Aimee Mann - Murder Backstage - Non-Album Tracks (2014-2019) (NOTE: sound quality warning)

I have to start my comments with a big fat WARNING: the sound quality for this album is not up to my usual standards! If you're familiar with this blog, you've probably noticed that I try to maintain certain a sound quality level, but sometimes there's a song or two just below that that is still interesting, so I include those as bonus tracks. Well, this is basically an entire album of songs at the bonus track level. Most of these come from audience bootlegs that are somewhat muddy or muffled, and/or have some crowd noise through the song. There still are a lot of great Aimee Mann songs here though, some of them very amusing. So you may want to give this a listen, at least once, if you're a fan of her music. But beware of the sound quality issue.

I just posted another Aimee Mann stray tracks album covering largely the same time period, which I call "Can't You Tell." Basically, I put all the excellent sounding songs on that one, and all the dodgy sounding ones here. 

Why are there so many songs with iffy sound from these years? I think there are two reasons. The first is that Aimee Mann has taken part in an annual Christmas concert each year with lots of unique songs, especially comedic and/or parody songs. Six of the songs here come from two of those concerts, but all I've been able to find are audience bootlegs that don't sound that great. That's too bad, because some of the songs are freaking hilarious. I especially enjoy her parody of her big hit "Voices Carry" with her 1980s band Til Tuesday, called "This Is Gary." And there's a parody of the hit musical song "Jesus Christ Superstar" that gets Jesus and Santa Claus all mixed up, called "Jesus Claus Santa Christ." It would be great to hear a better version of these where the words were clearer. If you know of such a recording, please let me know.

The other main problem is that Mann has been in the habit of taking part in yearly musical cruise ship voyages, like many other famous people do recently. She tends to play some unusual songs on that cruises, especially as she has a tradition of singing a song by famous musicians who died in the past year. She did that here with four covers. Unfortunately, these cruises are usually poorly bootlegged by people with cell phones, if they get bootlegged at all. There were a bunch of additional songs I didn't even include here because the sound quality was worse. 

So yeah, be warned. But if you don't mind the rough sound, there are many good performances here. I think having all of these together helps, so hopefully you adjust to the sound quality issue instead of having jarring switching from excellent to dodgy sound and back again repeatedly.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Give Me Another Chance (Aimee Mann & Susanna Hoffs)
02 Murder Backstage [Baby it's Cold Outside] (Both [Ted Leo & Aimee Mann])
03 What Are You Doing New Year's Eve (Both [Ted Leo & Aimee Mann])
04 It's Christmas Time (Both [Ted Leo & Aimee Mann])
05 This Is Gary [Voices Carry] (Both [Ted Leo & Aimee Mann])
06 Jesus Claus Santa Christ [Jesus Christ Superstar] (Both [Ted Leo & Aimee Mann])
07 Calling On Mary [Acappella Version] (Aimee Mann)
08 Queen Jane Approximately (Both [Ted Leo & Aimee Mann])
09 Keep the Customer Satisfied (Both [Ted Leo & Aimee Mann] with John Roderick)
10 Love Is All Around (Aimee Mann)
11 Wichita Lineman (Aimee Mann)
12 Life of Bug (Aimee Mann)
13 Sister Golden Hair (Aimee Mann & Jonathan Coulton)

https://www.imagenetz.de/j6bbF

The cover art photo comes from a 2014 news article about that year's Christmas concert. I cropped it from a larger photo that had Ted Leo, her musical partner in the band the Both, in it. I believe the colorful animals were added in after the fact, but not by me. There are more added Christmas-y elements like that in the complete photo.