Molly Tuttle - Home Concerts, Volume 2, Nashville, TN, 9-3-2020 to 12-20-2020

I just posted an album of Molly Tuttle's solo acoustic home concert performances in early 2020. This continues where that left off, with the same from the rest of 2020. If you don't know who she is (and I'd never heard of her until about two weeks ago), please check out that post for more information about her. Suffice to say that she's a remarkable guitar player, an excellent vocalist, and a talented songwriter. In my opinion, if popularity were based on actual musical talent, she should be a big star already.

As with Volume 1, everything here is officially unreleased, and generally comes from YouTube videos of home performances done when most musicians were socially distancing during the worst months of the coronavirus pandemic. Also like that volume, nearly all the songs here consist just of Tuttle on acoustic guitar and/or vocals. And also like that volume, I'd guess about half of the songs here are originals and half are cover versions.

If you're interested in a talented relatively young musician, I suggest you give this album a try. I think it's even stronger than Volume 1. (By the way, this one contains the cover of the Rolling Stones song "She's a Rainbow" that I praised in my comments from that volume.)

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 talk (Molly Tuttle)
02 Good Enough (Molly Tuttle)
03 talk (Molly Tuttle)
04 The High Road (Molly Tuttle)
05 Light Came In [Power Went Out] (Molly Tuttle)
06 talk (Molly Tuttle)
07 A Little Lost (Molly Tuttle)
08 talk (Molly Tuttle)
09 She's a Rainbow (Molly Tuttle)
10 talk (Molly Tuttle)
11 Mirrored Heart (Molly Tuttle)
12 Clue (Molly Tuttle)
13 talk (Molly Tuttle with Sierra Hull)
14 Fourth of July (Molly Tuttle with Sierra Hull)
15 talk (Molly Tuttle with Sierra Hull)
16 Salt Creek [Instrumental] (Molly Tuttle with Sierra Hull)
17 Coat of Many Colors (Molly Tuttle)
18 talk (Molly Tuttle)
19 Zero (Molly Tuttle)
20 talk (Molly Tuttle)
21 Standing on the Moon (Molly Tuttle)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266690/MollyT_2020_HmeConcrtsVol2NshvilleTN__9-3-2020_to_12-20-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo appears to be a promotional photo from either 2019 or 2020.

Molly Tuttle - Home Concerts, Volume 1, Nashville, TN, 1-6-2020 to 9-3-2020

Here's an artist I only recently discovered and am jazzed about. I was wanting to learn the Rolling Stones song "She's a Rainbow" on guitar, and I happened to stumble across a YouTube video of her playing the song in a solo acoustic format. I was so impressed that I went looking for other songs she did, and found myself even more impressed. She's a guitar playing virtuoso, to the point that she won the IMBA (International Bluegrass Music Association) Guitar Player of the Year award two years in a row, in 2017 and 2018. But that's not all. She's an excellent vocalist, and a talented songwriter too. What's not to like?

Here's the "She's a Rainbow" video that I mentioned above. It's a good place to start if you want to get into her music. It starts out relatively normally, but wait until she starts soloing on her guitar. Damn, I wish I could play like that!

Molly Tuttle performs "She's A Rainbow" by The Rolling Stones from home - YouTube

By the way, if you don't like bluegrass, don't be turned off by my mention of the word "bluegrass" in that first paragraph. As I write this in 2021, Tuttle is 28 years old. She started out mostly doing bluegrass, but her musical style has evolved and diversified. Her latest album, "...but I'd rather be with you," released in 2020, is an all-covers album. On that, she does songs by the punk band Rancid, the alt rock bands the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Nationals, as well as the Grateful Dead, Cat Stevens, and more. There's very little overt bluegrass on it at all, but more of an indirect influence in her guitar playing style.

I plan on posting a few albums from her. But I'm a lover of acoustic music in general, and I'm most impressed by her solo acoustic playing, so I'm starting with a collection of her playing in that solo acoustic style. I missed her home concert material from the height of the 2020 pandemic, but I retroactively went back and found two albums worth of songs she did from that year. All of them were recorded at home from this or that Internet channel or benefit concert or the like. All of them are officially unreleased, but I only selected the ones that have very good to excellent sound quality.

You'll find a few songs here that are bluegrass-based instrumentals, but only a few. I like those, because she impresses with her guitar playing speed and melodicism. But most are songs she sings that cover a range of styles. I'd guesstimate about half are covers and half are originals. 

As an aside, if you checked out the "She's a Rainbow" video linked to above, you may have noticed she's completely bald in that. That puzzled me (since she wasn't bald in most other videos I saw of her) until I found she has a rare condition that has left her completely hairless. She wears a variety of wigs nearly all the time, causing her hair style to drastically change with each different wig, but I guess occasionally she doesn't bother. You can learn more about her here at her Wikipedia page:

Molly Tuttle - Wikipedia

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Lost Girl [Instrumental] (Molly Tuttle & Tristan Scroggins)
02 The Greatest (Molly Tuttle)
03 Love Never Fails (Molly Tuttle)
04 talk (Molly Tuttle)
05 Over the Line (Molly Tuttle)
06 talk (Molly Tuttle)
07 Little Annie (Molly Tuttle)
08 talk (Molly Tuttle)
09 Keeping the Cats Happy [Instrumental] (Molly Tuttle)
10 talk (Molly Tuttle)
11 When You're Ready (Molly Tuttle)
12 talk (Molly Tuttle)
13 White Freight Liner Blues (Molly Tuttle)
14 Beaumont Rag [Instrumental] (Molly Tuttle & Billy Strings)
15 talk (Molly Tuttle)
16 Angeline the Baker [Instrumental] (Molly Tuttle)
17 talk (Molly Tuttle)
18 Olympia, WA (Molly Tuttle)
19 talk (Molly Tuttle)
20 Take the Journey (Molly Tuttle)
21 talk (Molly Tuttle)
22 Mess with My Mind (Molly Tuttle)
23 talk (Molly Tuttle)
24 Fake Empire (Molly Tuttle)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266691/MollyT_2020_HmeConcrtsVol1NshvilleTN__1-6-2020_to_9-3-2020_atse.zip.html

I'm not sure when or where the cover photo is from, but I've found it with some articles about her that date to the early part of 2020.

The English Beat - BBC Sessions, Volume 2 (1982-1983)

Recently, I posted an album of the English Beat at the BBC. (Or, for those in Britain, just the Beat.) Here's the second and final volume. 

The first volume was really easy to make. It consisted entirely of BBC performances taken from album bonus tracks. This album has a lot of that. Specifically, six of the eleven songs are BBC performances from more album bonus tracks. But I felt those weren't enough to give an adequate picture, because the band only did one BBC session in the 1982/1983 time frame. So I've added in some live songs that I feel are important songs for the band. Most of these also come from album bonus tracks. There were a few more I could have included, but I didn't do that to avoid duplication of some songs. 

The only song here that isn't sourced from a bonus track is the last one, "Ackee 1 2 3." Personally, that's my favorite deep cut of theirs. Between this BBC volume and the first one, you basically get an excellent double album greatest hits collection. I wanted to make sure that song was included too. But since I couldn't find a bonus track version, I ended up using a version from a rare but officially released album of the band playing at the US Festival in 1983. However, with this and the other live songs here, it's hard to tell they're live versions, except sometimes for some applause at the end.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 Doors of Your Heart (English Beat)
02 I Confess (English Beat)
03 Spar Wid Me (English Beat)
04 She's Going (English Beat)
05 Save It for Later (English Beat)
06 Sole Salvation (English Beat)
07 Pato and Roger a Go Talk (English Beat)
08 End of the Party (English Beat)
09 Best Friend (English Beat)
10 Get-a-Job - Stand Down Margaret (English Beat)
11 Ackee 1 2 3 (English Beat)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15112200/TEnglishB_1982b-1983_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The album cover photo is a promotional photo of the band, I think from 1983.

Richard Thompson - 1000 Years of Popular Music - Second Version (2001-2007)

A couple of weeks ago, I posted my version of Richard Thompson's "1000 Years of Popular Music" concerts. If you liked that one, you should like this one too. It's the exact same thing, the same concept, except that every single song is different!

Here's a quick review. Starting around 2001, Thompson began playing his occasional "1000 Years of Popular Music" concerts, which consisted entirely of covers of songs from the last 1000 years. And "1000 years" wasn't an exaggeration, either: many of the songs go back hundreds of years. In 2004, he put out an album of the concert, and the first version I posted largely contains the same set of songs, though I made some changes, such as including more of his banter about the songs, and changing the song order to make more chronological sense. 

In 2006, he released a DVD of the show, with many different songs than the ones on the album. I took those different songs as the start of this version - there are nine of those. But then I added a bunch more, because there were many changes to his set lists as he kept playing "1000 Years" themed concerts from time to time in the 2000s. I found another 12 songs to add. All of these are officially unreleased in any form, and come from concert bootlegs. Luckily, most of them sound pretty good, but sometimes there's a drop in sound quality from the songs sourced from the DVD.

As with the first version I posted, I made a concerted effort to find comments he made about each song. I got lucky and found him saying at least a few words for every song, with two exceptions ("You'll Never Walk Alone" and "Ring of Fire").

Also like the first version I posted, I sorted the songs by the years they were first created, instead of by the order Thompson performed them in concert. Doing the latter pretty much would have been impossible, since the songs come from a bunch of concerts with very different set lists. With the first version, Thompson gave a great lesson on the history of Western music over the last 1000 years, and here he does it again, without repeating himself at all. Not only that, but I'm planning a third version where that feat is repeated.

By the way, sometimes the sound quality is a little worse on the banter between songs. Occasionally, I had to resort to lower quality bootlegs to find examples of saying anything at all. I figure and hope it won't be that big of a problem, since it only happens during the talking.

This album is an hour and 25 minutes long, which was roughly the length of one of his typical concerts with this theme. As with the first version, I've included the years the songs were created in the song titles, to help make that clear. I did some research on that to help me with the ordering of the songs.

01 Worlds Blis Ne Last [1200s] (Richard Thompson)
02 talk (Richard Thompson)
03 Bonnie St. Johnstone [unknown] (Richard Thompson)
04 talk (Richard Thompson)
05 O Sleep Fond Fancy [Thomas Morley, 1597] (Richard Thompson)
06 talk (Richard Thompson)
07 Remember O Thou Man [Thomas Ravenscroft, 1609] (Richard Thompson)
08 talk (Richard Thompson)
09 Full Fathom Five [Robert Johnson, 1611] (Richard Thompson)
10 talk (Richard Thompson)
11 A-Begging I Will Go [1817 or earlier] (Richard Thompson)
12 talk (Richard Thompson)
13 Hobo Bill's Last Ride [Jimmie Rodgers, 1929] (Richard Thompson)
14 talk (Richard Thompson)
15 Night and Day [Cole Porter, 1932] (Richard Thompson)
16 talk (Richard Thompson)
17 I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter [Fats Waller, 1935] (Richard Thompson)
18 talk (Richard Thompson)
19 Java Jive [The Ink Spots, 1941] (Richard Thompson)
20 talk (Richard Thompson)
21 London Pride [Noel Coward, 1941] (Richard Thompson)
22 You'll Never Walk Alone [Rodgers and Hammerstein, 1945] (Richard Thompson)
23 talk (Richard Thompson)
24 Don't Stop the Music [George Jones, 1957] (Richard Thompson)
25 Ring of Fire [Johnny Cash, 1963] (Richard Thompson)
26 talk (Richard Thompson)
27 A-11 [Buck Owens, 1964] (Richard Thompson)
28 talk (Richard Thompson)
29 I Ain't Marching Anymore [Phil Ochs, 1965] (Richard Thompson)
30 talk (Richard Thompson)
31 See My Friends [The Kinks, 1965] (Richard Thompson)
32 talk (Richard Thompson)
33 Walk Away Renee [The Left Banke, 1966] (Richard Thompson)
34 talk (Richard Thompson)
35 Friday on My Mind [The Easybeats, 1967] (Richard Thompson)
36 talk (Richard Thompson)
37 There's Always Someone Cooler than You [Ben Folds Five, 2003] (Richard Thompson)
38 talk (Richard Thompson)
39 1985 [Bowling for Soup, 2005] (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376717/RICHRDTHMPSN2001-20071000YersofPoplrMusicSecndVerson_atse.zip.html

The album cover uses a photo of Thompson in concert in 2007. I don't know any more details. I used the same artwork on each side as I did with the first version.

By the way, speaking of the first version, in making this album I realized that I'd put the wrong year on the cover of that album. I just fixed it, so if you keep copies of the covers and you're into accuracy, you might want to grab the updated version of that.
 

The English Beat - BBC Sessions, Volume 1 (1979-1980)

I recently posted a stray tracks album for the English Beat. I'm following that up with two albums of their BBC sessions. Here's the first one. (And, as I mentioned before, I understand they're just called the "Beat" in Britain, but I'm an American, where they're called the "English Beat," so that's what I call them.

This is a very straight-forward album. The band put out an album in 1980 ("I Just Can't Stop It") and another one in 1981 ("Wha'ppen.") Decades later, each of those albums were released with lots of bonus tracks, and those included the complete BBC sessions from those time periods. So this is just a collection of those particular bonus tracks.

One interesting thing though is that the first five songs come from a John Peel BBC session when the band was just starting out. They had a meteoric rise, from forming their band to having hit singles and a hit album in just nine months. I read an interview with lead singer Dave Wakeling where he said the John Peel session was touch and go, because the band had just written most of the songs and hadn't done them in the studio yet, and they had to rise to the occasion to remember the chord changes and so forth. But the results sound fine to me.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 Tears of a Clown (English Beat)
02 Ranking Full Stop (English Beat)
03 Click Click (English Beat)
04 Mirror in the Bathroom (English Beat)
05 Big Shot (English Beat)
06 Hands Off... She's Mine (English Beat)
07 Rough Rider (English Beat)
08 Twist and Crawl (English Beat)
09 Mirror in the Bathroom (English Beat)
10 Too Nice to Talk To (English Beat)
11 New Psychedelic Rockers (English Beat)
12 Monkey Murders (English Beat)
13 Walk Away (English Beat)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15112084/TEnglishB_1979-1980_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

I had a hard time finding good photos of the band from 1979 or 1980. So in the end I decided to use the cover to their single "Mirror in the Bathroom." I cropped out the outer edges where the name of the single was included, and added in some text of my own.

The Faces - I Can Feel the Fire - Non-Album Tracks (1974-1975)

Here's the last of the stray tracks albums for the Faces. 

The band broke up in 1975. Their last studio album was in 1973, and one of their key members, Ronnie Lane, left that year too. They had some studio sessions in 1974 and 1975 with a mind to putting out a new album, but in the end all they released was a single. The first two songs here are from that single. The next two songs were recorded live in concert, then released much later on a Faces box set. The rest of the songs are from the unfinished album studio albums, and also were released much later on that Faces box set.

By the way, the song "I Can Feel the Fire" was put on a Ron Wood solo album in 1974. He joined the Rolling Stones in 1976, and I put a different version of the song on a Rolling Stones stray tracks album too.

Most of the songs are originals. I think the only one that isn't is the medley of "Hi-Heel Sneakers - Everybody Needs Somebody to Love."

The two bonus tracks are fine songs. The only reason they're bonus tracks is they're from concert bootlegs, and the sound quality isn't that good.

The album is 37 minutes long, not counting the two bonus tracks.

01 You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything (Faces)
02 As Long as You Tell Him (Faces)
03 Take a Look at the Guy (Faces)
04 I Can Feel the Fire (Faces)
05 Hi-Heel Sneakers - Everybody Needs Somebody to Love (Faces)
06 Gettin' Hungry (Faces)
07 Open to Ideas (Faces)
08 Rock Me (Faces)

Big Bayou (Faces)
Early One Morning [Highgate Shuffle] (Faces)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15116263/TFacs_1974-1975_I_CnFeeltheFire_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is from 1975. Note that Ronnie Lane is gone, and has been replaced by Tetsu Yamauchi (who is the only one in back, wearing a hat).

Phil Collins - Stick It - Demos from the Early Years (1980-1990) (A MIKE SOLOF GUEST POST)

Here's another post by my musical friend Mike Solof. If you've been following my blog, you may have seen that he's made two guest posts already, one about the Monkees and the other about Genesis. Generally speaking, there are some musical artists that I either don't like or at least don't like enough to create albums for them. Genesis/Phil Collins is a good case in point. I'm somewhat of a fan, but not enough of a fan to do a deep dive. So Mike can pick up the slack on that. Knock on wood, more guest posts from him should be coming soon.

I'm not going to say much about this album, because Mike likes to create PDF files with explanations and pictures. So I'll mostly leave the comments to him in the PDF. But the really short version is that this is a collection of the demos of many songs from Phil Collins' 1980s albums. The demos usually aren't acoustic, but they're often stripped down compared to the final released versions, and sometimes they have significant differences. Most of the songs come from bonus tracks, but there are some unreleased ones, including some songs that haven't been officially released in any form.

By the way, all the songs are studio versions, except the last two, which are kind of live bonus tracks, from "The Secret Policeman's Other Ball" in 1981.

This album is an hour and 42 minutes long.

01 In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)
02 This Must Be Love (Phil Collins)
03 The Roof Is Leaking (Phil Collins)
04 Please Don’t Ask (Phil Collins)
05 Hand in Hand (Phil Collins)
06 Against All Odds (Phil Collins)
07 Please Don’t Break My Heart (Phil Collins)
08 Tomorrow Never Knows (Phil Collins)
09 Misunderstanding (Phil Collins)
10 Oddball [Do You Know, Do You Care] (Phil Collins)
11 Thru These Walls (Phil Collins)
12 Don’t Let Him Steal Your Heart Away (Phil Collins)
13 The West Side (Phil Collins)
14 Why Can’t It Wait Til Morning (Phil Collins)
15 Sussudio (Phil Collins)
16 Only You Know and I Know (Phil Collins)
17 One More Night (Phil Collins)
18 Take Me Home (Phil Collins)
19 Something Happened on the Way to Heaven [Broadway Chorus] (Phil Collins)
20 Another Day in Paradise [Homeless] (Phil Collins)
21 Do You Remember (Phil Collins)
22 I Wish It Would Rain Down (Phil Collins)
23 The Roof Is Leaking (Phil Collins)
24 In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Hy2CRqyd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/i4znArrBnjxe1Cm/file 

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/mknfw

Mike picked the cover art photo. Then I added the text. I don't know the source.

The Specials - Ghost Town - Non-Album Tracks (1981-1985)

Here's the second and final stray tracks album for the Specials. 

Note that the band basically split into two in 1981. Lead singer Terry Hall and a couple others left to form the band Fun Boy Three, while the main songwriter Jerry Dammers continued with the somewhat different name the Special AKA. For simplicity's sake, I call everything "the Specials." In actual fact, only the first four songs feature Hall and the rest of the original band.

The first song, "Ghost Town," was a number one hit in Britain, and all three major British music magazines of the time named it the song of the year. However, it didn't make much impact in the US, since it was specifically speaking about the economic troubles in Britain at the time.

Most of the rest of the songs are B-sides. "96 Tears" is an unreleased demo of the classic 1960s hit, from right before the band broke up. "Jungle Music" is an A-side, but it didn't chart at all. The last song, "Starvation," is a special case. 1985 was the year of the huge "Live Aid" benefit concert, and the massive hit charity single "We Are the World." A bunch of band in the British ska/reggae movement, led by the Dammers version of the Specials, decided to do their own charity single to benefit the same problem of famine in Africa. It's a cover of a song originally done by the Pioneers in 1971.

Personally, I think Dammers wrote some top notch songs for the Specials. But after 1984 or thereabouts, he more or less stopped putting out music and mostly switched to other pursuits, such as DJing, instead. That's a shame, in my opinion. Starting in 1993, various versions of the Specials reformed. Terry Hall rejoined the band in 2008, and has led it ever since. Dammers never rejoined though. But these later versions of the band are basically an oldies act, in my opinion, focusing on concerts filled with their 1970s and early 1980s songs, so this series ends here.

Now, I have to address the very unusual bonus track, "The Boiler." I have to warn you that this song, written by Dammers and several women from a short-lived band called the Bodysnatchers, is very hard to listen to. It starts off sounding like most any other catchy, toe-tapping Specials song, with lead vocals by female vocalist Rhoda Dakar. But as the song goes on, Dakar describes a date that goes horribly wrong. It ends with her getting raped, which is expressed in audio by her screaming in horror. It is one of the most disturbing songs I've ever heard.

Dammers has said it's a song that's only meant to be heard once, in order to get its message across. Thus, I've only included it as a bonus track, an optional kind of thing, because it would stick out like a sore thumb in the middle of the rest of the songs, well-intentioned though it is. Also, note that the B-side, "Theme from the Boiler," is basically the same song, but just an instrumental version. I have included that as one of the album tracks. 

So you might want to take Dammers' advice and listen to "The Boiler" once. But I doubt there are many who would want to hear it lots of times.

01 Ghost Town (Specials)
02 Why (Specials)
03 Friday Night, Saturday Morning (Specials)
04 96 Tears [Demo] (Specials)
05 Theme from the Boiler [Instrumental] (Specials)
06 Jungle Music (Specials with Rico)
07 Rasta Call You [Instrumental] (Specials with Rico)
08 Easter Island [Instrumental] (Specials with Rico)
09 Can't Get a Break (Specials)
10 Starvation (Specials, Pioneers, UB40, Madness, & General Public)

The Boiler (Specials featuring Rhoda)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376815/TSPECLS1981-1985GhstTwn_atse.zip.html

The album cover is the cover of the "Ghost Town" single. The only change I made is that the original cover included the names of the two B-sides as well. I removed those names, and increased the size of A-side name to cover the empty space.

Joe Cocker - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1969-1971

I have to admit it's basically false advertising to call this some of Cocker's BBC sessions. There isn't a single song here that was actually done for the BBC! But, as I've said previously, I consider his career peak to be the years 1968 to 1971, and I wanted songs for the rest of that time, if I could find source material that was of equal sound quality to the BBC tracks that made up Volume 1. I feel I did that. 

The first five songs all come from concert performances. But these sound great, because they were taken from an official Joe Cocker box set called "The Long Voyage Home." The next three songs are unreleased, and come from French and German TV appearances, so they have excellent sound quality too. 

The last three songs don't sound quite as good as the rest, because they're from a concert bootleg, and probably an audience recording instead of a soundboard. But I think they're worthy of inclusion here, due to their unusual nature. After Cocker's notoriously wild "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" concert tour, which ended in early 1970, it seems he was mentally and physically exhausted. He didn't tour or release any new music (except for one single) until early 1972, so he kept a low profile for most of two years. One exception to that is he made a guest appearance at a Rita Coolidge concert, playing the three songs here. None of the songs were ever officially recorded and released by him. So they're worthy for that, plus their sound quality is still pretty good, though not great.

The song "Cry Me a River" had a major problem in that a TV announcer spoke over the soloing section in the middle of the song. Previously, I had cut this section out rather than have the announcer talking. But I used new sound editing program X-Minus to simply erase the talking, and keep the soloing.

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Let It Be (Joe Cocker)
02 Feelin' Alright (Joe Cocker)
03 I Shall Be Released (Joe Cocker)
04 Something's Coming On (Joe Cocker)
05 Something (Joe Cocker)
06 The Letter (Joe Cocker)
07 Dear Landlord (Joe Cocker)
08 Cry Me a River [Edit] (Joe Cocker)
09 Horizontal Blues (Joe Cocker)
10 When This Battle Is Over (Joe Cocker & Rita Coolidge)
11 The Devastating Things Love Can Do to You (Joe Cocker)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15847540/JoeCock_1969-1971_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The album cover photo was taken at a concert at the Fillmore East in New York City, in March 1971.

Grace Potter - Twilight Hour, Volume 7 - Home Concert, Topanga, CA, 7-13-2020 to 7-20-2020

I still have some home concerts from 2020 left to post. For instance, I've got a few more from Grace Potter. So here's the next one from her.

This is just like the others in her "Twilight Hour" series. Basically, she played these songs with a small band - I think just a guitarist and a drummer. There was a lot of talking between songs, and sometimes some snippets or failed attempts (since she often was winging it). I didn't include any of that, just the songs that were successfully done.

This comes from two consecutive songs, one week apart. For the first show, she played her own personal rarities, including some songs she's never officially released. For the second show here, she played all of her own songs, but stuff she released, mostly from her earlier albums.

01 At Your Request (Grace Potter)
02 Deliverance Road (Grace Potter)
03 Somebody Fix Me (Grace Potter)
04 Somewhere Out There (Grace Potter)
05 Til the Morning Comes (Grace Potter)
06 Letter to My Children (Grace Potter)
07 Crazy Parade (Grace Potter)
08 Sweet Hands (Grace Potter)
09 That Phone (Grace Potter)
10 Roulette (Grace Potter)
11 One Heart Missing (Grace Potter)
12 Ah Mary [Country Version] (Grace Potter)
13 Can't See Through (Grace Potter)
14 The Lion the Beast the Beat (Grace Potter)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15328372/GraceP_2020_TwilghtHourVolme7HmeConcrtTopangaCA__7-13-2020__to_7-20-2020_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, once again I used one of Potter's chalk board drawings. I don't think it was specifically for either of these shows, but hey, close enough for horseshoes.

Robyn Hitchcock - The Man Upstairs - Acoustic Versions (2014)

I have so much Robyn Hitchcock music to post that it seems overwhelming to me. So I'm going to try to post more from him soon, to try to chip down the backlog. In 2014, he released the studio album "The Man Upstairs." These are all unreleased, acoustic versions of the songs from that album.

I should add the caveat that these are most of the songs from the album, but not all of them. I wasn't able to find an acoustic version of just one song, "Somebody to Break Your Heart." But on the plus side, I've added two more songs he released on singles around that time, "Follow Your Money," and a cover of the Neil Young song "Motion Pictures." ("The Ghost in You" and "The Crystal Ship" are also covers.)

Even though the songs are all unreleased, the sound quality is generally very good. Six of the 11 songs were recorded in the studio without an audience, usually due to in-person radio station performances. The only one that sounds a bit worse than the rest is "Ferries." I could only find two performances of that song, so we're lucky to have anything at all for that one.

This album is 45 minutes long.

By the way, last year, Hitchcock released an album called "The Man Downstairs," that consists of rarities from "The Man Upstairs" album. I won't be posting songs from that on this blog, since I don't want to cut into the sale of that album, so if you're interested, I suggest you buy it.

01 The Ghost in You (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 San Francisco Patrol (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 To Turn You On (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Trouble in Your Blood (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Don't Look Down (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Ferries (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Comme Toujours (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 The Crystal Ship (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Recalling the Truth (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Follow Your Money (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
11 Motion Pictures (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15274625/RobynH_2014_TheManUpstairAcousticVersions_atse.zip.html

The artwork for "The Man Upstairs" included the above photo inside a booklet. It was extremely washed out, and fairly blurry. I used Photoshop to sharpen and darken it some. The writing of Hitchcock's name is the same as on the official album cover.

The Specials - Gangsters - Non-Album Tracks (1978-1980)

I'm a big fan of the Specials. Like the English Beat whom I posted about yesterday, they didn't stay together very long, but pretty much all their music is top notch. They only released three albums (if you count the Special AKA as the Specials, and I do). However, I was able to find two albums' worth of stray tracks. Here's the first such album.

The first four songs are technically by the Coventry Automatics. But that was an early name of the Specials, and included key members Terry Hall and Jerry Dammers, though two other members hadn't joined yet. So I'm crediting those to the Specials for simplicity's sake. 

All but two songs here have been officially released, but some have come out in rather obscure ways. The first four songs mentioned above were included on an archival release. Five more songs were from singles or an EP, including the hit single "Gangsters," which went to the Top Ten in Britain. Two more are from BBC sessions ( the "Long Shot Kick de Bucket - The Liquidator - Skinhead Moonstomp" medley and "Sea Cruise"). By the way, I plan on posting some Specials BBC sessions albums here eventually, but I think those two songs deserve to be included here, as well on those albums. The medley also appeared on a 1980 EP, but that was a live version, and I think the BBC version, effectively a studio version, sounds better.

Speaking of sound quality, the two unreleased songs, "Man from Wareika" and "Madness," are from a live bootleg. They sound good, but not as good as everything else on this album. By the way, "Man from Wareika" first appeared on a 1977 album by Rico Rodriguez. He'd already had a long musical career since the 1950s as a trombonist before joining the Specials when that group formed. He also released a solo version of "Sea Cruise" in 1980. So that explains why the Specials did those songs.

I wasn't sure what to do with the song "Rat Race." It was a hit single in 1979, then it was included on the 1980 album "More Specials," but only the US version. I poked around, and it seems the British version still doesn't include the song. So US Specials fans are very likely to have this song on album already, and British fans are not. Thus, I've included it as a bonus track only. So keep it or not, depending on your situation.

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

01 Wake Up [Instrumental] (Specials)
02 Rock and Rock Nightmare (Specials)
03 Look but Don't Touch (Specials)
04 Jay Walker (Specials)
05 Gangsters (Specials)
06 Guns of Navarone (Specials)
07 Man from Wareika [Instrumental] (Specials)
08 Madness (Specials)
09 Maggie's Farm (Specials)
10 Rude Boys Outta Jail (Specials)
11 Racquel (Specials)
12 Braggin' and Tryin' Not to Lie (Specials with Roddy Radiation)
13 Long Shot Kick de Bucket - The Liquidator - Skinhead Moonstomp (Specials)
14 Sea Cruise (Specials)

Rat Race (Specials)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701085/TSPECILS1978-1980_Gngstrs_atse.zip.html

The cover art uses a publicity photo taken in New York City in 1980. I added the record company logo, since it usually featured on the band's releases.