Joe Jackson - Night by Night - Cover Versions (2012-2017)

Here's the third and last of my albums compiling the cover versions Joe Jackson has played in concert. Well, at least it's the last one for a while. Hopefully he'll keep touring and keep playing different songs.

In 2012, Jackson released the studio album "The Duke," in which he covers songs made famous by Duke Ellington. Personally, I think this is one of Jackson's most disappointing albums. I love his 1981 album "Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive," which similarly looked back to swing and jump blues at the like. But on "The Duke" I felt he tried too hard to make things different with rearrangements and bringing in guest singers.

With this album, I feel I can partially fix that. The first four songs are also songs on "The Duke" studio album. But here they're done in concert with Jackson singing. In my opinion, they're done in a more appealing manner. The fifth song, "In a Sentimental Mood," is another song associated with Ellington, but it was only done by Jackson in concert. (I would have included more songs from the album, except even in concert he had guest singers sing the other songs.)

The rest of this album consists of Jackson's usual wide variety of covers. "Peter Gunn Theme" is particularly interesting, because he does a version of this famous instrumental with lyrics, based on an obscure version once done by Sarah Vaughan. The remaining covers are of songs by David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, and Bob Marley.

01 I'm Beginning to See the Light - Take the 'A' Train (Joe Jackson)
02 Mood Indigo (Joe Jackson)
03 The Mooche - Black and Tan Fantasy [Instrumental] (Joe Jackson)
04 It Don't Mean a Thing [If It Ain't Got that Swing] (Joe Jackson)
05 In a Sentimental Mood [Instrumental] (Joe Jackson)
06 Peter Gunn Theme (Joe Jackson)
07 Life On Mars (Joe Jackson)
08 Big Yellow Taxi (Joe Jackson)
09 Night by Night (Joe Jackson)
10 Johnny Was (Joe Jackson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15908763/JoeJacks_2012-2017_NghtbyNight_atse.zip.html

The cover art uses a photo of Jackson from 2015.

Richard Thompson - In Over Your Head - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (1982-1985)

Here's the third and final of my three Richard Thompson posts today. When it comes to Thompson's extensive solo career, I think it makes the most sense to split his stray tracks into acoustic and non-acoustic. So this is the first of the acoustic ones.

Nearly all the songs here are covers. They display quite a range of music, from Django Reinhardt ("Melodie au Crepuscule") to Elvis Costello ("Pump It Up)." Five of the 13 songs are instrumentals, which are opportunities for Thompson to show off his guitar playing prowess.

There are a couple of originals though. "Love Is Bad for Business" is here, and also on the other stray tracks album I just posted, "Jealousy." But this is the solo acoustic version and that is the full-band version. It's a good song, so I don't know why it didn't make any of his studio albums in either form.

Much less well known is the song "In Over Your Head." This song has never been played by Thompson in concert, and we only know of it because of it was included on the rather obscure box set "The Life and Music Of." That version is incomplete at only about two minutes. It ends with Thompson muttering about how the song continues like that. But it's a really nice song that he definitely should have finished off and put on a studio album. I've made a major edit to it by repeating a section of it, making it three minutes long instead of two. I think it now sounds like a full song.

All but four of the songs here come from concerts. As I often do, I've removed the audience noise. Luckily, all of them are sourced from soundboards and have excellent sound quality. The last song though is somewhat interactive with the audience though, so one can hear some clapping and laughing.

By the way, there are a couple of supporting musicians on the first couple of songs, including a violinist. The rest is just Thompson, except for two other guitarists joining in on "Sheebeg and Sheemore."

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Honky Tonk Blues (Richard Thompson)
02 Farther Along [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
03 Why Don't Women Like Me (Richard Thompson)
04 Melodie au Crepuscule [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
05 Love Is Bad for Business (Richard Thompson)
06 The Kid on the Mountain [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
07 You're Gonna Change [Or I'm Gonna Leave] (Richard Thompson)
08 Shepherd's March - The Braes of Lochiel [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
09 In Over Your Head [Edit] (Richard Thompson)
10 Sheebeg and Sheemore [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson with Steve Morse & David Lindley)
11 Pump It Up (Richard Thompson)
12 Flyin' Saucers Rock and Roll (Richard Thompson)
13 Willie and the Hand Jive - Not Fade Away (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15268066/RichrdT_1982-1985_InOvrYourHeadAcoustc_atse.zip.html

Note that in November 2019, I changed the cover art photo. I thought the photo I'd used was from around 1985, but I later discovered it actually dates to 1991. So I replaced it with a photo of Thompson that actually dates from 1985, when he had a concert in Chicago.

Richard Thompson - Jealousy - Non-Album Tracks (1982-1985)

Here's the second of my triple shot of Richard Thompson albums. This one deals with full-band versions of songs from the earliest years of his solo career, 1982 to 1985.

Generally speaking, Thompson doesn't seem to have a lot of original songs that haven't been officially released yet have been made public through bootlegs. That said, there are some. This album starts with three. "Jealousy" is an original very much in the style of the Everly Brothers that surprisingly hasn't been officially released in any form. The next two songs, "Small Town Romance" and "Love Is Bad for Business," have been officially released, but in solo acoustic form, whereas these are full-band studio takes.

The rest of the songs are all cover versions, I believe. But they're an interesting and varied bunch that generally haven't been officially released, except for two that come from the little known "The Life and Music Of" box set. Some are well known songs and others are total obscurities.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Jealousy (Richard Thompson)
02 Small Town Romance (Richard Thompson)
03 Love Is Bad for Business (Richard Thompson)
04 Steel Guitar Rag [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson, Dave Swarbrick & Simon Nicol)
05 Danny Boy (Richard Thompson)
06 Amaryllis - Nonesuch a la Mode de France [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
07 Let's Talk about Us (Richard Thompson)
08 Great Balls of Fire (Richard Thompson)
09 Loch Lomond (Richard Thompson)
10 Pennsylvania 6-5000 [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson Band)
11 Move It (Richard Thompson)
12 Skull and Crossbones (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15268061/RichrdT_1982-1985_Jealsy_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I found the art on-line. I believe it comes from a concert poster from the early 1980s. I added the text.

Richard Thompson - Shoot Out the Lights - Acoustic Version (1982)

Here's an all acoustic version of "Shoot Out the Lights." This classic album was recorded by both Richard and Linda Thompson. It usually gets on the best albums of all time lists, and deservedly so. But I'm not posting the official version with Linda here. In fact, there's no band at all, just Richard and his guitar.

Richard Thompson is a great guitarist all around. Rolling Stone magazine deemed him in their top twenty of the greatest guitarists of all time. He can wail on the electric guitar like Clapton or Hendrix, but he has a special talent for the acoustic guitar. He's learned a technique very few people know that allows him to solo while keeping a picking pattern or strumming pattern going. Sometimes, people going to his solo concerts will look around and wonder where the second guitarist is! (Hint: it's all him.)

So I plan on posting a lot of his acoustic versions of things. Luckily, it turns out he's played every song from "Shoot Out the Lights" in solo acoustic format, enabling me to put this together. All but one song here dates from 1982, the year the album came out. One of the songs, "Did She Jump or Was She Pushed," has been performed in concert only rarely, since Linda was the singer of it on the album. But I was able to find a pristine version from 2004.

And, as it so happens, I was able to find excellent versions of all the other songs too. These come from high quality soundboard bootlegs. I've removed all the audience noise, so it sounds exactly as if Richard Thompson is playing the album in your living room.

It's only 33 minutes long, five minutes shorter than studio album, since he doesn't actually do much soloing here. But it's all solid. Is it as good as the official album? No, but it's nice to listen to that album in a different way sometimes.

01 Don't Renege on Our Love (Richard Thompson)
02 Walking on a Wire (Richard Thompson)
03 Man in Need (Richard Thompson)
04 Just the Motion (Richard Thompson)
05 Shoot Out the Lights (Richard Thompson)
06 Back Street Slide (Richard Thompson)
07 Did She Jump or Was She Pushed (Richard Thompson)
08 Wall of Death (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376669/RICHRDTHMPSN1982ShotOuttheLghtsAcustc_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I found an outtake of the Shoot Out the Lights cover photo session that has Richard standing instead of sitting in a corner. Unfortunately, it was originally in black and white and I normally hate to use black and white photos for covers, but it was so fitting that I couldn't resist using it this time.

However, many months later, I got a good program for colorizing (Pixbim), so I was able to colorize it and closely match the official cover. (The way that Linda's portrait is heavily yellow is the same as the original.) I also added in the exact text from the original album cover, but minus Linda's name and with the word "Acoustic" added.

Joe Jackson - Dirty Love - Cover Versions (2003-2011)

Here's the second of three albums I've made of Joe Jackson playing cover versions. As with the previous album, nearly all of these are from concerts, with the audience noise removed.

This time around, he plays songs by: XTC, a music hall number, Steely Dan (twice), Frank Zappa, the Beatles (twice), Duke Ellington, Suzanne Vega, ABBA, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, and David Bowie.

Most of the songs have excellent sound quality, with four coming from official releases. But a couple are a notch below, such as "Dirty Love." Still, I deemed those good enough to include.

01 Mayor of Simpleton (Joe Jackson)
02 Hello, Hello, Who's Your Lady Friend (Joe Jackson)
03 Any Major Dude Will Tell You (Joe Jackson)
04 Dirty Love (Joe Jackson)
05 I'm Looking through You (Joe Jackson)
06 Don't Get Around Much Anymore (Joe Jackson)
07 Reelin' in the Years (Joe Jackson)
08 Frank and Ava (Joe Jackson)
09 Knowing Me, Knowing You (Joe Jackson)
10 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Joe Jackson)
11 Music to Watch Girls By (Joe Jackson)
12 Inbetweenies (Joe Jackson)
13 Scary Monsters [And Super Creeps] (Joe Jackson)
14 Girl (Joe Jackson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15908581/JoeJacks_2003-2011_DirtyLve_atse.zip.html

The cover art is based on a 2008 photo.

Petra Haden - Acappella 2: Red (2016-2017)

Here's the second of four albums I've made using Petra Haden's acappella versions of famous songs. They all are officially unreleased and have only appeared at her YouTube account.

This album is a bit different than the first one in that only four of the 12 songs have actual sung words to them. But of course all the songs are sung, since Haden's voice makes every single note of every song here. It's really impressive how she can create a soundscape by multitracking her vocals over and over again.

I highly recommend you check out this album (and the other albums in this series). If you want soothing mood music, this hits the spot.

This time around, she does songs by the Police, Mike Oldfield, Tangerine Dream, Charlie Haden, Michael Hedges, Blind Faith, and two songs by King Crimson. Additionally, she does several oddities, such as the themes to the original Star Trek and the Incredible Hulk.

01 River's Edge Theme (Petra Haden)
02 Bring on the Night (Petra Haden)
03 Tubular Bells (Petra Haden)
04 Star Trek [Original Series Main Title] (Petra Haden)
05 Love on a Real Train (Petra Haden)
06 Auld Lang Syne (Petra Haden)
07 Silence (Petra Haden)
08 Two Days Old (Petra Haden)
09 Can't Find My Way Home (Petra Haden)
10 Red (Petra Haden)
11 Matte Kudasai (Petra Haden)
12 The Lonely Man Theme [The Incredible Hulk] (Petra Haden)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634462/PetraH_2016-2017_Acapella2Red_atse.zip.html

All of these songs come from Haden's YouTube videos. But she never has a video of herself singing. She'll just post a photo to go along with the music instead. This is one of the photos. I thought it fit the "Red" album title nicely.

Richard & Linda Thompson - The Price of Love - Non-Album Tracks (1982)

1982 was a seminal year for Richard and Linda Thompson, because they released their all time classic album "Shoot Out the Lights" and had a final tour of the US even though their marriage was dramatically falling apart. Richard Thompson started his solo career right away, having solo concerts only a month after the last Richard and Linda Thompson concert. For the purpose of this album, I'm only including material from the time the two of them were still together musically, which lasted through June 1982.

Six of the eleven songs here (plus the bonus track) come from that tour, with the audience noise removed if possible, as I usually do. Unfortunately, the tour was not recorded well. Even officially released songs from soundboard performances sometimes only have good sound quality instead of excellent. We have to make do.

One song ("Great Balls of Fire") was a notch below the rest in terms of the sound, so I've only included it as a bonus track.

A few of the other songs feature Richard Thompson only. But they date from before the final break up of the Richard and Linda duo, so I consider those fair game. Luckily, they come from in-person radio show appearances, so the sound quality on those is excellent.

This album is 40 minutes long, not counting the bonus track.

01 Living in Luxury (Richard & Linda Thompson)
02 Move It On Over (Richard Thompson)
03 New-Fangled Flogging Reel - Kerry Reel [Instrumental] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
04 Danny Boy (Richard & Linda Thompson)
05 High School Confidential (Richard & Linda Thompson)
06 Genesis Hall (Richard & Linda Thompson)
07 Honky Tonk Blues (Richard & Linda Thompson)
08 Learning the Game (Richard Thompson)
09 I'll Keep It with Mine (Richard & Linda Thompson)
10 Sheebeg and Sheemore [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson with Simon Nicol)
11 The Price of Love (Richard & Linda Thompson)

Great Balls of Fire (Richard & Linda Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15852266/RichnLinT_1982b_ThePrceLve_atse.zip.html

I originally made the cover art using a screenshot of a YouTube video from 1982.But the quality was poor. Eventually, I was able to find a really nice color photo of the duo from a 1982 photo shoot for an album cover. The only problem was that it was taken from an album booklet and there was a distortion across the middle of the photo since it was spread across two pages. I used Photoshop to hopefully fix that issue, but some slight changes resulted from that.

Richard & Linda Thompson - Time to Ring Some Changes - Non-Album Tracks (1981)

Here's another Richard and Linda Thompson stray tracks album. Although I must say this doesn't have a lot of Linda on it.

In 1982, Richard Thompson got romantically involved with another woman despite being married to Linda at the time. She found out and they divorced as a result, after one final and emotionally contentious tour. But it retrospect, their marriage had been on the rocks for a while, and Richard had been starting in on his solo career before 1982.

In 1981, not only did he release his first solo album (an all instrumental one called "Strict Tempo!"), but he started doing some other solo recordings and even performing some solo shows. On top of all that, he joined a group (that only lasted through 1981) called the GPs that was led by him and Ralph McTell, with the two of them evenly splitting the singing.

Five of the ten songs here are from Richard's various solo ventures that year. Three of those songs are from the GPs (who only released one obscure album about a decade after they broke up). "The Knife-Edge" comes from his solo album "Strict Tempo." Frankly, that all-instrumental album is for limited tastes. But the song I chose is the only Richard Thompson original from it, and I think it's the highlight.

I made a significant edit on the other Richard solo song, "Time Has Told Me." This is a nice cover of a Nick Drake song with some tasty Hawaiian slack key guitar work added by Raymond Kane. But on the released version, Kane sings the last verse, and I didn't like that. It seemed odd to me that his unusual voice would come in so late in the song. It just didn't work musically, in my opinion. Since that last verse was a repeat of the first verse, I swapped out Kane's singing with Richard's.

By the way, for albums like these, I try to stick to songs that aren't on official studio albums. I've made kind of an exception here with the song "Sloth." That song (which Richard co-wrote) is well known from it's original version when Richard was a part of Fairport Convention. It's a classic that's been done lots of times since. But I figure this version is special because it's possibly the only version with high sound quality in which Linda Thompson has a prominent role in the vocals.

Speaking of sound quality, I included one song as a bonus track only because the sound quality wasn't quite up to snuff with the rest of the album.

01 Time to Ring Some Changes (Richard & Linda Thompson)
02 Baby Don't You Do It [Don't Do It] (Richard Thompson & the GPs)
03 Tryin' to Get to You (Richard & Linda Thompson)
04 Planxty Morgan Mawgan - Long Odds [Instrumental] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
05 [Come Round Here] I'm the One You Need (Richard Thompson & the GPs)
06 Sloth (Richard & Linda Thompson with Simon Nicol)
07 Going, Going, Gone (Richard Thompson & the GPs)
08 Blues in a Bottle (Richard & Linda Thompson with Simon Nicol)
09 The Knife-Edge [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
10 Time Has Told Me [Edit] (Richard Thompson with Raymond Kane)
11. Banish Misfortune [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)

Lawdy Miss Clawdy (Richard Thompson & the GPs)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15852156/RichnLinT_1981_TmeRingSmeChanges_atse.zip.html

I made the album cover from a screenshot of a YouTube video of a 1981 concert performance.

Richard & Linda Thompson - The Wrong Heartbeat - Non-Album Tracks (1978-1980)

I've been really getting into Richard Thompson's music lately. I'd already been a big fan, but I recently found a bunch of bootleg material I hadn't known about, and I've been incorporating it into my collection. I've got so much of his stuff to post that I'm going to post three of his albums at once, finishing off the stray tracks for the phase of his career with his then wife Linda Thompson.

This album deals with the years 1978 to 1980, but most of it is from 1980. A majority of the songs are originals, and the rest are pretty obscure covers. Well, a couple of them aren't obscure. Surprisingly, Richard does the surf rock instrumental "Pipeline" and a song best known from its association with the Harlem Globetrotters, "Sweet Georgia Brown." Oh, and "Crying in the Rain" was a hit for the Everly Brothers.

The song quality ranges from excellent to pretty good. There are three songs though that I wanted to include but felt I couldn't, due to sound quality issues. So I've added those as bonus tracks.

UPDATE: On February 1, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. I added the songs "Then He Kissed Me," "The Dust of Your Road," and "Drunk."

01 Woman or a Man (Richard & Linda Thompson)
02 The Gas Almost Works [Instrumental] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
03 La Valse de Madame Sosten (Richard & Linda Thompson)
04 The Dust of Your Road (Richard & Linda Thompson)
05 Drunk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
06 Then He Kissed Me (Richard & Linda Thompson)
07 Speechless Child (Richard & Linda Thompson)
08 I'm a Dreamer (Richard & Linda Thompson)
09 The Wrong Heartbeat (Richard & Linda Thompson)
10 Modern Woman (Richard & Linda Thompson)
11 Pipeline [Instrumental] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
12 How Many Times Do You Have to Fall (Richard & Linda Thompson)
13 Lucky in Life, Unlucky in Love (Richard & Linda Thompson)
14 Sweet Georgia Brown [Instrumental] (Richard & Linda Thompson with Richard Digence)
15 Crying in the Rain (Richard & Linda Thompson)

No Particular Place to Go (Richard & Linda Thompson)
Sugar Babe (Richard & Linda Thompson)
The Train That Carried My Girl from Town (Richard & Linda Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15851970/RichnLinT_1978-1980_TheWrngHrtbeat_atse.zip.html

I could find very, very few photos of Richard and Linda Thompson. I found this one in black and white and added a sepia tone. Months later, I colorized. I'm not completely sure, but I believe it's from 1978.

Robyn Hitchcock - Oscar - The A&M Sessions - Acoustic Demos (1993)

Followers of this blow know I've posted a lot of Robyn Hitchcock albums, and I've even started a series of albums just of Hitchcock's acoustic cover songs.

This is yet another acoustic covers album by him, except it's somewhat different. Those other albums generally collect songs from concert bootlegs. whereas this all comes from one source. I decided to keep this together instead of incorporating it into the long series of covers albums. A key reason is that the sound quality is a cut above, since these tracks were all recorded in a studio, so they sound a bit better than even soundboard versions of concert performances.

I don't know why Hitchcock recorded an album of covers in 1993. It's especially curious given that this came during his time with A&M Records, which produced his albums more heavily than at any other time in his career. I also don't know why the bootleg of this music is called "Oscar."

Getting to the music, Hitchcock has his usual great taste in covers. He does songs by Jimi Hendrix, Morrissey, Roxy Music, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Syd Barrett, the Incredible String Band, and Richard Thompson. (One more song, "Polly on the Shore," is traditional, but Fairport Convention did a well known version.)

It's a short album, only 31 minutes long. It could have been longer, but I removed two songs because they were just repeat versions of songs already on the album, and were almost identical.

01 The Wind Cries Mary (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Polly on the Shore (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Every Day Is like Sunday (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Take a Chance with Me (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Senor [Tales of Yankee Power] (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Yer Blues (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Dominoes (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Chinese White (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 The Calvary Cross (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15271970/RobynH_1993c_OscarA_MSessions_atse.zip.html

The cover is the exact cover of a bootleg of this album. However, that cover didn't have the word "Oscar" on the front, so I moved some text and added it in.

Fleetwood Mac - Dragonfly - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1971)

Since I've been posting a lot of Fleetwood Mac lately, here's one more. This kind of completes an era, because the Peter Green-led Fleetwood Mac had all kinds of stray tracks from its inception through this year. The songs here are actually from the year after Green led the band in mid-1970, but there still were lots of stray tracks in late 1970 and 1971. Then there's practically nothing from 1972 until the band significantly changed in 1975 when Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined and they found huge success.

This is a very excellent album in my opinion. I think it's my favorite of all the band's stray track albums I've posted so far. With Peter Green gone and Christine McVie fully on board, the band largely left the blues behind and became a rock band. Most of the songs here are originals and quite good, so it's surprising to me that they didn't make it on album at the time. Perhaps that had to do with the personnel changeover. Not only did Green leave in 1970, but guitarist Jeremy Spencer left in 1971, and guitarist Danny Kirwan would leave in 1972 after growing increasingly estranged from the rest of the band.

But despite the changes, the band was still going strong. The album "Bare Trees" came out in 1971, and it's one of my favorites, and it's critically acclaimed in general. So it's not surprising that other songs from that time are good too. Admittedly, four of the songs here were done by McVie during her short solo career before joining the band. You can find them on my collection of her best early solo songs.

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/chiristine-mcvie-christine-perfect.html

That said, these are all the full Fleetwood Mac versions of those songs, and they're done somewhat differently. I see no reason why they couldn't have put at least a couple of these on a Fleetwood Mac album.

"I'm Alright Now." is a song sung by Christine McVie that appears to have been written by her as well, yet has remained totally unreleased. (The title is certain because she introduced it in concert that way.)

By the way, nearly all the songs here are from 1971, except for three from 1970 and one from 1972. I put the 1972 one here because, as I said, the number of stray tracks from the band suddenly drops off a cliff right after this. I can't find a single stray track from 1973 or 1974, which is startling considering that it took three and a half albums to contain all the stray tracks the band did in 1969 alone! This can be seen in concert set lists too, where the band dramatically reduced the number of different songs it was playing in concert by 1972.

That said, we have this one last burst of creativity before the band went into a fallow period where their popularity with fans and critics went way down for a couple of years. McVie in particular comes to the fore here for the first time, with about half of the songs sung by her.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 I'm on My Way (Fleetwood Mac)
02 Madison Blues (Fleetwood Mac)
03 Crazy 'bout You Baby [Can't Hold Out Much Longer] (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Open the Door (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Get like You Used to Be (Fleetwood Mac)
06 Preachin' (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Lonely without You (Fleetwood Mac)
08 It's Alright Now (Fleetwood Mac)
09 Dragonfly (Fleetwood Mac)
10 The Purple Dancer (Fleetwood Mac)
11 I'd Rather Go Blind (Fleetwood Mac)
12 Trinity (Fleetwood Mac)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15116100/FleetwodMc_1971a_Dragnfly_atse.zip.html

Two of the songs here were released as an obscure single, "Dragonfly" backed by "The Purple Dancer." The cover art is just the cover of that single.

Petra Haden - Acappella 1: Frame by Frame (2016)

In 2005, Petra Haden released an album called "Petra Haden Sings The Who Sell Out," which contained acappella versions of all the songs on the Who's "The Who Sell Out," done in the exact order of the original album. I really enjoyed this album (even though I'd never heard of Petra Haden), because she didn't just sing the lyrics, she sang all the instruments too, creating a full sound that allows one to hear the Who's great album in a different way. She even sang all the fake commercials between the songs.

While I liked that album a lot, I didn't get any of her other albums. Actually, she's mainly known for being a violinist in a variety of bands and hasn't put out much solo stuff at all, even though she has a great voice. However, I recently discovered that she's been active on YouTube since 2016, putting out her acappella versions of all sorts of interesting songs. So I've gathered them up and assembled them into albums, generally ordered by the dates of her YouTube postings.

This is as good as acappella music gets. This is miles beyond barbershop quartets. Think the Beach Boys at their vocal best, except it's all just Haden, multitracked enough to sometimes sound like a full orchestra of voices.

You really need to down this and check it out. I think it's very cool, and it's a shame that she's only put these out on YouTube instead of releasing them on albums. She has a very interesting taste in music, obviously picking songs by how well she thinks they'd work in acappella form. On this album alone, she covers Duran Duran, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, the Psychedelic Furs, Journey, the Beach Boys, and more!

By the way, the last three songs don't fit with the others chronologically. They are from years before (2007 to 2012), and were all the other acappella songs I could find from her other than her "Who Sell Out" album. But musically they fit in perfectly with the rest of the album, and I didn't have anywhere else to put them.

She's posted so many songs that this is just the first of four albums I've compiled, of about 45 minutes of music each. And she's releasing new songs from time to time, so hopefully I'll eventually be able to post even more from her.

01 Save a Prayer (Petra Haden)
02 Blade Runner Theme (Petra Haden)
03 Frame by Frame (Petra Haden)
04 Don't Box Me In (Petra Haden)
05 Goodbye Blue Sky (Petra Haden)
06 Life on Mars (Petra Haden)
07 The Ghost in You (Petra Haden)
08 Love My Way (Petra Haden)
09 Batman Theme (Petra Haden)
10 Don't Stop Believin' (Petra Haden)
11 Music (Petra Haden)
12 God Only Knows (Petra Haden)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634474/PetraH_2016_Acapella1FrmebyFrme_atse.zip.html

I made the cover from a photo of Haden, but I don't know what year it's from.

Pete Townshend - Body Language - Non-Album Tracks (1980-1982)

Pete Townshend was very productive writing songs between 1980 and 1982. He wrote the vast majority of the songs on two Who album released in that time, and released two solo acclaimed albums besides that. Furthermore, I think this post shows that he could have released yet another solo album in that time period. And that's just from the demos that have been made public.

Indeed, nearly all the songs here are from his demos, generally released on his three Scoop albums. There's also one demo from a bootleg with slightly less sound quality ("What Is Love"). Furthermore, there are two songs from a bootleg of a concert he did in 1981. One is the R&B standard "Big Boss Man."

The other needs some explanation, because it's the song "Body Language," and I've put two versions of that here. One is from a demo and the other is from the concert. The reason I'm including both is because they're so different. One is less than two minutes, and the other is over five minutes long, for starters. The sound quality of the two songs from the concert are also slightly below the other songs, but I think they're worth including, especially since they've hardly even been bootlegged.

By the way, I didn't include one song from this time period that was included on "Scoop 3," and that's "Theme 017." In my opinion, it's an unimpressive and short instrumental. However, I've thrown it on as a bonus track, because why not.

01 Prelude No. 556 [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
02 Dance It Away (Pete Townshend)
03 Body Language [Demo Version] (Pete Townshend)
04 You're So Clever (Pete Townshend)
05 Zelda (Pete Townshend)
06 Ascension Two (Pete Townshend)
07 Dirty Water (Pete Townshend)
08 Driftin' Blues (Pete Townshend)
09 Big Boss Man (Pete Townshend)
10 It's in Ya [It's in You] (Pete Townshend)
11 What Is Love (Pete Townshend)
12 Holly like Ivy (Pete Townshend)
13 Man Watching (Pete Townshend)
14 Vivienne (Pete Townshend)
15 Body Language (Pete Townshend)
16 Baroque Ippanese [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)

Theme 017 [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696916/PETTWNSHND1980-1982_BdyLanguge_atse.zip.html

Admittedly, I pictured a pretty strange photo for the cover art. But it is a pic of Townshend in 1982, doing a promo for MTV. It seemed fitting to have an unusual expression for an album called "Body Language."