Jim Croce - Harper College, Palantine, IL, 2-2-1973

In my opinion, there isn't enough live Jim Croce music out there. There's only been one official live album, "The Final Tour," and very few concert bootlegs. But he was a very engaging live performer. He seems to have nearly always performed his songs in an acoustic format, and that's the case here. Also, he tended to talk a lot between songs, sometimes telling long stories.

So I set about trying to create the ultimate Jim Croce concert recording, without including any of the exact performances on "The Final Tour" album. The basis for this is a concert he did at Harper College in Illinois in 1973, since there's an excellent soundboard bootleg for that one. But there were some key songs that weren't included there, so I found some more and added them in at the beginning and the end. 

Also, it seems some of the talking between songs at the Harper College concert didn't get recorded. (Back in those days especially, sometimes bootleggers turned their tape recorders off and on between songs in order to make sure they have enough tape to finish recording the show.) So, where it was relevant, I took some of his banter from another concert and added it in before the Harper College songs. But I only did that three times, so it isn't that big of a change.

All together, the concert is an hour and a half long, nearly to the second. An hour and five minutes of that actually comes from the Harper College show, and the remaining 25 minutes comes from four other sources. Occasionally there's a dip in the sound quality due to the differing sources, but it's generally excellent.

01 talk (Jim Croce)
02 Rapid Roy [The Stock Car Boy] (Jim Croce)
03 talk (Jim Croce)
04 Working at the Car Wash Blues (Jim Croce)
05 talk (Jim Croce)
06 He's Got a Way with Women (Jim Croce)
07 talk (Jim Croce)
08 Lovers Cross (Jim Croce)
09 I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song (Jim Croce)
10 talk (Jim Croce)
11 Careful Man (Jim Croce)
12 talk (Jim Croce)
13 Operator [That's Not the Way It Feels] (Jim Croce)
14 talk (Jim Croce)
15 Box No. 10 (Jim Croce)
16 talk (Jim Croce)
17 A Good Time Man like Me Ain't Got No Business [Singin' the Blues] (Jim Croce)
18 talk (Jim Croce)
19 It Doesn't Have to Be That Way (Jim Croce)
20 Next Time, This Time (Jim Croce)
21 talk (Jim Croce)
22 Speedball Tucker (Jim Croce)
23 talk (Jim Croce)
24 Framed (Jim Croce)
25 talk (Jim Croce)
26 Roller Derby Queen (Jim Croce)
27 talk (Jim Croce)
28 New York's Not My Home (Jim Croce)
29 Dreamin' Again (Jim Croce)
30 One Less Set of Footsteps (Jim Croce)
31 talk (Jim Croce)
32 Ball of Kerrymuir (Jim Croce)
33 You Don't Mess Around with Jim (Jim Croce)
34 I Got a Name (Jim Croce)
35 Bad Bad Leroy Brown (Jim Croce)

https://www.imagenetz.de/cUDK7

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uhyQgXwe

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/c8e40sz7JuzH5dq/file

The cover art photo comes from an appearance on a 1973 TV show called "In Concert."

The Byrds - Sing Me Back Home - Non-Album Tracks (1969)

I posted a few albums of the Byrds in their early era (1964-1967) a while back. I was looking for a few songs before I posted some late era Byrds stuff (1968 to 1973). I finally found what I was looking forward, so I can move ahead. First up is a stray tracks album dealing with 1969.

In 1968, the Byrds changed their sound with the ground breaking country rock album "Sweethearts of the Rodeo." The songs on this album generally contains more country rock, as well as the band's usual fascination with Bob Dylan songs. In my opinion, this is a very solid bunch of songs. This would go toe to toe with some of the studio albums the Byrds put out in their late era.

The first six songs are officially released. They are from a box set and/or album bonus tracks. Most of the rest are live tracks. Three of those are from an archival live album; another four are from concert bootlegs. I'm happy to report that the bootleg recordings sound as good as the officially released live tracks. With all the live songs, I removed as much of the crowd noise as I could so they'd fit in with the studio tracks.

There's one bonus track here, "Ballad of Easy Rider." It's a great song, one of my favorites from the group. The reason it's only a bonus track is because the definitive version is on the album "The Ballad of Easy Rider." This is a different version done solo by band leader Roger McGuinn for the "Easy Rider" movie soundtrack. I don't like it as much as the other version, but it's still worth hearing.

01 Lay Lady Lay (Byrds)
02 Stanley's Song (Byrds)
03 Way Beyond the Sun [Way Behind the Sun] (Byrds)
04 Mae Jean Goes to Hollywood (Byrds)
05 Build It Up [Instrumental] (Byrds)
06 Fiddler a Dram [Moog Experiment] (Byrds)
07 Long Black Veil (Byrds)
08 Get Out of My Life Woman (Byrds)
09 I Shall Be Released (Byrds)
10 Sing Me Back Home (Byrds)
11 Close Up the Honky Tonks (Byrds)
12 It's Alright Ma [I'm Only Bleeding] (Roger McGuinn)
13 Take a City Bride (Byrds)
14 Buckaroo [Instrumental] (Byrds)

The Ballad of Easy Rider (Roger McGuinn)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/gDKndiL6

I stole the cover art from a Byrds bootleg called "Santuary III." I liked the period flavor, plus it has one of the very few good color photos I've seen of a 1969 era Byrds line-up that isn't used for a different album cover or something like that. This is from later in 1969, after John York was replaced by Skip Battin. I made a few tweaks, and add the text at the bottom.

Morgan James - Full Band Cover Songs (2014-2020)

Morgan James has a curious habit when it comes to musical arrangements: her studio albums usually have full band arrangements, but she's also posted lots of stuff on YouTube, and nearly all of that is solo acoustic. I've posted six acoustic cover version albums from her already, and I have even more than that to post. But I've only been able to find the occasional cover version that she's posted with full band arrangements. I've gathered them all together into this album.

Personally, I prefer her solo acoustic style, but I like these songs too. As usual, she has a mix between the classic rock stuff that I typically favor and more modern stuff, but performed and produced intelligently in a way that allows me to appreciate the songs. A couple of the songs are done in a very unusual way. For instance, the only musical backing to "Shut Up and Dance" is a rhythm created by somebody tap dancing! It works well. And "Burn" is only backed by some simple drumming.

This album is 43 minutes long.

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

01 Burn - Ellie Goulding
02 She's Gone - Hall & Oates
03 Lay Down Sally - Eric Clapton
04 Shut Up and Dance - Walk the Moon
05 Help Me - Joni Mitchell
06 Oh Me, Oh My [I'm a Fool for You Baby] - Lulu / Aretha Franklin
07 Crazy in Love - Beyonce
08 Call My Name - Prince
09 Human - Rag'n'Bone Man
10 This Christmas - Donny Hathaway
11 Hold On, I'm Coming - Sam & Dave

And here's the usual song list:

01 Burn (Morgan James)
02 She's Gone (Morgan James)
03 Lay Down Sally (Morgan James)
04 Shut Up and Dance (Morgan James)
05 Help Me (Morgan James)
06 Oh Me, Oh My [I'm a Fool for You Baby] (Morgan James)
07 Crazy in Love (Morgan James)
08 Call My Name (Morgan James)
09 Human (Morgan James)
10 This Christmas (Morgan James)
11 Hold On, I'm Coming (Morgan James)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/dvyKKmsD

For the album cover, I found a photo of James doing some recording at a radio station in 2014.

The Animals - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1967-1968

This is the fourth and final album of the Animals playing at the BBC. There can be no more because the Animals ceased to exist in 1968 (although they did get back together for two reunions many years later).

Technically speaking, the Animals ceased to exist in late 1966, and became "Eric Burdon and the Animals." But as I pointed out with Volume 3 in this series, I prefer to call them "the Animals" all the way through, for consistency and simplicity. But the name change was meaningful, because it marked some personnel changes, as well as a change of style. The Animals had been an R&B band. They retained some of that style, but they also dabbled quite a lot in psychedelic music. You can see that mix here, with some soulful and/or bluesy songs like "Shake, Rattle and Roll" and "It Hurts Me Too," but also ones celebrating the emerging psychedelic culture, like "San Franciscan Nights" and "Monterey."

As I've said many times before, BBC recordings are often bedeviled by BBC DJs talking over the starts and ends of songs. The first three volumes in this series didn't have much of that, helped by the fact that I'm only including one version of each song and I often had multiple versions to chose from with those earlier volumes. But for this one, seven of the songs needed to be edited to remove the DJ talking. Those are the ones marked with "[Edit]" in the titles.

Just like the previous albums in this series, all these performances remain officially unreleased. Generally speaking, the sound quality is good. But since the band appeared less often at the BBC in these years (or at least less of their BBC sessions have survived), I've often had to make do with less than pristine versions of some songs.

Only the last three songs here are from 1968. But the one and only really great sounding concert bootleg of the band from the 1960s is from 1968. I plan on posting that soon.

01 If I Were a Carpenter [Edit] (Animals)
02 Shake, Rattle and Roll (Animals)
03 When I Was Young (Animals)
04 A Love like Yours [Don't Come Knocking Everyday] (Animals)
05 Connection [Edit] (Animals)
06 San Franciscan Nights (Animals)
07 All Night Long [Edit] (Animals)
08 It's All Meat [Edit] (Animals)
09 Good Times [Edit] (Animals)
10 I'm So Excited (Animals)
11 Hey Gyp [Dig the Slowness] (Animals)
12 Monterey (Animals)
13 Anything [Edit] (Animals)
14 It Hurts Me Too [Edit] (Animals)
15 White Houses (Animals)
16 Every Day I Have the Blues (Animals)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15124066/TAnimls_1967-1968_BBSessionsVolume4_atse.zip.html

It seems there are very few good color photos of the band from their last two years. I had to resort to using a photo just of lead singer Eric Burdon at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

The Guess Who - Winnipeg Arena, Winnipeg, Canada, 2-25-1966

Here's something that I think is really neat, and underappreciated. I recently went on a deep dive of early Guess Who material. I like a lot of their 1970s stuff, but I like their era with Randy Bachman (of Bachman Turner Overdrive fame) on lead guitar even more. He was with the band from its inception in 1962 through early 1970. I went looking to see if there were any good concert recordings from that time. It turns out there are surprisingly few, and the ones that exist generally have middling to poor sound quality.

There's one glorious exception, which is the concert here. This has to be a soundboard, because the sound quality is as good as any live recording from 1966 that you'll hear. But that's really odd, in my opinion, because the band was just getting started in early 1966, when the concert took place. 

Also, it happened at a pivotal time for the band. They'd had a big hit in 1965, "Shakin' All Over," with Chad Allan as lead vocalist. But at the end of 1965, Burton Cummings joined as a keyboardist. It turned out that he could sing really well too, so much so that he was arguably even better than Allan. For a short time, the band had two main lead vocalists. This may well be the first concert with Cummings in the band. If not the first, it was definitely one of the first. I'm just speculating, but I wonder if the reason this recording exists is because the band wanted to hear how they sounded with Cummings added.

If you're familiar with the band's history, then you probably already know that Chad Allan left shortly after this, and Cummings became the lead singer for the rest of the band's existence. His distinctive voice was a key part of the band's sound. On this bootleg, Allan still sings the majority of the songs, but Cummings has a decent share, and sometimes they sang together. I'd be curious if anyone could list who sang what.

Anyway, I made some bold cuts to this recording. For one thing, I cut out a few songs that I felt weren't as good as the others. Those were "Money (That's What I Want)," "Baby's Birthday," "Louie, Louie," and "I Fought the Law." In some cases, like "Money," I thought the vocals were bad. (I think that one was sung by someone other than Allan or Cummings.) In others, like "I Fought the Law," I felt the band stumbled with their performance. I felt less is more, and the concert is a more enjoyable listen by cutting out the fat.

I also made some big cuts with what happened between songs. For one thing, the audience was small and/or unresponsive. The small scattered amount of clapping is so meager that it's sad. At one point, one of the band members even made a sarcastic comment about it, saying something like "Don't everyone clap at once." So I cut out all the clapping. 

Furthermore, strangely, there was a professional MC who spoke sometimes between the songs, but not all the time. I don't like that guy, whoever he was. He reminded me of the BBC DJ Brian Matthew in that he seemed excessively smooth and enthusiastic, like the stereotype of a used car salesman. So I cut out all of his comments. But I kept in all the comments the band members made between songs (except for the sarcastic comment about the lack of clapping mentioned above), and there were plenty of those.

The end result of these edits is that it sounds like the band was playing live in the studio, even though they played at a concert. The sound quality is good enough to make it sound that way.

In terms of the music, the majority of the songs are covers of the big hits of the day. But they did play some of their own songs, namely: "Hey Ho (What You Do to Me)," "Believe Me," "Tuff E Nuff," and "Shakin' All Over." (Technically, "Hey Ho" and "Shakin' All Over" were covers too, but I include them here because they were hits in Canada for the band.) Also, "Blue Is the Night" was introduced as a song by the Deverons, which is true. But what wasn't mentioned was that Burton Cummings was the lead singer in that band, and he sang the version of it here.  

As an aside, there's another very similar bootleg of the band playing in Winnipeg in February 1966. That one is of them playing the River Heights Community Club. That one seems to be much more popular than this one, and the set list is longer. But in terms of sound quality, this one is far superior. Hopefully by posting this, I can help make this one better known.

This album is 43 minutes long. I suspect the performance was longer, since there is nothing near the end to indicate the concert was coming to an end, such as an encore or comments about playing one last number or the like. But even so, I'll take this one over the longer River Heights one I mentioned any day of the week.

01 Wait (Guess Who)
02 talk (Guess Who)
03 Blue Is the Night (Guess Who)
04 Little Latin Lupe Lu (Guess Who)
05 Shakin' All Over (Guess Who)
06 It's Too Late (Guess Who)
07 talk (Guess Who)
08 I'm Down (Guess Who)
09 It's My Life (Guess Who)
10 talk (Guess Who)
11 Hey Ho [What You Do to Me] (Guess Who)
12 talk (Guess Who)
13 My Generation (Guess Who)
14 Look through Any Window (Guess Who)
15 talk (Guess Who)
16 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Guess Who)
17 Believe Me (Guess Who)
18 Batman Theme (Guess Who)
19 talk (Guess Who)
20 I'm a Man (Guess Who)
21 talk (Guess Who)
22 I'm Alive (Guess Who)
23 Tuff E Nuff (Guess Who)
24 California Dreamin' (Guess Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jffPoeBZ 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3UnvtDPqcXKSwwh/file

For the cover art, I'm tickled pink that I managed to find a photo of the band in concert in Winnipeg in 1966. It's not the exact concert here. It's from something called the "Bang-A-Rama" held at the Winnipeg Stadium in May 1966. But hey, close enough for horseshoes. ;)

The original was in black and white, but I colorized it. It's not the best colorization, due to the complexity of the photo, with the whole band showing. But hopefully it's good enough to be acceptable. Also, I used "The Guess Who?" (complete with question mark) as the band name in the cover, because that's what the band did at the time. I used the exact font style that they preferred back then as well.

KT Tunstall - Cover Songs, Volume 5: 2016-2019

I've posted four albums of KT Tunstall's cover songs already, out of six.  It's been a while since I've posted more from her, so here's the next one in the series.

In terms of the songs, this is very much in keeping with the previous albums in this series. As someone who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, she favors covers from those decades more than those of the 1970s and earlier, though there are some of those here too.

In terms of sourcing though, this one is a bit different. For a couple of the earlier albums in this series, nearly every song was recorded in a studio and officially released. Not so here. All but three of the songs are from bootlegs, and most of those were recorded at concerts. Around 2017 or so, she started the habit of taking requests for cover songs from her audiences and doing the songs she through she could make it through without any practice first. So the number of covers she did went up. Unfortunately, the quality tended to go down, because the odds of there being a soundboard-esque bootleg for any given concert was low.

Never fear, though. I've combated that by being very selective. I have four bonus tracks this time, because those are the ones that missed the cut. But there were many more that I didn't even include as bonus tracks, because the sound quality was lower still. So, overall, yeah, the sound quality isn't as good as the ones recorded in a studio, but they're pretty close.

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

01 On Melancholy Hill - Gorillaz
02 Secondhand News - Fleetwood Mac
03 You Make Loving Fun - Fleetwood Mac
04 Default - Atoms for Peace
05 Kiss - Prince
06 Independent Women, Part 1 - Destiny's Child
07 It's Too Late - Carole King
08 I Won't Back Down - Tom Petty
09 The Times They Are A-Changin' - Bob Dylan
10 Blister in the Sun - Violent Femmes
11 Heaven Is a Place on Earth - Belinda Carlisle
12 Gimme Some Truth - John Lennon
13 This Land Is Your Land - Woody Guthrie

Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden
Faith - George Michael
Stupid Girl - Garbage
The Story - Brandi Carlile

And here's the usual song list:

01 On Melancholy Hill (KT Tunstall)
02 Secondhand News (KT Tunstall)
03 You Make Loving Fun (KT Tunstall)
04 Default (KT Tunstall)
05 Kiss (KT Tunstall)
06 Independent Women, Part 1 (KT Tunstall)
07 It's Too Late (KT Tunstall)
08 I Won't Back Down (KT Tunstall with Mike McCready)
09 The Times They Are A-Changin' (KT Tunstall)
10 Blister in the Sun (KT Tunstall)
11 Heaven Is a Place on Earth (KT Tunstall)
12 Gimme Some Truth (KT Tunstall)
13 This Land Is Your Land (KT Tunstall)

Black Hole Sun (KT Tunstall)
Faith (KT Tunstall)
Stupid Girl (KT Tunstall)
The Story (KT Tunstall)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15603081/KTTnstl_2016-2019_CovrSngsVol5_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo was taken in Los Angeles in October 2016.

Honeybus - I Can't Let Maggie Go - Non-Album Tracks (1966-1968)

I have to admit that, until recently, I wasn't that into the band Honeybus. I had their double album anthology "She Flies like a Bird," and I figured that was all the music from them that I would want. But I was wrong. If you've been following this blog, you may have noticed that I've been posting a lot of BBC material. Searching for that helped me reappraise Honeybus, because they have lots of good songs that were never officially released, and only exist as BBC recordings. This album will help show what I mean.

It's really shocking how badly Honeybus was treated by their record company. They existed from 1967 to 1973, and had a big Top Ten hit in Britain with "I Can't Let Maggie Go." They were critically acclaimed, and had three talented singer-songwriters in the band. Yet, despite that, the record company only allowed them to record ONE studio album, "Story," in 1970. And in terms of archival material, they continue to be badly served, with many quality songs still unreleased.

So thank God for the BBC! Luckily, this band was well liked by the BBC and had quite a few sessions with them despite only having that one hit. As a result, versions of many of their unreleased songs exist, usually with very good sound quality. This album has seven songs where the only version that exists is the BBC one. All of them have been officially released. They're all good songs, and the band might have had much more success if they'd been able to use them to flesh out a studio album at the time.

Four songs from the BBC suffer from the usual problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. And, as usual, I edited the songs to fix that.Those are the ones with "[Edit]" in their titles.

The first two songs are also rare. They are the A- and B-Sides to the only single by the Anteeeks. (Yes, that's with three e's in a row.) This band was basically an early version of Honeybus, though there were some personnel differences. Crucially, it contained Pete Dello. He wrote both songs. He also wrote Honeybus's one hit, "I Can't Let Maggie Go." Plus, he wrote "(Do I Figure) In Your Life." It wasn't a hit at the time, though it should have been. It has since been covered by many artists, including Dave Berry, Joe Cocker, Ian Matthews, and Paul Carrack.

But the band had a lot more than just two good songs. This album is solid through and through, in my opinion. I believe all the songs are originals. Since the band didn't release any albums in this time period, the remaining songs not mentioned above are eight songs released as the A- and B-sides of singles.

There's one bonus track here, "Lilly." I don't know where it's from exactly, but it's an unreleased studio version. Sadly, the sound quality isn't up to snuff with the others, thus the bonus track status.

I really like this album. If you haven't tried Honeybus, this is an excellent place to start, since it contains their two best known songs. Right after the time period here, the end of 1968, the band would suffer a blow when their main songwriter at the time, Pete Dello, would leave the band. But here, they were firing on all cylinders. It's a real shame that they didn't have more success and that they weren't even allowed to release a full album.

This album is 45 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 I Don't Want You (Anteeeks [Pete Dello & Ray Cane])
02 Ball and Chain (Anteeeks [Pete Dello & Ray Cane])
03 Delighted to See You (Honeybus)
04 The Breaking Up Scene (Honeybus)
05 [Do I Figure] In Your Life (Honeybus)
06 Throw My Love Away (Honeybus)
07 Arise Sir Henry (Honeybus)
08 Like an Old Time Movie [Edit] (Honeybus)
09 Maxine's Parlour (Honeybus)
10 Ain't That Just Bonnie for You [Edit] (Honeybus)
11 Francoise [Edit] (Honeybus)
12 She Comes to Me [Edit] (Honeybus)
13 I Can't Let Maggie Go (Honeybus)
14 Tender Are the Ashes (Honeybus)
15 Girl of Independent Means (Honeybus)
16 How Long [Single Version] (Honeybus)
17 Incredibly Bad (Honeybus)

Lilly (Honeybus)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cmAsaHJB

Normally, for an album like this, I prefer to have something that shows the members of the band. I went looking to see what the cover of the "I Can't Let Maggie Go" single looked like. There were several versions, and one had the photo you see above, with a literal interpretation of the song title. It's corny, but I like it as an example of the style of the era, so I used that one. I'll be posting other Honeybus albums where I can show what the band members looked like.

In September 2026, I used the Ask Gemini program to improve the image quality. 

The Animals - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1966-1967

Here's the next album in my series of four albums of the Animals performing for the BBC. 

In December 1966, after some personnel changes, the band name was changed from "the Animals" to "Eric Burdon and the Animals." But I'm going to continue to refer to all their songs as being by "the Animals" for simplicity's sake. That name changed also marked a stylistic change from R&B to psychedelic, but that isn't very noticeable until the next album in this series. All but one of the songs here are from 1966, and probably only the last three came after the name change.

As with most BBC albums, this has the problem of BBC DJs talking over the starts to some songs. Luckily though, for this album that only happened for three songs. Every single performance here is officially unreleased, but the sound quality is generally very good, with a few minor exceptions.

Most of the songs here are songs from Animals albums or singles. But there are some exceptions. I previously posted an album of Animals songs that were unique to BBC sessions. But in putting this album together, I came up with a few that I'd previously missed. I particularly like the duet between the Animals and soul music legend Otis Redding on the song "Shake," as well as a version of the soul classic "Hold On, I'm Coming." Both are from the British TV show "Ready Steady Go," and you can find the videos of them on YouTube.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Inside - Looking Out (Animals)
02 Sweet Little Sixteen (Animals)
03 She'll Return It [Edit] (Animals)
04 One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show (Animals)
05 Wee Wee Hours [Edit] (Animals)
06 That´s All I Am to You (Animals)
07 Shake (Animals)
08 Don't Bring Me Down (Animals)
09 Hold On, I'm Coming (Animals)
10 Shake (Animals & Otis Redding)
11 The Same Thing [Edit] (Animals)
12 Jailhouse Rock (Animals)
13 Paint It, Black (Animals)
14 Road Runner (Animals)
15 Tobacco Road (Animals)
16 McCulloch's Blues [Instrumental] (Animals)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15481489/TAnimls_1966-1967_BBSessionsVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1966.

Stevie Wonder - Johanan Vigoda's Birthday Party, New York City, 1-1-1973

Here's something that's strange but very cool. About a month ago as I write this, a previously unknown Stevie Wonder bootleg emerged of him playing at a private birthday party for someone named Johanan Vigoda. If you've never heard of Vigoda, don't worry, he's not exactly a household name. But he was Wonder's personal lawyer starting from around 1971 until about three decades later. 

This recording is only 33 minutes long, but what it lacks with length it makes up with quality. It contains no less than THREE Stevie Wonder songs that not only were previously unreleased, but were even previously unknown, as far as I can tell. It's likely this was the one and only time they were played in public. 

I have no frigging idea what their actual song titles are. Wonder is known for having hundreds of unreleased songs. I checked a list of all the known ones (mainly due to them being played in concert at some point) and there's nothing that comes close to matching. So the titles of those three - "Can You See the Sun Rising," "Baby That's Why" and "Stay with You" - are my best guesses. The last two are plausible, based on repeated lyrics, but the first one is a wild guess that is almost certainly wrong, since virtually no phrases are repeated in that one. If you have better titles, please let me know!

In 1973, Stevie was in his "golden age," which is generally considered to be from 1972 to 1976. Every song he touched then sounded good, so it's not that surprising that the previously unknown songs are all good as well. They're not lost classics, but they would have been worthy of inclusion on his albums at the time, in my opinion, and that's saying a lot considering how good his albums were in those years.

Normally with these sorts of bootlegs, the sound quality is middling to poor, because the odds of anyone having high quality recording equipment smuggled into a private party is vanishingly small. But this one sounds so good that I'm pretty sure it's a soundboard. Perhaps Wonder or Vigoda or someone else there wanted it recorded for posterity. 

Clearly, Wonder seized the occasion to take some risks that he wouldn't normally take in his concerts. The only songs he played at this party that had been previously released were "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" and "Blame It on the Sun." But those had only been released a couple of months earlier. It's clear some of the band members weren't very familiar with them, because you can hear Wonder sometimes calling out the chord changes even on "You Are the Sunshine of My Life." Not surprisingly, he did that sometimes for the new songs as well. That said, you can't really tell from the music that the band was winging it, because they followed along capably, with only a few audible mistakes.

In addition to the songs I've mentioned, Wonder also played a short bluesy birthday song that I'm guessing was improvised on the spot. I don't consider it a newly discovered song, due to its short and simple nature. Lacking any better title, I'm calling it "Happy Birthday Johanan." 

Finally, "All in Love Is Fair" was played. That would have sounded just as unfamiliar to the audience and the other band members, because it wouldn't be released until the album "Innervisions" came out eight months later.

Speaking of audiences, the audience here must have been very small indeed, judging by the amount of clapping between songs. In short, there's almost none. I'm guessing there were a dozen or two people at most. The location is unknown, except for the fact that it was in New York City. But it could have been held at a privately booked restaurant, or maybe someone's house.

I removed some aimless doodling and/or tuning between songs. But there wasn't much that I cut, less than a minute. It seems there was very little talking between songs, and what there is had Wonder way off mike. I didn't cut any of that.

01 Can You See the Sun Rising (Stevie Wonder)
02 talk (Stevie Wonder)
03 Happy Birthday Johanan (Stevie Wonder)
04 You Are the Sunshine of My Life (Stevie Wonder)
05 Blame It on the Sun (Stevie Wonder)
06 All in Love Is Fair (Stevie Wonder)
07 Baby That's Why (Stevie Wonder)
08 Stay with You (Stevie Wonder)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15274919/StevieW_1973_JohananVgodasBirthdayPrty__NYC__1-1-1973_atse.zip.html

By luck, it happens that there's a quality photograph of Vigoda and Wonder standing next to each other, so naturally I used that for the album cover. I'm guessing was taken around this time, give or take a year or so. The only problem was the photo was in black and white, so I colorized it.

The Rolling Stones - We Love You - Non-Album Tracks (1966-1967)

A couple of days ago, I posted an album that resulted when I split a Guess Who album I'd previously posted in two. A couple of days ago, I did the same thing with a Jefferson Airplane album. Today, it's happening again, this time with a Rolling Stones album. In 2018, I had posted a bunch of these songs on the stray tracks album "Flowers," which was only loosely based on the official album of that name. I've created a new version of that album, putting most of the 1966 songs it. Meanwhile, this is for the late 1966 and 1967 songs, as the band radically (though temporarily) switched its style from R&B to psychedelia.

I hadn't planned on creating this album. But a few days ago, a remarkable new Rolling Stones bootleg emerged. You can read about it here:

Treasure trove of 50 unreleased Rolling Stones songs mysteriously emerges online (the-sun.com)

I considered posting the whole thing here, but I've decided against it, because I noticed a few other similar sites had it and then quickly took it down. I presume they got takedown notices, and I want to avoid those. Instead, I'm going to pick the worthy songs from it and add them to my stray tracks albums. I also plan on posting more of those albums soon, especially since most of the songs from this new bootleg date from the 1980s and 1990s.

That said, the new bootleg contains one song dating all the way back to 1967, and it's a good one. "She's Doing Her Thing" had previously been bootlegged, but only as an instrumental, and this newly emerged version is fully fleshed out with vocals. There are rumors that the person who posted the new bootleg has more coming soon. This song gives hope that they have access to 1960s material. That would be great, because there has been very little previously unreleased 1960s material released due to continued disputes between the band and their record company from that era.

Anyway, I was going to put "She's Doing Her Thing" on my "Flowers" collection, but when I did I saw it was over an hour long, which was really long for a 1960s album. I went looking around to see if there were any more songs from that time that I'd missed. To my surprise, I found a couple. One is a bluesy instrumental called "Gold Painted Fingernails." 

Another is a very unusual instrumental for the band. According to Nico Zentgraf's authoritative Rolling Stones website called "The Complete Works of the Rolling Stones," this song is called "Pieces, Part 1 to 5." I couldn't find any other mentions of this name, so I'm using that name for now. The band recorded it in five separate sections, which may explain why it's called "Pieces." I found a version where someone had edited all the sections together. I cut out a middle section that I didn't like. The final result is a real gem, in my opinion, and is just as neat of a rare find as "She's Doing Her Thing."

On top of that, there is yet another unreleased song here, "Get Yourself Together." And curiously, this also contains an instrumental, "Title 5," that was released as a bonus track for "Exile on Main Street," even though the song was recorded in 1967 and seemingly has nothing to do with that 1972 album. (I suspect that has to do with the previously mentioned troubles between the band and their 1960s record company. I'm guessing they liked "Title 5" and wanted to release it, so they pretended as if it was from the early 1970s and thus out of reach of that 1960s record company.)

Up till now, I've discovered the rare and unusual songs on this album. But really, the meat of the album are the well known ones. In my opinion, this contains five classics with "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow," "Let's Spend the Night Together," "Ruby Tuesday," "We Love You," and "Dandelion." But the other songs are solid too. In my opinion, had this actually been an album the band released in the 1960s, it would be considered one of their best.

This album is 39 minutes long. That doesn't include the bonus track, "It's All Over Now." The band had a big hit with it in 1964. But I'm including it because they came up with a totally different arrangement for it for a TV show appearance in early 1967. They prerecorded the backing track a few days earlier, then sang live vocals to it in front of a cheering audience. It's only a bonus track because unfortunately the sound quality isn't that good.

01 Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow (Rolling Stones)
02 Who's Driving Your Plane (Rolling Stones)
03 Get Yourself Together [I Can See It] (Rolling Stones)
04 Gold Painted Fingernails [Instrumental] (Rolling Stones)
05 Let's Spend the Night Together (Rolling Stones)
06 Ruby Tuesday (Rolling Stones)
07 Title 5 [Instrumental] (Rolling Stones)
08 If You Let Me (Rolling Stones)
09 We Love You (Rolling Stones)
10 Dandelion (Rolling Stones)
11 She's Doing Her Thing (Rolling Stones)
12 Pieces, Parts 1 to 5 [Instrumental] [Edit] (Rolling Stones)

It's All Over Now [1967 Version] (Rolling Stones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701039/TROLLNGSTNES1966-1967_WeLovYu_atse.zip.html

Since I decided to name this album "We Love You," I searched the Internet for covers of the single with that name. I've often found that using single covers for albums help provide authentic period flavor to the art. I found a good one, but a big chunk of it was filled with a boring black and white background pattern. And I found another one that had a good photo of the band, but was surrounded with some boring artwork. So I combined them, putting the band photo over most of the black and white pattern.

I did one more thing. The band photo had them sitting in front of some really awful curtains. They looked like the curtains of somebody's old fashioned grandmother, totally out of sync with their psychedelic fashions of the time. So, using Photoshop, I edited out the curtains and replaced them with a dark forest. I'm not sure why I picked a forest, but it just popped into my head as the thing to do, and I like how it turned out.

The Guess Who - It's My Pride - Non-Album Tracks (1965-1966)

A couple of years ago, I posted a Guess Who album, which I called "This Time Long Ago," that included all their best songs from their start in 1965 to 1968. I recently discovered there are more good earlier songs than I'd thought. So I'm keeping "This Time Long Ago," but I've removed some songs from it and added others, so it only deals with the years 1967 and 1968. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-guess-who-this-time-long-ago.html

That leaves this album to deal with the years 1965 and 1966. In those years, the Guess Who put out three studio albums. I think I overlooked this time period for a couple reasons. For one thing, the band had a different lead singer for most of that time, Chad Allan. For their third album, "It's Time," released in early 1966, they had a new band member, Burton Cummings. Allan still sang most of the songs on that album, but Cummings sang a few. I think Cummings is a superior singer, and I associate the sound of the Guess Who with his voice and songwriting. 

To add to that, the band wasn't even known  as the Guess Who for most of this time. They went through several names, including "Chad Allan and the Reflections" and "Chad Allan and the Expressions." But from their hit 1965 single "Shakin' All Over," their record company simultaneously marketed them as "The Guess Who?", hoping to boost sales by creating intrigue that they might be a famous band working under a different name. The name finally stuck permanently for their third album, and the question mark at the end was ditched. Anyway, all that name confusion furthered my feeling that they weren't the "real" Guess Who, which didn't happen until Burton Cummings was in charge, Chad Allan was gone, and they'd finally settled on their famous name.

But I was wrong. The truth is, this band had a lot of worthy songs in their early phase, definitely enough for a solid album cherry picking their best songs. Yeah, most of them have Chad Allan on lead vocals, but he was a pretty good singer and in these early recordings sometimes it's hard to tell his voice apart from Cummings' voice. But more importantly, they were a talented band that already was showing a lot of songwriting talent. If you like their later stuff, you shouldn't overlook this phase. They were operating more as a garage band with a heavy Beatles influence, but I love good garage band music, and you can't go wrong with a heavy Beatles influence.

The Guess Who had a huge hit in 1965 with a cover of "Shakin' All Over." It went to number one in Canada, and even hit the Top Twenty in the US, which was very rare for a Canadian band at the time. So that's here, of course. But eight out of the 14 songs are from their third album "It's Time." Their songwriting improved a lot by then, and Burton Cummings sings about half of those songs.

Speaking of Cummings, he was in a different Canadian band, the Deverons, just prior to joining the Guess Who. That band put out a couple of singles with Cummings as lead vocalist. I've included two of those songs here, "She's Your Lover" and "Blue Is the Night." They sound exactly like Guess Who songs. In fact, the Guess Who played "Blue Is the Night" in concert often in 1966. "She's Your Lover" was a Cummings original, the first put on record. Another song here, "Seven Long Years," is another Cummings original that was first done by the Deverons. By the way, that song sounds exactly like the songs the Animals were doing at the time, but it's so good that the Animals should have covered it.

This album is only 37 minutes long, but that's in line with the lengths of albums at the time. I called it "It's My Pride" because I consider that the best song here. It's too bad it was only a B-side, because it should have been a big hit. The songs are in rough chronological order with the exception of the last one, which I thought made for a good closer.

01 Shakin' All Over (Guess Who)
02 I'd Rather Be Alone (Guess Who)
03 Hey Ho [What You Do to Me] (Guess Who)
04 Use Your Imagination (Guess Who)
05 She's Your Lover (Deverons with Burton Cummings)
06 You Know He Did (Guess Who)
07 Believe Me (Guess Who)
08 Clock on the Wall (Guess Who)
09 It's My Pride (Guess Who)
10 Seven Long Years (Guess Who)
11 Gonna Search (Guess Who)
12 Don't Act So Bad (Guess Who)
13 And She's Mine (Guess Who)
14 Blue Is the Night (Deverons with Burton Cummings)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/XhqtCuie

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ZM7Sh47wPTchjC8/file 

For the album cover, I used the only decent color photo of the band from their early years that I could find. I think it was included in an archival album of those years, but I forget which one. In any case, all the versions I found of this had a reddish tint on it. I used Photoshop to get rid of that. I think it looks much better now (and is more accurate, since they didn't live in a red haze!).

For the text, I used the same exact font that was used for the band name on their first two albums. I also included the question mark in the name, since that's what those albums did too. I also mimicked those albums by including the record company logo.

In 2026, I further updated the cover photo. I used Krea AI to improve the detail, and I redid some of the text.

The Small Faces - 1862 - Non-Album Tracks (1968)

The Small Faces released their album "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" in mid-1968. Bands often put out two albums in a year in those days, and right as the record was released, they returned to the studio to record their next album. This album was going to be called "1862," named after a metal plaque on a chapel that lead singer Steve Marriott owned and where the band practiced. Unfortunately, the album was never finished, and the band broke up at the end of 1968. It remains one of the better known "lost albums" from the 1960s. Many others have tried to piece the album together. This is my attempt.

In making this, I relied heavily on the effort of soniclovenoize at his blog Albums That Never Were. He made a version in April 2020, which you can find here:

http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2020/04/small-faces-1862.html

Although I got a lot of info from him, this is different because I had a somewhat different goal. Yes, I wanted to recreate the "lost album," but at the same time, I wanted to use all the 1968 studio recordings the band did. So there are a few differences between my version of his. For instance, I've included the covers "Every Little Bit Hurts" and "If I Were a Carpenter" even though they probably wouldn't have been used on the album, because otherwise they would fall through the cracks and not appear on any of the Small Faces stray tracks albums I've posted here.

One very interesting thing I learned from the "Albums That Never Were" blog is that Steve Marriott's son Toby once published a proposed song list for the album. It included a lot of the expected songs, but also two from Steve Marriott's next band, Humble Pie. I wanted to minimize the inclusion of any non-Small Faces performances, but I included those two since they were on that list.

I included one more non-Small Faces song, "Evolution." This Ronnie Lane song would be released several times, and later versions would be called "Stone," so I've included that name in the song subtitle. I've included this for a couple of reasons. One, apparently it was written around the time of the 1862 recording sessions. This particular version comes from a various artists album dedicated to a religious guru that was put together by Pete Townsend and was released in 1970. An edited version of this performance that's a couple minutes shorter was included on a better known various artists album for the same guru. 

The second reason I've included it is because Ronnie Lane was a key singer as well as songwriter for the Small Faces, and usually sang lead vocals for at least one song per album. Without this song, pretty much all the vocals would have just been by Steve Marriott.

Another tricky issue here has to do with a couple of songs that were never finished, due to the band falling apart. One is called "Wide Eyed Girl on the Wall" and the other is called "Jack (The War of the Worlds)." (For the latter, the real name was "Jack," but "The War of the Worlds" was used for a later compilation, to the total bafflement of the members of the band, who have no idea where that name comes from.) The problem is these songs were just backing tracks, and lead vocals were meant to be added later. As a result, they get boring and repetitive, with no soloing to spice things up. Because of this, I drastically cut both songs by about half. I noticed that soniclovenoize at his blog Albums That Never Were did the exact same thing. But I made my own judgment calls on how much to cut without listening to his versions.

"Collibosher" is also an instrumental, but it was planned to be an instrumental all along, so it didn't have the same problem and I didn't make any edits to it.

One more little issue. According to the liner notes to the Small Faces box set "Here Comes the Nice," the song "Wham Bam, Thank You Man" was supposed to be titled just that. But on many archival releases, it's called "Wham Bam, Thank You Ma'am" instead. It's a better rhyme, and we're probably more familiar with that phrase due to David Bowie using it in his classic song "Suffragette City." But I decided to stick with the correct spelling. Oh, and "The Autumn Stone" was originally titled "Jenny's Song," and some versions of it (for instance on the "Here Comes the Nice" box set still call it that. So I've put the alternate title in there too.

Overall, I think this a strong album, especially since it includes the classics "The Autumn Stone" and "The Universal." This is pretty close to what the "lost album" was, but not all the way there, due to uncertainty over the song list and songs that didn't get finished and so forth. Supposedly, there is an official mini-box set of the band's 1968 material planned, but it's been in "development hell" for many years, so who knows if or when it'll ever come out. Maybe when it does we'll get even closer.

UPDATE: On March 16, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. I added one song as a bonus track, "Afterglow of Your Love." This song appeared on the band's 1968 album "Odgen's Nut Gone Flake" under the name "Afterglow." In 1969, after the band broke up, the song was released under the new name, and became a minor hit single. I've included it as a bonus track because the single version is significantly different, with the intro removed, the outro extended, and the whole thing sped up.

01 The Autumn Stone [Jenny's Song] (Small Faces)
02 Red Balloon (Small Faces)
03 Evolution [Stone] [Complete Version] (Ronnie Lane)
04 Wide Eyed Girl on the Wall [Instrumental] [Edit] (Small Faces)
05 The Universal (Small Faces)
06 Donkey Rides, a Penny a Glass (Small Faces)
07 Wham Bam, Thank You Man (Small Faces)
08 Collibosher [Instrumental] (Small Faces)
09 Every Little Bit Hurts (Small Faces)
10 Buttermilk Boy (Humble Pie)
11 Jack [The War of the Worlds] [Instrumental] [Edit] (Small Faces)
12 If I Were a Carpenter [Edit] (Small Faces)
13 Wrist Job (Humble Pie)

Afterglow of Your Love (Small Faces) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LU8iPE8K

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/r8K4bDyxxZUV9S1/file

As I mentioned above, this album was going to be called "1862," named after a metal plaque on a chapel that lead singer Steve Marriott owned and where the band practiced. I have no idea what the band planned for the album cover, if they even got that far, but it gave me an idea to use a tombstone with that year featured prominently on it. I looked through some pictures of 1862 tombstones and decided all the usual names and dates and other info was distracting. So I found that year written in stone, and I found a photo of a tombstone in the ground, and I used Photoshop to edit them together. 

I'm happy how this turned out because the 1969 album "The Autumn Stone," where many of these songs first appeared, prominently featured autumn leaves on it, due to the title song name. So this cover is reminiscent of that.

The Animals - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1965-1966

Here's the second of four albums of the Animals performing at the BBC. 

Most of what I have to say is a repeat of what I said for the first volume in this series, but I'll repeat the main points anyway. Surprisingly, nothing the Animals ever did for the BBC has been officially released, so all of this comes from bootlegs. Even so, the song quality is generally very good, though it varies sometimes.

As usual with 1960s BBC recordings, the BBC DJs sometimes spoke over the starts or ends of songs. Also as usual, I've tried my best to remove this talking from the songs with sound editing, usually thanks to the fact that intros are often repeated later in songs. Thankfully, I didn't have to do this very much on this volume, because the Animals did a lot of BBC sessions in 1965 and 1966. I was often able to find a version without talking. For instance, I think I literally had five or more versions of "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" to choose from. (It goes without saying that I've only included one version of each song, as I usually do for albums like these.) Thus, I only had to do edits for three of the songs. 

"Lucille" also has the "[Edit]" mark on it. But that's because there were some sound glitches in the middle of the song, not talking DJs. I was pretty much able to repair the problem though, so you shouldn't notice it.

As I mentioned for the previous volume, a year or two ago, I made an album of songs the Animals performed for the BBC but didn't put on album. I plan on updating that eventually, since I found some new songs and better versions of other songs. One example of a really rare song on this volume that I'd previously missed is "We're Gonna Howl Tonight." That's the one song here that wasn't done for the BBC at all. Instead, it was performed on a US TV special called "The Dangerous Christmas of Red Riding Hood."

01 We Gotta Get Out of This Place (Animals)
02 Squeeze Her, Tease Her [But Love Her] (Animals)
03 Work Song [Edit] (Animals)
04 Heartbreak Hotel (Animals)
05 Let the Good Times Roll (Animals)
06 Club A-Go-Go (Animals)
07 We're Gonna Howl Tonight (Animals)
08 Bright Lights, Big City (Animals)
09 I'm Gonna Change the World (Animals)
10 Lucille [Edit] (Animals)
11 Baby What's Wrong [Edit] (Animals)
12 Rosie (Animals)
13 I Can't Believe It [Edit] (Animals)
14 It's My Life (Animals)
15 Corrina, Corrina (Animals)
16 Maudie (Animals)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15123988/TAnimls_1965-1966_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The album cover photo comes from an appearance the band did on the TV show "Ready Steady Go" in 1965.

Jefferson Airplane - High Flying Bird - Non-Album Tracks (1962-1966)

A year or two ago, I posted a Jefferson Airplane album with this exact name and cover art. Today, I'm deleting that and replacing it with this album and one other. Basically, I found enough material to make two stray tracks albums of this band's beginnings instead of one. So you should delete that earlier album if you downloaded this, and replace it with this one and the new one I'll be posting.

I know these changes must be confusing. In terms of content, this album is almost entirely different from the previous "High Flying Bird" album. That one dealt with the years 1966 to 1967. This one deals with 1962 to 1966. There's only a little overlap, but one of the songs here is the song "High Flying Bird." That's why I've moved the album title and the associated cover art.

With that out of the way, let's get to the music. The band released their first album, "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off," in 1966. But there was a long musical journey getting there, given all the talented people in the band. 

I've found some early recordings Marty Balin made that go back to 1962, including a song where he sang lead vocals for the folk music group the Town Criers. There are some more early songs he did both with solo singles and with the Town Criers, but most of them frankly aren't very good so I haven't included them.

I also found a couple of bootleg recordings of Jorma Kaukonen playing solo acoustic in night clubs in 1964. Most of what he did was exactly what he'd play solo and as part of Hot Tuna in later years, such as lots of Reverend Gary Davis tunes. I picked out a couple of the songs I liked the best, including "Good Shepherd," a cover song Jefferson Airplane would record in a very different arrangement in 1969.

Paul Kantner was one of the main singers and songwriters for the band, but I didn't find anything he recorded before joining the band.

Grace Slick only joined Jefferson Airplane after the band's first album, replacing another female vocalist, Signe Anderson. Prior to that, she was in the band the Great Society for about a year. They were surprisingly good in my opinion, and I've already posted a bootleg of one of their concerts on this blog. I decided not to include any of their live material here, but to include the best of their limited studio work. They never put out a studio album, but they did release two singles, plus they recorded some demos. I've included the best of all that, mainly the songs where Slick sang lead vocals.

That leaves six songs on this album that were actually recorded by Jefferson Airplane. They all were done in 1966, mostly as outtakes or B-sides from the "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off" album. Note that I think these Jefferson Airplane songs have Signe Anderson singing the female vocals if there are any, since Slick didn't replace her until towards the end of the year. (I believe the last song, "Kansas City Blues," is from Slick's very first concert with the band in mid-October 1966, but it's pretty much a moot point since there's no female vocals on that particular song.)

This album is something of a mixed bag, since it's got a number of different lead vocalists singing different styles of music over a several year period. But Jefferson Airplane was very much like that in general, so I don't think this sounds that different from their early stuff.

The sound quality is generally excellent. Everything here has been officially released except for the two Jorma Kaukonen solo songs, plus a cover of a Bob Dylan song, "Lay Down Your Weary Tune." That Dylan song probably sounds the worst, but I made some edits to fix some rough parts of the song. The band did a few more cover songs in their early years, such as "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" by the Byrds and the blues song "Baby What You Want Me to Do." But I didn't include them either due to poor bootleg recordings, or poor performances, or both. 

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 I Specialize in Love (Marty Balin)
02 900 Miles (Town Criers with Marty Balin)
03 Pawnshop Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 Good Shepherd (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 Born to Be Burned (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
06 Father Bruce (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
07 Heads Up (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
08 Lay Down Your Weary Tune [Edit] (Jefferson Airplane)
09 Free Advice (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
10 Someone to Love [Somebody to Love] (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
11 Go to Her (Jefferson Airplane)
12 High Flying Bird (Jefferson Airplane)
13 It's Alright (Jefferson Airplane)
14 Runnin' 'Round This World (Jefferson Airplane)
15 Sally Go 'Round the Roses (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
16 Kansas City Blues (Jefferson Airplane)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/G1duzVq8

I really like the album cover I chose here. In fact, I used to have a poster of it. It's based on a concert poster from the era, but I cropped it and added some words at the bottom.

Jefferson Airplane - The Other Side of This Life - Non-Album Tracks (1967)

I just posted a Jefferson Airplane stray tracks album dealing with the years 1962 to 1966, called "High Flying Bird." This continues from that, dealing with the year 1967. Together, these two albums expand upon and replace a stray tracks album I'd posted a year or two ago that had the same "High Flying Bird" title and cover art. I'm deleting that previous version now.

The band's 1967 album "Surrealistic Pillow" is a classic. Most of the songs here are outtakes from that album. The band was peaking creatively, so it's not too surprising that the outtakes are solid too. In my opinion, had this album been released, it would hold up with their other 1960s albums. Most of the songs are originals, though "The Fat Angel" is a Donovan song, "The Other Side of This Life" is a Fred Neil song, and "In the Midnight Hour" was a hit for Wilson Pickett. 

The last song is an outtake from their next album, "After Bathing at Baxter's" released near the end of 1967. Surprisingly, there aren't really any good stray tracks from 1968, though there are some weird studio experiments a la the Beatles' "Revolution 9."

All the songs here are officially released except for "The Fat Angel," "Leave You Alone," "The Other Side of This Life," and "In the Midnight Hour." But those are from soundboard bootlegs, so the sound quality is generally excellent. "Leave You Alone" seems to be a Marty Balin original. I'm surprised it hasn't been released, since it's a fine song. The sound quality is little bit poorer on that one.

This album is 47 minutes long.

UPDATE: On June 2, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. I added the song "In the Midnight Hour." And I replaced a version of "The Fat Angel" from 1966 with one from 1967.

01 The Fat Angel (Jefferson Airplane)
02 In the Morning (Jefferson Airplane)
03 J. P. P. McStep B. Blues (Jefferson Airplane)
04 In the Midnight Hour (Jefferson Airplane)
05 Come Back Baby (Jefferson Airplane)
06 Don't Let Me Down (Jefferson Airplane)
07 Leave You Alone (Jefferson Airplane)
08 The Other Side of This Life (Jefferson Airplane)
09 Things Are Better in the East (Jefferson Airplane)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15301591/JeffersonA_1967_TheOthrSideofThisLife_atse.zip.html

The cover art is based on a 1966 concert poster from when the band played the Fillmore in San Francisco. I made three big changes to it. First, I had to crop a lot of it out, to get a rectangular poster shape to fit into the square album shape. Second, I replaced some text at the bottom, which I believe was the name of one of the support acts, with the album title. Third, the band name and the woman in the middle were colored a boring shade of brown. I changed that to a blue that I liked better.

America - Musikladen, Bremen, Germany, 11-13-1974

America had a series of soft rock hits, mainly from 1971 to 1975. There has never been an official live album from their prime early 1970s one, so I'm posting the best bootleg I could find. (There is a live album, simply called "Live," recorded and released in 1977. But it has some problems, including the fact that it was recorded just after the band turned from a trio to a duo.) Because this took place near the end of their most successful era, it contains pretty much all of their big hits with the exception of 1975's "Sister Golden Hair."

This is kind of a strange recording because it's not exactly a concert. The band had a chance to appear on the German TV show "Musikladen." They played a bunch of songs without any audience. There was very little talking between the songs because I think they had the impression that just the songs would be broadcast. 

In the end, from what I could figure out, I think just one song was actually broadcast on the show, "Mad Dog." This is ironic because it's not included here. One can see from video footage that it was recorded at the same time and place, but I haven't included it because fake audience noise was added, and even worse, some announcer talked over much of the song in German. I found it too annoying to even include as a bonus track.

What we do have here is about 40 minutes of music with excellent sound quality. The lack of any audience really helps allow one to hear every note of their songs. The band consists of just the main trio of the band, plus a bassist and drummer.

01 Ventura Highway (America)
02 talk (America)
03 I Need You (America)
04 talk (America)
05 Don't Cross the River (America)
06 A Horse with No Name (America)
07 Moon Song (America)
08 talk (America)
09 Lonely People (America)
10 Wind Wave (America)
11 Rainbow Song (America)
12 talk (America)
13 Tin Man (America)
14 California Revisited (America)
15 Green Monkey (America)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15288722/Amerca_1974_MuskldenBremnGermany__11-13-1974_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I took a screenshot from the video of this show, which can be found on YouTube. To that, I added the band name, using the exact font used on many of their albums. I also threw in the Musikladen logo, since I found that too.

The Animals - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1964-1965

Here's the start of a four volume series of the Animals at the BBC. The Animals are a band that has been particularly poorly served when it comes to archival releases. Virtually nothing new has been released from the 1960s, so everything here is officially unreleased. There are some bootlegs and grey market releases, including a popular bootleg called the "Deluxe BBC Files." But this series is at least double the size of that, at about the same sound quality all the way through.

Note that I previously posted an album of unreleased Animals songs from the 1960s, almost entirely from BBC performances. This new series supplants that. But once I'm done posting all four volumes, I'll update that one for the people who just want the unique songs. I've found some new ones, and others with better sound quality.

It so happens that there never was a good official live album of the Animals from the 1960s. I say "good" because there is an album of them backing Sonny Boy Williamson in late 1963, which has been released under many different names and variants due to some copyright loophole. But that doesn't really count in my opinion, since most of those songs were sung by Williamson, with the Animals just the backing band. I've searched for quality live bootlegs, and there aren't any excellent sounding ones I could find (other than one from 1968, which I probably will post here eventually). So when it comes to live versions from the 1960s, these BBC recordings are basically it.

The Animals hit it big with their classic single "The House of the Rising Sun" in June 1964, which went to number one in the US and Britain. Despite that, and two other Top Twenty hits in Britain that year, I could barely find any worthy recordings from 1964. I'm sure they made many appearances on the BBC and/or other TV and radio shows, but some were lip-synched and other recordings were lost. I particularly had much difficulty finding any non-lip-synched version of "The House of the Rising Sun," period. I've had to resort to a version with some crowd noise.

You may notice six songs in the song list with "[Edit]" in the song titles. That's due to the usual problem with BBC recordings of BBC DJs talking over the songs. And, as I usually do, I edited the songs to get rid of that talking, usually by patching in repeating musical sections from other parts of the songs, or patching in bits from the studio recordings. For this series, I've only included one version of each song. Luckily, I found multiple versions of many songs, so I often was able to pick a version that didn't have the DJ banter problem.

Note that this includes a cover called "Gonna Send You Back to Georgia," originally done by Timmy Shaw in early 1964. When it came time to record this for an album, the Animals changed the title to "Gonna Send You Back to Walker." It's the exact same song, except for the word "Walker" instead of "Georgia."  I looked this up, and it turns out the Animals' lead singer Eric Burdon hailed from the town of Walker, near Newcastle. I've put the other song title in parentheses.

In a similarly confusing vein, the Animals performed the cover song "C. C. Rider," often known as "See See Rider." Generally speaking, when the Animals did it, they called it "See See Rider," but the song is known by both spellings in about equal measure. I looked this up, and it turns out that it should be "C. C. Rider," because that stands for either "church circuit rider," a reference to traveling preachers, or "county circuit rider," a reference to traveling lawyers. So I've put that spelling first and the other one in parentheses.

This album is 45 minutes long. The other albums in this series have similar lengths. The sound quality is generally high, though a couple, like "The House of the Rising Sun," sound a bit rougher.

01 Talkin' 'bout You - Shout (Animals)
02 Around and Around (Animals)
03 The House of the Rising Sun (Animals)
04 Gonna Send You Back to Georgia [Gonna Send You Back to Walker] (Animals)
05 Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood (Animals)
06 Dimples [Edit] (Animals)
07 Mess Around [Edit] (Animals)
08 Boom Boom [Edit] (Animals)
09 Lawdy Miss Clawdy [Edit] (Animals)
10 What Am I Living For [Edit] (Animals)
11 C. C. Rider [See See Rider] (Animals)
12 I Got to Find My Baby [Edit] (Animals)
13 Bring It on Home to Me (Animals)
14 I'm Crying (Animals)
15 Drown in My Own Tears (Animals)
16 Ain't that a Shame (Animals)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15123913/TAnimls_1964-1965_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is of the band in 1964.

Jorma Kaukonen - Home Concerts 4, Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, OH, 5-23-2020 to 11-21-2020

This is the last home concert of Jorma Kaukonen. Unfortunately, even though he's been playing home concerts pretty much every week from the start of the pandemic until now (sometimes alone and sometimes as part of Hot Tuna), he tends to play the same songs over and over again. For the three previous volumes, I avoided repeating songs. With this one, the unique songs basically ran out. These are the songs he didn't play in a few months of previous home concerts, so they're generally his rarities. As such, I find this volume the most interesting one.

There isn't much else to say. He's been very consistent with playing at the same place using the same set up for all his home concerts, so the sound quality is uniformly excellent. Also, as I did with previous volumes, I've cut out most of the between song banter except for the bits that are directly relevant to the songs he played. He's typically done long question and answer sessions with questions sent in by fans, so if I included that it would be a totally different thing, with tons more talking.

I don't know why, but I've made the albums in this series rather long, at over an hour apiece. This one is especially long, at an hour and forty minutes. If he ends up doing a handful of unique songs in 2021 home concerts, I'll probably add those and break this in two. But, for now, it is what it is.

I've added one song as a bonus track, "Yes Blues." This cover of the Beatles song was done for a John Lennon tribute concert in October 2020, so it doesn't exactly fit the home concert format. But it's a performance in the same solo acoustic blues style as most of the other songs, so I figure it fits enough to be a bonus track.

01 Broken Highway (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 A Walk with Friends [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 Corners without Exits (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 Roads and Roads and (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 Izze's Lullaby [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 Ode for Billy Dean (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 Song from the Stainless Cymbal (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 What Are They Doing in Heaven Today (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 Blues Stay Away from Me (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Follow the Drinking Gourd [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 That'll Never Happen No More (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 Folsom Prison Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
21 Great Divide Revisited (Jorma Kaukonen)
22 Soliloquy for 2 (Jorma Kaukonen)
23 Uncle Sam Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
24 Serpent of Dreams (Jorma Kaukonen)
25 Second Chances (Jorma Kaukonen)
26 Blue Railroad Train (Jorma Kaukonen)
27 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
28 West Coast Blues [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
29 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
30 I'm Free from the Chain Gang Now (Jorma Kaukonen)
31 You and My Old Guitar (Jorma Kaukonen)
32 Vampire Women (Jorma Kaukonen)
33 Yer Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vooaS69z

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/S8oixIZTCB2Cc8o/file

The cover art photo is a screen shot from one of the home concerts during this time period. I don't recall which one.

Grace Slick & the Great Society - The Matrix, San Francisco, CA, 6-1966

Do you like Jefferson Airplane? How would you like an entire album that sounds like Jefferson Airplane in their prime but has Grace Slick sing most every song, instead of her just being one of four lead vocalists? That's basically what the Great Society were. Even though I've been a Jefferson Airplane fan for ages, I only recently started appreciating the Great Society. 

There have been a couple of official albums released by them: "Born to Be Bad," which contains early studio demos that aren't very good, and "Collector's Item," which is an excellent concert recording. This is a bootleg, so I feel free to post it here, and the sound quality and performance are very similar to "Collector's Item."

The Great Society only existed for about a year, from 1965 to 1966. For most of that time, they had two lead vocalists: Grace Slick and David Miner.  I have to be brutally honest here. Miner generally sang his own songs, and they were pretty bad. As a lead vocalist, he was merely adequate. I think it's telling that after leaving the band, he went to college and left the music business. As a result, I've taken a longer bootleg and removed all of the David Miner originals, making it a much stronger album. The only ones I've kept where he sings are the covers "Down Home Girl," "Black Crow Blues," and "Get Out of My Life Woman." For that last one, he and Slick harmonize together on the vocals. 

Removing his songs may sound harsh, but believe me, you're not missing anything. Note this is exactly what the official album "Collector's Item" did. That was recorded about three months before this, so Miner probably sang half or more of the songs, but all of the songs with him singing lead were removed.

With Miner gone, the Great Society would have had a bright future being fronted by Slick. But right as they were offered a record contract, she had a chance to join Jefferson Airplane and replace their departing female lead vocalist. She obviously chose to join Jefferson Airplane. Somewhat surprisingly, the other band members encouraged her to do so, knowing that was the better path to success. Then the band folded, since they knew they wouldn't be much without her.

You can read more about the band at their Wikipedia entry, if you're curious:

The Great Society (band) - Wikipedia

What surprises me about the band is that it had multiple talented songwriters. Slick sang some songs she wrote herself, others written by the bassist (Peter van Gelder), and still others written by her brother-in-law Darby Slick. The Jefferson Airplane classic "White Rabbit" was written by Slick and was first performed by the Great Society, though sadly it's not included here. Another Jefferson Airplane classic, "Somebody to Love," was written by Darby Slick and is included here in a slower version called "Someone to Love." The songs are originals other than the three Miner sung or co-sung ones mentioned above, plus "Outlaw Blues" by Bob Dylan.

As an aside, I find it interesting that there's a slight lyrical difference with the early version of "Somebody to Love" compared to the hit version done by Jefferson Airplane. The Airplane version has a verse that goes: "Your eyes, your eyes may look like his. But in your head, baby, I'm afraid you don't know where it is." But the original here goes: "Your eyes, your eyes may look like his. But in bed, baby, I'm afraid you don't know where it is." It's a subtle difference, but it makes more sense. I'm guessing it was changed because the "in bed" part was considered too risque by the very innocent sexual standards of that era. (To show just how much standards have changed, consider that in the same year of 1967, the Van Morrison song "Brown Eyed Girl" was banned by many radio stations merely for containing the lyric "makin' love in the green grass behind the stadium.")

This album is 35 minutes long. As I said above, you can find longer versions of this bootleg with the Miner songs included, but in this case, less is more. I also removed a second version of "Born to Be Burned" that got cut off before the end, and a short instrumental that wasn't very good. Both on this bootleg and the live "Collector's Item," there doesn't seem to have been any banter between songs.

By the way, at the time, the band was simply known as "the Great Society." But due to Slick's later fame, after the band broke up, they have often been called "Grace Slick and the Great Society." I've gone with that latter, less accurate name, to help make sure people don't miss this music.

01 Down Home Girl (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
02 Born to Be Burned (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
03 Black Crow Blues (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
04 Didn't Think So (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
05 Darkly Smiling (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
06 Father Bruce (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
07 Often as I May (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
08 Outlaw Blues (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
09 Get Out of My Life Woman (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
10 Someone to Love [Somebody to Love] (Grace Slick & the Great Society)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LeTEx2dz

I wanted to use a photo of the whole band, but I couldn't find a good one in color that wasn't used for an album already. So I went with a photo of just Grace Slick. I don't know when or where this photo is from, but I'm guessing it's from 1967 or thereabouts.

Roberta Flack - Afro Blue - Non-Album Tracks (1968)

In mid-2020, a deluxe edition of Roberta Flack's album "First Take" was released. This was very special as far as deluxe editions go, because it contained a second disc of what was essentially an entirely unreleased album. In fact, there's so much music on it (an hour and 16 minutes) that it could be a double album. "First Take," her debut album, was recorded in early 1969 and released by the end of that year. All but the first songs here was recorded in 1968. So one might think of this as her true debut album.

Flack started out playing small clubs for several years before getting a record contract. Most of the songs here were recorded in three days, and came easily since they consisted the songs of her well honed stage act. The vast majority of the songs are covers. However, "Groove Me" is not the hit by King Floyd, which wouldn't come out until 1970. It's a Flack original.

The first song is a bit different. "All the Way" is a live recording done in 1969. But it wasn't released until decades later on a Les McCann archival album called "Les Is More." This was included on the "First Take" deluxe edition. (Another song on that, "Trade Winds," has been put on the stray tracks album "Freedom Song" instead.)

By the way, as generous as the bonus tracks on the deluxe edition are, there are many more songs recorded at that session. Other songs include: "On a Clear Day," "A Change Is Gonna Come," "Lovin' You," "Love for Sale," "With These Hands," "A House Is Not a Home," "Just a False Start," "Elusive Butterfly," "First of All," and "This House," plus early versions of the songs from "First Take." Let's hope those get released someday too.

If you like Flack's first few albums before she went fully into a slick, mainstream direction, you're sure to like this.

01 All the Way (Roberta Flack)
02 This Could Be the Start of Something (Roberta Flack)
03 Groove Me (Roberta Flack)
04 Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out (Roberta Flack)
05 Hush-A-Bye (Roberta Flack)
06 Afro Blue (Roberta Flack)
07 It's Way Past Suppertime (Roberta Flack)
08 Frankie and Johnny (Roberta Flack)
09 On the Street Where You Live (Roberta Flack)
10 The House Song (Roberta Flack)
11 Ain't No Mountain High Enough (Roberta Flack)
12 The Song Is Love (Roberta Flack)
13 To Sir with Love (Roberta Flack)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15116229/RobertaFl_1968_AfroBlu_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any photos of Flack from 1968, which isn't surprising since she was largely unknown back then. The one I used is from a series of promo photos that came out when her debut album was released in late 1969. It was a black and white photo, but I colorized it.

Herman's Hermits - The Covers Album (1968)

I'm psyched to be presenting this, even though it's from the notoriously uncool band Hermit's Hermits. It turns out that in 1968, Herman's Hermits planned to release an album made up entirely of cover versions of well known songs. It never was released, probably because the band's commercial fortunes were rapidly declining in the late 1960s. Every song here remains officially unreleased, so this is a true "lost album." I think it's pretty darn good, especially if you're into the "sunshine pop" genre. If you're into this type of music at all, you should give it a listen.

I know you're probably thinking, "Herman's Hermits?! What the hell?!" It's true they have a bad reputation as an inconsequential and lightweight pop group from the 1960s. And there's some truth to that, for sure. But I've been putting together material for a series of BBC albums from them, and I've been pleasantly surprised by what they did for the BBC, which is often superior to their studio recordings. I plan on posting those BBC performances soon. This is going to serve as a kind of teaser, because most of these songs come from their BBC sessions, though some do not.

Here's what I know about their covers album. Apparently, in 1968, the band recorded about 50 (!) songs for a proposed cover album. None of them have ever been officially released, nor have any of their BBC performances. But some have appeared on bootlegs, so I've collected everything I could find. Twelve of the songs are from BBC sessions. I'll be including them on BBC albums as well, but I figure they can do double duty here too. I'm not sure if all of these were part of the covers album, but I included all the covers they did at the BBC from mid-1967 to early 1969.

Seven more songs from the covers album have leaked out in other ways. Most of these were played on the "Come to the Sunshine" podcast by Andrew Sandoval in 2012. Unfortunately, all of these songs were cut off about two-thirds of the way through. In each case, I did my best to restore the missing parts, usually by repeating verses and/or choruses from earlier in the song. Generally, there was just enough to make this work, with the versions generally going just past the second verses. But for the song "Friends," the end of the second verse got cut off. So if you listen carefully, the last word is actually from the end of the first verse.

I had a similar problem with the BBC performances. In almost every case here, a BBC DJ talked over the starts or ends of the songs. I think I did a pretty good job of restoring the missing bits though, usually by patching in sections from later in the same song.

In terms of the music, I think the band made some excellent choices which they do well in their poppy style. They sound a lot like the Association on many of these songs, with lush harmony vocals. This band was nowhere near the cutting edge, but even so, I was pleasantly surprised to see them do songs by the likes of Buffalo Springfield, Tim Hardin, and Jeff Beck. You don't have to be a fan of Herman's Hermits to enjoy this; just a fan of 1960s pop music in general.

If the band really did record 50 songs for their covers project, that could have easily been a double album with some songs left over. As it is, I was only able to find 47 minutes worth of music. But that so happens to end up being the length of generous single album from that era, so that works out rather nicely.

Here are the original artists for each song:

01 Walk Away Renee - Never My Love - Left Banke - Association
02 Rock and Roll Woman [Edit] - Buffalo Springfield
03 If I Were a Carpenter - Tim Hardin / Bobby Darin
04 New York Mining Disaster 1941 [Edit] - Bee Gees
05 Memphis, Tennessee [Edit] - Chuck Berry
06 Tallyman [Edit] - Jeff Beck
07 Hello Mary Lou [Edit] - Gene Pitney / Ricky Nelson
08 Keep On [Edit] - Bruce Channel
09 It's All Right - Shout [Edit] - Impressions - Isley Brothers
10 Morning Dew [Edit] - Bonnie Dobson / Grateful Dead
11 Love Is Blue [Edit] - Vicky Leandros
12 Save the Last Dance for Me - Drifters
13 Little Green Apples [Edit] - Bobby Russell / O. C. Smith
14 Friends [Edit] - Beach Boys
15 People - Barbra Streisand
16 Daydream [Edit] - Lovin' Spoonful
17 What to Do [Edit] - Buddy Holly
18 Windy [Edit] - Association

Here's the usual song list:

01 Walk Away Renee (Herman's Hermits)
02 Rock and Roll Woman [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)
03 If I Were a Carpenter (Herman's Hermits)
04 New York Mining Disaster 1941 [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)
05 Memphis, Tennessee [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)
06 Tallyman [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)
07 Hello Mary Lou [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)
08 Keep On [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)
09 It's All Right - Shout [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)
10 Morning Dew [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)
11 Love Is Blue [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)
12 Save the Last Dance for Me (Herman's Hermits)
13 Little Green Apples [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)
14 Friends [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)
15 People (Herman's Hermits)
16 Daydream [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)
17 What to Do [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)
18 Windy [Edit] (Herman's Hermits)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Wp2fubaB

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/u1oKBjcQmYzVevy/file

The cover art shows the band playing on an unknown TV show in 1968. I'm very glad to have it as the cover, because it shows the band bending ever so slightly to the prevailing cultural winds of the late 1960s, especially with the background imagery, while staying somewhat square. That perfectly describes their music on this album too.