Robyn Hitchcock - Acoustic Covers, Volume 5: 2000-2004

Here's the fifth of my album collections of acoustic covers done by Robyn Hitchcock, the vast majority played live. He's played a million covers, so there are a lot more albums like this one on the way.

It's not too hard to guess that the three biggest musical influences on Hitchcock have been the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. So it's fitting that he does four songs by the Beatles, three by Barrett, and two by Dylan.

None of the performances on this album have been officially released, though two of them come from a DVD about Syd Barrett. Yet the sound quality is generally quite good.

For the first song, a version of "I Am the Walrus" by Hitchcock and Grant Lee Phillips, there's some crowd noise because the two of them are having a fun lark with the song, which gets a lot of audience response. It's similar with "Stayin' Alive," which is another jokey lark (including some improvised lyrics).

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

01 I Am the Walrus - Beatles
02 Across the Universe - Beatles
03 Think for Yourself - Beatles
04 All that Money Wants - Psychedelic Furs
05 Born in Time - Bob Dylan
06 Pledging My Time - Bob Dylan
07 Honky Tonkin' - Hank Williams
08 Dominoes - Syd Barrett
09 It Is Obvious - Syd Barrett
10 Neon Meate Dream of an Octafish [Recitation Version] - Captain Beefheart
11 The Main Thing - Roxy Music
12 She Said, She Said - Beatles
13 Tarotplane - Captain Beefheart
14 Stayin' Alive - Bee Gees
15 Some Kinda Love - Velvet Underground
16 The Ocean - Velvet Underground / Lou Reed
17 Baby Lemonade - Syd Barrett

Here's the song list:

01 I Am the Walrus (Robyn Hitchcock & Grant Lee Phillips)
02 Across the Universe (Robyn Hitchcock & Grant Lee Phillips)
03 Think for Yourself (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 All that Money Wants (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Born in Time (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Pledging My Time (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Honky Tonkin' (Robyn Hitchcock with Jon Brion, Grant Lee Phillips)
08 Dominoes (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 It Is Obvious (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Neon Meate Dream of an Octafish [Recitation Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 The Main Thing (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 She Said, She Said (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 Tarotplane (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 Stayin' Alive (Robyn Hitchcock)
15 Some Kinda Love (Robyn Hitchcock)
16 The Ocean (Robyn Hitchcock)
17 Baby Lemonade (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15272825/RobynH_2000-2004_AcousticCoversVolume5_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I wanted to use a photo of Hitchcock with an acoustic guitar at some point in the years 2000 to 2004. But I couldn't find any good ones that were definitely from that time. I found one from 2006. I guess that's close enough for horseshoes.

Imelda May - More Mayhem - Non-Album Tracks (2011)

I've been meaning to post this album for months, but I've hesitated because there are two songs for it that I've been trying to find. However, all this time has passed and I still haven't found them. I'm trying to post the stuff I have on Imelda May chronologically, so this has stopped me for posting anything from her. Thus, I'm going to post this now, and if those two songs show up later, I'll just have to update this.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Imelda May is the whole package. She's got a great voice, she's a talented songwriter, and she looks like a star. She's pretty big in Britain and Ireland but very little known elsewhere, so if you still don't know about her yet, give this a try.

In 2010, May released the album "Mayhem." It was a hit, reaching the top ten in Britain and going gold there, and reaching number one in Ireland. In 2011, rather than release a new album, she put out an enlarged version of the "Mayhem" album with four new songs, plus three other previous released songs, and called it "More Mayhem." I'm using the "More Mayhem" title and cover here, but I'm only including the four new songs. The other seven songs here come from various other music projects she had going on in 2011.

The four songs from the official "More Mayhem" album all fall into her rockabilly style, including a cover of the Patsy Cline classic "Walking After Midnight." The rest have a much wider stylistic range. She does covers of 1950s classics "I'm Lookin' for Someone to Love" and "Train Kept a Rollin'" still in her rockabilly mode. But she also gets in touch with her Irish roots with "Mountains to the Sea" and the standard "Danny Boy." She also does a lullaby she wrote herself for a charity, "Make a Wish." She finishes it all with the Christmas classic "Silent Night."

All in all, this is a solid album. I wish she actually would have put out an album like this instead of the supersized "Mayhem" idea. She wouldn't put out another studio album until 2014. (Though as we'll see, she kept busy.)

As for the two songs I still can't find, one is her version of the Buddy Holly song "Rocking Around with Ollie Vee," done for the Holly tribute album "Listen to Me." The problem is, it's only a bonus track, and most versions don't have it. The other one is a cover of "On My Radio," a ska hit by the band The Selecter. That was done for an extremely rare various artists album called "Reworked: Songs from the John Lewis TV Adverts." If anyone has either or both of these songs and can share them with me, I surely would appreciate it! Then I can add them to this album.

UPDATE: On November 4, 2022, I updated the mp3 download file. I added one song I'd previously missed. It's a version of May's original song "Kentish Town Waltz," but in duet form with Lou Reed, of all people! Apparently, record producer Tony Visconti became a fan of the song shortly after it was released and passed a recording on to Reed. Reed liked it so much that he asked May to record a duet version. That was put on the B-side when the regular version was released as a single.

01 Road Runner (Imelda May)
02 Gypsy (Imelda May)
03 Blues Calling (Imelda May)
04 Walking After Midnight (Imelda May)
05 I'm Lookin' for Someone to Love (Imelda May)
06 Train Kept A-Rollin' (Imelda May)
07 Make a Wish (Imelda May)
08 Mountains to the Sea (Mary Black & Imelda May)
09 Danny Boy (Jeff Beck & Imelda May)
10 Baby, I Love You (Imelda May)
11 Kentish Town Waltz [Duet Version] (Imelda May & Lou Reed)
12 Silent Night (Michel Legrand Orchestra with Imelda May)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693311/IMELDMY2011_MreMayhm_atse.zip.html

As mentioned above, the album cover here is the exact one for the official "More Mayhem" album, though the contents are drastically different.

Richard Thompson - Oh I Swear - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (1990)

1990 is a bumper crop year for Richard Thompson playing acoustic songs, at least in my world. I was able to make this entire album of acoustic songs just from that year, plus I have some more from 1990 on my next album in this series.

I think there's a couple of reasons for this. One is that he'd been mostly playing with a band in the late 1980s, then started doing more acoustic shows. But I think a bigger factor is luck, because he had been doing at least some acoustic concerts all along, but in 1990, a couple of the shows were bootlegged with outstanding soundboard sound quality. Two of the songs here are officially released. The rest all come from those two shows. So everything on this album sounds as good as official live albums usually do.

Regarding the songs themselves, most of them are cover versions. Some are traditional songs that go way back, and others are covers of more recent classics. He also covers himself in that he does a song he did with Fairport Convention twenty years earlier, "Now Be Thankful." "She Moves through the Fair" also was done by that band, although it's a traditional song and not one Thompson had a hand in writing. Similarly, "The Old Changing Way" is a Thompson original first put on album in 1972. I've included songs like these because the solo acoustic versions of them are so different.

A few of the songs are more recent Thompson originals. "Mrs. Rita" was written by Thompson, but sung by June Tabor for the 1990 album "Hard Cash." Apparently, he only sang his own song a few times in concert in 1990. "Oh I Swear" is also from "Hard Cash." On that album Thompson performs it, but with a full band. (I'll post that version on a different stray tracks album soon.) "Killing Jar" is another Thompson original from a 1990 French, Frith, Kaiser & Thompson album. I'll be posting my version of that album soon.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 The May Day Psalter [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
02 I Can't Keep from Crying Sometimes - Stop Your Sobbing (Richard Thompson)
03 Oh I Swear (Richard Thompson)
04 Now Be Thankful (Richard Thompson)
05 Killing Jar (Richard Thompson)
06 Hickory Wind (Richard Thompson with Julian Dawson)
07 She's Not There (Richard Thompson with Julian Dawson)
08 High School Confidential (Richard Thompson)
09 Mind Your Own Business (Richard Thompson with Julian Dawson)
10 Mr. and Mrs. Mickey Mouse (Richard Thompson)
11 The Old Changing Way (Richard Thompson)
12 Mrs. Rita (Richard Thompson)
13 She Moves through the Fair (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15268283/RichrdT_1990_OhISwearAcoustc_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is of Thompson playing an acoustic guitar in 1990.

The Pretty Things - Emotions - Alternate Version (1967)

Since I've been listening to a lot of the Pretty Things, here's another album from them.

I'm very happy with what I've accomplished here, I must say! "Emotions" is a 1967 album from the Pretty Things that wasn't well received when it came out, and was almost immediately disowned by the band. They've been critical of it ever since. I hope I've tweaked things to come up with a version that would meet their approval, and hopefully yours as well.

There's an interesting story behind this album. In late 1966, the Pretty Things were on a commercial decline. Their rocking R n' B msuci was going out of style, and musical tastes were drastically changing fast. They owned one more album to their record company Fontana Records. Fontana wanted hits from them, and forced a producer on them, Steve Rowland who had made some hits for a couple of lightweight bands. The band members tried their best to go along with the record company's demands, writing songs in a new style and acquiescing with the producer's methods, which was to slather horn sections and strings all over the songs.

Keep in mind that this was 1967, and the new psychedelic style often had very ornate production. Consider how drastically the Rolling Stones changed their style for one album that year, "Their Satanic Majesties Request," to fit in with musical trends. (The Stones would soon disdain that album of theirs as well, although I think it's a really good one.)

The good news was, the Pretty Things wrote a very good bunch of songs, proving they had the talent and versatility to go beyond R n' B. But the producer way overdid it with the strings and horns, badly undermining the songs. Two band members were so upset that they quit the band in frustration in the middle of recording the album, never to return. The band never played any of the songs from it in concert (except one, "Children," and that only briefly). The album did poorly commercially, so all the selling out was for naught, but at least the band was done with their Fontana record company contract. They would go on to greater things with their next album ("S. F. Sorrow").

Luckily, it turns out that various archival releases have included alternate versions of most of the songs, stripped free of the strings and horns. I was able to find alternate versions for eight of the twelve songs. Of the remainder, two of them don't have that much overproduction. But you will definitely notice the horns on the first song, "Death of a Socialite," and the strings on another song, "Growing in My Mind." Overall,l this is much closer to how the band wanted the songs to sound, before the producer went wild on them.

Since the band has continued to express their frustration with this album even to this day, I'm kind of surprised they haven't made an alternate version just like this one. The alternate versions I found were scattered all over the place. Perhaps if they search their archives they could find alternates for the remaining four songs as well, and fully undo the mistakes of the past.

For bonus tracks, I've included two other songs from the same era that similarly had production issues. (One of the songs, "Progress," is from 1966, but December 1966.) These bonus tracks use alternate versions that are similarly stripped down. I'm putting the non-alternate versions of these two songs on different albums.

UPDATE: On November 18, 2020, I updated the mp3 file. I didn't add or remove any songs. But I did change some of the songs. This is because someone pointed out to me that there's a version of the album with extreme stereo separation, putting all the horns and strings in one channel for some songs. I used this to strip the horns and strings from "Death of a Socialite," "House of Ten," "Growing in My Mind," and "Bright Lights of the City." So now the album is even closer to the original vision the band had. Basically all the ornate production they didn't like has been removed from all the songs. The only song that didn't get changed is "Tripping," and that's because there was nothing objectionable to change for that one song.

01 Death of a Socialite [Alternate Version] [Edit] (Pretty Things)
02 Children [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)
03 The Sun [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)
04 There Will Never Be Another Day [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)
05 House of Ten [Alternate Version] [Edit] (Pretty Things)
06 Out in the Night [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)
07 One Long Glance [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)
08 Growing in My Mind [Alternate Version] [Edit] (Pretty Things)
09 Photographer [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)
10 Bright Lights of the City [Alternate Version] [Edit] (Pretty Things)
11 Tripping (Pretty Things)
12 My Time [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)

Defecting Grey [Alternate Mix] (Pretty Things)
Progress [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700876/TPRETTYTHGS1967_EmtionsAltrnte_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I simply used the cover for the officially released album.

Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers - Live Cover Versions, 2003-2006

Here's yet another album in the very long series of collections of live cover versions by Tom P*tty and the Heartbreakers. I believe this is the tenth album so far, and I still have ten more years of the band's career to go. Collect them all!

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

This album is very much like the others, which means it's more quality rock and roll. As usual, P*tty is mainly interested in covering the classic songs from the 1950s and 60s that he grew up with. A couple exceptions are "Thirteen Days" by J. J. Cale, first recorded in 1979, and "Handle with Care," a song that P*tty was very much a part of with the Traveling Wilburys in 1988. But while P*tty didn't have a role in writing it, and only sang backing vocals on it, with this version, he shares lead vocals with fellow Wilbury Jeff Lynne.

(By the way, I always used to think the song "Thirteen Days" included the line "thirteen days with life to go." I was bummed to find out the correct lyrics are actually "thirteen days with five to go." I like my version better!)

Another interesting anomaly on this album is a cover of the Beatles' classic "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." Again, it's P*tty and Lynne trading off different parts of the lead vocals. But this was done in a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert with lots of famous musicians on stage and more in the audience. Prince took over the song and amazed everyone with his lead guitar work, then finished by tossing his guitar into the audience. You should check out the YouTube video of this if you haven't already. It has over 70 million views, and climbing!

Surprisingly, that performance is still officially unreleased. Only five of the eleven performances here have been officially released. Luckily, there isn't much decline in sound quality for the unreleased ones, except for one or two.

This album is 44 minutes long.

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

https://pixeldrain.com/u/n3BxtvKQ 

alternate:  

https://bestfile.io/en/QbOfRx5uI3Z7pht/file

I did some rather drastic things for the cover art this time. I found a P*tty concert poster with art I liked. (I think it's for what turned out to be his last tour, in 2016). However, the colors were really ugly, off shades of green and orange that looked horrible together. So I used Photoshop to shift all the colors together. Then I still had the problem of the poster being rectangle and album covers being square. So I chopped off a lot of the bottom, but then added back in the very bottom, so the loss wouldn't be noticeable.

The Pretty Things - Midnight to Six Man - Non-Album Tracks (1964-1966)

The Pretty Things are a drastically underrated band. If you like the kind of 1960s and 1970s music that I post a lot of here at this blog, such as the Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, the Move, and so on, the Pretty Things should be right up your alley. But they were far less popular than they should have been back then, and their catalog is still messed up together, keeping them underappreciated. I plan on posting a whole bunch of albums here that should allow you to appreciate their musical legacy.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the first phase of their career, which actually was their most commercially successful. In 1964 through 1966, they had the only significant hits in their long career, especially with "Don't Bring Me Down" and "Honey I Need." They were very much like the early years of the Rolling Stones and the Animals, doing lots of rocking covers of soul and blues songs, and original songs in the same vein. They had a few really great songs from this time period, especially "Rosalyn" and "Don't Bring Me Down," both of which would later be covered by David Bowie. But in my opinion, they weren't consistent, and a lot of songs on their early albums were just ordinary.

Thus, this album is my selection of their best stuff from the early years. Happily, it's 40 minutes of music, which would have been an ideal length back in those days.

Some bands continued to mine this style for a long time, or even their entire career, with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers being an example of the latter. But the Pretty Things quickly moved into coming up with their own songs in different styles. In particular, they fit psychedelic music very well, while still continuing to rock. You can already see this transition happening on this album.

"Midnight to Six Man" in particular is a song that stands out. It should have been a huge hit, and the band expected it would, but it didn't even make the Top 40 in Britain, which is baffling. "L.S.D." is an even better example of where the band was going. And what chutspah for a well-known band in 1966 to give a song that title! (Supposedly, the song was about money, and the "L" in the title was the symbol for the British pound, but that was just the thin cover story.)

This is a good album, and if you haven't paid attention to the Pretty Things, this is a good place to start. But the band's peak era was from 1967 to 1971, in my opinion, and that's what I'll be posting about in the future.

01 Rosalyn (Pretty Things)
02 Don't Bring Me Down (Pretty Things)
03 Honey, I Need (Pretty Things)
04 Road Runner (Pretty Things)
05 Cry to Me (Pretty Things)
06 Can't Stand the Pain (Pretty Things)
07 You Don't Believe Me (Pretty Things)
08 Gonna Find Me a Substitute (Pretty Things)
09 London Town (Pretty Things)
10 Raining in My Heart (Pretty Things)
11 Midnight to Six Man (Pretty Things)
12 Come See Me (Pretty Things)
13 L.S.D. (Pretty Things)
14 A House in the Country (Pretty Things)
15 Me Needing You (Pretty Things)
16 Progress (Pretty Things)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15271602/TPrettyT_1964-1966_MidnghttoSixMn_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used a cover art for the "Midnight to Six Man" single. However, the French version of that looked really good, so I used that. I had to make a few minor changes as a result, most notably changing "Les Pretty Things" to "The Pretty Things." But "Les" was colored green, so I colored "The" the same green.

The Move - BBC Sessions, Volume 4, 1970-1972

Here's the last of the albums I plan to post from the Move. It's the end of a series of four albums covering their performances at the BBC.

Unfortunately, their BBC albums end on kind of a down note in that the Move petered out as a band, releasing a few singles before turning into the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), and in a similar way, the Move made fewer and fewer appearances, either at the BBC or in concert in general, as the band wound down. They also got a LOT less diverse with their song list. The previous BBC albums all had lots of interesting cover versions, but this only has one, their version of the Beatles song "She's a Woman."

But on the flip side, Jeff Lynne joined the band in late 1969, and his arrival greatly strengthened the band's songwriting. So, song for song, this is a strong album. But unfortunately, some great songs late in the band's career don't appear to have been done at the BBC or live at all, or at least were never recorded. For instance, "California Man," "Chinatown," "Tonight," and "Do Ya." In the case, of "Do Ya," I had a nice alternate studio version of that song that I didn't have a good spot for, so I stuck that on here. (The band did a few high profile TV performances of some of these songs, but the ones I found we're lip-synched.)

The vast majority of the songs here originally appeared on the Move's last two albums, "Looking On" and "Message from the Country." But they didn't even play very many of those for the BBC. Luckily, they did three different songs for German TV show "Beat Club" in studio conditions (not in front of an audience), so I was able to include those too.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Brontosaurus (Move)
02 Falling Forever (Move)
03 Lightning Never Strikes Twice (Move)
04 Looking On (Move)
05 When Alice Comes Back to the Farm (Move)
06 She's a Woman (Move)
07 Ella James (Move)
08 Down on the Bay (Move)
09 The Words of Aaron (Move)
10 Do Ya [Alternate Version] (Move)
11 California Man (Move)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xPtQc7Q7 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/UtA2WLuOPfFEvEd/file

This the last of four BBC Move albums I've posted here, and I'm proud to say that I kept artistic unity across all four, using a different primary color for each. The photo here comes from the Move performing on a TV show called "Whitaker's World of Music" in 1971 (where, unfortunately, they lip-synced).

Paul McCartney - Once upon a Long Ago - Non-Album Tracks (1987)

I've been too busy to post here for the last week or so. I'll try to make up for that by posting a bunch of stuff in the next couple of days.

From a couple of articles I read, Paul McCartney was very disappointed by the poor critical reception and sales to his 1986 album "Press to Play." He realized he'd been coasting musically, and resolved to try harder. It turns out he recorded an album's worth of songs in 1987, but hardly any of it has been officially released. Instead, he kept recording and started a songwriting collaboration with Elvis Costello. He finally came back with his "Flowers in the Dirt" album in 1989, which got a better reception.

So what about his 1987 recordings? There's a popular bootleg of them known as "Return to Pepperland." Frankly, I don't like a lot of it, and I didn't include some of the songs. McCartney was trying to sound hip to current musical trends, which meant drum machines, too many synths, and other 1980s musical production crimes. But some of the songs were good, and it's surprising that they seem to have been forgotten by McCartney.  For instance, he released a 3 CD deluxe version of "Flowers of the Dirt" in 2017 that included all sorts of things, but the only material from 1987 were some demos he did with Costello that year. If he ever does a deluxe version of "Press to Play," it seems likely these songs won't fit there either.

This album starts with "Once upon a Long Ago" and its B-side. This song was a top ten hit in Britain and some other countries, but oddly wasn't even released in the US.

Most of what follows is still officially unreleased. The only exceptions to that is the song "Love Come Tumbling Down," which was used as a B-side in the 1990s, and  two acoustic demos with Elvis Costello that came out as part of that "Flowers in the Dirt" official release. I'm including these two demos, "Shallow Grave" and "I Don't Want to Confess," and not some others, because these two songs weren't officially released by McCartney in the 1980s.

Tow of the unreleased songs are not like the others. Those two are "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore." McCartney made very few live appearances for the vast majority of the 1980s, up until his world tour in 1989. These two covers of songs from the 1950s and 40s are from one of those rare pre-1989 live appearances, when he played a few songs on a TV show in 1987.

The rest of the unreleased songs are all originals. I think there are a lot of good songs here. Frankly, I much prefer these songs to the ones on "Press to Play." I think he would have been smart to use some of these on his next album. But by 1989, they probably were old news to him, and he was more excited about his more recently written songs.

I've made major edits to two of the unreleased songs. Both "Atlantic Ocean" and "Squid" go on for six and a half minutes in their original versions. That's too long, in my opinion, because the songs have a lot of repetition. So I cut "Atlantic Ocean" down to four minutes and "Squid" down to three and a half. I'm pretty confident that if McCartney released them at the time, he would have cut them down too.

I've included one song here are a bonus track only, "Beautiful Night." That's because I like to have these stray tracks albums filled with songs that aren't on any official albums, and "Beautiful Night" was released on his "Flaming Pie" album in 1997. But that was a different version done a full decade later, so I figure it's worth checking out this version too.

By the way, I have another album I plan to post here that consists just of all the 1987 acoustic demos McCartney did with Costello.

01 Once upon a Long Ago (Paul McCartney)
02 Back on My Feet (Paul McCartney)
03 Return to Pepperland (Paul McCartney)
04 Lawdy Miss Clawdy (Paul McCartney)
06 The Same Love (Paul McCartney)
07 Christian Pop [Instrumental] (Paul McCartney)
08 Atlantic Ocean [Edit] (Paul McCartney)
09 Shallow Grave (Paul McCartney & Elvis Costello)
10 I Don't Want to Confess (Paul McCartney & Elvis Costello)
11 Love Come Tumbling Down (Paul McCartney)
12 Don't Get Around Much Anymore (Paul McCartney)
13 Squid [Instrumental] [Edit] (Paul McCartney)

Beautiful Night [Early Version] (Paul McCartney)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376612/PAULMCCRTNY1987OncUpnLngAgo_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I simply used the cover to the "Once upon a Long Ago" single. It may seem strangely familiar to you, because it has a lot of similarity to the cover to his "All the Best" greatest hits collection. For instance, it uses the same color and all-caps font for the text, with an underline, and also having a black and white photo. But it's a totally different photo.

Stevie Wonder - Journey through the Secret Life of Plants - Alternate Version (1979)

I'm in a Stevie Wonder mood today, so here's another one from him.

From 1972 to 1976, Wonder was on top of the music world. He released one all-time classic album after another, culminating in his 1976 magnum opus, "Songs in the Key of Life." It seemed he was on a roll and could keep going like that indefinitely.

But then... nothing. He didn't tour after "Songs in the Key of Life," and didn't put out any new music either. It wasn't until 1979 when he reemerged, with a very offbeat project. There was a nature documentary called "The Secret Life of Plants" that virtually nobody saw, and Wonder released a double album soundtrack to it. The vast majority of the songs for it were instrumentals, which makes sense for music to a nature documentary.

The anticipation for Wonder's next release was immense. When his "Journey through the Secret Life of Plants" came out, it was a big disappointment, both critically and commercially. Clearly, Wonder was tired of the expectations of always coming out with more great hit singles and albums, and just wanted to follow his muse in experimental directions.

I applaud him for his boldness in bucking expectations and in his musical vision. But I'm afraid to say that "Journey" just isn't that good of an album. It has its moments, but at 88 minutes long, it's way too long. A lot of it seems like padding, with songs extended to fill time, and some of the same musical motifs repeated over and over again. Plus, although it is experimental, a lot of it sounds like "easy listening" or "new age" background music.

So I decided to create a single album version. Since the double album version is 88 minutes long, I wanted to limit it to something around 44 minutes. Funnily enough, this wound up just three seconds away from being exactly 44 minutes long.

I don't want to go into detail about why I chose to cut certain songs and keep others, because that would take too long. But I will say that I kept all the songs with his vocals on them, plus the instrumentals I liked best. The result is that only five out of 13 songs here are instrumentals, whereas on the double album version, 12 out of 20 songs are instrumentals, or at least are songs lacking in understandable vocals.

In addition to leaving out a bunch of songs, I also edited some songs down. I've marked in the song titles which of the seven songs I significantly edited down. The most drastic example is the kind of instrumental "Race Babbling," which goes on for over eight minutes on the original album. I've cut it down to just two minutes. (I like a little bit of the song a lot, but it's extremely repetitive overall, with only minor changes for eight minutes. Sometimes, less is more.)

Some songs, like "Power Flower" and "Outside My Window," are very good, but go on too long. So I cut short things like choruses that repeat over and over at the end of a song. In other cases, I cut out whole sections of a song. For instance, "The First Garden" is a nice instrumental, but the original version ends with a couple minutes that is pretty much just the atmospheric sounds of a jungle. I chopped that whole section out. For "A Seed's a Star - Tree Medley," I cut out about a minute from the middle of the song, where Wonder uses some kind of manipulation of his voice to make it sound robotic (similar to what Neil Young would do with his "Trans" album a couple of years later).

Anyway, some people love the entire double album version, and would find any shorter version to be a sacrilege. If you're one of those people, great. This album is not for you. But over the years, I've seen many comments that the album goes on too long and that it would have made a much better single album. I've even read some newspaper reviews to that effect. If you feel that way, then please give this version a try.

Even after all the edits and cuts I made, I still don't think it's a great album, like those he did from 1972 to 1976. But it's a much better one than before, IMHO, and one I like to listen to from time to time.

What would have made it much stronger was if he would have used at least some of the countless great unreleased songs he had lying around. For instance, I've read he almost included the song "Overjoyed" on it, but that got cut at the last minute. That alone would have really helped the album, and would have been a big hit single at the time. But I feel it goes beyond my task here to add extra songs, especially since there isn't any available version of "Overjoyed" from around 1979. (It was officially released in 1985, and played in concert from 1983 onwards.)

By the way, I've got a lot more Stevie Wonder to come after this. His career in the 1980s and after has been a disappointment compared to what came before. I'm going to do my best to try to "fix" that, using lots of music he didn't put on his official albums.

01 The First Garden [Instrumental] [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
02 Voyage to India [Instrumental] [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
03 Same Old Story (Stevie Wonder)
04 Venus' Flytrap and the Bug [Instrumental] (Stevie Wonder)
05 Seasons [Instrumental] [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
06 Power Flower [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
07 Race Babbling [Instrumental] [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
08 Send One Your Love (Stevie Wonder)
09 Outside My Window [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
10 Black Orchid (Stevie Wonder)
11 Come Back as a Flower (Syreeta Wright & Stevie Wonder)
12 A Seed's a Star - Tree Medley [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
13 The Secret Life of Plants (Stevie Wonder)
 
https://www.upload.ee/files/15852641/StevieW_1979_JournythroughSecrtLifePlntsAlternte_atse.zip.html

I've noticed the official album cover comes in several different colors, with the same design otherwise. (I'm not sure how many, or why.) I've picked the green version, since it seems to be less common.

Stevie Wonder - Feeding Off the Love of the Land - Non-Album Tracks (1974-1975)

Stevie Wonder had one of the greatest runs of incredible albums of anyone in musical history from 1972 to 1976. But what's frustrating is that it is said he's written literally hundreds of additional songs, including plenty from the 1970s, that still remain officially unreleased, and even unbootlegged.

As an example, in 1974 he released the highly acclaimed album "Fulfillingness' First Finale." But there actually was a "Fulfillingness' Second Finale" album due to be released the next year, but the record company nixed it, fearing it was too depressing. Only one of the songs on it has ever made it to the public in any form ("Feeding Off the Love of the Land" (redone for a B-side in 1991)).

Even more frustrating is that several of the musicians who played on Wonder's magnum opus, "Songs in the Key of Life" in 1976, say they recorded as many good songs that got left off that very long album as the ones that got on it! Arrgh! Why does all this music just sit in the vaults, unheard by anyone?!

Luckily, there are some songs that have made it out to the public. Although virtually no studio recordings have been bootlegged, from time to time, Wonder has played some of his unreleased songs in concert, and sometimes those luckily got recorded. I've already posted an album of stray tracks from 1972 and 1973 mostly made of such songs played in concert, and here's the same, but for 1974 and 1975. (I don't have anything from 1976, because he never toured that year, and in fact didn't tour again until 1979.)

All but two of the songs here are still unreleased. The two are from duets Wonder did on other artists' albums in this time frame. "Take a Little Trip" with Minnie Riperton and "When Your Daddy's Not Around" with Syreeta Wright.

The version of "Take a Little Trip" was written by Wonder, but the version on Riperton's 1974 album features only Riperton singing. However, luckily there's a bonus track on a later version of that album that has Wonder singing as much as Riperton does.

"When Your Daddy's Not Around" unfortunately is only a minute long. Not only is it written by Wonder, but literally every single song on Wright's 1974 album "Stevie Wonder Presents: Syreeta" is written or co-written by him! If you enjoy his 1970s music, you should really check that out. It's like another entire album from him, except mostly sung by someone else. (Wright and him were married for a few years earlier in the 1970s, and she co-wrote some songs on his albums too.)

"I Can See the Sun in Late December" is a song Wonder gave to Roberta Flack, who did her version for a 1980 album. Luckily, Wonder played it himself in concert a few times. "Feeding Off the Love of the Land," mentioned above, is a very rare instance of a studio outtake somehow becoming public.

I've included parts of an oldies medley Wonder played in concert in 1975. I've included his versions of "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," "I Heard It through the Grapevine," "What I'd Say," and "She Loves You." He only plays parts of each song, spending a total of three minutes on the four of them. The medley actually was longer, but I cut out songs that were sung by his backing vocalists, as well as a snippet of "Uptight," since he's played that hit of his tons of times.

Aside from the oldies medley, I believe all the songs are written or co-written by Wonder. So if you want more classic era Wonder, you need to give this a listen!

I've added two bonus tracks, which need some explanation. One is a great version of "Tell Me Something Good," a song Wonder wrote and gave to Rufus and Chaka Khan, who had a number one hit with it in 1974. Unfortunately, Wonder has almost never played this great song himself. I found a really good version of him doing it, but it's all the way from 2017! Thus, it's only a bonus track, since it's so out of place chronologically. But it's remarkable how little his voice has changed, so I think it fits in pretty well with the rest of the music here.

The other bonus track is a stripped down mix of his great song "Living in the City." This is exactly the same as the single version of the official release, except everything is removed but his vocals and keyboards. I really like how it sounds. (I'm not sure where it comes from, but multitrack versions of some songs have been released in recent years for "Guitar Player" and 5.1 versions of songs and albums, so I'll bet it's from something like that.)

01 I Can See the Sun in Late December (Stevie Wonder)
02 Danka Shoen Jam [Instrumental] (Stevie Wonder)
03 Take a Little Trip (Minnie Riperton & Stevie Wonder)
04 [You've Been Better to Me Than] A Lot of My Dreams (Stevie Wonder)
05 To Know You Is to Love You (Stevie Wonder)
06 When Your Daddy's Not Around (Syreeta Wright & Stevie Wonder)
07 Feeding Off the Love of the Land (Stevie Wonder)
08 Ain't Too Proud to Beg - I Heard It through the Grapevine - What I'd Say - She Loves You (Stevie Wonder)
09 I've Been Away Too Long (Stevie Wonder)
10 Yeah Ya Do (Stevie Wonder)

Living for the City [Keyboards and Vocals Version] (Stevie Wonder)
Tell Me Something Good (Stevie Wonder)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15852643/StevieW_1974-1975_FeedngOffLovetheLnd_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the cover to Wonder's single "You Haven't Done Nothin'." I obviously had to remove the song title and replace that with the album title. I also had to clean up the photo here and there, since the version I used had some blemishes on it.

Rosanne Cash - What Kinda Girl - Non-Album Tracks (1979-1989)

I really like Rosanne Cash. I've said that before and I'll probably say it many times again. There's something about her singing voice that appeals to me, and I think she's an underrated songwriter.

Rosanne Cash grew up enveloped by music, because her father was none other than Johnny Cash. She was appearing at Johnny Cash concerts and even singing some on his albums at a young age. In 1981, after recording a couple of little known country albums, she hit it big with her original song "Seven Year Ache." It was a number one country hit in the US, and even a top 20 pop hit. For the rest of the 1980s she was a significant country star, with a total of 11 number one country hits. (Her record sales plummeted with her 1990 album "Interiors" and after, even though it was great music, because it didn't fit the country radio format.)

This album covers her time as a country star. Some of the songs here are country in style, but a lot of them are more rock and roll. She always had interests in many different kinds of music, and she was a Beatles fanatic from a young age (even heading a chapter of a Beatles fan club). This can be seen by two Beatles covers on this album. Perhaps, as her record company tried to position her as a country star, her less country efforts often wound up as non-album tracks.

Still, there's a lot of country here too, including a duet with Carl Perkins and two more duets with her dad, Johnny Cash. I'd especially like to point out the duet "Love Is a Gambler." I only came across this song recently, and I was shocked to find out it still is officially unreleased. I think it's a really fun song, and it could have been a big hit.

There are a lot of other really good songs here. Two, "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" and "It's Such a Small World," were number one country hits. Even if you're not much of a country fan, this is very accessible music. She even does a cover of a Motown song ("Come See about Me").

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 Not a Second Time (Rosanne Cash)
02 The Feeling (Rosanne Cash)
03 Come See about Me (Rosanne Cash)
04 I Don't Even Try (Rosanne Cash)
05 Nobody Sees Me like You Do (Rosanne Cash)
06 No Memories Hangin' Round (Johnny Cash & Rosanne Cash)
07 What Kinda Girl (Rosanne Cash)
08 Jackson (Carl Perkins & Rosanne Cash)
09 707 (Rosanne Cash)
10 You Ain't Woman Enough [To Take My Man] (Rosanne Cash & k. d. lang)
11 It's Such a Small World (Rosanne Cash & Rodney Crowell)
12 Love Is a Gambler (Johnny Cash & Rosanne Cash)
13 Black and White (Rosanne Cash)
14 I Don't Want to Spoil the Party (Rosanne Cash)
15 Look What Our Love Is Coming To (Rosanne Cash)
16 One Step Over the Line (Rosanne Cash, John Hiatt & the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JjW4429C

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/WypNK1rq4Own1jd/file

For the album cover, I used a photo of Cash taken in 1982.

Aimee Mann - Nobody Does It Better - Non-Album Tracks (1997-2004)

Aimee Mann is fantastic and underrated. One thing I love about her is that virtually everything she does is good. This album covers a time of great creativity for her, as well as her peak of commercial success with the "Magnolia" soundtrack in 1999, so of course this is a really solid album.

One critique I've seen leveled at Mann's music which I think is fair is that her albums tend to have too many songs with similar production done at similar tempos. The songs sound great taken individually, but they can blend into each other if you're not paying close attention. These stray tracks of hers don't have that problem because they show greater variety.

And there can be no greater example of that than an Aimee Mann cover of "Sweet Home Alabama," which is included here. Yes, THAT "Sweet Home Alabama!" I didn't include her comments from before the song, but to summarize them, in her concerts, people often call out for her to play Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird," since that's a joke that virtually all musicians face. Eventually, she decided to face this by surprising audiences and actually playing "Freebird." But she and her band members listened to the song, and decided it was rather slow, and Lynyrd Skynyrd's equally famous "Sweet Home Alabama" made for a more rocking and fun song to play. So this is the result. I couldn't have imagined her doing a song like that, but I think it sounds great.

The rest of the songs on the album are a mixed bunch. She married fellow singer-songwriter Michael Penn in 1997, and they've stayed married since. They sing two songs here, both of them covers. In addition, I've added their duet version of Penn's hit song "No Myth" as a bonus track. The only reason it got demoted to bonus track status is because the sound is subpart compared to the rest of the album, since it's taken from an audience bootleg.

A majority of the rest of the songs are originals, with the exceptions of "Nobody Does It Better," "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "The Scientist," and "What the World Needs Now." And I'm not sure who wrote the songs she does as duets with Dan Zanes and Jim White.

Mann has performed a lot of her songs in a solo acoustic format, and they sound great that way. I've got a whole other series of albums of her songs played acoustically. But I think I'll finish posting her stray tracks albums before getting to those.

This album is 50 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

UPDATE: On June 8, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. I added a song I'd missed, "Backfire."

01 Nobody Does It Better (Aimee Mann)
02 Reason to Believe (Aimee Mann & Michael Penn)
03 Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Aimee Mann)
04 Two of Us (Aimee Mann & Michael Penn)
05 Nightmare Girl (Aimee Mann)
06 Backfire (Aimee Mann)
07 Fighting the Stall (Aimee Mann)
08 Observatory (Aimee Mann with Glenn Tilbrook)
09 The Scientist (Aimee Mann)
10 Night Owl (Dan Zanes & Aimee Mann)
11 Sweet Home Alabama (Aimee Mann)
12 Static on the Radio (Jim White & Aimee Mann)
13 What the World Needs Now (Aimee Mann)

No Myth (Aimee Mann & Michael Penn)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15423587/AimeMn_1997-2004_NbdyDoesItBetter_atse.zip.html

The cover art uses a photo of Mann from 1999.

Robyn Hitchcock - A Star for Bram - Acoustic Versions (2000)

Here's the next in my long series of Robyn Hitchcock albums. This is the type where I made an all-acoustic version of one of his studio albums.

This album is based on "A Star for Bram," released in 2000. That album was pretty much the leftovers from "A Jewel for Sophia." The connection was made obvious by the album covers, which are nearly identical except for different colors. However, "A Jewel for Sophia" is one of his very best albums, so it's not surprising that even the leftovers make up a very good album.

I was able to find acoustic versions for 9 of the 12 songs on "A Star for Bram." The sound quality varies. The first song probably has the worst sound. But most of them come from soundboards and sound very good.

It's a short album, only 35 minutes long.

01 Daisy Bomb (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 I Saw Nick Drake (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Adoration of the City (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 1974 (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 I Wish I Liked You (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Nietzsche's Way (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 The Philosopher's Stone (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Judas Sings [Jesus and Me] (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 I Used to Love You (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15272747/RobynH_2000_StarforBrmAcousticVersions_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I could only find one color photo of Hitchcock that I knew for sure came from 2000. It's a strange picture of his face up next to a clock, but that's okay, because he's a strange guy. ;)

Various Artists - Nuggets 6: Scandinavia (1965-1970)

Generally speaking, I'm been focusing on posting stray tracks collections from prominent artists. But I have a lot of other things I plan on posting eventually, including many various artists collections. I've posted several collections of what are called "nuggets," which are mostly garage rock-type songs from more obscure bands. Rhino Records released two excellent box sets of such material, but those mostly focused on American and British bands. I was intrigued to find more of the songs from other countries.

This album deals with the "nuggets" from Scandinavia. I define that as Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. I must admit I don't know the music of Scandinavia from the 1960s that well. But I have found a bunch of songs I like a lot, all of them in English.

I would like to especially point out the song "Naked When You Come," by the Lollipops. Apparently, the Lollipops were a Danish boy band, which made a bunch of forgettable, derivative pop. Yet this original song is a serious classic to my ears.

This collection also has four songs from the Tages, a more serious group from Sweden. They were known as the Beatles of Sweden, and with good reason. Obviously, they weren't as good as the Beatles (who were?!), but they may have been the best 1960s band in Europe outside of the British Isles. If you like their songs here, you should check out their album "Studio," which is excellent.

If any of you know of some really good songs from Scandinavia that fit with this style of music, please let me know and I'll consider adding them to this collection.

I have more albums in this series to post, covering other parts of Europe, and beyond.

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Empty Handed (Friends)
02 I Want to Live (Mascots)
03 My Life (Thor's Hammer)
04 Naked When You Come (Lollipops)
05 Summer Sun (Beathovens)
06 Wedding (Hep Stars)
07 Words Enough to Tell You (Mascots)
08 You Can Be My Baby (Red Squares)
09 Have You Seen Your Brother Lately (Tages)
10 It's My Life (Tages)
11 A Girl I Knew (Savage Rose)
12 Fantasy Island (Tages)
13 I Read You like an Open Book (Tages)
14 They Call Us Misfits [Dom Kallar Oss Mods] (Lea Riders Group)
15 Did You Give the World Some Love Today, Baby (Doris Svensson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634475/Nuggets6_Scndinavia_atse.zip.html

Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers - Live Cover Versions, 2002-2003

Here's yet another album of live cover versions by Tom P*tty and the Heartbreakers. I believe this is the ninth such album in the series.

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

All but five of the 13 songs here were officially released, which is a lot more than usual for this album series. That means the sound quality is usually excellent. However, there are a couple of the unreleased tracks, especially "Commit a Crime" that sound somewhat rougher.

As is typical for this series, the vast majority of the songs are classic hits from the 1950s and 1960s. But P*tty seems to have been in more of a bluesy mood than usual. He played a number of usually lesser known blues songs, such as "Commit a Crime," "Down Home Girl," "Born in Chicago," and "Done Somebody Wrong." As an aside, some of the original songs he wrote around this time also had a bluesy sound to them.

I think the most recent song is "I'd Like to Love You Baby," by J. J. Cale, from 1972 (which, by the way, is also a blues song).

As usual, if you like Tom P*tty and good rock and roll music, you should like this.

This album is 50 minutes long.

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

https://pixeldrain.com/u/au2pcQ53 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/ERMEH2CyFi1cg8B/file

I've gotten in a habit of using concert posters for the album covers in this series, so I'm going to continue with that. Luckily, P*tty had a lot of colorful and interesting posters. This one dates from 2014. I removed some text towards the bottom and replaced it with the album title. I also changed the background color from white.

Fairport Convention - One Sure Thing - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1967-1968

I'm posting this second Fairport Convention album immediately after the other one I just posted to hopefully make clear my approach on dealing with the band's non-album tracks. That album contains all their songs that didn't appear on any of their official studio albums, including some BBC performances. This album makes up all their other BBC performances.

The first half of this album is from when July Dyble was the band's main singer. From the seventh track onwards ("She Moves through the Fair"), the rest of the songs have Sandy Denny as the band's main singer.

Actually, not all the songs on this album are BBC performances. I've added a few song demos here too, because I couldn't think of a better place to put them. The first two songs are demos by Judy Dyble. The seventh track (mentioned above) plus the last two are acoustic or demo versions by Sandy Denny.

All the songs here have been officially released, so the sound is great. And the performances are excellent too.

I'll continue this approach, with more albums of unique non-album songs, plus other albums of BBC performances, soon.

01 Both Sides Now (Fairport Convention)
02 One Sure Thing (Fairport Convention)
03 Chelsea Morning (Fairport Convention)
04 If [Stomp] (Fairport Convention)
05 Time Will Show the Wiser (Fairport Convention)
06 If I Had a Ribbon Bow (Fairport Convention)
07 She Moves Through the Fair [Acoustic Version] (Fairport Convention)
08 Some Sweet Day (Fairport Convention)
09 I Don't Know Where I Stand (Fairport Convention)
10 Nottamun Town (Fairport Convention)
11 Jack O'Diamonds [Edit] (Fairport Convention)
12 Fotheringay [Acoustic Version] (Fairport Convention)
13 Autopsy [Demo] (Fairport Convention)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8k5y962o 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/btHLJfyr9soxJIj/file

Good color photos of Fairport Convention in their early years are harder to find than hen's teeth. This isn't a great photo of the band - Sandy Denny isn't even in view - but it is of them from 1969.

Fairport Convention - Morning Glory - Non-Album Tracks (1967-1968)

Almost exactly a year ago, I posted an album of Fairport Convention at the BBC. (Wow, have I been running this blog for a year already?!) It collected all the BBC performances of the band when their main singer was Judy Dyble, who was only with the back from its start in 1967 through mid-1968. I didn't post any more from the band after that, because I wasn't sure how best to organize their non-album tracks.

I finally figured out a way, so I'm ready to post a lot more by the band. I decided to collect all their songs not on their official albums, creating a series of stray tracks albums. Then, I collected all their BBC performances of songs on their official albums. This means splitting up the BBC performances into two groups. But I think it makes more sense this way. I want to listen to the songs that aren't on their official albums (which I've heard many, many times) more than performances of songs that often are only slightly different than the ones on their albums.

With that in mind, here's the first album using this new approach. I'll be using many of the same songs I put on that Judy Dyble-focused collection I did a year ago, since I'm acting as if that collection doesn't exist. (But I'll keep that album on this blog for people who still want it.)

For this first album, it still has a Judy Dyble focus. Except this time, it's all songs that don't repeat any of the songs on the very first Fairport Convention album in 1968, simply called "Fairport Convention." That's the only one with Dyble, since she was replaced by Sandy Danny. Of course Denny is great, but I feel Dyble is underrated.

Unfortunately, there simply aren't enough unique stray tracks from the Dyble era to make up a full album. But I got around that problem by adding in some songs Dyble sung with Giles, Giles and Fripp shortly after leaving Fairport Convention. If you're not familiar, Giles, Giles and Fripp was a very short lived group that only released one album, "The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp," in 1968. Then Peter Giles left and Michael Giles and Robert Fripp picked up some new members and morphed into King Crimson.

Dyble was with this band very briefly and doesn't appear on their sole album. But the songs she sings with them are very good in my opinion, and also sound a lot like Fairport Convention and very little like what King Crimson would sound like. However, one of the songs she sings with them, "I Talk to the Wind," actually would appear on King Crimson's acclaimed debut album, "In the Court of the Crimson King," though in different form (and of course not sung by her).

So what you have here is 24 minutes of Dyble-led Fairport Convention songs, two of them from BBC performances and four not. Then there's 13 minutes of Dyble-led Giles, Giles and Fripp songs. Add it up and it makes for a nice 37-minute-long album.

As far as the Fairport Convention songs that don't come from the BBC, special note should be made of two songs performed for a French TV show, "Morning Glory" and "Reno, Nevada." If you're a fan of Fairport Convention at all, you should look these up on YouTube, because it seems to be the only color footage of the band from before 1970, and definitely the only footage from the Dyble era. Even Richard Thompson and other band members have publicly commented about how happy they were to see this footage on YouTube. What's really impressive is the performance of "Reno, Nevada," because they take a simple short folk song and turn it into an eight-minute-long Richard Thompson guitar solo extravaganza. The audio recording of this is very clear, and of course it's included here.

By the way, there's one BBC performance, "Let's Stay Together," that I had to reduce to a mere bonus track due to sound quality issues.

01 Lay Down Your Weary Tune (Fairport Convention)
02 If I Had a Ribbon Bow (Fairport Convention)
03 Both Sides Now (Fairport Convention)
04 Violets of Dawn (Fairport Convention)
05 Morning Glory (Fairport Convention)
06 Reno, Nevada (Fairport Convention)
07 Passages of Time (Giles, Giles & Fripp with Judy Dyble)
08 Under the Sky (Giles, Giles & Fripp with Judy Dyble)
09 Make It Today (Giles, Giles & Fripp with Judy Dyble)
10 I Talk to the Wind (Giles, Giles & Fripp with Judy Dyble)

Let's Get Together (Fairport Convention)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15115264/FairprtC_1967a-1968_MorningGlry_atse.zip.html

It's exceedingly difficult to find any color photos of Judy Dyble or the rest of Fairport Convention from the Dyble era. Pretty much the only color images come from that one French TV appearance on YouTube. So I took a screenshot of Dyble from that and used it as the cover. It's too bad I couldn't get the rest of the band in the picture too, but she was the main singer for only a short time, so I figure it's okay if she gets the spotlight for this one album. It's not even a great photo of her, but at least it exists! ;)

Dusty Springfield - Am I the Same Girl? - Non-Album Tracks (1969-1970)

I've said several times in this blog that Dusty Spingfield's 1960s discography is a confusing mess. And that's not even considering her parallel career of numerous TV and radio appearances, where she did a whole different set of songs (check out my "On TV and Radio" series for that).

This is the last of my 1960s stray tracks albums for her. If you download this, plus all my previously posted stray tracks albums for her, and you get all of her official British albums, you should have literally everything she recorded in the 1960s.

Just to be clear, these are the 1960s albums I have NOT posted here, since they're fine as they are:

Ev'rything's Coming Up Dusty (1965)
Where Am I Going (1967)
Dusty ... Definitely (1968)
Dusty in Memphis (1969)

On top of that, I've posted six stray tracks collections, including this one. I posted the stray tracks albums out of order, so it's easy to get confused. Just download everything from her and you'll be fine. ;)

Now that's spelled out, let's get to the music on this album. The first eight songs are from singles, with six out of those eight being A-sides. The remaining five songs are songs that were officially released later, as bonus tracks or on archival releases.

Given the large number of A-sides, it's a safe bet this is a pretty solid album, even if a lot of her singles weren't big hits. (She was entering a period of commercial decline, with a few exceptions, probably because her musical style and looks became increasingly out of step with the more wild hippie trends of the time.) In fact, I'd go so far to say that there's usually little difference between the quality of her album tracks and non-album tracks, because she was a perfectionist with everything she did.

Anyway, note that this does not include all of her stray tracks from 1970. I have some more of those on the next stray tracks of hers that I'll be posting. 

This album is 36 minutes long.

01 Willie and Laura Mae Jones (Dusty Springfield)
02 That Old Sweet Roll [Hi-De-Ho] (Dusty Springfield)
03 Am I the Same Girl (Dusty Springfield)
04 Earthbound Gypsy (Dusty Springfield)
05 I Wanna Be a Free Girl (Dusty Springfield)
06 What Good Is I Love You (Dusty Springfield)
07 Morning Please Don't Come (Dusty Springfield)
08 How Can I Be Sure (Dusty Springfield)
09 What Do You Do When Love Dies (Dusty Springfield)
10 Cherished (Dusty Springfield)
11 Goodbye (Dusty Springfield)
12 Richest Girl Alive (Dusty Springfield)
13 Summer Love (Dusty Springfield)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15833911/DstySpr_1969-1970_AmISmeGirl_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I chose the cover of one of the covers for her "Am I the Same Girl" single. I cleaned it up and removed some text on it, such as the name of the B-side.

Paul McCartney - Twice in a Lifetime - Non-Album Tracks (1985-1986)

It occurred to me today that it's been a long time since I've last posted a Paul McCartney album. I've got a lot more of his stuff to post, since he's had such a long and prolific solo career. So I'm posting this, and I'll try to prioritize posting more of his music soon.

This album deals with the years 1985 and 1986. Many, including me, consider the mid-1980s to be a low point in his career. His "Tug of War" album in 1982 was great, one of his best, but then "Pipes of Peace" a year later was basically the leftover songs from that album, so it wasn't nearly as good. Then, after the longest gap between albums in his career so far, he put out "Press to Play" in 1986. It was received very poorly both critically and commercially. If you look at the crowdsourced ratings of his albums on rateyourmusic.com, "Press to Play" has the lowest rating of all his solo albums, even including his classical and experimental projects. I would argue that between the long wait before and after the album, and the album itself, his career momentum took a big hit, from which it never recovered. He'd been steadily having hits up until this point, but that pretty much stopped for good from 1986 onwards.

The strange thing though is that although I agree "Press to Play" is not a good McCartney album, he had a lot of songs from this time period that was better than what he put on the album. I don't really count "Spies like Us" as part of that. It was a top ten hit in the US, and almost one in Britain, but I think that was almost entirely due to career momentum and a movie tie-in. It's pretty much been forgotten by radio and compilation albums in the years since. I've included it, but I used a radio edit that's a minute shorter.

The other songs here come from all sources. Two are "Press to Play" bonus tracks. Two others are B-sides. Another is from a various artists compilation. Four others remain officially unreleased. But, in my opinion, it all adds up to a collection of songs that's stronger than "Press to Play."

I think a big problem with that album was the production. In general, artists like McCartney who made it big in the 1960s and 1970s suffered from bad production in the mid-1980s as they struggled to sound current. "Press to Play" is a classic example. So I've tried to find some alternate versions of the best songs from that album that aren't so overproduced. I've gone with unreleased studio outtakes of "Stranglehold" and "Footprints." They aren't very different, but I think they're a little better. I've chosen an official remix of "Angry." But I think the biggest and best difference is a live acoustic version of "Only Love Remains."

Frankly, if you have those four songs from that album here, you don't have much need for the actual "Press to Play" album. I don't even think much of the hit song, "Press" (which also has been pretty much totally forgotten in the years since). The one good thing about the album is that McCartney realized he was slacking musically, and he tried much harder for his next album, and put out a much better one.

If you're a fan of "Press to Play," then more power to you. But I have to call 'em like I see 'em, and I'd much rather listen to this album than that one.

01 Spies like Us [Single Version] (Paul McCartney)
02 Yvonne [Yvonne's the One] (Paul McCartney)
03 I Love This House (Paul McCartney)
04 Twice in a Lifetime (Paul McCartney)
05 Words of Love [Acoustic] (Paul McCartney)
06 Simple as That (Paul McCartney)
07 Stranglehold [Alternate Version] (Paul McCartney)
08 Footprints [Alternate Version] (Paul McCartney)
09 Tough on a Tightrope (Paul McCartney)
10 Angry [Remix] (Paul McCartney)
11 Write Away (Paul McCartney)
12 Only Love Remains [Live Acoustic] (Paul McCartney)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696793/PALMCCRTNY1985-1986_TwceinLfetime_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I found a photo of McCartney from 1986. I don't know the details.

Blind Faith - Village Antiques - Non-Album Tracks (1969)

Today, it occurred to me that I've overlooked posting anything from Blind Faith, even though I've posted a lot of Eric Clapton's stuff from both before and after the band's short existence. So here's my attempt at giving the band a second album.

In case you don't know, Blind Faith was the first rock "supergroup," consisting of Clapton and Ginger Baker from Cream, Steve Winwood from Traffic, and Rick Grech from Family. They only existed for part of 1969, and put out one album, also called "Blind Faith."

There has been various extra material released over the years, including a deluxe three CD version of their album, plus a DVD of their first concert, in Hyde Park, London. The problem is that a lot of that material isn't very good. The deluxe edition is short on actual songs and heavy on long instrumental jams (all in the 15-minute range) that simply aren't that good. Plus, the Hyde Park concert sounds okay, but it isn't liked by the band members themselves, since they felt pressured to do it before they had practiced enough.

I also considered including an instrumental called "Change of Address." This was actually the first thing released by the band, as a single, though it wasn't for sale and only a small number were sent to radio stations. However, I decided it was pretty bad, just a simple chord change sequence repeated over and over with no soloing or meaningful variation. I decided it wasn't even worth including as a bonus track.

I decided to try to include as much songs with vocals as possible, and avoid all the long instrumental jams. I was helped by the fact that an earlier rerelease of the "Blind Faith" album contained two bonus tracks that were left off the deluxe edition: "Exchange and Mart" and "Spending All My Days." Both of these were meant for a Rick Grech solo album that never materialized, and Grech is the lead singer on "Spending All My Days." (The other song is an instrumental.) But it was basically Blind Faith playing on the two songs, plus a few extra people, including George Harrison assisting Clapton on guitar.

I found other songs here and there. For instance, the band had a limited concert set list that was almost entirely made of the songs from their lone album, but they did play a few extra songs. One was the Rolling Stones' hit "Under My Thumb," so I've included an excellent sounding version of that from a Steve Windwood box set.

They also played some Cream and Traffic songs to pad out their concerts. They did occasionally play Traffic's "40,000 Headmen" and Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love," but the only versions of those I found sounded extremely poor, not even good enough to be bonus tracks.

However, I did find better versions of Traffic's "Means to an End" and Cream's "Crossroads" from a Santa Barbara concert. (They didn't play either of those at the Hyde Park concert.) While the sound on those isn't great, I think they hold up with the rest of the album. It's especially interesting to hear Blind Faith perform "Crossroads," because Clapton sang it with Cream and all through his long solo career, but Winwood sings it here.

I've included two versions of their cover of the blues song "Sleeping in the Ground" because they did it two different ways. There's a fast version that's less than three minutes long, and a slow version that's nearly five minutes long. But since it's the same song, I put one version at the very front of the album and the other at the very end, to make listening to both of them less repetitious. I've also included an electric version of the band's best known song, "Can't Find My Way Home," because that's drastically different from the acoustic version that made their album.

Oh, I did include one long instrumental, but ironically it wasn't included on the deluxe edition of the album. I'm referring to the blues standard "Key to the Highway." Clapton would do a version with vocals for his acclaimed Derek and the Dominos album a year later. This version has no vocals, but in my opinion it has much more spirited soloing than any of the long jams that were included on the deluxe edition.

Add it all up, and this comes to 46 minutes of music, with only three instrumentals. I think this makes for a solid second album.

01 Sleeping in the Ground (Blind Faith)
02 Exchange and Mart [Instrumental] (Blind Faith)
03 Can't Find My Way Home [Electric Version] (Blind Faith)
04 Spending All My Days (Blind Faith)
05 Time Winds [Instrumental] (Blind Faith)
06 Under My Thumb (Blind Faith)
07 Crossroads (Blind Faith)
08 Means to an End (Blind Faith)
09 Key to the Highway [Instrumental] (Blind Faith)
10 Sleeping in the Ground [Slow Blues Version] (Blind Faith)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15902124/BlindF_1969_VillagAntiques_atse.zip.html

Normally, when it comes to naming albums, I try to chose the names of one of the songs, rather than come up with a name from scratch. However, with this album, I didn't think any of the song titles worked well as album titles. Then, with that still unresolved, I came across a great photo of the band. It was taken in front of a local store called "Village Antiques" near their recording studio, in July 1969, and was obviously considered for their album cover. So I decided to use "Village Antiques" as the album title. All I did to the cover was remove a little bit of text from the store's sign and replace that with the band name.

It seems the sort of quirky thing a band like this one would have done at the time. In case you doubt that, consider how much hassle and trouble the band had for their official album cover, which showed a topless 11 year old girl holding what some considered to be a phallic object. Many stores refused to stock the album, forcing the record company to make an alternate cover. As if that wasn't enough, the neither the band name nor the album name was put on the cover. So yeah, it was a time of quirky album covers. ;)

The Pretenders - I Got You Babe - Non-Album Tracks (1981-1985)

I've already posted one album of stray tracks from the Pretenders. I have many more to come. This one covers 1981 to 1985.

In 1981, the Pretenders were a "real" band, meaning it wasn't just Chrissie Hynde and a bunch of people backing her up. But in mid-1982, bassist Pete Farndon was kicked out of the band and died of a drug overdose a short time thereafter, then lead guitarist James Honeyman-Scott also died of a drug overdose. The Pretenders were never really a real band after that. The first four songs on this album come from before the two deaths.

However, despite these losses, the band's 1984 album "Learning to Crawl" was a huge hit and is arguably the band's best album ever (or maybe tied with the debut album). This album basically covers the "Learning to Crawl" era, so it's pretty good too. Four of the songs are bonus tracks from that album.

Two of the songs are still officially unreleased, a medley of "Wild Thing" and "Whatcha Gonna Do about it," and "Room Full of Mirrors." The sound of these two live songs are pretty good, though I don't think they come from soundboard bootlegs. Note that a version of the Jimi Hendrix song "Room Full of Mirrors" would appear on the next Pretenders album "Get Close." But that album has some typical 1980s production issues, so I prefer the live version here.

The last song, "I Got You Babe," deserves a special mention because it was a hit in 1985. It's a duet between Chrissie Hynde and UB40, and it's a cover of a 1960s hit by Sonny and Cher. I think it's also the first commercially significant Hynde solo song. But on all future Pretenders stray tracks albums, there will be plenty of those, sometimes more than actual Pretenders songs. But I'll be mixing the two together, because there's so little difference between the Pretenders and Hynde solo.

This album is rather short at 35 minutes. There are a couple more songs I want to add to it, but they're very rare and I haven't found them yet. (One is a cover of "Day Tripper" from a 1981 concert and the other is a version of "The Last Ride" from a 1984 concert, which I think is the same song that would show up on a 2008 Pretenders album. If you have either of these, please let me know.)

01 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher [Live] (Pretenders)
02 In the Sticks [Instrumental] (Pretenders)
03 Tequila (Pretenders)
04 Wild Thing - Whatcha Gonna Do about It [Live] (Pretenders)
05 Fast or Slow [The Law's the Law] (Pretenders)
06 Money [That's What I Want] [Live] (Pretenders)
07 Ramblin' Rob [Demo] (Pretenders)
08 Room Full of Mirrors [Live] (Pretenders)
09 I Got You Babe (UB40 & Chrissie Hynde)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15181600/TPretndrs_1981-1985_IGotYouBbe_atse.zip.html

In searching for good album cover art, I came across a neat Pretenders concert T-shirt from 1984. I wanted to use that, but it was too blurry and low-res. However, I happened to find the exact black and white photo that was put on the shirt. So I've used that, and added "The Pretenders" in red, taking the letters directly from a photo of the T-shirt. Of course, I also had to add the album title.

Maria McKee - If Love Is a Red Dress - Non-Album Tracks (1994-1996)

It's been a long time since I've posted any Maria McKee music, but I definitely haven't forgotten her. So far, I've posted two albums of stray tracks and one album of acoustic versions. This is the next in the stray tracks series, covering 1994 to 1996. There will be a lot more to follow this, eventually.

I'm sure the most well known song on this album is the first one, "If Love Is a Red Dress," because it was featured in the movie "Pulp Fiction." Most of the remaining 11 songs are also officially released, with a bunch of them being B-sides. But four songs here are still unreleased. One is a studio outtake and the other three are from in-person radio station performances, so the sound of those are basically the same as studio recordings.

There's not much more to say except if you like McKee's music from the time period, you'll like this.

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 If Love Is a Red Dress [Hang Me in Rags] (Maria McKee)
02 Hold Me Up (Chris Lizotte & Maria McKee)
03 The Plague (Maria McKee)
04 Anathema (Maria McKee)
05 Her I Shred (Maria McKee)
06 I'm in Love with My Car (Maria McKee)
07 Magdelaine (Maria McKee)
08 Ribbons (Maria McKee)
09 Amnesia Blues (Maria McKee)
10 At Your Feet (Maria McKee)
11 One Hand, One Heart (Maria McKee)
12 If You Were Still Around (Maria McKee)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15848149/MariMcK_1994-1996_IfLovIsRedDrss_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I used the cover of the "Breathe" single. I changed the text and colorized it from black and white to slightly red.

The Move - BBC Sessions, Volume 3, 1969

This is the third album I've posted of the Move's BBC performances. I really like how there happens to be one album's worth of music per calendar year.

As with the two previous albums, I think the really interesting thing here is the number and variety of cover songs. Five of the 13 BBC performances here are Move originals: "Something," "Beautiful Daughter," "Curly," "Hello Susie," and "Fields of People."

Here's a breakdown of who did the originals for the rest:

The Birthday - Idle Race
Goin' Out of My Head - Little Anthony and the Imperials
Evil Woman - Crow
The Sound of Silence - Simon and Garfunkel
Abraham, Martin and John - Dion
Open My Eyes - Nazz
Walk Right Back - Everly Brothers

Once again, it's notable that not only did they seem more interested in playing covers than their own songs, they sometimes played fairly recent hits by their competitors. For instance, "Evil Woman" was a hit by Crow when the Move played it at the BBC. I applaud their approach of playing whatever good songs they liked, even if that didn't help them sell their latest records.

I've added two bonus tracks of sorts at the end that actually aren't BBC performances at all, but I didn't have a better place to stick them. On the 1968 BBC collection, I included three songs recorded by Ace Kefford, who was bassist for the Move until he had to leave in mid-1968 due to mental issues. Those three songs were recorded in 1968 for a solo album that never got released at the time. Here are two more that he recorded in 1969 and also didn't get released until decades later. I think they would have made solid Move songs.

Two songs, a cover of "Good Times" by the Easybeats and a cover of "Rock and Roll Woman" by the Buffalo Springfield, come from a bootleg. Originally, I didn't think they were even worry of inclusion as bonus tracks. However, I did some editing, such as patching in a chorus from one part of the song to help with a chorus in a rougher sounding part of the song. Then I got my musical associate MZ to work on them. He managed to make them a little bit clearer. So at least now they're listenable, but still rough.

This album is 41 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks.

01 The Birthday (Move)
02 Beautiful Daughter (Move)
03 Goin' Out of My Head (Move)
04 Evil Woman (Move)
05 Curly (Move)
06 The Sound of Silence (Move)
07 Abraham, Martin and John (Move)
08 Open My Eyes (Move)
09 Hello Susie (Move)
10 Fields of People (Move)
11 Walk Right Back (Move)
12 Gravy Booby Jamm (Ace Kefford Stand)
13 This World's an Apple (Ace Kefford & Big Bertha)

Good Times [Edit] (Move)
Rock and Roll Woman [Edit] (Move)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/f1Fgex3k

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/dGp0J2Igxh6logJ/file

For the cover art, I'm glad to say that I found an actual photo of the Move performing for the BBC in 1969. This comes from an appearance on the BBC TV show "Colour Me Pop."