Covered: Neil Young: Alternates, Volume 2: 2001-2007 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's the second volume out of four, of alternates for Neil Young's "Covered" series. As I explained in my write-up for Volume 1, guest poster Fabio from Rio did most of the legwork finding cover versions for the original ten volumes, but I had most of the say in picking which ones were ultimately chosen. So these four alternate volumes are kind of Fabio's "revenge," because he did the picking. There were only one or two songs I pointed out I didn't think were that strong.

There's not much else to say. As with Volume 1, about half the songs are different versions of covers chosen in the original ten volumes, and about half the songs are ones that only show up in these alternates volumes. 

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 Dreamin' Man (Freebo)
02 Pressure (Ned Whattakiller)
03 This Note's for You (Royal Cat Club)
04 Pocahontas (Johnny Cash)
05 On the Beach (Radiohead)
06 Let It Shine (Ad Vanderveen)
07 Falling from Above (Jamey Darnold)
08 Hawks and Doves (Scott Miller & the Commonwealth)
09 Red Sun (Charlie Macon)
10 Without Rings (Scott Sandi)
11 The Needle and the Damage Done (Jorane)
12 Families (Gil Michaels)
13 Helpless (Elk City)
14 Cortez the Killer (Carrie Rodriguez with Tim Easton)
15 Ohio - Find the Cost of Freedom (Dalia)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ySf9gd4c

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/BLbNlIQ1jzvddqu/file

The cover image is from 1991 or thereabouts.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Denver Coliseum, Denver, CO, 5-12-1970

Here's something I'm very excited to post. I put many, many hours of work into this, but I think it paid off. This is an audience bootleg of a special Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) concert that sounded pretty rough. But now, after some editing, I believe it sounds almost as good as a soundboard from the era. However, be warned that sometimes the sound quality is still rough sometimes. But you should have heard what it sounded like before. It's vastly improved.

This also was on the most pivotal concerts in the history of CSNY. So let me give some background. In March 1970, the CSNY album "Deja Vu" was released. It was a massive hit right away. Rolling Stone magazine would later put it on their list of the top 500 albums of all time. It would eventually sell eight million copies in the U.S. alone.

CSNY had toured in late 1969 into January 1970, but then they took an extended break. This Denver concert was supposed to be the first one of a big nationwide tour after that break to promote "Deja Vu." However, there was trouble brewing behind the scenes. CSNY needed a bassist and drummer to play live. So far, those roles had been filled by Greg Reeves on bass and Dallas Taylor on drums. But mere days before this concert, Reeves was fired by Stephen Stills. Stills later claimed that this was "because [Reeves] suddenly decided he was an Apache witch doctor." That sounds like a weird excuse, but it seems there's some truth to it. For instance, Nils Lofgren later said that during one of the sessions for Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush" album in 1970, Reeves appeared covered head to toe in gold paint. Young explained the bassist was "doin' his Indian thing." And Reeves himself later said that members of CSNY "thought I was trying to put spells on them" due to his strong interest in Native American shamanism. He also dyed his hair red and did many other strange things.

But that wasn't the only reason he was fired. It seems there were some musical issues as well. Still later said that Reeves "freaked too much on the bass and no one could keep up because [he] did not play one rhythm the same. He could play bass imaginatively, but he has to be predictable as well." Furthermore, Reeves also wanted to sing some of his songs during CSNY concert. Stills thought that was "ludicrous, only because the songs weren't great. We'll sing any song if it's great, but not just because it happens to be written by our bass player."

Reeves was replaced by Calvin "Fuzzy" Samuel. Stills had just been using him as his bassist when he was recording his first solo album that year. But Reeves was fired late in rehearsals, so CSNY didn't have much time to rehearse songs with Samuel before their tour began. Furthermore, the band members were having other problems. Their massive success was leading to ego trips and lots of drug use. Also, David Crosby's girlfriend Christine Hinton died in September 1969, and it took him a long time to get over it. For instance, he was prone to just breaking into tears at random times during the recording of the "Deja Vu" album. On top of all that, eight days before this concert, four students were killed by the U.S. government's national guard at Kent State. It caused a nationwide uproar. It also led Neil Young to write the classic song "Ohio" in the days just prior to this concert.

So tensions were steadily rising for CSNY, and it all blew up around the time of this concert. The first half of the concert was all acoustic. That went pretty well, mostly. One issue was the sound system the band had paid to use for their entire tour was used for the first time, and it was terrible. If you listen to this recording, you can hear strange sounds in the background from time to time, much like fireworks going off. David Crosby even commented on those sounds and apologized for them before one of the songs in the acoustic set. But this continued occasionally for the rest of the concert. Furthermore, there were problems with the monitors, which means the band members had trouble hearing what the others were playing. You can hear Neil Young complain about that during the acoustic set as well.

But things got a lot worse during the electric set. The problems with the sound system and the monitors continued, and were magnified in the full band setting. Furthermore, Samuel was struggling to keep up with all the songs he had just learned days earlier. 

Drummer Dallas Taylor later explained: "The tour had been booked during all of this chaos. And it was a multi-million dollar tour. And so [Samuel] came out, but we didn't get a chance to rehearse with him. By then, the Charles Manson [murder trial] stuff was going on; it just went very dark, very quickly. I think with the cocaine coming into the world, it just went dark and evil. So [Samuel], God bless him, he didn't get a chance to learn the songs."

Samuel himself later said, "I'd never been on stage with monitors before. I didn't even know who I was on stage with. Dallas I knew a little bit from [working on Stills' solo album], so we just had to bluff our way through. Neil was very uncomfortable because Stephen and I had played together a lot more."

Neil Young was so frustrated that he walked off the stage before the end of the second to last song, "Everybody I Love You." If you listen to the banter after that song, you can hear the other band members asking each other what happened to Young. Probably, they cut the concert a little short when Young didn't return during their final song.

Things then got even worse after the concert was over. The rest of the tour was immediately cancelled. Young was so upset that he threatened to leave the group. Taylor later said, "After the show, I got this phone call from Neil. He asked would you consider continuing the tour without Stephen? I didn't think about it: no." 

The next day, the band flew to Los Angeles. A crisis meeting was held with all the band members, plus record company executives and managers, like David Geffen, Ahmed Ertugun, and Elliott Roberts. Only Taylor had to wait outside. At the end of the meeting, he was told that he was fired. Taylor later said, "By then, it was about Neil taking over as leader, controlling the band. He was mad that Stephen fired Greg Reeves, 'cos he loved Greg. It's like third grade stuff. ... Neil said, well, if I have to work with Stills, then Dallas has to go, 'cos he knew I was allied. I mean, it's crazy stuff."

Indeed, during the recording of the "Deja Vu" album, Stills was taking copious amounts of cocaine for the first time. This led to him working in the studio for many hours a day, sometimes even going 24 hours or more without stopping. The only other person who could keep up with him was Taylor, who was also taking lots of cocaine. Whereas Young felt a connection to Reeves, probably helped by their shared interest in Native American culture. For instance, the very moment Stills fired Reeves, Young was there in the same room, and immediately told Reeves that he still wanted him to play bass on his solo album, "After the Gold Rush." 

So, almost certainly, Young didn't want Stills fired, and/or knew that wasn't a realistic demand. The two of them would later say multiple times that they were close friends, and they've had many musical projects together over the years. But, by making that initial demand, it allowed Young to get the compromise of getting Taylor fired, which reduced Stills' influence over the whole band.

Johnny Barbata was hired to play drums instead. Additionally, the cancelled tour dates were rescheduled. After two weeks of more rehearsals, the tour resumed. At first, things went okay. But soon, personality conflicts came to a head again. Stills, in particular, got even more carried away with cocaine and alcohol abuse, which led to megalomania. After a concert in Chicago in early July, Crosby, Nash, and Young decided to fire Stills. The tour staggered on for two more concerts before mercifully coming to an end. 

Nash then helped put together a double live album, "Four Way Street," which was released in 1971 and was a big seller. But CSNY was effectively finished, excepting a couple of spontaneous reunion concerts, until a 1974 tour. (And that tour is a whole other story, with even more problems.)

Decades later, Stills had this to say: "I just wish we could have held it together a little longer. But there were petty ego jealousies going on. Nash and I weren't talking. Neil wanted to be on his own. I had my solo album to finish. But we still could have done that and kept CSNY going. But we threw it all away for very fallacious reasons, I can see now. I mean, we were standing on the verge. And all of the freedom we wanted for our own personal careers would have still been available to us. But we couldn't put [aside] the trivial going on between us. If a voice of reason could have cleared that fog, we could have realized our full potential and CSNY would be mentioned in the same breath with the Beatles and the Stones. We also could have become rich enough to be creative. But I was the biggest fool. I thought the managers would come up with some strength. They didn't. So we lost it all, right there, that day, to indulgence. We lost it all." 

Ironically, just one day after this concert, and the same day the band fired Taylor, CSNY was told that "Deja Vu" had just reached the Number One spot on the U.S. album chart. So Stills is right to lament what might have been if they could have stayed together. 

So that's the story, the context of this concert. But I also want to talk a little bit about the song list, because it was an extraordinary one for the band. The previous CSNY concert was in January 1970, and none of them had done solo concerts, except for Young doing a few concerts with Crazy Horse in February and March. All four of them wrote a lot of new songs and began working on solo albums. Plus, there were some songs from "Deja Vu" that none of them had ever performed in concert before. This meant that lots of songs were performed to the public for the very first time, including many that were still unreleased. I did some research using the setlist.fm website. Here are all the songs that got their world premiere at this concert. The ones with asterisks were still unreleased at the time:

Tell Me Why*
Man in the Mirror*
Only Love Can Break Your Heart* 
We Are Not Helpless* 
Love the One You're With*
Carry On
Chicago*
As I Come of Age*
Southern Man*
Everybody I Love You

That's pretty incredible, considering how many of those songs have gone on to be considered classics! 

Furthermore, this was the first time CSNY performed "Everybody's Been Burned," a Byrds song written by Crosby, as well as "Bluebird," a Buffalo Springfield song written by Stills. I don't count those as premieres though, since they were performed live previously by the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield. However, this was the sole time "Everybody's Been Burned" was performed in a CSNY concert, and one of only two times "Bluebird" was performed in a CSNY concert. (However, Stills wrote another song, "Bluebird Revisited," that was kind of an update of that song, and he did perform that in concert some.)

Oh, and another exceptional thing about this concert is that this was the one and only time "Everybody I Love You" was performed live by CSNY. Perhaps later there were bad feelings about that song, since it was the one where Young walked off the stage? I don't know. But also note that the lyrics of the song are actually quite different from the version on the "Deja Vu" album. Additionally, this was the only time "We Are Not Helpless" was performed in a CSNY. The song was written by Stills, but he also only performed it three more times in solo concerts all the rest of his long music career. 

Okay, this is turning out to be a long write-up, sorry. But now I have to address the sound quality issue. When I first heard this the bootleg of this concert, I noticed a lot of big problems. For instance, there was a tremendous amount of hiss. But I also sensed that most of them were fixable problems, and it was a better audience recording than most. (I've included a text file with the download zip that explains some about the origins of the recording.) I also was impressed that this was a complete recording, including all the cheering and banter between songs. For some reason, there are a lot of partial recordings of CSNY concerts from 1969 and 1970, and/or recordings where the banter wasn't recorded. (Tapers often did that in that era to save tape.)

The first thing I did was run all the songs through the MVSEP program to get rid of hiss. And boy, was there a lot of hiss! I've rarely ever seen that much hiss get cleaned up. So that was a big improvement right there. The next problem was there was a lot of reverb/ echo, especially on the vocals. So I ran all the songs through MVSEP again, first separating out the vocals and then running a dereverb filter on them. That helped a lot too.

But then I decided to go further, and really clean up the vocals. Since this was an audience recording, there was a lot of talking from people near the taper. In fact, at one point, one could hear a conversation where someone asked the taper if they were taping the concert, and then, finding out they were, asking if they could get a copy. So there was a lot of crud like that. I listened to each song carefully, and erased any vocals that came from comments in the audience instead of band members. I was able to get rid of most of it. However, sometimes people were talking at the exact same time band members were talking. I tried running songs with that problem through yet more filters which are supposed to separate talking from singing. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. 

In the end, some talking remains, for instance on the song "On the Way Home." But most of that is fairly low in the mix. For the more egregious remaining cases of audience members talking during singing, I used vocals from the CSNY concerts that year and patched them in. Typically, that was just for a line or two. For instance, in "Teach Your Children," someone in the audience had a coughing fit for about ten seconds while Nash was singing. So I got rid of that with the patching method. Really, every song here deserves to have "[Edit]" in their titles, due to all the line by line editing I did. But I've only marked the ones where I patched in bits from other songs. Oh, and I also got rid of some dead air between songs, especially guitar tuning. I also cut out some talking from audience members during quiet times between songs, if that was the only way to get rid of it.

In conclusion, this was a pretty disastrous concert. Nash even publicly said this after the concert, to explain the tour date cancellations: "The music was rubbish and we knew it. We had to cool ourselves out before we could get back again." But, in my opinion, most of the trouble happened in private, before and after the concert. The actual music was pretty good. That's especially true for the acoustic set, before the problems with playing with a full band with an unprepared bass player and bad monitors and sound system happened. 

And it certainly is a historic concert, with so many classics being heard in public for the very first time, and rare songs, as well as all the band drama. If you're a CSNY fan, I would consider this a "must have," even though some sound quality problems remain.

I can't resist ending with one more quote, this time by Young, summing up how the band broke apart in 1970: "[It was] because we had no idea what we were doing. It's not because there was anything wrong with anybody in the band. It was just, what we were confronted with made us be... it changed us. It changed us. The crowd. The adulation. The roaring sound. It changed us." 

And ooooooone more quote... this one from British music critic Barney Hoskyns: "I don't think it would have been possible for CSNY in 1970, 1971, to go on much beyond that. A break-up was inevitable. You've got four young guys, two of whom are certainly out of their heads on cocaine [Crosby and Stills]. It's petty stuff. These are guys who were not very grown up. And they're not very good at talking to each other. And resolving stuff."

This album is an hour and 50 minutes long. 

01 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
02 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
03 Teach Your Children [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
04 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
05 On the Way Home (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
06 Helpless (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
07 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
08 Everybody's Been Burned (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
10 Tell Me Why [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
11 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
12 Man in the Mirror (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
13 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
14 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
15 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
16 Black Queen (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
17 Bluebird [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
18 We Are Not Helpless - America's Children (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
19 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
20 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
21 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
22 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
23 Pre-Road Downs (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
24 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
25 Carry On (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
26 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
27 So Begins the Task (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
28 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
29 Chicago (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
30 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
31 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
32 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
33 As I Come of Age (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
34 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
35 Southern Man (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
36 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
37 Everybody I Love You (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
38 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
39 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CRbuc6Rc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/T9pNrz1WmydF5Tc/file

The cover image is from a concert at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit, Michigan, on June 12, 1970. The original version was black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program.

Little Feat - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 7-19-1973, Late Show

Yesterday, I posted Little Feat's early show at the Ebbets Field venue in Denver, in 1973. This is the late show.

As I mentioned in my write-up for the early show, it seems this one was the one that was actually broadcast live on a local radio station at the time. The emcee at the end of the early show told the people leaving they could hear the late show with their car radios as they drove home. But this show lacks the usual expected encore because the band was opening for Zephyr, and had run out of time. (Zephyr broke up around 1970, but did a few reunion shows in the Denver area around this time.)

There's some overlap in song selection between the early shows and late shows, with five songs being played in both. But five songs were only played in the early show: "Hamburger Midnight," "On Your Way Down," "Willin'," "Cold, Cold, Cold," and "Fat Man in the Bathtub." Meanwhile, six songs were only played in the late show: "A Apolitical Blues," "The Fan," "Texas Rose Cafe," "Snakes on Everything," "Cat Fever," and "Sailin' Shoes."

This album is an hour long.

01 talk (Little Feat)
02 A Apolitical Blues (Little Feat)
03 Two Trains (Little Feat)
04 Got No Shadow (Little Feat)
05 The Fan (Little Feat)
06 talk (Little Feat)
07 Texas Rose Cafe (Little Feat)
08 talk (Little Feat)
09 Snakes on Everything (Little Feat)
10 talk (Little Feat)
11 Cat Fever (Little Feat)
12 talk (Little Feat)
13 Walkin' All Night (Little Feat)
14 talk (Little Feat)
15 Sailin' Shoes (Little Feat)
16 Dixie Chicken (Little Feat)
17 Tripe Face Boogie (Little Feat)
18 talk (Little Feat)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4Ca8kMnq

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Cor6zSPJrrheyHK/file

The cover image focusing on band member Lowell George is from an episode of the "Midnight Special" TV show, broadcast on August 9, 1974. I wanted to have a picture of the band in 1973, but there were surprisingly few of those, and none that were very good. I used the same source for the early show.

Covered: Neil Young: Alternates, Volume 1: 1966-2001 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Back in March 2026, I posted no less than ten volumes of the "Covered" series for Neil Young. Surely, you'd think, that's enough. Ten volumes is more than any of the other dozens of artists in the "Covered" series. But no, there's more! In making those ten albums, guest posted Fabio from Rio did most of the hard work, collecting hundreds of different cover versions, and presenting them to me in an organized fashion. But I did most of the selecting of which songs made the final cut. This, by contrast, represents Fabio's choices for the best of the rest. I had a little say, but just a song or two here and there where I suggested a different version or something like that. 

Fabio found enough for four volumes of "Covered" alternates. Here's the first one. Across these four volumes, about half the songs are different versions of songs that were included on the previously posted ten Neil Young "Covered" volumes. But the other half are songs that didn't feature on those volumes at all.

Fabio has written some liner notes, which are included in the download zip. But since these volumes are more like an addendum to those earlier ten volumes, he wrote just one essay for all four volumes, without song-by-song explanations.

For some musical acts in the "Covered" series, they had a lot of hits, and the choices of which covers to pick is pretty straight forward - the hit versions. But with Neil Young, it was much more subjective, since there have been tons of covers, but very few hits. So one person's trash is another person's treasure. You may well like some of these better. 

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 Flying on the Ground Is Wrong (Guess Who)
02 Down to the Wire (Yellow Hand)
03 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Carpenters)
04 Down by the River (Buddy Miles)
05 Til the Morning Comes (Francoise Hardy)
06 I Believe in You (Linda Ronstadt)
07 Hold Back the Tears (Jessi Colter)
08 Revolution Blues (Band of Blacky Ranchette)
09 Already One (Aaron Springfield)
10 Human Highway (Jim Witter & Cassandra Vasik)
11 Borrowed Tune (Marc Jordan)
12 Pushed It Over the End (Rich Hand)
13 Big Time (Black Crowes)
14 The Old Laughing Lady (Stereophonics)
15 Motion Pictures (Mercury Rev)
16 Mellow My Mind (Hederos & Hellberg)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kra1ih4k

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yfTyPoRmZ7KvcBd/file

The cover image is from 1969 or 1970. It was taken from a black and white photo of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

Little Feat - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 7-19-1973, Early Show

Next up from the Ebbets Fields radio broadcasts is Little Feat. They did an early show and a late show, so naturally I'm starting with the early show.

I've already posted a couple of Little Feat albums, so I won't say much more about them here. But note that this was from relatively early in the band's history, before they became very famous. Near the start of 1973, they released their third album, "Dixie Chicken." It was their first album to go Gold in the U.S., which means sales of half a million. But I'm guessing most of those sales didn't happen until later, when the band's growing popularity caused some people to discover their earlier albums, because the album didn't make the charts at all.

Interestingly, you can hear by the emcee speaking at the end of this recording that the band was actually the opening act for Zephyr. (They probably were much less well know nationwide, but they were based in Denver and played there a lot, so they were local favorites.) Also, it seems only the late show sets of both Little Feat and Zephyr were actually broadcast on the radio. But somehow this recording survived too, probably due to Little Feat's later fame. 

In fact, I'd say these early and late shows by Little Feat are some of the most popular of all the Ebbets Fields recordings. There are very few concert recordings of this sound quality from this early in the band's career. But the recordings, going under names like "American Cutie" and "Late Night Truck Stop," are grey market releases. That means they exploit a loophole in European copyright law allowing for their legal sale in Europe, but the musical act doesn't get any of the profits. 

This album is 54 minutes long. 

01 Hamburger Midnight (Little Feat)
02 Got No Shadow (Little Feat)
03 talk (Little Feat)
04 On Your Way Down (Little Feat)
05 talk (Little Feat)
06 Walkin' All Night (Little Feat)
07 talk (Little Feat)
08 Two Trains (Little Feat)
09 talk (Little Feat)
10 Willin' (Little Feat)
11 talk (Little Feat)
12 Cold, Cold, Cold (Little Feat)
13 Dixie Chicken (Little Feat)
14 Tripe Face Boogie (Little Feat)
15 talk (Little Feat)
16 Fat Man in the Bathtub (Little Feat)
17 talk (Little Feat)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rRobHZAk 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/hPVtW7HbErXX0zn/file

The cover image focusing on band member Lowell George is from an episode of the "Midnight Special" TV show, broadcast on August 9, 1974. I wanted to have a picture of the band in 1973, but there were surprisingly few of those, and none that were very good.

Alan Price with Georgie Fame - BBC Sessions, Volume 8: Alan Price, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Britain, 12-22-1980

Here's another album of Alan Price performing for the BBC. I found four episodes of a short T.V. series he did in 1980, simply called "Alan Price." This is the fourth and last of those. 

This one has a pretty prominent guest role for Georgie Fame, who was in a musical duo with Price in the early 1970s. The three songs they did together here was enough for me to credit this to "Alan Price with Georgie Fame." Linda Taylor also was a part of two duets. She featured in one of the earlier episodes, the one I turned into "Volume 6."

Each of the four episodes from this show had a musical theme. I'll bet you couldn't figure out this one, just from the song titles. Basically, the theme was "great songwriters." More specifically, Price said in his banter, "We're going to devote this program to some of the most significant composers of the last 15 to 20 years." 

That pretty much checks out. Here's the songwriters for each song:

01 Subterranean Homesick Blues - Bob Dylan
03 Get Away - Georgie Fame
05 Saturday Night Fish Fry - Louis Jordan & Ellis Walsh
07 Be My Baby - Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich & Phil Spector
09 Fire and Rain - James Taylor
10 American Pie - Don McLean
12 Reach Out, I'll Be There - Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier & Eddie Holland
14 You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' - Phil Spector, Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil

Georgie Fame and Louis Jordan are a lot better known for covering songs by others, but that's a minor quibble, I suppose. Most of the others have been featured in my "Covered" series, or will be eventually (knock on wood).

The last song, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," isn't actually from the same show as the rest. It's from another BBC T.V. show, "Fundamental Frolics," aired in 1981. But the song choice fits the great songwriters theme perfectly. Even the guest vocalist on that one, Linda Taylor, appeared on this same episode.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 32 minutes long. 

01 Subterranean Homesick Blues (Alan Price)
02 talk (Alan Price)
03 Get Away (Alan Price & Georgie Fame)
04 talk (Alan Price)
05 Saturday Night Fish Fry (Alan Price & Georgie Fame)
06 talk (Alan Price)
07 Be My Baby (Alan Price & Linda Taylor)
08 talk (Alan Price)
09 Fire and Rain (Alan Price & Georgie Fame)
10 American Pie (Alan Price)
11 talk (Alan Price)
12 Reach Out, I'll Be There (Alan Price)
13 talk (Alan Price)
14 You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' (Alan Price & Linda Taylor)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HEd73RjJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/4TdLLOA0KiphRqe/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from a video of this exact concert. Since Georgie Fame had a prominent role, I wanted to include him as well. He's the one in the light green jacket.

Klaatu - The Sampler Album (1976-2005) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's another Mike Solof guest post. This one came about because I was conversing with Mike, and the band Klaatu somehow came up. I mentioned that I'd heard of them, but I'd never gotten around to listening to their music. So Mike volunteered to enlighten me by making a sampler album containing what he considers the cream of their crop.

The band has a very unusual history. Probably their biggest claim to fame is that when their debut album came out in 1976, there was a widespread rumor that their album actually was a secret Beatles reunion album. Of course that wasn't true. But I can understand why some people believed the rumor, because the band had a Beatlesque sound. And I consider that a very good thing. If you like that style of music - and who doesn't? - you should give this a listen.

There's a lot more to this band and their history. But I'm not going to tell it here. For one thing, Mike has written extensive liner notes, which are included in the download zip, as is his wont. And you can also read Wikipedia for more:

Klaatu (band) - Wikipedia

I asked Mike why Woman is only a bonus track. Here's his response. "In case you are all wondering (and I know you all are) why I considered 'Woman' a bonus cut and not part of the main set, here's the answer (taken from Wikipedia): 'The trio very briefly reunited in 1988 at George Martin's AIR Studios in London with John Jones to record a single, "Woman," though no one was particularly happy with the results as the song was written by someone outside of the band (Paul Vincent Gunia) for the German television series Tatort. Initially, Long had wanted to merely use the Klaatu name, but could not get the rest of the band's approval without their involvement. The single was released only in West Germany and did not chart, making it an extremely rare item in the Klaatu catalogue; Draper confirmed that the song was considered for a few rarities compilations, but all three band members had agreed to not include the track.'"

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (Klaatu)
02 Anus of Uranus (Klaatu)
03 Sub-Rosa Subway (Klaatu)
04 Doctor Marvello (Klaatu)
05 We're Off You Know (Klaatu)
06 Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III (Klaatu)
07 Around the Universe in Eighty Days (Klaatu)
08 Little Neutrino (Klaatu)
09 A Routine Day (Klaatu)
10 The Love of a Woman (Klaatu)
11 I Can't Help It (Klaatu)
12 True Life Hero (Klaatu)
13 Knee Deep in Love (Klaatu)
14 I Don't Wanna Go Home (Klaatu)
15 California Jam (Klaatu)
16 All Good Things (Klaatu)

Woman (Klaatu)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vcsQKLJM

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/473QSPC1alBVbpl/file

Klaatu was a notoriously elusive band. For the band's first few years, there were no publicly available photos of them at all. They finally relented a bit in the early 1980s, when they briefly went on tour. So I think this promo photo dates from that time. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. Also, the background was just blank white. So I took some artwork of the pyramids from one of their album covers and put that in the background to make things look a little more interesting.

Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 4-4-1974

Here's another concert from the Ebbets Field radio broadcasts. I'm getting close to about the halfway point with posting these. This is the 33rd one, and I have about 35 to go. This one features Brian Auger and the Oblivion Express.

Auger found a lot of success in the late 1960s as part of a musical group with the unwieldy name of "Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity." But Driscoll left in 1969, and the Trinity disbanded shortly after that. In 1970, Auger formed the Oblivion Express. Without a soulful female singer fronting most of the songs, this new band went in more of a jazz rock direction, with more instrumentals. Still, most of the songs here have lead vocals, generally sung by Auger.

Here's the Wikipedia page for Auger. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a lot to say about this phase of his career:

Brian Auger - Wikipedia 

In 1973, the band has a commercial break through, thanks to a minor hit, "Happiness Is Just Around the Bend." This concert was part of a tour promoting the band's album "Straight Ahead," released a month earlier.

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express)
02 talk (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express)
03 Beginning Again (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express)
04 talk (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express)
05 Don't Look Away (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express)
06 talk (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express)
07 Freedom Jazz Dance (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express)
08 talk (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express)
09 Happiness Is Just Around the Bend (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express)
10 talk (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express)
11 Maiden Voyage [Instrumental] (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express)
12 Compared to What (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express)
13 Second Wind (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express)
14 Listen Here [Edit] (Brian Auger & the Oblivion Express) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qhkATZjP

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/n1MmI0x1dCke0BB/file

The cover image of Auger is from the Klaus Doldinger Jubilee at the Rheinhalle in Duesseldorf, Germany, on October 16, 1973. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program.

Alan Price - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: Alan Price, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Britain, 12-15-1980

This is the third out of four episodes of a short BBC TV series just called "Alan Price," starring Alan Price.

As I mentioned in the write-ups for the first two episodes of this show, each episode had a special musical theme. The theme for this one was 1950s rock and roll. So none of the songs were written by Price. Also, each episode had special guests helping to sing lead vocals on some songs. This one has two, Bernie Stewart and Linda Taylor.

For the other albums of these episodes, I was able to find a song or two to add in as bonus tracks of sorts, since the episodes were only half an hour long. But I didn't find anything fitting for this one. So it's the shortest of the four. 

This album is 28 minutes long. 

01 Reelin' and Rockin' (Alan Price)
02 talk (Alan Price)
03 Johnny B. Goode (Alan Price)
04 talk (Alan Price)
05 Blueberry Hill (Alan Price & Bernie Stewart)
06 talk (Alan Price)
07 Great Balls of Fire (Alan Price)
08 talk (Alan Price)
09 Devoted to You - All I Have to Do Is Dream (Alan Price & Linda Taylor)
10 talk (Alan Price)
11 Let the Good Times Roll (Alan Price, Linda Taylor & Bernie Stewart)
12 talk (Alan Price)
13 One Night (Alan Price)
14 Not Fade Away (Alan Price)
15 talk (Alan Price)
16 Bony Maronie (Alan Price)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/muMh4CD5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/LciSLOw7PVRGTNx/file 

The cover image is a screenshot I took of a video of this exact concert.

ZZ Top - Hec Edmundson Pavilion, Seattle, WA, 12-5-1973

Yeay! I've mentioned previously on this blog that I've looked high and look for good sounding ZZ Top bootlegs prior to 1980, and come up empty. But I've finally found one worthy of posting. Mind you, the sound quality is not great. It's below my usual standards. The source is an audience bootleg, and there are issues. But I made a lot of improvements, and in my opinion, it's a worthy listen. But you may feel differently, depending on how tolerant you are about sound quality.

This recording has been circulating since 2021, but somehow I missed it. Or, more likely, I overlooked it back in 2021, because what one could do with audio editing was much more limited back then. But I recently came across it and decided it had potential. I ran all the songs through the MVSEP program multiple times, to get rid of muck and reduce or eliminate the crowd noise (except where appropriate). Then I ran the songs through MVSEP again, and split the vocals from everything else. I took just the vocals and used the Adobe vocal enhancer program on them. Also, for some songs where there was a lot of yelling and talking from the audience, I listened carefully and deleted just the "woo hoos" and such that I didn't like.

I feel the end result is a very noticeable improvement. However, one can only do so much the source material, so you still need to lower your standards somewhat. Some songs sound better than others. I was particularly pleased with how "I Just Got Back from Baby's" came out. That's a slow blues with a quieter dynamic than most of the band's songs. As a result, many people near the taper found it a good time to hold conversations. But I went through that one with a fine toothed comb, and got rid of nearly all of that. Now, in my opinion, that song could be taken for a soundboard recording. But, admittedly, I can't say that about most of the others.

I've left in a text file that explains how this recording came to be available on the Internet in 2021. It turns out the original taper mislabeled it as the band Black Oak Arkansas and forgot about it. Clearly, that person wasn't a ZZ Top fan. But, decades later, someone else went through that person's tapes and discovered this hidden gem.  

One last thing. Just one day after I posted this, a commenter named Bob listened to it and said the whole thing was running a bit fast. I'm not very good at detecting that sort of thing, but I'm taking his word for it. So he sent me a corrected version. The overall concert is now about 30 seconds longer than before, so the change isn't that big on any song. Still, thanks, Bob.

This album is 53 minutes long. 

01 Thunderbird (ZZ Top)
02 [Somebody Else Been] Shaking Your Tree (ZZ Top)
03 talk (ZZ Top)
04 Chevrolet (ZZ Top)
05 Waitin' for the Bus (ZZ Top)
06 Jesus Just Left Chicago (ZZ Top)
07 Feel So Bad (ZZ Top)
08 Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers (ZZ Top)
09 I Just Got Back from Baby's (ZZ Top)
10 Rattlesnake Shake (ZZ Top)
11 La Grange (ZZ Top)
12 Let's Go Get Stoned - Backdoor Love Affair (ZZ Top)
13 Mellow Down Easy - Boogie Chillen (ZZ Top)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/U13tb5RC

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/gDqvwQTprAzqkQl/file

Who the heck are those guys on the album cover? Believe it or not, that's Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill of ZZ Top! The two of them became known for their extremely long beards. But in 1973, Hill, on bass, had a relatively short beard, while Gibbons, on guitar, was clean shaven. The pictures of them in 1974 show Gibbons grew a beard about as long as the one Hill had at the time. They didn't grow their beards long until the late 1970s.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the photo was taken at Memorial Auditorium in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on October 23, 1973. Also, if you look carefully at the drum set, you can see drummer Frank Beard in there.

Brewer & Shipley - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 3-28-1974

Here's another Ebbets Field radio broadcast concert. This one stars the singer-songwriter duo Brewer and Shipley.

Here's the intro to their Wikipedia entry: 

"Brewer & Shipley were an American folk rock duo who enjoyed their peak success in the late 1960s through the 1970s. The duo consisted of singer-songwriters Mike Brewer and Tom Shipley. They were known for their intricate guitar work, vocal harmonies, and socially conscious lyrics which reflected the concerns of their generation - especially the Vietnam War, and the struggles for personal and political freedom. Their greatest commercial success was the song 'One Toke Over the Line' from their 1970 album 'Tarkio.' They had two other singles on the Billboard charts: 'Tarkio Road' (1970) and 'Shake Off the Demon' (1971)."

Here's the link to the whole entry: 

Brewer & Shipley - Wikipedia 

This is an acoustic performance, with just Brewer and Shipley singing and playing guitars. 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and one minute long.

01 talk (Brewer & Shipley)
02 See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (Brewer & Shipley)
03 talk (Brewer & Shipley)
04 Black Sky (Brewer & Shipley)
05 talk (Brewer & Shipley)
06 Oh, Mommy (Brewer & Shipley)
07 Tarkio Road (Brewer & Shipley)
08 talk (Brewer & Shipley)
09 How Are You (Brewer & Shipley)
10 Indian Summer - To Love Somebody (Brewer & Shipley)
11 Shake Off the Demon (Brewer & Shipley)
12 talk (Brewer & Shipley)
13 All Along the Watchtower (Brewer & Shipley)
14 Yankee Lady (Brewer & Shipley)
15 talk (Brewer & Shipley)
16 One Toke Over the Line (Brewer & Shipley)
17 talk (Brewer & Shipley)
18 Witchi-Tai-To (Brewer & Shipley)
19 talk (Brewer & Shipley)
20 Fifty States of Freedom (Brewer & Shipley)
21 talk by emcee (Brewer & Shipley) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZHCkvfFS

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/kE35gB3qGsfpEOi/file 

The cover image is from the "Midnight Special" T.V. show, aired on June 29, 1973. Brewer is the one in a blue shirt, and Shipley is the one with a beard and a red shirt.

Bowie Improvement

When I posted a David Bowie 1990 BBC concert back in 2022, the sound quality had issues. Yesterday, a commenter named Captcrunch pointed out a better sounding version. So I replaced the whole thing. It sounds significantly better now. I speak of this one:

David Bowie - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: In Concert, Milton Keynes National Bowl, Milton Keynes, Britain, 8-5-1990

Here's the link to the improved version:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/07/david-bowie-bbc-sessions-volume-7-in.html

Thanks to Captcrunch. And if anyone else finds better versions of albums than what I've posted, let me know and I'll make the upgrade. 

Frank Zappa - 1971-1988 Strictly Commercial Live (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Guest poster Mike Solof has been busily slaving away in the salt mines, coming up with more albums to post at this blog. In particular, he's got a big Beatles project coming that hopefully will knock your socks off. Unfortunately, I've fallen behind getting some things ready to post, but hopefully I'll catch up soon. For this album, he came up with the idea of collecting live versions of all the songs on the Frank Zappa best of collection "Strictly Commercial."

I'll leave most of the explaining to Mike, in his PDF notes included in the download zip. But Zappa was well known for his lead guitar playing, and he's able to stretch some songs out here. For instance, the official album is about an hour and 17 minutes long, whereas this is almost two hours long. A lot of the difference there is with "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow." The official album has the three minute long single version, but this is a 20-minute-long live version of the entire suite. 

As is Mike's style, he's included a gapless single file of the album in the download zip, for those who prefer to hear it that way.

By the way, all the songs here feature Frank Zappa, except for one. His only Top Forty hit in the U.S. was "Valley Girl," in 1982. But that featured his daughter Moon Unit Zappa on lead vocals instead of him, and she was only 14 years old at the time. So it turns out he never performed the song before dying in 1993. But, much later, in 2010, his children Dweezil and Moon Unit performed the song in concert just once. So that's the version included here. But note the sound quality is a bit rough on that compared to everything else. It's one of only two unreleased versions (along with "Sexual Harassment in the Workplace)." All the others were chosen from the many dozens of official live albums.

This album is an hour and 56 minutes long. 

01 Peaches en Regalia (Frank Zappa)
02 Don't Eat the Yellow Snow (Frank Zappa)
03 Dancin' Fool (Frank Zappa)
04 San Ber'dino (Frank Zappa)
05 Let's Make the Water Turn Black (Frank Zappa)
06 Dirty Love (Frank Zappa)
07 My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama (Frank Zappa)
08 Cosmik Debris (Frank Zappa)
09 Trouble Every Day (Frank Zappa)
10 Disco Boy (Frank Zappa)
11 Bobby Brown Goes Down (Frank Zappa)
12 I'm the Slime (Frank Zappa)
13 Joe's Garage (Frank Zappa)
14 Fine Girl (Frank Zappa)
15 Planet of the Baritone Women (Frank Zappa)
16 Sexual Harassment in the Workplace [Instrumental] (Frank Zappa)
17 Tell Me You Love Me (Frank Zappa)
18 Montana (Frank Zappa)
19 Be in My Video (Frank Zappa)
20 Valley Girl (Dweezil Zappa & Moon Unit Zappa)
21 Who Are the Brain Police (Frank Zappa)
22 Muffin Man [Extra Guitar Mix] (Frank Zappa) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/424ohU9v 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/WWM2Cx8sAJ0funq/file

The cover art is by Greg Joens. The original version was in black and white. I colorized it (because I hate black and white covers) with the use of the Kolorize program.

Alan Price - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: Alan Price, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Britain, 12-8-1980

As I mentioned in the write-up to the previous album in this series, I found a short series of four televised concerts Alan Price did for the BBC in 1980. Here's the second out of those four. 

Each of the concerts had an overall theme to the song selections. For this one, the theme was "social commentary." Most of the songs fit that theme, but a few are a stretch. How does "Bridge Over Trouble Water" belong, especially? In any case, this meant that most of the songs were covers. Only one from the show, "Jarrow Song," was an original.

However, there's a bonus song of sorts here, "The Trimdon Grange Explosion," that is also an original. But it's from a different BBC T.V. show, "Fundamental Frolics," aired in 1981. I figured that fits well here, since it also could be considered a social commentary song.

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 32 minutes long. 

01 Power to the People (Alan Price)
02 talk (Alan Price)
03 Blowin' in the Wind (Alan Price)
04 talk (Alan Price)
05 Political Science (Alan Price)
06 talk (Alan Price)
07 Big Yellow Taxi (Alan Price & Linda Taylor)
08 talk (Alan Price)
09 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Alan Price)
10 talk (Alan Price)
11 Sunny Afternoon (Alan Price)
12 Imagine (Alan Price)
13 talk (Alan Price)
14 Jarrow Song (Alan Price)
15 The Trimdon Grange Explosion (Alan Price)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3tdqTEUs 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/zxpvn7o4FOizYmr/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took of a video of this exact concert. 

Les McCann - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 2-6-1974

The flood of concerts from the Ebbets Field venue in Denver, Colorado continues. This one stars soul jazz pianist Les McCann.

I'm not really into jazz, although there are some exceptions. For instance, I do like vocal jazz more than the all instrumental kind. I'm posting this because I'm trying to be post most of the Ebbets Field concerts I find, and McCann's fusion of soul and jazz is more palatable to me than straight jazz.

Here's some of what Wikipedia has to say about him: "[McCann] was an American jazz pianist and vocalist. He is known for his innovations in soul jazz and his 1969 recording of the protest song "Compared to What". His music has been widely sampled in hip hop. ... After the success of "Swiss Movement" (the album that contained "Compared to What"), McCann, primarily a piano player, emphasized his vocals. He became an innovator in soul jazz, merging jazz with funk, soul and world rhythms. His music was influential for its use of electric piano, clavinet, and synthesizer."

Here's the link to the entry:

Les McCann - Wikipedia

This concert contains a version of "Compared to What," McCann's surprise hit single. That song only reached Number 35 in the U.S. singles charts, but it sold over a million copies. So it was a slow seller, but ultimately reached numbers expected of a song that got close to the top of the charts. And it became a classic, with over 200 cover versions. The song was actually written by Gene McDaniels, although McCann released the first version of it, back in 1966.

When I first posted this, I didn't know the names of some of the song titles. But a commenter named Nick quickly straightened me out, so I was able to fix the names within hours of posting. Thanks, Nick.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 58 minutes long. 

01 Talk to the People (Les McCann)
02 Beaux J. Poo Boo [Instrumental] (Les McCann)
03 Soaring [At Dawn] (Les McCann)
04 North Carolina [Instrumental] (Les McCann)
05 Compared to What (Les McCann)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1UpuaZdx

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/IW7m0BXT4l0uIls/file

The cover photo is from the Newport Jazz Festival in 1974. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. 

Covered Covers

I recently announced that I've updated all the links for the 150 or so "Covered" albums. And I mentioned that I made changes to many of the album covers for them while I was at it. 

The changes were mostly pretty minor, to be honest. A lot of it was standardizing the size of the text. And, for instance, for some albums, I wrote "The Best Of" and others I just wrote "Best Of." So I standardized that kind of thing as well. But I did make changes to the pictures too. I even replaced some of the pictures entirely, for instance for two of the Bacharach and David volumes. 

So, if any of that matters to you, redownloading 150 plus albums is a big pain in the ass. I got a request today by a commenter named Private Beach to make just the changed covers available. I decided that was reasonable. Thus, here's a zip file with all of the 150 or so album covers. Not all of them were changed, but the vast majority were (if only in subtle ways).

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZajSf728

But note that if you download this, you still have to put each one of them in with the albums they belong to. 

John Hartford, Joni Mitchell & Pete Seeger - Gentle on Your Mind, KCOP-TV Studios, Los Angeles, CA, 10-18-1970

Here's a really nice find I luckily stumbled across recently. It's the audio from a 1970 musical T.V. special that featured John Hartford, Joni Mitchell, and Pete Seeger in roughly equal amounts. (Technically, the special was called "John Hartford, Joni Mitchell & Pete Seeger - Gentle on Your Mind," but I cut it down to just "Gentle on Your Mind" because really long album titles can cause problems for PC users.)

I wish I knew more about this T.V. show, but I could find very little about it other than this audio recording, plus one photo. And even that photo, which I used for the cover art, was taken from a newspaper clipping. So apparently none of the film footage survives, at least not in the public domain. 

The official Joni Mitchell website is normally extremely comprehensive about anything relating to her. But even that site has very little about this show. However, if you go to this link, you cansee the one photo I'm talking about (before I colorized it and used Krea AI to fill in some detail):

Joni Mitchell - 1970.10.18 | Gentle On My Mind KCOP-TV | Los Angeles

There are some nice surprises in this special. One is having Mitchell sing two songs with Seeger and one song with Hartford. "The Water Is Wide" was mostly Seeger, with Mitchell generally singing wordless backing vocals. But "Both Sides Now" was a proper duet. Seeger even wrote some nice new lyrics and sang those. And it was also great to hear Mitchell sing "Mr. Tambourine Man" with Hartford, especially since it's a Bob Dylan song that she very rarely sang.

Another nice surprise is that Mitchell performed "A Case of You" from her 1971 classic album "Blue" nearly a year before that album was released. So this was an early version, and it turned out a lot of the lyrics were changed by the time the album version came out. I actually prefer some of these lyrics (though some other changes were clear improvements). I particularly like "I'm frightened by the devil, and I'm scared to death by saints." (It was later changed to "I'm frightened by the devil, and I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid.")

Hartford also sang an original song he didn't release at the time, "Sunshine Lady, You Really Know How to Slow a Man Down." It eventually came out on an archival release, "Radio John," in 2002. 

This recording sounds pretty good considering how long it's been since the broadcast, though I couldn't call it "excellent." But there was one big problem with the recording: the applause for many of the songs were cut off. Probably, that's how it was in the original broadcast, due to the usual practice of quickly cutting to commercial breaks. I fixed that by patching in extra cheering that I took from the ends of other songs. 

Also, there's no banter included whatsoever. I'm sure there was some in the original broadcast. In fact, there were a few words said by Seeger before one of the songs, but I cut that out because it was literally just a few words, a mere sentence fragment. It would have been great to hear Hartford, Mitchell, and Seeger all talking to each other. But hey, at least we have the music.

The music is unreleased.  

This album is 48 minutes long. 

01 Frustrated Bird (John Hartford)
02 In Tall Buildings (John Hartford)
03 A Case of You (Joni Mitchell)
04 Bring Me Little Water (Pete Seeger)
05 Orange Blossom Special [Instrumental Version] (John Hartford)
06 Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell & Pete Seeger)
07 Willy (Joni Mitchell)
08 [He Played Real Good] For Free (Joni Mitchell)
09 A Simple Thing as Love (John Hartford)
10 Sunshine Lady, You Really Know How to Slow a Man Down (John Hartford)
11 The Water Is Wide (Joni Mitchell with Pete Seeger)
12 Mr. Tambourine Man (Joni Mitchell & John Hartford)
13 Letter to Eve [Edit] (Pete Seeger) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jjUYyFhP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/LImWqWn09DQyBVQ/file

As mentioned above, the image is the sole picture I could find that is actually from this exact performance. It's too bad Pete Seeger isn't shown as well. And, also as I mentioned above, I colorized it (using the Kolorize program) as well, and then increased the detail with the Krea AI program. 

Alan Price - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Alan Price, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Britain, 12-1-1980

Once upon a time, back in 2022, I started posting BBC albums for Alan Price. I had plans to post two such albums for him, which seemed about right for his level of popularity. Then I found two more, and posted those. And I found two more BBC albums with him and Georgie Fame as a duo, and posted them as well. I thought that was a lot, more than expected. But now, I've found FOUR more BBC volumes for him! Here's the first of those four.

The reason I found four more albums from him all at once is that it turns out he was the star of a four part T.V. series for the BBC in 1980, and good copies have survived until today. Each episode consisted of a half an hour-long concert and nothing else. Furthermore, each of the episodes had specific musical themes. So Price played songs that fit those themes instead of his own songs. I believe that, between the four episodes, he only sang one of his songs. I don't know when the episodes were filmed exactly (I'm using the broadcast dates, since that's all I know), but they were broadcast on consecutive weeks.

This first episode had the theme of "Black music." That's pretty damn broad and vague, but hey, I didn't come up with the themes. In any case, it gave Price an excuse to sing some of his favorite songs from various genres, so that's what he did here. And one feature of these episodes is that each one featured at least one other guest singer. Madeline Bell was the choice this time, singing prominently on two of the songs.

The last song, "The House of the Rising Sun," isn't actually from this concert. But I found a version of Price singing the song on another BBC T.V. show ("Jeremy Taylor"), earlier in 1980. I stuck it on this album, instead of some of the other episodes, because I have other bonus tracks for some of them, and it fits the theme... maybe. I say "maybe" because nobody knows who actually wrote "House of the Rising Sun" or where it came from. The earliest versions go back to the 1920s, but apparently those are based on still earlier versions from the 1800s. So we don't know if it was originally written by a Black person or not. But it fits into the general Black blues tradition, in any case. 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 33 minutes long. 

01 Introduction [Instrumental] (Alan Price)
02 Sir Duke (Alan Price)
03 talk (Alan Price)
04 A Stranger's Lament (Alan Price)
05 talk (Alan Price)
06 Beat Out a Rhythm on a Drum (Alan Price & Madeline Bell)
07 talk (Alan Price)
08 Cherry Red (Alan Price)
09 talk (Alan Price)
10 Go Where I Send Thee (Alan Price & Madeline Bell)
11 talk (Alan Price)
12 What'd I Say (Alan Price)
13 Keep a-Knockin' (Alan Price)
14 The House of the Rising Sun (Alan Price)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UfKvgz3Y

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/MzMWzLg9hJuATOT/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from this exact concert.

Terry Reid - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 4-1973

The Ebbets Field radio broadcasts keep coming, nearly one a day. Here's one starring singer-songwriter Terry Reid.

Reid, unfortunately, is best known for one bit of trivia: he passed on offers to be the lead singer for both Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple! In 1968, when he was given the Led Zeppelin offer by Jimmy Page, he had extensive touring commitments he couldn't get out of. So he suggested Robert Plant for the role instead, and the rest is history. And when Richie Blackmore asked him to join Deep Purple in 1969, he said their music was too heavy and not really his style.

The fact that both bands wanted him was a sign that a lot of people thought he was going to be a big star, one way or another. Unfortunately, that never happened. Here's the intro to his Wikipedia entry:

"[Reid] was an English musician, songwriter, and guitarist, best known for his emotive style of singing in appearances with high-profile musicians as vocalist, supporting act, and session musician. As a solo recording and touring artist he released six studio albums and four live albums. Described as an 'artists' artist' by Rolling Stone, Reid was recognized by his contemporaries as an eminent talent in English rock music, both as a guitarist and a vocalist. Robert Plant praised his vocal 'flexibility, power, and control' and Graham Nash was quoted as saying he should have been 'a gigantic star.'"

Terry Reid - Wikipedia 

There are very few live recordings of Reid, and this one was hard to find. So hopefully this will get around and add to his unofficial discography. By the way, he died in 2025 at the age of 75, which is why that paragraph was written in the past tense for him.

This concert took place when Reid was promoting his third solo album, "River," released in 1973. It got a lot of critical praise, but not a lot of sales. It put him more into singer-songwriter mode compared to his earlier, more rocking records. Some people compared the style of "River" to "Astral Weeks" by Van Morrison. That style of the album can be heard here, even for the songs not from the album.

I'm not sure if this concert was actually broadcast on local radio at the time, because there were some big issues with the recording. Overall, it doesn't sound as good as most of the Ebbets Field recordings, even after some changes I made. I had to make a lot of adjustments. The biggest was that I boosted the lead vocals dramatically relative to the instruments. But I made some other changes as well. For instance, a chunk of "Things to Try" was missing. Luckily, he played that song at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, so I used that to patch in the missing section.

I couldn't find any song list for this concert, so I had to figure out the song titles myself. This was difficult since I didn't have any of his albums prior to this. I had a hard time of it, since the sound quality meant the vocals sounded somewhat muffled at any volume. I think I got most of them right. However, I was totally stumped for one of them, which I just call "Unknown Title." If anyone knows the real name of that song, please let me know so I can fix it.

This album is an hour and 19 minutes long.

01 Rich Kid Blues (Terry Reid)
02 Without Expression (Terry Reid)
03 Live Life (Terry Reid)
04 To Be Alone with You (Terry Reid)
05 talk (Terry Reid)
06 Avenue (Terry Reid)
07 [Unknown Title] (Terry Reid)
08 Funny (Terry Reid)
09 talk (Terry Reid)
10 Things to Try [Edit] (Terry Reid)
11 Dean (Terry Reid)
12 River (Terry Reid)
13 talk (Terry Reid)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kqist42S

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/rMFpswvfr9EWDSK/file

The cover image is from a concert at an unknown location on Jun3 24, 1973. The original was in black and white. I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

The Beatles and Various Artists (including Brenda Holloway and King Curtis) - Shea Stadium, New York City, 8-15-1965

Normally, I'm not that interested in recordings of Beatles concerts, because they generally played short sets with the same songs over and over again, and the sound quality is bad, with more screaming girls than music. But this is an exception, for three reasons. 

One: this was an incredibly important and historic concert. That's because it was the very first stadium-sized concert anywhere. The 55,000 person-sized crowd would remain the largest audience for any Beatles concert, and the largest concert in the U.S. by anyone until a concert by Led Zeppelin in 1973. After it proved to be a big success, stadium concerts have become a standard thing ever since. It also was highly symbolic, showing how the Beatles were a cultural phenomenon and the most popular music act in the world, by far. Even the cynical John Lennon later said, "I saw the top of the mountain on that glorious night."

Two: this is the only Beatles concert recording I've seen that includes the opening acts with worthy sound quality. So you get the full concert experience, complete with lots of local radio DJs and other emcees hyping things up. It's true the opening acts weren't the greatest, compared to other opening acts for other Beatles concerts. I'm mainly interested in King Curtis and Brenda Holloway. But still, all of them are interesting as a historical curiosity. Keep in mind that there are an extremely small number of concert recordings from rock concerts as far back as 1965, outside of the Beatles and a few other big stars. So we're very lucky to have the opening acts. 

Three: the sound quality is surprisingly good for all of it, including the Beatles set. That's surprising because most concert recordings of the Beatles are practically unlistenable, in my opinion, due to all the screaming. And we know this concert took the screaming to new levels. The Beatles were forced to use the stadium's P.A. system, which was woefully inadequate for the situation. That meant the Beatles could barely hear each other. For instance, John Lennon later said of the concert, "It was a happening. You couldn't hear any music at all." But somehow, this recording brought the crowd noise down to a normal, reasonable level. I've done a lot of audio editing of crowd noise for this blog in general, but I barely made any changes for the Beatles set. (To have no or very little crowd noise would sound weird as well.) Plus, the actual singing and playing by the Beatles sounds very good, considering the difficult circumstances. 

There's a lot more I could say about this concert. But I don't want to write a mini-tome. So instead, I'll suggest some links if you want to know more. There's no Wikipedia page just for this concert. So here's a page from the Beatles Bible website instead:

https://www.beatlesbible.com/1965/08/15/live-shea-stadium-new-york/

Here's a 17 minute long fan-made YouTube video that explains the story of the concert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sca-bR1b-qE&t=247s

And here's a Rolling Stone magazine article just about the concert: 

Why The Beatles’ Shea Stadium Show Is The Ultimate Pop Celebration 

Here's a Washington Post article from 2025, also just about the concert, written to mark the 60th anniversary of it. It has a lot of great photos and anecdotes, including extensive quotes for Brenda Holloway about her impressions of all of it:

The Beatles’ historic Shea Stadium concert, remembered 60 years later - The Washington Post 

Finally, and most importantly, here's the transcript of an interview of author Laurie Jacobson, who wrote an ENTIRE BOOK just about this one concert, called "Top of the Mountain." I highly recommend reading this one. It's not too long, and it's filled with interesting stories, for instance how Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were also at the concert, and what happened to them:

https://lovethatsongpodcast.com/the-beatles-play-shea-stadium-1965/

By the way, did you know a lot of then-current and future famous people were in the crowd of 55,000 people for that concert? Future Beatles wives Linda Eastman and Barbara Bach were there. So were Marvin Gaye, Bobby Vinton, John Sebastian, Ronnie Spector, and Mary Wilson of the Supremes. (Gaye actually got a brief mention by an emcee right before Brenda Holloway's set.) So were Joe Walsh, Steve Van Zant, Whoopi Goldberg, and Meryl Streep, all of them teenagers or younger at the time. (Streep held up an "I love Paul" sign.) And Bob Dylan did not attend the concert, but he hung out with the Beatles at their hotel after the concert ended. (He'd met them for the first time a year earlier.) 

Another aside. Some accounts claim that the Rascals, then known as the Young Rascals, performed at the concert. They did not. However, they did attend, and got prime seats in the third base dugout. At the time, they had signed a record contract, but were still unknown. Promoter Sid Bernstein wanted to hype them as the next big thing, and had the scoreboard sign flash the message "The Rascals are coming!" But Beatles manager Brian Epstein saw that and told Bernstein to stop it immediately, so it was stopped.

Now, let me address edits to this recording. I kept most of it, but I removed a song at the start called "Discotech Dancers Medley." It basically was a Muzak-like instrumental that played while a dance troupe called the Discotech Dancers showed off their moves. It was something I guess you needed to see more than hear. Also, there was very little cheering to be heard at the ends of songs for all the opening acts. So I generally upped the volume of the applause for all of those.

There also were extensive problems with most of the songs in the short set by Cannibal and the Headhunters. I did my best to fix those (which is why you see "[Edit]" in some song titles, but there was only so much I could do. The first half of "The Way You Do the Things You Do" is incomplete, and there's nothing I could do about that. There were the most problems with "Land of 1000 Dances," the band's sole hit, and the banter track right after that. I ran those though MVSEP multiple times to get rid of the strange crackling noises. Each pass got a rid of more, but I reached diminishing returns so I had to stop. It sounds a lot better than before, but there's still a lot of bothersome noise there.

The Beatles recorded this entire concert because they planned to make an hour-long BBC T.V. special out of it. And such a special was made, and shown in Britain in March 1966. However, there were a lot of flaws in the recording of the Beatles performance. For instance, Lennon's voice dropped out for one of the verses in "Help." I patched that using a different live version from 1965. Due to these problems, the Beatles went to a recording studio in January 1966 and completely rerecorded three of the songs: "Ticket to Ride," "I Feel Fine," and "Help." They used a different live version of "Twist and Shout." They also rerecorded other bits. For instance, Paul McCartney redid his bass parts for most of the songs. For Ringo Starr's vocals on "Act Naturally," they just patched in vocals from the studio version. This is the original recording of their concert performance, before the Beatles did their rerecordings (with the exception of the edit I made to "Help"). Perhaps I'll post that quite different BBC version of the concert at another time, since I like posting BBC stuff.

You can find a Wikipedia article about the BBC special of this concert, here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_at_Shea_Stadium 

One last comment. If anyone knows of any other recordings like this were the opening acts to the Beatles were recorded as well, please let me know. Like I said above, I'm just as interested in those parts as the Beatles' part, since there are so few live recordings of non-Beatles musical acts from this time period.

The music here is still officially unreleased, except for "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," which made it onto the "Anthology" albums.  

This album is an hour and 25 minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (King Curtis)
02 talk by emcee (King Curtis)
03 What'd I Say (King Curtis)
04 talk (King Curtis)
05 The Prance (King Curtis)
06 Soul Twist [Instrumental] (King Curtis)
07 talk by emcee (Cannibal & the Headhunters)
08 Out of Sight (Cannibal & the Headhunters)
09 talk (Cannibal & the Headhunters)
10 Now Lady Now [Edit] (Cannibal & the Headhunters)
11 The Way You Do the Things You Do [Incomplete] (Cannibal & the Headhunters)
12 talk (Cannibal & the Headhunters)
13 Land of 1000 Dances [Edit] (Cannibal & the Headhunters)
14 talk by emcee [Edit] (Cannibal & the Headhunters)
15 talk by emcee (Brenda Holloway)
16 Shake - [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Brenda Holloway)
17 I Can't Help Myself [Sugar Pie Honey Bunch] (Brenda Holloway)
18 talk (Brenda Holloway)
19 You Can Cry On My Shoulder (Brenda Holloway)
20 When I'm Gone (Brenda Holloway)
21 talk by emcee with outro (Brenda Holloway)
22 talk by emcee (Sounds Incorporated)
23 America - Fingertips (Sounds Incorporated)
24 talk (Sounds Incorporated)
25 The William Tell Overture [Instrumental] (Sounds Incorporated)
26 Instrumental (Sounds Incorporated)
27 talk (Sounds Incorporated)
28 In the Hall of the Mountain King [Instrumental] (Sounds Incorporated)
29 talk by emcee (Beatles)
30 talk (Beatles)
31 Twist and Shout (Beatles)
32 She's a Woman (Beatles)
33 talk (Beatles)
34 I Feel Fine (Beatles)
35 talk (Beatles)
36 Dizzy Miss Lizzy (Beatles)
37 talk (Beatles)
38 Ticket to Ride (Beatles)
39 talk (Beatles)
40 Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby (Beatles)
41 talk (Beatles)
42 Can't Buy Me Love (Beatles)
43 talk (Beatles)
44 Baby's in Black (Beatles)
45 talk (Beatles)
46 Act Naturally (Beatles)
47 talk (Beatles)
48 A Hard Day's Night (Beatles)
49 talk (Beatles)
50 Help [Edit] (Beatles)
51 talk (Beatles)
52 I'm Down (Beatles)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JXJAdAMN

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/NDfxXPlJ6q0RgxD/file

I had a lot of choices for a cover photo, since this concert was such a high profile event, with lots of photographers there. I chose this one, even though it only shows George Harrison and John Lennon, because they look so damn happy. I especially don't think I've ever seen any other photo of Lennon looking this overjoyed. When he later talked about the Shea Stadium concert being "the top of the mountain," this shows what he meant. 

And by the way, this photo was taken right at the end of the concert, when they were performing "I'm Down." Harrison and Lennon were especially amused and happy because Lennon had just played a short keyboard solo with his elbows.

Covered Albums

This is just a note to say that, over the past few days, I've updated all the links for all of the "Covered" albums posted on the blog so far. There are 154 of those by now, with more coming soon. I'd noticed that many of the links were from upload.ee, and are starting to die. So I redid all the album links, whether they were broken yet or not, to make sure there were at least two links for all of those albums. While I was at it, I also made some small improvements to the cover art for many of the albums.

This is a good moment to take stock of how that series is going. So far, I've profiled 75 songwriters or songwriting teams. I have about another 35 ready to go, cover art and all. I tend to drag my feet on posting those though, because I have to put more effort than usual into the write-ups for them. But I'm making a concerted effort to get to those lately. Some of the bigger names already finished include the Bee Gees, George Harrison, Gamble and Huff, Tom Petty, and Max Martin. 

But I also have plans to make albums for dozens more. A lot of those I haven't even started yet. For some, I'm getting key help from Fabio from Rio. Some of the ones where I'm getting closer include Bob Dylan, Ray Davies, Brian Wilson, Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Prince, and Willie Nelson. But there are many more than that on the wish list. 

If you have suggestions for songwriters I might be overlooking, and/or if you want to get involved to help pick songs, please let me know. In particular, I'd also like to deal with the great songwriters from the pre-rock and roll era, but I struggle with that since I'm not very familiar with a lot of that music. Thanks.

Various Artists - Covered: Dennis Lambert & Brian Potter: 1965-1985

A week or two ago (as I write this in mid-May 2026), a commenter named Rich had the excellent suggestion that I should make a "Covered" album for the songwriting team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. So thank you, Rich. They fit the format of the "Covered" series perfectly, because they had no careers as performers, but they wrote a lot of hits for others.

Lambert and Potter are a rare case of a successful trans-Atlantic songwriting partnership. Lambert was born in 1947 and raised in New York City. Potter was born in 1939 and raised in the Essex countryside of England. Lambert joined a record company in 1965, working in A&R, production, and songwriting. I'm not sure what Potter did at first (with him being almost ten years older than Lambert), but in 1965 he already had a big songwriting success, helping to write "What'cha Gonna Do about It," the first British hit for the Small Faces. Meanwhile, Lambert had a decent success in 1965 as well, co-writing "Do the Freddie," a hit for Freddie and the Dreamers.

Lambert and Potter met when Lambert was in London in 1969. The two of them decided to write songs together. They both moved to Los Angeles and began working with a record company there. One of their first songs they wrote together was "One Tin Solder." It made the Top Forty in the U.S. for the band the Original Caste. Then it would get higher on the charts in 1971 for the band Coven. Their first really big success together though was "Don't Pull Your Love," which was a Top Five U.S. hit in 1971 for Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds.

From that point on, they had many more hits all through the 1970s. I've only included the ones I like best here. There were others that were Top Forty hits. Their songwriting continued until about 1980. I don't know much about Potter's career, but it seemed he stopped writing songs around that time, because I don't find any more songwriting credits for him after 1980. 

However, Lambert kept going well into the 1980s, writing with others. He didn't have that many hits, but he had a couple of really big ones. He co-wrote "Nightshift" with a member of the Commodores, and the Commodores had a Top Five hit with it in both the U.S. and Britain in 1985. 

He also helped write "We Built This City." That song was originally written by Martin Page and Bernie Taupin (the latter being the main co-writer for Elton John). But their version was lacking something. So Lambert and a producer named Peter Wolf drastically changed it. (That's a different Peter Wolf than the one in the J. Geils Band, by the way.) The result was a smash, going all the way to Number One in the U.S. for Starship in 1985. Personally, I don't think it's a bad song, but it's hated by a lot of people, making several worst songs of all time lists by critics.

Since then, Lambert and Potter presumably both eventually retired. But both of them are still alive as I write this in 2026. 

Here's the Wikipedia page for Lambert:

Dennis Lambert - Wikipedia

And here's the one for Potter:

Brian Potter (musician) - Wikipedia  

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 What'cha Gonna Do about It (Small Faces)
02 Do the Freddie (Freddie & the Dreamers)
03 Delighted to See You (Honeybus)
04 One Tin Soldier (Original Caste)
05 Don't Pull Your Love (Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds)
06 Keeper of the Castle (Four Tops)
07 The Runway (Grass Roots)
08 Ain’t No Woman [Like the One I’ve Got] (Four Tops)
09 Love Music (Sergio Mendes)
10 Are You Man Enough (Four Tops)
11 Country Boy [You Got Your Feet in L.A.] (Glen Campbell)
12 One Chain [Don’t Make No Prison] (Four Tops)
13 It Only Takes a Minute (Tavares)
14 Open Invitation (Santana)
15 Don't Look Any Further (Dennis Edwards & Siedah Garrett)
16 We Built This City (Starship)
17 Nightshift (Commodores)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rrnJPb9s

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/oLZomJN7xtUUHiG/file

The cover image was the cover photo for an issue of Songwriter Magazine in 1977. That's Dennis Lambert on the left and Brian Potter (with the blue shirt) on the right.