the third take, but it stopped before the chorus. So I stitched the two takes together. Then I added in the one good chorus to the end of the second verse to make a complete song.

So there you have it. All in all, this makes up 19 minutes of acoustic versions of five otherwise lost songs by Dylan in his prime 1965 to 1966 era. Yeah, purists may have issues with all the editing I did here. But I'd rather have these edited versions than the bits and pieces on "The Cutting Edge" with all the flubs and coughs and such. Virtually everything Dylan did in 1965 and 1966 was awesome, with three albums he released in that time all included in lists of the greatest albums of all time. These songs definitely fit in with the rest of his music from that time. I especially like "I Can't Leave Her Behind" and "Positively Van Gogh."

01 What Kind of Friend Is This (Bob Dylan)
02 I Can't Leave Her Behind [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
03 If I Was a King [If I Were King of the Forest] [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
04 Positively Van Gogh [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
05 Don't Tell Him, Tell Me [Edit] (Bob Dylan)

NOTE: This album has now been folded into this larger stray tracks album:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/01/bob-dylan-shes-your-lover-now-various.html

I hadn't intended for this to have an album cover, since it's only a collection of five song edits, not a proper album. But Peter at the Albums I Wish Existed blog made one for me, so what the heck, here it is. ;)