Mary Chapin Carpenter - The Barns at Wolf Trap, Vienna, VA, 7-3-1995

I think it's strange that Mary Chapin Carpenter has never released a live album. But there were to be one, I'd be most interested in hearing one from her mid-1990s commercial peak. Unfortunately, when it comes to bootlegs, there are virtually no soundboards or radio shows from that time period. However, I did find one concert that's worthy, and that's what's presented here. It's the audio from her live DVD, called "Jubilee: Live at Wolf Trap."

The good news is this is a professionally recorded concert from the weirdly named venue "The Barns at Wolf Trap." (I gather "The Barns" is in front for clarification, because there's more than one concert arena at Wolf Trap.) But there's a big downside to using the audio from this DVD: instead of just presenting the entire concert, there usually were interludes between songs that cut to clips of her being interviewed at a different date and location. Even worse, a couple of songs actually have dialogue over the music. One of those was a duet between her and Shawn Colvin that wasn't from the concert at all. Another, "Jubilee," is a backstage performance. So I don't feel bad losing those, since neither of them actually were a part of the concert.

But there's one more song, "Stones in the Road," that's all messed up. It started with some talking over the song, then switched to a duet version of Carpenter and Joan Baez in a different location. Then, about a minute and a half in, it switched to the version played at Wolf Trap. But even then, during an instrumental solo section, there was more talking over the music. So I found a different live version, the one released on the "Party Doll" album, and used that for the first couple of minutes, then morphed it into the Wolf Trap version for the second half of the song. The arrangements were pretty much identical since the two versions were performed only a few months apart, so I don't think you'll notice the switch.

The other big problem with the DVD audio was that the editors were quick to cut away from the songs as soon as they finished. So there's virtually no talking between songs. To fix the very short audience applause, I used the few songs where there was longer applause and copied and pasted that into the brief applause for the other songs. I was careful to match the volume of the end of the clapping of one song with the start of the next one.

Now, after those edits, this should sound like a normal concert, except one in which she hardly said anything between songs. In a way that;s a bummer, but it means the concert has no wasted time whatsoever.

If you enjoy Mary Chapin Carpenter's most popular albums from the 1990s, this is the concert for you. She plays pretty much all of her hits, as well as her other most popular songs. That's so much the case that this could easily double as the track list for a greatest hits album.

The album is one hour and 15 minutes long. Oh, and note she plays the songs with a band, so it's generally a lively album.

01 Why Walk When You Can Fly (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 Passionate Kisses (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 I Feel Lucky (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Shut Up and Kiss Me (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 A Keeper of Every Flame (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 Come On Come On (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 The Last Word (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 John Doe No. 24 (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 Only a Dream (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 I Am a Town (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Can't Take Love for Granted (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 The Hard Way (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 Quittin' Time (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 He Thinks He'll Keep Her (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 Down at the Twist and Shout (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 Stones in the Road [Edit] (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15282389/MaryChapC_1995_BrnsatWlfTrapViennaVA__7-3-1995_atse.zip.html

I could have used a photo from the DVD, but the quality wasn't that good. I also could have used a screenshot from a video of the DVD on YouTube, but that was a bit low resolution as well. So instead, I went with a photo from an unknown 1995 concert.

Norah Jones - Let It Ride - Non-Album Tracks (2012-2013)

Over the past few days, I've updated virtually every Norah Jones album that I've posted at this blog so far. (The only exceptions are the one called "Day Is Done" and the Tanglewood Jazz Festival with Marian McPartland.) The reason for all the changes is that I was contacted by a Norah Jones super fan named Jorge who shared dozens and dozens of her songs that I'd somehow overlooked. I didn't include all the songs, mostly due to sound quality issues for some of the live ones, but I included enough for me to have to create two new albums in order to keep everything in rough chronological order.

If you're a fan of these albums, I highly, highly recommend you redownload them all! Seriously. There are newly discovered songs all over the place, others with improved sound, still others that were misplaced moved to the years they were done, improved mp3 tag information, and more. My musical friend MZ even worked on improving the sound of some of the iffy cases, including all of the bonus tracks.

I'm sorry that I keep having to change these Norah Jones albums. It frustrates me to no end, believe me. The thing is, she's done so many side projects, collaborations, and the like, and played all kinds of songs in concert that aren't on her albums, yet as far as I can tell, nobody has systematically collected them and made them available anywhere. So I had to grope around in the dark. But now that I've had the help of Jorge, I'm very confident I've found 99 plus percent of everything available out there, so I'm confident I won't have to make major changes again. That's why this is the ideal time for you to get these updated versions of her albums.

Anyway, let me address the music specifically on this album. It's very much like the other stray tracks albums I've been posting. It has a couple of songs from one of her side projects, in this case the Little Willies. It also has one song from an album she did with Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. They did an entire album of Everly Brothers covers. But all the songs but one mainly featured Armstrong on lead vocals, so I've only included the one with Jones singing the main lead. This album also has other collaborations, including a duet with her favorite duet partner, Willie Nelson.

By chance, all the songs here are officially released, although some of them are very obscure. So sound quality isn't a problem, except for the bonus track, a cover of the Rolling Stones classic "Beast of Burden." That one is from a bootleg, and the sound quality just doesn't match the standards of the rest.

One final note. Three of the songs ("Killing Time," "It Came upon a Midnight Clear," and "Always Judging") are from the previous album in this stray tracks album series, and had to be moved here due to space issues with that previous album. There was a lot of moving around from album to album like that, which is all the more reason for you to redownload all the previous albums. But hopefully everything will be clear and simple with her albums moving forward chronologically from here. Knock on wood!

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Lovesick Blues (Little Willies featuring Norah Jones)
02 Remember Me (Little Willies featuring Norah Jones)
03 Killing Time (Norah Jones)
04 It Came upon a Midnight Clear (Norah Jones)
05 Always Judging (Norah Jones)
06 Dealbreaker (White on Rice featuring Norah Jones)
07 Lullaby + Exile (M. Ward & Norah Jones)
08 [Talk to Me Of] Mendocino (Norah Jones)
09 I'm Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail (Billie Joe Armstrong & Norah Jones)
10 Funny How Time Slips Away (Willie Nelson & Norah Jones)
11 Let It Ride (Robert Glasper & Norah Jones)

Beast of Burden (Norah Jones & Hayes Carll)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696746/NORHJNS2012-2013_LetItRde_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is of Norah Jones in concert in 2012.

Manfred Mann - Mann Made (1965)

I'm continuing to post Manfred Mann's 1960's output in hopes people will take this band more seriously. Virtually everything I'm planning on posting are stray tracks compilations I've made. But there are two early Manfred Mann albums that need no changing: "The Five Faces of Manfred Mann," and this one. So I'm posting this just as it is.

This album was only released in Britain. The US releases were generally even more messed up than the British ones, so I'm sticking with the British. It's notable that Manfred Mann are largely remembered as a singles band, but there are no hit singles on this. In the 1960s, Britain was still recovering from World War II, and people typically didn't have much spending money. It was considered a rip-off to make someone buy a single and then buy the same song when an album came out later. (Of course that changed before too long!)

With this album, the band is still very much in rhythm and blues mode, with some jazzy instrumental added in. I really don't think they deserve their reputation as a poppy singles band.

This album is 40 minutes long.

01 Since I Don't Have You (Manfred Mann)
02 You're for Me (Manfred Mann)
03 Look Away (Manfred Mann)
04 The Abominable Showmann [Instrumental] (Manfred Mann)
05 Watch Your Step (Manfred Mann)
06 Call It Stormy Monday (Manfred Mann)
07 I Really Do Believe (Manfred Mann)
08 Hi Lili, Hi Lo (Manfred Mann)
09 The Way You Do the Things You Do (Manfred Mann)
10 Bare Hugg [Instrumental] (Manfred Mann)
11 You Don't Know Me (Manfred Mann)
12 L. S. D. (Manfred Mann)
13 I'll Make It up to You (Manfred Mann)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16695552/MANFRDMNN1965_MnnMde_atse.zip.html

The cover art is just the same as the original cover. I enlarged it a bit because there was some damage around the edges for the photograph I used, which was the best one I could find.

Norah Jones - Hands on the Wheel - Non-Album Tracks (2007-2008)

A couple of days ago, I started posting a complete overhaul of all the Norah Jones stray tracks albums I've posted so far. This is due to a Jones super fan named Jorge, who alerted me to dozens of her songs that I'd previously missed. I've found so many new songs that I've had to create a couple of new albums to squeeze between existing albums in order to keep things organized chronologically.

This is the second such new album. Four of the eleven songs were moved from the previous album in the stray tracks series. But the other seven are ones that I've never posted before.

In terms of content, seven songs are ones that she only played in concert and never put on album.  Three of those come from concert DVDs and thus have excellent sound. The other four live ones come from concert bootlegs, but generally sound pretty good as well.

Finally, there are four more songs from "El Madmo," an album by a side project band also called "El Madmo." They've been called an "alt rock" or "indie rock" band. I don't know if that's exactly accurate, but those songs are more rocking than Jones's usual fare, in a fun and goofy way. Some of her other side projects have persisted, but so far this is the only El Madmo album. I generally picked the songs where Jones dominated the lead vocals, since some of the other songs are sung by the other band members.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Hands on the Wheel (Norah Jones with M. Ward)
02 Ocean of Noise (Norah Jones)
03 My First Lover (Norah Jones with M. Ward)
04 I'm Gonna Get You Yet (Norah Jones)
05 Scary Lady (El Madmo featuring Norah Jones)
06 The Best Part (El Madmo featuring Norah Jones)
07 I Like It Low (El Madmo featuring Norah Jones)
08 Blame It On My Youth (Norah Jones)
09 When God Made Me (Norah Jones with Neil Young)
10 Fantasy Guy (El Madmo featuring Norah Jones)
11 Yesterdays (Norah Jones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15848895/NorahJ_2007-2008_HndsontheWheel_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a Norah Jones appearance at an awards show.

Lianne La Havas - Home Concert, London, Britain, 5-10-2020

Even I am fairly surprised that I'm posting this. I have to admit that I'm so busy exploring all the great music of past decades that I don't pay enough attention to promising new artists. It takes a lot of time to separate the wheat from the chaff - if anyone has recommendations on great new talents, please share them here.

Anyway, until very recently, I'd never heard of Lianne La Havas. She's put out two albums and has a third coming out this year, but she's not very well known. But I happened to come across a video of her playing a recent "Tiny Desk" concert with just an acoustic guitar, and I'm big on acoustic music, so I decided to check her out. I was impressed. That was a short performance, but when I found out she did a longer home concert last month, again in the solo acoustic format, I gave that a listen and liked it enough to post it here.

La Havas is a British singer-songwriter with both a Greek and Jamaican ethnic background. Her released albums are in the "neo-soul" genre, but I'm not that impressed with them. I suspect her record company pushed a generic slick production on her music in hopes of making her more commercially appealing. But after listening to some of that and some of her solo acoustic performances, I feel strongly that it's playing solo acoustic where she truly shines. She has a unique style that's folky, soulful, and jazzy all at once. If you've never heard her in this mod, I recommend you give her a shot. I have a high bar for new artists, but she jumped over the bar, at least when she plays in this format.

The recording comes from her Instagram account. The video is 53 minutes long. But there was a lot of dead air between songs, so I wound up cutting it down to 41 minutes. I cut out some of the talking that I felt was unnecessary. For instance, there was a section where she was testing her microphone, and another section where she got feedback on the amount of reverb she was using. I boiled this down to just the music and her relevant comments.

I'm far from an expert on her music, since all I have from her is this, but I gather that all the songs here are originals, except for "He Loves Me," which is a cover of a Jill Scott song.

01 talk (Lianne La Havas)
02 No Room for Doubt (Lianne La Havas)
03 talk (Lianne La Havas)
04 Au Cinema (Lianne La Havas)
05 talk (Lianne La Havas)
06 Green and Gold (Lianne La Havas)
07 talk (Lianne La Havas)
08 Tease Me (Lianne La Havas)
09 talk (Lianne La Havas)
10 He Loves Me (Lianne La Havas)
11 talk (Lianne La Havas)
12 Paper Thin (Lianne La Havas)
13 Unstoppable (Lianne La Havas)
14 talk (Lianne La Havas)
15 Bittersweet (Lianne La Havas)
16 talk (Lianne La Havas)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15262196/LiannLH_2020_HmeConcertLondnBritain__5-10-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot from the concert in question. It's somewhat low-res, but I went with it anyway.

Neil Young - Le Noise Acoustic Sessions (2010)

It's been a while since I've posted any of Neil Young's music. I've been moving chronologically through his 1980s stuff, and I plan to continue doing that. However, I've been distracted by some other music, especially because I'm trying to prioritize the posting of recent home concerts. That said, I want to step out of my usual chronological progression and post something he did from 2010 because I just came across it.

In 2010, Young released the album "Le Noise." The title is a word play on the name of the producer, Daniel Lanois. Personally, I think the album is just good, not great. Ironically, given that the album is named after the producer, much of the problem is due to the production.

It turns out that Young originally planned for it to be an all acoustic album. Only two of the songs, "Love and War" and "Peaceful Valley Boulevard," ended up being recorded in that form. Instead, he played most of the songs with a distorted electric guitar sound, but no bass, drums, or other instruments. As one reviewer at rateyourmusic.com said, "The sound of this album is just... not very engaging. It's basically just the same massively distorted guitar sound on every track."

On the same day that Young released the album in 2010, he also released video footage of him playing each of the songs from it. Most of the versions on video are exactly the same as the ones on the album, although there are some exceptions, such as the way he merged the songs "Walk with Me" and "Sign of Love" together.

But years later, he released a longer versions of the same video, with extra songs. This version is much more interesting, and the music from it is presented here. Three of the extra songs, "For the Love of Man," "Twisted Road," and "Born in Ontario," would be released on his "Psychedelic Pill" album in 2012. But that album was done with his band Crazy Horse, and the versions there are very different. I like these better. There also is an interesting solo electric guitar instrumental (anyone have any idea if it has a name?!) that came to an abrupt end due to a blown amp or some similar technical problem.

The extra songs also included a version of one song on the album, "Hitchhiker," done with solo electric guitar just like the album, but without the crazy amounts of reverb and echo added to it. This version is far superior, in my opinion. So I've replaced the album version with this version, and included the other version as a bonus track for completists.

But perhaps most crucially of  all, this longer video contains two versions of the song "You Never Call." This song still hasn't been officially released, although it appeared in the film "Neil Young Journeys" in 2011. What's frustrating is that it's possibly the best song out of this bunch! It's a moving tribute to his friend and producer L.A. Johnson, who died in early 2010. Two versions of this song were included, one on acoustic guitar and the other on organ. I've moved the organ version to be one of the bonus tracks.

Finally, I'm including a song here that isn't actually part of the Le Noise extended video, but should have been, "Leia." In typically perverse Neil Young fashion, he played this song in most of the concerts for the album (which also, perversely, took place before the album was released), and then didn't include it on the album either. It also remains unreleased, and it also is one of the better songs. Plus, it's played on piano, which is welcome relief to the monotonous solo electric guitar sound of much of the album. I found an excellent sounding version from a concert bootleg and stuck it in the middle of the album.

The official "Le Noise" album is rather short, at 38 minutes long. This album, if you don't count the bonus tracks, is an hour and four minutes long. Personally, I think this makes it a stronger album. If you were to remove a couple of the solo electric guitar tracks from the released album and keep all the extra songs, I think it would make an even better album that would still have a good album length. But I'm leaving all those in so people can make up their own minds.

01 You Never Call [Guitar Version] (Neil Young)
02 Walk with Me - Sign of Love (Neil Young)
03 Leia (Neil Young)
04 Someone's Gonna Rescue You (Neil Young)
05 Love and War (Neil Young)
06 Angry World (Neil Young)
07 Hitchhiker (Neil Young)
08 Peaceful Valley Boulevard (Neil Young)
09 Rumblin' (Neil Young)
10 For the Love of Man (Neil Young)
11 Twisted Road (Neil Young)
12 Born in Ontario (Neil Young)
13 Instrumental (Neil Young)

Hitchhiker [Echo Version] (Neil Young)
You Never Call [Organ Version] (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15193997/NeilY_2010_LeNoisAcoustcSessions_atse.zip.html

The cover art picture is a screenshot from the "Le Noise" video. It's similar to cover of the "Le Noise" album, since he was standing in the same room in both cases.

Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift - Home Concert, Nashville, TN, 6-3-2020 - Element of Light Era Outtakes

A few days ago, I posted a home concert of Robyn Hitchcock with his romantic and musical partner Emma Swift. It's a rather complicated situation, but I explained in that post that although he's been doing lots of home concerts since the coronavirus pandemic lockdown began, I don't plan on posting them here for various reasons, at least not any time soon. That concert, in which they played all the songs from Hitchcock's 1986 album "Element of Light," was an exception, mainly due to the fact that the concert recording was seriously flawed with lots of gaps of silence, and I made a version that fixed the flaws.

Well, it turns out that whatever caused those flaws continued to cause more flaws in the next couple of home concerts they did, so I'm posting this here for the same reason. I got the recording from a private Facebook group of Robyn Hitchcock fans.

Anyway, as has become their habit with home concerts, Hitchcock and Swift did two shows with nearly identical set lists, one timed for an American audience on June 3,2020, and the other timed for a European audience on June 5, 2020. Both of them turned out to have the gaps of silence. But since the song list was largely the same for both, I was able to use bits of one version to patch in gaps in the other version. I decided to fix the June 3rd concert, since it had a lot fewer gaps.

I'm very happy to say that the fixing went well, overall. The gaps were uniformly bigger this time compared to the last time, usually about five seconds each, so I was easily able to find them all. I successfully fixed all the gaps in the songs without any problems. Hopefully you'll never even notice where the gaps were.

But I had a harder time with the gaps in the talking between songs, and there were a lot of those, maybe about one per talking track. Not surprisingly, the actual words spoken were very different in each concert, so I couldn't use bits from one concert to fix the gaps in the other in these cases. Instead, I edited the talking down to make the gaps less noticeable. For instance, if there was a gap in the middle of someone's comment, I probably removed the whole comment. That worked most of the time, but there are times where there was a stream of related comments, and when one part is removed, the rest might not make as much sense. As an example, after the song "Tell Me about Your Drugs," Hitchcock and Swift talked a little bit about drugs, including a reference to cat food as drugs, but there was something missing there due to one of those gaps that probably would have helped you understand their meaning better. Oh well. These are pretty minor problems, all in all.

It turns out that three songs were played in the June 3rd concert that weren't played in the June 5th concert. So I've included those songs as well. By a remarkable stroke of luck, none of those three songs had any gaps! That really is very lucky indeed, because virtually every other song from that date had multiple gaps. I also included as much banter from just before and after each of those songs as I thought was relevant. This creates a minor problem in that, between the third and forth songs, there's some talk about a pet and then there's an abrupt shift to Hitchcock announcing the start of the concert. So just try not to mind that, as it also is a very minor thing.

Also, note there are two talking tracks between the first few songs, since each one is related to the song either just before or after it. That's because, unfortunately, none of those three songs from the June 5th concert were performed back to back on that date.

The June 3rd concert is 48 minutes long. The three songs from the June 5th concert at the start are an additional 12 minutes. So the total of all the songs is exactly one hour.

Oh, one more thing. After all this writing, I forgot to discuss the music theme. The idea was to play songs from the era of the "Element of Light" album, but no songs from the album itself. One song from the album was played though, "Lady Waters and the Hooded One," because in the "Element of Light" show a few days earlier, they ran out of time before they could finish that song. The rest are generally non-album tracks, some from 1986, but a few from slightly before or after that. Many could be found on this stray tracks album I made:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/09/robyn-hitchcock-leopard-variouns-songs.html

But wait! Yet one more thing after that. Hitchcock revised his 1980s song "The President" to comment on current President Trump. I especially appreciate this line: "He's holding up the Bible while the rubber bullets fly. He's holding up the Bible but cannot quote one line." Talk about timely, since the event mentioned just happened a few days ago!

01 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
02 Surgery (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
03 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
04 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
05 The President [2020 Version] (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
06 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
07 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
08 Polly on the Shore (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
09 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
10 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
11 The Leopard (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
12 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
13 The Black Crow Knows (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
14 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
15 Birdshead (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
16 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
17 The Crawling (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
18 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
19 Tell Me about Your Drugs (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
20 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
21 I Used to Say I Love You (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
22 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
23 Vibrating (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
24 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
25 You’ve Got (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
26 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
27 Lady Waters and the Hooded One (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
28 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
29 Victorian Squid (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
30 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292568/RobynH_2020_HomeConcrtNshvilleTN__6-3-2020_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, Emma Swift posted a photo at her Instagram account that shows the "Element of Light" album, presumably in Robyn Hitchcock's album collection, or maybe their shared collection. I could have gone with a screenshot of them at the concert instead, but it was low resolution and didn't look good.

Lucinda Williams - KSUT Virtual Pagosa Folk 'N Bluegrass, Home Concert, Los Angeles, CA, 6-5-2020

I'm very happy to be posting this Lucinda Williams home concert album today for two reasons. First, I've been hopeful that Williams would join the home concert fun, and she finally has.

Second, today has seen the biggest protests yet in response to the murder of George Floyd by four police officers. This concert was just recorded yesterday, and it's clear that the protest situation is very much on Williams' mind, as well as the continuing coronavirus pandemic problem. Most of the songs she chose to play seem relevant, right from the very first line of the first song: "bad news on my TV screen." She even dedicates the song "We've Come Too Far to Turn Around" to "the memory of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and all the hundreds of other victims of racial violence in this country." So this album is extremely timely, both literally (since it's from yesterday!) and thematically.

Williams released a new album a month or two ago called "Good Souls Better Angels." I highly recommend it; I think it's her best in years. On it, she's really pissed at President Trump, so if you hate him (as I do), you'll find the album cathartic listening. One of the songs here, and on the new album, "Man without a Soul," directly targets him. More songs here (and from the album) generally deal with the increasing troubles in the US in the Trump Administration years, such as "When the Way Gets Dark."

This album actually comes from two home concerts. The vast majority of it, the first 41 minutes, comes from the "KSUT Virtual Pagosa" show mentioned in the title. The last three songs, for an additional 11 minutes, come from an appearance for a Rolling Stone magazine Internet show that took place about five weeks earlier. The sound quality is similar for both, but maybe a little better for the Rolling Stone songs. I added in those extra songs because they seem to be the only other significant home concert performance she's done so far, as far as I can tell.

Although the sound is excellent overall, I ran into two problems for the KSUT portion. First, I had to increase the volume on the talking between songs so much that sometimes those get a bit hissy. But it's not too bad. The second problem is that Williams had a cell phone nearby, and it rang from time to time. Argh! Very annoying. It rang about eight to ten times through the course of the show. Luckily, I was able to edit out the rings by patching in different parts of the songs. Hopefully you won't notice at all (unless I missed one or two).

In terms of musical performance, this is in solo acoustic format, with the caveat that Williams was joined by Stuart Mathis for the KSUT show. He didn't sing at all, but he did play a lot of nice electric lead guitar to flesh out the sound some.

By the way, Williams also played "You Can't Rule Me" for the Rolling Stone performance, but I didn't include that because it was the only song done there that was also played for the KSUT performance. 

This album is 52 minutes long in total.

01 talk (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
02 Bad News Blues (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
03 talk (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
04 Pray the Devil Back to Hell (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
05 talk (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
06 World without Tears (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
07 talk (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
08 You Can't Rule Me (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
09 talk (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
10 Joy (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
11 Good Souls (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
12 talk (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
13 We've Come Too Far to Turn Around (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
14 talk (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
15 Big Black Train (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
16 talk (Lucinda Williams with Stuart Mathis)
17 talk (Lucinda Williams)
18 Are You Alright (Lucinda Williams)
19 talk (Lucinda Williams)
20 Man without a Soul (Lucinda Williams)
21 talk (Lucinda Williams)
22 When the Way Gets Dark (Lucinda Williams)
23 talk (Lucinda Williams)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15274886/LucndaWllms_2020b_KSTVirtualPagsaFolkBluegrssHomeConcrt__6-5-2020_atse.zip.html

The album cover is a screenshot from the KSUT concert. Stuart Mathis was in the same room, but a fair distance away, probably due to social distancing concerns. I would have liked to include him too, but that would have meant a rectangular shape in which both of them would have been quite small, so I zoomed in just on Williams instead.

Norah Jones - Going, Going, Gone - Non-Album Tracks (2004)

Phew! I thought I'd found all, or nearly all, of the good Norah Jones stray tracks out there. I was so very, very wrong! I was contacted by a big Norah Jones fan named Jorge who alerted me to dozens and dozens of additional songs that I'd missed. Jorge is such a fan that I think I finally have 99% of her stray tracks that are worth posting. But this means that I have to significantly revamp nearly all of the albums I've posted already.

In fact, there are so many songs that I had missed that I need to squeeze in a couple of new albums between previously posted albums in order to continue to present them all in rough chronological order. This is the first of those albums.

Only three of the songs here are songs that I haven't posted before - "Dreams Come True," "What Would I Do without You," and "Going, Going, Gone." The vast majority, eight, are from the next album in this series, the one I call "Sleepless Nights." That one will remain, with the same title, but the contents will be drastically different. One other song, "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)," is from "Day Dreaming," the previous album in this series.

If you're a fan of these albums at all, I highly recommend you just redownload the whole lot of her stray tracks albums. That way, you'll make sure you don't have the same song on two albums, or other such problems.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 I Turned Your Picture to the Wall (Norah Jones)
02 I Got It Bad [And That Ain't Good] (Dayna Kurtz & Norah Jones)
03 Dreams Come True (Willie Nelson & Norah Jones)
04 Here We Go Again (Ray Charles & Norah Jones)
05 What Would I Do without You (Norah Jones)
06 Streets of Baltimore (Norah Jones)
07 Cry One More Time (Norah Jones)
08 That's the Way that the World Goes 'Round (Norah Jones & Richard Julian)
09 Life Is a Carnival (Norah Jones)
10 Loretta (Norah Jones with Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
11 Drown in My Own Tears (Norah Jones)
12 Going, Going, Gone (Norah Jones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15848553/NorahJ_2004_GoingGoingGne_atse.zip.html

The album cover comes from an appearance on the "Tonight Show with Jay Leno" TV show in July 2004.

Eric Clapton - One Step Ahead of the Storm - Non-Album Tracks (1984-1985)

Boy, do I have a lot of Eric Clapton music to post. He's had a long and prolific career, and I've only made it to the mid-1980s as I move forward chronologically. So here's the next in my stray tracks album series for him.

The time period here roughly corresponds with his 1985 album "Behind the Sun." That was a success for him, mostly due to the inclusion of the hit "Forever Man." It had a mixed reaction critically, though. His record company didn't think it was commercial enough, so they had him add three songs by an outside songwriter. One of those was "Forever Man," so they had a point. But it meant there was an uneasy mix of commercial songs and bluesy songs.

It's pretty much the same story with these stray tracks. Some have a mid-1980s poppy sound, and others are pure blues. Personally, I much prefer the bluesy songs, like "Too Bad." But I've included the others for the sake of completeness. I'm especially not keen on "Jail Bait" - the lyrics get more cringe inducing the older Clapton gets. I reluctantly included it, but I edited it down, since it was nearly six minutes long.

Furthermore, around this time, Clapton started to experiment with instrumental music meant for film soundtracks. In 1985, he released the "Edge of Darkness" EP with six instrumental songs on it. I've only included two. As this series goes along, I'm going to be similarly selective of his soundtrack-styled instrumentals, since they only have limited appeal for me.

Three of the songs are officially unreleased. But two of those are clear studio versions, and the last one comes from a soundboard bootleg, so the sound quality is uniformly excellent.

01 One Jump Ahead of the Storm (Eric Clapton)
02 You Don't Know like I Know (Eric Clapton & Phil Collins)
03 Jail Bait [Edit] (Eric Clapton)
04 The Hit [Instrumental] (Roger Waters & Eric Clapton)
05 Who's Loving You Tonight (Eric Clapton)
06 Heaven Is One Step Away (Eric Clapton)
07 Loving Your Lovin' (Eric Clapton)
08 Too Bad (Eric Clapton)
09 Edge of Darkness [Instrumental] (Eric Clapton)
10 Shoot Out [Instrumental] (Eric Clapton)
11 Mean Woman Blues (Carl Perkins & Eric Clapton)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15101755/EricC_1984-1985_OneJumpAheadStrm_atse.zip.html

The cover art is based on the cover for the 1985 single "She's Waiting," but I made some changes. Most obviously, I had to remove "She's Waiting" from the bottom and replace it with my own text. I also found the exact photo used and pasted in a different copy, both for better photo quality and also so I could make it bigger.

Manfred Mann - Come Tomorrow - Non-Album Tracks (1964-1965)

Here's the next in my series of stray tracks albums for Manfred Mann. For this album, the band is still very much in their rhythm and blues phase. So if you like the 1960s British take on that kind of music, this is for you. I'll say again that Manfred Mann are a strangely underrated band.

As I mentioned before, I think they're underrated because they got the reputation of a poppy singles band. But for this bunch of songs, even though there are several A-sides included, it doesn't really have poppy hits. The closest are "Come Tomorrow," which was a top five hit in Britain, and "Oh No, Not My Baby," which made the top ten there despite first appearing as a B-side. The rest is much more in a rhythm and blues vein, as mention above. I especially find their cover of "Groovin'" interesting, considering that Led Zeppelin later did a version of the same song in their Led Zeppelin style (except they called it "We're Gonna Groove").

All the songs here have been officially released, so there are no sound quality issues. A couple come from BBC performances. The album is 39 minutes long, which was typical for albums of that era.

01 Groovin' [We're Gonna Groove] (Manfred Mann)
02 Can't Believe It (Manfred Mann)
03 Did You Have to Do That (Manfred Mann)
04 I Need You (Manfred Mann)
05 Come Tomorrow (Manfred Mann)
06 What Did I Do Wrong (Manfred Mann)
07 She Needs Company (Manfred Mann)
08 Oh No, Not My Baby (Manfred Mann)
09 She (Manfred Mann)
10 That's the Way I Feel [Edit] (Manfred Mann)
11 Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron (Manfred Mann)
12 I Can't Believe What You Say (Manfred Mann)
13 It's Getting Late (Manfred Mann)
14 Poison Ivy (Manfred Mann)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264043/ManfredM_1964-1965_CmeTomorrow_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I found a photo of the "Come Tomorrow" single. I made a few changes, especially enlarging the text as the top to cover some boring blank areas. I removed the name of the B-side song. I also put the record company logo in the bottom corner.

Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips - Fairly Obscure - Home Concert, Montclair, NJ, 5-31-2020

So far, Richard Thompson has played five home concerts during the coronavirus pandemic. I've posted two of them already. Here's the fifth.

"But wait!" You may well say. "What happened to the other two?" One I feel I can't post, because of a technical glitch that rendered it virtually unlistenable. The other one is fairly short, less than half an hour. I'm hoping he'll play a few other songs here and there, and then I'll be able to add those in and give it a more reasonable length. So in the meantime, here's the most recent one, which took place just a few days ago.

None of his first four home concerts had a theme. But this one does, even though it's a loose one. As he put it in his comments, this consists of "fairly obscure" songs. All of them are from his albums, and virtually all of them were written by him. But they're the sorts of songs that he's almost never played in concert. So if you're a serious Richard Thompson fan, this is for you.

As far as sound quality goes, there were some issues with the first ones. But I'm glad to say this one was recorded very well, so there are no issues to speak of. Thompson's recent romantic and musical partner, Zara Phillips, sings harmony vocals on a few songs. But her presence here is less than it was on some of the earlier home concerts, probably because she didn't know many of these obscure songs.

This concert is an hour and three minutes long.

01 talk (Richard Thompson)
02 Sam Jones (Richard Thompson)
03 talk (Richard Thompson)
04 The Poor Ditching Boy (Richard Thompson)
05 talk (Richard Thompson)
06 Sunset Song (Richard Thompson)
07 talk (Richard Thompson)
08 Doctor of Physick (Richard Thompson)
09 talk (Richard Thompson)
10 Devonside (Richard Thompson)
11 talk (Richard Thompson)
12 The End of the Rainbow (Richard Thompson)
13 talk (Richard Thompson)
14 Old Thames Side (Richard Thompson)
15 talk (Richard Thompson)
16 Hand of Kindness (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
17 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
18 Guns Are the Tongues (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
19 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
20 Razor Dance (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
21 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
22 Poppy Red (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
23 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
24 She Twists the Knife Again (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
25 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15328432/RichrdT_2020d_FairlyObscreHomeConcrtMontclairNJ__5-31-2020_atse.zip.html

Now that this is the third Richard Thompson home concert I've posted, I decided they should have consistent covert art. So I've used the same font style as the second one, and I just went back and changed the first one to use that style too. The photo here is a screenshot from the concert in question.

Melissa Etheridge - Home Concert Covers, Volume 1, Los Angeles, CA, 3-14-2020 to 4-11-2020

Since the coronavirus pandemic lockdown began, Melissa Etheridge has been one of the most active with home concerts. Up until a couple of weeks ago, she did one concert a day for over 50 days! Each concert has gone from about 30 minutes up until an hour, so that's a remarkable amount of music. The vast majority of the songs she's played have been originals, but she done some covers here and there, and those have added up. I've already posted one concert here in which she did nothing but Bruce Springsteen cover. Here's this album:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/04/melissa-etheridge-bruce-springsteen.html

I've also posted another concert in which she played her best known original songs. You can get that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/05/melissa-etheridge-from-my-home-to-yours.html

But now, I want to go through the rest of her home concerts and post the other covers she's done. I'm focusing on the covers because when it comes to originals you can find those on her albums, but the vast majority of these covers have never been officially released by her. Also, they should be of interest to anyone who likes the kind of music I post here and aren't Melissa Etheridge fans specifically. She has an excellent, distinctive voice, and she's also surprisingly talented on multiple instruments. She plays all the instruments on her home concerts, including drums and electric guitar solos.

It turns out that Etheridge has been very talkative during these home concerts. Oftentimes, there's more talking than songs. I've cut her comments way down, eliminating anything except comments directly relevant to the next song she's playing or the musician who did it. Even then though, she sometimes talks for five minutes or longer before getting to the next song. Personally, I like her comments, but it might be too much for some people, especially when it comes to repeat listening.

As a result, for this album and future albums in this series, I've created two versions. One includes the between song banter and the other does not. In this case, the version with the talking is an hour and 16 minutes long, and the version containing just the songs is 47 minutes long. I've made the versions with talking longer than usual so the versions without will still be long enough for a typical album.

The songs are presented in chronological order of the dates of her home concerts. Here's a list of the original artists for each song:

01 Refugee - Tom Petty
02 Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town - Kenny Rogers
03 The Weakness in Me - Joan Armatrading
04 Stay with Me - Faces
05 Breathe - Greenwheel
06 Ain’t No Sunshine - Bill Withers
07 Angel from Montgomery - John Prine / Bonnie Raitt
08 Mercedes Benz - Janis Joplin
09 Get It While You Can - Janis Joplin
10 Me and Bobby McGee - Kris Kristofferson / Janis Joplin
11 Piece of My Heart - Emma Franklin / Janis Joplin

Here's the usual song list for the version with the talking:

01 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
02 Refugee (Melissa Etheridge)
03 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
04 Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town (Melissa Etheridge)
05 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
06 The Weakness in Me (Melissa Etheridge)
07 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
08 Stay with Me (Melissa Etheridge)
09 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
10 Breathe (Melissa Etheridge)
11 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
12 Ain’t No Sunshine (Melissa Etheridge)
13 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
14 Angel from Montgomery (Melissa Etheridge)
15 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
16 Mercedes Benz (Melissa Etheridge)
17 Intro to Get It While You Can (Melissa Etheridge)
18 Get It While You Can (Melissa Etheridge)
19 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
20 Me and Bobby McGee (Melissa Etheridge)
21 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
22 Piece of My Heart (Melissa Etheridge)

Here's the music-only song list:

01 Refugee (Melissa Etheridge)
02 Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town (Melissa Etheridge)
03 The Weakness in Me (Melissa Etheridge)
04 Stay with Me (Melissa Etheridge)
05 Breathe (Melissa Etheridge)
06 Ain’t No Sunshine (Melissa Etheridge)
07 Angel from Montgomery (Melissa Etheridge)
08 Mercedes Benz (Melissa Etheridge)
09 Get It While You Can (Melissa Etheridge)
10 Me and Bobby McGee (Melissa Etheridge)
11 Piece of My Heart (Melissa Etheridge)

Music plus talking:

https://www.upload.ee/files/15289228/MelissaE_2020a_HomeConcrtCovrsVolume1LsAngelesCA__3-14-2020_to_4-11-2020_atse.zip.html

Music only:

https://www.upload.ee/files/15289352/MelissaE_2020a_HomeConcrtCovrsVolume1LsAngelesCA__3-14-2020_to_Music_Only.zip.html

I wanted to start this series with a close-up of Etheridge's face. This is from a public event in early 2000, before the pandemic began.

Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift - Home Concert, Nashville, TN, 5-29-2020 - The Element of Light Album

This album needs a fair amount of explanation. First off, Robyn Hitchcock has been extremely busy when it comes to home concerts during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown. Together with his romantic and musical partner Emma Swift, he's recorded a whole series of concerts of nearly an hour each. In fact, by my count, this is the twentieth such concert he's done since the middle of March 2020! That overstates things a bit because he's tended to do concerts in pairs with nearly identical set lists for both, one for the European audience and the other for the American audience, but still, he (and Emma) have been very busy indeed.

If you've been paying any attention to this blog, you know I'm a very big Hitchcock fan. I may well have posted more albums by him than anyone else. I would love to post many of these recent home concerts, but I haven't. The reason is that he's required people to pay to view the videos of these home concerts. Here's the link, to StageIt, if you want to join up, because they definitely are still happening on a frequent basis:

https://www.stageit.com/site/landing

Anyway, Hitchcock has stated that he doesn't care if people share the music after the initial airing of each concert. That said, I don't want to rush into posting them because if they got around widely on YouTube and such, it probably would lower his revenue, and it's not easy for musicians to make a living during the pandemic. I do want to post more of them, but I think it's prudent to wait a white first.

However, although I'm not posting those home concerts in general, this one concert is an exception. The reason is that when it aired, there was some kind of technical glitch that resulted in many small gaps of silence in the songs. I took up the task of fixing them. As a result, the folks at Fegmaniax agreed I could share this one at my blog as well, so here we are.

Now, as for those gaps, I believe I've gotten rid of all of them. Luckily, most of them resulted in no loss of music, so if I just cut out the gap of silence in a sound editing program, the problem was solved. But occasionally, the gaps represented an actual loss of music. In those cases, I would have been screwed. However, I was extremely fortunate in that Hitchcock played the exact same songs in the same way two days earlier. (Remember I mentioned above that he's essentially been doing each of his home concerts twice, one for Europe and one for America.) That earlier show was even more messed up with the gap problem. But it never happened that the gaps occurred in the exact same spots. So I was able to copy and paste in the missing music from those versions of songs. I might have missed a gap here or there, so if you notice any, please let me know and I'll fix it.

Phew! That was complicated to explain. But now let me get to the actual music. Many of Hitchcock's 2020 home concerts have had themes. For instance, he's done entire concerts of songs by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, and Syd Barrett, respectively. This particular concert is a performance of his entire 1986 album "Element of Light." But while that album was done with a band, this just features Hitchcock on vocals and acoustic guitar, and Emma Swift on harmony vocals. Furthermore, there's the usual entertaining banter between songs, made even more entertaining by Swift frequently chiming in as well. (For some reason, the gap problem almost never happened during the between song banter, except for the 23rd track, where I had to edit out a few comments because of it. I couldn't use the other concert as back-up, since the banter was always different.)

I'm puzzled as to why, but these home concerts through StageIt have a fixed length, which I think is 50 minutes. As soon as that time limit is reached, the recording ends, even if Hitchcock is in mid-song or mid-sentence. Due to this, he didn't play any extra songs, except for "The Ghost Ship," which was an "Element of Light" outtake. The other songs are all the exact songs from the album, played in the original order. There also isn't that much banter, relatively speaking, so all of the album could be played. They managed to squeeze it all in, although it was a close call.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. And if you want more of this sort of thing right away, please sign up at the StageIt link. Otherwise, I plan on posting more of his home concerts here eventually, but who knows how long it'll be before I feel it's okay to do that.

01 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
02 The Ghost Ship (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
03 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
04 If You Were a Priest (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
05 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
06 Winchester (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
07 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
08 Somewhere Apart (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
09 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
10 Ted, Woody and Junior (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
11 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
12 The President (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
13 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
14 Raymond Chandler Evening (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
15 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
16 Bass (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
17 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
18 Airscape (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
19 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
20 Never Stop Bleeding (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
21 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
22 Lady Waters and the Hooded One (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
23 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292563/RobynH_2020_HomeConcrtNshvilleTN__5-29-2020_atse.zip.html

Hitchcock has generally been posting photos for each of his home concerts a few days in advance, in order to help promote them. This is the promo photo for this particular concert. Note the "Element of Light" album on the sofa behind him.

Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers with Carl Perkins - The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA, 1-26-1997

I was in the mood for some good ol' Tom P. and the Heartbreakers rock and roll today, so I listened to one of my favorite bootleg concert recordings by him and prepared it to be posted here.

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

This concert is from a legendary run of over 20 shows in a row P. played at the Fillmore in San Francisco. Instead of playing the usual set list consisting mostly of hits, P. and his band used the Fillmore run to stretch out and play lots of covers as well as deep cuts from their own catalog. Two of the shows were professionally recorded and broadcast on the radio at the time. This is the first one, but I'll post the other one eventually as well.

If you've been following this blog a while, you may know that I've posted a long series of albums of P.'s live cover versions. Since a lot of covers were played at the Fillmore shows, and this is one of the very best of those shows in terms of sound quality, I've used seven of these exact performances in that series. But still, it's worth hearing the entire concert. In addition to those seven covers, they played five more, plus lots of rare originals. For instance, they did "On the Street," a song done by Mudcrutch, P.'s band before the Heartbreakers. But also, it was a long show (two hours and twenty minutes), so they still had time for lots of the big hits that everyone knows and loves.

On top of all that, rockabilly legend Carl Perkins was the opening act, and he came out during P.'s show and essentially took over for about 20 minutes, singing lead while P. and the Heartbreakers backed him up. So that's another four covers, if you want to count them that way.

Because this recording was already is very good shape, I didn't have to do much tinkering. But I did do some. Mostly, I adjusted the volume of the audience cheering (often too loud) and the comments between songs (often too quiet). I also fixed a few dropouts that only happened in one channel, so I was able to duplicate the music from the other channel.

In 2022, a box set called "Live at the Fillmore" was released, consisting of highlights from this Fillmore run. But none of the songs in it come from this particular concert, so everything here is still unreleased.

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/cepZCwr2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/QJGIudAnKE0syXg/file

The cover art photo is from this exact concert. That's Carl Perkins dressed in black and playing a guitar solo while Tom P. watches. The very red lighting (which I think looks pretty cool) was like that in the original.

Ray Davies - Austin City Limits, ALC Studios, Austin, TX, 7-24-2006

It feels like a long time since I've posted anything Kinks-related. Too long. So here's something by Ray Davies, lead singer and chief songwriter of my second favorite band in the world (after the Beatles).

In 2006, Davies released "Other People's Lives," his first studio album since the Kinks broke up in 1996. (That was a surprisingly long time, but apparently he held out for a good record deal.) He did some promotion in the wake of the release of the album, and that included an appearance on the TV show "Austin City Limits."

Unfortunately when it comes to Davies' solo career, there are lots of bootlegs, but most of them have middle to poor sound quality. This Austin City Limits show is a welcome exception. The good news is that it was professionally recorded for the TV show, and sounds great. The bad news is that only the songs that made it to the hour-long show have been bootlegged, for 46 minutes of music. He played another handful of songs that aren't included here.

It so happens that I have some other live appearances he did on TV shows around that time. So I've added four of those as sort of bonus tracks at the end. They actually are from 2005 to 2008, but I figure that's close enough for horseshoes. With those four extra songs included, this album stretches to an hour and two minutes long.

One problem with the Austin City Limits recording is that the audience applause at the end of songs was often quickly faded out. It didn't sound natural to me. So, using the few songs where there was a more extended audience reaction, I did some audio editing to extend the applause for the other songs.

01 I'm Not Like Everybody Else (Ray Davies)
02 Where Have All the Good Times Gone (Ray Davies)
03 talk (Ray Davies)
04 After the Fall (Ray Davies)
05 Next Door Neighbour (Ray Davies)
06 talk (Ray Davies)
07 Over My Head (Ray Davies)
08 talk (Ray Davies)
09 Run Away from Time (Ray Davies)
10 talk (Ray Davies)
11 20th Century Man (Ray Davies)
12 talk (Ray Davies)
13 The Tourist (Ray Davies)
14 A Long Way from Home (Ray Davies)
15 talk (Ray Davies)
16 The Getaway [Lonesome Train] (Ray Davies)
17 talk (Ray Davies)
18 All Day and All of the Night (Ray Davies)
19 Thanksgiving Day (Ray Davies)
20 In a Moment (Ray Davies)
21 Working Man's Cafe (Ray Davies)
22 Morphine Song (Ray Davies)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15289093/RayDvs_2006c_AustnCtyLimitsALCStdiosAustinTX__7-24-2006_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from the Austin City Limits concert.

Robyn Hitchcock - Acoustic Covers, Volume 10: 2011

Here's the next in my long series of Robyn Hitchcock doing acoustic covers. All the songs are from 2011 this time.

2011 was a particularly prolific year for Hitchcock in terms of acoustic covers, because he went on tour with Joe Boyd, a producer who worked with Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, the Incredible String Band, and many other musicians. Boyd did sing songs himself, but he'd tell stories of his interactions with those musicians, and Hitchcock would play covers of their music. A majority of the songs here are from those Boyd - Hitchcock concerts.

In terms of sound quality and album length, it's basically the same as the earlier albums in this series. None of the songs have been officially released, but that's also par for the course for this series as well.

Here's a list of the original artists:

01 Masters of War - Bob Dylan
02 Way Back in the 1960s - Incredible String Band
03 Mr. Tambourine Man - Bob Dylan
04 I Can Hear the Grass Grow - Move
05 Chinese White - Incredible String Band
06 Bike - Pink Floyd
07 River Man - Nick Drake
08 To the Aisle - Five Satins
09 Eight Miles High - Byrds
10 Tomorrow Never Knows - Beatles
11 Oh Yeah - Robyn Hitchcock
12 Terrapin - Syd Barrett

Here's the usual song list:

01 Masters of War (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Way Back in the 1960s (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Mr. Tambourine Man (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 I Can Hear the Grass Grow (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Chinese White (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Bike (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 River Man (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 To the Aisle (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Eight Miles High (Robyn Hitchcock with Jon Brion)
10 Tomorrow Never Knows (Robyn Hitchcock with Jon Brion)
11 Oh Yeah (Robyn Hitchcock with Jon Brion)
12 Terrapin (Robyn Hitchcock)

This album is 46 minutes long.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15272986/RobynH_2011_AcousticCoversVolume10_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from an August 2011 concert. The purple lighting really looked like that, so it was a natural for me to choose purple for the text too.

Leonard Cohen - Out of the Land of Heaven - Non-Album Tracks (1965-1968)

This is the start of a series of stray tracks albums from Leonard Cohen. Now, usually when I post a stray tracks album from someone, it's all songs that don't appear on the official albums. But with Cohen, there aren't a lot of rarities. However, in his case, his quality control is so high that I think even his alternate versions are interesting, so this includes those as well.

I'm proud to say that I've included some serious rarities that probably aren't even known to most die-hard Cohen fans. Cohen's musical career began in 1967 with the release of his first album, "Songs of Leonhard Cohen." However, he actually had a career as a poet and novelist that started in the mid-1950s, with a number of popular books. There was a gradual shift with him doing some poem recitations, poem recitations with backing music, and then full-on songs. I found a few poem recitations set to music from 1965, as well as one from 1968. Plus, there are some straight-up poem recitations without music.

All of those were not only unreleased, they were very hard to find. Furthermore, they were in bad shape, often with so many pops and crackles (obviously from a well-played vinyl album) that it was a tough listen. But I turned to my musical associate MZ and asked for his help. He cleaned them up to a remarkable degree. There's still some crackling, but it's nothing compared to what it used to be.

Most of the rest of the songs here are bonus tracks from his first three albums. There are some unique songs, and also some early alternate versions of songs. (Note that "Dress Rehearsal Rag" is a bonus track from the 1971 album "Songs of Love and Hate," but it was actually recorded in 1968, so it fits within this time frame.)

In 1966, Cohen gave a public performance in New York City. It was mostly filled with poem recitations and excerpts from his books, but he finished it with "The Stranger Song." That may well be the first time Cohen sang one of his sings in front of an audience. At least, it's the first time one got recorded for posterity.

This album is short, at only 33 minutes.

Note that in 2023, I found out there was a copyright extension release that is extremely rare, and contains more studio outtakes from this time period, including previously unknown songs like "In the Middle of the Night" and "The Beach of Idios." If anyone has that, PLEASE share, so I can add to this album!

UPDATE: On November 23, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file.  I removed "The Stranger Song" and "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" because they're BBC performances and I'm putting them on a BBC album instead. I also removed the bonus track of Richie Havens performing "Priests," since I've found a Cohen version of that song and will put it on a different album soon. I added the poem "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot," and upgraded a couple of bonus track poems to go on the regular album, "For E. J. P." and "You Have the Lovers."

01 Twelve O'Clock Chant (Leonard Cohen)
02 Out of the Land of Heaven [Poem for Marc Chagall] (Leonard Cohen)
03 Twelve O'Clock Chant [Reprise] (Leonard Cohen)
04 God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot [Poem] (Leonard Cohen)
05 Store Room (Leonard Cohen)
06 Blessed Is the Memory (Leonard Cohen)
07 You Have the Lovers [Poem] (Leonard Cohen)
08 The Stranger Song (Leonard Cohen)
09 For E. J. P. [Poem] (Leonard Cohen)
10 Gift (Leonard Cohen)
11 Bird on the Wire [Early Version] (Leonard Cohen)
12 You Know Who I Am [Early Version] (Leonard Cohen)
13 Dress Rehearsal Rag [Early Version] (Leonard Cohen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uXo93bNb

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/gLVwpbkO2k4uiWZ/file

In looking for a photo for the cover art, I found lots of photos of Cohen from his early years, but all of them were in black and white. Luckily, there's a color video of Cohen's appearance on the BBC with host Julie Felix, so I took a screenshot of him from that video. In February 2025, I upgraded the image with the help of the Krea AI program.

Rosanne Cash - Live from Zone C - Living Room Concert, New York City, 11-2-2011

I've been posting lots of home concerts from lots of different musicians lately, with more to come. But one musician who I'm surprised has been missing so far is Rosanne Cash. She's done some songs here and there recorded from home during the coronavirus lockdown, but not enough for an album of music. Hopefully that'll change by and by. But in the meantime, here's something similar from her. She had the home concert thing down pat nine years in advance, back in 2011.

In that year, Cash's record company had released "The Essential Rosanne Cash," a double album compilation of her best songs from throughout her career. To help promote that, Cash performed a concert in the living room of her New York City apartment, with just her guitar plus her husband John Leventhal on another guitar. (Leventhal is also her longtime musical collaborator and frequent songwriting partner.) The concert was professionally recorded for both audio and video. However, the audio has never been released on record, and only the video for about eight of the songs came out on the Internet. This is the whole concert, which is a few minutes short of an hour long.

One thing that makes this concert special is that instead of playing her usual set list, she limited herself to playing the 13 most popular songs out of the 36 songs on "The Essential Rosanne Cash."  So she played a lot of songs that she hadn't played in years, or even in decades. And I'm especially a fan of the solo acoustic format, without the sound quality issues of having an audience. Weirdly, she'd never released a live album in her long career. But if I were to pick just one live concert to hear from her, I think it would be this one.

01 talk (Rosanne Cash)
02 Sea of Heartbreak (Rosanne Cash)
03 talk (Rosanne Cash)
04 September When It Comes (Rosanne Cash)
05 talk (Rosanne Cash)
06 Seven Year Ache (Rosanne Cash)
07 talk (Rosanne Cash)
08 500 Miles (Rosanne Cash)
09 talk (Rosanne Cash)
10 Never Be You (Rosanne Cash)
11 talk (Rosanne Cash)
12 The Good Intent (Rosanne Cash)
13 talk (Rosanne Cash)
14 Runaway Train (Rosanne Cash)
15 talk (Rosanne Cash)
16 Western Wall (Rosanne Cash)
17 The Way We Make a Broken Heart (Rosanne Cash)
18 talk (Rosanne Cash)
19 Blue Moon with Heartache (Rosanne Cash)
20 talk (Rosanne Cash)
21 Black Cadillac (Rosanne Cash)
22 talk (Rosanne Cash)
23 House on the Lake (Rosanne Cash)
24 talk (Rosanne Cash)
25 Sleeping in Paris (Rosanne Cash)
26 talk (Rosanne Cash)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eNXAxTq6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/OqOCs899guYT0L1/file

The cover art photo is a photo from the exact concert in question. The original was really rough, but I managed to improve it somewhat with the Krea AI program in January 2025.

Crosby, Stills and Nash - Solo Demos, Volume 3: 1970-1971

I've posted two albums of solo demos from Crosby, Stills and Nash already. This is the third and final one. Solo demos are what they are - each of the songs feature just Crosby, Stills or Nash. As with the earlier albums in this series, most of the songs are well known ones. But I think it's interesting to hear these stripped down, acoustic versions.

Seven out of the 11 songs have been officially released. Of the four unreleased ones, they're all studio recordings and sound just as good as the others. The album is a bit short at 35 minutes, but these are all the performances I could find that fit the format.

Most of the songs are the kinds of songs you'd expect. But there are two exceptions. Graham Nash does a solo version of "Everybody's Been Burned," a David Crosby song that he originally performed with the Byrds. And I've included a rare and unreleased Crosby original, "Under Anesthesia" (also known as "You Sit There"). It would have made sense for me to include it on one of my CSN/Y stray tracks albums, but I felt it wasn't quite good enough to make the grade.

Unfortunately, this series ends because there just aren't enough solo demos after 1971 to allow me to keep going. CSN wrote many of their classic songs in the 1969 to 1971 time frame, so there's a lot more interest with those. Thus, there have been more officially released versions and more bootlegs too.

UPDATE: On October 21, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. I added two songs, "Bach Mode" and "Where Will I Be." I also upgraded "Dancer" and "The Wall Song" from unreleased to released versions. All of these songs come from the 50th anniversary edition of "If I Could Only Remember My Name."

01 Chicago (Graham Nash)
02 Where Will I Be (David Crosby)
03 4 + 20 (Stephen Stills)
04 Dancer (David Crosby)
05 Simple Man (Graham Nash)
06 Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills)
07 The Wall Song (David Crosby)
08 Man in the Mirror (Graham Nash)
09 Under Anesthesia [You Sit There] (David Crosby)
10 Everybody's Been Burned (Graham Nash)
11 Singin' Call (Stephen Stills)
12 Be Yourself (Graham Nash)
13 Bach Mode [Pre-Critical Mass] (David Crosby)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17363414/CROSBSTLLSNSH1970-1971SloDmosVlum3_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tkcQqHaV

For the cover art photo, I found a 1970 photo of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, with their bassist and drummer included as well. But I cropped the photo so it only showed Crosby, Stills and Nash. Neil Young happened to be sitting while the others were standing, so it was pretty easy to crop him out of it.

Manfred Mann - The Five Faces of Manfred Mann (1964)

Normally, I don't want to post an officially released album without any changes. But I'm making an exception here because I'm posting everything good from Manfred Mann in the 1960s in hopes of getting people to reassess their musical career, and everything on this album is good.

In the early to mid-1960s, rock albums generally were a mess. They usually were a bunch of songs almost randomly thrown together by record companies with virtually no attempt at musical cohesion and often no input from the band. US versions were usually the worst, with shorter run times to rip off the consumer that much more. British versions were better, so when it comes to Manfred Mann, I'm considering their British albums only.

This is a British album, and it's unusually unified for something in 1964. Albums from that time were often seen as one or two hit songs plus a bunch of filler, but this one doesn't have any hit singles on it. And it's unusually cohesive, because the band was really into a rhythm and blues mode, so pretty much all of the songs fit that genre.

A lot of other bands are revered for playing this music around this time, such as the Rolling Stones, the Pretty Things, the Yardbirds, and so on, but Manfred Mann's similar efforts seem to be largely forgotten. I don't know why, because they did this type of music better than most of their British contemporaries. True, it would have been nice if they did more instrumental soloing, but their vocalist Paul Jones was one of the best British singers for this genre.

01 Smokestack Lightning (Manfred Mann)
02 Don't Ask Me What I Say (Manfred Mann)
03 Sack O' Woe (Manfred Mann)
04 What You Gonna Do (Manfred Mann)
05 Hoochie Coochie Man (Manfred Mann)
06 I'm Your Kingpin (Manfred Mann)
07 Down the Road Apiece (Manfred Mann)
08 I've Got My Mojo Working (Manfred Mann)
09 It's Gonna Work Out Fine (Manfred Mann)
10 Mr. Anello (Manfred Mann)
11 Untie Me (Manfred Mann)
12 Bring It to Jerome (Manfred Mann)
13 Without You (Manfred Mann)
14 You've Got to Take It (Manfred Mann)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15262663/ManfredM_1964_FiveFcesofManfrdMnn_atse.zip.html

The album cover is the official cover with no changes.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Home Concerts 2, Afton, VA, 4-26-2020 to 5-24-2020

A few weeks ago, I posted an album of songs Mary Chapin Carpenter recorded during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown. I'm happy to say that she's continued to post new songs every few days, so I now have enough for another album. May she keep on posting more songs, even after the crisis is over.

I don't have much to say that I didn't say for the first album compiling her home videos. As with that album, she usually talks a lot before starting each song. But, as I did there, I've edited her comments down a lot to make this something much more likely to stand up to repeat listens. I've cut out her repetitive comments wishing people well during the pandemic, as well as her frequent comments about her pets. Instead, I've generally just kept the parts that are relevant to the songs she plays.

Pretty much all of the songs are her originals, from all parts of her career. If you like the first album of home concerts I've posted, you'll like this one too.

One minor note: since she's posted enough songs for me to create this album, I've gone back to the previous album and renamed it "Home Concerts 1," with this being "Home Concerts 2." I've also changed the cover art accordingly.

01 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 The Age of Miracles (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Why Shouldn't We (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 Transcendental Reunion (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 Rhythm of the Blues (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 Something Tamed, Something Wild (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Quittin' Time (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 John Doe No. 24 (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 This Shirt (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 I Take My Chances (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MHu5jWaQ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/OUXi5muvDFJJm7H/file

The cover art is a screenshot from one of her videos. (I don't remember which one.) She lives with a dog, Angus, and a cat, White Kitty. At the start of each video, she typically reports on where her two pets are and what they're doing. So, given her emphasis on them, I figure it's only fitting to include a screenshot with them in it. This one only shows the dog Angus, since I don't think the two pets have made an appearance together yet. (That's not too surprising, since her cat seems to be napping 99% of the time.) Also, I widened the background on either side of her and her guitar in order to include enough vertically of the screenshot to show both her head and Angus's head.

In February 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

X - My Father's Place, Roslyn, NY, 12-11-1983

I think X is a great band. Technically, I supose they're considered a punk band, but unlike most punk bands, I appreciate how they've had deep roots in older music forms, like folk and country. (This can best be seen in their alter ego band, the Knitters.) They put on a new album last month called "Alphabetland." It's their first album in 27 years. I haven't heard it yet, but it has all their original members on it, and it's been getting surprisingly good reviews. I figure that's a good excuse to post something by them.

In my opinion, the "golden age" of X was their first four albums, from 1980 to 1983. Let me quote from an allmusic.com review of one of their albums:

"X were undeniably not just one of the greatest punk bands, but one of the greatest live rock acts of all time. [But] they never issued a true live set featuring the stellar, original lineup with guitarist Billy Zoom."

Indeed. Zoom left the band (for the first time) in 1986. Their 1985 album was disappointing, where they tried for a different sound, so in my opinion the ideal time to have a live album from them would be 1983. Luckily, although no live album from that time has ever come out, there is an excellent bootleg of a concert that was played on the radio at the time, which is presented here.

That means it was professionally recorded to sound good for the radio. I didn't have to do much tweaking for this one. All I did was break was little talking there was between songs onto their own tracks, and lower the overall volume level, to put it in line with all the other albums I post on this blog.

There was one major snag with the recording in that the first song, "True Love, Part 1," fades in right as it was ending. I'm especially bummed since that's a really good song. It also suggests there could have been more of the concert that either didn't get on the radio or didn't get recorded by whoever captured the radio show. The concert is slightly less than an hour long, whereas they played well over an hour in other 1983 that are on bootleg, suggesting that a portion of the show is missing. At least we know the ending is correct, since the show finishes with a few parting comments.

I didn't want to start this off with just part of a song, so I found another bootleg from 1983 where "True Love" was played and I inserted that instead. While I was at it, I also included "Blue Spark" since that's one of my favorites of theirs, as well as a spoken introduction. I was tempted to include more, but I decided against it since the sound quality from the other show is less impressive.

If you want just one live X recording, I recommend this one, even though it's a bootleg. It beats all their official live albums, in my opinion. And it also kind of doubles as a "best of" for their early years, since they play most of their best known songs from that era.

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 talk (X)
02 Blue Spark (X)
03 True Love, Part 1 (X)
04 talk (X)
05 In This House that I Call Home (X)
06 talk (X)
07 Hungry Wolf (X)
08 talk (X)
09 The New World (X)
10 Universal Corner (X)
11 True Love, Part 2 (X)
12 Beyond and Back (X)
13 talk (X)
14 Los Angeles (X)
15 Make the Music Go Bang (X)
16 Some Other Time (X)
17 talk (X)
18 Hot House (X)
19 Soul Kitchen (X)
20 Breathless (X)
21 Johnny Hit and Run Paulene (X)
22 Motel Room in My Bed (X)
23 talk (X)
24 Poor Girl (X)
25 talk (X)
26 Devil Doll (X)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15258782/Xx_1983_My_Father_s_Place__Roslyn__NY__12-11-1983_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is of the band performing for "American Bandstand" in October 1983. I cropped it to focus on Exene Cervenka and John Doe. They're the band leaders and lead vocalists, and the other band members were mostly hidden in the darkness.