Oingo Boingo - Remember My Name - Non-Album Tracks (1987-1995)

I've posted quite a few Oingo Boingo stray tracks albums, which is rather surprising in my opinion considering that the band wasn't active that long. But for whatever reason, they had a habit of leaving lots of good songs off their albums. Here's the fifth and last. It's the last because the band folded in 1995.

Personally, my favorite period for the band is the first half of the 1980s. It was led by Danny Elfman, who was the lead vocalist and main songwriter. In 1985, he scored the music to a major motion picture, and from that point on he stayed very busy writing scores to dozens of movies. With each passing year, it seemed his interest in Oingo Boingo lessened until he disbanded the band altogether in 1995, after a farewell tour. 

This album deals with the years the band was slowing fading due to Elfman's changing interests. The band's musical style was changing too, growing more serious as Elfman aged and developed. But although I prefer the earlier style, in my opinion pretty much everything the band did was good. In fact, I would argue that many of the rare or unreleased songs here are as good or better than the songs on the band's albums.

Six of the songs here are unreleased. Most of those are studio outtakes and the sound quality is very good. "Minne the Moocher," a cover of the classic 1930s song, is the only one from a concert bootleg, and the sound quality of that one is a bit lower. Also, note that a different version of "Cindarella Undercover" did appear on the band's live in the studio album "Boingo Alive." Plus, the song was actually written in the late 1970s, and I posted a 1981 version on the stray tracks album "I Was a Teenage Monster."

By the way, "This Time" isn't an Oingo Boingo track at all, but a Danny Elfman solo one. It was actually done as a bonus track for the soundtrack to "Nightmare Before Christmas" in 1994. I included it because it has Elfman on lead vocals, something he almost never did for any of his soundtrack scores, and it was done while Oingo Boingo was still together.

This album is 59 minutes long.

01 Cinderella Undercover (Oingo Boingo)
02 Happy (Oingo Boingo)
03 Mama (Oingo Boingo)
04 Find You (Oingo Boingo)
05 Inside (Oingo Boingo)
06 Remember My Name (Oingo Boingo)
07 Try to Believe [Soundtrack Version] (Oingo Boingo)
08 Minnie the Moocher (Oingo Boingo)
09 Helpless (Oingo Boingo)
10 Water (Oingo Boingo)
11 This Time (Danny Elfman)
12 Piggies (Oingo Boingo)
13 Change (Oingo Boingo)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264849/OingBo_1987-1995_RemembrMyNme_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I found a nice graphic with the band's name in it on the Internet. I don't know where or when it's from, but I thought it looked cool. All I did was add the black background and the album title at the bottom.

Jorma Kaukonen - Home Concerts 3, Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, OH, 5-2-2020 to 5-16-2020

It's already 2021 as I write this, but I still have some 2020 home concerts to post. So here's another from Jorma Kaukonen of both Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna fame. Since the pandemic began, he's been holding a concert at his home once a week, sometimes solo and sometimes as part of Hot Tuna. He continues to do that most weeks.

I think Kaukonen is underrated as a songwriter. I also think he relies too much on a small number of blues songs by others that he plays over and over again, especially those by Rev. Gary Davis. So this contains the songs he hadn't played in previous home concerts up till this point, minus those overplayed blues covers. The result is mostly originals, though there are a few covers here, such as "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" and "Nine Pound Hammer."

Also, note that his home concerts have often had as much talking as music. Typically, his wife has asked him questions from fans, and he would answer them at length. I've removed pretty much all of that. However, I've kept the comments he made that are relevant to the songs he's playing, so there's still a decent amount of between song banter.

I think the songs here are particularly interesting, because the songs he plays the most generally appeared on the first two albums in this series. These are the lesser known ones. But in my opinion they're generally very good just the same.

01 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 Letter to the North Star (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 Do Not Go Gentle [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 From the Land of Heroes (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 Mann's Fate [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 In My Dreams (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 River of Time (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 Living Just for You (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 Song for the High Mountain (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 Trial by Fire (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Song for the North Star (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 Another Man Done a Full Go Round (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 A Life Well Lived (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 Day to Day Out the Window Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
21 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
22 I'll Let You Know Before I Leave [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
23 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
24 Hamar Promenade (Jorma Kaukonen)
25 Nine Pound Hammer (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292229/JormaK_2020_HomeConcrts3FurPeaceRanch_5-2-2020_to_5-16-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot taken from one of the YouTube videos of the songs on this album.

Morgan James - Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James (2014-2018)

Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox is a musical collective with an interesting conceit: they take popular songs from the last few decades and recast them in drastically different arrangements, turning slick pop hits into ragtime jazz, 1960s modern, 1940s swing, and the like. In my opinion, it's a very hit and miss approach. Sometimes it works great and makes you appreciate a song in a new way. Other times, it's more like a failed experiment. But their versions are definitely interesting, which is why all their songs combined have received more than a billion views on YouTube. You can read more about this collective at Wikipedia:

Postmodern Jukebox - Wikipedia

One aspect of this collective is that there's a rotating cast of lead vocalists, with no one singer dominating. But of all the vocalists they've used, Morgan James at least ties for being the most prominent. That makes perfect sense to me, since she's very vocally gifted and has an attractive appearance that helps get more YouTube views. I've posted a number of albums of her acoustic cover versions, and I plan on posting a lot more. I've also compiled all her lead vocal turns with Postmodern Jukebox. Luckily, there are just enough songs for an album.

The vast majority of the performances here come from Postmodern Jukebox studio albums, which basically just repackage their popular YouTube videos. But two of the performances are unreleased ("All About that Bass" and "Sweet Child o' Mine"). Don't worry though, the sound quality of those are just as excellent as the others. And note that unlilke most of the other Morgan James music I've been posting, which is acoustic, these are generally full band performances.

This includes James's version of "Dream On" by Aerosmith. The video of it has gotten over 20 million views on YouTube, and for good reason, because she blows the song out of the water. 

I was torn over whether to include "Barbie Girl" or not. I consider the original by Aqua to be a truly vile song that is best totally forgotten. But this version is different enough (done in a vintage Beach Boys style) to make it at least bearable. If you have issues with the song like I do, you can always just delete that one.

This album is 43 minutes long. James apparently hasn't performed as part of the Postmodern Jukebox collective since 2018. But if she ever does more with them, I'll consider adding that here.

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

01 Maps - Maroon 5
02 Really Don't Care - Demi Lovato
03 Break Free - Ariana Grande
04 All About That Bass - Meghan Trainor
05 Barbie Girl - Aqua
06 Take Me to Church - Hozier
07 Jealous - Nick Jonas
08 Dream On - Aerosmith
09 Who Wants to Live Forever - Queen
10 It's a Man's Man's Man's World - James Brown
11 Sweet Child o' Mine - Guns N' Roses

And here's the usual song list:

01 Maps (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
02 Really Don't Care (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
03 Break Free (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
04 All About That Bass (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Haley Reinhart, Morgan James & Ariana Savalas)
05 Barbie Girl (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
06 Take Me to Church (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
07 Jealous (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
08 Dream On (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
09 Who Wants to Live Forever (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
10 It's a Man's Man's Man's World (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
11 Sweet Child o' Mine (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266881/MorganJ_2014-2018_ScttBradleesPstmodernJukebox_atse.zip.html

Thanks again to PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog, who put the cover together while I was having computer trouble a couple of weeks ago. I selected the image, which is a screenshot from one of her YouTube videos.

Etta James - Miss Pitiful - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

I have to admit that I find Etta James' music hit or miss. She's had lots of really great songs, but plenty of duds too. I mostly like her at the box set level. A problem is that her personal like was messed up for much of her career, including pretty much all of the first half. She had lots of problems with drugs and dealings with shady people who brought her down. On top of that, she often got saddled with subpar production and mediocre songs.

Despite all that, there were times when she was firing on all cylinders and consistently came up with excellent performances. One of those times was in 1968 and 1969. James' career had been on the decline, with only a few minor hits in the previous few years. In my opinion, her turnaround in 1968 was inadvertently due to Aretha Franklin. Franklin was hugely talented, but her career had been foundering, due to a record company that misunderstood her and saddled her with the wrong production and songs (similar to James's problems at the time). But in early 1967, she got a new record company and a new producer who tried a new approach. They paired her up with a soulful backing back in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and basically let her be soulful instead of trying to push a more mainstream sound on her. The result was a bunch of hits that immediately turned Franklin into a big star.

Perhaps not surprisingly, James's record company tried to duplicate Franklin's model for success. They took her to Muscle Shoals and had her work with that exact same group of musicians, who by the way went on to play on tons of other classic records. (They're celebrated as "the Swampers" in the lyrics to Lynyrd Skynrd's song "Sweet Home Alabama.") Exactly like Franklin, James' soulfulness was unleashed. The result was a hit song in 1968, "Tell Mama," and an acclaimed album by the same name. If you don't have that album, I suggest you get it, because it's solid all the way through.

So, finally, we get to this album. It turns out the songs for the "Tell Mama" album weren't the only songs James performed with the Swampers in Alabama. After finishing that album in 1967, she went back there for a number of sessions in 1968 and early 1969. It had the same high level of quality, due to the sympathetic backing and letting her be more soulful. But for whatever reason, these songs weren't put on an album. Instead, her next album, called "Funk" and released in 1969, would come from other sessions recorded elsewhere, and she wouldn't play with the Swampers again.

What I've done is simply gather up all the other songs James played with the Swampers. That makes up 36 minutes of music, which was a typical album length at the time. (The "Tell Mama" album actually is even shorter, only 29 minutes long.) Some of the songs came out as A- and B-sides at the time, and one, "Miss Pitiful" was a minor hit and popular enough to make it on most of her best of collections, so that's why I've titled the album after it. But about half of them remained unreleased until coming out on archival releases decades later.

01 I Got You Babe (Etta James)
02 I Worship the Ground You Walk On (Etta James)
03 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Etta James)
04 You Got It (Etta James)
05 Fire (Etta James)
06 Almost Persuaded (Etta James)
07 You Took It (Etta James)
08 I've Gone Too Far (Etta James)
09 Misty (Etta James)
10 Miss Pitiful (Etta James)
11 Slow and Easy (Etta James)
12 Light My Fire (Etta James)
13 The Soul of a Man (Etta James)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15260262/EttaJms_1968-1969_MssPitiful_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from the "Tell Mama" recording sessions at Muscle Shoals in 1967. To make it look more authentic, I added the same "stereo" and record company logos as on the "Tell Mama" album.

KT Tunstall - Cover Songs, Volume 4: 2011-2016

Here's the next in my series of KT Tunstall cover songs albums. As with the others, the sound quality is excellent, and she has fun with songs from a wide variety of artists and genres.

As I've mentioned with previous albums in this series, Tunstall grew up on the music of the 1980s and 90s, so she often favors music from those decades over the 1960s and 70s, which is more common for many of the other cover album collections I've posted by other artists. There's an especially big emphasis on the 1980s here, with seven of the 11 songs from that decade. But as a sign of her range, she does songs from as early as 1932 ("Night and Day") and as late as 2003 ("Seven Nation Army").

Six of the 11 songs are officially unreleased. But don't worry, because most of those are from radio or TV appearances, and they sound just as great as the rest.

Even the bonus track songs excellent this time. The only reason I've put "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree - Seven Nation Army" is because it only partially qualifies for being a cover song. Most of it is KT Tunstall's great original hit "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree," with about a minute of "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripe near the end. So it's more of an original than a cover, in my opinion. But I figure it's interesting enough to include as a bonus track anyway.

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

01 Landslide - Fleetwood Mac
02 Merry Christmas Everyone - Shakin' Stevens
03 Sweet Dreams [Are Made of This] - Eurythmics
04 Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel
05 The Boys of Summer - Don Henley
06 Deportee [Plane Wreck at Los Gatos] - Woody Guthrie
07 Night and Day - Cole Porter / Fred Astaire
08 Should I Stay or Should I Go - Clash
09 Promised You a Miracle - Simple Minds
10 Writing to Reach You - Travis
11 State Trooper- Bruce Springsteen
Seven Nation Army - White Stripes

Here's the usual song list:

01 Landslide (KT Tunstall)
02 Merry Christmas Everyone (KT Tunstall)
03 Sweet Dreams [Are Made of This] (KT Tunstall with Dave Stewart, Vanessa Haynes & Candy Dulfer)
04 Sledgehammer (KT Tunstall)
05 The Boys of Summer (KT Tunstall)
06 Deportee [Plane Wreck at Los Gatos] (KT Tunstall)
07 Night and Day (KT Tunstall with Jools Holland)
08 Should I Stay or Should I Go (KT Tunstall)
09 Promised You a Miracle (Simple Minds & KT Tunstall)
10 Writing to Reach You (KT Tunstall)
11 State Trooper (KT Tunstall & Julie Fowlis)

Black Horse and the Cherry Tree - Seven Nation Army (KT Tunstall)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15847871/KTTnstl_2011-2016_CovrSngsVol4_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a concert in Scotland in 2013.

Cat Stevens - KCET Studios, Los Angeles, CA, 6-8-1971

I'm a very big fan of Cat Stevens' early 1970s music, which was his commercial and critical success. In terms of live recordings, 1971 seems to be the best. By chance, there's very little that's recorded well from 1970 or 1972 (although I've posted a very good 1970 recording here recently), and by 1973 his music changed and he played with a full band. That leaves 1971. Luckily, he played a few concerts that were recorded very well. 

This one has excellent sound because it was broadcast on PBS. This concert hasn't been officially released in full, though I think a track here and there has been included as bonus tracks on archival releases. The one snag with it is that it's relatively short. The portion of this album from the KCET Studios show broadcast on PBS is only 30 minutes long.

I wanted it longer. So I found another concert he played later that month in Berkeley, California, and added in just the songs from it that weren't on the PBS recording. That added another 15 minutes, making the whole thing 45 minutes long. As you'll probably notice when listening to this, the sound quality isn't as good. It still is fairly good, but there's some boomy echo. 

The only problem with the PBS portion is that it got cut off in the middle of the song "Hard Headed Woman." I surmise the TV show just played what they could until time ran out. (That makes me wonder if the rest of the concert was recorded at that same excellent quality, and if we'll ever be able to hear the whole thing.) I edited the song so the first half is from the PBS recording and the second half is from the Berkeley recording. Again, you'll probably notice the change, but I figure that's better than not including the song at all.

01 Moonshadow (Cat Stevens)
02 talk (Cat Stevens)
03 On the Road to Find Out (Cat Stevens)
04 Where Do the Children Play (Cat Stevens)
05 talk (Cat Stevens)
06 Wild World (Cat Stevens)
07 talk (Cat Stevens)
08 Miles from Nowhere (Cat Stevens)
09 talk (Cat Stevens)
10 Longer Boats (Cat Stevens)
11 talk (Cat Stevens)
12 Father and Son (Cat Stevens)
13 talk (Cat Stevens)
14 Hard Headed Woman [Edit] (Cat Stevens)
15 Time (Cat Stevens)
16 Fill My Eyes (Cat Stevens)
17 talk (Cat Stevens)
18 Peace Train (Cat Stevens)
19 talk (Cat Stevens)
20 On the Road to Find Out (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687686/CATSTVNS1971b_KCETStdiosLosAnglesCA__6-8-1971_atse.zip.html

I was surprised that I could find any really excellent concert photos in color from 1971. So I used a black and white one and colorized it using the Pixbim program. This photo was taken in London in September 1971.

Jim Croce - Which Way Are You Goin' - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1973)

Jim Croce became a big star in 1972 seemingly out of nowhere, with a hit "debut" album and a couple of hit singles. However, he spent years toiling in obscurity as a folk musician and songwriter before his success. Unfortunately, his time in the spotlight was short, because he died in a plane crash in 1973. This album gathers up all his stray tracks from 1970 until the end of his career to 1973. I will have more to post of his music before 1970, but that's for another time.

Croce put out an obscure album in 1969 that was performed as a duet with his wife Ingrid Croce. Then he didn't release any new music until the hit 1972 album mentioned above, "You Don't Mess Around with Jim." It turns out he had a bunch of songs that he wrote and recorded in 1970 and 1971 that didn't get released at the time. Those comprise the first eight songs. I think all of them are originals, and all of them were only released posthumously. 

The remainder of the songs are cover versions that he did in his years of fame, 1972 and 1973. Two of those, "Chain Gang Medley" and "Ol' Man River" were the A- and B-sides of a 1972 single. The rest were performed in concert. I did my best to strip those of audience noise to make them sound like the other studio tracks. Luckily, the sound quality is so high on these that I think they come fairly close to sounding as good, even though a couple of them are from bootlegs.

Note that if you're easily offended, the song "Ball of Kerrymuir" probably is not for you. This seems to be a traditional Irish song that Croce played in concert for laughs. The lyrics are wild and X-rated, with each verse describing an outrageous sex act. I didn't include the long introduction he always gave to explain this strange song, but you can hear that on his official live album "The Final Tour." This version is longer and has some extra verses.

The songs are in rough chronological order by the year they were recorded. But I put "Ol' Man River" at the end even though it's from 1972 instead of 1973 since I find it a fitting final song.

This album is 40 minutes long. I wouldn't say it's as good as the three hit albums from 1972 and 1973 that he's best known for, but if you like those you should like this, since it's very much in the same vein.

01 [And] I Remember Her (Jim Croce)
02 Cotton Mouth River (Jim Croce)
03 More than That Tomorrow (Jim Croce)
04 The Migrant Worker (Jim Croce)
05 Stone Walls (Jim Croce)
06 King's Song (Jim Croce)
07 Mississippi Lady (Jim Croce)
08 Which Way Are You Goin' (Jim Croce)
09 Chain Gang Medley [Chain Gang - He Don't Love You - Searchin' - Chain Gang] (Jim Croce)
10 Framed (Jim Croce)
11 He's Got a Way with Women (Jim Croce)
12 Ball of Kerrymuir [Edit] (Jim Croce)
13 Shopping for Clothes (Jim Croce)
14 Ol' Man River (Jim Croce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Ahp6T2BS

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/axc2ngOOr4hgQb8/file

PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog originally did the album cover. But then I realized I had to redo it after I discovered the exact version of the song I wanted as the title song was in fact on Croce's "Americana" album already. So I redid it with a new title. I'm not sure where or when the photo is from. I added the same record company logo that was on his 1972 and 1973 albums.

In February 2025, I sharpened the image with the Krea AI program.

I'm back on Soulseek

As I explained previously in this blog, in mid-December 2020 I had a computer hard drive fail on me. Luckily, my music collection wasn't affected, but I had to get a new computer. As part of that, I also lost my SoulseekQT account. But in the past few days, I've managed to put all the albums I've shared here back on Soulseek. My user name is the same as before: albumsthatshouldexist. So if you have trouble with Zippyshare or just want a better and/or different way to access my music, I highly recommend doing so through Soulseek.

My computer trouble, plus the trouble PJ at his Albums I Wish Existed blog around the same time did have a silver lining. When PJ's blog was unexpectedly and suddenly taken down, he resumed it at a new URL (check my list of links for that). But he also decided to share his files through Soulseek. To help people find his files there, he renamed all of the folders he was sharing, adding "aiwe" to them (for "Albums I Wish Existed"). 

I realized this was a good idea. Since I had to reshare all my folders for Soulseek anyway, I also have added something to each folder to help people find the files. In my case, I chose "atse," which naturally is short for "Albums That Should Exist." You probably can find the files anyway, but this should make it easier. Soulseek can be a bit erratic. 

For one thing, I have to be online and with the Soulseek program open for the files to be shared. But also, sometimes if you search for a specific thing, you might or might not find it depending on the search terms you use. For example, I recently posted the album "Acoustic Demos" by Jim Croce. Maybe if you search for "acoustic demos" and "jim croce" the album will come up, but if you search for "acoustic demos" and just "croce" it won't, or vice versa. It's hard to tell, because Soulseek can be erratic, as I said. But adding in "atse" to your searches from now on should help a lot. PJ had noticed much more success with people finding the albums they're looking for since he's done that.

Oh, one final point. Make sure you're using the program "SoulseekQT" and not just "Soulseek." (I just call it "Soulseek" most of the time because it's easier.) I don't know why there are two programs with such similar names, especially since Wikipedia says they're run by the same management, but "SoulseekQT" is used by way more people and has at least five times the number of shared files, so that's what I use. 

By the way, the program is free and awesome. If you're not using it already, you really should. Here's the Wikipedia entry on it. You can find the link to download it there:

Soulseek - Wikipedia

Beck - Gimme - Non-Album Tracks (2013)

Here's the next in my long series of stray tracks albums for Beck. Despite being a prolific songwriter, he didn't release a studio album between 2008 and 2014. However, he remained busy. In 2013 alone, he performed enough new and unique songs for me to be able to compile this album. In that same year, he also did his very unusual "Song Reader" project, but I'll deal with that in a different post. None of the songs here were a part of that project.

The songs here are a grab bag of different things. Four of the songs are A-sides to singles, and another is a B-side. All those are originals. "Evil Things" is also an original, but that comes from a concert bootleg. "I Am the Cosmos" and "Sound and Vision" are covers played in concert, and were originally done by Chris Bell of the band Big Star, and David Bowie, respectively. I also included the medley of Beck's hits "Devil's Haircut" and "Where It's At" because it's a very rare acoustic version that I like.

My version of the song "Gimme" is unique. Beck put out an A-side version of that song that's only about two and a half minutes long. He also put out another version that is split in two and totals over 20 minutes long. I thought the short version is too short and the long version is way too long. So instead I made my own edit of the first half of the long version that's about six minutes long.

The bonus track, "Heaven Can Wait," is a duet between Beck and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who is the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg, one of Beck's musical heroes. In 2009, she released the album "IRM" with all the songs either written or co-written by Beck. He also produced the album. Beck generally has never played these songs himself, but in 2013 he played a concert in Paris where Charlotte Gainsbourg lives, and that's why they played a duet of this song on stage. But unfortunately the sound quality of the bootleg recording is just okay, so it only merits being a bonus track.

01 Defriended (Beck)
02 I Won't Be Long (Beck)
03 Evil Things (Beck)
04 Gimme, Part 1 [Edit] (Beck)
05 Back to You (Beck)
06 I Am the Cosmos (Beck)
07 Devil's Haircut - Where It's At [Live Acoustic] (Beck)
09 I Just Started Hating Some People Today (Beck with Jack White)
09 Blue Randy (Beck with Jack White)
10 Sound and Vision (Beck)

Heaven Can Wait (Beck & Charlotte Gainsbourg)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15127428/BeckH_2013_Gmme_atse.zip.html

The album cover is heavily based on the cover to Beck's "Gimme" single. However, to distinguish it from that, I increased the size of the text at the top, and also increased the size of the main painting. What that replaced was merely white space.
 

David Bowie - Toy (2001)

One well known "lost album" is "Toy" by David Bowie. Around 2000, Bowie had what I consider to be the excellent idea of revisiting some of his little-known songs from the very start of his career. He performed all new versions of these songs with drastically different arrangements, as well as three brand new songs. He was ready to release this as his next album in 2001, but there were problems with his record company, which wouldn't let him release the album. So instead a number of the songs dribbled out as B-sides and on compilations. Then, in 2011, the entire album as it was originally conceived was released onto the Internet. It is widely speculated that Bowie himself did this.

There are two different versions, but with the same song order. The versions differ slightly with the productions of the songs. I've chosen the less well known version, if only to help spread it around a little more. Both are equally good, in my opinion.

I could say a lot more, but for once I don't have to, since there's a Wikipedia entry that explains it all quite well. That can be found here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_(David_Bowie_album)

That lists where the original versions can be found, and where some of the revised versions can be found. Two of the songs, "Uncle Floyd" (also known as "Slip Away") and "Afraid" appeared on his next studio album, "Heathen."

The album is fairly long, being exactly an hour in length. Perhaps some of the songs would have been cut had it actually been released in 2001.

UPDATE: On November 29, 2021, I drastically updated the mp3 download file. Earlier that month, an official version of the album was finally released, as part of the "Brilliant Adventure" box set. However, only 12 of the 16 songs were included. So I've posted those twelve, plus the extra four at the end. 

01 I Dig Everything (David Bowie)
02 You've Got a Habit of Leaving (David Bowie)
03 The London Boys (David Bowie)
04 Karma Man (David Bowie)
05 Conversation Piece (David Bowie)
06 Shadow Man (David Bowie)
07 Let Me Sleep Beside You (David Bowie)
08 Hole in the Ground (David Bowie)
09 Baby Loves That Way (David Bowie)
10 Can't Help Thinking about Me (David Bowie)
11 Silly Boy Blue (David Bowie)
12 Toy [Your Turn to Drive] (David Bowie)
13 Uncle Floyd [Slip Away] (David Bowie)
14 Afraid (David Bowie)
15 Liza Jane (David Bowie)
16 In the Heat of the Morning (David Bowie)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15129408/DavidB_2001_Ty_atse.zip.html

When I searched the Internet for a good cover art photo, I was surprised to find many fan-made versions already existed. I don't know of any cover that was approved to be the real one back in 2001. So instead I just picked the one out of those that I liked the best. I like this one because it's based on the cover of his 1967 album, simply called "David Bowie," except it has different text and uses a photo of him from around 2001.

Various Artists - Covered: Graham Gouldman, Volume 1: 1964-1967

It's been months, but I'm very glad to announce that my "Covered" series is back! For this series, I've highlighted the best songs of the most famous and talented songwriters. So far, I've mostly focused on those who got started in the 1950s. But I'm starting to move to those who made it in the 1960s.

Graham Gouldman is one of my favorite songwriters. He's known for some great 1960s classics such as "Bus Stop" by the Hollies, "No Milk Today" by the Herman's Hermits, and "For Your Love" by the Yardbirds. Then in the 1970s he was part of the band 10cc, and co-wrote most of their big hits, such as "The Things I Do for Love" and "Dreadlock Holiday." You can read more about his long career, with his still leading 10cc at 74 years old as I write this, at his Wikipedia entry:

Graham Gouldman - Wikipedia

What I like about Gouldman's songwriting is that he writes very catchy pop songs, yet he uses unusual chord changes, especially utilizing minor chords, to separate his songs from the pack. Although lots of different artists are featured on this album, in my opinion there is some sort of musical continuity that identifies them all as Gouldman songs. 

He has so many excellent songs that I've created three albums for him in this series. However, he differs from many songwriters in that he was a very capable singer and performer, and has put out a lot of his own material. This series avoids all of that, including everything he did with 10cc. This series is contains his songs, but performed by others. Later, I plan on posting some other album collections of his best songs outside of 10cc where he was the lead vocalist.

This album has a lot of songs on it, but they're generally short, so the total length of the album is only 44 minutes.

01 For Your Love (Yardbirds)
02 I'm Gonna Take You There (Dave Berry)
03 Evil Hearted You (Yardbirds)
04 Behind the Door (St. Louis Union)
05 Heart Full of Soul (Yardbirds)
06 The Cost of Living (Downliners Sect)
07 Look through Any Window (Hollies)
08 East West (Herman's Hermits)
09 People Passing By (High Society)
10 I'm 28 (Toni Basil)
11 You Stole My Love (Mike Furber & the Bowery Boys)
12 Listen People (Herman's Hermits)
13 Bus Stop (Hollies)
14 Pamela, Pamela (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
15 No Milk Today (Herman's Hermits)
16 Star of Eastern Street (High Society)
17 London Look (Hifis)
18 Going Home (Normie Rowe & the Playboys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17181023/COVRDGrhmGuldmn1964-1967Volum1_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/84jcEcP2

I'm not sure when or where the cover art photo is from, but clearly it looks to be from 1964 or 1965. It was black and white, but I colorized it.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Norah Jones - Home Concerts 13, New York City, 10-22-2020 to 11-5-2020

Here's another in a long line of Norah Jones home concert albums. I waited a little bit to see how things would shake out for the next album or two. She has slowed down a lot, for the first time, for the Christmas holidays. But she's promised to post more in the new year.

Hopefully by now I don't need to explain much. If you've listened to any of the previous home concerts in this series, you should know the drill. This is about 45 minutes of her playing songs solo from her home in her unique style.

Perhaps the most notable thing about this particular album is the cover. This is a compilation of three performances of four songs each. (I didn't include any songs that she played in previous home concerts, and I think there was one or two of those here.) The middle performance took place very close to Halloween. So for that she dressed up in a Halloween costume, as the Hamburglar from the McDonalds fast food chain. Note also in the back two kids in their own costumes. I'm assuming those are her kids. They came out and danced around for one of the songs.

01 Picture in a Frame (Norah Jones)
02 talk (Norah Jones)
03 Just a Little Bit (Norah Jones)
04 Blue Bayou (Norah Jones)
05 talk (Norah Jones)
08 My Dear Country (Norah Jones)
09 talk (Norah Jones)
10 Wake Me Up (Norah Jones)
11 talk (Norah Jones)
12 Man of the Hour (Norah Jones)
13 Down by the River (Norah Jones)
14 talk (Norah Jones)
15 Rosie's Lullaby (Norah Jones)
16 Sleep Won't Come (Norah Jones)
17 talk (Norah Jones)
18 Hands on the Wheel (Norah Jones) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634401/NorahJ_2020_HomeCncerts13__10-22-2020_to_11-5-2020_atse.zip.html

I discussed the album cover above. It comes from a screenshot I took. I couldn't find an ideal screenshot clearly featuring both children. But you can see the head of one (in an alien mask) on one side of her, and part of the body of the other one on her other side.

Colorization

Good news - I have a new computer, finally, and I have Photoshop again. Thanks a ton to PJ at his Albums I Wish Existed blog for making a bunch of album covers in the last couple of weeks while I couldn't. By the way, in case you haven't heard, his blog was taken down due to a copyright takedown notice. He's replicated his blog here:

https://albumsiwishexisted2.blogspot.com/

However, he's taken down all links and instead will share music through SoulseekQT. As an aside, my music files currently are not being shared through Soulseek. However, now that I have my new computer, I plan on bringing them back to Soulseek in the next few days. I'll let you know when that happens.

One plus to working with PJ on album covers these past couple weeks is that he turned me onto a program called Pixbim Color Surprise AI. Basically, it takes black and white images and colorizes them. What's cool is that it uses some analysis to determine what the image is about and then makes intelligent guesses as to what the colors probably are. For instance, if it identifies light colored hair, it'll turn that blonde and if it identifies dark colored hair it'll turn that brown.

Normally, I'm not in favor of colorization because it doesn't look good. But I'm so impressed with this program that I bought it and I plan on using it to colorize the several dozen black and white album covers I have posted here. 

Let me give you an example. Up above is the cover I made for a Neil Young album some months ago. It's from so early in his career (1965 to 1967) that there are no color photos of him, so I took a black and white one and tinted it brown.

Whereas here is the version I just colorized using the Pixbim program a few minutes ago. What do you think? Is it better? Should I colorize more?  Personally, I'm pretty happy with it, and the colorization is mostly automated, so it's easy to do.

By the way, here's the link to the album in question, in case you missed it:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/01/neil-young-folksinger-demos-1964-1967.html

Here's another example, of a Joni Mitchell album cover. The old version is at top and the new version is at the bottom. I think the change is pretty damn amazing.

Here's one more that I feel I have to highlight. For some of the others that I've just done, I did some touch up work, either in the program itself or in Photoshop. But for this below cover of songwriters Bacharach and David I did basically NO touch up work. This is all what the program did on its own. (Note that I'm referring to the main image and not the text, which is a separate thing.) The program decided the shirts should be blue, and the background brown, and all the rest. So I was able to make this change literally in a minute.

Crosby, Stills and Nash - Unplugged in Saratoga (Paul Mason Winery, Saratoga, CA, 6-26-1991)

In the early 1990s, "MTV Unplugged" acoustic concerts were all the rage. Some artists who got started in the 1960s and had lost much of their commercial appeal sold millions upon millions of their "unplugged" albums. For instance, Eric Clapton's "Unplugged" album sold no less than 26 million copies! Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN) have made many, many boneheaded decisions on what to release or not release. In my opinion, one of their biggest mistakes was to not release an acoustic live album at the peak of the "unplugged" trend. They excelled at the acoustic format, so you'd think they would have been all over that. The only thing they did was release a DVD called "The Acoustic Concert," but it was short and stripped of most of their banter.

So, still in keeping with my mental "alternate universe" in which CSN(Y) released many more albums than they actually did, I've crafted an unplugged album for them that probably would have come out in 1992, which was the same year as many other huge sellers. Nearly all of it comes from a soundboard bootleg of a concert in Saratoga, California. The sound quality of it is stellar, and there's lots of entertaining banter between songs.

I made a few changes or additions. I added "Wasted on the Way" to the start of the concert, because that was their typical first song on all their concerts that year, but it wasn't on the bootleg. Similarly, they typically ended with "Teach Your Children," and that wasn't there either, so I added that too. Also, in the middle, the song "Soldiers of Peace" was played. I really don't like that song. I'm all in favor of peace, but it's just not a good song despite the message of it. Since that was during Graham Nash's solo spot, I replaced it with another Nash song, "These Empty Days."

Luckily, there are a few other soundboard bootlegs from that year, so I was able to take the songs from those. I found a couple more that didn't get played at this particular concert but I thought would improve the concert: "4+20" and "Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom." So I added those to the very end.

I made some minor adjustments, generally boosting the volume of the banter and removing some dead air moments, like guitar tuning. But there wasn't much of that. Also, I generally boosted the volume of the audience applause after each song. One trickier thing was that there were a few singalong moments during a couple of songs, where the audience was supposed to take over the singing for a little while. In those cases, I boosted the audience noise a lot so there wouldn't be a strange mostly silent gap there.

All in all, this is a long concert, at two hours and 32 minutes. Nearly all their classic songs got played, plus some new ones for the time that in my opinion kept up their high standards. I imagine had CSN actually released a live album at this time it wouldn't have been that long, but I don't need to be limited by album lengths.

01 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 Wasted on the Way (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
04 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Blackbird (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 The Lee Shore (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 You Don't Have to Cry (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 Just a Song Before I Go (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
13 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
14 Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
15 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
16 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
17 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
19 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
20 Wind on the Water (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
21 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
22 On the Other Side of Town (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
23 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
24 These Empty Days (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
25 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
26 Thousand Roads (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
27 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
28 Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
29 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
30 Guinnevere (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
31 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
32 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
33 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
34 For What It's Worth (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
35 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
36 Southern Cross (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
39 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
40 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
41 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
42 Our House (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
43 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
44 4+20 (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
45 Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom (Crosby, Stills & Nash)

https://www.imagenetz.de/cUvsa

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8XbpAvhK

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/v8Rd1Fk0giq0Gpo/file

The cover photo comes from a concert in Portland in 1991. I moved Crosby so he'd be closer to the other two.

Jim Croce - Acoustic Demos (1971)

This is my first Jim Croce post, but it won't be the last. I feel that his music is sadly overlooked in this era, in part due to his early death in a 1973 plane crash only about a year after he became a star. 

This collection is something I've never seen gathered together before, and frankly I don't know much about it. In short, these are many of his classic songs in demo form, stripped down to his lead vocals and acoustic guitar. Croce's songs are generally acoustic sounding, but the studio versions often had strings, drums, and other instruments added. I love acoustic versions, so I really enjoy these versions.

I only recently came across this material as I was digging deeper into his music. Most of these songs are officially released, but on rather obscure releases, and spread out here and there. What little I know about the backstory comes from the liner notes to one of his collections ("The Studio Album Collection"), and goes like this. In 1969, Croce released an album that was performed with his wife Ingrid, and is known as either "Croce" or "Jim and Ingrid Croce." It didn't sell well at all, and his record company dropped him. Around that time, Ingrid got pregnant. He and she stopped touring and focused on their new baby and making enough money to get by. But staying at home, Croce had lots of time to write new songs. 

In February 1971, he recorded acoustic demos for a bunch of new songs, and this new material was so strong that he got a new record contract. That resulted in the album "You Don't Mess Around with Jim," released in April 1972. It was a surprise hit, with two hit songs, "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" and "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)." Plus, after his death, the song "Time in a Bottle" was released from the album and went to number one.

I know that lots of these performances are from that demo, but I don't know which ones exactly. I realized that they include every single one of the 12 songs on the "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" album, so I've sorted the first 12 songs to duplicate that album order exactly. I'm guessing that February 1971 tape included most or all of those. But that still leaves another six songs. I've arranged it so the next four songs all come from his subsequent album "Life and Times." The penultimate song "Lover's Cross" comes from his last album, "I Got a Name." That just leaves the final song, "Mississippi Lady." It was first released on "The Faces I've Been," an album released in 1975 that gathered up some stray tracks. I'm pretty sure it was an outtake from the "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" album.

So that's all I know. I'm guessing these are from 1971, but it could well be that some are from 1972 or 1973. If anyone knows more, please let me know. 

Most of the songs here come from three different official collections. But I searched on YouTube and found four additional songs that apparently remain unreleased, or perhaps are from some other official source that I missed. In any case, these four sound just as good as the rest. All the performances are excellent, but note that "Speedball Tucker" is less than a minute long. Since that's one of the officially released ones, I surmise that he hadn't finished the song when he recorded the demo.

01 You Don't Mess Around with Jim (Jim Croce)
02 Tomorrow's Going to Be a Brighter Day (Jim Croce)
03 New York's Not My Home (Jim Croce)
04 Hard Time Losin' Man (Jim Croce)
05 Photographs and Memories (Jim Croce)
06 Walkin' Back to Georgia (Jim Croce)
07 Operator [That's Not the Way It Feels] (Jim Croce)
08 Time in a Bottle (Jim Croce)
09 Rapid Roy [The Stock Car Boy] (Jim Croce)
10 Box No. 10 (Jim Croce)
11 A Long Time Ago (Jim Croce)
12 Hey Tomorrow (Jim Croce)
13 A Good Time Man like Me Ain't Got No Business (Jim Croce)
14 Bad, Bad Leroy Brown (Jim Croce)
15 These Dreams (Jim Croce)
16 Speedball Tucker (Jim Croce)
17 Lover's Cross (Jim Croce)
18 Mississippi Lady (Jim Croce)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15102046/JimCr_1971_AcoustcDemos_atse.zip.html

Yet again, the album cover art was made by PJ of his "Albums I Wish Exist" blog.

The Jeff Beck Group - BBC Sessions (1967-1968)

In the late 1960s, the Jeff Beck Group was known for featuring Jeff Beck on lead guitar and Rod Stewart on lead vocals. This album consists of songs they played for the BBC (with one exception, which I will explain below). There have been so many official albums of BBC material by different artists over the decades that I'm surprised none of these performances have been officially released.

The sound quality is generally very good, but it's variable. Some of the BBC sessions were recorded very well, some not so well, and some weren't recorded at all and apparently have been lost forever. There also have been multiple versions of some songs floating around on bootlegs. I carefully checked all the versions I could find and picked the best ones. There were only a couple of songs performed more than once that made it to bootlegs. I didn't include any duplicates, because the extra versions weren't that different and has poorer sound quality.

One typical problem with BBC recordings is when the BBC DJs talked over the beginnings or endings of songs. Luckily, the DJs seemed to respect the musicianship of the band enough to not talk over the music much. There were only about three cases where I had to make edits to patch over the talking. Those have "[Edit]" in the song titles.

The song "Shapes of Things" was especially tricky. Sometimes, the BBC performances were broadcast overseas in versions without the DJ talking. That was the case here with "Shapes of Things." Furthermore, by chance, the overseas version was recorded with much better quality. But unfortunately, about a minute of Jeff Beck's guitar solo was edited out of that version. So what I did was I edited the guitar solo in from the lower quality version. There were brief pauses in the music at both ends of the cut out section, so it was easy to add back in. Although the quality for that section is noticeably lower, it isn't so bad since there aren't any vocals there.

As I mentioned above, all the songs here are from the BBC, except for one. That one is "Love Is Blue." Apparently, the band only played the song in concert once, even though they released it as a single. The recording of that song comes from a bootleg with excellent quality - except for the vocals, which are terrible. But since this song is an instrumental, that doesn't matter. Due to the great sound quality, and the lack of any audible crowd noise, I figure it fits in well with the other songs here.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Hi Ho Silver Lining (Jeff Beck Group)
02 [I Know] I'm Losing You [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
03 Let Me Love You (Jeff Beck Group)
04 Stone Crazy [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
05 Rock My Plimsoul [Rock Me Baby] (Jeff Beck Group)
06 The Sun Is Shining [This Morning] [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
07 Tallyman (Jeff Beck Group)
08 I Ain't Superstitious (Jeff Beck Group)
09 Beck's Bolero [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck Group)
10 You'll Never Get to Heaven [If You Break My Heart] (Jeff Beck Group)
11 You Shook Me (Jeff Beck Group)
12 Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever (Jeff Beck Group)
13 Love Is Blue [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck Group)
14 Shapes of Things [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
15 Sweet Little Angel (Jeff Beck Group)
16 Rice Pudding [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck Group)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693321/JEFFBCK1967-1968_BBSessons_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is a promotional photo from 1967. Once again, thank to PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog, who put the cover together for me.

Rod Stewart - Don't You Tell Nobody - Non-Album Tracks (1964-1969)

It used to be that Rod Stewart had a widespread, well-regarded musical reputation. His work with the Jeff Beck Group in the late 1960s was great, and his early 1970s solo and Faces albums were excellent. Then he got too slick and commercial for my tastes, except for a usual good hit song or two per album. So the only reason I've made this collection of his very early stuff is because it's good music, heavily influenced by blues and soul. So if you're into British 1960s rhythm and blues, forget all about that later day Rod Stewart stuff and enjoy this.

Stewart had a long slow start to his musical career. He began singing in public in 1961, if not earlier. In 1963, he saw soul great Otis Redding in concert and became fascinated by soul music. The problem was, for several years, he lacked a steady band or musical identity. As you can see from the credits here, he joined and left various bands while sometimes putting out solo records. Nothing fully clicked until 1967, when he became the leader singer for the Jeff Beck Group and had two hit albums. But even that was temporary since he and Jeff Beck clashed. It wasn't until 1969 when he released his first solo album and also joined the Faces where he really established himself as a major star.

This album contains his various experiments and efforts as he struggled to make a name for himself. There's at least twice the amount of material from this time period, but I cherry picked that for what I thought was the best stuff. Note that I didn't include anything from the Jeff Beck Group. They do have some rarities from the Rod Stewart era, but I'll deal with those at another time.

One song here, "In a Broken Dream," was a big hit, but in a very odd way. It was a song by the band Python Lee Jackson. But their lead vocalist felt he didn't have the right voice for the song, so Stewart was brought in to sing on it plus two other songs, in mid-1969, while he was between bands and working as a session musician. Stewart was paid by being given new seat covers for his car! The song was released in a single in 1970, but went ignored. Then, in 1972, after Stewart was a big star, it was released again. This time, it became a number three hit in Britain.

This album is 51 minutes long. That would have been a stretch for albums of that time, but it would have been possible.

UPDATE: On March 19, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file by removing two songs. Those songs ("Wonderful One" and "Can I Get a Witness") were done by Stewart when he was a part of the band the Steampacket. I got rid of them because I've posted an entire album of music by that band, with those two songs and many more sung by Stewart, so they're no longer needed here.

01 Don't You Tell Nobody (Rod Stewart & Long John Baldry & the Hoochie Coochie Men)
02 Just like I Treat You (Rod Stewart & Long John Baldry & the Hoochie Coochie Men)
03 Good Morning Little Schoolgirl (Rod Stewart)
04 I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town (Rod Stewart)
05 The Day Will Come (Rod Stewart)
06 Why Does It Go On (Rod Stewart)
07 I Just Got Some (Rod Stewart)
08 Come Home Baby (P. P Arnold & Rod Stewart)
09 Stone Crazy (Rod Stewart, Peter Green, Aynsley Dunbar & Jack Bruce)
10 I Could Feel the Whole World Turn Round (Rod Stewart & the Shotgun Express)
11 Little Miss Understood (Rod Stewart)
12 So Much to Say (Rod Stewart)
13 In a Broken Dream (Python Lee Jackson with Rod Stewart)
14 Cloud Nine (Python Lee Jackson with Rod Stewart)
15 How Blue Can You Get (Python Lee Jackson with Rod Stewart)
16 Diamond Joe (Rod Stewart & Quiet Melon)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697083/RODSTWRT1964-1969_DontYuTllNbody_atse.zip.html

Once again, the album cover was made by PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog. It dates to a TV performance he made to promote his first solo single in 1964.

Beck - Spiral Staircase - Non-Album Tracks (2010-2012)

It's been a long time since I last posted a stray tracks album from Beck. But I recently went through my entire Beck collection making audio fixes, so I hope to post a lot more of his stuff soon. Here's the next one in my long stray tracks series from him.

Beck is a prolific song writer. But, strangely, he didn't release any albums between 2008 and 2014, despite writing lots of songs in those years. This comes from the middle of those years. We don't know what lies in his private vaults, and there have been very little bootlegging of his studio material from this time period. So what we're left with are songs he did for various projects plus rarities played in concert. Many of the songs here are from movie soundtracks and various artists collections. Only one, "Ah Melody," is from a concert bootleg.

A few of the songs have been heavily edited, so they need some special explanation. The first two songs are rare cases of bootlegged studio material. Beck did a number of original songs for the "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" movie, but these two didn't get included in the movie or the soundtrack. Both of them were very short, only about a minute long. I repeated some sections to make them long enough to come across as proper songs. Now, they're about two minutes long each.

"Silk Pillow" is a song that was a collaboration between Beck and Childish Gambino (a.k.a. Donald Glover). I removed a big chunk of the song in the middle that was pretty much all a Childish Gambino rap. I simply didn't like it that much, so this is very much a personal preference thing. 

In a similar way, Beck's song "NYC 73 - 78" is over 20 freakin' minutes long. I found that to be way, way too long, since it's not filled with instrumental solos or anything like that, mostly just lots of repetition. So I drastically cut it down to less than five minutes, the length of a normal song.

The songs "Cities" and "Spiral Staircase" present a highly unusual case. Both these songs, plus one more, "Touch the People" were recorded by Beck for the video game "Sound Shapes." They've never been released in any audio format, but one can hear them through the video game. However, there's a twist: the songs are broken into various pieces, and in the game you can put them together in any way you like to create your own versions of these songs. There's no definitive right version. 

I simply didn't like the song "Touch the People," which is a generic instrumental, so I didn't include that one. I found a mix of "Cities" that someone else did that I liked a lot, so I used that. (It was a long time ago, so I've lost track of whose version it was.) For "Spiral Staircase" though, I didn't find any version that I thought really nailed it. I didn't have the video game, but I took two different versions of the song that I found on YouTube and used audio editing software to make a version that worked for me.

By the way, the songs "Stormbringer," "Ah Melody," "Michelangelo Antonioni," and "Corrina, Corrina" are cover versions. "Michelangelo Antonioni" is by Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso, and his version is in Portuguese. Beck's version is very different in that the lyrics are in English. But I don't know if it's a straight translation or Beck's own lyrics or what.

The three bonus tracks are merely bonus tracks due to sound quality issues. "Nefertiti" and "Teeny Weeny Bobbie" as well as "Ah Melody" are Serge Gainsbourg songs that Beck played at a tribute concert. All three come from the same source, but for some reason I found the sound quality of "Ah Melody" good enough for the album, but the other two only good enough for bonus track status. For these songs, Beck generally sung in French.

01 Disgusting Rainbow [Edit] (Beck)
02 Gasoline Eyes [Edit] (Beck)
03 Stormbringer (Beck)
04 Iron Horse (Beck)
05 Curfew (Beck)
06 Ah Melody (Beck)
07 Looking for a Sign (Beck)
08 Silk Pillow [Edit] (Beck & Childish Gambino)
09 Cities (Beck)
10 Spiral Staircase (Beck)
11 Michelangelo Antonioni (Beck)
12 Corrina, Corrina (Beck)
13 NYC 73 - 78 [Edit] (Beck)

Nefertiti (Beck)
Pocahontas (Beck with Neil Young)
Teenie Weenie Boppie (Beck)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15127434/BeckH_2010-2012_SpirlStaircase_atse.zip.html

Once again, I was helped by PJ of the "Albums I Wish Existed" blog to make the album cover. Beck often has artistic covers instead of a photo of himself, so I decided to go for a literal interpretation of the "Spiral Staircase" album title. The art is by Barbara Berney. PJ added the text.

Ray Davies - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-27-2010

In 2009, Ray Davies, the lead singer and main songwriter for the Kinks, released an album called "The Kinks Choral Collection." As you can guess from the title, he did Kinks songs with a full-sized choir. 

This concert is from a year after the release of that studio album, but he kept going with the choir concept. As you can see from the album cover, he played the massive Glastonbury Festival with a full-sized choir. (The cover only shows a part of the choir.)

One thing that's really great about this concert is the sound quality. I'm a big Kinks fan, and I've taken a close look at the Ray Davies solo concert bootlegs out there. Very few are soundboards or have soundboard level quality, but this one does, because it was professionally recorded and filmed for a webcast by the BBC.

The other thing that makes this stand out, of course, is the use of the choir. He only used a choir for that 2009 album and the subsequent tour. They do add something if you're looking for different takes on the usual big Kinks songs. 

This concert recording is 57 minutes long. I believe I'm missing two songs played near the start of the concert, "I Need You" and "I'm Not like Everybody Else." If you have those, please let me know so I can add them in.

UPDATE: On February 11, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is the same, but I changed the name of the album to "BBC Sessions, Volume 3" after finding a BBC concert from 2007 that I'd missed.

01 Dedicated Follower of Fashion (Ray Davies)
02 talk (Ray Davies)
03 Till the End of the Day (Ray Davies)
04 After the Fall (Ray Davies)
05 talk (Ray Davies)
06 Sunny Afternoon (Ray Davies)
07 Instrumental (Ray Davies)
08 talk (Ray Davies)
09 You Really Got Me (Ray Davies)
10 talk (Ray Davies)
11 Shangri-La (Ray Davies)
12 talk (Ray Davies)
13 Victoria (Ray Davies)
14 talk (Ray Davies)
15 See My Friends (Ray Davies)
16 talk (Ray Davies)
17 Working Man's Cafe (Ray Davies)
18 talk (Ray Davies)
19 Johnny Thunder (Ray Davies)
20 talk (Ray Davies)
21 Lola (Ray Davies)
22 talk (Ray Davies)
23 Waterloo Sunset (Ray Davies)
24 Days (Ray Davies)
25 All Day and All of the Night (Ray Davies)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rPQmgbcv

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/wvBC9jOg10jNsWT/file

I took a screenshot from a YouTube video of the exact concert in question. It was rather low-res, so in February 2025, I improved it somewhat thanks to the Krea AI program.

The Monkees - Pleasant Valley Monday - Live (1986-2020) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's something special for you. It's the first guest post for this blog. It was put together by a friend named Mike Solof, who has recently been helping me behind the scenes with this blog.

Mike has written a thorough explanation about what he did in a PDF file, which is included in the download file. I recommend you read that. If you want to know why the title is "Pleasant Valley Monday" instead of "Pleasant Valley Sunday," you'll have to read the PDF to find out.

But in summary, the Monkees weren't known for their live shows in the 1960s, due to loudly screaming fans and other sound and performance issues. They did much better during occasional reunion concerts from 1986 to 2020. But it was very rare for all four Monkees to get together and play a full set of songs. So Mike has put together a kind of ultimate dream concert that lasts 2 hours and 15 minutes and contains every song of theirs you'd want to hear. 

Mike has pulled out all the stops to perfect this concert. He's only used performances of the best sound quality, with many of them taken from official live albums that are exceedingly rare, only sold at concerts and now out of print. In compiling this, he was left with a bunch of songs that were interesting but of slightly lower sound quality. So he's compiled those into a separate bonus zip file that's 37 minutes long and a de facto extra live album.

Furthermore, he spent some time adding crowd noise at the end of each song when necessary, to help make it sound live one seamless concert recording. But sound editing programs always seem to leave little microgaps between songs, and he found that annoying. So he's also created a version with all the songs merged into one, in order to eliminate those little gaps and give you a "you are there" uninterrupted concert experience.

Thus, there are actually three zip downloads here. This is the first one, the main concert, with each song a separate track. Note that after each song title, you'll find listed in brackets which of the original four Monkees took part in that particular performance.

01 NBC 1966 Logo Intro (Monkees)
02 [Theme From] The Monkees (Monkees [Michael, Micky, Peter & Davy])
03 Last Train to Clarksville (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
04 A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
05 talk (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
06 Long Title [Do I Have to Do This All Over Again] (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
07 Mary, Mary (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
08 talk (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
09 For Pete’s Sake (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
10 Look Out [Here Comes Tomorrow] (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
11 Door into Summer (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
12 You Just May Be the One (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
13 The Girl I Knew Somewhere (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
14 She (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
15 talk (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
16 Your Aunty Grizelda (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
17 Shades of Grey (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
18 St. Matthew (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
19 As We Go Along (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
20 talk (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
21 I Wanna Be Free (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
22 [I'll] Love You Forever (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
23 talk (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
24 Papa Gene's Blues (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
25 Randy Scouse Git (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
26 Nine Times Blue (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
27 I'll Spend My Life with You (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
28 Me and Magdalena (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
29 Daydream Believer (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
30 MGBGT (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
31 No Time (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
32 Valerie (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
33 She Hangs Out (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
34 Circle Sky (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
35 I'm a Believer (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
36 talk (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
37 It's Nice to Be with You (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
38 Girl (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
39 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
40 Different Drum (Monkees [Michael])
41 Porpoise Song [Theme from 'Head'] (Monkees [Micky Dolenz, Circe Link & Christian Nesmith])
42 Good Morning, Good Morning (Monkees [Micky Dolenz, Circe Link & Christian Nesmith])
43 Cuddly Toy (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
44 That Was Then, This Is Now (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
45 Sweet Young Thing (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
46 [I’m Not Your] Stepping Stone (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
47 Listen to the Band (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
48 The Grand Ennui (Monkees [Michael])
49 talk (Monkees [Michael, Micky & Peter])
50 Tapioca Tundra (Monkees [Michael, Micky & Peter])
51 Pleasant Valley Sunday (Monkees [Michael & Micky with Peter & Davy on video])
01 Intro to You Bring the Summer (Monkees [Micky & Peter])
02 You Bring the Summer (Monkees [Micky & Peter])
03 She Makes Me Laugh (Monkees [Micky & Peter])
04 Let's Dance On (Monkees [Micky & Peter])
05 Saturday's Child (Monkees [Micky & Peter])
06 Steam Engine (Monkees [Michael, Micky & Peter])
07 Good Clean Fun (Monkees [Mike & Micky])
08 Papa Gene's Blues (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
09 Take a Giant Step (Monkees [Peter & Micky])
10 Sometime in the Morning (Monkees [Micky])
11 Intro to Shades of Grey (Monkees [Michael, Micky & Peter with Davy on Video])
12 Shades of Grey (Monkees [Michael, Micky & Peter with Davy on Video])
13 Porpoise Song [Theme from 'Head'] (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
14 We Wish You a Merry Christmas - Jingle Bell Rock - I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - Happy Xmas [War Is Over] (Monkees [Micky & Peter])

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WvRJE17y

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/6m8svTMqT5Vt4GW/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/cQeqJ

For the second zip file, here is the exact same concert, except all the mp3s have been merged into one in order to eliminate the microgaps between songs:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QS9HcCY6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/qm6pX4uPLEVWo4r/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/fXXuZ

Thanks again to Mike for this nice album. I assisted him here and there, but the vast majority of the effort was his. Plus, he came up with this unusual idea, and it's something I wouldn't have thought of or done without him.

Regarding the album cover, Mike selected the photo, which is a promo photo from 1996. I added the text.

Beck - Another Foot in the Grave - Non-Album Tracks (1994)

Before I talk about this album, check out my previous post about volume balance issues. In short, I was sloppy about volume balance from song to song with the albums I posted in the first year or so of this blog, and I'm belatedly trying to fix that. For starters, I just reuploaded all the Beck albums I've ever posted here to improve volume balance. So if you're a Beck fan, I suggest you redownload those.

I've been torn about posting this album, because there's so little for me to do. In 1994, Beck released the album "One Foot in the Grave." It was mostly acoustic, though it was assisted by a small band on some songs. In 2009, the album was released with bonus tracks - lots of bonus tracks. in fact, there were so many extra songs added, all recorded in 1994, that it doubled the album length, from 37 minutes to 73 minutes. 

So all I've done here is package all those bonus tracks into their own album, in the exact same order as on the official 2009 release. There seemed to be only one logical name to give this. Since the first album was "One Foot in the Grave," this has to be "Another Foot in the Grave." All those songs are of the same acoustic bent. In my opinion, 73 minutes of that is too much in one sitting. It's better to split this into two albums.

For some reason, it seems Beck didn't like these songs as much as those on the original "One Foot in the Grave." With a few exceptions, he's hardly ever played any of them live. But in my opinion, "Another Foot" is just as good as "One Foot, "or at least close to it. At the time, Beck was on a creative hot streak and was simply writing way more songs than he knew what to do with, so some got lost in the shuffle.

By the way, confusingly, the song "One Foot in the Grave" did not appear on the album "One Foot in the Grave." Instead, it was a track on another 1994 album he did, "Stereopathic Soul Manure." But that song was included also as one of the 2009 bonus tracks, so you'll find it here. 

Also, none of the songs here were released at the time, as far as I can tell, except for three: "It's All in Your Mind," "Feather in Your Cap," and "Whiskey Can Can." The first one was the A-side and the other two were the B-sides to an obscure single he released in 1995. He then did a different version of "It's All in Your Mind" for his 2002 album "Sea Change." A couple other songs here were also done by him in different versions of other releases, such as "Leave Me on the Moon" and "I Get Lonesome."

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 It's All in Your Mind (Beck)
02 Whiskey Can Can (Beck)
03 Last Night I Traded My Soul's Innermost (Beck)
04 Mattress (Beck)
05 Leave Me on the Moon (Beck)
06 Woe on Me (Beck)
07 Teenage Wastebasket [Electric Version] (Beck)
08 Your Love Is Weird (Beck)
09 Favorite Nerve (Beck)
10 Piss on the Door (Beck)
11 Close to God (Beck)
12 Sweet Satan (Beck)
13 Burning Boyfriend [Beck Will Die] (Beck)
14 Black Lake Morning [Instrumental] (Beck)
15 Feather in Your Cap (Beck)
16 One Foot in the Grave (Beck)
17 Teenage Wastebasket [Acoustic Version] (Beck)
18 I Get Lonesome [Alternate Version] (Beck)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15124575/BeckH_1994e_AnothrFootintheGrave_atse.zip.html

The gatefold artwork for "One Foot in the Grave" has some photos of Beck's band members, as well as a second one of Beck. I selected that second photo as the cover. PJ of the "Albums I Wish Existed" blog did a really excellent job on the cover, in my opinion. He found the exact same font, font color, and font design, to make this look as good as I could have imagined it. Thanks again, PJ!

Volume Balance (and Beck)

I've never written about it before at this blog, but one issue with posting albums here that has been a constant bother for me is volume balance. What I mean is, some songs are mixed much louder than others, so when I put together an album from different sources, I need to do something about that to make them sound good together. 

Unfortunately, for the past few decades, there has been a growing "loudness war," where songs are mixed to be louder and louder, in order to get more attention on the radio and on iTunes playlists and such. This has led to a problem known as "brickwalling," where if you look at the sound profile of a song, it can look like one solid block, much like a brick wall. The result is that much of the subtlety in the music is lost, such as the contrast between the loud and quiet parts of the songs.

I hate brickwalling, and I've tried my best to combat it. To help with that, I've used a program called "mp3gain." If you run it on some songs, it attempts to detect songs that are too loud or too quiet and set them at a standard volume. But I've discovered over time that it's from perfect. In can crudely get the songs in the right ballpark, but to really get them right I have to check each sound profile and make further adjustments. It's as much an art as a science. For instance, what if you have one song that has a consistent volume all the way through, compared to another song that's mostly quiet but has a couple of very loud sections? The same maximum volume doesn't work well if you apply it the same to both.

The differences caused by the "loudness war" can be dramatic. A song that is brickwalled can be two or three times as loud as one that is not. So if you listen to my albums, and then some other albums, mine may be on the quiet side. But there would be a problem like that no matter what I do, because there's such inconsistency and variability in the loudness from album to album these days. I refuse to fall into the loudness war trap by making things extra loud, and have stuck to the recommended average volume suggested by mp3gain. I suggest you use a volume normalizer program like mp3gain to bring the brickwalled albums in your music collection down to more reasonable and consistent levels.

Posting albums on this blog has been a learning experience for me. When I started out over two years ago, I pretty much entirely relied on the program mp3gain for the volume adjustments. Now, when I listen to some of the albums I posted in the first year or so of this blog, sometimes I'm embarrassed by how inconsistent the volume levels can be from song to song. So in the last week or so, I've started trying to fix those albums posted in the first year. 

It's going to be a long and time consuming task, since I often have to look at the sound profile of every single song. If anyone knows of any tools to help with this other than mp3gain, please let me know! I've started out by redoing ALL of the albums by Beck that I've posted here. Most of those were posted in the first year, and most of them needed volume balance work. I just redid all the links today, so I invite you to redownload those, if you care about this volume balance issue. I believe I updated 13 of his albums.

If and when I update the links for other major artists because of volume balance, I'll let you know. Also, if anyone wants to help me fix the volume levels of the albums I've posted, I sure would appreciate it. Then I could concentrate all my focus here on posting more new music instead.

Sweetwater - Woodstock Festival, Max Yasgur's Farm, Bethel, NY, 8-15-1969

Last week, I posted a couple of performances from the famous 1969 Woodstock concert that otherwise are not widely available. I have a few more of those to post, and here's the next one.

Chances are you're never heard of Sweetwater. Here's their Wikipedia entry if you want to know more:

Sweetwater (band) - Wikipedia

Let me give you a quick summary. The band put out their debut album in 1968. They were led by female vocalist Nancy Nivens. Many people likened them to the Jefferson Airplane, with Nivens sounding a bit like Grace Slick. Wikipedia calls their style "psychedelic folk." 

Their appearance at Woodstock was their big break. They started to get some TV appearances, and it seemed like they were going to become a major band. But then, just a few months after Woodstock, Nivens was severely injured when a car that was hit by a drunk driver. She was in a coma for ten days and she almost died. Her vocal chords were damaged when she had a tracheotomy surgery to help save her life. Afterwards, she could still sing, but she lost much of her vocal range and things were never the same. She only sang a few songs on their next album. Without Nivens' vocals, the band struggled and broke up a couple of years later.

In my opinion, this tragic series of events explains why Sweetwater isn't better known. But they were a very good band, and luckily we have an excellent recording of them at their full power at Woodstock. So if you like the music of that era and want to try something new, given this a listen, or their debut album (which is simply called "Sweetwater").

Sweetwater was one of the first full band to play at Woodstock. (Richie Havens and a couple of folk musicians came before them.) As a result, although this is a soundboard recording, I think the recorders were still working some kinks out. I had to make some adjustments that I didn't have to make for other artists who appeared later in the festival. One thing is that the audience applause was very quiet. So I boosted that somewhat when I could.

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 talk (Sweetwater)
02 Motherless Child (Sweetwater)
03 talk (Sweetwater)
04 Look Out (Sweetwater)
05 talk (Sweetwater)
06 For Pete's Sake (Sweetwater)
07 talk (Sweetwater)
08 Day Song (Sweetwater)
09 talk (Sweetwater)
10 What's Wrong (Sweetwater)
11 talk (Sweetwater)
12 My Crystal Spider (Sweetwater)
13 Two Worlds (Sweetwater)
14 talk (Sweetwater)
15 Why Oh Why (Sweetwater)
16 Let the Sunshine In (Sweetwater)
17 Oh Happy Day (Sweetwater)
18 talk (Sweetwater)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15175659/Sweetwtr_1969_WoodstckFestivlMaxYasgursFarmBethlNY__8-15-1969_atse.zip.html

The album cover is another one I made before my recent computer troubles. The photo is less than ideal, but I used it because it's from their Woodstock performance. If anyone has a better one, please let me know. Nancy Nivens is the one female shown.