James Brown - Keystone, Berkeley, CA, 1-30-1982

Good God, poeple! Take it to the bridge! Here's Jaaaaameeeees Brooooown!

I've long wanted to post something here by James Brown, since he is one of the soul music greats. However, my policy is to only post worthy music, and there have been so many zillions of James Brown albums officially released, including about 30 live albums, that I didn't come across anything worthy. 

But that's finally changed. I came across an unreleased concert that has excellent sound quality and performance, plus a great selection of songs. Also, it's from a time, the early 1980s, when there are no official live albums (at least that I know of). In fact, if you just wanted one James Brown live album from the second half of his career, it would be hard to beat this one, official or not.

Brown had a pretty rough time in the late 1970s. Disco was all the rage, largely replacing his style of funky soul music. His sales plummeted. He tried disco, but it didn't work. Thankfully, by the time of this concert, disco fever had broken. Brown wisely went back to doing the funky soul he did so well. Although this concert was recorded in 1982, the set list and performance could have easily come from 1974.

Brown did two shows on this evening. Most of the music here is from the first show. But he played three different songs in the late show, so I added those to the end. 

This concert is 55 minutes long.

01 Show Intro (James Brown)
02 James Brown Intro (James Brown)
03 The Payback (James Brown)
04 It's Too Funky in Here (James Brown)
05 Doing It to Death (James Brown)
06 Try Me (James Brown)
07 Talk with Me (James Brown)
08 Get on the Good Foot (James Brown)
09 Prisoner of Love (James Brown)
10 I Got the Feelin' (James Brown)
11 It's a Man's Man's Man's World (James Brown)
12 Cold Sweat (James Brown)
13 Please Please Please (James Brown)
14 Jam (James Brown)
15 [Get Up I Feel like Being A] Sex Machine (James Brown)
16 Georgia on My Mind (James Brown)
17 Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (James Brown)
18 I Got You [I Feel Good] (James Brown)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16036901/JmesBrwn_1982_KystneBerkelyCA__1-30-1982_atse.zip.html

The cover photo isn't from this exact concert, but it's close. It's from a concert only one day later, in Reseda, California. With the text, I drew upon the style of old James Brown concert posters for inspiration with the font type and colors and so forth.

Leonard Cohen - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 5-30-1988

This is the fourth, and so far last, Leonard Cohen BBC album I plan on posting. Like the last one, it's a concert. It's also a much longer one, clocking in at over two hours long.

Cohen's career reached a commercial low point in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was so bad that when his album "Various Positions" was released in 1984, his record company refused to release it in the U.S. (For years, one could only get it as an import from Canada.) But that was a strong album that contained what would become his most famous song, "Hallelujah." His next album, "I'm Your Man," was arguably even better. It also sold much better, helped by the fact that he had a new record company that supported it. 

This was part of his tour to support that album. There are no official live albums from the 1980s at all, so this is an excellent one to fill in that gap. The sound quality is top notch, as you'd expect from the BBC.

Note that Cohen's voice got much deeper all through the 1980s. So he sound considerably different than on the last BBC concert album, recorded in 1979.

I believe there's only one song missing: "Avalanche." I don't know why it wasn't included.

Unfortunately, I imagine this is the last BBC album I'll be posting of his music, because I don't know of any BBC concerts or significant sessions after this. He did perform a set at the Glastonbury Festival in 2008, and those sets are almost always broadcast by the BBC. But I'm guessing his set wasn't broadcast, because I can't find a good copy of that performance anywhere. If you have one, please share.

This album is two hours and 19 minutes long.

01 talk (Leonard Cohen)
02 Dance Me to the End of Love (Leonard Cohen)
03 talk (Leonard Cohen)
04 Ain't No Cure for Love (Leonard Cohen)
05 Who by Fire (Leonard Cohen)
06 Bird on the Wire (Leonard Cohen)
07 talk (Leonard Cohen)
08 I'm Your Man (Leonard Cohen)
09 Sisters of Mercy (Leonard Cohen)
10 Coming Back to You (Leonard Cohen)
11 talk (Leonard Cohen)
12 First We Take Manhattan (Leonard Cohen)
13 talk (Leonard Cohen)
14 Chelsea Hotel No. 2 (Leonard Cohen)
15 Tower of Song (Leonard Cohen)
16 The Stranger Song (Leonard Cohen)
17 If It Be Your Will (Leonard Cohen)
18 Everybody Knows (Leonard Cohen)
19 Joan of Arc (Leonard Cohen)
20 Hallelujah [Edit] (Leonard Cohen)
21 There Is a War (Leonard Cohen)
22 talk (Leonard Cohen)
23 Take This Waltz (Leonard Cohen)
24 The Partisan (Leonard Cohen)
25 Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)
26 Passin' Through (Leonard Cohen)
27 I Tried to Leave You (Leonard Cohen)
28 Whither Thou Goest (Leonard Cohen)
29 So Long, Marianne (Leonard Cohen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/XCz1W8sF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/0SJvOxDirqLJfud/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/mDiDT

The cover photo was taken in Paris, France, in May 1988.

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 10 - Buddy Guy & Junior Wells

This is the last of ten albums featuring the biggest names from the 1968 Newport Folk Festival. This time, it's a set from the blues duo Buddy Guy and Junior Wells.

Guy and Wells were successful solo artists, but they also had a long and successful partnership, sometimes working as a duo from the 1960s until Wells died in 1998. I believe they started performing together around 1966, but they wouldn't release their first album as a duo until 1972. I can't say this with total certainty, but I think this is their best and only concert recording as a duo from the 1960s.

Guy and Wells did different types of blues together. They've even done some acoustic albums which I particularly like. But at this phase of their career, they mostly played a more rocking and lively form of blues, sometimes even veering into soul music. This was helped by the fact they were assisted by a horn section. You can see that here by the fact that they finished with a cover of "I Got You (I Feel Good)," the soul classic by James Brown.

This concert is 39 minutes long.

129 talk by George Wein (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
130 Intro [Instrumental] (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
131 One Room Country Shack (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
132 Checkin' on My Baby (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
133 talk (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
134 Hoodoo Man Blues (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
135 Messin' with the Kid (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
136 talk (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
137 Help Me (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
138 talk (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
139 Call It Stormy Monday - I Got You [I Feel Good] (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17205342/VA-NEWPRTFLKFESTIVL196810BuddyGy_JniorWlls.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Cg8bXPax

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

UPDATE: On October 5, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 9 - Janis Ian & Tim Buckley

This is the ninth of ten albums of the 1968 Newport Folk Festival. This was part of the festival's last day, July 28, 1968. There are two sets here, one from singer-songwriter Janis Ian and the other from singer-songwriter Tim Buckley.

Ian was quite young at the time of this concert, just seventeen years old. She'd had a surprise hit the year before with the song, "Society's Child (Baby, I've Been Thinking)," which dealt with interracial romance. The same month as this concert she released her third album, "The Secret Life of J. Eddy Fink." It was a bad time in her life. She was doing a lot of drugs to cope with her fame, and even attempted suicide. You wouldn't know that from her performance here though, which was fine.

Tim Buckley has become something of a music legend, in part due to dying young (in 1975) as well as having a famous musical son, Jeff Buckley, who also died young. As a result, there's a demand for his live recordings. So this is a very welcome addition to his discography. The sound quality is excellent, like everything from this festival. And it took place at an interesting time, when he was moving from folky material to more experimental and jazzy material. 

His first song, "Buzzin' Fly," wouldn't be released until a year later, on his album "Happy Sad." The next two songs were covers. He played them a lot in concert, but he didn't put them on any albums at the time. "The Dolphins" would be released on a studio album, but not until 1973. His final song, "Morning Glory," was from his most recent album at the time, "Goodbye and Hello."

This album is 45 minutes long. The Janis Ian set is 23 minutes long, and the Tim Buckley set is 22 minutes long.

116 talk by George Wein (Janis Ian)
117 Janeys Blues (Janis Ian)
118 Pro-Girl (Janis Ian)
119 Society's Child [Baby, I've Been Thinking] (Janis Ian)
120 New Christ Cardiac Hero (Janis Ian)
121 My Land (Janis Ian)
122 talk by Oscar Brand (Tim Buckley)
123 Buzzin' Fly (Tim Buckley)
124 Wayfaring Stranger (Tim Buckley)
125 talk (Tim Buckley)
126 The Dolphins (Tim Buckley)
127 talk (Tim Buckley)
128 Morning Glory (Tim Buckley)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17205348/VA-NEWPRTFLKFESTIVL196809JnisIan_TimBuckly.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TPusZM62

The cover art shows Janis Ian on the left and Tim Buckley on the right. Both are from this exact concert. It's a shame I had to edit them down to get both to fit. If anyone wants me to post the full versions, or of any of the others from the concert that I had to split in two, let me know and I'll post them here too. 

UPDATE: On October 5, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 8 - Kaleidoscope (US) & Taj Mahal

Next up at the 1968 Newport Folk Festival were Kaleidoscope (U.S.) and Taj Mahal. 

I say "Kaleidoscope (U.S.)" and not just "Kaleidoscope," because in the late 1960s, there were two fairly well known bands with the name Kaleidoscope, one in Britain and one in the U.S. I've already posted a few albums by the British Kaleidoscope. I like them a lot, and in my biased mind they are THE Kaleidoscope, so that's why I clarify that this is the U.S. band by putting "U.S." in their name. That said, Kaleidoscope (U.S.) had a lot going for them. They had a very unique sound that has been described as "psychedelic folk." Retrospectively, they're probably best known for the fact that their guitarist was David Lindley, who would go on to have a long and successful music career after the band broke up before the end of the 1960s.

In fact, I would say the Kaleidoscope set was the big deal here, much more so than Taj Mahal's. That's not to knock Taj Mahal at all, but instead it's a matter of scarcity. There are lots of Taj Mahal concert recordings, both bootleg and official, but I only know of one Kaleidoscope official live album and no bootlegs. So this is a key addition to their pretty small recorded legacy.

Also, their set was quite interesting and even provocative. They started out with a short and simple cover of the country song "Hello Trouble." Then they took a cover of another cover, "Oh Death" - made famous by Ralph Stanley, who had played earlier in the festival - and totally transformed it. Normally a short song, they stretched it to twelve minutes, mostly by adding a spoken word section in the middle with very harsh words about the Vietnam War, a hot, controversial topic at the time. They followed that with "Taxim," a long instrumental with strong "world music" elements.

Taj Mahal had already performed a set earlier in the festival. I included that in the first album in this series. The set he did here wasn't terribly different. It included two of the same songs: "She Caught the Katy (And Left Me a Mule to Ride)" and "EZ Rider." But only this one ended with "Ain't That a Lot of Love," which is one of my favorite songs from him, and one of his most upbeat ones.

This album is 54 minutes long. The Kaleidoscope set is 32 minutes long, and the Taj Mahal set is 21 minutes long.

101 talk by Pete Seeger (Kaleidoscope (US))
102 Hello Trouble (Kaleidoscope (US))
103 talk (Kaleidoscope (US))
104 Oh Death (Kaleidoscope (US))
105 talk (Kaleidoscope (US))
106 Taxim [Instrumental] (Kaleidoscope (US))
107 talk (Taj Mahal)
108 Dust My Broom (Taj Mahal)
109 talk (Taj Mahal)
110 She Caught the Katy [And Left Me a Mule to Ride] (Taj Mahal)
111 Diving Duck Blues (Taj Mahal)
112 talk (Taj Mahal)
113 EZ Rider (Taj Mahal)
114 talk (Taj Mahal)
115 Ain't That a Lot of Love (Taj Mahal)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17205341/VA-NEWPRTFLKFESTIVL196808Kleidoscpe_TajMhal.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/dJxygCZb

For the cover, that's Kaleidoscope on the left and Taj Mahal on the right. Both photos are from this exact festival. However, I don't know if Taj Mahal's picture is from this set, or the one he played earlier in the festival. And the Kaleidoscope picture was originally in black and white, because that's all I could find of them from this show. But I colorized it with the help of the Palette computer problem. Also, unfortunately, I had to crop out the drummer to get it to fit. Since good photos of the band in concert are very few and far between, and it took some work to colorize it, here's the full picture.

UPDATE: On October 5, 2024, I upgraded the cover photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 7 - Big Brother & the Holding Company

Next up for the 1968 Newport Folk Festival was Big Brother and the Holding Company, led by singer Janis Joplin.

At the time of this festival, Joplin and her band hadn't had much success so far. They'd released one album in 1967, simply called "Big Brother and the Holding Company," but it had only reached Number 60 in the U.S. charts. They'd put out a few singles, but only one of them, "Down on Me," had charted at all. In August, just one month after this concert, their second album, "Cheap Thrills," would be released. It would hit Number One in the U.S. and sell millions, becoming a classic. But that was still in the future.

Despite that relative lack of success so far, the buzz about Joplin had already turned her into a star. 

I previously posted a link to a Rolling Stone Magazine review of the entire Newport festival. It was written by famed rock critic (and future producer for Bruce Springsteen) Jon Landau. He was a real curmudgeon in his sour review, disliking most all the acts in the festival, especially Joplin and her band. (He even wrote, "I should note the audience loved every minute of [her performance] and that I was singularly isolated in my reaction.") But even he had to admit that her set was "unquestionably the hit of the festival."

Joplin and her band was the last act to perform on the July 27th day of the festival. Technically, their set was on the 28th, because they went on well after midnight. A curfew was enforced, so the band had to play a shorter set than they wanted. Many or even most of the people in the crowd waited through folk acts all day in order to see Joplin, and they'd gotten bored and restless. 

However, all that changed when Joplin took the stage. Landau later wrote that the song "Ball and Chain" in particular earned a "massive standing ovation." And at the end of the set, "[Joplin] and the audience just beamed at each other through her two encores."

Here's that Landau review again, in case you're curious to read the whole thing:

The Newport Folk Festival: 1968 (rollingstone.com)

This album is 35 minutes long.

087 talk by Unknown Emcee (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
088 Piece of My Heart (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
089 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
090 Summertime (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
091 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
092 Coo Coo (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
093 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
094 Combination of the Two (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
095 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
096 Ball and Chain (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
097 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
098 Down on Me (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
099 talk (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
100 Piece of My Heart [Reprise] (Big Brother & the Holding Company)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16033565/NewprtFlkFestivl_1968_07BigBrothrtheHoldngCompny.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 6 - B. B. King

I posted five albums of the 1968 Newport Folk Festival, but there are ten in all. So here's the sixth one. It's a set from legendary blues guitarist B. B. King.

King was a tireless concert performer, usually playing concerts well over 300 nights a year. So it's highly likely this was his well-honed typical set done with a full band, without any changes for the folk theme or folky crowd of the festival. But that's fine. He was in peak form in the late 1960s, with his most acclaimed live albums from that time period, so it's good to have another live recording like this from him.

As with the other albums from this festival, there was some problem with wind blowing on the microphone, especially during the applause and banter. But I cleaned that up using the Izotope 10 audio editing program, just like I did for the other albums.

This album is 32 minutes long.

076 talk by George Wein (B. B. King)
077 Everyday I Have the Blues (B. B. King)
078 How Blue Can You Get (B. B. King)
079 Whole Lot of Loving (B. B. King)
080 talk (B. B. King)
081 Please Accept My Love (B. B. King)
082 talk (B. B. King)
083 I'm Gonna Do What They Do to Me (B. B. King)
084 Sweet Sixteen (B. B. King)
085 Paying the Cost to Be the Boss (B. B. King)
086 talk by George Wein (B. B. King)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16033193/NewprtFlkFestivl_1968_06BBKng.zip.html

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 5 - George Hamilton IV & Ralph Stanley

The fifth album from the 1968 Newport Folk Festival gets even more rootsy, with sets from country singer George Hamilton IV and bluegrass musician Ralph Stanley.

George Hamilton IV doesn't seem to be that well known these days, probably because he didn't excel with original songs or a unique style. Here's his Wikipedia entry:

George Hamilton IV - Wikipedia

But he started out as a teen idol in the late 1950s, then switched to country music in the early 1960s. By the time of this festival, he had become very interested in playing folk songs in a country style. He had a knack for covering songs by emerging singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot. He had dozens of country hits in the 1960s and 1970s.

For his set at the festival, he played two songs by Lightfoot ("Steel Rail Blues" and "Early Mornin' Rain") and one by Mitchell ("Urge for Going"), as well as "Abeline," which was a Number One coutnry hit for him in the U.S. in 1963.

Ralph Stanley was a giant figure in bluegrass music for a long time. Here's his Wikipedia entry:

Ralph Stanley - Wikipedia

He was born in 1927 and died in 2016 at the age of 89. He was known both his his distinctive singing and his banjo playing. If you're not familiar with the bluegrass genre, he's probably best known in the wider popular culture for singing the song "Oh Death" in the 2000 movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

This album is 39 minutes long. The Hamilton IV set is 19 minutes and the Stanley set is 20 minutes.

053 talk by Unknown Emcee (George Hamilton IV)
054 Steel Rail Blues (George Hamilton IV)
055 Abeline (George Hamilton IV)
056 talk (George Hamilton IV)
057 Urge for Going (George Hamilton IV)
058 talk (George Hamilton IV)
059 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right [Instrumental Version] (George Hamilton IV)
060 talk (George Hamilton IV)
061 Break My Mind (George Hamilton IV)
062 Early Morning Rain (George Hamilton IV)
063 talk by George Wein (George Hamilton IV)
064 talk by Unknown Emcee (Ralph Stanley)
065 How Mountain Girls Can Love (Ralph Stanley)
066 talk (Ralph Stanley)
067 Man of Constant Sorrow (Ralph Stanley)
068 talk (Ralph Stanley)
069 Pretty Polly - Wild Bill Jones (Ralph Stanley)
070 talk (Ralph Stanley)
071 The Hills of Roane County (Ralph Stanley)
072 talk (Ralph Stanley)
073 Sally Goodin' [Instrumental] (Ralph Stanley)
074 talk (Ralph Stanley)
075 Little Birdie (Ralph Stanley)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17205349/VA-NEWPRTFLKFESTIVL196805GeorgHamiltnIV_RlphStanly.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BhRLpJGF

The cover art has a picture of Hamilton IV on the left and Stanley on the right. The one of Hamilton IV is from this exact concert. However, I couldn't find any photos of Stanley from the festival. In fact, I had trouble finding any good photos of him from this time period at all. I ended up using an undated black and white one. Then I colorized it using the Palette program.

UPDATE: On October 5, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 4 - Mississippi Fred McDowell, Joan Baez & Ramblin' Jack Elliott

In the fourth volume of the 1968 Newport Folk Festival, things get increasingly folky. The two main performers here are from before the rock era, the kinds of musicians that almost never got bootlegged.

Mississippi Fred McDowell in particular went way back. Here's his Wikipedia entry:

Mississippi Fred McDowell - Wikipedia

He was born in 1904 and died in 1972, just a few years after this festival. He actually was a farmer most of his life. But about ten years before this, musicologists discovered him while doing field recordings in the Southern U.S. Only then did he become a professional musician and start putting out records.

Joan Baez was the featured musician of the previous album in this festival series. But this album took place one day later. She had performed solo acoustic, but she came back on stage at this time to play a couple of classic country songs with a band. It seems she only did two songs.

The remainder of the album is Ramblin' Jack Elliott's set. Here's his Wikipedia page:

Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Wikipedia

Elliott truly was a ramblin' guy. He ran away from home at age fifteen to join the circus. Before long he connected with legendary folk musician Woody Guthrie. He essentially became his young apprentice for many years, traveling with him and learning his songs. He kept playing for a long time, for instance having a role in Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder tour in 1975 and 1976, and even playing with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the 2000s. As I write this in late 2023, he's still alive, at the age of 92.

At some points, this wind problem mentioned in previous albums happened here too. But I fixed that using the "de-wind" feature of the Izotope 10 audio editing program.

Also, Elliott's set was quite short, only three songs, and had big problems. Parts of the songs "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" and "If I Were a Carpenter" were missing. Luckily though, he did studio versions a year earlier for an album in the same acoustic style done here. So I used the studio versions to fill in the missing parts. Even though live and studio versions are combined, I'd be surprised if you can find where the edits took place. I'm guessing there could have been more songs to his set that might not have been properly recorded at all.

But that was just the first three songs of his set. You may notice he did an additional five songs. That's because of the special set I previously mentioned with the Arlo Guthrie set, the one dedicated to Woody Guthrie. Since Elliott was so close to Woody, it was only natural that he was a part of that, and that he played a bunch of songs. So those last five songs are all Woody Guthrie covers done as part of that set.

This album is 46 minutes long. The McDowell set is 10 minutes long, the Baez one is eight minutes, and the Elliott one is 29 minutes.

033 talk by George Wein (Mississippi Fred McDowell)
034 Fred's Worried Life Blues (Mississippi Fred McDowell)
035 Shake 'Em on Down (Mississippi Fred McDowell)
036 Write Me a Few Lines (Mississippi Fred McDowell)
037 talk by Ralph Rinzler (Mississippi Fred McDowell)
038 talk by Bob Siggins (Joan Baez)
039 Green, Green Grass of Home (Joan Baez)
040 talk (Joan Baez)
041 The Banks of the Ohio (Joan Baez)
042 talk by Unknown Emcee (Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
043 talk (Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
044 912 Greens (Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
045 talk (Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
046 Don't Think Twice, It's Alright [Edit] (Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
047 If I Were a Carpenter [Edit] (Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
048 Ramblin' Round (Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
049 How'd You Do (Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
050 Why Oh Why (Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
051 Car, Car (Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
052 Talking Merchant Marine (Ramblin' Jack Elliott)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17205343/VA-NEWPRTFLKFESTIVL196804MssissippFrdMcDowlJnBaez_RmblinJckEllott.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/A782uTtf

For the cover, that's McDowell on the left and Elliott on the right. Both photos were taken during this festival.

UPDATE: On October 5, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 3 - Joan Baez

Next up at the 1968 Newport Folk Festival is folk singer Joan Baez.

In 1968, Joan Baez was a big star. In fact, I was surprised to recently read that the organizers of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival - basically, the British version of Woodstock, with lots of big name artists - considered her the biggest name draw of the whole festival. And at this time, she would have been considered hip enough to appeal to both the folk and rock crowds at the festival, in part due to her strident anti-Vietnam War protests.

Baez did an all acoustic set. It's the only set from the festival I'm presenting here that has been officially released. It's notable for the cover of "Gentle on My Mind," made famous by Glen Campbell, because Baez otherwise never recorded it.

For two of the songs, she sang duets with her sister, Mimi Farina. Farina was a well known folk singer in her own right, especially as part of the duo of Richard and Mini Farina, but that ended when Richard died in 1966. As far as I know, Farina didn't do a set of her own during the festival.

Many of the sets were plagued by wind noises, and that was the case here. But I used Izotope 10 to "de-wind" some of the files. If any still remain, please let me know and I'll make another effort.

Note that Baez also sang a couple of songs in a very short set at the festival a day later. I'll include those on the next album, to put them in the proper chronological context.

This set is 37 minutes long.

021 talk by Jean Ritchie (Joan Baez)
022 Carry It On (Joan Baez)
023 Gentle on My Mind (Joan Baez)
024 talk (Joan Baez)
025 Maria Dolores (Joan Baez)
026 talk (Joan Baez)
027 Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (Joan Baez)
028 talk (Joan Baez)
029 Legend in My Time (Joan Baez & Mimi Farina)
030 Morning, Morning (Joan Baez & Mimi Farina)
031 Suzanne (Joan Baez)
032 We Want Our Freedom Now (Joan Baez)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17205354/VA-NEWPRTFLKFESTIVL196803JnBaez.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fP8EZWgT

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

UPDATE: On October 5, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 2 - Arlo Guthrie

The 1968 Newport Folk Festival continues with Arlo Guthrie.

As an aside, note that I'm not entirely sure of the order of performers in this festival. I tried to research it, but I only got some clues, like a mention of a particular act being the last one of the day, or one performer going before another one. So the order is my best guess. I do know which day each performance took place on though, and that information is in the mp3 tags. In Guthie's case, his set was on August 26th, the second day of the festival.

Arlo Guthrie is famous for being the son of Woody Guthrie, probably the most revered folk musician of all time. But he also has had a long and successful music career of his own. He found fame early, when he was just a teenager. In the 1967 Newport Folk Festival, he peformed a newly written long story-song, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree," and it got a tremendous reception. He recorded it at another concert shortly after that and released it on his debut album later that year. As a result, he was already well-known by the time of this festival, though mainly known for that one song.

If this is his full performance, then he didn't play that song this time. However, he made passing reference to it more than once, and you can tell from the reaction that the audience was familiar with it. Instead, he played a couple of songs done in a very similar vein, that was a mix of talking, often humorous, and singing. 

The last three songs are actually from a different set at the same festival. There was a special set with multiple artists that was a tribute to Arlo Guthrie's famous father, Woody Guthrie. Arlo played a few songs in that, so I put them at the end of his set. Two of them, "The Oklahoma Hills" and "Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues," were covers of Woody Guthrie songs. But the last one, "The Motorcycle Song," was an Arlo Guthrie original.

Note that the recordings of this festival were often plagued by the sound of wind blowing against the microphone. For some reason, this didn't seem to affect the music or singing much at all. However, it often was quite noticeable during the cheering after songs, and the banter between songs. It wasn't a problem with the first album I posted, but it affected some of the songs here. But happily, I recently got the audio editing program Izotope 10, and that has a "de-wind" feature that works very well. I'm not going to mark all the songs I edited, because there were many. But note that this version sounds better than others you might find on the Internet because the windy noises have been removed. (If any remain, please let me know and I'll try to fix them.)

This album is 48 minutes long.

013 talk by Jean Ritchie (Arlo Guthrie)
014 Swimmy Swim (Arlo Guthrie)
015 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
016 The Pause of Mr. Claus (Arlo Guthrie)
017 Meditation [Wave Upon Wave] (Arlo Guthrie)
018 The Oklahoma Hills (Arlo Guthrie)
019 Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues (Arlo Guthrie)
020 The Motorcycle Song (Arlo Guthrie)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17205366/VA-NEWPRTFLKFESTIVL196802ArloGthrie.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RGMKhgyR

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. However, it was in black and white. I used the program Palette to colorize it, then did some touch ups with Photoshop.

UPDATE: On October 5, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 1 - Taj Mahal & Elizabeth Cotten

I write this in December 2023. For the past few months, I've put a special effort into posting big rock festivals, since it seems to me those often get overlooked. I just reorganized the "labels" sidebar a bit: if you look under "Various Artists," you'll see eight such festivals I've posted already. Here's the ninth. In my opinion, it's an extra special one, because many of the artists here have few if any publicly available live recordings to their names.

The festival I'm posting this time is the "Newport Folk Festival 1968." At the time, there was a confusing number of Newport festivals. There was a yearly Newport Folk Festival and Newport Jazz Festival. Both were held in Newport, Rhode Island, and both had been happening since the 1950s. But there also was a Newport Pop Festival that only took place in 1968 and 1969. These were held in Southern California, and had no connection with the more established Newport festivals on the East Coast, except maybe they were taking advantage of the name.

Anyway, as you can imagine, the "Newport Folk Festival" tried to focus on folk music. But that was increasingly difficult in 1968, because the folk music movement had largely died out around 1965 and morphed into folk rock. Folk music would make a comeback in the early 1970s with the singer-songwriter movement, but that hadn't happened yet. So in 1968, the organizers of this festival tried to broaden their appeal by including some musical artists who weren't really folk music at all, such as B. B. King, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, and Janis Joplin's band, Big Brother and the Holding Company. As a result, it was the most popular Newport festival yet, with about 17,000 people attending over several days. However, the crowd was an uneasy mix of folk purists wanting to see the more traditional acts, and rock fans especially there to see Janis Joplin. 

If you want to know more about the festival as a whole, I highly suggest this Rolling Stone Magazine article, which was written shortly after the festival ended:

The Newport Folk Festival: 1968 (rollingstone.com)

The conflict I speak of was even mentioned in the article's subtitle: "Torn Between Two Worlds."

I don't know how or why, but for some reason it seems the vast majority of this festival was professionally recorded, and has been available in bootleg form for many years. (As far as I can tell, only Joan Baez's set has been officially released, along with a few other songs that have gone on various artists compilations.) It seems previous festivals were recorded too, but all that's in the public domain are the little bits that have made into onto official albums. But while one can find these more extensive 1968 performances here and there if you dig deep, I've never seen them put together in a coherent way until now.

I've taken what I consider the best and most popular sets and made ten albums out of them. (The artists I've leaving out are obscure folk acts you've probably never heard of them, many of them doing gospel music.) Some of the sets were rather short, so in several cases I'm putting two sets onto one album.

This is one such album featuring sets from two musical acts. The first one, Taj Mahal, is a well known blues musician today. But at the time of this concert, his solo career was just getting started. (He'd been in the band the Rising Sons for a couple of years prior to this.) At the time of this concert, he'd only released one solo album, simply called "Taj Mahal," earlier in the year. Some of the acts actually played more than one set at the festival, though generally only one set was recorded. However, Taj Mahal is a rare case where two sets were recorded, so I'll present his set set later, on a different album, since it happened a few days later.

One of his songs, "EZ Rider" got cut off after only about a minute. It so happens that he also played this song in his other set later in the festival. So I used that version to fill in the missing portion. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title. That was the last song from his set that we have here, so it's fairly likely there was more to his set that didn't get recorded.

Elizabeth Cotten is an extremely unlikely musical figure. Here's her Wikipedia entry:

Elizabeth Cotten - Wikipedia

She played guitar when she was a teenager, and that's when she wrote her most famous song, "Freight Train." But poverty forced her to begin working as a maid at the age of nine. Eventually, she got married and had children, and gave up playing music altogether. It was only in her sixties that her musical talent was rediscovered, due to the fact that she was working as a housekeeper for the family of famous folk singer Pete Seeger. She finally put out some records, and did some touring. She won a Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording in 1984, and died in 1987 when she was ninety-four years old.

Here's what her Wikipedia entry has to say: "She was a self-taught left-handed guitarist who played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down. This position meant that she would play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as 'Cotten picking.' NPR stated 'her influence has reverberated through the generations, permeating every genre of music.'"

So Cotten is very musically influential, and two of her songs, "Freight Train" and "Shake Sugaree," have been covered by dozens of famous musicians. However, she didn't record or tour that much. Two official live albums have been released, but I believe this is the only bootleg recording of her. I have to warn you that she lived most of her life up to this point as a maid, not a musician, and her vocals here were sometimes off key. The last song though is sung by her granddaughter Brenda Evans, who has a more conventionally trained voice.

This album is 41 minutes long. The Taj Mahal set is 25 minutes long, and the Elizabeth Cotten one is 16 minutes long.

By the way, note that the songs are numbered 001, 002, 003 and so on instead of 01, 02, 03, etc... That's because there are over 100 songs from this festival as a whole, and the numbering of each subsequent album in this series continues where the last one left off.

001 Dark Dusty Road [Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad] (Taj Mahal)
002 The Cuckoo (Taj Mahal)
003 Checkin' Up on My Baby (Taj Mahal)
004 talk (Taj Mahal)
005 She Caught the Katy [And Left Me a Mule to Ride] (Taj Mahal)
006 talk (Taj Mahal)
007 EZ Rider [Edit] (Taj Mahal)
008 Do Lord Remember Me (Elizabeth Cotten)
009 Bye and Bye (Elizabeth Cotten)
010 Freight Train (Elizabeth Cotten)
011 talk (Elizabeth Cotten)
012 Shake Sugaree (Elizabeth Cotten & Brenda Evans)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16038899/NewprtFlkFestivl_1968_01TajMahl_ElizabthCottn.zip.html

The two photos on the cover come from this exact concert. I don't know if the Taj Mahal photo is from this set or the other one he did later in the festival, but I'm guessing it's from this one due to it taking place in the day time. (I think his other set was at night, though I'm not entirely sure.)

Tracy Chapman - Austin City Limits, Zilker Metropolitan Park, Austin, TX, 8-3-2003

Tracy Chapman was massively popular in the late 1980s and through much of the 1990s. Her debut album "Tracy Chapman" sold about 20 million copies worldwide, and her 1995 album "New Beginning" sold five million copies in the US alone. But strangely, I've found it very difficult to find any concert recordings at a soundboard level after about 1991. That's not helped by the fact that she's never released a live album. I've previously posted a 2008 concert by her, but that was just a very good audience bootleg. Finally, I've found a worthy later live recording, and here it is.

The reason this sounds so good is because it's from the TV show "Austin City Limits." It seems to me Chapman didn't do a lot of the usual promotional appearances most music stars do. She wasn't that interested in fame, and in fact he music career pretty much stopped altogether after about 2008, with no more album releases or tours from then until now (as I write this in late 2023). But I came across an article about this concert that said the producer of "Austin City Limits" was a big fan of Chapman's music, and pushed hard to get her on the show.

This concert remains unreleased, but the sound quality is excellent. Unfortunately though, it looks like it was edited down to fit in a one hour time slot. There also is no banter, except for one extended discussion she had about seeing seeing bats in Austin, of all things.

I'm not a fan of a lot of Chapman's studio albums after the first couple. I often don't like the production, which seemed to be moving in the dreaded "adult contemporary" direction, and a few weak songs would drag down the good ones. But in this concert she played a mix of newer (at the time) songs with the well known ones mostly from her debut album, and I think all the songs here are really good. This was why I was keen to hear an excellent sounding concert from her later years, to put her later songs in a better way. 

By the way, the full video of this concert is available on YouTube if you want to watch it and not just hear it. And if you have other concerts from her of this caliber from after 1911, please let me know so I can share them.

This album is 52 minutes long.

01 Say Hallelujah (Tracy Chapman)
02 For My Lover (Tracy Chapman)
03 Smoke and Ashes (Tracy Chapman)
04 Baby Can I Hold You (Tracy Chapman)
05 Fast Car (Tracy Chapman)
06 Another Sun (Tracy Chapman)
07 talk (Tracy Chapman)
08 Telling Stories (Tracy Chapman)
09 You're the One (Tracy Chapman)
10 Talkin' 'bout a Revolution (Tracy Chapman)
11 Give Me One Reason (Tracy Chapman)
12 I Am Yours (Tracy Chapman)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Q3PMBnkU

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/TMnqIVRkxz1w4B1/file

The cover is a screenshot I took of a YouTube video of this exact concert. In January 2025, I sharpened it a bit with the Krea AI program.

Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne - Joan Osborne Sings Grateful Dead Songs, Volume 3 (2006)

I've previously posted two albums of Joan Osborne singing Grateful Dead songs with Phil Lesh and Friends in 2006. Here's a third album. There's one more to come.

As I said with the previous volumes, there's a lot of charm in hearing how Jerry Garcia and Bobby Weir of the Grateful Dead originally sung these songs. But hearing Osborne sing them is a different thing altogether. Not only does she have a remarkable voice, but it's interesting hear a woman sing these songs. Plus, you still got very Dead-like jamming thanks to Dead bassist Phil Lesh and the other musicians.

All the songs here have soundboard level quality, due to the fact that all the concerts by this band from 2006 were officially released at one point. I've put them in chronological order.

This time, all the songs are Grateful Dead originals, except for "I Know You Rider" and "Turn on Your Lovelight." But the Dead played those two zillions of times. And "Magnolia Mountain" was originally by Ryan Adams, and was written after the Dead had already broken up.

This album is an hour and 17 minutes long.

01 I Know You Rider (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
02 Turn on Your Lovelight (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
03 High Time (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
04 Magnolia Mountain (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
05 Althea (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
06 Candyman (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
07 China Doll (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
08 Stella Blue (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16029883/JoanO_2006a_JoanOsbrneSngsGrtefulDdSngsVolum3_atse.zip.html

The cover is a photo of Osborne from the Bonnaroo Festival in 2006.

Depeche Mode - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 11-2-1984

Here's the second Depeche Mode BBC sessions album. Once again, it's a full concert. I plan on posting at least one more album in this series.

This BBC concert took place only one year after the last one I posted. But in the meantime the band released the album "Some Great Reward," which featured some hits like "People Are People," "Master and Servant," "Blasphemous Rumours," and "Somebody," raising the profile of the band. So the set list has a lot of differences.

Many versions of this concert are missing songs. But I found the most comprehensive version at a Depeche Mode wiki site. Unfortunately, the final encore of "Shout" and "Just Can't Get Enough" is still missing, since those were never broadcast in any version of this concert.

This unreleased concert has excellent sound quality. But it's one of those cases where what happened on stage was recorded so well that there's very little of the crowd. There's also very little banter. At times, it almost sounds like the band was practicing their concert set list in a studio setting. That has pluses and minuses, but I decided to keep it as it is instead of patching in a bunch of audience applause.

This album is an hour and 20 minutes long.

01 Something to Do (Depeche Mode)
02 Two Minute Warning (Depeche Mode)
03 Puppets (Depeche Mode)
04 If You Want (Depeche Mode)
05 People Are People (Depeche Mode)
06 Leave in Silence (Depeche Mode)
07 New Life (Depeche Mode)
08 Shame (Depeche Mode)
09 Somebody (Depeche Mode)
10 Ice Machine (Depeche Mode)
11 Lie to Me (Depeche Mode)
12 Blasphemous Rumours (Depeche Mode)
13 Told You So (Depeche Mode)
14 Master and Servant (Depeche Mode)
15 Photographic (Depeche Mode)
16 Everything Counts (Depeche Mode)
17 talk (Depeche Mode)
18 See You (Depeche Mode)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16029799/DepcheMde_1984_BBSessonsVolum2InConcrtHmmersmthOdeonLondnBrtain__11-2-1984_atse.zip.html 

The cover photo is from a concert in Schleiden, Germany, in April 16, 1984.

Beck - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: BBC 4 Sessions, Union Chapel, London, Britain, 4-28-2003

Here were are with Beck performing for the BBC again. This is a particularly nice concert due to the excellent sound quality and varied set list.

At the time of this concert, Beck was still promoting "Sea Change," the album he'd released late in 2002. It was a critically acclaimed album, and it was a return to his mellow, acoustic-based style. So this album certainly has a lot of acoustic music on it, especially performances of songs from "Sea Change." But he also played with a full band on many songs, and he wasn't afraid to show off his funky side as well. He even did a cover of "Hot in Herre," which was a Number One hit in the US by the rapper Nelly the year before.

This unreleased concert was broadcast on the BBC TV show "BBC 4 Sessions." So you can watch the entire thing on YouTube.

This album is 58 minutes long. Once again, I strongly suspect it was edited down by the BBC to fit into an hour-long time slot.

01 talk (Beck)
02 The Golden Age (Beck)
03 talk (Beck)
04 It's All in Your Mind (Beck)
05 talk (Beck)
06 Guess I'm Doing Fine (Beck)
07 talk (Beck)
08 Lonesome Tears (Beck)
09 Nicotine and Gravy - Where It's At (Beck)
10 Lost Cause (Beck)
11 Ship in a Bottle (Beck)
12 talk (Beck)
13 14 Rivers, 14 Floods - Beautiful Way (Beck)
14 Loser (Beck)
15 Nobody's Fault but My Own (Beck)
16 Lord Only Knows (Beck)
17 Hot in Herre (Beck)
18 One Foot in the Grave (Beck)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16029809/BeckH_2003b_BBSessonsVolum4BB4SessonsUnionChaplLondnBitain__4-28-2003_atse.zip.html

The cover is a screenshot I took from the YouTube video of this exact concert.

Mark Knopfler & the Notting Hillbillies - BBC Sessions (1988-1990)

I previously posted a live album of Mark Knopfler and the Notting Hillbillies. Between that and this BBC sessions album, you should get a good sense of what the band was all about. I prefer both to the band's lone studio album, in 1990, "Missing... and Presumed Having a Good Time," which was a little overproduced and lacked many lead vocals by Knopfler.

I posted the live album before this one because I wanted to start out strongly and that album has better sound quality overall than this one. That's not to say this one has bad sound quality, but it's taken from five different radio sessions, and some sound better than others. They appear chronologically, and it just so happens that the first one sounds the worst and the last two sound the best. So if you're disappointed with the sound quality, keep at it, it gets better.

I explained about the Notting Hillbillies when I posted the live album. Suffice to say that it was a true band, not just Mark Knopfler and a backing band. For instance, he shared lead vocal duties, and only sings lead on about a third of the songs here. But at the same time, Knopler was the clear star, due to his fame from his previous band Dire Straits, and the main people listen to this is to hear his singing and lead guitar work. Don't worry, while he doesn't sing all the time, his guitar is all over this.

Everything here is officially unreleased. The first two songs actually come from a 1988 BBC session, which I think is before the band officially became the Notting Hillbillies, but it was the same group of musicians. The rest are from 1990. Most everything else is from various BBC TV or radio sessions, except for the last five songs. Those come from a concert broadcast on a different British radio station, Radio Clyde. That features highlights from a concert the band did in Glasgow, Scotland, in April 1990. 

"Tennessee Blues" has "[Edit]" in the title because there was a spot near the end of the song where a few seconds of music were missing. Luckily it was during a repetition of the chorus, so I patched it up with a part of a chorus from earlier in the song.

This album is 52 minutes long.

01 Weapon of Prayer (Notting Hillbillies)
02 Please Baby (Notting Hillbillies)
03 Feel like Going Home (Notting Hillbillies)
04 That's Where I Belong (Notting Hillbillies)
05 Blues Stay Away from Me (Notting Hillbillies)
06 When It Comes to You (Notting Hillbillies)
07 Tennessee Blues [Edit] (Notting Hillbillies)
08 The Next Time I'm in Town (Notting Hillbillies)
09 Bewildered (Notting Hillbillies)
10 Setting Me Up (Notting Hillbillies)
11 Down the Road Apiece (Notting Hillbillies)
12 Let's Have Some Fun Tonight (Notting Hillbillies)
13 One Way Gal (Notting Hillbillies)
14 talk (Notting Hillbillies)
15 Running On Down This Road (Notting Hillbillies)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16026070/NottngHillbllies_1988-1990_BBSessons_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is the same as the one featured on the cover of the band's only studio album. However, that version was in black and white, and only filled up the middle section of the cover. I was lucky to find a color version of the same photo.

Marshall Crenshaw - The Human Jukebox, Volume 4: 1992-1994

Here's another album containing cover versions that Marshall Crenshaw didn't put on his studio albums. He's so prolific with covers in concert, even though his albums are usually all originals, that I have five more volumes of these. (Thus his nickname, "The Human Jukebox.")

The first thing I have to say is that anyone who does a cover of the great Who obscurity "Odorono" is A-OK in my book. :) That's a good sign right there of the depth of Crenshaw's musical knowledge, which shows up again with the variety of cover songs he does here. 

Just like the last few songs on the previous volume, the first five songs here are from a radio show where radio listeners called in and requested cover songs. Crenshaw and others in the ad-hoc band then tried their best to play them, if they could remember them. So there are a bit rough. That's especially noticable with "And I Love Her," which gets off to a rocky start where Crenshaw sometimes has to call out the chord changes. But in my opinion that's all the more impressive, that he and the band was winging it.

All but the last three are officially unreleased. Of the last three, " I'd Do It Over Again" is from an Arthur Alexander tribute album, and "Silver Wings" is from a Merle Haggard tribute album. "Knowing Me, Knowing You" is from a Crenshaw live album, "Live: My Truck Is My Home." But all the rest are from soundboard bootlegs or radio shows, and sound excellent.

This album is 50 minutes long.

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

01 Don't Let Me Down - Beatles
02 And I Love Her - Beatles
03 Sunshine Superman - Donovan
04 I Fought the Law - Bobby Fuller Four
05 Rock Around the Clock - Bill Haley & His Comets
06 Big River - Johnny Cash
07 [Get Your Kicks On] Route 66 - Bobby Troup
08 Don't Fear the Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
09 Odorono - Who
10 I'm Movin' On - Hank Snow
11 The Lucky One - Freedy Johnston
12 Hitch Hike - Marvin Gaye
13 Rocket 88 - Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats
14 Pretty Flamingo - Manfred Mann
15 I'd Do It Over Again - Arthur Alexander
16 Knowing Me, Knowing You - ABBA
17 Silver Wings - Merle Haggard

And here's the usual song list:

01 Don't Let Me Down (Marshall Crenshaw)
02 And I Love Her (Marshall Crenshaw)
03 Sunshine Superman (Marshall Crenshaw)
04 I Fought the Law (Marshall Crenshaw)
05 Rock Around the Clock (Marshall Crenshaw)
06 Big River (Marshall Crenshaw)
07 [Get Your Kicks On] Route 66 (Marshall Crenshaw)
08 Don't Fear the Reaper (Marshall Crenshaw)
09 Odorono (Marshall Crenshaw)
10 I'm Movin' On (Marshall Crenshaw)
11 The Lucky One (Marshall Crenshaw)
12 Hitch Hike (Marshall Crenshaw)
13 Rocket 88 (Marshall Crenshaw)
14 Pretty Flamingo (Marshall Crenshaw)
15 I'd Do It Over Again (Marshall Crenshaw)
16 Knowing Me, Knowing You (Marshall Crenshaw)
17 Silver Wings (Marshall Crenshaw)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16025994/MarshallC_1992-1994_ThHumnJkeboxVolum4_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken in New York City in October 1994.

David Gilmour - On TV and Radio, Volume 3: 2006-2017

Here's the third and final album of David Gilmour "on TV and radio." As I explained with the previous two volumes, this started out as a BBC sessions series, but I found a bunch of interesting recordings from non-BBC TV and radio shows, so I expanded the scope. That said, this volume does happen to be particularly BBC heavy, with all but four of the tracks from BBC TV or radio shows.

By chance, the four tracks not from the BBC are the ones that are officially released. "Dark Globe," a song written by Pink Floyd's first leader, Syd Barrett, was recorded at an unknown location in 2006 and included on the "Remember That Night" DVD. "Astronomy Domine" and "Echoes" were both done in the studio with former Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright, and were also included as bonus tracks on the "Remember That Night" DVD. "Wots... Uh the Deal," a great song from the 1972 Pink Floyd album "Obscured by Clouds," was played at the Gdansk concert that was the subject of the "Live at the Gdansk" DVD. However, I've included it here because it was merely included as an iTunes only bonus track.

That leaves nine unreleased songs. The first three tracks are from a 2006 appearance on the "Later... with Jools Holland" TV show.  Tracks 8 and 9 are from another appearance on that same show two years later. Note that "Remember a Day" was written and originally sung by Richard Wright, and was done as a tribute, since he'd died in the days before the TV show appearance. Track 10 is from a different BBC appearance in 2008. Then tracks 11 and 12 are from yet another appearance on "Later... with Jools Holland," this time in 2015. Finally, the last song was done in the studio for the TV show "Front Row."

This album is an hour and four minutes long.

01 Take a Breath (David Gilmour)
02 On an Island (David Gilmour)
03 Arnold Layne (David Gilmour)
04 Dark Globe (David Gilmour)
05 Wot's... Uh the Deal (David Gilmour)
06 Astronomy Domine (David Gilmour with Richard Wright)
07 Echoes (David Gilmour with Richard Wright)
08 Remember a Day (David Gilmour)
09 The Blue (David Gilmour)
10 Here I Go (David Gilmour)
11 Rattle That Lock (David Gilmour)
12 Today (David Gilmour)
13 A Boat Lies Waiting (David Gilmour)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16030500/DavdGlmour_2006-2017_OnTVndRdioVolum3_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2006.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Mardi Gras - Alternate Version (1972-1973)

Today, I got a comment that four bonus tracks I'd put on the 1976 unreleased John Fogerty album "Hoodoo" were missed. I checked, and this is true. When I was redoing all the links a few months ago, those were gone from that album because I'd moved them in my music collection. I could have just put them back, but I thought about it, and figured out something better to do with them.

Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) had a great run of albums in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but they ended on a bum note with the 1972 album "Mardi Gras." They broke up shortly after that album was released, and it's not hard to understand why if you listen to the album. At the time, Rolling Stone Magazine even called it the worst album ever released by a major rock act. I think I've made a much better alternate version. 

But before I get to that, let me explain why the officially released version is considered so bad. John Fogerty was the clear leader of CCR, writing all the songs, singing them, and producing them. He even did things like the backing vocals on the recordings. But as the band's fame grew, the other three band members - rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty (John's brother), bassist Stu Cook, and drummer Doug Clifford - chafed under John Fogerty's musical domination of the band.

In late 1970, the other band members told John Fogerty they wanted more creative involvement. John said no. His brother Tom then left the band in early 1971 for a solo career (which wasn't that successful). Then what happened next is disputed. John claims the remaining two band members, Cook and Clifford, demanded they be given more creative control, and he was forced to agree or break up the band. However, Cook and Clifford claim John demanded that they each write and sing an equal portion of songs on the next album.

Personally, although John was known to be controlling and stubborn, I believe his side of the story. The evidence is right there in the lyrics of the "Mardi Gras" song "Take It like a Friend," written by Cook:

If maybe you'd move over, gave someone else a chance to try their luck
Instead, you run up closer, tryin' to grab a page before they close the book

Clearly, the whole song, and that bit in particular, is about Cook (and Clifford) wanting more creative involvement in the band, with John resisting and being controlling.

But in any case, when "Mardi Gras" came out, the album was basically divided into songs written and sung by Fogerty, Cook, and Clifford. Fogerty's songs were of a high standard, as usual, including two hit singles, while Cook's and Clifford's were... well... not so good. Neither of them were blessed with great singing voices, and their songs were generally subpar. 

That said, while John Fogerty was put in a tough spot of giving them more creative control or breaking up the band, he was kind of an ass to put the album out like that and watch it fall on its face. But tensions were high, and everyone involved made mistakes. In retrospect, it probably would have been better for everyone involved if John had just let the band break up before recording "Mardi Gras." As it was, the break up was so painful that John never truly reconciled with Cook, Clifford, or even his brother Tom.

From what I understand, the real villain in the story is Saul Zaentz, the owner of their record company. Before getting famous, CCR had signed a very bad record deal, forcing the band to release albums quickly (the released three in 1969 alone!) while getting only a small percentage of royalties. By 1971, CCR wanted to renegotiate their contract in light of the band's massive success. But Zaentz played the game of divide and conquer, flattering Cook and Clifford that they could be solo stars, and promising to give them solo record deals. In that way, Zaentz stopped the band from presenting a united front in their financial battle against him. But in so doing, he killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, by helping to break the band up entirely. (Needless to say, the promised solo album deals never happened.)

Anyway, let me get to what's on this alternate album. The official "Mardi Gras" album is short, only 28 minutes long. I cut it down even more by getting rid of nearly all the songs written and/or sung by Cook or Clifford: "Take It like a Friend," "Need Someone to Hold," "Tearin' Up the Country," "Sail Away," and "Door to Door." The only one I kept is "What Are You Gonna Do," written and sung by Clifford, who at least was a better singer than Cook.

As for the Fogerty songs, "Someday Never Comes" and "Sweet Hitch-Hiker" were hit singles, so those were no-brainers to keep. "Hello Mary Lou" is a serviceable cover of a Gene Pitney song sung by Fogerty, so that was good enough to keep. "Lookin' for a Reason" is a rather weak and generic Fogerty song, but it's still a Fogerty song, so I kept it. Besides, the lyrics are interesting in that they're his take on the slow collapse of the band.

If that was the entire album, it would only be 15 minutes long, which would be way too short. But remember those four bonus tracks I mentioned at the beginning of this write-up? In 1973, Fogerty released the album "The Blue Ridge Rangers." It consisted entirely of covers of country songs, and all the instruments and vocals were done by Fogerty alone. That's a separate thing entirely, so I didn't include any songs from that. 

However, still in 1973, Fogerty released two stand-alone singles containing original songs on the A- and B-sides. Those are the four bonus tracks I'd put on "Hoodoo" that I'm moving here. True, they're not CCR, but they're a better fit chronologically on a 1972 album than a 1976 album. Besides, they sound exactly like CCR songs. They're also really good songs, even though both singles stiffed. I'm sure they would have done much better if they'd been released under the CCR name.

But that's not all I included. Remember, John's brother Tom left CCR in 1971 to pursue a solo career. Unlike Cook and Clifford, he had singing talent and songwriting talent, although he struggled mightily to come up with enough good songs to fill entire albums. His first two albums, released in 1972, didn't have any stand out tracks, in my opinion. But I've included two from this third album, the songs "Joyful Resurrection" and "Mystic Isle Avalon," and one song from his fourth album, "What Did I Know." For all three of the songs, he was backed by Cook and Clifford, so one could argue that those were still CCR songs, just led by Tom instead of John. "Mystic Isle Avalon" even has some guitar parts by John. He recorded his parts separately from the others, but still, it was the one and only time after CCR broke up that all four original band members played on the same song.

For all three of those Tom songs, it's pretty easy to think they're CCR songs sung by John. Being brothers, they had very similar voices. (Tom died in 1990, which is why I use the past tense.) Plus, while lots of Tom's solo stuff was done in different styles, these three songs clearly were done in the general CCR style.

So there you have it. Admittedly, this album is pretty far removed from the official version of "Mardi Gras." But that album needed serious help. Also, this is a fitting place to put those four songs Fogerty only put out on singles. (By the way, to this day they still haven't been re-released as bonus tracks or anything like that, although Fogerty did perform one of them, "Comin' Down the Road," on a live album.)

This album is 36 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 Someday Never Comes (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
02 Lookin' for a Reason (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
03 What Are You Gonna Do (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
04 Hello Mary Lou (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
05 Sweet Hitch-Hiker (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
06 Joyful Resurrection (Tom Fogerty & Creedence Clearwater Revival)
07 Mystic Isle Avalon (Tom Fogerty & Creedence Clearwater Revival)
08 You Don't Owe Me (John Fogerty)
09 Back in the Hills (John Fogerty)
10 Comin' Down the Road (John Fogerty)
11 Ricochet [Instrumental] (John Fogerty)
12 What Did I Know (Tom Fogerty & Creedence Clearwater Revival)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16025208/CreedCR_1972_MrdiGrsAltrnatVrsion_atse.zip.html

"Mardi Gras" has such a bad reputation that merely looking at the official album cover gave me bad vibes. So I decided to make a new one using the same general style. I kept the circular shape of the band's name, and the font colors. "Mardi Gras" had been written in small letters on a tambourine in the original. I kept the lettering but enlarged the words greatly and made them black. Then I took a photo of the three remaining band members from late 1971 and put it in the center of the cover, over a picture of a girl holding the tambourine.

James - BBC In Concert, Brixton Academy, London, Britain, 12-9-1993

When it comes to the British band James, generally speaking, I only like them at about the "greatest hits" level. However, I make an exception for their 1993 album "Laid." I think a lot of people agree. If you look at their page at the crowd-sourced rateyourmusic.com, "Laid" gets the highest rating, as well as way more votes than their other albums. Perhaps it was the fact that they collaborated with producer Brian Eno for the first time that took their creativity to a higher level. But whatever the reason, I consider that a five-star album.

Given my opinion on that, I was very pleased to recently discover that James did a BBC concert in late 1993 to promote the "Laid" album. Since that fits into my big BBC project, it's a no-brainer that I post this unreleased concert here.

The sound quality is excellent. My only quibble is that there's no banter between songs whatsoever. Perhaps the BBC cut that out as part of their frequent habit of cutting concerts down to fit into an hour-long radio show, I don't know.

Actually, I had another kind of quibble, that some of the excellent songs from that album weren't included in the BBC broadcast. (Again, probably due to the BBC cutting things down.)  So I found another concert James did in France just two weeks earlier, which was broadcast on French radio at the time. Most of the songs played were the same, but three were different. So I've included those three at the end of this album.

This album contains ten of the 13 songs from "Laid." But the band has other very good songs, as the four non-Laid songs here show.

This album is an hour and eight minutes long. Just the BBC portion is 53 minutes.

01 Born of Frustration (James)
02 Sound (James)
03 Laid (James)
04 Knuckle Too Far (James)
05 Honest Joe (James)
06 Out to Get You (James)
07 Low Low Low (James)
08 Skindiving (James)
09 P. S. (James)
10 Lullaby (James)
11 Sometimes [Lester Piggott] (James)
12 Come Home (James)
13 Five-O [Edit] (James)
14 Say Something [Edit] (James)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16023995/Jmes_1993b_BBCInConcrtBrixtnAcadmyLondnBrtain__12-9-1993_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any really good pictures of the band in concert in 1993. So I used one that only shows the band's lead singer, Tim Booth. This is from the 1994 Woodstock concert.

The Beatles - Roxburgh Hall, Stowe School, Buckinghamshire, Britain, 4-4-1963

Here's something that's pretty amazing, if you're a Beatles fan. I'm writing this in December 2023. Back in September, there were some articles in the mainstream media about a recently discovered bootleg recording of a 1963 Beatles concert at the Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, Britain. Here's one such article. I suggest you read it to be familiar with what I'm talking about:

The Beatles Stowe School Concert Is Unlike Any Other Show in History (thedailybeast.com)

I'll explain more about the story behind this concert and how it got recorded in a bit. But first, I want to say that I tracked down that recording after reading about it, and I have to admit I was pretty disappointed, due to poor sound quality. Amongst many other problems, the vocals were so low that they often couldn't be heard at all. I tried my best to fix things with my limited ability using the artificial intelligence based audio editing programs that have come out in recent years, but the recording was too poor to be salvageable. I didn't even bother keeping a copy of the concert in my music collection, because it wasn't worth hearing for me.

Or so I thought. Enter Lord Reith. He's someone who has been editing and improving Beatles recordings for years. I don't know if he's a magician or what, but what he did with this Stowe School bootleg is nothing short of miraculous! There are still some problems, which I will get to in a bit, but he's completely transformed the sound quality, making it almost sound as good as some soundboard recordings. In particular, he did wonders to make the vocals audible. So, in my opinion, this has gone from not worth listening to more than once (if that) to being one of the most interesting and listenable live Beatles recordings, period. If you're a fan, and you can tolerate some sound quality issues, definitely give this a listen.

Now, let me explain a bit more about what this concert is and why it's so unique. Again, I highly recommend you read the above newspaper article, but in case you don't, here's a short summary. At the time of this concert, the Beatles were right on the cusp of being big stars in Britain, but they weren't quite there yet. They'd released their first single, "Love Me Do," in late 1962. It made the Top Twenty in Britain, which was a good start. Then, in January 1963, they released the single "Please Please Me." It reached Number One in most British charts. In late March 1963, they released their first album, also called "Please Please Me." That would go on to be a huge hit, staying in the Top Ten of the charts for over a year, which would set a record for the next fifty years. Then, only one week after this concert, the single "From Me to You" would be released, and that would be another Number One hit in Britain. 

So, mere weeks after this concert, Beatlemania hit Britain in a big way, just as it would hit the U.S. in early 1964. From that point on, pretty much all Beatles concerts would be short, a half an hour or less, and so filled with screams from overexcited girls that one couldn't really hear the music. If you're heard live Beatles recordings, then you know it's usually a pretty rough listening experience, due to all that screaming and cheering.

Previously, the Beatles had spent a couple of years in Hamburg, Germany, honing their music skills by playing in small clubs. There are some rough live recordings from that, and they're very interesting, but they consisted almost entirely of cover songs. 

This recording is unique, however, in part because the Stowe School is very unusual. In 1963, it was only for boys aged 13 to 18. As you can see from this photo, it was only for the children of the elite. It looks less like a high school and more like a palace! The Beatles were booked to perform there months before the concert date, when their fame was a lot less. But they upheld their agreement and played there in April 1963 anyway. Not only that, but they played for over an hour, instead of the mere half hour or less they were already doing for screaming fans in other shows. 

But what's really great is, because the audience considered entirely of boys, and well-behaved upper class boys, no less, there was no screaming. According to articles I read, most of the boys in the audience hadn't even heard of the Beatles yet, so they weren't swept up in any hysteria. The Beatles played virtually all the songs from the "Please Please Me" album, plus "From Me to You" and its B-side "Thank You Girl," despite the fact those last two songs still hadn't been released. Yet they also played a bunch of cover songs that they'd done in Hamburg. This is probably the last time most of those covers were played by them in concert, as they switched to doing very short concerts consisting entirely of their best known songs. So this is the one and only concert recording with a mix of the "old" Beatles of Hamburg cover versions and the "new" Beatles with their remarkable original songs. How lucky we are that one of the boys in the audience snuck in a tape recorder and recorded it.

So that's the good news. The bad news is, even after Lord Reith's miraculous transformation of the recording, there still are sound quality issues. The biggest problem is the banter between songs. There was a lot banter, between almost all the songs. Unfortunately, the recording of those bits were very quiet, way more quiet than the music. So I suspect there just wasn't much there on the recording for Lord Reith to work with. I took his version, with the banter way down low, and boosted the volume of those bits so the banter can be clearly heard. But unfortunately, all that means in that quiet jibber jabber is now louder jibber jabber. I've included a couple of extra text files. One of them is a list of all the changes Lord Reith made to make this listenable. The other is a transcript of what he and other die-hard Beatles fans have managed to figure out from the banter. If you read that as you listen, you can catch most of it. But otherwise, the talking is pretty hard to understand, other than the occasional phrase.

Due to this seemingly unfixable problem, I'm posting two versions of this album. One contains the banter and the songs, and the other one contains just the songs. I much, much prefer the music only version. The banter is interesting to hear once or twice, but beyond that, it drags down the overall recording. So maybe you'll want to download both, and listen to one version and then the other.

There's one other big problem. The tape in the tape recorder only lasted for about sixty minutes. The recorder was up at the stage and the boy who recorded it was sitting in the audience, so when the tape ran out, there was no way for him to flip it over and keep recording. Thus, the end of a second version of "I Saw Her Standing There" was cut off, plus all of the last two songs, "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Long Tall Sally." Most of the second version of  "I Saw Her Standing There" survived, and luckily it happened to be the only song played twice. So I patched in the ending from the first version earlier in the show. But the last two songs are lost.

And there's one more lost song. Right before that second version of "I Saw Her Standing There," the Beatles played "Money (That's What I Want)." Unfortunately, there's only about twenty seconds of this on the recording, and then it gets replaced by the hit version of "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen! Probably what happened was that the boy who recorded it accidentally recorded that song off the radio over the Beatles concert. I removed the snippet of "Money" and the little bit of banter before it, because it's frustrating to get only such a short part of that. 

Furthermore, note that even after all of Lord Reith's edits, there were still some problems with the vocals. I used UVR5 to boost all the vocals a bit. I think that helped to make the singing easier to hear. But some songs are better than others. For "Matchbox" in particular, only bits and pieces of the lead vocals can be heard. I figure that's because that song was sung by Ringo Starr, the drummer, and maybe he was sitting back and too busy with drumming to keep his mouth near the microphone all the time. (That reminds me: there are no lead vocals from George Harrison because he was recovering from a cold.)

If you want to know even more about this remarkable concert, I recommend this link:

The Beatles concert at Roxburgh Hall, Stowe School in Buckingham on Apr 4, 1963 (the-paulmccartney-project.com)

It includes lots of great photos and stories. You can learn the whole story of how this bootleg came to be recorded and then rediscovered decades later. It's really interesting stuff, if you're a Beatles fan. That also includes a transcript of the banter between songs.

Here's the track list to the version that includes the banter. This version is 58 minutes long.

01 talk (Beatles)
02 I Saw Her Standing There (Beatles)
03 Too Much Monkey Business (Beatles)
04 talk (Beatles)
05 Love Me Do (Beatles)
06 talk (Beatles)
07 Some Other Guy (Beatles)
08 talk (Beatles)
09 Misery (Beatles)
10 talk (Beatles)
11 I Just Don't Understand (Beatles)
12 talk (Beatles)
13 A Shot of Rhythm and Blues (Beatles)
14 talk (Beatles)
15 Boys (Beatles)
16 talk (Beatles)
17 Matchbox (Beatles)
18 talk (Beatles)
19 From Me to You (Beatles)
20 talk (Beatles)
21 Thank You Girl (Beatles)
22 talk (Beatles)
23 Memphis, Tennessee (Beatles)
24 talk (Beatles)
25 A Taste of Honey (Beatles)
26 talk (Beatles)
27 Twist and Shout (Beatles)
28 talk (Beatles)
29 Anna [Go to Him] (Beatles)
30 talk (Beatles)
31 Please Please Me (Beatles)
32 talk (Beatles)
33 The Hippy Hippy Shake (Beatles)
34 talk (Beatles)
35 I'm Talking about You (Beatles)
36 talk (Beatles)
37 Ask Me Why (Beatles)
38 talk (Beatles)
39 Till There Was You (Beatles)
40 talk (Beatles)
41 I Saw Her Standing There [Edit] (Beatles)

And here's the link to the version with the banter:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RqK9Aoq6

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/ZJ2vjwIBlYO5yRK/file 

Here's the track list for the version with only the music. This version is 50 minutes long, eight minutes shorter than the other version.

01 I Saw Her Standing There (Beatles)
02 Too Much Monkey Business (Beatles)
03 Love Me Do (Beatles)
04 Some Other Guy (Beatles)
05 Misery (Beatles)
06 I Just Don't Understand (Beatles)
07 A Shot of Rhythm and Blues (Beatles)
08 Boys (Beatles)
09 Matchbox (Beatles)
10 From Me to You (Beatles)
11 Thank You Girl (Beatles)
12 Memphis, Tennessee (Beatles)
13 A Taste of Honey (Beatles)
14 Twist and Shout (Beatles)
15 Anna [Go to Him] (Beatles)
16 Please Please Me (Beatles)
17 The Hippy Hippy Shake (Beatles)
18 I'm Talking about You (Beatles)
19 Ask Me Why (Beatles)
20 Till There Was You (Beatles)
21 I Saw Her Standing There [Edit] (Beatles)

Here's the link to the version with no banter, and only songs. 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jQXFfpAb

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/02ggG53jP4MyIFd/file

Again, especially if you're not a die-hard fan, I recommend just getting the music only version.

For the cover photo, I used one of the photos from this exact concert and colorized it, using the Palette program. You can see a larger and uncropped version of the original black and white photo in one of the above article links.