The Alan Price Set - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1967-1969

Here's the second half of what Alan Price did at the BBC in the 1960s.

For the first album, about half of the songs came from an official album. In this case, only the first two performances have been officially released. Generally speaking, the songs are from proper BBC sessions. There are two exceptions though. "Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear" and "Rip It Up" are from the German TV show "Beat Club." And the last two songs are from the BBC, but a BBC TV show instead of radio shows like all the rest.

By chance, most of the songs here were plagued with the problem of BBC DJs talking over the starts and ends of the songs. Heck, even one of "Beat Club" songs had a DJ talk in German over the beginning of it. But, as I usually do, I used the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe the DJ talking while keeping the underlying music.

Note that during this time Price was quite taken by the songwriting of Randy Newman who was still unknown and hadn't put out any albums yet. So there are a few Newman covers here (including one he otherwise never did, "1941"). Also, like the previous BBC album, there are a number of songs here that he never recorded in the studio. Those include: "Take Me in Your Arms and Love Me," "I Was Made to Love Her," "Rip It Up," "The Letter," "Satisfied Street," "1941," "I Keep Forgettin'," "Here, There and Everywhere," "Walk on By," and "Still Searching for Love." So, like last time, that's about half of the songs.

This album is 51 minutes long.

UPDATE: On January 1, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. I added the songs "Falling in Love Again," "I Can't Turn You Loose," and "Walk On By," which I'd previously missed. A different version of "I Can't Turn You Loose" is on Volume 1.

01 Take Me in Your Arms and Love Me [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
02 I Was Made to Love Her [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
03 Lover's Law [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
04 Shame (Alan Price Set)
05 Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
06 Rip It Up (Alan Price Set)
07 The Letter [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
08 Don't Do That Again [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
09 Satisfied Street [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
10 Don’t Stop the Carnival [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
11 The Time Has Come [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
12 When I Was a Cowboy (Alan Price Set)
13 1941 [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
14 I Keep Forgettin' [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
15 Falling in Love Again [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
16 I Can't Turn You Loose [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
17 Walk On By (Alan Price Set)
18 Here, There and Everywhere (Alan Price Set)
19 Still Searching for Love (Alan Price Set)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16373056/ALANPRCE1967-1969BBSssonsVlum2_ztse.zip.html

The album cover uses a photo from 1967.

Them - BBC Sessions and Live (1965-1966)

Them only existed as a band led by Van Morrison for a short time, 1964 to 1966. Unfortunately, as chance has it, very few recordings of what they played live has survived. I've cobbled together what little there is here. In doing so, I had to combine their BBC sessions and concert performances to get enough material for one album. Even then, it's only 35 minutes long. 

Furthermore, it includes three versions of "Gloria" and three versions of "Here Comes the Night." Normally, I'm against including multiple versions of the same song on one album. But I figure I'd put out everything, since there's so little of it. If you don't like the multiple versions, just delete one or more of them.

I've sorted the music here chronologically. It comes from five sources. Songs one to three and six to eight are apparently Them's only two brief BBC performances. It's nice to have these alternative versions with studio quality sound, but it's unfortunate that they played "Here Comes the Night" and "Gloria" both times. Note that these suffer from the typical problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. But I applied the usual X-Minus editing to wipe those vocals while keeping the underlying music.

The fourth and fifth songs come from the 1965 NME Pollwinners concert. I recently posted that concert in full, including the Them portion, but it's good to have it here with the other material by the band. This is probably the best glimpse of what they sounded like live. Instead of just playing short versions of their hits as expected, they stretched out with a six minute version of "Turn On Your Love Light." Apparently this was more typical of what they did when they played in small clubs, often stretched songs out with lots of soloing, and even sometimes improvising songs on the spot. ("Gloria" is said to have originated from one such on stage creation.)

Tracks nine and ten are from a live performance in Paris that was shown on TV. Too bad there isn't more of it.

The last three tracks are rather curious. A Belgian TV show filmed Them in concert in 1966, and you can still find this footage on YouTube. Unfortunately, they only showed parts of songs. Each of the three songs here range from about a minute to almost two minutes. Still, I figure this much is better than nothing. If you know the name of the instrumental, please let me know. If you watch the YouTube video of this, you'll see it's Van Morrison wailing on the saxophone during that song.

I made a couple of edits to the last song, "I Put a Spell on You." The first line was missing from the recording. So I found a spot later on in the song where he said the line and patched it in. Also, the song came to a very abrupt end. Rather than making the song even shorter by fading it out, I patched in a bit more from the solo, maybe five to ten seconds, and faded that out.

Note that the making of this album can be partially credited to the blogger Prof Stoned. He has collected everything Them ever did and put it on his blog, with the best sounding versions. So all I had to do was select from that. Unfortunately, there were some other recorded TV performances by the band, but they were lipsynced, so I didn't include those here.

01 Here Comes the Night (Them)
02 Gloria [Edit] (Them)
03 All for Myself [Edit] (Them)
04 Here Comes the Night (Them)
05 Turn On Your Love Light (Them)
06 Gloria [Edit] (Them)
07 One More Time (Them)
08 Here Comes the Night (Them)
09 Mystic Eyes (Them)
10 Gloria (Them)
11 Dimples [Incomplete] (Them)
12 Unknown Title [Instrumental] (Them)
13 I Put a Spell on You [Incomplete] [Edit] (Them)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700742/THM1965-1966_BBSessonsLve_atse.zip.html

The cover uses a promo photo of the band from 1965. The version I found had a really messed up color balance, with a kind of wash of orange over the whole thing. I used Photoshop to tweak it and hopefully make them have plausibly human skin tones.

Mary Hopkin - Temma Harbour - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1970)

Currently, I'm focusing most of my efforts with this blog on posting BBC material. But in some cases, as with Mary Hopkin here, I feel it makes sense to post stray tracks albums first, then the BBC stuff. So here's the first of several.

Hopkin has had a strange music career. In 1968, at just the age of eighteen, she appeared in a talent show broadcast on British TV. Word of her performance got to Paul McCartney, and he hooked her up with an obscure and recently written song that he'd heard performed in a night club called "Those Were the Days." It was a global smash, going on to sell at least eight million copies. 

She was very successful for a couple of years, but she withdrew from the pop music scene around 1972. Probably, she was overwhelmed by such success at a young age. She's continued to record and release music since then (and is still going at the age of 71 as I write this in 2022), but with a way lower profile. She's only rarely released music (although a lot more came out decades after they were recorded), and has almost never appeared on TV or played concerts. 

During her popular heyday, she only released two albums, "Post Card" in 1969 and "Earth Song/Ocean Song" in 1971. But she easily could have released two more, dropping stray tracks all over the place. For instance, with the exception of "Those Were the Days," she tended to not put the songs on her singles on her albums. This album has four A-sides and two B-sides, including the big hits "Goodbye" (written by Paul McCartney) and "Temma Harbour." 

Hopkin comes from Wales. Before she was discovered by McCartney, she made two obscure EPs in which all of the songs were sung in Welsh. I listened to them, and I think they're mainly for people who understand Welsh. Nearly all the songs are versions of famous songs, like Guantanamera and Somethin' Stupid. So I've only included one song from those EPs, which is a cover of a more obscure song from the 1950s.

Four more songs here are officially released. Two of them are from an obscure movie soundtrack. The remaining five unreleased songs generally come from live performances from TV or concerts. But one oddity is "Somewhere Along the Morning." This song is a bit under a minute long. That's because it was used for a Coca Cola commercial. But unlike most commercials, there's no plug for the product whatsoever; it's just a nice, though short, song.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Gwrandewch Ar Y Moroedd [Listen to the Ocean] (Mary Hopkin)
02 Somewhere Along the Morning (Mary Hopkin)
03 Morning of My Life (Mary Hopkin)
04 Turn, Turn. Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Mary Hopkin)
05 Goodbye (Mary Hopkin)
06 Sparrow (Mary Hopkin)
07 Que Sera, Sera [Whatever Will Be, Will Be] (Mary Hopkin)
08 Fields of St. Etienne (Mary Hopkin)
09 Lontano Dagli Occhi (Mary Hopkin)
10 Where's Jack (Mary Hopkin)
11 Last Moments (Mary Hopkin)
12 Plaisir d'Amour (Mary Hopkin)
13 Both Sides Now (Mary Hopkin)
14 In My Life (Mary Hopkin)
15 Temma Harbour (Mary Hopkin)
16 Night in the City (Mary Hopkin)
17 Yesterday (Mary Hopkin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15121689/MaryHop_1968-1970_TemmaHarbr_atse.zip.html

The album cover is based on a cover for the Temma Harbor single. However, I rearranged things so the picture in the middle could be made much larger. She was signed to Apple Records, and I thought the record company logo added period charm. So I kept it, but moved it to a corner and shrank it so it wouldn't get in the way of the picture.

The Alan Price Set - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1966-1967

I've got a ton of BBC material to process and post here. I'm not doing them in any special order, just kind of randomly picking from the pile. Thanks to these BBC recordings, I'm learning about some artists that I'd never paid much attention to before. 

A good example of that is Alan Price. He was the organ player for the Animals, and is responsible for the famous organ sound on "The House of the Rising Sun." But not long after that, in 1965, he left the band for a solo career. It turns out he was a capable lead singer (with a voice that sounds a bit like Eric Burdon's of the Animals) and a sometimes songwriter, so it was easy to see why he went solo. He went on to have some hits in Britain into the early 1970s. But he didn't make an impact in the US, and since I'm American, I'd pretty much missed his solo career.

These BBC recordings are good for highlights of his early solo career. There are versions of all of his hits from that time, plus album tracks and some songs I don't think he released. I don't know his music well enough to name every song done exclusively for the BBC, but I checked and confirmed that at least these ones are exclusive: "Baby Work Out," "When a Man Loves a Woman," "Shake," "I Take What I Want," "Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody," "Goin' Out of My Head," "Knock on Wood," and "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood." That's half the songs here! Most of those are famous soul songs.

You'll note some of the songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. That's the usual problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. I applied the usual solution of using the audio editing software X-Minus to wipe the vocals clean while keeping the underlying music.

Some of these are from a rare archival album, and others are unreleased. But the sound quality is excellent and essentially the same either way.

This album is 42 minutes long. I have enough material for a second volume, which will be coming soon.

01 I Put a Spell on You (Alan Price Set)
02 Baby Work Out (Alan Price Set)
03 The Walk [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
04 Hi-Lili Hi-Lo (Alan Price Set)
05 Take Me Home [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
06 When a Man Loves a Woman (Alan Price Set)
07 Shake [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
08 I Can't Turn You Loose [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
09 Tickle Me (Alan Price Set)
10 I Take What I Want [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
11 Critic's Choice [Instrumental] (Alan Price Set)
12 Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
13 Goin' Out of My Head [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
14 Knock on Wood [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
15 Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood [Edit] (Alan Price Set)
16 The House That Jack Built (Alan Price Set)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16373052/ALANPRCE1966-1967BBSssonsVlum1_atse.zip.html

The album cover pictures Alan Price in 1966. I don't know the details though.

Deep Purple - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 2-19-1970

Here's the next in my series of Deep Purple BBC albums.

This one is different from the three previous ones in that it's a complete, though somewhat short, live concert. It was broadcast on the BBC, with DJ John Peel serving as the host. Peel soured on the band shortly after this, finding their new music too loud and bombastic. But you can hear him talking between most of the songs here, and he sounded approving.

This concert has been officially released several times, the first time as part of an album called "Deep Purple in Concert." My version doesn't differ from the official one, but I've posted this here so I can present everything the band did for the BBC in their prime years.

The concert is 55 minutes long. There are only five songs because there's a lot of jamming. The last three songs are all over 10 minutes long.

01 talk (Deep Purple)
02 Speed King (Deep Purple)
03 talk (Deep Purple)
04 Child in Time (Deep Purple)
05 talk (Deep Purple)
06 Wring That Neck [Instrumental] (Deep Purple)
07 talk (Deep Purple)
08 Mandrake Root (Deep Purple)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109462/DeepP_1970_BBSessionsVolume4InConcrtParisTheatre__2-19-1970_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I took a screenshot of a YouTube video of the band playing on the TV show "Doing Your Thing." I had to resort to doing that because I couldn't find any really good color photos of the band on stage in 1970.

The La's - Cocktail - Non-Album Tracks (1988-1991)

I just posted one album of stray tracks by the La's. There's enough material for a second strong set, so here it is.

As I mention in my previous La's post, the band's leader Lee Mavers never wanted to release the band's one album, 1990's "The La's," because he was unhappy with the production, and has never come up with a follow-up album. Since about 1992, he's pretty much disappeared. It turns out that at some point around then, he developed a bad heroin addiction. Apparently, after some years he quit drugs entirely, which is very good to hear. 

But it seemed to derail his music career. There have only been a few hints that he's done anything new in the years since. There are some bootleg recordings, but their sound quality is so terrible that I'm not including anything from them. He did get the La's back for two short tours, one in 2005 and another in 2010, but they pretty much played the exact same songs they played in 1990. There are rumors and hints that he's been tinkering away on some great stuff, but who knows if that's true, and if that'll ever come to light if it exists.

So that leaves us just with the music from the band's late 1980s and early 1990s prime. Most of the songs here didn't come out at the time, although there are a couple of B-sides. Two of the songs here, "Tears in the Rain" and "Callin' All," also appeared in the first volume of the band's stray tracks. I've included these versions because they're significantly different from the versions on that other volume, but just as good.

Six of the songs here remain officially unreleased. Three of them come from what is called "The Kitchen Tapes," where in 1989, Mavers and the rest of the band went through songs that might go on their next album. This was recorded in the producer's kitchen, I think, so the sound is a bit rough, but still decent. There were a bunch of other songs, but most of them either were done better on other occasions or were mere fragments of ideas and aren't worthy of inclusion. For one of these songs, "Go Go Daddy," the band played parts of the song over and over, since it seems they were learning it as they went. So I edited that one down considerably to make it a more coherent song. The other two from this source, "Our Time" and "Tears in the Rain," also got some minor edits just to clean things up a bit.

Speaking of edits, I took this version of "Fishing Net" from YouTube. A poster there found a rough sounding live recording of the song and did some tinkering to make it sound better. It sounded better to me, so I used that one. It sounds quite good now. 

By the way, the La's weren't entirely Lee Mavers' band. He had a right hand man of sorts in John Power. Two of the songs here, "Alright" and "Follow Me Down," were written and sung by Power, though they're very much in the style of the others. In 1992, Power got tired of waiting for Mavers to stop obsessing over the same songs on "The La's" album and move on to these new songs. He quit the band and started his own band called "Cast." They had a big hit in Britain in 1995 with "Alright." 

This album is 41 minutes long. I've given it the title "Cocktail" because there's a reporter who claimed to talk to Mavers in the 1990s and was told his planned follow up album was going to have that title. Who knows if that's true, but it's as good as any other title, so I've used it.

01 I Am the Key (La's)
02 That'll Be the Day (La's)
03 Our Time [Edit] (La's)
04 Tears in the Rain [Slow Version] (La's)
05 Go Go Daddy [Edit] (La's)
06 Clean Prophet (La's)
07 Over (La's)
08 Fishing Net [Edit] (La's)
09 Rebound [Edit] (La's)
10 Callin' All [1990 BBC Version] (La's)
11 When Will I See You Again (La's)
12 Alright (La's)
13 Follow Me Down (La's)
14 Swashbuckler [Instrumental] (La's)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700798/TLAS1989-1991_Ccktail_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the cover to the single for "Timeless Melody." It's very similar to the cover for "The La's" album, except with a female eye closed instead of open. It seems there were several different versions with different colors. I liked the orange one the best. I enlarged the eye a bit and changed the text.

The La's - Callin' All - Non-Album Tracks (1985-1988)

In my opinion, the La's were one of the best bands of their era, the late 1980s and early 1990s. Yes, their music had a 1960s vibe to it, but what's wrong with that? What mattered most was that the songwriting was excellent. Even though they didn't sell tons of records back in the day, their music still has a popular audience, showing how quality can endure.

The big problem with this band, though, was how little music they released. There was only one album, the 1990 album also called "The La's." The band's main singer and songwriter Lee Mavers is still alive and still said to be working on a follow-up album. It's been freaking 32 years as I write this in 2022! I'd be extremely shocked if he ever put out anything new.

That said, there are many more quality songs from the band back in the heyday than what they put on that album. In fact, I have enough for two stray tracks albums. Here's the first one.

Despite the fact that the band only released one studio album, there have been a ton of archival releases in the decades since they broke up. But most of the stuff isn't that interesting, because it tends to be slightly different versions of the same batch of songs over and over. 

Plus, early on, there were a bunch of songs by a different band member, Mike Badger. Unfortunately, his songs simply weren't that good, in my opinion. He was kicked out of the band in 1986 (even though he'd started it) and the band became a vehicle for Lee Mavers and his songs from that point on. I've avoided the Mike Badger songs, as well as song early Mavers ones that also weren't that good.

After cutting all that, there still are many good songs from the band's early years that have generally been overlooked because they didn't come out on a studio album at the time. I should mention that I've named this album "Callin' All" even though there are at least two official archival albums with that same name because apparently there was a plan to release a double album of songs around 1988. That never happened, due to Mavers never being happy with any of the produced versions, a problem that continues until today. But that leaves me with the ideal album cover for music from this time period.

All but one song here have been officially released. That one song, "Callin' All," has been officially released in multiple versions. But I liked this unreleased version the best. It's a studio recording, so the sound quality is as good as the others. Six of the songs are from B-sides and the rest came out on archival albums much later.

You may note that I've edited the two songs with "[Edit]" in their names. In both cases, I felt the songs had some problematic or dull parts, so I edited those out. However, even after being cut down some, "The Way We Came" is still over eight minutes long. It's still clearly the La's, but it's in a different and slower style than their usual stuff.

This album is 48 minutes long, not including the bonus track. 

As I mentioned above, I found enough material for the stray tracks albums from this band. I'll post the other one dealing with the years 1988 to 1991 soon.

The bonus song "Jumpin' Jack Flash" is a cover version of the famous Rolling Stones hit. It's a bonus track in part due to somewhat poorer sound coming from a concert recording. But also, it doesn't fit well with the other songs. Still, I thought it was interesting enough for at least bonus track status.

01 Moonlight (La's)
02 Open Your Heart (La's)
03 Get Down Over (La's)
04 Tears in the Rain (La's)
05 Callin' All (La's)
06 Knock Me Down (La's)
07 Endless (La's)
08 It's Not Impossible [Edit] (La's)
09 The Way We Came [Edit] (La's)
10 Come In, Come Out (La's)
11 Who Knows (La's)
12 Man I'm Only Human (La's)
13 All by Myself (La's)\

Jumpin' Jack Flash (La's)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266644/TLas_1985-1988_CallnAll_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used a cover of the "There She Goes" single. Except I made a few changes. I enlarged the picture of the band, about doubling it in size. And I enlarged the text, as well as changing the words to fit the album title name.

Deep Purple - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1970

Here's the next album of Deep Purple at the BBC. In my opinion, the band was hitting its stride at this time, moving more into hard rock with the "In Rock" album in 1970.

All but one of the songs here come from official album "BBC Sessions 1968-1970." The one exception is the last track, "Mandrake Root." This also comes from an official source, but a lesser known one, and something that only came out on DVD, "Rock Review 1969-1972." The reason for the difference is that last song is the only one that wasn't actually performed at the BBC. Instead, it was done for a French TV show. I've included it to get all the other songs the band did on TV or radio that weren't also done for the BBC. It so happens there simply aren't many of those, at least not with excellent sound quality.

You may note three songs have "[Edit]" in their names. Generally speaking, by 1970, the BBC DJs were ending their bad habit of talking over the starts and ends of the songs they were playing, but as you can see they still did that for those songs. As usual, I used the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe out the talking while keeping the underlying music.

This album is 43 minutes long. There aren't as many songs as before because the songs were getting longer. "Mandrake Root" in particular is 14 minutes long.

01 Bloodsucker [Edit] (Deep Purple)
02 Living Wreck [Edit] (Deep Purple)
03 Black Night (Deep Purple)
04 Grabsplatter [Instrumental Version of I'm Alone] (Deep Purple)
05 Into the Fire [Edit] (Deep Purple)
06 Child in Time (Deep Purple)
07 Mandrake Root (Deep Purple)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109453/DeepP_1970_BBSessionsVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is of the band performing for the Top of the Pops BBC TV show in early 1970. (I didn't include that exact performance on this album because they lipsynced the vocals.)

Kirsty MacColl - Acoustic Radio Shows (1993-2000)

First off, note that I've made changes to all the Kirsty MacColl stray tracks albums that I've posted so far. For some of them, I merely improved the volume balance between songs, and updated the mp3 tags to the new format I'm using. But for three albums, I've added songs that I only recently became aware of. For the album "Sun on the Water," I added two songs from an obscure various artists compilation that I'd previous missed. For "You Still Believe in Me," two unreleased songs emerged in 2021. And for "Real," four more unreleased songs emerged in 2021. So, if you're a fan of her music, don't miss those.

Moving on to this album, there is a nice but little known official album called "What Do Pretty Girls Do" that compiles MacColl's BBC appearances from 1989 to 1995. All of the songs on that were done in an acoustic format, so I find those versions a nice contrast to the fully produced album versions. But it turns out MacColl did some other acoustic versions for radio appearances in the 1990s. They all remain unreleased since they weren't done for the BBC. This collects them. Many of the songs here are also on "What Do Pretty Girls Do" in similar acoustic versions, but there are a good number of songs that are unique here.

The songs here are compiled from six radio shows. with five of those in the US. There were a few cases where the same songs were played on more than one of these shows, although not that many. In cases where there were two or more versions of one song, I only included one version. 

I'm especially delighted to include the last two songs, "Nao Esperando" and "England 2 Colombia 0." These are from her 2000 album "Tropical Brainstorm," which is my favorite album of hers. That album is heavily influenced by music from Latin America, especially Brazil. As such, one would think the songs wouldn't work in a solo acoustic format. But that's how she plays those two songs, and they work well, with the help of a bit more instrumentation, though no drums.

The song "Miss Otis Regrets" has "[Edit]" in the same because I edited it. This version was almost acoustic, but had some drumming on it. I used the X-Minus audio editing program to remove the drums.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Can't Stop Killing You (Kirsty MacColl)
02 Bad (Kirsty MacColl)
03 Children of the Revolution (Kirsty MacColl)
04 My Affair (Kirsty MacColl)
05 Last Day of Summer (Kirsty MacColl)
06 There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis (Kirsty MacColl)
07 Don't Come the Cowboy with Me, Sonny Jim (Kirsty MacColl)
08 Fifteen Minutes (Kirsty MacColl)
09 Still Life (Kirsty MacColl)
10 Miss Otis Regrets [Edit] (Kirsty MacColl)
11 Free World (Kirsty MacColl)
12 Caroline (Kirsty MacColl)
13 They Don't Know (Kirsty MacColl)
14 Roll Um Easy (Kirsty MacColl)
15 Nao Esperando (Kirsty MacColl)
16 England 2 Colombia 0 (Kirsty MacColl)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15260706/KirstyMacC_1993-2000_AcoustcRadioShws_atse.zip.html

Since this is an acoustic album, I wanted a cover photo showing MacColl playing an acoustic guitar. I found a good one, which I used here. But it so happens it's from the Fleadh concert in London in 1995. I've posted that concert in full. If you compare the cover photo of that one to this one, you'll see she's wearing the same outfit.

Deep Purple - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1969-1970

I'm currently prioritizing the posting of Deep Purple BBC albums so I can get to other BBC albums by other artists, so here's another one of those from them.

My favorite Deep Purple line-up by far is the Mark II one, which is the one responsible for "Smoke on the Water" and most of their other best known songs. This is mostly made by that line-up. However, the first two songs were done by the Mark I line-up, since they were recorded in June 1969 and the Mark II line-up had their first concert in early July 1969. (The different between the line-ups is very noticeable, since they had different lead singers.)

All but three of the songs here come from the official album "BBC Sessions 1968-1970." Of those three, "Paint It Black" comes from a Dutch radio show, and is the only officially unreleased performance here. "Hallelujah" was done for the German TV show "Beat Club," and comes from an obscure compilation of Beat Club performances. "Kentucky Woman" was played in concert, and comes from the official live album "Live in Montreux 69." I included that one because the song was played for the BBC but the recording was lost, and the sound quality is on par with the rest of the album.

Note that three of the songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. In the first two cases, that was because BBC DJs were talking over part of the songs. For the third case, "Hallelujah," a German DJ talked over part of the song during the "Beat Club" TV show. In all cases, I used the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe out the talking while keeping the underlying music.

By the way, the song "Jam Stew" needs a bit of explanation. This was done as an instrumental in the studio, and that version was later released as a bonus track to the "In Rock" album. But this version actually does have lead vocals and lyrics, so this particular version is also known as "John Stew."

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Hush [Edit] (Deep Purple)
02 The Painter [Edit] (Deep Purple)
03 Ricochet [Early Version of Speed King] (Deep Purple)
04 The Bird Has Flown (Deep Purple)
05 Paint It Black - Drum Solo - Paint It Black [Instrumental] (Deep Purple)
06 Hallelujah [Edit] (Deep Purple)
07 Kentucky Woman (Deep Purple)
08 Speed King (Deep Purple)
09 Jam Stew [John Stew] (Deep Purple)
10 Hard Lovin' Man (Deep Purple)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109449/DeepP_1969-1970_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

I believe the cover art photo dates from 1970. I had a hard time finding a really good photo of the band from 1969. But this is the Mark II version of the band in the photo, featured on all but two tracks here.

Iwan Fals - Ngalor Ngidulnya, Volume 2 (2021)

A few days ago, I posted Volume 1 in this series. I have several more to go, so here's the next one already.

If you don't know who Iwan Fals is, beware that he's an Indonesian musician who sings all his songs in the Indonesian language. So if that's not your cup of tea, you should skip this.

My Volume 1 post explained more about who he is and why I'm posting his music. Assuming you know all that, this is a reminder that this series is basically his version of the home concert recordings lots of musicians have done during the pandemic lockdown phase. He has regularly done one song a week, playing them in solo acoustic format (sometimes with harmonica). All these performances are unreleased, unless you count him posting them for free on YouTube.

It seems when he started this series, he tended to do a lot of his most famous songs early on (famous in Indonesia, that is). With this being Volume 2, these generally are all still well known songs. It's too bad if you can't speak Indonesian, because his lyrics are excellent. Although he does lots of romantic songs, he also does many social commentary ones. Take the first song here for instance, "Isi Rimba Tak Ada Tempat Berpijak Lagi." This song laments the cutting of the tropical forests in Indonesia. But the song came out in 1982, putting him ahead of most public consciousness on this issue, especially for Indonesia.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Isi Rimba Tak Ada Tempat Berpijak Lagi (Iwan Fals)
02 Sapuku Sapuku Sapu Sapu (Iwan Fals)
03 Tarmijah dan Problemnya (Iwan Fals)
04 Tak Bitu Lagi Lautku (Iwan Fals)
05 Ambisi (Iwan Fals)
06 Antara Aku, Kau dan Bekas Pacarmu (Iwan Fals)
07 Galang Rambu Anarki (Iwan Fals)
08 Obat Awet Muda (Iwan Fals)
09 Sumbang (Iwan Fals)
10 Kereta Tiba Pukul Berapa (Iwan Fals)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16064272/IwanF_2021_NgalrNgidlnyaVolum2_atse.zip.html

As with Volume 1, the cover art was made from taking a screenshot from one of the YouTube videos of these exact performances.

Various Artists - NME Poll Winners' Concert, Empire Pool, London, Britain, 4-11-1965

I read an interesting article today about how the sale of new music is continually falling to all time lows every year, while interest in older music continues to rise. It's a good article. I suggest you check it out:

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/is-old-music-killing-new-music 

As the article points out, there's still plenty of good new music, it's just that's not what gets promoted and makes it big, due to screwed-up record companies and other factors. Compare the artists on the top of the charts today to the quality of the mainstream artists at the time of this 1965 concert: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Animals, Dusty Springfield, Them (with Van Morrison), the Moody Blues, Donovan, and many more, all sharing the same stage! Is it any wonder that lots of people (including me) are more interested in this kind of music than the generic, pre-packaged pop of today? The amount of sheer talent bursting up the charts in 1965 was staggering.

The reason so many big names played this one concert was because it was an awards show of sorts for NME - New Musical Express, a British music magazine. NME began giving out yearly poll winner awards in 1953, and continue to do it until this day (2022 as I write this). At least through 1968, there were annual concerts to celebrate the winners. But unlike most awards shows, this concert just focused on music instead of bogging things down with speeches and award presentations. 

I would love to hear the 1966, 1967, and 1968 shows in full, since music just got better and better as the 1960s went on, in my opinion, and all sorts of interesting artists played in those later shows, including Cream, the Small Faces, the Move, the Beach Boys, Cat Stevens, the Who, the Yardbirds, and lots more, including more appearances by big names in this concert, like the Beatles and Rolling Stones. But I've only come across parts of the 1966 show, and none of the 1967 or 1968 shows. The full 1964 and 1965 shows are available on bootleg though, and I'm posting the 1965 one as I think it's more interesting, with these mostly British Invasion acts more fully developed by then.

The sound quality is excellent throughout. This concert was professionally recorded in order to be broadcast on British TV a short time afterwards. The TV version was edited down, but somehow luckily a recording of the entire show has made its way to the public. You can watch the entire thing on YouTube, though it's only in black and white.

This concert took place before artists typically stretched out with lots of soloing and jamming and such. These songs don't differ that much from their studio versions (with a few exceptions, like Them and the Animals). But I still think this is a fascinating listen, as there aren't many quality concert recordings from this early in the 1960s. In particular, there were many artists who were pretty big back in the day but have little to no surviving audio or video of them in concert. Even for major names like the Animals and Dusty Springfield, there's very little from around this time period. And for the lesser known acts, this is often the only evidence of them in concert that seems to still exist.

I'm a big Kinks fan, so a minor disappointment for me is that the Kinks only played two songs. Even at this early stage in their career they were a big enough name to deserve more time. Apparently, this has to do with them being late to the show. You can hear guitarist Dave Davies apologize about this between songs. According to some accounts, they actually played after the Beatles, as the very last act. However, the recording I used had them just before the Beatles, and that seems to fit in terms of the audience applause and announcement and such, so I'm keeping it that way.

As far as naming the artists for each song goes, technically I should have put the names of the emcee or emcees on many of the talk tracks. Some of those had band members talking, some had the emcees, and some where a mix. But rather than spend time dealing with all that, I just put the name of the act being introduced, for simplicity's sake. (Unfortunately, one of the emcees was DJ Jimmy Savile, who later was disgraced in a child molestation scandal. Thankfully, his role here is very minor.) I only put in the DJ names on the very first and last tracks, since those weren't linked to any particular artists.

A couple of the performers here are rather forgettable. I was tempted to cut out Freddie and the Dreamers and Sounds Incorporated in particular. But ultimately I decided it was best to present the entire thing unedited (although I cut out some annoying laughter by Freddie and the Dreamers between songs). Overall, I think the percentage of quality performers is quite high. 

The Beatles only got to do a 15 minute long set, but it's nice that you can actually hear them perform instead of being totally drowned out by screaming, as was typical of the time. Apparently, the arena (Empire Pool, later renamed Wembley Arena), held about 10,000 people. I'm sure that, by 1965, the Beatles could have filled up a much larger venue in London all on their own.

This concert is two hours and 23 minutes long. I cut out some dead air between songs. But there was surprisingly little of that to begin with. Either this was already edited down, or this was a tightly run show.

01 talk (Keith Fordyce & Jimmy Savile)
02 Bo Diddley - Pretty Thing (Moody Blues)
03 Go Now (Moody Blues)
04 talk (Freddie & the Dreamers)
05 Little Bitty Pretty One (Freddie & the Dreamers)
06 talk (Freddie & the Dreamers)
07 A Little You (Freddie & the Dreamers)
08 talk (Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames)
09 Yeh Yeh (Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames)
10 talk (Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames)
11 Walking the Dog (Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames)
12 talk (Seekers)
13 I'll Never Find Another You (Seekers)
14 talk (Seekers)
15 A World of Our Own (Seekers)
16 talk (Herman's Hermits)
17 Wonderful World (Herman's Hermits)
18 talk (Herman's Hermits)
19 Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter (Herman's Hermits)
20 talk (Ivy League)
21 Funny How Love Can Be (Ivy League)
22 talk (Ivy League)
23 Sweet and Tender Romance (Ivy League)
24 talk (Ivy League)
25 That's Why I'm Crying (Ivy League)
26 talk (Sounds Incorporated)
27 Time for You [Instrumental] (Sounds Incorporated)
28 talk (Sounds Incorporated)
29 In the Hall of the Mountain King [Instrumental] (Sounds Incorporated)
30 talk (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
31 The Game of Love (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
32 talk (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
33 Just a Little Bit Too Late (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
34 talk (Rolling Stones)
35 Everybody Needs Somebody to Love (Rolling Stones)
36 Pain in My Heart (Rolling Stones)
37 Around and Around (Rolling Stones)
38 The Last Time (Rolling Stones)
39 talk (Cilla Black with Sounds Incorporated)
40 Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah (Cilla Black with Sounds Incorporated)
41 talk (Cilla Black with Sounds Incorporated)
42 Going Out of My Head (Cilla Black with Sounds Incorporated)
43 talk (Donovan)
44 You're Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond (Donovan)
45 talk (Donovan)
46 Catch the Wind (Donovan)
47 talk (Them)
48 Here Comes the Night (Them)
49 Turn on Your Love Light (Them)
50 talk (Searchers)
51 Bumble Bee (Searchers)
52 talk (Searchers)
53 Let the Good Times Roll (Searchers)
54 talk (Dusty Springfield)
55 Dancing in the Street (Dusty Springfield)
56 talk (Dusty Springfield)
57 Mockingbird (Dusty Springfield)
58 I Can't Hear You [No More] (Dusty Springfield)
59 talk (Animals)
60 Boom Boom (Animals)
61 Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Animals)
62 Talkin' 'bout You (Animals)
63 talk (Kinks)
64 You Really Got Me (Kinks)
65 Tired of Waiting for You (Kinks)
66 talk (Beatles)
67 I Feel Fine (Beatles)
68 talk (Beatles)
69 She's a Woman (Beatles)
70 talk (Beatles)
71 Baby's in Black (Beatles)
72 talk (Beatles)
73 Ticket to Ride (Beatles)
74 talk (Beatles)
75 Long Tall Sally (Beatles)
76 talk (Keith Fordyce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4H9U7vDp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7A16q3et1lHDWG1/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/cTsNU

There are a fair number of photos from this concert. However, the vast majority of them are in black and white. The only color one I've found is a photo showing only Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. When I first posted this, I used a photo of the Beatles, but it turned out that was from the 1966 NME concert. So instead I took a screenshot of the Beatles in the 1965 NME concert video, and colorized that.

I took most of the cover text from advertisements of the show, though I added in the list of some of the artists.

Joan Osborne - An Uncommon Love - Non-Album Tracks (1998-2003)

It's been a slow process, but I'm making my way through Joan Osborne's career with stray tracks albums. She's sometimes tagged as a 1990s one hit wonder ("One of Us"), but that's just the tip of the iceberg for her long and fruitful music career. 

Mostly due to her remarkable voice, lots of people want to have her on their records. This album has numerous examples of that. In fact, she collaborates with other big name musicians for ten of the 12 songs here! Generally, these are cover versions done for various artists compilations or other people's albums.

The only unreleased song is a cover of the soul classic "Ooh Child." This was done with soul great Isaac Hayes for a short-lived TV show that he hosted. There's no loss of sound quality on that track compared to the others here.

By the way, in case you don't know who the Funk Brothers were, they were the backing back for dozens and dozens of big Motown hits in the 1960s and early 1970s. The two songs with them here are from the 2002 documentary movie "Standing in the Shadows of Motown." If you're a fan of that music at all and haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend that you do.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 An Uncommon Love (Chieftains with Joan Osborne)
02 Hand In Mine (Rob Hyman & Joan Osborne)
03 I'm Just a Bill (Isaac Hayes & Joan Osborne)
04 At Last (Joan Osborne)
05 Chimes of Freedom (Bob Dylan & Joan Osborne)
06 Raglan Road (Chieftains with Joan Osborne)
07 My Back Pages (Jackson Browne & Joan Osborne)
08 Ooh Child (Joan Osborne with Issac Hayes)
09 [Love Is like A] Heat Wave (Joan Osborne & the Funk Brothers)
10 What Becomes of the Brokenhearted (Joan Osborne & the Funk Brothers)
11 Do I Ever Cross Your Mind (Joan Osborne)
12 Nobody's Fault but Mine (Joan Osborne with the Holmes Brothers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376017/JOANOSB1998-2003AnUncmmnLve_atse.zip.html

The photo used for the album cover was taken during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on January 17, 1996 at The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.

Deep Purple - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1968-1969

Last month (December 2021), I posted some albums by Episode Six, including two BBC sessions albums. I considered that a prelude to posting anything by Deep Purple, since two members of Episode Six became key members of the Mark II version of Deep Purple, including the lead vocalist. Now, I can start posting Deep Purple BBC albums. I have a bunch of them coming.

This album dates from 1968 and 1969, and features the Mark I version of Deep Purple. It's from a time when Episode Six still existed, in their last stages. The Mark I version sounded fairly different from the much more famous Mark II version, with Rod Evans as lead vocalist instead of Ian Gillan, and more of a pop rock song instead of a hard rock sound.

All of the performances here have been officially released on an album called "BBC Sessions 1968-1970)." But I feel I can add value by removing the BBC DJ talk over the intros and ends of some songs. On this album, there are only two such songs with that problem, the ones with "[Edit]" in their titles. There will be more on later volumes in this series. In all such cases, I used the audio editing program X-Minus to erase the DJ talking while keeping the underlying music.

This doesn't include all the BBC session from this time period, because the BBC made no effort to save their recording sessions, and some were lost to history. But it's not that big of a loss, in my opinion, because most of those lost sessions were repeats of songs included here, such as multiple versions of their first big hit, "Hush." I also searched for non BBC TV or radio performances, but there was nothing significant from this time period.

This album is 43 minutes long. 

01 Hush (Deep Purple)
02 One More Rainy Day (Deep Purple)
03 Help (Deep Purple)
04 And the Address [Instrumental] [Edit] (Deep Purple)
05 Hey Bop a Re Bop [Early Version of The Painter] (Deep Purple)
06 Emmaretta (Deep Purple)
07 Wring That Neck [Instrumental] (Deep Purple)
08 Hey Joe (Deep Purple)
09 It's All Over (Deep Purple)
10 The Painter (Deep Purple)
11 Lalena (Deep Purple)
12 I'm So Glad [Edit] (Deep Purple)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109405/DeepP_1968-1969_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a TV performance in 1968, but I don't know the exact details.

Iwan Fals - Ngalor Ngidulnya, Volume 1 (2020-2021)

I have to warn that this album isn't for everyone. Do you speak Indonesian? If so, you'll hopefully love this. But if not, you may well skip it, since all the songs here are sung in the Indonesian language. I figure very few people will download this, but who knows, maybe word will get out to some Indonesian groups and it'll find an audience.

Have you ever heard of Iwan Fals? Unless you've spent time in Indonesia, I highly doubt it. But I lived there for two years at one point, and in my opinion he's heads and shoulders above all other Indonesian musicians, a musical genius. He's often referred to as the "Bob Dylan of Indonesia," and with good reason. His music career started in the late 1970s, and he's still going strong today (as I write this in 2022), with a new album released in 2021. 

He's particularly known for the quality of his lyrics, and he's served as kind of the social conscience of the country, with many protest songs about poverty, injustice, corruption, and so on. (As an example, the second song here, "Ambulans Zig Zag," is a critique about the poor state of Indonesia's public health care system.) In 2002, Time Magazine listed him as a "Great Asian Hero." Also in 2005, the Asian version of Time Magazine published their opinion of the top 100 Indonesian songs of all time. Fals had the number one song, as well as the most songs on the list. Here's his Wikipedia entry if you want to know more about him:

Iwan Fals - Wikipedia 

If you've never heard his music before, this probably isn't the best place to start. These are all unreleased versions of songs he started posting on YouTube during the Covid pandemic, just as many musicians have done in other countries. They're all in a solo acoustic format. As such, there's more of a focus on the lyrics. Probably a better place to start for someone who doesn't speak the language is the full band stuff. which has often been rocking and catchy. I could try to put together an introductory best of collection of that kind of material, if people are interested.

Fals got started doing these acoustic versions in late 2020, typically doing one song a week. As I write this in January 2022, he's still going with it. So I have four more albums in this series after this one, hopefully with more to come. They're all original songs taken from his many albums. But the original versions were typically done with a band, and these acoustic versions are often quite different.

The YouTube videos these songs are taken from are usually quite long, typically ten to twenty minutes long. Most of that time t is him talking into the camera (in Indonesian), with one song performed at some point in there. So I've gone to some effort to extract only the songs and leave all the rest behind. The talking doesn't have much replay value, and has zero value if you don't speak Indonesian.

The sound quality is generally pretty good, but it's variable. Even though all the songs were recorded inside his house, it seems he's varied his recording setup and his location slightly from time to time, which has sometimes changed the sound quality. There are a few songs in this long series that I didn't include because the sound quality wasn't as good as the others. But overall, this sounds about the same as other 2020 home recordings I've posted at this blog.

This album is 50 minutes long. Most of the songs from this album are better known ones from the early part of his long career. Oh, and by the way, the name of this series, "Ngalor Ngidulnya" is the name Fals has given to all these videos, and roughly means "hanging out" in Indonesian.

01 Bangunlah Putra Putri Pertiwi (Iwan Fals)
02 Ambulans Zig Zag (Iwan Fals)
03 Puing (Iwan Fals)
04 Sarjana Muda (Iwan Fals)
05 Doa Pengobral Dosa (Iwan Fals)
06 Yang Terlupakan (Iwan Fals)
07 Oemar Bakrie (Iwan Fals)
08 22 Januari (Iwan Fals)
09 Bung Hatta (Iwan Fals)
10 Opiniku (Iwan Fals)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16064265/IwanF_2020-2021_NgalrNgidlnyaVolum1_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I took a screenshot from one of the YouTube videos of the songs featured here. I think it was "Doa Pengobral Dosa."

Jellyfish - Music Hall, Frankfurt, Germany, 5-6-1991

Jellyfish are one of my favorite 1990s bands. Their songwriting in particular was excellent, but their style was the opposite of the gloomy grunge trend of the time, so they never got as much success as they deserve. I have some stray tracks compilations and other things to post soon, but I only came across this a few days ago, so it's going to the top of my pile of things to post.

Jellyfish only put out two studio albums, one in 1990 and one in 1993. This is a concert from when they were promoting their 1990 album "Bellybutton." This is an archival live album called "Live at Bogart's" that's from three months earlier in the same tour. The sound quality of that is probably a bit better than this one. But I'm posting it for a couple of reasons. For one, this doesn't seem to have existed as an audio bootleg until now. I found a high quality video file of the concert, and converted it to mp3. Even this remarkable Jellfish fan website while has every bootleg that exists doesn't have it:

AUDIO-ARCHIVE | Jellyfish (jellyfish-archive.de)

So hopefully I can get this circulating around. It definitely is one of the very best concerts in terms of sound quality. But also, this concert is longer that "Live at Bogart's" and they played some different songs, including covers of "Go Your Own Way" by Fleetwood Mac and "Jet" by Paul McCartney.

There were some audio problems, but luckily of the fixable kind. In a couple of spots, there were brief dropouts. For instance, there was about five seconds missing from a middle section of "Go Your Own Way." But again luckily, all those problems occurred in fixable spots. For instance, that problem with "Go Your Own Way" was during one of the choruses, so I patched it up with a bit from another chorus. The songs with such drop outs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

There also were a few other songs where only one of the stereo channels dropped out, often just for a few seconds. Those were even more fixable, by copying the other stereo channel over, so the song didn't lose half of its volume during those spots. 

I sent the whole concert to my musical associate MZ to see if he could improve the sound quality. It's a good thing that he said no, the balance and such was good and there was nothing to fix. However, he helped me find some of the drop out spots.

01 Hold Your Head Up - Hello (Jellyfish)
02 Calling Sarah (Jellyfish)
03 The King Is Half Undressed (Jellyfish)
04 I Wanna Stay Home [Edit] (Jellyfish)
05 talk (Jellyfish)
06 Mr. Late (Jellyfish)
07 Bye Bye Bye (Jellyfish)
08 She Still Loves Him (Jellyfish)
09 talk (Jellyfish)
10 Will You Marry Me (Jellyfish)
11 talk (Jellyfish)
12 Now She Knows She's Wrong (Jellyfish)
13 talk (Jellyfish)
14 Baby's Coming Back (Jellyfish)
15 talk (Jellyfish)
16 Jet (Jellyfish)
17 No Matter What (Jellyfish)
18 All I Want Is Everything (Jellyfish)
19 talk (Jellyfish)
20 The Man I Used to Be (Jellyfish)
21 Let 'Em In - This Is Why (Jellyfish)
22 talk (Jellyfish)
23 Go Your Own Way [Edit] (Jellyfish)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15908778/Jellyfh_1991_MsicHallFrankfurtGermany__5-6-1991_atse.zip.html

I didn't find many high quality cover photos of the band in concert from around 1991 to choose from. This one is from 1990. It shows only the main lead singer Andy Sturmer. As you can see from the photo (with part of the drum kit in the foreground), he had the tricky task of singing lead while playing drums.

Norah Jones - Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz with Norah Jones (2003)

I recently had a commenter ask me to fix some dead links of Norah Jones albums. I figured while I was at it, I would fix all the Jones albums needing fixing. So I edited all the albums that needed fixing, adjusting the volume balance between songs and fixing the mp3 tags. It turns out the vast majority needed at least some changes, so if that means anything to you, you might want to redownload those.

While I was fixing those albums, I noticed that I hadn't posted one of them that I'd thought I'd posted. So here it is. Around 2003, Norah Jones did a few collaborations with Marian McPartland, an expert piano player who already 85 years at the time (and passed away in 2013). During these collaborations, Jones pretty much exclusively sang jazz classics more than she's ever done at any point in her music career. I've posted another album of them doing classics together, but that was a live show. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/03/norah-jones-marian-mcpartland.html

This, by contrast, is a studio album. However, it's an extremely rare one, and usually is not included in Norah Jones discographies. Also, the performances come from a radio show rather than proper studio sessions. I've only included half of the album here, because there is about 22 minutes of conversation between the songs, and I've cut all that out. This is just the music, which greatly includes the repeat listening potential for the album.

All but one of the songs here are covers of classics. The one exception is "Don't Know Why," which also is a cover but first came out as a huge hit by Jones in 2002. The songs are just McPartland on piano and Jones on vocals.

Even with all the conversation tracks removed, this album is still 37 minutes long.

01 September in the Rain (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
02 In the Dark (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
03 Comes Love (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
04 For All We Know [Instrumental] (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
05 I Can't Get Started (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
06 Don't Know Why (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
07 Peace (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
08 The Nearness of You (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
09 Beautiful Friendship (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15603469/NorahJ_2003_MarianMcPrtlandsPianoJzz_atse.zip.html

For the cover, I found a photo of McPartland and Jones singing together during McPartland's 85th birthday party. Jones actually was much further away, almost to the far end of the piano. But using Photoshop, I moved her closer to McPartland so I could have both of them appear larger in the photo.

Oingo Boingo - Whisky A Go-Go, Los Angeles, CA, 10-3-1980

I recently posted a bootleg concert of Oingo Boingo from the Whisky A Go-Go that took place in August 1980. I mentioned I would post another one from the same venue, but later that year. Here it is.

As I mentioned with that post, there aren't many bootlegs from this band with really great sound quality. Weirdly, two of the best in terms of sound come from these Whisky shows in 1980, before the band's first album came out. With that show I already posted, it was professionally recorded so excerpts could be used in a movie. With this show, it was professionally recorded so it could be broadcast live on a local radio station. (You can hear lead singer Danny Elfman give shout outs to the station at a couple of points between songs.)

What I like about both shows is that they were from so early in their career that they performed some songs that they ultimately never put on any of their studio albums. In this case, those are: "I Was a Teenage Monster," "California Girls" (the Beach Boys hit), "Nature Zone" (an instrumental often called "Woke Up Clipped" on bootlegs), "Forbidden Zone," and "Louise." But this show is also longer than the other one I shared, at an hour and one minute, with a bunch of songs not played on that one, so if you're a fan of the band I recommend listening to both.

UPDATE: On October 24, 2022, I updated the mp3 download file. I didn't add or remove any songs. But I found a better sounding version of the entire concert, so I replaced the entire thing. The sound quality was excellent already, but now it's top notch. I would guess it's the best sounding bootleg by the band out there.

01 I Was a Teenage Monster (Oingo Boingo)
02 What You See (Oingo Boingo)
03 Controller (Oingo Boingo)
04 You Really Got Me (Oingo Boingo)
05 talk (Oingo Boingo)
06 On the Outside (Oingo Boingo)
07 talk (Oingo Boingo)
08 Imposter (Oingo Boingo)
09 California Girls (Oingo Boingo)
10 Nature Zone [Woke Up Clipped] [Instrumental] (Oingo Boingo)
11 I'm So Bad (Oingo Boingo)
12 Violent Love (Oingo Boingo)
13 talk (Oingo Boingo)
14 Forbidden Zone (Oingo Boingo)
15 Ain't This the Life (Oingo Boingo)
16 Only a Lad (Oingo Boingo)
17 Louise (Oingo Boingo)
18 talk (Oingo Boingo)
19 Nasty Habits (Oingo Boingo)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264704/OingBo_1980_WhiskyAGoGoLsAngelesCA__10-3-1980_atse.zip.html

I found the photo for the cover art from a bootleg of this exact concert. I don't know if it's really from this show or not, and it's low-res. But I used it anyway, because I think it's a really cool photo. 

Owsley - Vintage Vinyl Records, Fords, NJ, 4-3-2004

A couple of weeks ago, I posted two albums by the Semantics, the band Owsley was a part of in the early 1990s. Now I'm going to start posting some of Owsley's solo material. A good start is this concert, which features him in solo acoustic format.

In short, Owsley put out two solo albums, one in 1999 and the other in 2004. But neither got the attention they deserved, and his troubles mounted, culminating in his suicide in 2010. This concert took place shortly after the release of his second album, "The Hard Way," so it contains versions of the best songs from both of his albums. 

If you've been following this blog, you'll know I'm a particular fan of acoustic versions of songs. This is a good case in point. I enjoy the full band versions in all their power pop glory. But it's nice to see them radically reinvented in a stripped back format, and still show themselves as quality songs.

It seems this concert was recorded by the venue it took place in. You can still see the video of the entire concert on YouTube, along with many other concerts by others at that same venue. So that probably accounts for the excellent sound quality. There are only a handful of Oswley bootlegs (and no official live albums), and this at least ties for best sound.

Unfortunately, because his career never took off, you can hear that the crowd is quite small. But for a concert recording, it creates a very intimate atmosphere, with him taking requests for most of the songs. The only cover is a version of "A Hard Day's Night" by the Beatles, thanks to what sounds like a little kid, who requested it. 

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 talk (Owsley)
02 Good Ol' Days (Owsley)
03 talk (Owsley)
04 Coming Up Roses (Owsley)
05 talk (Owsley)
06 The Hard Way (Owsley)
07 She's the One (Owsley)
08 talk (Owsley)
09 Oh No the Radio (Owsley)
10 talk (Owsley)
11 Zavelow House (Owsley)
12 Rainy Day People (Owsley)
13 talk (Owsley)
14 Uncle John's Farm (Owsley)
15 talk (Owsley)
16 Rise (Owsley)
17 talk (Owsley)
18 Be with You (Owsley)
19 talk (Owsley)
20 A Hard Day's Night (Owsley)
21 talk (Owsley)
22 Sonny Boy - Undone (Owsley)
23 talk (Owsley)
24 The Sky Is Falling (Owsley)
25 talk (Owsley)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15328387/Owsly_2004b_VintageVinylRcordsFrdsNJ__4-3-2004_atse.zip.html

Often when making the cover art, I have to choose between photo quality and relevance. This time, I went for relevance. I took a screenshot from the YouTube video of this exact concert. The downside is that it's rather low-res.

The Traveling Wilburys - Volume 2 - Non-Album Tracks (1989-1990)

The Traveling Wilburys were a great but short-lived "supergroup," consisting of George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne. Unfortunately, they only made two studio albums, and never did any live performances. The unexpected death of Orbison due to a heart attack effectively killed the group, even though they did their second album without them.

Due to the limited amount of material the band made together, people naturally want more. And since their albums were called "Volume 1" and "Volume 3" (as a joke), it's just as natural that when people put together stray tracks to make another album, they call it "Volume 1." Many others have put together various versions of "Volume 2," but here is my attempt.

In terms of actual songs recorded by all of the Traveling Wilburys, it's slim pickings. I count four songs, all of which eventually came out as bonus tracks as part of the archival album "The Traveling Wilburys Collection." So I started with those four. 

Luckily, and the reason this album is possible, is that different members of this band helped out with various solo albums. Plus, member Jeff Lynne typically did the production, and he had a distinctive sound that he put on everything he produced during this time period. So, if it wasn't an actual Traveling Wilburys song, I limited myself to song where at least two of the band members collaborated, and it had their typical production sound. To help make things clear, I've included who was on each track in the song list. And while I didn't list the songwriters, many of these were collaborations. For instance, the big Roy Orbison hit "You Got It" that starts this album was co-written by Orbison, Petty, and Lynne.

I could have included more songs, but I tried to avoid songs that were on very famous albums, such as George Harrison's "Cloud Nine," Tom Petty's "Full Moon Fever," and Bob Dylan's "Oh Mercy" and "Under the Red Sky." For the sources of the other songs, check the mp3 tags. But I'll note I did use some songs from Lynne and Orbison solo albums from around that time. Maybe it's just me with my personal record collection, but those don't seem as overplayed as the songs from the other albums mentioned above. (Certainly, the song from Petty's album are played on the radio a zillion times a day.)

I think there's a good mix of songs sung by all the band members, except for Dylan. He's heard some here and there, but not as much as the others. That's not too surprising, since he's tended to do his own thing for his long music career. I've added an early, unreleased version of his song "Everything Is Broken" as a bonus track, just in case you want to up the amount of Dylan on the album. But it's only a bonus track because it doesn't have any of the other Wilburys on it. I considered using the Dylan song "Under the Red Sky" because it has a Harrison guitar solo on it, but I ultimately decided against it because it didn't have that Jeff Lynne-esque sound all the other songs have.

The last song is somewhat unusual because it comes from a solo album by Jim Horn, a saxophone player who is a long-time session musician. I've included it because, although it's mostly an instrumental, it has vocals by Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne only (Horn doesn't sing at all). Those vocals have that exact Traveling Wilburys sound, and the production is by Lynne, also making it fit sonically with the rest. Using the audio editing program X-Minus, I boosted the vocals some (so that's why there's "[Edit]" in the song title).

This album is 51 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 You Got It (Roy Orbison with Tom Petty & Jeff Lynne)
02 Cheer Down (George Harrison with Tom Petty & Jeff Lynne)
03 Runaway (Traveling Wilburys)
04 A Love So Beautiful (Roy Orbison with Jeff Lynne & George Harrison)
05 Poor Little Girl (George Harrison with Jeff Lynne)
06 Lift Me Up (Jeff Lynne with George Harrison)
07 Nobody's Child (Traveling Wilburys)
08 California Blue (Roy Orbison with Tom Petty & Jeff Lynne)
09 Cockamamie Business (George Harrison with Jeff Lynne)
10 Don't Treat Me like a Stranger (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers with Jeff Lynne)
11 Like a Ship (Traveling Wilburys)
12 Blown Away (Jeff Lynne with Tom Petty)
13 Maxine (Traveling Wilburys)
14 Work It Out [Edit] (Jim Horn with Tom Petty & Jeff Lynne)

Everything Is Broken [Early Version] (Bob Dylan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701028/TRAVLNGWILBRYS1989-1990_Volum2_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I found a promotional photo of the band taken around the time of the release of their first album. There's a famous logo of the band name, but looking at the band's official website, I noticed a different band name logo. So I used that one, then added "Volume Two" with a similar font to some of it.

Gordon Lightfoot - Seattle Opera House, Seattle, WA, 5-16-1974

First off, I have to point out that I've only posted two Gordon Lightfoot albums here so far, both of them concerts, but weirdly, I recently found reasons to change the titles of both of them. In one case, a 1966 concert, I discovered I got the venue wrong. In the other case, a 1971 concert, I hadn't known the exact date, and I recently found out what that was. So I've changed the cover art and mp3 tags and such for both of those. If that kind of thing matters to you, you might want to re-download them.

Moving on to this concert, Lightfoot's popularity peaked in the mid-1970s, with some big singles and hit albums. However, he never capitalized on that to release a live album around then. Even now, there is only one official live album of his from his peak 1960s and 1970s decades, which was recorded in early 1969.

So I thought another live album from the mid-1970s was nice. It turns out there are very few widely circulating bootlegs by him, in part no doubt because there are very few recorded with excellent sound. I figure the most popular is a soundboard recorded in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1976. But I'm not a big fan of that one because it was recorded with a full band, and their arrangements don't sound that different from the album versions.

I recently came across this one, and I like it a lot better. Technically, it's not a soundboard. But it's an excellent audience recording that sounds as good as a large percentage of soundboards. However, what I like most about it is that he performed in a more stripped down format, with just a lead guitarist and bassist accompanying him. The lack of drums and strings and other instruments means you get significantly different versions of many songs. Plus, the fact that it was recorded in 1974 means you get most of his 1970s hits, including one of his biggest, "Sundown."

While the sound quality was generally very good, something about it seemed a bit off. I guessed the bass was too prominent. So I shared it with my musical friend MZ, who is better at that sort of thing. He agreed with me about the bass problem, and improved the equalization to take care of that. It sounds significantly better now.

Lightfoot actually performed two concerts on this date, an early one and a late one. The bootleg includes all of both. There was a lot of repetition, so I've decided to base this on the early show, since it sounded a little better, and was one song longer. But I've added the five songs at the end that were only played at the late concert. So you get the best of both.

If you only count the early show, the concert is an hour and three minutes long. But with the extra late show songs added at the end, the total is an hour and 21 minutes.

01 High and Dry (Gordon Lightfoot)
02 Tennessee Stud (Gordon Lightfoot)
03 Sundown (Gordon Lightfoot)
04 Seven Island Suite (Gordon Lightfoot)
05 Alberta Bound (Gordon Lightfoot)
06 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
07 Don Quixote (Gordon Lightfoot)
08 Christian Island (Gordon Lightfoot)
09 It's Worth Believin' (Gordon Lightfoot)
10 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
11 Beautiful (Gordon Lightfoot)
12 Partners (Gordon Lightfoot)
13 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
14 The Auctioneer (Gordon Lightfoot)
15 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
16 Divorce Country Style (Gordon Lightfoot)
17 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
18 If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)
19 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
20 Cold on the Shoulder (Gordon Lightfoot)
21 Canadian Railroad Trilogy (Gordon Lightfoot)
22 talk (Gordon Lightfoot)
23 Too Late for Prayin' (Gordon Lightfoot)
24 Wherefore and Why (Gordon Lightfoot)
25 Affair on Eighth Avenue (Gordon Lightfoot)
26 Cotton Jenny (Gordon Lightfoot)
27 Sit Down Young Stranger (Gordon Lightfoot)
28 The Pony Man (Gordon Lightfoot)
29 Carefree Highway (Gordon Lightfoot)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693266/GORDNLGHTFT1974_SettlOpraHuse__5-16-1974_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any photos from this exact show. However, I found one from 1974, taken from his appearance on "The Midnight Special" TV show.

Marmalade - Reflections of My Life - Non-Album Tracks (1969-1970)

I'm slowly making my way through the rest of the best of Marmalade's musical output. 

Around the start of this album, the band's fortunes took a turn for the better because they changed record companies. The previous company was short sighted, pushing the band to record singles written by professional songwriters. Under the terms of their new contract, they were freer to write and record their own material. The first two songs are the last from their time with the previous record company, and it still fits that mode. But then they hit it out of the park with their first single for their new record company: "Reflections of My Life." This original song hit number three in Britain and number 10 in the US. More importantly, it has gone on to become a classic, being played millions of times on the radio. 

Encouraged by this success with their own material, they began writing nearly all their own songs. I believe all the others from this album are theirs. They put out an album in late 1970 to capitalize on their "Reflections of My Life" success, called "Reflections of the Marmalade." I've included only six of the ten songs from that album. I thought some of the other songs from that time period were stronger. The rest of the songs here come from the A- and B-sides of singles, as well as two songs that weren't released at the time and only came out on archival releases much later, "Some Fine Day" and "Evenings Shadows."

In my opinion, Marmalade isn't appreciated as much as they should be. I think one big reason for that is because their musical identity kept shifting. At first they were psychedelic, then poppy, then they switched to more of a Crosby, Stills and Nash sound, meaning more acoustic based with lust harmonies. But then they switched again to more of a hard rock sound. But looking back on it decades later, these things don't matter as much, since it's all quality stuff.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Baby Make It Soon (Marmalade)
02 Time Is on My Side (Marmalade)
03 Reflections of My Life (Marmalade)
04 Rollin' My Thing (Marmalade)
05 Some Fine Day (Marmalade)
06 Butterfly (Marmalade)
07 Kaleidoscope (Marmalade)
08 Fight Say the Mighty (Marmalade)
09 Super Clean Jean (Marmalade)
10 Life Is (Marmalade)
11 Evenings Shadows (Marmalade)
12 Rainbow (Marmalade)
13 Ballad of Cherry Flavar (Marmalade)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696641/MARMLDE1969-1970_RflctionsoMyLife_atse.zip.html

I've had a hard time finding good photos of the band from these years. I found a cover of the "Reflections of My Life" single, but I didn't like the photo there. So I took the text for the band name and song title, and used those up top, as well as the record company logo. Then I brought in a different photo that appears to be from roughly that time, based on the band members in it and the clothes. All of that was in black and white though, so I jazzed things up with various shades of blue.

Oingo Boingo - Whisky A Go-Go, Los Angeles, CA, 8-17-1980

I'm a particularly big fan of early Oingo Boingo. I was reading an interview of the band's lead singer and songwriter Danny Elfman recently, which he was doing to promote his 2021 solo album "Big Mess." He commented that he has a short attention span, including musically. He gets tired of entire music genres, and wants to switch to something else entirely. This clearly happened with Oingo Boingo after a handful of years, with Elfman getting increasingly experimental before disbanding the group entirely in 1994. 

That said, Elman was all in with the band at the time of this concert, and they were firing on all cylinders. The band was so fresh that they hadn't even released their first album yet. 

One snag with Oingo Boingo bootlegs, in my opinion, is that many of them have okay to good sound quality, but very few have fantastic sound quality. However, this one has fantastic sound quality. It sounds so good that at times it sounds as good as a studio session, in my opinion.

Note that there's another bootleg of the band at this same venue, the Whisky A Go-Go, also from 1980. That one is also excellent, with more songs, but slightly lower sound quality. I believe this one was professionally recorded and filmed for material for the concert movie "Urgh! A Music War." Only the performance of "Ain't This the Life" was included in that, since it featured many artists. The other Whisky A Go-Go concert was recorded for a local radio station broadcast. I plan on posting that one here soon as well.

The one quibble I have with this boot is that it's rather short, at only 30 minutes. They played one more song, "Nasty Habits," but that wasn't recorded or included on the boot for whatever reason. So instead, I replaced it with "Goodbye, Goodbye," taken from another concert of unknown date and location, but also from 1980. With that song added in, the total length is 37 minutes long.

At this time, the band played a lot of quality songs that were never officially released on any of their studio albums. Even though this is a relatively short show, it includes three such songs, "Forbidden Zone," "I Was a Teenage Monster," and "California Girls" (a cover of the Beach Boys hit). Also, "Ain't This the Life" only appeared on an EP.

Oh, one more thing: at the same time I posted this, I redid the links to all the other Oingo Boingo albums I already posted, fixing the volume balance between songs and redoing the mp3 tags.

01 Forbidden Zone (Oingo Boingo)
02 Controller (Oingo Boingo)
03 Ain't This the Life (Oingo Boingo)
04 Only a Lad (Oingo Boingo)
05 talk (Oingo Boingo)
06 Imposter (Oingo Boingo)
07 You Really Got Me (Oingo Boingo)
08 I Was a Teenage Monster (Oingo Boingo)
09 California Girls (Oingo Boingo)
10 talk (Oingo Boingo)
11 Goodbye, Goodbye (Oingo Boingo)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264512/OingBo_1980_WhiskyAGoGoLsAngelesCA__8-17-1980_atse.zip.html

As I mentioned above, one song from this exact concert, "Ain't This the Life," was featured in the concert film "Urgh! A Music War." So I took a screenshot from the video footage of that and used it for the album cover.

Gladys Knight & the Pips - SOUL!, WNET Studios, New York City, 2-9-1972

Here's something I recently stumbled across, so it's gone to the top of the pile of stuff to get posted. 

Gladys Knight and the Pips were an excellent soul act. In my opinion, their peak years were the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, there's almost no live music available from them from that time. There is one official archival live album called "The Lost Live Album." But that features a concert from 1974. Although that was only two years after this concert, the band changed record companies and had a bunch of new hits, so the song list was almost entirely different.

As far as I could tell, there aren't even any concert bootlegs from before 1974, not even this one (until now). The reason this exists is because it comes from the public TV show "Soul!" I found a video of that and converted it to audio. Thanks to this unique TV show that exclusively highlighted black entertainers at a time when most of them didn't get much extensive TV exposure, we have great concert recordings of artists that otherwise didn't get bootlegged at all. I've already posted "Soul!" concerts from Al Green, Stevie Wonder, and Merry Clayton. I hope more will follow, although unfortunately many of the TV show's episodes have been lost.

The "Soul!" show was an hour long, without commercials (since it was on PBS stations). This episode focused on Gladys Knight and the Pips, but there was a short interview with Knight and an unrelated section featuring some poets. So I have 40 minutes of music from the show. 

The recording sounds very good, as you'd expect from a professionally recorded TV show in front of a small studio audience. (If you look at the video, which is available on YouTube, there are only a few dozen people there.) However, some of the audience responses to songs were cut off, probably due to quickly cutting to an emcee or station identification or something like that. In those cases, I took applause from the ends of other portions of the video and patched them in. Plus, at the very end of the last song, the emcee loudly said the word "soul" right over the final chord. I used the audio editing program X-Minus to erase his voice but keep the underlying music. 

In addition to the songs from "Soul!," I've added two songs at the end. The first, "Every Beat of My Heart," comes from the band's appearance on the British TV show "The Old Grey Whistle Test" later in 1972. The second one, "You're All I Need to Get By," is from a Canadian TV show called "Rollin' On the River." This show was hosted by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. Knight sang a duet with Kin Vassy, who was a member of the First Edition at the time. The two of them sang live (and there's official recording of them doing this song anywhere), but there was no sign of any backing band on stage, so I'm guessing they sang to a backing track.

I added applause at the end of "Every Beat of My Heart." But I didn't do so with "You're All I Need to Get By," since the song faded out so quickly that I would have had to overlap the applause with more of the music to make it sound natural. 

With the two extra songs at the end included, this album is 45 minutes long.

01 Intro (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
02 The Nitty Gritty (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
03 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
04 Make Me the Woman You Go Home To (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
05 Friendship Train (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
06 If I Were Your Woman (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
07 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
08 Intro to Help Me Make It through the Night (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
09 Help Me Make It through the Night (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 Intro to I Don't Want to Do Wrong (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
11 I Don't Want to Do Wrong (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
12 Every Beat of My Heart (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
13 You're All I Need to Get By (Kin Vassy & Gladys Knight)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693217/GLADYSKNGT1972_SOULWNETStdios__2-9-1972_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I took a screenshot of Knight singing "Help Me Make It through the Night" on a TV show in 1972. But it was a different performance than the one included here.