Elvis Costello - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1977-1980

British singer-songwriter Elvis Costello has performed for the BBC many times over his long music career, and nearly all of it is unreleased. I have long wanted to start posting his BBC albums, but there was a problem: many of his early BBC sessions sounded pretty bad. However, I did a little more digging recently, and I discovered that while my versions had poor sound, there were other versions out there that sounded much better. I've fixed this for nearly all of the songs that concerned me, and now I'm ready to post.

Costello burst onto the music scene in 1977 with his classic debut album "My Aim Is True." He followed that with three more classic albums in the next three years. That's the exact time frame for this album of BBC studio sessions. All the songs here are from BBC shows hosted by famous DJ John Peel. The first four are from a 1977 session. The next four are from an early 1978 session. Then there's four from a later 1978 session. The last four are from a 1980 session.

When I first put this album together, I included two songs that were from other TV or radio shows, but not the BBC. However, later on I decided to keep this strictly a BBC thing, so those two songs got the axe. But what the heck, I'm still including them here as bonus tracks. "Hoover Factory" is from a Capitol Radio studio session in 1977, and the acoustic version of "Watching the Detectives" is from a 1977 Swedish TV show.

01 [The Angels Wanna Wear My] Red Shoes (Elvis Costello)
02 Mystery Dance (Elvis Costello)
03 Blame It on Cain (Elvis Costello)
04 Less than Zero (Elvis Costello)
05 Pump It Up (Elvis Costello)
06 [I Don't Want to Go To] Chelsea (Elvis Costello)
07 You Belong to Me (Elvis Costello)
08 The Beat (Elvis Costello)
09 Radio, Radio (Elvis Costello)
10 Stranger in the House (Elvis Costello)
11 I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself (Elvis Costello)
12 Really Mystified (Elvis Costello)
13 Beaten to the Punch (Elvis Costello)
14 Possession (Elvis Costello)
15 B Movie (Elvis Costello)
16 High Fidelity (Elvis Costello)

Hoover Factory (Elvis Costello)
Watching the Detectives (Elvis Costello)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16527216/ELVSCSTLLO1977-1980BBSssonsVlum1_atse.zip.html

All I know about the cover photo is that it was taken in concert around April 1978.

Chris Isaak - Acoustic, Volume 2, KCRW Studios, Los Angeles, CA, 4-1994 & 6-9-1995

One reason I like Chris Isaak's music is that he's not afraid to perform in solo acoustic mode. Here is the second of three albums I've made collecting such acoustic performances.

This album consists of two unreleased radio show performances, both from the same radio station, KCRW, but a year apart from each other. The first six songs are from a 1994 show, and the other seven are from a 1995 show.

Luckily for my purposes, there was only one repeat between the two shows. That repeat happens to be his most famous song by far, "Wicked Game." I've included both versions, since it's such a great song.

This album is 31 minutes long.

01 Devil Woman (Chris Isaak)
02 La Tumba Sera el Final (Chris Isaak)
03 Solitary Man (Chris Isaak)
04 Beautiful Homes (Chris Isaak)
05 Wicked Game (Chris Isaak)
06 5-15 (Chris Isaak)
07 Somebody's Crying (Chris Isaak)
08 Graduation Day (Chris Isaak)
09 Forever Blue (Chris Isaak)
10 Blue Day, Black Nights (Chris Isaak)
11 Wicked Game (Chris Isaak)
12 Blue Darling (Chris Isaak)
13 Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing (Chris Isaak)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16520386/CHRSISAK1994-1995AcustcVlum2KCRStdosLsAnglesCA__4-1994___6-9-1995_atse.zip.html

All I know about the cover photo is that it was taken in Paris in 1995.

Genesis (including Peter Gabriel): Six of the Best Reunion, National Bowl, Milton Keynes, Britain, 10-2-1982

Peter Gabriel was the lead singer for the British band Genesis from their start in 1967 until 1975, when he left for a very successful solo career. The band's drummer, Phil Collins, took over as lead singer and the popularity of Genesis soared as they switched from a prog rock style to pop rock. After Gabriel left, he only united with his old Genesis bandmates for a single concert in 1982 - this one. Unfortunately, it wasn't professionally recorded or filmed, so all we're left of it is audience bootleg recordings. I've taken the best such recording and significantly improved the sound quality, using the advances in audio technology that have become available in recent years. So even if you have this already, you need to hear this version.

Before I discuss the sonic improvements, I want to explain how this singular concert happened. After Gabriel left Genesis, he remained on good terms with his former bandmates. For instance, Collins played drums on several songs on Gabriel's 1980 solo album. Collins was even Gabriel's best man in his wedding in 2000. Earlier in 1982, Gabriel had arranged a concert called WOMAD (World of Music, Art and Dance), which included performers from dozens of countries (in addition to headliners like Gabriel). It was one of the first efforts to popularize world music in Britain. Unfortunately, the concert was in a difficult to reach location and there was a train worker strike, plus probably many people weren't ready for world music yet. As a result, Gabriel faced huge debts from that one concert. Worse, he owed money to some nasty people who began giving him death threats.

Being a big rock star, he could have raised the money eventually, but he needed it urgently. So he called up his old Genesis bandmates with the idea to have a one-off Genesis reunion to pay off those debts. The concert happened as expected (right at the end of a Genesis tour), and he was able to pay the debts. Since then, he's stuck with the WOMAD idea, and it's gone on to have many concerts over the years promoting world music, until the present day. So the story has a happy ending. But although the musicians involved in this concert claim to have enjoyed it, there has never been another reunion concert or tour since. All the original members of Genesis have occasionally gotten together for interviews and/or photo ops, but that's it. That's probably a reflection of how complicated the music from early Genesis is. It's not like being able to jam to a simple Chuck Berry song. To do the prog rock songs right, one needs a lot of group practice. But at least there was this one reunion.

The band was billed as "Six of the Best" instead of "Genesis." The six mentioned in the name were: Peter Gabriel (lead vocals), Phil Collins (drums), Tony Banks (keyboards), Mike Rutherford (guitars), Daryl Stuermer (guitars), and Chester Thompson (drums). The last two weren't official members of Genesis, but they regularly joined the band for concert tours. Additionally, Steve Hackett was a guitarist for Genesis from 1971 to 1977. He was touring in South America at the time, and only arrived back in Britain the day before the concert. Because he missed most of the rehearsals, he only joined the band for the encores ("I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" and "The Knife").

The concert went fairly well, despite the fact that it was held outdoors and it rained heavily for over 24 hours straight, leaving the audience totally wet and muddy. Gabriel started the show by rising from a coffin carried to the stage by four pallbearers, a stunt which was a surprise to even the other musicians on stage. The concert happened to take place on Rutherford's birthday, so the crowd sang 'Happy Birthday' to him during the show. 

All the songs were from the years Gabriel sang the lead vocals with Genesis, with two exceptions: "Solsbury Hill" was a 1977 solo hit for Gabriel (and the lyrics actually deal with his feelings about leaving Genesis!) and "Turn It On Again" was a 1980 hit for Genesis without Gabriel. That was the only song in the concert with lead vocals only by Collins. Gabriel attempted to play bongos on "Turn It On Again," but he was foiled by the surprisingly tricky and changing time signatures, and basically gave up before the song ended. 

Now, let me discuss the audit edits I made to this concert. As I mentioned above, the best available recording is an audience bootleg - someone in the audience with a tape recorder. But these can vary drastically in sound quality depending on various factors, such as their position relative to the stage and the quality of the tape recorder. I wouldn't have attempted to improve this except for the fact that I thought the audience boot was an unusually good one. 

The main problem, in my opinion, was that there was the sound of audience cheering during the songs as well as at the ends. No doubt, because of the unique nature of this Genesis reunion, the crowd was especially loud and excited. Luckily, there's a fix for that sort of thing these days. I used the MVSEP audio editing program to split the songs into crowd noise and all other sounds. Then I cut out all the crowd noise I didn't want, while keeping the applause at the ends of songs as well as other times when it felt appropriate. I also kept the crowd noise during the banter between songs, but lowered it a lot so the talking could be better heard.

After I did that, I edited all the songs again. This time, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to isolate the vocals from the instruments. Then I generally boosted the vocals on all the songs, as well as the banter, relative to the instruments. I also listened along, and carefully removed most unwanted vocals, such as fans shouting "WOOHOO!" in the middle of songs.

These edits took a lot of time and effort, but I think they made a big impact. I would argue that this recording now could easily be mistaken for a soundboard bootleg instead. Of course, it could still be even better in a perfect world, but I've heard plenty of soundboards that sound worse than this one does now. So if you've been avoiding this concert due to sound quality issues, I suggest you give it a listen.

Some die-hard fans made an entire booklet to go along with this concert that looks professionally done. So I've included that in the download files. It contains interesting quotes from all the band members about the concert. Furthermore, in case I missed mentioning key details, check out this Wikipedia page just about this one concert:

Six of the Best - Wikipedia

This fan page also has lots of good info about the concert:

Six Of The Best - Genesis (genesis-band.com)

Here are a couple of good quotes about the concert from that link:

Mike Rutherford: "I regret it now, but I was keen not to record the show. I thought it would be a bit rough and ready and that it was better to be there and in the moment."

Gabriel: "I was frustrated because it was very sloppy. I was certainly not sharp enough. You can memorize stuff and work on your own until you're blue in the face, but actually you need to be sitting in with the band and doing some warm-up gigs. So it was frustrating, and yet it felt a warm occasion, there was a nice feeling up on stage. A lot of fans seemed to enjoy it, even though it was very loose."

This album is an hour and 58 minutes long.

01 talk by Jonathan King (Genesis)
02 Back in N.Y.C. (Genesis)
03 Dancing with the Moonlit Knight [Part 1] (Genesis)
04 The Carpet Crawlers (Genesis)
05 talk (Genesis)
06 Firth of Fifth (Genesis)
07 talk (Genesis)
08 The Musical Box (Genesis)
09 talk (Genesis)
10 Solsbury Hill (Genesis)
11 talk (Genesis)
12 Turn It On Again (Genesis)
13 talk (Genesis)
14 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (Genesis)
15 Fly on a Windshield (Genesis)
16 Broadway Melody of 1974 (Genesis)
17 In the Cage (Genesis)
18 talk (Genesis)
19 Supper's Ready (Genesis)
20 I Know What I Like [In Your Wardrobe] (Genesis)
21 talk (Genesis)
22 The Knife (Genesis)
23 talk (Genesis)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gcNUP

The cover photo is from this exact concert, during the final encore. From left to right: Mike Rutherford, Daryl Stuermer, Chester Thompson, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett, and Peter Gabriel. Tony Banks can't be seen, but I believe that's his red jacket showing one arm between Hackett and Gabriel. Also, Hacket's face was mostly hidden in this photo, so I used another photo from the same sequence and pasted in his head just enough to make it visible behind Collins' shoulder. The "Six of the Best" text at the top is from promotional material for the concert.

The Hoodoo Gurus - Ethos Mama Club, Gabicce Mare, Italy, 7-17-1987

I have long been a fan of the Australian band the Hoodoo Gurus, especially their 1980s material. (They're still going as I write this in 2024.) I've particularly wanted to post a live album from them. They've posted one live album, but only as part of a multi-disc set called "Bite the Bullet," and it's compiled from lots of different concerts. I usually prefer hearing a full, unedited concert. The problem was, every time I came across a concert bootleg by the band, the sound quality was lacking - decent, but not excellent. A couple of days ago, I finally came across a concert with the sound quality I was looking for. So here it is.

I don't know much about the sourcing for this bootleg, except there's a video on YouTube of this exact show which these exact songs (broken up into several smaller videos), so this probably is taken from that, although I found the audio files of it instead. According to setlist.fm, there actually were some more songs played that didn't make this recording: "Hell for Leather," "Dig It Up," "Death Defying," and "Leilani." That's a shame, but at least it has "I Want You Back." In my opinion, in a better world, that's a great song that would have been a worldwide smash hit.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 In the Wild (Hoodoo Gurus)
02 On My Street (Hoodoo Gurus)
03 Good Times (Hoodoo Gurus)
04 Come and See Me [I'm Your Man] (Hoodoo Gurus)
05 talk (Hoodoo Gurus)
06 In the Middle of the Land (Hoodoo Gurus)
07 I Want You Back (Hoodoo Gurus)
08 Mars Needs Guitars (Hoodoo Gurus)
09 I Was the One (Hoodoo Gurus)
10 What's My Scene (Hoodoo Gurus)
11 Bittersweet (Hoodoo Gurus)
12 Like Now - Wipeout (Hoodoo Gurus)
13 Teenage Head (Hoodoo Gurus)
14 I Was a Kamikaze Pilot (Hoodoo Gurus)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16517240/THODOGRUS1987EthsMmaClbGbcceMreItaly__7-17-1987_atse.zip.html

The cover shows the band's lead singer Dave Faulker at a concert in Munich, Germany, in June 1987. I got the font for the band name at the top from a concert poster.

Ronnie Lane - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1973-1976

I've posted a couple of Ronnie Lane stray tracks albums. Now, I'll start turning my attention to what music he performed for the BBC. He was in the Small Faces, and then the Faces. But his time in the spotlight for his solo career only lasted for a few years due to having multiple sclerosis. (He was diagnosed in 1977, but in retrospect he was showing signs since the early 1970s.) Despite that short time frame, I found enough for four BBC albums. This one consists of studio sessions. The other three are all live concerts.

All but one of the performances here are officially released, and all of those come from the BBC compilation album "You Never Can Tell." The one exception is the song "You Never Can Tell" (ironically enough), which is from an appearance on the BBC TV show The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1975. 

The first four songs are from a 1973 session. The next four are from a 1974 session. The last four are from a 1976 session. (As usual, check the mp3 tags for more details.) Most of the songs are originals either from his solo career or his years with the Faces, plus one song ("All or Nothing") that he did with the Small Faces. "Sweet Virginia" is originally by the Rolling Stones and "You Never Can Tell" is originally by Chuck Berry.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Ooh La La (Ronnie Lane)
02 Flags and Banners (Ronnie Lane)
03 How Come (Ronnie Lane)
04 Careless Love (Ronnie Lane)
05 Anniversary (Ronnie Lane)
06 Sweet Virginia (Ronnie Lane)
07 Lovely (Ronnie Lane)
08 You Never Can Tell (Ronnie Lane)
09 Don't Try and Change My Mind (Ronnie Lane)
10 One for the Road (Ronnie Lane)
11 Steppin' and Reelin' (Ronnie Lane)
12 All or Nothing (Ronnie Lane)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16516504/RONNILNE1973-1976BBSssonsVlum1_atse.zip.html

I don't know anything about the cover photo except that it dates to the year 1974. 

The Bangles - Ritz Theater, New York City, 9-28-1984

I posted an unreleased Bangles concert from 1986 just a couple of days ago. Yet here I am, posting another one, this time from 1984. The reason is that, when it comes to the Bangles, I like their earliest stuff the best. My favorite music of theirs of all is their 1982 E.P. and other songs released before their first album in 1984. The reason is because they were more raw and rocking early on, and gradually got slicker until they broke up in 1989, and I generally don't like slick.

So, after posting the 1986 concert, I got to thinking about listening to another concert by them from an earlier year. The problem was, I'd investigated that previously and decided that the sound quality for all known concert in 1985 or before were a little bit lacking. But then it occurred to me that with the advances in audio editing technology in recent years, maybe something could be done about that.

I picked the best sounding of the early concerts, which is this one. It's the best because it was professionally recorded and broadcast live on the radio. However, there still were issues. The biggest one was that there was a lot of crowd noise, even during the songs. But that's something that can be fixed these days. So I used the audio editing program MVSEP and removed the cheering and hollering during the songs, while keeping it between the songs. But I also lowered in some during the banter, because it was quite high there too. Next, I boosted the volume of the vocals relative to the instruments using the UVR5 audio editing program. So all the songs got adjusted twice.

The end result makes this sound significantly better than ever before, on part with the two 1986 Bangles concerts I've posted. The songs are dominated by songs from the band's 1984 album "All Over the Place," which is my favorite from them (although their 1986 album "Different Light" is a close second). But there are a few cover versions added that didn't make any of their albums at the time: "Where Were You When I Needed You," "I'm Not Talkin'," "Going Home," and "7 and 7 Is." Those especially show how rocking the band could get.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 talk (Bangles)
02 Silent Treatment (Bangles)
03 The Real World (Bangles)
04 talk (Bangles)
05 Restless (Bangles)
06 Mary Street (Bangles)
07 talk (Bangles)
08 Live (Bangles)
09 talk (Bangles)
10 All about You (Bangles)
11 James (Bangles)
12 talk (Bangles)
13 Where Were You When I Needed You (Bangles)
14 talk (Bangles)
15 I'm in Line (Bangles)
16 He's Got a Secret (Bangles)
17 talk (Bangles)
18 Going Down to Liverpool (Bangles)
19 talk (Bangles)
20 Tell Me (Bangles)
21 talk (Bangles)
22 I Want You (Bangles)
23 Hero Takes the Fall (Bangles)
24 I'm Not Talkin' (Bangles)
25 talk (Bangles)
26 Going Home (Bangles)
27 7 and 7 Is (Bangles)
28 Dover Beach (Bangles)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16509110/TBANGLS1984RtzThtrNwYrkCty__9-28-1984_atse.zip.html

 The cover photo is from a Bangles concert at Les Bains Douches, in Paris, France, on February 19, 1985.

10cc - Apollo Theatre, Glasgow, Britain, 2-25-1982

The British band 10cc put out a lot of great albums and singles in the 1970s. But the 1980s weren't so kind to them, as they lost two of their four songwriters in 1976 (Kevin Godley and Lol Creme). But at the time of this concert the other two remained, Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart. Stewart would leave just one year later, in 1983.

So this is a good time for a 10cc concert. True, they already were past their peak of popularity and creativity. But the Gouldman and Stewart version of the band had some big hits after Godley and Creme left, such as "Good Morning Judge," "The Things We Do for Love," and "Dreadlock Holiday." This concert contains those songs, plus all the hits from the earlier years.

The band's commercial fortunes fell fast in the early 1980s as music trends were changing. The album they were promoting on this tour, 1981's "Ten Out of 10," failed to chart in either the U.S. or Britain. However, there are only four songs here from that album, and naturally they are the stronger ones.

This concert is completely unreleased. In fact, there's no official live album from this era (between when Godley and Creme left in 1976 and when Stewart left in 1983). But I picked this one because of the excellent sound quality. 

However, there was one flaw. I found a list of all the songs the band played in this concert, and three were missing. I'm guessing it was broadcast on the radio and those three were cut out. I wanted to hear what the full concert would have been, so I found other live versions with similar sound quality. I had to use a 1980 concert in Mainz, Germany for two of them, "From Rochdale to Ocho Rios" and the sole cover, "Roll Over Beethoven." I used a 1983 concert in Rotterdam, Netherlands, for the other one, "Lying Here with You."

This album is one hour and 32 minutes long.

01 The Power of Love (10cc)
02 The Wall Street Shuffle (10cc)
03 talk (10cc)
04 Don't Ask (10cc)
05 I'm Mandy, Fly Me (10cc)
06 talk (10cc)
07 Good Morning Judge (10cc)
08 talk (10cc)
09 Memories (10cc)
10 The Things We Do for Love (10cc)
11 Art for Art's Sake (10cc)
12 talk (10cc)
13 Lying Here with You (10cc)
14 From Rochdale to Ocho Rios (10cc)
15 Les Nouveaux Riches (10cc)
16 Dreadlock Holiday (10cc)
17 Feel the Benefit (10cc)
18 talk (10cc)
19 I'm Not in Love (10cc)
20 Rubber Bullets (10cc)
21 Silly Love (10cc)
22 Life Is a Minestrone (10cc)
23 Roll Over Beethoven (10cc)

https://www.imagenetz.de/fMVnG

I couldn't find any good photos of the band in concert in 1982, or even 1981 or 1983. So I had to resort to this, from May 1980. It's from an appearance on a German TV show.

Pete Townshend - Who Demos, Volume 8: Who Are You: 1977-1978

It's been so long since I posted an album in this series (it's been almost a year as I write this), that I thought I would try to catch up a bit by posting two albums in a row. So here's another album of Pete Townshend demos of songs that ended up appearing on albums by the Who. In this case, all the songs were for the band's 1978 album "Who Are You."

Five out of the nine songs here have been officially released. Decades later, Townshend released various versions of his 1971 "Lifehouse" project, such as "Lifehouse Chronicles" and "Lifehouse Elements." Most of those come from that (tracks 6 through 9). But the song "Empty Glass" is actually a Townshend demo that ended up as a bonus track on the "Who Are You" album. That song, plus one other here, "Keep on Working," eventually ended up on Townshend's 1980 solo album "Empty Glass."

There's one undisputedly great song on the "Who Are You" album: "Who Are You." There are two versions of that here. The second one is much longer.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Love Is Coming Down (Pete Townshend)
02 Who Are You (Pete Townshend)
03 Empty Glass (Pete Townshend)
04 Guitar and Pen (Pete Townshend)
05 Keep On Working (Pete Townshend)
06 Music Must Change (Pete Townshend)
07 New Song (Pete Townshend)
08 Sister Disco (Pete Townshend)
09 Who Are You [Long Version] (Pete Townshend)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16508986/PETTWNSHND1977-1978WhoDmosVlum8WhoArYu_atse.zip.html

In 1978, a video was created of the Who performing the song "Who Are You" in Shepperton Studios in London. It's really great, you should watch it on YouTube. The cover is a screenshot of Townshend I took from that video.

Pete Townshend - Who Demos, Volume 7: Quadrophenia: 1972-1973

I've posted many albums of Pete Townsend demos, with still more to go. I posted a whole series of albums of his demos for songs that never made it onto albums by his band the Who. I'm still posting another series of albums of his demos for songs that did make it onto Who albums. As I've moved forward chronologically with that series, I've reached around 1973, the year the Who's classic double album "Quadrophenia" was released. 

I've been hesitant to post this album. I usually have a rule not to post something that has been officially released and still in print, when I haven't made any changes to it. But this is an exception. I figure I've been posting a whole series of Townshend's demos for the Who, and it would be odd to have a giant hole where the Quadrophenia sounds would be. In 2011, a super deluxe edition of the album was released, called "The Director's Cut." This is just two discs from that, combined, in the exact same song order.

The songs order generally follows the released 1973 version of the album. However, there are some exceptions, especially songs that didn't make the album, like "We Close Tonight," "You Came Back," "Joker James," "Wizardry (Electronic Wizardry)," and more. The Who eventually would release their versions of some of these in 1979, in conjunction with the release of a movie about the album.

One classic song from the album, "5:15," is not included here. That's because Townshend never made a demo for it. Instead, it was the only song on the album that was created spontaneously while the Who was jamming in the studio.

Note that Volume 5 in this series actually envelops this album chronologically, with demos from 1970 all the way to 1975. That includes some songs from the next Who album, "Who by Numbers," which was released in 1975. Most of the songs here were recorded in 1972 or 1973. Because it was a double album, it took a while for it to come together. Apparently, the "Drowned" demo dates all the way back to 1970, before Townshend even came up for the concept of the album.

This album is an hour and 43 minutes long.

01 The Real Me (Pete Townshend)
02 Quadrophenia - 4 Overtures [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
03 Cut My Hair (Pete Townshend)
04 Fill No. 1 - Get Out and Stay Out (Pete Townshend)
05 Quadrophenic Four Faces (Pete Townshend)
06 We Close Tonight (Pete Townshend)
07 You Came Back (Pete Townshend)
08 Get Inside (Pete Townshend)
09 Joker James (Pete Townshend)
10 The Punk and the Godfather (Pete Townshend)
11 I'm One (Pete Townshend)
12 Dirty Jobs (Pete Townshend)
13 Helpless Dancer (Pete Townshend)
14 Is It in My Head (Pete Townshend)
15 Any More (Pete Townshend)
16 I've Had Enough (Pete Townshend)
17 Fill No. 2 [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
18 Wizardry [Electronic Wizardry] [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
19 Sea and Sand (Pete Townshend)
20 Drowned (Pete Townshend)
21 Is It Me (Pete Townshend)
22 Bell Boy (Pete Townshend)
23 Doctor Jimmy (Pete Townshend)
24 Finale - The Rock [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
25 Love Reign O'er Me (Pete Townshend)

https://www.imagenetz.de/eJEkP

The original cover of the Quadrophenia was basically colorless. But a person named Stuart Gilbert colorized it. I thought that was interesting, so I've used it here as the cover.

Steely Dan - The Bear (1980)

It's not often that I post true "lost" studio albums, but here is one. This Steely Dan is contains completely unreleased material (save for one song), has fantastic sound quality, and is arguably at the same level of musical quality as their other albums. I've been aware of this collection of material for years, but I was waiting for some final pieces to fall into place before posting it here. Now they've fallen. So if you're a Steely Dan fan, this is a must have.

Here's the story behind this music as I understand it. Steely Dan put out a series of acclaimed albums from 1972 to 1977. But when it came time for them to complete their next album, "Gaucho," they ran into some problems that caused delays. 

One issue had to do with their record company planning to charge an extra dollar for the album over the other new studio albums they were selling, something the band members opposed. Another issue was a conflict with the record company over just who had the rights to do certain things. Yet another issue was that the band was down to just a duo by this time, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who were the two main creative forces since the beginning. But the relationship between them was becoming increasingly strained, largely due to Becker's increasing drug use. (A year after the album was released, the band would break up for more than a decade.) To make matters worse, Becker got in a car accident and was immobilized for six months. Furthermore, both of them were musical perfectionists, but they took that to new extremes, sometimes recording dozens of takes for seemingly trivial reasons.

The long and short of all that is that it took from 1977 to 1980 for "Gaucho" to be released, while they had previously released six albums in six years. Before, there had been almost no unused songs. Often, they had resorted to going back to earlier unreleased songs written before their first album (of which there were many) to fill up their albums. But with three years passing for "Gaucho," they had a big surplus this time. And since they had such high levels of consistency and quality, even their outtakes were generally very good. 

None of these songs have been officially released in any form, with one key exception that I was discuss later. But different versions have leaked to the public over the years, with one key leak of a song taking place only last year (2023). However, many of the versions were incomplete, and/or suffered sound quality issues. But also, in recent years, audio editing technology has increased by leaps and bounds, using many of the same aspects of generative AI that has made the news, such as Chat GPT. Using these new tools, fans have created mixes of these songs fixing the sound quality issues. Some musically talented fans have even gone further and added in their own musical instrumentation to fill in missing pieces, especially since some of the songs were never completely finished. 

All the songs here use special mixes done by others, so all I have to do was collect them. For that, I mostly followed the recommendations of a YouTuber named AE Collins. Two of the songs here are "outfakes," which I define to mean they had added music not on the original recordings. Those two are "Kulee Baba" and "Talkin' Bout My Home." Both of them contain vocals from the original recordings, but have music by a very talented person named Michael Caplin. In the case of Kulee Baba, I believe he added in all the instrumentation! But if you listen, you would never know, because it's played in the exact style of Steely Dan. 

The only song here that has been officially released is "FM (No Static at All)." This didn't appear on any Steely Dan album at the time, but it was released both as a single and on the soundtrack to the movie "FM" in 1978. There actually were four different versions released in total, including a long 12 Inch single version. Some versions contain a guitar solo, and other versions contain a saxophone solo. Different fans have combined them to create a maximally long version with both the guitar and saxophone solos. I've used that. So while the song is a well known hit, this is a special edit that is unreleased. As far as I know, it seems to be the only other non-album track from this era. Most versions of the "Gaucho" outtakes albums don't include it, but I think it fits in great.

If there was an alternate universe in which this album really was released, it's hard to say when exactly that would have been. Perhaps it would have come out in 1979, which would make the inclusion of "FM" from 1978 more fitting. Or perhaps it would have come out after "Gaucho," in 1981 or thereabouts. I'm going with 1980, since that's when I figure all the recording for all of these ended. 

By the way, the last song, "Were You Blind That Day," is the only one that isn't a totally unique song that didn't make any of the band's studio albums. Eventually, it was reworked into the song "Third World Man," which made it to the "Gaucho" album. But while the music is basically the same, the lyrics are totally different, so I figured it merited inclusion.

You can find more information about this topic at the Wikipedia entry on the "Gaucho" album. There's a whole section just on the outtakes. Here's the link:

Gaucho (album) - Wikipedia

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 Kulee Baba [Michael Caplin Outfake] (Steely Dan)
02 I Can't Write Home about You [Jive Miguel Mix] (Steely Dan)
03 Kind Spirit [Bleu's Audio Archive Mix] (Steely Dan)
04 Stand by the Seawall [Jive Miguel Mix] [Instrumental] (Steely Dan)
05 F.M. [No Static at All] [Extended Mix] (Steely Dan)
06 The Bear [Jive Miguel Mix 2] (Steely Dan)
07 Talkin' Bout My Home [Michael Caplin Outfake] (Steely Dan)
08 The Second Arrangement [Andreas Mixes Mix] (Steely Dan)
09 Were You Blind That Day [Early Version of Third World Man] (Steely Dan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16509254/STELYDN1980ThBer_atse.zip.html

Different people have come up with different names for this album of outtakes, such as "Gaucho II." "The Bear" seems to be a particularly popular name, after one of the songs. I did a Google search for "Steely Dan" and "The Bear," and found the image I used for the cover included in a YouTube video. I couldn't figure out who made it or what it's from, but I think it's a great fit. My only change is that I cropped it differently.

David Byrne - True Creatures Demos (1984)

In 1985, the Talking Heads put out the studio album "Little Creatures," which turned out to be their best seller. In 1986, they put out the album "True Stories," which was linked to a movie of the same name largely created by the band's main singer-songwriter, David Byrne. It turns out Byrne wrote most of the songs for both albums by 1984, and recorded demos of them. This is the entirely unreleased album of those demos. 

These demos have long been nicknamed the "True Creatures" (or "True Creature") demos, combining the titles of the "Little Creatures" and "True Stories" album. But that was almost certainly just an idea of some clever bootlegger, and not what they were actually called. They just as easily could be known as the "Little Stories" demos, I suppose. But I'm sticking with the name.

This album is also widely credited to the Talking Heads. But I'm changing that, because it's obvious to my ears that the only person on them is Byrne. Mind you, these aren't simply solo acoustic versions. He had incorporated drum machines into his songwriting since early in his music career, and there are drum machines all over this. Plus, he fleshed it out with backing vocals and other instruments. But still, it sounds like it's all him. For instance, the backing vocals sound like his voice as well.

These aren't radically different versions from the final ones. But still, it's interesting to hear how these songs originated. Plus, the sound quality is excellent. I'd had this in my music collection for many years. But I was inspired to finally post them after I saw a new version recently (April 2024) shared by someone named Mr. Sifter. This person used the recently developed AI tools of programs like Izotope to clean up the recordings. So even if you've had this already, this version sounds better than ever before. 

There are nine songs on "Little Creatures" and nine more on "True Stories." This has 12 songs. So it has a majority of songs from those albums, but definitely not all of them. I presume some were composed later.

This album is 54 minutes long. 

By the way, fun fact: the band Radiohead got their name from one of the songs here, "Radio Head."

01 Wild Wild Life (David Byrne)
02 Puzzlin' Evidence (David Byrne)
03 Love for Sale (David Byrne)
04 The Lady Don't Mind (David Byrne)
05 Hey Now (David Byrne)
06 Road to Nowhere (David Byrne)
07 Hey [Instrumental] (David Byrne)
08 Papa Legba (David Byrne)
09 People like Us (David Byrne)
10 City of Dreams (David Byrne)
11 Radio Head (David Byrne)
12 Give Me Back My Name (David Byrne)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16519362/DAVDBRYN1984TruCreturDmos_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is actually two images combined. I started with a photo of David Byrne, taken at a New York City party in 1986. The background was bland, so I came up with the idea of putting part of the cover to the "Little Creatures" album behind him.

Mark Knopfler - What Have I Got to Do - Non-Album Tracks (1990-1996)

I've posted some BBC albums from Mark Knopfler's solo career. Now I want to post a few stray tracks albums. This is the first one.

Knopfler's band Dire Straits kind of ended in 1986, after a long world tour supporting the massively successful "Brothers in Arms" album. He seemed exhausted by the stardom and basically took a few years off from music. Then in 1990, he revived the band, and put out a final studio album, "On Every Street," in 1991. Then, after another massive world tour, he retired the band again, this time for good. He later said, "I put the thing to bed because I wanted to get back to some kind of reality. It's self-protection, a survival thing. That kind of scale is dehumanizing."

Knopfler clearly didn't have the personality for that level of stardom, because he again took off a couple of years to recover before putting out his first solo album, "Golden Heart," in 1996.

But that's not the whole story of that time period, because he had some other music projects going on as well. The most important one was a role in another band, the Notting Hillbillies. That resulted in a 1990 album, "Missing... Presumed Having a Good Time." 

He also played a lot of concerts with guitarist Eric Clapton, and had a major role for a studio album by guitarist Chet Atkins. The first song here is a song he did with Clapton for the big 1990 Knebworth Festival. Technically, one could call this a Dire Straits performance, since there were other Dire Straits band members with him on stage at the time, even though they weren't officially reunited yet. But the original song was never officially released by Dire Straits or anyone else. The next four songs are from the 1990 album "Neck and Neck," which was billed as a Knopfler and Chet Atkins album. Knopfler produced it and played guitar all over it, but I've only included the four songs where Knopfler sang with Atkins as well. All the songs were covers, except "The Next Time I'm in Town," which was written by Knopfler.

After this, there's a big time jump to 1995, while Knopfler recovered and prepared for a proper solo career. He next emerged with an appearance on a 1995 album by the Chieftans, which is track 7, "The Lily of the West." Track 6, "No Wonder He's Confused," is an unreleased studio track, no doubt a song that he considered putting on his 1996 solo album "Golden Heart." Tracks 8 and 9 are B-sides from singles released from that album. The last song, "Blues Stay Away from Me" comes from an appearance on a 1996 album by guitarist Steve Phillips, who was one of his bandmates with the Notting Hillbillies.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Think I Love You Too Much (Mark Knopfler & Eric Clapton)
02 Poor Boy Blues (Mark Knopfler & Chet Atkins)
03 Just One Time (Mark Knopfler & Chet Atkins)
04 There'll Be Some Changes Made (Mark Knopfler & Chet Atkins)
05 The Next Time I'm in Town (Mark Knopfler & Chet Atkins)
06 No Wonder He's Confused (Mark Knopfler)
07 The Lily of the West (Chieftains with Mark Knopfler)
08 My Claim to Fame (Mark Knopfler)
09 What Have I Got to Do (Mark Knopfler)
10 Blues Stay Away from Me (Steve Phillips & Mark Knopfler)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16505919/MARKKNPFLR1990-1996WhtHveIGttDo_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a promo photo from 1995.

The Bangles - Catch a Rising Star, New York City, 10-22-1986

I really like the Bangles. I still think it's strange that they never released an official live album. I tried to fill that gap by posting a 1986 concert bootleg, which you can find here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-bangles-loft-berlin-germany-2-10.html

I thought that was the best live recording of the band from their 1980s heyday, but now I think this one is. This bootleg had a big flaw in that the vocals were low in the mix. But nowadays, we have the technology to fix that, and I did. I used the UVR5 audio editing program on all the songs.

Both shows are very good, and if you're a fan, you'll want both. There are some song selection differences. For instance, that one includes the cover "I'm Not Talking" and the great early track "I Want You," while this one includes the cover "Pushin' Too Hard" and the non-album track "I Got Nothing." That one had some holes I had to fill in with bits from another 1986 concert, whereas this one is complete. This one is also somewhat longer.

The reason this one sounds so good is because it was broadcast live on the radio. In the banter between songs, they kept referring to the concert as a "soundcheck." I'm guessing what they mean is it was a relatively short concert for the radio, and they played a longer concert later in the evening in the same city. Also, one nice thing about it is they played at a small club (with the unusual name "Catch a Rising Star"), despite the fact that they already had two huge hits earlier in the year with "Manic Monday" and "Walk like an Egyptian." I'm guessing that was done specially to help with the sound quality for the radio broadcast.

Note that there are conflicting dates about when this concert took place, with May and August being cited. But I looked into it and I'm convinced this is the correct date.

This album is an hour and eight minutes long.

01 talk (Bangles)
02 Intro (Bangles)
03 Let It Go (Bangles)
04 talk (Bangles)
05 Restless (Bangles)
06 talk (Bangles)
07 Live (Bangles)
08 Walking Down Your Street (Bangles)
09 James (Bangles)
10 I Got Nothing (Bangles)
11 talk (Bangles)
12 He's Got the Secret (Bangles)
13 talk (Bangles)
14 September Gurls (Bangles)
15 If She Knew What She Wants (Bangles)
16 talk (Bangles)
17 Return Post (Bangles)
18 In a Different Light (Bangles)
19 Going Down to Liverpool (Bangles)
20 Angel Don't Fall in Love (Bangles)
21 Hero Takes a Fall (Bangles)
22 talk (Bangles)
23 Manic Monday (Bangles)
24 talk (Bangles)
25 Walk like an Egyptian (Bangles)
26 talk (Bangles)
27 Dover Beach (Bangles)
28 Pushin' Too Hard (Bangles)
29 talk (Bangles)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16505975/TBANGLS1986cCtchaRsingStrNwYrkC__10-22-1986_atse.zip.html

I had a surprisingly difficult time finding a good color photo of the band in concert in 1986. I do like this one and it is in color, but I'm not sure when or where it's from exactly. But I'd guess that it's from 1986 or thereabouts.
 

The Rolling Stones - Emotional Rescue - Alternate Version (1980)

I've been gradually posting Rolling Stones stray tracks albums, working my way chronologically through their long music career. Starting at this point with their 1980 album "Emotional Rescue," I'm going to take a different approach. In my opinion, from 1980 onwards, their albums were usually hit and miss (with occasional exceptions, such as their 1981 album "Tattoo You"). So instead of more stray tracks albums, I'm making alternate versions of most of their albums from 1980 and after. (I'm also making some cover versions albums and some other things.) In this way, I hope to make versions of these later day albums that are solid all the way through, just like nearly all of their output prior to 1980.

The Stones put out a classic album in 1978, "Some Girls." Their 1981 album "Tattoo You" is also a classic. So it's a bit strange that the album in between, "Emotional Rescue" in 1980, was considered both a commercial and critical disappointment. (It reached Number One in the charts in many countries, but that was momentum from the previous album, and it didn't stay high in the charts for long.) For instance, if you look at the crowd-sourced ratings at rateyourmusic.com, it was their lowest rated album in their career up until then, and far below the ratings of "Some Girls" and "Tattoo You."

The Rolling Stones Albums: songs, discography, biography, and listening guide - Rate Your Music

In retrospect, I think there are two reasons this was a disappointing album. The first is that there was increasing conflict between the two main creative forces in the band, singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards. Richards had been heavily using drugs through most of the 1970s, if not earlier, but he cleaned himself up in time for this album, after having narrowly dodged a long prison term for drug possession in Canada in 1978. During his drug years, he'd been content to let Jagger lead the band. But once he cleaned up, he wanted to take a bigger role. That should have been a good thing, but Jagger was used to being in charge by then. The songwriting suffered, since Jagger and Richards had often written songs together, much like the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team in the Beatles.

But even with that, the album should have been a really solid one, except for poor song selection. Most critically, three songs were rejected for this album, but were included on their next one, "Tattoo You," when the band all but stopped coming up with new songs for a while due to the Jagger-Richards conflict. Those three were "Hang Fire," "Little T&A," and "No Use in Crying." In my opinion, had those songs been included instead of the weakest ones that ultimately made it on the album, its reputation would be much, much better. Unfortunately for my purposes though, I don't want to use any of those three, since they work great as part of "Tattoo You."

That said, it still can be greatly improved by removing some songs and adding others. The ones I removed are: "Dance (Part 1)," "Send It to Me," "Indian Girl," and "Where the Boys Go." I'm sure other people would pick different ones to remove. In my opinion, some of these are less fully fleshed out songs and more riffs with dance beats added. The band wasn't afraid to dabble with disco, which was super trendy at the time, but I don't think many of their disco experiments look that good in retrospect (with the obvious exception of their big 1978 hit "Miss You").

Anyway, I've kept six songs from the album, and I've put those as the first six tracks here, in their original order. The remaining four come from elsewhere. "I Think I'm Going Mad" was an easy add. It was a B-side, released in 1979. That's another case of poor song selection, since I think it's better than many songs they chose to include on the album. 

You might recognize "Lonely at the Top," because it was a single from Jagger's 1985 solo album "She's the Boss." However, it started out as a Rolling Stones song in 1979. The version here is unreleased. The sound quality is a bit rough, and some of the lyrics hadn't been worked out yet. But I figure it's interesting enough to merit inclusion.

The last two songs are more examples of poor song selection for the album. They did get released, but not until decades later. Both were recorded in 1979 and could have been included on the album. But "Troubles A-Comin'" wasn't released until the 2021 super deluxe edition of "Tattoo You," and "We Had It All" wasn't released until the 2011 super deluxe edition of "Some Girls" (despite the fact that it was actually recorded a year after "Some Girls" was released). 

This album is 40 minutes long. By comparison, the original version was 41 minutes long.

01 Summer Romance (Rolling Stones)
02 Let Me Go (Rolling Stones)
03 Down in the Hole (Rolling Stones)
04 Emotional Rescue (Rolling Stones)
05 She's So Cold (Rolling Stones)
06 All about You (Rolling Stones)
07 I Think I'm Going Mad (Rolling Stones)
08 Lonely at the Top [Edit] (Rolling Stones)
09 Troubles A-Comin' (Rolling Stones)
10 We Had It All (Rolling Stones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16501877/TROLLNGSTNS1980EmtonlRscuAltrnte_atse.zip.html

The original cover used a thermal camera to take pictures of four members of the band. (I think drummer Charlie Watts got cut out.) I wanted something similar but different. Since the cover was already so strange, all I did was invert the colors for everything but the text at the top. You have to know the cover well to even tell the difference.

Al Stewart - University of Warwick, Coventry, Britain, 11-8-1970

I'm back from my vacation in New Orleans. I had a really good time. I was especially impressed by the food, doubly so since I'm vegetarian. Thanks for all the well wishes while I was gone, and thanks for your patience.

I hadn't planned on posting this Al Stewart concert. Most of it has been officially released on the mega box set "The Admiralty Lights." But while I was on vacation, musical associate Lil Panda posted a bunch of songs from this exact concert that wasn't included in that box set at a bootleg sharing site. He also included a set list of the complete concert. So it was a no-brainer for me to put the entire concert together, mixing the released and unreleased songs.

I wouldn't have posted this had it not been for the fact that the sound quality is really excellent. This has to be the best sounding concert recording from this early in Stewart's career, probably by a good margin. Both the unreleased and released songs sound equally great, so it's just about impossible to tell which is which. (If you're curious, the unreleased tracks are: 14, 15, 16, 17, 25, 26, 27, 28, and 29.) As for why some songs weren't included, my best guess is that they included as many as could fit on a single CD.

This is a solo acoustic performance, and Stewart was in top form. There's a good amount of banter before almost every song. He also played some rare songs, especially the covers "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" by Bob Dylan and the 1950s classic "Summertime Blues."

This album is an hour and 48 minutes long.

01 Swiss Cottage Manoeuvres (Al Stewart)
02 talk (Al Stewart)
03 Zero She Flies (Al Stewart)
04 talk (Al Stewart)
05 Electric Los Angeles Sunset (Al Stewart)
06 talk (Al Stewart)
07 Songs Out of Clay (Al Stewart)
08 talk (Al Stewart)
09 In Brooklyn (Al Stewart)
10 talk (Al Stewart)
11 Samuel, Oh How You've Changed (Al Stewart)
12 talk (Al Stewart)
13 Room of Roots (Al Stewart)
14 talk (Al Stewart)
15 It's Alright Ma [I'm Only Bleeding] (Al Stewart)
16 talk (Al Stewart)
17 News from Spain (Al Stewart)
18 Old Compton Street Blues (Al Stewart)
19 talk (Al Stewart)
20 Elvaston Place (Al Stewart)
21 talk (Al Stewart)
22 Manuscript (Al Stewart)
23 talk (Al Stewart)
24 Love Chronicles (Al Stewart)
25 talk (Al Stewart)
26 Small Fruit Song (Al Stewart)
27 Summertime Blues (Al Stewart)
28 talk (Al Stewart)
29 My Enemies Have Sweet Voices (Al Stewart)

https://www.imagenetz.de/dsp58

I couldn't find any good photos of Stewart that clearly came from 1970. In fact, I couldn't really find any color photos of him in concert from before about 1973. So I used a black and white that is from "circa 1970." But I don't know anything else about it. I used the Palette program to convert it into color.

Vacation

I'm off for spring break (to New Orleans). I'll be back in about a week. So there won't be any new posts until then.

I haven't been posting much recently, but I've been busy behind the scenes getting ready to post another big rock festival. So expect that shortly after I get back.

Ron Sexsmith - Reasons to Believe, Volume 5: 2009-2012

Once again, here's another in a long series of stray tracks albums for Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith.

If you like the previous volumes, you should like this one too. I don't have much else to say, other than to explain where the songs come from.

All but the last two songs have been officially released. Those two are from concert bootlegs. The other songs are generally from tribute albums, appearances on albums by other musicians, and bonus tracks. Tracks 7 through 9 are bonus tracks from the 2011 album "Long Player Late Bloomer."

There are more originals on this one than the previous volumes, I think. The three bonus tracks mentioned above are originals. So are the two songs with Carlos Fregtman (tracks 4 and 5). "Love Shines" is another original, from the "Long Player Late Bloomer" album, but track 12 is a solo acoustic version done in concert.

"Day Is Done," originally by Nick Drake, is the sole bonus track. It's a lovely version, but unfortunately it's from an audience concert bootleg, and the sound quality isn't as good as the rest.

Thanks again to Pete BBBB for help in putting this together and figuring out the original artists for each song, as he's done for the whole "Reason to Believe" series.

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

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

01 Crayon Angels - Judee Sill
02 Broken in Two - Krista Hartman
03 When I Need You - Leo Sayer
04 Ghost of a Chance - Carlos Fregtman & Ron Sexsmith
05 Thoughts and Prayers - Carlos Fregtman & Ron Sexsmith
06 Broken Hearted People - Guy Clark
07 Next Time - Ron Sexsmith
08 Wooden Toys - Ron Sexsmith
09 Chambermaid - Ron Sexsmith
10 I Surrender Dear - Bing Crosby
11 Give Me Love [Give Me Peace on Earth] - George Harrison
12 Love Shines - Ron Sexsmith
13 Good Old Desk - Harry Nilsson
Day Is Done - Nick Drake

Here's the usual song list:

01 Crayon Angels (Ron Sexsmith)
02 Broken in Two (Krista Hartman & Ron Sexsmith)
03 When I Need You (Albert Hammond with Ron Sexsmith)
04 Ghost of a Chance (Carlos Fregtman & Ron Sexsmith)
05 Thoughts and Prayers (Carlos Fregtman & Ron Sexsmith)
06 Broken Hearted People (Ron Sexsmith)
07 Next Time (Ron Sexsmith)
08 Wooden Toys (Ron Sexsmith)
09 Chambermaid (Ron Sexsmith)
10 I Surrender Dear (Alex Pangman & Ron Sexsmith)
11 Give Me Love [Give Me Peace on Earth] (Ron Sexsmith)
12 Love Shines (Ron Sexsmith)
13 Good Old Desk (Ron Sexsmith & the Silver Ages)

Day Is Done (Ron Sexsmith)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16463657/RONSXSMTH2009-2012ResnstoBliveVlum5_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from 2011. I don't know the details.

Various Artists - Prince's Trust Rock Gala, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 6-5-1988

The Prince's Trust is a charity founded by then Prince Charles, the British crown prince. (He is now King Charles III) as I write this in 2024.) There have been a bunch of benefit concerts for the charity, each with many stars participating. Here's another one.

These Prince's Trust concerts have happened in a very irregular pace. I've already posted benefit concerts from 1982, 1986, and 1987. This one is from 1988. There were more from 1989 and 1990, so it started to seem like an annual thing. However, I think the next one after that took place in 1996. There have been at least five more since then, although I may well be missing some.

This one was similar to the previous two in similar ways. The concert started with some newer acts, like T'Pau and Wet Wet Wet, and they played more songs than one might expect, given the stature of the other acts in the concert. Both T'Pau and Wet Wet Wet actually played four songs each, according to setlists, but I only have two from T'Pau and three from Wet Wet Wet. I can't say I'm lamenting the missing songs, since I don't think one could compare them with nearly all of the acts that came later. Rick Astley and Black were a couple other acts that appeared early, and played the one big hit each of them was known for.

After that, there were many of the same "usual suspects" who played in previous Prince's Trust concerts, such as Phil Collins, Elton John, Howard Jones, Mark Knoplfer, and Eric Clapton. But there were some first timers too, like Leonard Cohen, the Bee Gees, Peter Gabriel, and Joe Cocker. It's frustrating to me that you have someone like Peter Gabriel, whose most recent album at the time, "So," had sold five million copies in the U.S. alone, only getting to play one song. But it is what it is, I guess.

I don't know the exact details, but I believe that many of the big stars backed each other towards the end of the concert, as was the case in previous years. Because people pay extra close attention to Eric Clapton's guitar playing, I was able to find out that once he took the stage with track 26 ("Behind the Mask"), he stayed on stage for the rest of the concert, including playing guitar on songs sung by Knoplfer, John, and Cocker.

Similarly, I was able to determine that Brian May of Queen didn't sing lead vocals on any songs, but he played lead guitar on a bunch of them: tracks 6, 8, 10, 16, 19, 24, 26, and 35. John Deacon, the bassist for Queen, also apparently played on some songs.

Currently, I'm only able to find a few songs from the 1989 and 1990 concerts. If anyone has the full concerts, please let me know. I may try to post the 1996 concert, but I'm probably missing about half of that one.

This album is two hours and two minutes long.

01 Heart and Soul (T'Pau)
02 China in Your Hand (T'Pau)
03 talk (Wet Wet Wet)
04 Wishing I Was Lucky (Wet Wet Wet)
05 Sweet Little Mystery - Twist and Shout (Wet Wet Wet)
06 Dancing with Tears in My Eyes (Midge Ure)
07 talk (Midge Ure & Rick Astley)
08 Never Gonna Give You Up (Rick Astley)
09 talk (Rick Astley & Black)
10 Wonderful Life (Black)
11 talk (Black & Leonard Cohen)
12 Tower of Song (Leonard Cohen)
13 talk (Phil Collins)
14 Doesn't Anyone Stay Together Anymore (Phil Collins)
15 talk (Phil Collins & the Bee Gees)
16 You Win Again (Bee Gees)
17 Jive Talkin' (Bee Gees)
18 talk (Bee Gees & Peter Gabriel)
19 Sledgehammer (Peter Gabriel)
20 talk (Peter Gabriel & Howard Jones)
21 What Is Love (Howard Jones)
22 talk (Phil Collins)
23 I Missed Again (Phil Collins)
24 You Can't Hurry Love (Phil Collins)
25 talk (Phil Collins & Joe Cocker)
26 The Letter (Joe Cocker)
27 talk (Eric Clapton)
28 Behind the Mask (Eric Clapton)
29 Cocaine (Eric Clapton)
30 talk (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
31 Money for Nothing (Mark Knopfler)
32 talk (Elton John)
33 I Don't Wanna Go On with You like That (Elton John)
34 Layla (Eric Clapton)
35 With a Little Help from My Friends (Joe Cocker)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gP7SW

Just like previous years, there was a group photo taken of the performers. Here are all their names.
Back row: Rick Astley, Howard Jones, Peter Gabriel, Joe Cocker, Phil Collins, Midge Ure
Middle row: Mark Knopfler, Brian May, Elton John, Eric Clapton
Front row: The Bee Gees, Robin, Barry and Maurice Gibb

World Party - Park West, Chicago, IL, 8-22-2006

For all intents and purposes, the British band World Party was Karl Wallinger. Not only did he write all the band's songs and sing lead on all of them, he often produced the albums and played most of the other instruments on some of them. Sadly, he died earlier this month, on March 11, 2024, at the age of 66, due to a stroke. 

I didn't hear the news at first, but then I noticed a surge in World Party bootlegs at bootleg sharing sites, and I figured it out. A couple of years ago, I had a hard time finding even a single World Party bootleg. But in the wake of his death, a bunch were posted. I wanted to post something new to mark Wallinger's passing, so I looked at all the concerts I hadn't posted yet, and decided this was the best one. It came after most of his albums were released, so it serves as a de facto best of. He was backed by an excellent band, and gave a solid importance. But probably the most important factor of all is sound quality, and this is a fantastic soundboard. If you were to get just one live World Party recording, this would probably be the best one to choose.

Because this is a excellent soundboard boot, I didn't have to do much tinkering at all. But I did boost the volume of the vocals for the banter between songs, and sometimes I boosted the cheering after the songs.

This album is an hour and 28 minutes long.

01 talk (World Party)
02 Put the Message in the Box (World Party)
03 talk (World Party)
04 Is It like Today (World Party)
05 What Does It Mean Now (World Party)
06 talk (World Party)
07 When the Rainbow Comes (World Party)
08 talk (World Party)
09 Best Place I've Ever Been (World Party)
10 I Thought You Were a Spy (World Party)
11 talk (World Party)
12 She's the One (World Party)
13 Love Street (World Party)
14 talk (World Party)
15 Who Are You (World Party)
16 Here Comes the Future (World Party)
17 talk (World Party)
18 Vanity Fair (World Party)
19 Thank You World (World Party)
20 talk (World Party)
21 Sweet Soul Dream (World Party)
22 Is It Too Late (World Party)
23 talk (World Party)
24 Way Down Now (World Party)
25 It Is Time (World Party)
26 talk (World Party)
27 Ship of Fools (World Party)
28 talk (World Party)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16435667/WORLDPRTY2006PrkWstChcgoIL__8-22-2006_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is of Wallinger at the Bonnaroo Festival in Memphis, Tennessee, in June 2006.

Jamaica World Music Festival, Montego Bay, Jamaica, 11-27-1982, Part 6: Peter Tosh

The sixth and last act of the third day of the 1982 Jamaica World Music Festival was Peter Tosh. That makes this the last act of the entire festival too.

By 1982, Bob Marley was far and away the best known Jamaican musician in the world. I'm sure had he lived, the festival would have wanted him as the final act. Unfortunately, he died of cancer in 1981. So having Peter Tosh close the festival was probably thought of as the next big thing. For one, Tosh was in the Wailers from 1963 to 1974. During that time, he co-wrote and co-sang the classic song "Get Up, Stand Up," which he also performed here.

But also, he had a successful solo career after leaving the Wailers, including some success in the U.S. and other overseas countries. Unfortunately, his career would be cut short when he was killed by an armed gang robbing his house in 1987.

I made one very drastic cut to this. Track 94, a banter track, is only half a minute long. It had originally been 18 minutes long! Tosh, after not talking much at all between the other songs, gave a a very long monologue, mostly about his desire to see marijuana legalized. I have no problem with the topic. In fact, I'm in favor of legalization. But in my opinion, this monologue went on way, way too long, and it killed the momentum of his set. Furthermore, most of it is moot by now anyway, with marijuana becoming legal in more and more places (including the state I live in). In Jamaica, which is what mostly would have mattered to Tosh, it is mostly legal, but only in private or public dispensaries.

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long.

85 Steppin' Razor (Peter Tosh)
86 talk (Peter Tosh)
87 African (Peter Tosh)
88 Coming in Hot (Peter Tosh)
89 Not Gonna Give It Up (Peter Tosh)
90 Don't Look Back (Peter Tosh)
91 Rastafari Is (Peter Tosh)
92 I'm the Toughest (Peter Tosh)
93 Bush Doctor (Peter Tosh)
94 talk (Peter Tosh)
95 Get Up, Stand Up (Peter Tosh)
96 Want I (Peter Tosh)
97 Legalize It (Peter Tosh)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16411128/VA-JmicaWrldMsicFstvlMntgoByJmica__11-27-1982Prt06PetrTsh_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any good photos of Tosh at this festival, or even from 1982. So this one is from an unknown location in June 1981.