The Flying Byrds Brothers Fly Higher

A few days ago (as I write this in mid-February 2026), I posted a 1970 concert in which the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Bros played extensively together. One commenter noted that there was recording of an earlier part of that concert with the same excellent sound quality. I looked into it, and found that recording, which indeed sounds as good as the rest. So I added it in. It extends the concert by 50 minutes.

Here's the link (or just scroll down a bit):

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-flying-burrito-bros-byrds-flying.html

This addition works out very nicely, because only one of these added Byrds songs, from the early show, was repeated when the Byrds and Flying Burrito Bros played together in the late show. 

Thanks to Psyclist for pointing out the existence of this extra material.  

The Steve Miller Band - Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco, CA, 5-11-1968

Here is an excellent Steve Miller Band concert from 1968 that I have drastically improved through audio editing. The source is a great soundboard bootleg, but there was one major flaw: the vocals were way, way down in the mix for most of the songs. In fact, they were so far down in the mix that it was almost like an all instrumentals version. I used the MVSEP program to bring the vocals back to their proper levels. So now, in my opinion, this becomes of the best live recordings of this band in the 1960s, if not the very best.

At the time of this concert, the band had only released one album, "Children of the Future," in 1967. Later in 1968, they would have a minor hit with "Livin' in the U.S.A.," a song from their second album. This concert contains a version of that song. Also, Boz Scaggs was still part of the band. He would leave in September 1968, just prior to the release of the second album. He would go on to have a long, successful solo career.

The band played at the Carousel Ballroom a lot around May 1968. I didn't realize this until recently, but in July 1968, the management of the venue was taken over by promoter Bill Graham, and it was renamed the Fillmore West. (I had thought the Fillmore West was just the Fillmore renamed due to there being a Fillmore East started in New York City around that time. But the original Fillmore was about a mile away, and also changed ownership and names.) Anyway, for some reason, there are a bunch of soundboard bootleg recordings of Steve Miller Band concerts at the Carousel Ballroom around this time, for instance on April 26, 27, 28, and May 10, 11, and 12. A lot of the other ones are incomplete or have other problems. Now that the vocals problem has been solved, I think this is the best one.

Actually, I did a lot of work on this recording, in addition to the vocals problem mentioned above. Another issue was that the recording captured very little of the audience noise, so it seemed like there was an odd lack of audience reaction at the ends of songs. To fix this, I ran many songs through the MVSEP program again, separating the crowd noise out, and then greatly boosting the volume. I also copied and pasted some crowd noise from one song to another where there wasn't enough crowd noise to use the other method. I made some other fixes too. There was a lot of annoying buzzing coming from one of the instruments on some songs. I made more edits to get rid of that. I didn't get rid of that entirely. But now there's only a little bit of it on a few songs. I did still more edits. As one example, the harmonica on "Just a Little Bit" was buried in the mix, but I fixed that by using MVSEP yet again. 

In short, this is way better than the previous version. But the original version had a lot going for it. One nice thing is that the lead guitar work is very prominent and clear. 

This actually combines two sets. The song "Living in the U.S.A." was played in both sets. However, the second version was cut off before it finished. So I chose not to include that one. That was a lucky break, that the one song that got cut off was the only one that was played twice. Also, this began with the song "Can't You Hear My Daddy's Heartbeat." But I didn't include that, because it was only the last two minutes out of an eight minute long song. It was played the night before, and since there's a soundboard recording of that, I tried to combine them, but the two versions were too different for that to work well. 

The recording I found ended with two unnamed jams featuring Steve Miller Band playing with Jorma Kaukonen and Elvin Bishop on lead guitars and Jack Casady on bass. I'm pretty sure this was some sort of backstage, after hours kind of thing, because there was no audience noise whatsoever. And there was several minutes of tuning and doodling between the jams that also had no hint of any audience. So I've included those as bonus tracks, since they weren't part of the concert.   

This album is an hour and 17 minutes long. 

01 Goin' to Mexico (Steve Miller Band)
02 Living in the U.S.A. (Steve Miller Band)
03 talk (Steve Miller Band)
04 Steppin' Stone (Steve Miller Band)
05 Blues with a Feeling (Steve Miller Band)
06 talk (Steve Miller Band)
07 Roll with It (Steve Miller Band)
08 Mercury Blues (Steve Miller Band)
09 talk (Steve Miller Band)
10 Sitting in Circles (Steve Miller Band)
11 talk (Steve Miller Band)
12 Junior Saw It Happen (Steve Miller Band)
13 talk (Steve Miller Band)
14 Me and My Woman (Steve Miller Band)
15 Feel So Good (Steve Miller Band)
16 Instrumental (Steve Miller Band)
17 I've Got My Eyes on You (Steve Miller Band)
18 Just a Little Bit (Steve Miller Band)
19 talk (Steve Miller Band)
20 Your Old Lady (Steve Miller Band)

Long Jam [Instrumental] (Steve Miller Band with Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady & Elvin Bishop)
Short Jam [Instrumental] (Steve Miller Band with Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady & Elvin Bishop)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Y7TAY7V5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/mhiVCLS5WseEoKW/file 

The cover is the concert poster for this exact concert. However, I made some changes. One is that I had to do some reshaping to get things to fit into a square shape. I kept the image in the middle unstretched, but there are parts that got cropped. Also, I removed the names of the supporting bands, which were right below where "The Steve Miller Band" is mentioned in the striped area. The other bands were Kaleidoscope and the Youngbloods.

Bettye LaVette - Blackpool International Soul Festival, Winter Gardens, Blackpool, Britain, 6-22-2024

Here's a really interesting concert by Bettye LaVette. I'm not totally certain, but I think it may be the only one like it she's ever done in her long career. In short, in this concert, she ONLY performed songs from the 1960s phase of her career.

As I've explained in other posts, LaVette pretty much had two music careers. She was a decently popular soul singer in the 1960s, but that career petered out in the early 1970s. Then, in the early 2000s, she had a career revival that has kept going strong ever since then. She ended up being more popular as a senior citizen than she ever was when she was young. 

Generally speaking, since her career revival began, she's only played songs from her recent albums, with only a few exceptions. The biggest exception is "Let Me Down Easy," which she plays at all her concerts. It wasn't a big hit at the time, but it's grown to be considered a soul classic, and her signature song. I looked up her song stats at the setlist.fm database website, and it's pretty clear that she's never performed the vast majority of these songs in concerts ever, at least not since the 1960s. 

I don't know what inspired her to do this. According to a knowledgeable commenter, the promoters hired her to perform this kind of concert, and even chose the songs. Even so, it's a pretty bold and challenging move, when she could have just rested on her laurels and played the same songs as usual. Keep in mind she was 79 years old at the time of this concert! Yet her voice was just as soulful as ever. 

I found this concert on Bettye LaVette's YouTube page. It hasn't gotten much notice there, and I haven't seen mention of it anywhere else. I did my usual thing of converting the video to audio then chopping it into mp3s. I couldn't find a song list anywhere, so I had to figure out the song titles myself. I got a couple of them wrong at first, but a commenter corrected me, so they should be good now.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality on this is as good as typical soundboard or FM radio broadcast. 

This album is an hour and four minutes long.

01 I Feel Good [All Over] (Bettye LaVette)
02 talk (Bettye LaVette)
03 Only Your Love Can Save Me (Bettye LaVette)
04 talk (Bettye LaVette)
05 I'm Just a Fool for You (Bettye LaVette)
06 talk (Bettye LaVette)
07 Your Turn to Cry (Bettye LaVette)
08 I'm Holding On (Bettye LaVette)
09 talk (Bettye LaVette)
10 You Made a Believer Out of Me (Bettye LaVette)
11 Ticket to the Moon (Bettye LaVette)
12 Stormy (Bettye LaVette)
13 talk (Bettye LaVette)
14 Almost (Bettye LaVette)
15 talk (Bettye LaVette)
16 Just Dropped In [To See What Condition My Condition Is In] (Bettye LaVette)
17 Hey Love (Bettye LaVette)
18 Let Me Down Easy (Bettye LaVette)
19 talk by emcee (Bettye LaVette)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/g8HeSdU8

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/nu0btV2FX0LhEfh/file

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

The Tubes - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 11-21-1974

Here's a concert by the Tubes for the "Live at the Record Plant" radio show, in 1974.

I have to admit, I'm not familiar at all with the music of the Tubes, other than a couple of their best known songs like "White Punks on Dope," "Talk to Ya Later," and "She's a Beauty." I've heard intriguing things, though. Although I've also heard that Tubes concerts were visual spectacles that needed to be seen as much as heard. The cover image gives a hint at just how theatrical and visually arresting they could be. Be that as it may, I plan to post most all the "Live at the Record Plant" concerts I can find, and this one randomly came up next.

The Tubes were formed in San Francisco in 1972. Before long, they were as much as performance art as they were about music. Their unusual concerts and music attracted a lot of fans, but they had trouble getting a record contract because they were so unusual. Thus, this concert took place when they had gotten pretty well known in the Bay Area, at least, but they still hadn't released an album, or even a single. Their debut album, "The Tubes," would come out in June 1975. 

Here's their Wikipedia page: 

The Tubes - Wikipedia 

The music here is unreleased, and the sound quality is very good. There's just a little crowd noise, since they performed before a small audience in the Record Plant recording studio. 

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 Up from the Deep (Tubes)
02 Space Baby (Tubes)
03 Malaguena Salerosa (Tubes)
04 Hermuta Bermuda (Tubes)
05 What Do You Want from Life (Tubes)
06 talk (Tubes)
07 Poland Whole (Tubes)
08 talk (Tubes)
09 Rock and Roll Hospital (Tubes)
10 Theme from 'Rawhide' (Tubes)
11 Mondo Bondage (Tubes)
12 Hip Dip (Tubes)
13 Boy Crazy (Tubes)
14 talk (Tubes)
15 White Punks on Dope (Tubes)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mzaAmPxM

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/cc3FcQcm2DgxOEN/file

I don't know much about the cover photo, except it's from a Tubes concert in New York City, around 1975. 

Brandi Carlile - Target Center, Minneapolis, MN, 2-21-2026

Here's a concert that I'm posting (on February 24, 2026) only three days after it took place. One thing that often stops me from posting recent music is sound quality. But this is a rare exception because the concert was broadcast live on a local radio station. That means the sound quality is excellent.

This concert had special significance because of the city it was taking place in - Minneapolis. This was a regularly scheduled stop on Brandi Carlile's national tour, planned months in advance. But with the battles between I.C.E. and the local populace in Minneapolis, Carlile wanted to broadcast this concert on the radio to help celebrate the successful resistance efforts there. It was also livestreamed nationally, and available for a fee for 24 hours. The concert thus raised $600,000 for a non-profit, the Advocates for Human Rights, who are supporting legal efforts of those detained by I.C.E. So good for Carlile! I hope more musical acts make similar efforts.

If you also want to donate to the same cause, here's their link:

https://www.theadvocatesforhumanrights.org/Home 

This concert got some media attention. Here's a Rolling Stone Magazine article about it, which mainly consists of an interview Carlile gave right after the concert finished:

Brandi Carlile on Resisting Trump, Protesting ICE in Minneapolis 

And here's another article with some further links and photos and so forth:

https://www.jambase.com/article/brandi-carlile-twin-cities-singing-resistance-minneapolis

The song list was pretty similar to other ones on her tour. It mostly consisted of originals, with a few covers thrown in: "Long, Long Time," "Viva la Vida," and "Uninvited." And just for the concert, it ended with "It's Okay to Change Your Mind," which had become a theme song for protesters in Minneapolis. For that song, Carlile was joined on stage by the Singing Resistance, which is a group of hundreds of locals who have been conducting singing vigils to help protest illegal actions by I.C.E.

I didn't change the music here. However, there were frequent interjections by radio DJs between songs to mention the radio station name and so on. I edited all of those out. And there was much longer DJ banter before and after the concert, plus during an unusually long break before the encore. I cut all that out as well.  

Thanks to commenter nytvf for suggesting I check out this concert. I might have missed it otherwise. 

This album is two hours and 22 minutes long. 

01 Returning to Myself (Brandi Carlile)
02 Human (Brandi Carlile)
03 talk (Brandi Carlile)
04 Mainstream Kid (Brandi Carlile)
05 Broken Horses (Brandi Carlile)
06 talk (Brandi Carlile)
07 A War with Time (Brandi Carlile)
08 talk (Brandi Carlile)
09 A Woman Oversees (Brandi Carlile)
10 Right on Time (Brandi Carlile)
11 talk (Brandi Carlile)
12 Who Believes in Angels (Brandi Carlile)
13 talk (Brandi Carlile)
14 Beginning to Feel the Years (Brandi Carlile)
15 talk (Brandi Carlile)
16 The Things I Regret (Brandi Carlile)
17 talk (Brandi Carlile)
18 You without Me (Brandi Carlile)
19 The Mother (Brandi Carlile)
20 talk (Brandi Carlile)
21 The Story (Brandi Carlile)
22 talk (Brandi Carlile)
23 You and Me on the Rock (Brandi Carlile)
24 talk (Brandi Carlile)
25 No One Knows Us (Brandi Carlile)
26 talk (Brandi Carlile)
27 Sinners, Saints and Fools - Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round (Brandi Carlile)
28 talk (Brandi Carlile)
29 Long, Long Time (Brandi Carlile)
30 talk (Brandi Carlile)
31 The Joke (Brandi Carlile)
32 Hold Out Your Hand (Brandi Carlile)
33 talk (Brandi Carlile)
34 Viva la Vida (Brandi Carlile with the Head & the Heart)
35 Church and State (Brandi Carlile)
36 Uninvited (Brandi Carlile)
37 talk (Brandi Carlile)
38 A Long Goodbye - Girl from the North Country (Brandi Carlile)
39 It's Okay to Change Your Mind (Brandi Carlile with the Singing Resistance) 

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

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/6DPGvIGjM5rq3hI/file

The cover image is from this exact concert.

The Loading Zone - The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA, 2-8-1968

As I've mentioned many times on this blog before, I think the late 1960s were a special time for music. It's my opinion that often even little known bands from that time were better than most bands that came later. I've been making an effort to post music from such talented less bands. Here's one: the Loading Zone. Although they never found critical or commercial success, somehow there's this one bootleg recording that sounds professionally recorded.

One thing that makes music of that time special, in my opinion, is that a lot of what was happening was brand new. The concert is a case in point. At the time, the Loading Zone were pioneering what would later be called "jazz rock." That would soon be made popular by groups like Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears. But "jazz soul" might be a better name, because there's a large soul element here.

The Loading Zone were formed in Berkeley, California at the start of 1966. In my opinion, they stood out by their musical talent, which was on a different level than most Bay Area bands of the time. Their lead vocals by Linda Tillery were a particular highlight. (Note that she had only recently joined the band in late 1967, but that's definitely her on this recording.) However, their weakness was they didn't come up with much original material. Thus, their self-titled debut album mostly consisted of covers. It wasn't that well received, being especially criticized for excessive production. Tillery left the band for a solo career in 1969. After some personnel changes, the band put out one more album in 1970, "One for All," then broke up in 1971.

Here's their Wikipedia page: 

The Loading Zone - Wikipedia 

In my opinion, the band probably would have been wise to release this concert instead of their debut album. It shows their musical talent without the overproduction issue. It's actually quite different from that album as well, with only three songs being on both: "Love Feels like Fire," "I Can't Please You," and "Kali Yuga-Loo."

By the way, it's frustrating that the recording ends with the emcee announcing that Arlo Guthrie would be on stage next. Too bad that recording doesn't exist (or at least hasn't been made public). Also, note that this took place at the Fillmore a few months before it changed its name to the "Fillmore West" (due to a "Fillmore East" opening up on the East Coast).

This album is 38 minutes long. 

01 Watermelon Man [Instrumental] (Loading Zone)
02 talk (Loading Zone)
03 Get Ready (Loading Zone)
04 talk (Loading Zone)
05 Call It Stormy Monday (Loading Zone)
06 talk (Loading Zone)
07 Love Feels like Fire (Loading Zone)
08 I Can't Please You (Loading Zone)
09 talk (Loading Zone)
10 The Monkey Time (Loading Zone)
11 talk (Loading Zone)
12 Kali Yuga-Loo (Loading Zone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ExpkS8BJ 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/nnUwUUvbmvCOi2M/file

I tried finding a photo of this band in concert, but I came up snake eyes. This was the best photo I could find, by far. It was used on the back side of their 1968 album, though more cropped than this. The version I found was in black and white (as it was on the album), but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. The only person I can identify is Linda Tillery, who is the Black woman in the leather jacket and cap second to the left.  

Bettye LaVette - Season of Change - Non-Album Tracks (2012-2017)

I recently came across a recent Bettye LaVette concert I was impressed by and plan on posting here soon. That reminded me that I've never finished posting a couple more collections of non-album tracks from her. So here's the next one.

As I've mentioned previously, LaVette has had an unusual career. She had some success in the 1960s as a soul singer. But then she struggled for a long, long time, only to have a big and prolonged career revival since the early 2000s. That revival gave her a lot of opportunities to appear in tribute concerts, on other artists' albums, and the like. This album is a mix of those sorts of things.

Tracks 6, 7, 8, and 11 are unreleased. All of them come from appearances at tribute concerts. Track 9 is a live performance too, but it comes from a deluxe edition version of one of her albums. For all these live songs, I used MVSEP to get rid of the crowd noise.

The other songs are all released, and from studio albums. The first two tracks here are actually from an EP she released, called "More Thankful, More Thoughtful." It consisted of extra songs from her 2012 album "Thankful N' Thoughtful." The rest (tracks 3, 4, 5, 10, and 12) are mostly from appearances on albums by other artists, and generally are duets.

By the way, in addition to getting this album ready for posting, at the same time, I went over her past non-album track albums and improved them. I added a song to the "Heart of Gold" collection, a duet with Joe Tex that only recently emerged on YouTube. Here's the link to that one:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/04/bettye-lavette-heart-of-gold-various.html

And for the album in this series previous to this one, "Change Is Gonna Come," most of the songs were unreleased live versions. I used the MVSEP program to get rid of the cheering, so they'd fit in with the other songs. I also improved the sound quality of two bonus tracks enough to add them to the main album. Here's the link to that:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/05/bettye-lavette-change-is-gonna-come.html  

This album is 52 minutes long. 

01 Long Time (Bettye LaVette)
02 Save Some Time to Dream (Bettye LaVette)
03 Most of the Time (Bettye LaVette)
04 Yours and Mine (Dynamites featuring Charles Walker & Bettye Lavette)
05 Hustlin' [In the Motor City] (Bettye LaVette)
06 I'm Only Sleeping (Bettye LaVette)
07 Watching the Wheels (Bettye LaVette)
08 I [Who Have Nothing] (Bettye LaVette)
09 Like a Rock (Bettye LaVette)
10 Make You Feel My Love (Will Porter & Bettye LaVette)
11 In My Secret Life (Bettye LaVette)
12 Season of Change (Stone Foundation with Bettye LaVette) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/H6yJnwZY

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/mikQeQOUG5CzXXL/file

The cover is from the "Robert Johnson at 100 Centennial" concert at the Apollo Theater in New York City on March 6, 2012.

Geno Washington - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Cambridge Folk Festival, Cherry Hinton Hall Grounds, Cambridge, Britain, 7-28-1990

Back in 2024, I posted an album of 1960s BBC studio sessions by soul singer Geno Washington. I thought that was all I'd ever post from him. However, I got this BBC concert from musical associate Progsprog. I'm pretty sure it has been publicly unavailable until now, because an Internet search doesn't even come up with a hint of such a recording. So, a big thanks again to Progsprog for sharing. 

Washington was an American who was stationed in Britain as a U.S. soldier in the mid-1960s. He began singing in clubs during his free time, and discovered there was a big demand for soul singers in that country. He had some minor hit singles. But more importantly, two of his live albums were huge sellers. What he did wasn't that original, especially since most of his songs were covers. He was very much in the mold of upbeat singers like Wilson Pickett, James Brown, and Sam and Dave. But he performed that style very well. Those live albums were big sellers because they contained fun music you could dance to.

Washington's career petered out in the 1970s, as styles changed. He quit music entirely for a time, and became a professional hypnotist! Then, in 1980, Dexys Midnight Runners had a Number One hit with a song they wrote about him, "Geno." That revived interest in him, and he resumed performing in clubs in Britain. He put out some new albums in the 1980s. But his bread and butter has been performing the same material he did in the 1960s.

I find it odd that this concert took place at the annual Cambridge Folk Festival, because this is upbeat soul. If this is "folk music," then any music is folk music. But never mind about that. It's a rocking good time.

By the way, I couldn't find any song list for this concert, or even for other concerts he did around this time. So I had to come up with the song titles myself, as I split a single mp3 file into pieces. I had to guess on some of the songs. If anyone has more accurate titles, please let me know. 

Oh, one last thing. Now that I have this "Volume 2," I renamed that 1960s BBC studio sessions collection I mentioned above "Volume 1." Here's the link to that:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2024/08/geno-washington-ram-jam-band-bbc.html 

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

This album is one hour long. 

01 Push It [Instrumental Version] (Geno Washington)
02 Hi-Heel Sneakers - Can I Get a Witness (Geno Washington)
03 talk (Geno Washington)
04 Gimme One More Piece of that Good Thing (Geno Washington)
05 talk (Geno Washington)
06 In the Midnight Hour (Geno Washington)
07 talk (Geno Washington)
08 Bony Moronie (Geno Washington)
09 talk (Geno Washington)
10 If I Wasn't for My Bad Luck (Geno Washington)
11 talk (Geno Washington)
12 Hoochie Coochie Man Blues (Geno Washington)
13 talk (Geno Washington)
14 House (Geno Washington)
15 talk (Geno Washington)
16 I Wish It Would Rain (Geno Washington)
17 talk (Geno Washington)
18 Respect (Geno Washington)
19 talk (Geno Washington)
20 Knock on Wood (Geno Washington)
21 I Can't Turn You Loose (Geno Washington)
22 talk (Geno Washington)
23 Push It (Geno Washington)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xZtuQ3AK

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/S4M36ujNBV1r3sY/file

Considering how obscure this recording has been, I was very pleasantly surprised to find a photo from this exact concert. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

The Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds - The Flying Byrds Brothers, Whisky-A-Go-Go, Los Angeles, CA, 9-19-1970

If you're a fan of country rock, this is a very special concert. The Byrds helped invent country rock in 1968. But a couple of key members left and started a new band, the Flying Burrito Bros, that kept developing the country rock sound. The various band members remained friends, however. So when they happened to be on the same bill together, they decided to merge their bands together for most of one concert. So that makes this concert very unique and special. But, even better, it was recorded with soundboard quality, despite still being unreleased.

By 1969, the main leader of the Byrds was Roger McGuinn. The Flying Burrito Bros were jointly led by ex-Byrds members Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, but by the end of 1969, Parsons had left, making Hillman the temporary leader. (He in turn would leave in early 1972, passing the leadership to others.) McGuinn and Hillman went way back, both being founding members of the Byrds in 1964, and they remained on good terms. So when their bands were on the same bill one night at the Boston Tea Party club in Boston in February 1969, they merged bands together for about an hour and a half. Unfortunately, there are no known recordings of that show. 

But then, in September 1970, they shared the same bill at the Whisky-a-Go-Go club for three nights in a row, playing two shows a night. For the first two nights, and the first show of the third night, they just did their sets separately. I have included the Byrds set from the first show. (If there's a Flying Burrito Bros set, I don't have have it.) Then, for this performance, the late show on the third and final night, they had something special planned. The Flying Burrito Bros did their second set as usual. Then, when the headlining act, the Byrds, came on, the two bands merged. And they didn't just perform together for a couple of songs. No, they were together for a full hour! They mostly played Byrds songs, since Hillman was in the Byrds from 1964 until late 1968, so he no doubt remembered many of them well.

At one point between songs, McGuinn jokingly suggested the name "Flying Byrds Brothers" for the merging of the two bands. That sounded pretty good to me, so I added it to the title and the cover art. 

It could be there were more Flying Burrito Bros songs at the start that didn't make the recording. The version I found started with the last minute of "The Train Song." I cut that because there wasn't much left of that song at that point, just one line repeated over and over. So it's possible there were other songs prior to that one before someone started recording. I'm not aware of any complete set list so we could check.

Also, it's possible that the Byrds set from the early show is incomplete. There isn't a clear start to the first song, with an introduction of the band, so there could have been more there. And the last song, "This Wheel's on Fire," was cut off about 30 seconds before the song ended. I patched that up by adding in the end from a concert in Ames, Iowa, a month later. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title. But it also suggests there could have been more songs after that cut off.

This album is two hours and six minutes long.

UPDATE: On February 26, 2026, a few days after I first posted this, I was told about all the Byrds songs from the first set, so I added those in. This addition works out very nicely, because the Byrds clearly tried to play all different songs in the first set than in the second set. There's only one song played in both, "You Ain't Goin' There." It's telling that the leader of the Byrds, Roger McGuinn expressed surprise at the start of the song that the other band members wanted to play it again.

01 Lover of the Bayou (Byrds)
02 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Byrds)
03 talk (Byrds)
04 I Trust (Byrds)
05 My Back Pages (Byrds)
06 B.J. Blues - Baby What You Want Me to Do (Byrds)
07 Well Come Back Home (Byrds)
08 Truck Stop Girl (Byrds)
09 Take a Whiff [On Me] (Byrds)
10 It's All Right Ma [I'm Only Bleeding] (Byrds)
11 The Ballad of Easy Rider (Byrds)
12 Jesus Is Just Alright (Byrds)
13 This Wheel's on Fire [Edit] (Byrds)
14 Payday (Flying Burrito Bros)
15 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
16 Wake Up Little Suzie (Flying Burrito Bros)
17 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
18 Colorado (Flying Burrito Bros)
19 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
20 Break My Mind (Flying Burrito Bros)
21 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
22 Trying to Reach My Goal (Flying Burrito Bros)
23 talk (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
24 Roll Over Beethoven (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
25 You Don't Miss Your Water (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
26 I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
27 Hickory Wind (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
28 So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
29 The Bells of Rhymney (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
30 Close Up the Honky Tonks (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
31 Time Between (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
32 Mr. Spaceman (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
33 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
34 Mr. Tambourine Man (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
35 Eight Miles High (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
36 Wasn't Born to Follow (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
37 Chimes of Freedom (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
38 talk (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
39 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
40 Hold It (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eoQ4idQm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/AIqu9SRH7L4DmF5/file

There is a photo of the Flying Burrito Bros and the Byrds playing in concert together in 1969. But to call it "low quality" is putting it mildly. It's about as bad a photo as you can imagine, with the people looking little more than black blobs. So I didn't want to use that. Instead, I kind of created a fake picture. This is a real picture of McGuinn (left) and Hillman (right) on stage together when they were both members of the Byrds. It was taken at the Grand Old Opry in 1968. But at that time, McGuinn kept his hair very short, and he grew it out by 1970. So I found a photo of him in concert in early 1970 and pasted that over his head in the original photo. I hope this comes close to what they might have actually looked like at this concert.

Also, the original photo was quite low-res and in black and white. I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. And I used Krea AI to help with the detail.

Various Artists - The Big TNT Show, Moulin Rouge, Los Angeles, CA, 11-30-1965

A few days ago (writing this in February 2026), I posted the audio to the "TAMI Show" concert. As I mentioned in my write-up, that's one of the all time great 1960s concerts, which was made into a movie in 1964. The people who made that movie basically repeated the formula in 1965 with this one, "The Big T.N.T. Show." Although this concert isn't as famous as the TAMI Show, I'd argue the star power and performances here are even better.

Just like the TAMI Show, what sets this apart from other musical shows on TV and the like is that there was no lip-syncing. Everything was done live in front of an audience. Actually, each act performed their set three times, and then the film footage from the best versions were used for the movie. 

By the way, technically "T.N.T." was an acronym for "Tune n' Talent," but clearly they just wanted to call it "T.N.T." for the "explosive" connotation, and then made up an acronym for it.

The idea was to use the most popular music acts popular with kids at the time. Musical trends had changed a lot in the year since the TAMI Show. One big change was that folk-rock was suddenly all the rage. So this concert had some folk music acts that had been lacking in the TAMI Show. In addition to folk rock like the Lovin' Spoonful and the Byrds, Joan Baez and Donovan performed in solo acoustic mode. One curiosity is that Baez sang "You Lost that Lovin' Feeling," which didn't seem like her type of song at all. But the music in the show was directed by legendary producer Phil Spector, and that's a song he actually co-wrote, so my guess is he got her to sing it.

Additional, some classic soul acts were included, like Ray Charles, Bo Diddley, Ike and Tina Turner. Country was represented by Roger Miller, and pop by Petula Clark. It was a very diverse line-up, with no repeats from the TAMI Show. 

It seems like this movie was commercially successful, as was the TAMI Show. So it's a shame no similar film was made in 1966 or after. However, I read one mention that the movie wasn't as successful as the TAMI Show. This was blamed on the fact that it was edited and released so quickly that there wasn't time for proper production. Remarkably, the movie was in the theaters by the end of 1965, less than a month after the concert!

Also, perhaps, with musical trends changing so fast, it grew too difficult to bring these many big stars together for one concert. These sorts of variety concerts with lots of acts performing short sets were rapidly fading away at the time, replaced by having just a couple of acts performing much longer sets.

Just as I did with the TAMI Show, I converted the video to audio format, then chopped it into mp3s. The sound quality was a little bit better with this one, so I didn't have to make any adjustments. 

Here's the Wikipedia article:

The Big T.N.T. Show - Wikipedia 

Here's an interesting article that discusses both this movie and the TAMI Show:

https://cavehollywood.com/the-t-a-m-i-show-and-the-big-t-n-t-show-out-on-blu-ray-dvd/

This album is an hour and 30 minutes long. 

01 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction [Instrumental Version] (David McCallum)
02 What'd I Say (Ray Charles)
03 Downtown (Petula Clark)
04 Do You Believe in Magic (Lovin' Spoonful)
05 You Didn't Have to Be So Nice (Lovin' Spoonful)
06 Hey Bo Diddley (Bo Diddley)
07 Bo Diddley (Bo Diddley)
08 500 Miles (Joan Baez)
09 There but for Fortune (Joan Baez)
10 Georgia on My Mind (Ray Charles)
11 Let the Good Times Roll (Ray Charles)
12 talk (Donovan)
13 You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling (Joan Baez)
14 Be My Baby (Ronettes)
15 Shout (Ronettes)
16 Dang Me (Roger Miller)
17 talk (Roger Miller)
18 Engine Engine No. 9 (Roger Miller)
19 King of the Road (Roger Miller)
20 talk (Roger Miller)
21 England Swings (Roger Miller)
22 talk (David McCallum)
23 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Byrds)
24 The Bells of Rhymney (Byrds)
25 Mr. Tambourine Man (Byrds)
26 You're the One (Petula Clark)
27 My Love (Petula Clark)
28 talk (David McCallum)
29 Universal Soldier (Donovan)
30 Summer Day Reflection Song (Donovan)
31 Bert's Blues (Donovan)
32 Sweet Joy (Donovan)
33 Shake (Ike & Tina Turner)
34 A Fool in Love (Ike & Tina Turner)
35 It's Gonna Work Out Fine (Ike & Tina Turner)
36 Please, Please, Please (Ike & Tina Turner)
37 Goodbye, So Long (Ike & Tina Turner)
38 Tell the Truth (Ike & Tina Turner)
39 1-2-3 [Instrumental Version] (David McCallum)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/dTkPhgcn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Kjs0z43hqpeffYb/file

The main picture in the cover art shows Tina Turner in this exact concert. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. The text and design at the top and sides are taken from a concert poster. I did some repositioning and cleaning up for those areas.

The Guess Who with Bachman-Turner Overdrive - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 1-3-1975

A few days ago (writing this in February 2026), I posted a Midnight Special episode hosted by the Guess Who in 1974. They did another one that was broadcast in very early 1975 (though it was almost certainly recorded in late 1974). So here it is. The band broke up later in 1975, so this was their last appearance on the show.

As I mentioned in my write-up for the 1974 Guess Who album, the band had their first big hit in a few years that year with the song "Clap for the Wolfman." Wolfman Jack, host of the Midnight Special, loved the song, since it was about him, and he had some spoken lines in the recording. He performed the song with the band in their 1974 appearance, and did so again here. In fact, he was so keen on the song that the episode began straight away with the song before the usual introductions, then it ended with a short reprise of the song! 

Note the band Bachman-Turner Overdrive didn't appear on this episode of the show. They were only on the show once, in 1973, and played two songs. This album was rather short, and I didn't think any of the other musical acts from this episode were a good fit with the Guess Who. But the key member of Bachman-Turner Overdrive was Randy Bachman, former lead guitarist of the Guess Who, so I thought that made a very good fit. Thus, I included their songs from an earlier episode on this album, even though that took place over a year earlier. 

Between this album and the other Guess Who Midnight Special album I've posted, the band played most of their best known songs, with no overlap. For instance, in this performance they went back to some earlier songs, like "No Time" and "Bus Rider," as well as playing some that were new for the time. The band's last significant hit was "Dancin' Fool," which was performed here. That was released in October 1974, and made the Top Forty in the U.S. singles chart. 

In case you're curious, the other acts in this episode of the show were the Spencer Davis Group, Montrose, and the Charlie Daniels Band. 

This album is 39 minutes long. 

01 Clap for the Wolfman [Edit] (Guess Who with Wolfman Jack)
02 talk by Wolfman Jack [Edit] (Guess Who)
03 Dancin' Fool (Guess Who)
04 Bus Rider (Guess Who)
05 Sour Suite (Guess Who)
06 talk (Bachman-Turner Overdrive)
07 Hold Back the Water (Bachman-Turner Overdrive)
08 No Time (Guess Who)
09 Diggin' Yourself (Guess Who)
10 Gimme Your Money Please (Bachman-Turner Overdrive)
11 Dirty (Guess Who)
12 talk (Guess Who)
13 Clap for the Wolfman [Reprise] (Guess Who with Wolfman Jack)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/DZi5uFTV

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/jdsQMVECCUsLdOl/file

The cover photo is a screenshot I took of a video from this exact concert. Wolfman Jack is on the far left, wearing a blue shirt. Burton Cummings is on the far right, playing piano and apparently wearing the curtains from his living room for a suit. 

Fleetwood Mac - Long Beach Arena, Long Beach, CA, 4-15-1973

The band Fleetwood Mac went through many personnel transformations, with only the bassist (John McVie) and the drummer (Mick Fleetwood) remaining constants. I'm interested in pretty much all versions of this band, because they remained consistently good despite all the changes. As far as live recordings go, I always though 1973 was a lost year. I couldn't find even one decent recording from that year. But recently (writing this in February 2026), I came across a worthy one. So here it is.

In 1972, the main creative forces in the band were Christine McVie on keyboards, Bob Welsh on lead guitar, and Danny Kirwan on lead guitar. By the end of 1972, Kirwan was out of the band. The band brought in two new members: Bob Weston on slide guitar, and Dave Walker on lead vocals. That's the line-up for this concert: Christine McVie, Bob Welsh, Bob Weston, Dave Walker, plus the two unchanging members, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood.

Walker, who had been the lead vocalist for the band Savoy Brown, was brought into the band because the band's manager thought the band needed a charismatic lead vocalist. However, he didn't last long. He was included in the album "Penguin," released in March 1973. But he only sang lead vocals on two songs, one of which he wrote. At the end of the tour to promote the album, he was ejected from the group. So, in the larger history of this band, Walker is a minor blip, only remembered for singing two songs on one album. But he actually dominates this concert, singing most of the songs. 

The band carried on with just five members. Later in 1973, the band released another album, "Mystery to Me." Shortly after the tour to promote that album started, it was discovered that Bob Weston was sleeping with the wife of Mick Fleetwood. The tour was immediately cancelled, and the band actually broke up for several months. When they finally got back together, Weston was gone. So this is probably the only decent concert bootleg out there prominently featuring both Walker and Weston. One can tell Weston's guitar playing since he pretty much exclusively played slide guitar.

Now, let me address this recording. This is an audience bootleg. I generally shy away from those, due to sound quality issues. But it was an unusually good one. The main problem was that the lead vocals were buried in the mix. So I used the MVSEP program to bring them back up. That made a big difference. I also ran MVSEP over all the songs again to get rid of the crowd noise during the songs. Furthermore, the banter between songs was hard to understand. I ran those tracks through the Adobe vocal enhancer program, and that helped a lot. After all that, I think this concert sounds almost as good as a soundboard boot from the time. 

The one disappointment I have in this concert is that McVie only sang lead vocals on one song, "Get like You Used to Be." That's curious, because the lead single for the album they were promoting at the time, "Penguin," was "Remember Me," a song written and sung by McVie. 

This album is 55 minutes long. It's relatively short for a concert, but that's because they were an opening act. You can hear right at the end how the emcee announces there will be a short break before the main act, Deep Purple, takes the stage. 

01 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
02 The Green Manalishi [With the Two Prong Crown] (Fleetwood Mac)
03 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Oh Well, Part 1 (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Get like You Used to Be (Fleetwood Mac)
06 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Night Watch (Fleetwood Mac)
08 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
09 Same Old Blues (Fleetwood Mac)
10 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
11 In the Country (Fleetwood Mac)
12 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
13 Rattlesnake Shake (Fleetwood Mac)
14 talk by emcee (Fleetwood Mac)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BfV3NdrW

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/IoeQxCwJoYsPsA1/file

The cover image is kind of a creative invention. I found a photo of band members Bob Weston and Bob Welch in concert in 1973, and another photo of Dave Walker in concert in 1973. I put them together in Photoshop. Both original photos were in black and white, but I colorized them using the Kolorize program. From right to left: Bob Weston, Bob Welch, and Dave Walker. 

Wilson Pickett with Edwin Starr - Rose d'Or Festival, Pavillon Montreux, Montreux, Switzerland, 5-3-1972

I keep coming across really interesting music on YouTube that doesn't ever make it to audio bootlegs. I keep trying to fix that. Here's another example. It's a Wilson Pickett concert from 1972. Edwin Starr is here too, but he only has a lesser role on one song.

In my opinion, the prime period of Pickett's music career was from about 1965 to 1973. When it comes to live recordings, surprisingly, there never has been an official live album from those years. And when it comes to bootlegs, there's only one well known one, which I've posted here at this blog, which took place in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1969. So it's quite nice to find this second one.

The sound quality is good, due to the fact that it was broadcast on TV. You can find multiple versions on YouTube. A couple of them have lots of little gaps of silence in the songs, but I was able to find a version without those.

This concert was part of a four-day-long festival. For this year, it was known as the Rose d'Or Festival, but it would soon be renamed the Montreux Jazz Festival, which continues until the present. Most years, this was held at the Montreux Casino, but it had to be moved for this year, due to the fire at the casino documented in the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water." I looked up the schedule, and Edwin Starr performed at the festival one day later, so it was easy for him to drop in on Wilson Pickett's set.

By the way, I think "I'm a Midnight Mover" turned into a different song halfway through, but if so, I don't know the name of that other song. If anyone does, let me know, and I'll fix the song list. 

Also, it's kind of hard to tell just when Edwin Starr was involved, since neither his arrival nor his departure was clearly announced. But he joined the song "People Make the World (What It Is)" right after Pickett asked if any members of the Rolling Stones in the audience wanted to join him on stage. (Either they weren't there, or didn't want to join.) Then Starr traded lead vocals through the end of the song. 

This album is 43 minutes long. 

01 Funky Broadway (Wilson Pickett)
02 People Make the World [What It Is] (Wilson Pickett & Edwin Starr)
03 I'm a Midnight Mover (Wilson Pickett)
04 I'm in Love (Wilson Pickett)
05 Fire and Water (Wilson Pickett)
06 Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You (Wilson Pickett)
07 Don't Knock My Love (Wilson Pickett)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6cTwjNTi

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/NExW4kGTp6meNAW/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from a video of this exact concert. That's Edwin Starr closer to the camera, and Wilson Pickett slightly behind him. Although Starr didn't have that big of a role in this concert, finding an image like this showing the top of them together was too good to pass up. 

Various Artists - The TAMI Show, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, CA, 10-29-1964

When I recently posted the 1964 NME Poll Winners' Concert, I got a request to post another stellar 1964, known as "The TAMI Show." Like the NME concerts, this has to be one of the greatest collection of musical talent on one stage in the 1960s. The TAMI Show was made for a movie, which was released at the end of 1964. But I haven't seen just the audio available. So I converted a video of the movie into audio and chopped it into mp3s.

There's so much to say about the TAMI Show. I'm going to try to be relatively brief. It seems some clever people decided that rock music was all the rage in 1964, so if they could get enough big stars together for a concert, it would make a profitable movie. They did, and it did. The result was a classic, regularly cited as one of the best music movies of all time. In 2006, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

The key about the concert is that all the songs were performed live, at a time when lip-syncing was standard for TV appearances. Jan and Dean emceed the concert. They also performed its theme song, "Here They Come (From All Over the World)", written by songwriters P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri. The concert brought together some British Invasion bands (Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, and the Rolling Stones) with Motown acts (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, and the Supremes), plus some other big names, like the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, and Lesley Gore.

The concert is probably best known for the performance by James Brown, and for good reason. The whole thing is worth watching, but especially his part. The Police even immortalized it in their song "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around," with the lyric:  

Turn on my V.C.R. 
Same one I've had for years
James Brown on the T.A.M.I. Show
Same tape I've had for years

In other words, Sting (who wrote that song) has a video of the TAMI Show, and is fascinated by James Brown's performance, watching it over and over. It's easy to see why. Brown's dancing is so extraordinary, it almost defies the laws of physics. He was moonwalking, and more, back when Michael Jackson was just a little baby. The lyrics are also interesting in that the TAMI Show was very hard to find for decades, generally only being available as a bootleg video, so that probably was an especially prized possession for Sting. It was finally remastered and rereleased as a DVD in 2010.

I worked from the DVD version, converted it to audio, and chopped it into mp3s. The sound quality isn't great, but it's as good as you could hope for from a 1964 concert. The lead vocals were rather low in the mix, so I used the UVR5 program to boost them relative to the instruments.

There was some controversy at the time whether James Brown or the Rolling Stones should be the final act in the show. At the time, the Stones had barely toured the U.S. at all. In fact, this would be only the third stop on their first big U.S. tour. But they were rapidly rising stars, enough for them to be chosen as the final act. However, James Brown wasn't pleased about that, and made sure to steal the show.

Mick Jagger, lead singers for the Stones, later said, "James Brown was probably the best thing about our trip. He is a fantastic artist. When you've seen him, you've seen the act to end all acts. We appeared with him on the TAMI Show and we had to follow him. It was a disaster in a way because nobody can follow James Brown, it’s impossible." Despite the competition, it was a friendly rivalry, and they were on good terms with him when they crossed his path at various times in later years.

By the way, the "TAMI Show" stood for either "Teenage Awards Music International" and "Teen Age Music International" - the producers were inconsistent about the meaning. The fact that they were inconsistent shows it didn't really matter much. Apparently, they just wanted an interesting sounding acronym. 

Here's a good article about the concert, written in 2025, if you want to know more:

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/teenagers-world-unite-2/

And here's the Wikipedia article:

T.A.M.I. Show - Wikipedia 

This album is an hour and 52 minutes long. 

01 [Here They Come] From All Over the World (Jan & Dean)
02 talk (emcee)
03 talk (Jan & Dean)
04 Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)
05 Maybellene (Chuck Berry & Gerry & the Pacemakers)
06 Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
07 It's Gonna Be Alright (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
08 Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry)
09 How Do You Do It (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
10 Nadine (Chuck Berry)
11 I Like It (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
12 That's What Love Is Made Of (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
13 You've Really Got a Hold on Me (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
14 Mickey's Monkey (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
15 Stubborn Kind of Fellow (Marvin Gaye)
16 Pride and Joy (Marvin Gaye)
17 Can I Get a Witness (Marvin Gaye)
18 Hitch Hike (Marvin Gaye)
19 talk (Jan & Dean)
20 Maybe I Know (Lesley Gore)
21 You Don't Own Me (Lesley Gore)
22 You Didn't Look Around (Lesley Gore)
23 Hey Now (Lesley Gore)
24 It's My Party - Judy's Turn to Cry (Lesley Gore)
25 The Little Old Lady from Pasadena (Jan & Dean)
26 Sidewalk Surfin' [Surfin' Safari] (Jan & Dean)
27 Surfin' U.S.A. (Beach Boys)
28 I Get Around (Beach Boys)
29 Surfer Girl (Beach Boys)
30 Dance, Dance, Dance (Beach Boys)
31 Little Children (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
32 Bad to Me (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
33 I'll Keep You Satisfied (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
34 From a Window (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
35 When the Lovelight Starts Shining through His Eyes (Supremes)
36 Run, Run, Run (Supremes)
37 Baby Love (Supremes)
38 Where Did Our Love Go (Supremes)
39 Hey Little Bird (Barbarians)
40 talk (Jan & Dean)
41 Out of Sight (James Brown)
42 Prisoner of Love (James Brown)
43 Please, Please, Please (James Brown)
44 Night Train (James Brown)
45 Around and Around (Rolling Stones)
46 Off the Hook (Rolling Stones)
47 Time Is on My Side (Rolling Stones)
48 It's All Over Now (Rolling Stones)
49 I'm Alright (Rolling Stones)
50 Let's Get Together (Rolling Stones & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vRghL7X4

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/IlezlVz2skiZmQ5/file

Since James Brown had the most renowned performance in this concert, I decided it was fitting to have a photo of him on the cover. That photo is from this exact concert. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. All the other text and graphics comes from original promotional material for the concert. But I used Photoshop to do some repositioning and other editing.

Aretha Franklin - Festival de Jazz d'Antibes, Juan-les-Pins, France, 7-21-1970

Here's a really nice Aretha Franklin from 1970, right in the middle of her peak era of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

There are very few concert bootlegs of Franklin from this time period. This is probably the earliest one, other than a 1968 Stockholm concert that I've posted at this blog already. She also released a 1968 live album. There's more live material from 1971 and 1972. But this helps fill a gap between the 1968 recordings and the ones from 1971 and after.

This definitely has soundboard-level sound quality. I don't know if that's because it's from an FM radio broadcast, or TV broadcast, or other, but it sounds as good as official live albums from this time period.

Note that two of the songs, "Put on a Happy Face" and "A Brand New Me," were sung by her back up singers. I believe one of those singers was Carolyn Franklin, her sister, who also helped her write some songs. 

This album is 52 minutes long. 

01 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Aretha Franklin)
02 Respect (Aretha Franklin)
03 [You Make Me Feel Like] A Natural Woman (Aretha Franklin)
04 I Say a Little Prayer (Aretha Franklin)
05 talk (Aretha Franklin)
06 Eleanor Rigby (Aretha Franklin)
07 Since You've Been Gone [Sweet Sweet Baby] (Aretha Franklin)
08 Tighten Up [Instrumental Version] (Aretha Franklin)
09 Put on a Happy Face (Aretha Franklin)
10 A Brand New Me (Aretha Franklin)
11 Dr. Feelgood [Love Is a Serious Business] (Aretha Franklin)
12 You Send Me (Aretha Franklin)
13 Spirit in the Dark (Aretha Franklin) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JmvpkgXc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/rkl5PP8I67WKvJE/file

I got lucky with the cover photo, because it's from this exact concert. It's the only one that I found. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program.

Covered: Billy Steinberg & Tom Kelly: 1980-2019

I don't keep a close eye on music news, but yesterday I happened to hear that songwriter Billy Steinberg died. Specifically, he died on February 16, 2026, at the age of 75. That probably doesn't mean anything to most people, because I don't think he's very well known as far as songwriters go. But it meant something to me, because I had already made a "Covered" album of the songs he and songwriting partner Tom Kelly made. (It's one of several dozen "Covered" albums I've made but haven't gotten around to posting yet.) Due to his death, I decided to post this sooner rather than later.

Steinberg and Kelly wrote a lot of hits from the 1980s to the 2000s that you probably know without ever knowing who wrote them. Even though they were male, somehow they had the most success with females covering their songs. They had five Number One hits in the U.S., all sung by women: "Like a Virgin" by Madonna (1984), "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper (1986), "Eternal Flame" (co-written with Susanna Hoffs and recorded by the Bangles in 1989), "So Emotional" by Whitney Houston (1987), and "Alone" by Heart (1987).

Billy Steinberg was born in Fresno, California, though his family moved to Palm Springs when he was a teenager. After graduating from college, he formed a band called Billy Thermal. However, they didn't have any success, and one album they recorded around 1980 wasn't released until decades later, after he made a name for himself as a songwriter. He had his first songwriting success with "How Do I Make You," which was a hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1980.  

Tom Kelly was born in a small town in Illinois in 1952. He went to a college in that state, but dropped out to pursue a music career. He was a backing musician for Dan Fogelberg in 1976 and 1977. He also did a lot of session work, for instance singing backing vocals on Toto albums. He had his first songwriting success with "Fire and Ice," a minor hit for Pat Benatar in 1981.

Both Steinberg and Kelly independently had songs on Benatar's 1981 album, "Precious Time." They met at a party that year, and soon began writing together. Previously, both of them had written lyrics and music. But they soon fell into a pattern where Steinberg generally wrote the lyrics while Kelly wrote the music. Their really big break as a songwriting team was "Like a Virgin" by Madonna. After that, they were in high demand. What's on this album is just the cream of the crop of the many dozens of songs they wrote for well-known musical acts.

Their partnership continued very fruitfully until the mid-1990s. At that point, Kelly tired of songwriting and dropped out of the music business. He'd already had enough success to live on the royalties he'd made. However, Steinberg kept going with new songwriting partners. From the mid-1990s until the mid-2000s, he mostly wrote with Rick Newels, who already was a successful professional songwriter. From the mid-2000s to about the mid-2010s, he mostly wrote with Josh Alexander.

Steinberg had a lot of songwriting success after he stopped working with Kelly. But I listened to his big hits and, to be honest, didn't like them very much after about 2000. They suffer the same problems as most popular pop music since about 2000: formulaic and forgettable. So I generally didn't include most of those. To be honest, even a lot of their earlier stuff was formulaic and forgettable, but sometimes, in fact many times, they had some real winners.

But in case you're curious, Steinberg's biggest later hits include "I Turn to You" by Melanie C (2000), "Love Doesn't Have to Hurt" by Atomic Kitten (2003), "Too Little Too Late" by JoJo (2006), "Don't Hold Your Breath" by Nicole Scherzinger (2011), and "Give Your Heart a Break" by Demi Lovato (2012). After that, the hits petered out, although some older songs keep getting rerecorded and making the charts again, especially "Alone" and "I Drove All Night." For instance, Alyssa Reid went all the way to Number Two in the British charts with "Alone" in 2012, although it was titled "Alone Again" and had the now practically obligatory rap section.

I'm not a fan of Whitney Houston's version of "So Emotional." But since it was a massive Number One hit, I wanted to include it in some form. I found a radically different cover version by Jon McLaughlin from 2019 that I like much better, so I used that instead. Had it not been for that song, this album would end in 2000.

Here are their Wikipedia pages: 

Billy Steinberg - Wikipedia

Tom Kelly (musician) - Wikipedia  

That album is an hour and ten minutes long. 

01 How Do I Make You (Linda Ronstadt)
02 Fire and Ice (Pat Benatar)
03 Like a Virgin (Madonna)
04 Sex as a Weapon (Pat Benatar)
05 True Colors (Cyndi Lauper)
06 Eternal Flame (Bangles)
07 Alone (Heart)
08 In Your Room (Bangles)
09 I Touch Myself (Divinyls)
10 My Side of the Bed (Susanna Hoffs)
11 I Drove All Night (Roy Orbison)
12 Night in My Veins (Pretenders)
13 Lucky Love [Acoustic Version] (Ace of Base)
14 I'll Stand by You (Pretenders)
15 Falling into You (Celine Dion)
16 California (Belinda Carlisle)
17 One and One (Edyta Gorniak)
18 Everytime It Rains (Ace of Base)
19 The Consequences of Falling (k.d. lang)
20 So Emotional (Jon McLaughlin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4xNLLW9p 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/uxa5jlpb5sQPr8t/file

I don't know the details of the cover photo. But that's Tom Kelly on the left and Billy Steinberg on the right. There are patches of white in Steinberg's hair, which went completely white in later photos of him. 

U2 - BBC Sessions, Volume 9: In Concert, Twickenham Stadium, London, Britain, 6-18-2005

Just two days ago (writing this in mid-February 2026), I posted a "BBC Sessions, Volume 7" for U2, a 1993 concert that I'd previously missed. A commenter noted US also did a 2005 concert that was broadcast for the BBC. I looked it up, and sure enough, that person was right. So I decided to get and post this one ASAP, because I was forced to do some renumbering. I had just renumbered the three albums in this series that come after this. I have renumbered them again. I hope most people hadn't had time to get that previous renumbering yet. And let's hope this renumbering sticks. If someone now tells me there was a 1982 concert U2 did for the BBC that I'd missed, I'll be tempted to go have a good cry!

Although my last U2 post was only two days prior to this one, there's been big U2 news in the meantime: they unexpectedly dropped an EP called "Days of Ash." This made a lot of headlines, because the songs addressed some current political topics. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it: "Produced by Jacknife Lee, the six-track EP contains five new songs, including protest songs addressing the killings of Minneapolis woman Renée Good, Iranian teenager Sarina Esmailzadeh, and Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen, as well as a poem by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai set to music. It is the first collection of original songs the band released since their studio album 'Songs of Experience' in 2017."

In other U2 posts, I've complained that the quality of the band's new songs has slowly gone downhill since the early 2000s. So I was very pleasantly surprised by this new EP. It helps that I agree with their political stances. But I think purely on a musical level, this is the best new music they've released in years. So I encourage you to check it out.

Anyway, back to this album. In 2005, U2 was still riding high, promoting 2004's "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb," which I would argue was their last solid album. (At least so far - this new EP gives me hope.) That album has their last big hits (again, at least so far), especially "Vertigo." So this contains the best songs from that album, plus classics from their earlier albums.

The BBC broadcast most of this concert, but not all of it. Apparently, the first time, the broadcast began around the start of "City of Blinding Lights," the ninth track, and then continued until the end. You can even hear lead singer Bono talking about this before that song begins. 

Later broadcasts included some of the earlier songs, but not all of them. Only three songs were missing: "The Electric Co.," "New Year's Day," and "Beautiful Day." I managed to find an audience bootleg for just those three songs. I did what I could, using the MVSEP program to split off the lead vocals and then run them through a filter to lessen the echo. I also used that program to get rid of the crowd noise during those songs. That helped some, but they still don't sound as good as the rest. However, they sound decent, or I wouldn't have included them.

Oh, also, I noticed the vocals were a bit low in the mix. So I ran all the songs through MVSEP to fix that as well. 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent, with a partial exception of the three songs I mentioned above. 

This album is two hours and one minute long. 

01 Vertigo (U2)
02 I Will Follow (U2)
03 The Electric Co. (U2)
04 Elevation (U2)
05 New Year's Day (U2)
06 Beautiful Day (U2)
07 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (U2)
08 All I Want Is You (U2)
09 City of Blinding Lights (U2)
10 Miracle Drug (U2)
11 Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own (U2)
12 Love and Peace or Else (U2)
13 Sunday Bloody Sunday (U2)
14 Bullet the Blue Sky (U2)
15 Running to Stand Still (U2)
16 Pride [In the Name of Love] (U2)
17 Where the Streets Have No Name (U2)
18 One (U2)
19 Zoo Station (U2)
20 The Fly (U2)
21 Mysterious Ways (U2)
22 Yahweh (U2)
23 Vertigo [Second Version] (U2)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Fn8JUeyA

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/hw8lXuJouKkGA8Z/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

The Guess Who - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 3-29-1974

I have a lot of new things I keep finding that distracts me from posting more of projects I've previously announced, but all those projects are still in progress. One of them is posting more from the "Midnight Special" TV show. When I posted a poll about this show, the Guess Who were one of the top vote getters. They were on the show a handful of times. I've turned that into two albums. Here's the first one.

The Guess Who didn't have any big hits in 1972 or 1973, after having more success from 1969 to 1971. But in 1974, they had another Top Ten hit in the U.S. with "Clap for the Wolfman," which was a tribute song for DJ Wolfman Jack. At the time, the Midnight Special was hosted by none other than Wolfman Jack, who naturally loved the song. He spoke some lines on the record. He repeated those here in this live version. (According to the Wikipedia article about the song, he even performed the song with the band sometimes while they were on tour in 1974.) I find it interesting that this episode aired at the end of March 1974, and probably was recorded a little earlier than that, but "Clap for the Wolfman" wasn't released on album until April 1974, and wasn't released as a single until June 1974. So this may have been the public debut of the song.

The Guess Who hosted this show on the date mentioned in this album title, March 29, 1974. Most of the songs here are from that date. But tracks 7 through 10 are from an episode that aired on December 14, 1973. And track 11 is from an episode that aired on February 22, 1974. They hosted the show again in 1975, but that will be the subject of a different album.

The first track has "[Edit]" in the title because I removed the theme song playing in the background and replaced it with crowd noise. And "Clap for the Wolfman" also has that in its title because there was a glitch in the song. Luckily, it happened during a chorus, so I was able to repair it by patching in a bit from a different chorus.

In case you're curious, the other musical acts in the main episode here were Wishbone Ash, Sha Na Na, Slade, David Essex, Judi Pulver, and Leo Kottke.

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

This album is 40 minutes long. 

01 talk by Wolfman Jack [Edit] (Guess Who)
02 American Woman (Guess Who)
03 talk (Guess Who)
04 Star Baby (Guess Who)
05 These Eyes (Guess Who)
06 Clap for the Wolfman [Edit] (Guess Who with Wolfman Jack)
07 Albert Flasher (Guess Who)
08 Undun (Guess Who)
09 Straighten Out (Guess Who)
10 Glamour Boy (Guess Who)
11 Share the Land (Guess Who)
12 talk (Guess Who)
13 Hand Me Down World (Guess Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8Mf4TUco

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/xnDkn4NazWflbLF/file

The cover photo is a screenshot taken from this exact concert. I could have selected more of a close-up pic, but I liked this unusual perspective showing how the stage stuck out into the audience. That's lead singer Burton Cummings on the front edge of the stage.

Elton John - Cover Versions, Volume 5: 2002-2007

In 2023 and 2024, I posted four volumes collecting all the cover versions performed by Elton John that I could find. However, I stopped this series before finishing it because I ran into copyright issues with the fourth volume. But I've had way less of those issues in recent months, so I'd going to try to post the fifth volume. If that works out, the sixth and final volume will follow. But you might want to grab this quickly, just in case.

Tracks 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8 are all unreleased, and from concerts. Out of those, tracks 2 and 3 are from a CMT Crossroads episode with Ryan Adams. Track 9 was also performed live, but it's from a tribute album to Luther Vandross. For all these live songs, I used the MVSEP program to wipe the cheering, so those songs would fit with the studio tracks.

That leaves the studio tracks, all of which are released. Those are from a mix of movie soundtracks, tribute albums, and duets done on albums by other musical acts. If you want more details, please look at the mp3 tags for the individual songs. Like always, I include the source info for each song on every album I post. 

By the way, some of the links in the previous volumes in this series weren't working, but I just replaced them with new links. 

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Oh My Sweet Carolina (Elton John)
02 Firecracker (Elton John & Ryan Adams)
03 La Cienega Just Smiled (Elton John & Ryan Adams)
04 Makin' Whoopee (Elton John)
05 Moon River (Elton John)
06 Nighttime Is the Right Time (Elton John & Mary J. Blige)
07 Born to Lose (Elton John)
08 Rock This House (B. B. King & Elton John)
09 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Elton John & Luther Vandross)
10 Dreamland (Bruce Hornsby & Elton John)
11 Where We Both Say Goodbye (Catherine Britt & Elton John)
12 Rags to Riches (Tony Bennett & Elton John)
13 Blueberry Hill (Elton John) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PWY7tZVF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Tk5ynn7dYAJmOmv/file

The cover photo is from a concert at Wembley Arena, in London, on December 5, 2003. 

Various Artists - NME Poll Winners' Concert, Empire Pool, London, Britain, 5-1-1966

I've already posted the NME Poll Winners' Concerts from 1964 and 1965. Here's the only other one known to be exist in the public sphere, the 1966 one.

This is arguably one of the greatest concerts of all time, just in terms of sheer star power. The last three acts were the Who, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles, for crying out loud! That was probably the one and only time those three acts appeared on stage in a row like that.

Unfortunately though... we're missing most of the good stuff, including all of those three performances! So sorry. And worse, of the remaining concert, we are missing half of that too. This concert was at least two hours long. So, to broadcast it on TV, it was split it two, and the two parts were shown on TV a week apart. It's pretty clear to me that only the second part survives, because all of the first part is missing. 

Here are all the musical acts that played in the first part: the Overlanders, Small Faces, the Spencer Davis Group, Roy Orbison, the Walker Brothers, the Yardbirds, the Seekers, the Alan Price Set, the Shadows, and Cliff Richard. If you add all those acts together, plus the ones we do have below (Sounds Incorporated, the Fortunes, Herman's Hermits, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, the Yardbirds, Crispian St. Peters, Alan Price Set, and Dusty Springfield), plus the three acts finishing the second set (the Who, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles), it's hard to argue this was the greatest collection of rock music talent ever on one stage in the 1960s. It's such a shame we don't have all of it!

Of course, the greatest loss is not getting to hear the Beatles' set. This would turn out to be the very last concert the Beatles performed in Britain, excepting the unannounced performance on top of Abbey Roads Studios in 1969. We do know the songs they played though: "I Feel Fine," "If I Needed Someone," "Day Tripper," "Nowhere Man," and "I'm Down."

To further frustrate you, these NME concerts continued until 1971. I couldn't find many details about the concerts after 1966. However, we know a bit more about the 1967 and 1968 concerts, because setlist.fm gives a list of the performers for each of those years.  

Here's a list of the known performers for the 1967 concert (in alphabetical order): Alan Price Set, Cat Stevens, Cliff Richard, Cream, Dusty Springfield, Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band, Lulu, Small Faces, the Beach Boys, the Dubliners, the Move, the Spencer Davis Group, the Troggs. 

And here are the known performers for the 1968 concert (also in alphabetical order): Amen Corner, Cliff Richard, Don Partridge, Dusty Springfield, Love Affair, Lulu, Procol Harum, Scott Walker, Status Quo, the Association, the Herd, the Move, the Paper Dolls, and the Rolling Stones. 

Man, what incredible concerts those would be to hear! Unfortunately though, no known recordings of any of the concerts after 1966 exist. I strongly suspect they weren't broadcast on TV, but I don't know for sure. Let's hope that the remainder of the 1966 concert and all of the 1967 to 1971 concerts are sitting in some vault and will be released to the public one day. 

Now, let's get to why we don't have the recordings of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Apparently, there was a big argument backstage. The popular version is that both Mick Jagger of the Stones and John Lennon of the Beatles argued that they were the biggest band in the world, and thus demanded to go on last. However, it appears this wasn't true. In fact, most of the members of the Beatles and the Stones were friends with each other. 

I found what appears to be the more accurate story at The Paul McCartney Project website. It has an impressive webpage dedicated to this concert, with lots of photos and text. You can find that here:

https://www.the-paulmccartney-project.com/concert/1966-05-01/

That webpage includes an excerpt from a book that extensively quotes Maurice Kinn, who was the owner of NME at the time. Here's what Kinn claims happened: 

"Halfway through the Stones' set, the four Beatles arrived at the foot of the stairs to the stage, with their guitars in hand. I told them they were 25 minutes early, but Lennon insisted that they were going on. I said they couldn't and John shouted, 'Didn't you hear me the first time? We're going on now, or we're not going on at all.' In a rapidly convened huddle with Brian Epstein, I outlined my dilemma, that I had promised the Stones, in writing, that the Beatles should not follow them immediately onto the stage. I had arranged for the awards presentation to come between the two acts and explained to Brian that if the Beatles did not come on at the previously arranged time, I would be left with no option but to send MC Jimmy Savile on stage to explain to 10,000 NME readers that the Beatles were in the stadium but they weren’t going to play. I explained to him very clearly what would happen then. There would be a riot! Half of Wembley would be destroyed and Wembley and the NME would both sue Epstein. Brian conveyed this to the Beatles and John exploded! He gave me abuse like you've never heard before in all of your life. You could hear him all over the backstage area. He said, 'We'll never play for you again!' But he knew that he had no choice. Fifteen minutes later, the Beatles went on stage, collected their awards and played the show."

So it seems it's true there was an argument involving Lennon, but not Jagger. Jagger was performing on stage at the time and was probably totally oblivious about the conflict going on nearby. While I think Lennon is one of the greatest musicians of all time, he could be an asshole sometimes, and it looks like this was one of those times. Probably the Beatles were sick and tired of giving concerts by this time, and Lennon had lost all patience and just wanted to get this obligation over with.

Be that as it may, the Beatles didn't even allow the cameras to roll when they took the stage, due to the conflict mentioned above. I'm not sure how it came to be that the Who and the Rolling Stones also didn't allowing their performances to be broadcast either, but that's what happened. 

So anyway, while we can lament all the missing music, what we're left with is still pretty damn impressive. And we're lucky to have anything at all, since very few live recordings from 1966 survive. As for the sound quality, it's reasonably good, but not great. Consider this was probably recorded off a TV in 1966, so one has to lower one's standards a bit. I tried to improve it, but there wasn't much I could do, since I couldn't successfully separate the vocals from the instruments, or the instruments from each other. In the end, I just kept it the same. 

In case you're curious about who won the poll awards this year, there's a list at the NME website, which you can see here:

https://www.nme.com/nme-awards/awards-history/1966-606221

Also, note that I found a review for this concert from NME, thanks to the Paul McCartney Project website mentioned above. I included an image of it in the download file. It has comments about all the performances, including all the missing ones.

This album is one hour long. 

01 talk (Sounds Incorporated)
02 In the Hall of the Mountain King [Instrumental] (Sounds Incorporated)
03 Zorba's Dance [Instrumental] (Sounds Incorporated)
04 talk (Fortunes)
05 This Golden Ring (Fortunes)
06 You've Got Your Troubles (Fortunes)
07 talk (Herman's Hermits)
08 A Must to Avoid (Herman's Hermits)
09 You Won't Be Leaving (Herman's Hermits)
10 talk (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
11 You Make It Move (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
12 Hold Tight (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
13 talk (Yardbirds)
14 Train Kept A-Rollin' (Yardbirds)
15 Shapes of Things (Yardbirds)
16 talk (Crispian St. Peters)
17 Send Me Some Lovin' (Crispian St. Peters)
18 The Pied Piper (Crispian St. Peters)
19 talk (Alan Price Set)
20 Baby Workout (Alan Price Set)
21 I Put a Spell on You (Alan Price Set)
22 talk (Dusty Springfield)
23 In the Middle of Nowhere (Dusty Springfield)
24 You Don't Have to Say You Love Me (Dusty Springfield)
25 talk (Dusty Springfield)
26 Shake (Dusty Springfield)
27 talk (Beatles & emcee)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/L5VqhUHF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/GvbEFGJxuHwyVLp/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. Sorry if it's misleading to have a photo of the Beatles but no actual Beatles music on the album. At least we do have the recording of the Beatles accepting their awards. This photo was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.