The Petersens - Home Concerts 4, Branson, MO, 6-25-2021 to 12-15-2021

I've posted a lot of albums by the acoustic duo Reina del Cid and Toni Lindgren. I consider the Petersens to be similar to that duo. Like them, they post a lot of videos on YouTube of acoustic covers they've performed of classic songs. They have a more traditional, "square" image, and occasionally do religious songs that I'm not fond of (and thus done include in these compilations). But they're similarly very talented, and mostly feature female lead vocals, which I particularly like. So if you've enjoyed the Reina del Cid and Toni Lindgren albums I've posted, I strongly suspect you'll like these.

They have what you might call a bluegrass sound, but you don't have to be a bluegrass fan to like this. I'm not a fan of the genre, and I do like this anyway. They do some traditional bluegrass numbers, but they also do songs by the likes of Coldplay and the Cranberries here. As I mentioned above, I'm normally not a fan of overtly religious songs, but occasionally I like one on musical terms enough to include, and that's the case with "Go Tell John" here.

Here's a list of the original artists for the songs they've covered: 

01 Steel Rails - Alison Krauss
02 The Star-Spangled Banner - John Stafford Smith & Francis Scott Key
03 The Way I Am - Ingrid Michaelson
04 Viva La Vida - Coldplay
05 Back Home Again - John Denver
06 Go Tell John - Tammy Griffin
07 Tulsa Time - Don Williams / Eric Clapton
08 Dreams - Cranberries
09 I'm Gonna Miss Her - Brad Paisley
10 Rocky Top - Osborne Brothers
11 The Thanksgiving Song - Ben Rector
12 Wayfaring Stranger - traditional
13 If We Make It through December- Merle Haggard

Here's the usual song list:

01 Steel Rails (Petersens)
02 The Star-Spangled Banner (Petersens)
03 The Way I Am (Petersens)
04 Viva La Vida (Petersens)
05 Back Home Again (Petersens)
06 Go Tell John (Petersens)
07 Tulsa Time (Petersens)
08 Dreams (Petersens)
09 I'm Gonna Miss Her (Petersens)
10 Rocky Top (Petersens)
11 The Thanksgiving Song (Petersens)
12 Wayfaring Stranger (Petersens)
13 If We Make It through December (Petersens)

This album is 45 minutes long.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15271441/TPetersns_2021_HmeConcrts4BransnMO__6-25-2021_to_12-15-2021_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot taken from one of their 2021 videos. It's hard to find a shot of all the band members close in, so I'm glad I finally have one for this cover.

John Fogerty - PBS Soundstage, Chicago, IL, 11-29-2007

This is one of the best John Fogerty bootlegs out there, in terms of set list, performance, and sound quality. He's put out a few live albums over the course of his long solo career, but I like this better than any of those. One advantage is that it's simply longer, at an hour and 45 minutes.

In 2007, Fogerty released the studio album "Revival." Personally, I think this is one of his best of his entire career, containing a handful of great songs right up there with his Creedence Clearwater Revival and "Centerfield" material. Unfortunately, it didn't get the exposure or sales it deserved, so those are would-be classics instead of classics. Also unfortunately, this has been the last material of all new songs from him. So this is the ideal time to hear a concert from him. He already was 62 years old at this time, and his voice has inevitably declined since then (though he can still belt it out as I write this in 2022). 

This concert has excellent song selection. It contains no less than nine of the 12 songs from his "Revival" album, all deserving of inclusion, plus the best song from his previous album, "Deja Vu All Over Again," another would-be classic. The concert is so long that he was able to dig deeper into his  Creedence Clearwater Revival songbook with the lesser known likes of "Ramble Tamble" and "Bootleg," plus the best of his solo years hits. The sound quality is also excellent. This show was professionally recorded for a PBS TV broadcast.

However, there was one problem with the sound quality. Five of the songs had a gap of missing music. In each case it was very brief, from a second or two up to a few seconds at most. But still, it was noticeable and annoying. So I carefully used my editing skills to fix those gaps. Luckily, they were all in fixable spots, for instance during choruses or other repeated sections where I could patch in bits from other parts of the songs. Those five songs are the ones with "[Edit]" in their titles. It's possible I missed some gaps, so if you hear any, please let me know and I'll fix those too.

01 Good Golly Miss Molly (John Fogerty)
02 talk (John Fogerty)
03 Bad Moon Rising (John Fogerty)
04 Longshot (John Fogerty)
05 Born on the Bayou (John Fogerty)
06 Ramble Tamble (John Fogerty)
07 Commotion (John Fogerty)
08 Midnight Special [Edit] (John Fogerty)
09 Summer of Love (John Fogerty)
10 Deja Vu [All Over Again] (John Fogerty)
11 talk (John Fogerty)
12 Don't You Wish It Was True [Edit] (John Fogerty)
13 talk (John Fogerty)
14 Have You Ever Seen the Rain (John Fogerty)
15 Long Dark Night (John Fogerty)
16 I Can't Take It No More (John Fogerty)
17 Travelin' Band (John Fogerty)
18 talk (John Fogerty)
19 Proud Mary [Edit] (John Fogerty)
20 Lookin' Out My Back Door (John Fogerty)
21 talk (John Fogerty)
22 Gunslinger (John Fogerty)
23 talk (John Fogerty)
24 Green River [Edit] (John Fogerty)
25 River Is Waiting (John Fogerty)
26 Bootleg (John Fogerty)
27 talk (John Fogerty)
28 Who'll Stop the Rain (John Fogerty)
29 talk (John Fogerty)
30 Creedence Song (John Fogerty)
31 Keep On Chooglin' (John Fogerty)
32 talk (John Fogerty)
33 Broken Down Cowboy (John Fogerty)
34 Down on the Corner (John Fogerty)
35 Centerfield (John Fogerty)
36 Up Around the Bend (John Fogerty)
37 The Old Man Down the Road [Edit] (John Fogerty)
38 Fortunate Son (John Fogerty)

https://www.imagenetz.de/i9Dd8

The cover photo comes from a 2007 concert.

Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren - Sunday Mornings with Elle & Toni, Volume 13: 2021-2022

Elle Cordova and Toni Lindgren have been putting out acoustic covers of great songs most every Sunday for years. Lately that's slowed down a bit, as they tend to do more originals and more covers just for paid subscribers, but they're still going. I'm getting closer to caught up to current day.

Like usual, the songs chosen are from all over, with the only link being that they're all great songs. (Okay, maybe not "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," one of my least liked Beatles songs, but they do a nice version here.) 

The last song is the well known patriotic song "My Country 'Tis of Thee," but with altered lyrics by Cordova as a commentary on the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2022 decision to overturn the Roe vs. Wade nationwide right to have an abortion. I thought it was excellent even though it blurs the line on what a cover is. If you don't like it, you can easily remove it since it's the last track.

This album is 44 minutes long.

Here's a list of the original artists that made the songs famous:

01 I've Just Seen a Face - Beatles
02 Buckets of Rain - Bob Dylan
03 Cold, Cold Heart - Hank Williams
04 The Christmas Song - Raveonettes
05 Maxwell's Silver Hammer - Beatles
06 Amie - Pure Prairie League
07 Ooh Las Vegas - Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris
08 Strange Magic - Electric Light Orchestra
09 Everybody Wants to Rule the World - Tears for Fears
10 You Don't Know Me - Ray Charles
11 Slip Sliding Away - Paul Simon
12 Take Me Home, Country Roads - John Denver
13 America [My Country 'Tis of Thee] [Land of Inequity] - Samuel Francis Smith

Here's the usual song list:

01 I've Just Seen a Face (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
02 Buckets of Rain (Toni Lindgren)
03 Cold, Cold Heart (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
04 The Christmas Song (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
05 Maxwell's Silver Hammer (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
06 Amie (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
07 Ooh Las Vegas (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
08 Strange Magic (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren with Josh Turner & Carson McKee)
09 Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
10 You Don't Know Me (Elle Cordova)
11 Slip Sliding Away (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
12 Take Me Home, Country Roads (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
13 America [My Country 'Tis of Thee] [Land of Inequity] (Elle Cordova)

This album is 44 minutes long.

https://www.upload.ee/files/17363702/ELLECRDVATNILINDRN2021c-2022SndyMrnngswthEllTniVlum13_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Cw5FKKEE

The cover photo is a screenshot from their YouTube video of "Slip Sliding Away." They filmed it in White Sands National Park, New Mexico.

Lulu - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1971-1973

Some months ago, I posted three albums of Lulu's BBC performances. I thought that was all the material available. However, musical associate Marley shared with me a bunch more that I'd missed and that have been extremely rare. As far as I know, they weren't publicly available anywhere. So a big thanks to him. 

There was so much material that I was able to turn what had been one album dealing with the years 1968 to 1972 into two albums. The drastically changed Volume 3 now features music from 1968 to 1970, while this new Volume 4 features music from 1971 to 1973.

Everything here is officially unreleased. Previously, I only had a few songs from this time period, all from various TV shows, mostly her own BBC show, with good but not great, sound quality. Thanks to Marley, now 12 of the 17 songs here are from proper BBC studio sessions. All of those have excellent sound quality, thanks to original transcription discs that have survived.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, Lulu's career started to go downhill around this time. She started out a raspy-voiced, energetic soul singer. But over time she became more of a generic, all-purpose pop entertainer. She lost her emphasis on soul and got very cheesy at times. As a result, by the early 1970s, she became a mainstay of variety shows on TV, but her actual musical career declined and the hits dried up. 

She had a last gasp with a cover of the David Bowie song "The Man Who Sold the World," produced by Bowie himself. After that, I lost interest in her music. By chance, that's also right when the BBC switched to largely using album versions of songs instead of having special versions done just for the BBC, so her BBC material ends right then anyway (although her TV show appearances continued).

That's not to say the music here isn't good. I was selective, and only included songs that I liked. But I had to get more and more selective with each passing year. I really wish she would have stayed with the mid- to late 1960s style that made her famous. But then again look at how the same decline happened to other similar singers such as Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, and Dionne Warwick, with their most acclaimed era ending in the early 1970s.

But don't let me scare you off. If you liked the first three volumes in this series, you should like this one too. I have my standards for song choice, performance, and sound quality. There still are a lot of highlights here. And, just like with the previous albums in this series, a majority of the songs weren't actually ever recorded by her for any of her albums or singles.

This album is 54 minutes long, not including the bonus track. 

The one bonus track is a nice duet with Dusty Springfield. Unfortunately, the sound quality just isn't there compared to the others, so it merits bonus track status only. I also have it on a Springfield stray tracks collection.

01 Bridge Over Troubled Water [Edit] (Lulu)
02 Help [Edit] (Lulu)
03 You've Gotta Believe in Love [Edit] (Lulu)
04 Save the Country (Lulu)
05 Get Ready [Edit] (Lulu)
06 I Got Love [Edit] (Lulu)
07 Resurrection Shuffle [Edit] (Lulu)
08 Everybody's Got to Clap (Lulu)
09 It Don't Come Easy (Lulu)
10 Blue Suede Shoes - Hound Dog - Heartbreak Hotel - Love Me Tender - Teddy Bear - Jailhouse Rock (Lulu)
11 Just a Little Lovin' (Lulu)
12 Nights in White Satin (Lulu)
13 Amazing Grace (Lulu)
14 It Takes a Real Man [To Bring Out the Woman in Me] (Lulu)
15 Even If I Could Change [Edit] (Lulu)
16 Lean On Me (Bill Withers & Lulu)
17 The Man Who Sold the World (Lulu)

Scarborough Fair (Dusty Springfield & Lulu)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16695545/LULOO1971-1973_BBSssonsVolum4_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a BBC TV show in 1971, but I don't know the details.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers - Austin City Limits Festival, Zilker Park, Austin, TX, 10-9-2022

A video of this concert that took place just two weeks ago popped up for me on YouTube yesterday. It was professionally filmed and recorded, I guess in connection with the "Austin City Limits" TV show. I found a higher quality version elsewhere, then concerted that to individual mp3 files.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are having a late career renaissance. With lead guitarist John Frusciante back in the band for the third time, they've put out two albums of 75 minutes of music apiece in 2022! Admittedly, both albums are too bloated (a common problem with the band). But if you cut them down to normal album length of about 45 minutes each, you'd have two very solid albums. Furthermore, if you watch the YouTube video of this concert, it's hard to believe a couple of the band members are 60 years old already. They bounce around with the energy even most 20 year olds don't possess. May they keep going forever.

This is an excellent concert, with great sound quality. There are no problems to fix. The one surprise for me is that they played so few new songs, considering they have dozens of new songs. There are three songs from the "Unlimited Love" album released in early 2022 ("Aquatic Mouth Dance," "The Heavy Wing," and "Black Summer") and just one, "Eddie," from the "Return of the Dream Canteen" album, which came out a few days after this concert. There's also a cover of the Ramones song "I Remember You."

This concert is an hour and 22 minutes long. I trimmed some dead air moments between songs, especially before the encore, where I cut out about two minutes of cheering.

01 Intro Jam [Instrumental] (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
02 Can't Stop (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
03 Drum Solo [Instrumental] (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
04 Dani California (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
05 talk (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
06 Scar Tissue (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
07 talk (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
08 Aquatic Mouth Dance (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
09 talk (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
10 I Remember You (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
11 Snow [Hey Oh] (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
12 Pea (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
13 talk (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
14 Eddie (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
15 talk (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
16 London Calling - Right on Time (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
17 Soul to Squeeze (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
18 talk (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
19 The Heavy Wing (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
20 Black Summer (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
21 John and Flea Jam [Instrumental] (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
22 Californication (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
23 Give It Away (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
24 talk (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
25 By the Way (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
26 talk (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16088828/TREDHCHILP2022b_AustinCtyLimitsFestivlAustnTX__10-9-2022_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is taken from this exact concert, I'm happy to say.

John Denver (plus Denver, Boise & Johnson) - Philadelphia Folk Festival, Old Pool Farm, Schwenksville, PA, 8-25-1968

I like to find music of famous musicians from the time before they were famous, provided it's worthy of their later career and the sound quality is excellent. There aren't a lot of cases like that, but I've posted three 1969 concerts of John Denver here, before he started to hit it big around 1971. He's a good candidate for that kind of thing, because he was singing in public and writing excellent songs well before becoming famous. For instance, his later classic "Leaving on a Jet Plane" was actually written in 1966.

The three 1969 concerts I've posted are all excellent sounding soundboard bootlegs. It turns out there's another excellent sounding soundboard bootleg of him from even earlier, 1968! Here it is.

It's actually three different recordings combined. (I'm keeping it just the same as the original bootleg.) The first nine tracks feature just Denver on solo acoustic guitar, at the Philadelphia Folk Festival on August 23, 1968. Then, two days later, he came back as part of the Denver, Boise and Johnson folk trio, at the same festival. That's here as tracks 10 to 22. Then the last four tracks also feature Denver, Boise and Johnson, but at a concert in Columbus, Ohio, in June 1968.

I need to explain the history of Denver, Boise and Johnson. The group was originally a popular folk group called the "Chad Mitchell Trio." But in 1965, Chad Mitchell left for a solo career, and was replaced by John Denver. It was his first big break into the music industry. The group changed its name to just the "Mitchell Trio." Then, by 1968, the last original member had left, so they were legally required to change their name again, to "Denver, Boise and Johnson." This version didn't last long, breaking up in 1969 without releasing any albums. But that's the version that appears on this bootleg.

For the Denver, Boise and Johnson songs, Denver sang most of them, but David Boise or Micheal did the lead vocals on some of them too.

The Philadelphia Folk Festival portion of the concert is 42 minutes long. With the Columbus, Ohio songs added at the end, it's a total of 55 minutes.

01 Good Ole Friends of Mine (John Denver)
02 talk (John Denver)
03 Deal with the Ladies (John Denver)
04 Catch Another Butterfly (John Denver)
05 talk (John Denver)
06 Sticky Summer Weather (John Denver)
07 Farewell Party (John Denver)
08 talk (John Denver)
09 What's That I Hear Now (John Denver)
10 If You Had Me in Shackles (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
11 Yellow Cat (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
12 talk (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
13 Talking Vietnam Potluck Blues (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
14 talk (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
15 Business Goes On as Usual (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
16 talk (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
17 Everybody's Talkin' (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
18 talk (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
19 '68 Nixon [This Year's Model] (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
20 talk (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
21 Leaving on a Jet Plane (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
22 Love of the Common People (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
23 The John Birch Society (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
24 Victoria Dines Alone (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
25 Your Friendly, Liberal, Neighborhood Ku-Klux-Klan (Denver, Boise & Johnson)
26 Let's Get Together (Denver, Boise & Johnson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15260440/JohnDnv_1968_PhiladlphiaFolkFestivlOldPoolFrmSchwnksvillePA__8-25-1968_atse.zip.html

The cover is a screenshot of Denver taken from a video of  Denver, Boise & Johnson from around this time period.

Elastica - Cleoptra - Non-Album Tracks (1993-1996)

I really love the mostly female British band Elastica. (The band was made up of three women, who sang, plus a male drummer, who didn't.) They only put out two albums, one in 1995 and the other in 1999, but the 1995 one (simply called "Elastica") is a stone cold classic in my opinion. The key to me is great songwriting, and they had multiple talented songwriters in the band. But there's also something special about lead singer Justine Frischmann's vocals, which are expressive and sexy.

The one frustrating thing for me is that their recorded output is relatively small. After their debut album was a hit, success went to their head. The band members started partying hard and taking lots of drugs, instead of staying focused on the music. They never reached the heights of their debut album again, and broke up in 2001. Frischmann then quit the music business and moved to the US, expressing a desire to "become a nobody." She's been a successful painter ever since.

Luckily, the band has a bunch of songs that never made it onto either of their two studio albums. There are so many that I was able to make two albums of stray tracks for them. This first one is the better one, because it deals with their musical peak around the time of the debut album.

The first song is an unreleased studio outtake. The next seven are B-sides. The ninth song was released on a flexi-disc only, and the 12th is another B-side. The 15th track, "Pull Up the Bumper" is an unreleased studio outtake of a cover of a hit by Grace Jones.

The remaining six songs are all unreleased songs that were only played in concert. They're all pretty good, and they come from very good sounding bootlegs. However, they all shared a sonic flaw, in my opinion, of having the vocals too low in the mix. So I used the X-Minus audio editing program to boost the vocals. I also did that to "Pull Up the Bumper." That's why those seven song have "[Edit]" in their titles.

Most of the songs are original, as far as I can tell, other than "Bumper." But "Cleopatra" and "Paranoid" are also covers.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Cos Cos [Demo] (Elastica)
02 Rockunroll (Elastica)
03 Pussycat (Elastica)
04 Blue [Acoustic Demo] (Elastica)
05 Spastica (Elastica)
06 Gloria (Elastica)
07 Car Wash [Demo] (Elastica)
08 Brighton Rock (Elastica)
09 Cleopatra (Elastica)
10 What I Want [You] [Edit] (Elastica)
11 Keep It on Ice [Edit] (Elastica)
12 Ba Ba Ba [Bar Bar Bar] [Demo] (Elastica)
13 I Want You [Edit] (Elastica)
14 The Other Side [Edit] (Elastica)
15 Pull Up to the Bumper [Edit] (Elastica)
16 Welcome to L.A. [Edit] (Elastica)
17 Paranoid [Edit] (Elastica)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15111397/Elastca_1993-1996_Clptra_atse.zip.html

The cover is a publicity photo from around 1995.

Procol Harum - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1968-1971

Here's the second of five BBC albums from the British band Procol Harum. Just like the first volume, all of the songs come from a series of BBC studio sessions.

Nine of these performances have been officially released as bonus tracks. The other seven (tracks 4 and 7 through 12) still sound pretty good.

There's not much else to say here. Procol Harum got lucky in that there are no examples of BBC DJs talking over the music. The song "Nothing That I Didn't Know" fades out in the middle of singing, which is a bummer, but I left it like that.

As far as I can tell, the band didn't do more BBC studio sessions after this. But they did have three full concerts broadcast by the BBC in the 1970s, so that's what the other albums in this series will consist of.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Skip Softly [My Moonbeams] (Procol Harum)
02 Wish Me Well (Procol Harum)
03 Long Gone Geek (Procol Harum)
04 In Held 'Twas in I (Procol Harum)
05 The Milk of Human Kindness (Procol Harum)
06 Juicy John Pink (Procol Harum)
07 Too Much Between Us (Procol Harum)
08 About to Die (Procol Harum)
09 Your Own Choice (Procol Harum)
10 Whiskey Train (Procol Harum)
11 Juicy John Pink (Procol Harum)
12 Nothing That I Didn't Know (Procol Harum)
13 Simple Sister (Procol Harum)
14 Quite Rightly So (Procol Harum)
15 Broken Barricades (Procol Harum)
16 Power Failure (Procol Harum)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697014/PROCLHRM1968-1971_BBSssonsVolum2_atse.zip.html

The album cover comes from a 1970 publicity photo session.

Stevie Wonder - People Move, Human Plays - Non-Album Tracks (1982-1983)

Stevie Wonder had an incredible musical career up through the year 1980. For most of the 1970s, he was on fire with creativity. Some people, such as some of his backing musicians, say there are entire albums worth of unreleased material from that time that remain unreleased and mostly unbootlegged.

Then the 1980s happened. Wonder still had some very big hits, but the critical consensus is that his albums weren't nearly as good as before, and it's been like that ever since. I believe he still was a genius talent, although his creative output slowed down and lessened some, which is typical for most musical artists as they get older. But he was steered wrong by bad song selection for his albums, bad production, having the songs usually go on too long, chasing trends instead of being an innovator, getting too sappy, and other such problems. 

His 1984 album "The Woman in Red" is a case in point. It was a soundtrack to the movie of that same name, and some of the songs aren't his, or are duets with Dionne Warwick. In my opinion, it's very sappy and generic, and pretty embarrassing compared to everything else he'd done up until that point.

But! It turns out he had another album all ready to go around that time, that was going to have the name "People Move, Human Plays." I have no idea what that grammatically strange title means, but it was definitely the title, since he mentioned it in multiple interviews. Apparently it was all finished by early 1984, but it was canceled at the last minute in favor of releasing "The Woman in Red" instead. Little is known about which songs were going to be on it. There are at least a couple dozen or more still unreleased songs from the early 1980s, so it could have been any of those. In my opinion, it was a terrible mistake not to release that, and to still keep it in the vaults until this day.

This various songs collection is called "People Move, Human Plays," but I'm sure it only has a few songs that would have been on that album, if even that many. However, I'm naming that since we know that's the name of a lost album from that time period.

What actually is on this album is something different, a grab bag of released songs and unreleased ones from concerts. Of the released songs, "Do I Do" and "Front Line" come from the 1982 hits collection "Stevie Wonder's Original Musiquarium I." "Used to Be" is a 1982 minor hit duet by Wonder and a singer named Charlene that had some unusual social commentary lyrics. 

"What's That You're Doing" is a collaboration between Wonder and Paul McCartney that appeared on McCartney's 1982 album "Tug of War." In my opinion, I always thought the song was flawed because it went on too long without enough to justify the length. Since this is my album to do whatever I want, I cut it down from six minutes to four minutes. I think it's much better that way.

I made an even more drastic edit to the song "The Crown." This was a hit single by musician Gary Byrd in Britain in 1983, but it didn't make the charts in the US, apparently due to some record company problem. It made it to the Top Ten in Britain despite being ten and a half minutes long. Note that I said "musician Gary Byrd," not "singer Gary Byrd," because he rapped and talked in his songs instead of singing them. However, there were a lot of backing vocals too, and Wonder sang a verse. So I made a Wonder-centric version. It took out pretty much all of the Byrd rapping but kept the backing vocals singing the chorus, the Wonder-sang part, and an instrumental section. Voila, it turned into a pretty great Wonder song that's four minutes long. My apologies to Byrd for cutting him out!

The other six songs here are all unreleased versions from concerts. However, some of them have studio released versions; it's just that I prefer the live versions better, because one can largely dodge the bad production and overproduction that way. "Ebony and Ivory," of course, was a huge Number One single duet between McCartney and Wonder in 1982. Since that gets overplayed way too much, I chose a concert version that's interesting because Wonder takes center stage singing it without McCartney there at all. It has "[Edit]" in the title because I edited out some sonic flaws.

"Redemption Song" is the classic Bob Marley song. Wonder did a studio version of this for a movie soundtrack in 1996, but it has the usual bad production issues. This version was done in concert with the reggae band Third World. I edited it considerably because it was a rough version with lots of mistakes. I'll bet it was a spontaneous thing and they hadn't practiced together at all. There are a couple of points where Wonder forgot the lyrics that I couldn't fix since he mumbled or didn't sing anything at all. But those are pretty brief.

"Stay Gold" and "Overjoyed" are nice Wonder originals that suffered from the usual bad production issues. But they sounded very different, and much better, in concert. The studio version of "Stay Gold" never appeared on any of Wonder's albums (until best of collections later), and instead first appeared in 1983 for the soundtrack to the movie "The Outsider." "Overjoyed" was a hit song from Wonder's 1985 album "In Square Circle," but it was played in concert as far back as 1980. The album version was good, but he played a version on "Saturday Night Live" in 1983 that featured just Wonder on piano. I like that much better, so I've used that version. Finally, "Taboo to Love" is a nice original song that he only ever did in concert.

I only used the best sounding bootlegs for the live versions, and generally wiped out the audience noise wherever I could. I believe they all come from soundboards.

So that's it. As I said, this album is a grab bag of all sorts of random things, including a lot of collaborations, and they don't always flow well together. This definitely isn't the lost album version of "People Move, Human Plays," and he never would have released an album similar to this. But, in my opinion, it's the best of what's publicly available by him from 1982 and 1983, and it shows he had more enough material to release a good album then if he wanted to. And that's not even counting the two dozen or more unreleased songs from that time that haven't been bootlegged yet!

This album is 47 minutes long.

Oh, by the way, when putting this together recently, I also found one unreleased song I'd previously missed that actually is from 1980, "Don't Make Me Wait Too Long," So I put it on the 1977 to 1981 stray tracks collection "Ribbon in the Sky."

01 Do I Do (Stevie Wonder)
02 Front Line (Stevie Wonder)
03 Used to Be (Charlene & Stevie Wonder)
04 Ebony and Ivory [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
05 What's That You're Doing [Edit] (Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder)
06 Redemption Song [Edit] (Third World & Stevie Wonder)
07 What You Don't Know [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
08 The Crown [Edit] (Gary Byrd & Stevie Wonder)
09 Stay Gold (Stevie Wonder)
10 Taboo to Love (Stevie Wonder)
11 Overjoyed [Live Acoustic] (Stevie Wonder)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700506/STEVIWNDR1982-1983_PepleMveHumnPlys_atse.zip.html

I didn't find any great photos of Wonder from 1982 or 1983. So I used a publicity photo from 1984 for the cover.

Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway - WPLJ Radio, A & R Studios, New York City, 11-24-1971

Here's something I just discovered the other day. So it went to the top of my ever-growing pile of albums to post.

I've posted a few albums by female soul singer Roberta Flack, but this is the first with soul singer and songwriter Donny Hathaway. Hathaway is considered a soul legend these days, but his music career was rather short and troubled. He started to hit it big with the hit single "The Ghetto" in 1969. But he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1971. Mental illness wreaked havoc on his life and his career after that, and he had to be hospitalized multiple times. He committed suicide in 1979.

Here's his Wikipedia page, for more info about him:

Donny Hathaway - Wikipedia

One bright spot in his musical career was his frequent duets with Roberta Flack. They put out a duet album in 1972, "Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway," and had some hit singles together in the late 1970s. That said, it seems they didn't perform in concert together much, since Hathaway didn't perform concerts that often after his mental health issues got worse. There are no official live recordings of them together that I know of, and virtually no such bootlegs either.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find the bootleg I'm sharing here on YouTube. I converted it into mp3 format and divided it into individual tracks. This show was recorded in front of a small studio audience for a live radio broadcast. The sound quality is excellent, just as good as an official live album from the time period.

Their 1972 album didn't come out until May of that year. This concert is from November 1971. However, most of the songs here are ones on that 1972 album. I'm guessing most or all of that album was recorded roughly around the time of this concert. Two singles from the album were released in late 1971.

The last two songs come from a different source, a US TV special broadcast in 1972 called "Double Exposure." The sound quality of those is significantly worse. The music even wobbles at a couple of points. So you might consider those bonus tracks of sorts. I included them mostly because Flack had a massive hit in 1972 with the song "The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face," and I thought it would be good to include a version of that.

Note that on a lot of these songs the vocals are dominated more by Flack than Hathaway. But I believe Hathaway at least played keyboards on all the songs. Although Hathaway was a talented songwriter, he wasn't prolific and most of the songs are covers.

This album is 49 minutes long without the last two songs, and 58 minutes long if you include those too.

01 talk (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
02 Where Is the Love (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
03 You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
04 talk (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
05 When Love Has Grown (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
06 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
07 You've Got a Friend (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
08 For All We Know (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
09 Baby I Love You (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
10 I [Who Have Nothing] (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
11 talk (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
12 Little Ghetto Boy (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
13 Be Real Black for Me (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
14 Someday (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
15 The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15218635/RobertaFlDonnyH_1971_WPLJRadioARStdiosNYC__11-24-1971_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a concert that took place at UCLA in Los Angeles in September 1972. It was the only good color photo of the two of them on stage that I could find.

Stevie Wonder - Masonic Temple Theatre, Detroit, MI, 4-14-1984

I plan on posting some more Stevie Wonder music in the near future. I'll start with this bootleg concert. It's a great recording and performance, maybe even the best single concert of his to listen to, since it comes just after his classic 1970s period and thus contains the vast majority of his greatest songs.

In my opinion, that classic period lasted from about 1972 to 1980. The 1980s were strange for Wonder. He still was a musical genius, but he often released disappointing records. A lot of that was due to overproduction and bad choices, such as switching to electric drums around 1984. Happily, those problems didn't occur with his live performances. 

This concert is two hours and forty minutes long! It's a tour de force by him. It includes hits from all points of his career up until then, plus some very good songs that remain unreleased to this day, such as "It's Growing," "I Can't Stand It," "Lighting Up the Candles" and the blues cover "Nobody Loves Me but My Mother." (Also, the song "Go Home" would be released on a 1985 album, but is done in a better style here.) It also preceded his often shlocky 1980s albums, starting with "The Woman in Red" soundtrack and the mega-hit "I Just Called to Say I Love You" released later that year. One might even argue his classic period extended through the date of this concert, because the few songs he released in the early 1980s, such as "Ribbon in the Sky" and "Front Line," were very good as well.

The concert took place less than two weeks after the death of Motown legend Marvin Gaye. I'm not sure, but I think this concert was a kind of hometown tribute to Gaye. That would explain the references to lighting of candles, as well as the song "Lighting Up the Candles," which I think was only ever performed at this concert. Gaye isn't directly mentioned much, although his name did come up at one point in the between the song banter and at another point as a shout out in the middle of a song. It's possible Wonder didn't want to address Gaye's death directly due to the strange circumstance of Gaye getting shot and killed by his own father. But clearly Gaye had to be on Wonder's mind throughout the concert.

The bootleg recording comes from a radio broadcast, so it sounds as good as you could hope for. I'm pretty sure it's the best live recording of him from the first half of the 1980s. However, there's one downside, and that's the recording was often cut off between songs. My guess is the concert was sometimes interrupted by commercials, DJ talk, and/or station identifications, and the bootlegger cut all those parts out. The songs themselves don't seem to have been affected, except for a strange fade in and fade out that removed most of the first verse of "You Haven't Done Nothin'." I removed what little remained of that verse so hopefully the loss will be hard to notice.

Other than that though, the main loss is the applause at the end of songs. I edited those, taking applause from the ends of other songs to make up for the losses. Probably, a lot of between song banter was lost too, but it's impossible to tell how much. But there's still a lot that remains. In fact, at one point he talked for five minutes straight about the first few years of his career. I also removed a few things that I didn't like. The main loss is the song "Walking the Floor Over You." Wonder did a cover of that country classic early in the show, but it was a piss take that only lasted about a minute, as an apparent joke that he was going to play songs the audience didn't like. I also cut out a few bits of the banter that I thought went on too long.

There was one minor sound problem in that a couple of times the backing singers took the lead vocals briefly, but their microphones were turned down so low that they couldn't be heard well. This happened at points in the songs "Living for the City" and "You Are the Sunshine of My Life." So I used the X-Minus audio editing program to boost those vocals. That's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their names. Actually, I made edits to most of the songs due to the applause problem mentioned above, but I didn't want to put "[Edit]" in the titles of so many songs.

I went looking for this bootleg at all the popular bootleg sites on the Internet. I was surprised that I didn't see it anywhere except on YouTube. I'm glad I downloaded it way back when, and that I can share it with you now. This definitely is one of his best concert recordings.

01 It's Growing (Stevie Wonder)
02 Nobody Loves Me but My Mother (Stevie Wonder)
03 talk (Stevie Wonder)
04 Did I Hear You Say You Love Me (Stevie Wonder)
05 Superwoman (Stevie Wonder)
06 Where Were You When I Needed You (Stevie Wonder)
07 talk (Stevie Wonder)
08 All in Love Is Fair (Stevie Wonder)
09 talk (Stevie Wonder)
10 You and I [We Can Conquer the World] (Stevie Wonder)
11 Lately (Stevie Wonder)
12 Send One Your Love (Stevie Wonder)
13 I Can't Help It (Stevie Wonder)
14 talk (Stevie Wonder)
15 Ribbon in the Sky (Stevie Wonder)
16 Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing (Stevie Wonder)
17 Fingertips, Part 1 [Instrumental] (Stevie Wonder)
18 talk (Stevie Wonder)
19 Fingertips, Part 2 [Instrumental] (Stevie Wonder)
20 talk (Stevie Wonder)
21 Uptight [Everything's Alright] - For Once in My Life - Cold Sweat - Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud (Stevie Wonder)
22 talk (Stevie Wonder)
23 My Cherie Amour (Stevie Wonder)
24 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)
25 Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder)
26 You Haven't Done Nothin' (Stevie Wonder)
27 Living for the City [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
28 Go Home (Stevie Wonder)
29 Sir Duke (Stevie Wonder)
30 I Wish (Stevie Wonder)
31 You Are the Sunshine of My Life [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
32 Superstition (Stevie Wonder)
33 Master Blaster [Jammin'] (Stevie Wonder)
34 talk (Stevie Wonder)
35 Lighting Up the Candles (Stevie Wonder)
36 talk (Stevie Wonder)
37 Isn't She Lovely (Stevie Wonder)
38 Do I Do (Stevie Wonder)
39 Happy Birthday (Stevie Wonder)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gDCbe

The cover photo comes from a 1984 concert, but one that took place in London in June.

The Peanut Butter Conspiracy - The Best of the Peanut Butter Conspiracy (1966-1969)

Sometimes, the "album that should exist" for a particular musical artist is a best of collection. I haven't posted many of those yet, but I hope to eventually. The Peanut Butter Conspiracy are one such band. There are a couple of best ofs out there already, but those are skimpy and inadequate, in my opinion.

The Peanut Butter Conspiracy was an American late 1960s band with a sound that was halfway between folk rock and psychedelic rock. I think their sound is right between the Mamas and the Papas and Jefferson Airplane. Like both of those bands, they stood out by having a woman, Barbara Robinson, who sang lead on most of their songs.

The band was first known as "The Ashes." The first five songs here were recorded under that name. But apparently as the band's sound became more psychedelic, that name wasn't "groovy" enough, so they renamed themselves but kept the same personnel. Unfortunately, I think now if people remember them at all, they tend to look down on their goofy name, seemingly chosen so they could name their first album "The Peanut Butter Conspiracy Is Spreading," which they did. They had one minor hit in 1967 with the song "It's a Happening Thing," which barely scraped the bottom of the Top 100 charts in the US. Their second album, "The Great Conspiracy," released in late 1967, was probably their best. After that, they petered out, releasing one pretty bad album in 1969 with a very different line-up before breaking up around 1970.

If you want to know more about them, here's their Wikipedia page:

The Peanut Butter Conspiracy - Wikipedia

Personally, I really like the late 1960s psychedelic sound. This band's music captures the magic of that time period, though it's more on the poppy and folky side of that sound than most. Barbara Robinson's vocals are very good. The songwriting can be hit or miss, which is why a best of like this is necessary. When they were on, for instance "Dark On You Now" and "Living, Loving Life," they were really on.

Everything here is officially released. My selections are unusual compared to the official best ofs out there. Instead of drawing mainly from their three studio albums, I've included a lot of songs from two rarities albums, "Spreading from the Ashes" and "Barbara," as well as two songs from a 1969 movie soundtrack, "Angels from Hell." One of the strange things about the band is that they had many good songs that not only didn't appear on their albums but didn't get released at all until archival releases decades later.

The length of this album is a bit problematic. This is 58 minutes long, which is too long for a double album of that time period, but too short for a single album. But these are all the songs I really liked. This band really deserves more recognition.

01 Is There Anything I Can Do (Ashes)
02 Roses Gone (Ashes)
03 Dark On You Now (Ashes)
04 Winds Up High (Ashes)
05 So Lonely (Ashes)
06 Love's Last Ground (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
07 Eventually (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
08 You Should Know [Live] (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
09 It's a Happening Thing (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
10 Time Is After You (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
11 Living, Loving Life (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
12 Turn On a Friend [To the Good Life] (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
13 Too Many Do (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
14 Get Out of My Dreams (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
15 Shuffle Tune (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
16 No One Says a Word (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
17 Crystal Tear (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
18 Step Aside [You're Crushing All the Flowers] (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
19 Come a Little Closer (Peanut Butter Conspiracy)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696940/PENUTBTTRCNSPRCY1966-1969_Bst_atse.zip.html

I don't know where the album cover photo comes from. I found it searching around the Internet, but it doesn't seem to be from any official album. I added the text from one of the official best of collections.

Procol Harum - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1967-1968

Next up with my BBC project is the British band Procol Harum. These days, they're primarily known for their international number one hit "A Whiter Shade of Pale." But they were a classic rock band with a number of hits, especially in Britain, and a long career of albums with intelligent songs.

There's enough material for five BBC albums. This and the second one consist of songs performed in various BBC studio sessions. The remaining three albums are full concerts. That was a typical pattern, with full concerts becoming common starting in the early 1970s.

There has never been any kind of official BBC album. However, some songs have been released as bonus tracks. For this album, all but one of the songs (plus the bonus track) come from bonus tracks. 

The exception is the song"Conquistador." This recording isn't from the BBC at all. It's a key song (and a minor hit) that the band played at the BBC around this time period, but the recordings apparently didn't survive. However, I found a version performed on a French TV show without a cheering audience, so I used that. Unfortunately, for a portion of the song, the lead vocals microphone was turned off. But I was able to find another soundboard quality recording of the song (I forget from where exactly, it's been a while), and I used that to fill in the missing portion, which if I recall lasted for a verse or two. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title.

Speaking of "[Edit]," there are a few more songs with that in the title. These recordings are from the time period when BBC DJs were commonly talking over the music. Procol Harum got off fairly lightly, with only four songs with that problem on this album. I suspect that's because the band played for more serious BBC shows where the talking was less compared to the pop based shows where there could be talking over nearly every song.

This album is 39 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

Regarding that bonus track, the instrumental "Repent Walpurgis," it comes from the same BBC session as some others here (tracks 5 through 8), but it's officially unreleased. In this case I can understand, because the sound quality is poor. Thus it's just a bonus track.

01 Morning Dew [Edit] (Procol Harum)
02 Mabel [Edit] (Procol Harum)
03 A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procol Harum)
04 Homburg [Edit] (Procol Harum)
05 Good Captain Clack (Procol Harum)
06 She Wandered through the Garden Fence (Procol Harum)
07 Kaleidoscope (Procol Harum)
08 Conquistador [Edit] (Procol Harum)
09 Quite Rightly So (Procol Harum)
10 Ramblin' On (Procol Harum)
11 Shine On Brightly [Edit] (Procol Harum)
12 Skip Softly [My Moonbeams] (Procol Harum)

Repent Walpurgis [Instrumental] [Edit] (Procol Harum)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697012/PROCLHRM1967-1968_BBSssonsVolum1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from 1967. That year, it seems every band tried to wear the most colorful and outrageous looking clothes possible, and Procol Harum was no exception.

DBMT (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich) - Festival - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1972)

Recently, I posted an album by DBMT, a group that was essentially the 1960s British pop rock group Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. But in 1969, Dave Dee left the group, the rest of them went with the new name DBMT, and they drastically changed their sound. Gone were the simple pop hits written by outsiders. Instead, they were heavily influenced by Crosby, Stills and Nash, both in their acoustic harmonies mode and rocking mode. 

Normally, this wouldn't have been of much interest, except it turns out they were really good at it. I posted their album "Fresh Ear," released in 1970 to very small sales compared to the band's hit-filled heyday. But I posted it because I think it's a lost gem that needs to be rediscovered.

It turns out the band's fortunes continued to decline. I suspect that if they'd been a brand new group, they would have gotten more positive attention and would have been on the upswing. But it seems they couldn't shake their Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich past despite the new name, and by 1970 the reputation of their old group was about as uncool as one could get in the music business. As a result, the band's record company never allowed them to record a second album in their new style. However, they did get to put out a few singles from 1970 to 1972 while their commercial fortunes continued to decline. The band petered out after that, although various members restarted the group years later to tour the oldies nostalgia circuit.

This album collects the band's songs from their DBMT years that didn't make it on the "Fresh Ear" album I posted. In my opinion, this is also very solid stuff and stands as an impressive album on its own. I was a little short of material, so I included four songs that I already posted on the third volume of the band's BBC albums: "Helplessly Hoping," "Bluebird," "Wedding Bells," and "Sweden." These are songs they only did for the BBC. Had they put out an album in 1971 or so, it seems probably those would have been on it. By the way, note the Crosby, Stills and Nash influence with the covers of "Helplessly Hoping" and "Bluebird." These BBC songs sound great; you can't tell they weren't studio tracks instead.

This albums is 38 minutes long.

01 Festival (DBMT)
02 Frisco Annie (DBMT)
03 Come and Stay with Me (DBMT)
04 Helplessly Hoping (DBMT)
05 I Want to Be There (DBMT)
06 For the Use of Your Son (DBMT)
07 Bluebird (DBMT)
08 Wedding Bells (DBMT)
09 Sweden (DBMT)
10 They Won't Sing My Song (DBMT)
11 Sarah (DBMT)
12 She's My Lady (DBMT)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109392/DaveDBMT_1970-1972_DBMTFestivl_atse.zip.html

The band's popularity declined so drastically during this time period that I couldn't find any good color photos for the cover. However, I found a cover of one of their singles and used that. I cleaned it up a bit, and removed the song titles, replacing that with the album title I'd chosen.

Duffy - Acoustic... and More (2008-2011)

British singer Duffy has had a strange music career. She put out two successful albums in 2008 and 2010. Then, around 2011, she was drugged, kidnapped, held hostage for many days, and repeatedly raped. She was so traumatized by this that her musical career has barely continued ever since. She hasn't released any new albums, gone on any tours, and only put out a few songs.

I've already posted two albums of cover versions she did. This album mostly focuses on acoustic versions of songs from her two albums. They're not always strictly acoustic, since they sometimes have drums, bass, and/or other instruments, but they're much more stripped down compared to the album versions. Personally, I prefer a lot of these versions, especially for the songs on her overproduced second album, "Endlessly."

The first ten songs make up the acoustic portion of this album. All of these are officially unreleased. All of them come from radio or TV shows, though the first four were performed in front of an audience. The sound quality is generally very good.

I'm calling this album "Acoustic... and More" because there are four extra songs after the acoustic ones. As I mentioned above, Duffy hasn't released much music from her kidnapping in 2011, but she has released some. I included a few of those in the second volume of the covers albums I posted. But there are four originals that she also put out. So I've included those here. The song "Whole Lot of Love" was included on the soundtrack to the movie "Legend" in 2015. "Dear Heart" was put out as a B-side in 2015. "Something Beautiful" and "River in the Sky" are unreleased, but were posted by Duffy on her Instagram account in 2020. I put "Whole Lot of Love" at the last track because it's the most rocking, so it doesn't fit well with the acoustic sound of the other ones.

The fact that Duffy posted two songs in 2020 is a promising sign. Let's hope she further recovers from her trauma and is able to fully resume her music career.

01 Stepping Stone (Duffy)
02 Syrup and Honey (Duffy)
03 Oh Boy (Duffy)
04 Distant Dreamer (Duffy)
05 Well, Well, Well (Duffy)
06 Endlessly (Duffy)
07 Don't Forsake Me (Duffy)
08 My Boy (Duffy)
09 Mercy (Duffy)
10 Too Hurt to Dance (Duffy)
11 Dear Heart (Duffy)
12 Something Beautiful (Duffy)
13 River in the Sky (Duffy)
14 Whole Lot of Love (Duffy)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15110832/Duff_2008-2011_AcousticandMre_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken in concert in Santa Monica, California, in 2008.

DBMT (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich) - Fresh Ear (1970)

Here's a rather odd album. I already posted three BBC albums by the British pop rock group Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. This is by them, but it's very different from the stuff that made them famous. In my opinion, they put out one solid album right at the end of their career, in 1970, that's in the vein of multiple harmony, singer songwriter influenced rock, like Crosby, Stills and Nash or America. 

From 1965 to 1969, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich (DDBMT) had a bunch of hits in Britain (but only in Britain, they never made it big in the US). They were teenage heartthrobs and actually one of the best selling artists in Britain for a couple of years. But musical styles were changing rapidly in the late 1960s, and they found themselves out of fashion. In 1969, their lead singer Dave Dee left the group to pursue an unsuccessful solo career. The others kept on, but changed their name to DBMT, since their old, and very unwieldy, name was now uncool. 

Most groups in a similar situation faded out of popularity around the same time, such as the Searchers, the Mindbenders, or the Tremeloes. Pretty much all of DDBMT's hits were not written by them, making it more likely that they would disappear once the hits stopped. Yet on this album, all of the songs were written by the band members with Tich, Beaky, and Dozy each writing a few. They were really included by the CSN sound that was very popular at the time, and sound dramatically different than how they did on their hits. If you're into that kind of music, I suggest you give this album a try.

The first two songs are not actually from the album, but were released as the A- and B-sides of a single a few months before it, in late 1969. They already had the new name by that time, but it's a transitional sound, and the A-side was a minor hit in some countries, but not Britain. One song from the album, "Mr. President," was released as a single and was a minor hit as well.

This album is rather short, at 35 minutes, but since I added the two songs at the start it's a more typical album length, 41 minutes.

DBMT has a bunch of other good songs from this time period that only came out as singles. There's enough of those for a nice album, so I'll post that album separately later.

01 Tonight Today (DBMT)
02 Bad News (DBMT)
03 Mr. President (DBMT)
04 Too Much (DBMT)
05 She Was a Raver (DBMT)
06 Mystery Rider (DBMT)
07 World (DBMT)
08 Rain (DBMT)
09 Soukie (DBMT)
10 Leader of a Rock and Roll Band (DBMT)
11 Buttercup Joe (DBMT)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109391/DaveDBMT_1970_DBMTFrshEar_atse.zip.html

The cover here is the original album cover with no changes at all.