Beck - Morning Becomes Eclectic, Apogee Studios, Santa Monica, CA, 4-16-2014

Here's yet another one of Beck's performances for the KCRW radio show "Morning Becomes Eclectic." There are at least two more coming after this.

According to setlist.fm, Beck actually played a concert of 15 songs in front of an audience. But for whatever reason, KCRW only played seven of them on the radio. If anyone has any of the other songs, please let me know and I'll add them in.

Beck was there to promote his 2014 album "Morning Phase." All the songs except "Soldier Jane" and "Lost Cause" come from that album.

This album is pretty short. But as I've said before, there aren't a lot of soundboard level live recordings of him. These KCRW shows have him performing his songs with the highest sound quality.

This album is 27 minutes long.

01 Blackbird Chain (Beck)
02 Soldier Jane (Beck)
03 Don't Let It Go (Beck)
04 Waking Light (Beck)
05 Country Down (Beck)
06 Lost Cause (Beck)
07 Blue Moon (Beck)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15520058/BeckH_2014_MornngBecomesEclecticSntaBrbraCA__4-16-2014_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

The Clash - Civic Theater, Akron, OH, 8-17-1982

There are tons of Clash live bootlegs out there, but in my opinion there are very few that have worthy sound quality. And the Clash are the kind of band where you need good sound quality to appreciate their music. (One can get away with lower quality with solo acoustic music, but the Clash definitely are not that!) I came across this concert bootleg recently. It definitely has worthy sound quality, coming from a good soundboard recording. It's fairly similar to another concert from them I've shared here (Jamaica, 11/27/1982), but I'm sharing it here to help you separate the wheat from the chaff.

A lot of Clash concerts in 1982 took place in huge stadiums, when they were an opening act for the Who. The sound quality suffers in such venues. So I think this sounds better than their official live album from this time, "Live at Shea Stadium." This has more of an intimate feeling.

I improved the sound quality in a few ways. "Police on My Back" had a problematic section. I was able to patch it by using another chunk from elsewhere in the song. "Garageland" had a more serious issue, as the song got cut off about half way through. I found a different live version from 1982 (I forget which one) and spliced that in to finish the song off. That's why those two have "[Edit]" in their names.

One problem common with excellent bootlegs is that they're so good with recording the music on stage that they get very little crowd noise, making it sound like the crowd was unenthusiastic. That was the case here. So I boosted the cheering after every song. I also noticed small gaps at the starts and ends of the songs, and got rid of those. 

This album is an hour and 34 minutes long.

01 talk (Clash)
02 London Calling (Clash)
03 The Leader (Clash)
04 Radio Clash (Clash)
05 talk (Clash)
06 Clash City Rockers (Clash)
07 Know Your Rights (Clash)
08 The Guns of Brixton (Clash)
09 talk (Clash)
10 Train in Vain [Stand by Me] (Clash)
11 The Call Up (Clash)
12 Rock the Casbah (Clash)
13 Police and Thieves (Clash)
14 Police on My Back [Edit] (Clash)
15 The Magnificent Seven (Clash)
16 talk (Clash)
17 Wrong 'Em Boyo (Clash)
18 Career Opportunities (Clash)
19 Somebody Got Murdered (Clash)
20 Brand New Cadillac (Clash)
21 I Fought the Law (Clash)
22 Armagideon Time (Clash)
23 Should I Stay or Should I Go (Clash)
24 Clampdown (Clash)
25 Straight to Hell (Clash)
26 Janie Jones - Garageland [Edit] (Clash)

https://www.imagenetz.de/ddD6m

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Ru9n1Qd7

I'm happy to say the cover photo comes from this exact concert, twice over. The top section is taken from a photo out in front of the venue. I adjusted the size and added the small text. The bottom section is from a black and white photo taken at this concert. I used the Palette program to colorize it, then made some more adjustments in Photoshop to help with the coloring. I also used the Krea AI program to further improve the image.

Joni Mitchell with Fred Neil - Save the Whales Benefit, Memorial Auditorium, Sacramento, CA, 11-20-1976

Here's a short but interesting Joni Mitchell concert. From 1968 to 1972, all of her albums had been acoustic. But by 1976, with her "Hejira" studio album, she was getting more into a full-band, jazzy sound. In this concert, she played acoustic guitar and was only backed by Jaco Pastorius on bass and Bobbye Hall on congas. So while it still had a jazzy feel, it was fundamentally acoustic. This allows you to hear songs from her "Hejira" era in very different arrangements than on album. 

It's a bootleg with near soundboard-level quality (even though it's actually just a really good audience recording). I cut out some rough bits between songs, like guitar tuning or excessively long cheering.

There's an added bonus in that the last song is a duet with Fred Neil. This has to do with the cause for the benefit concert, which obviously was near and dear to his heart. He basically retired from music around 1970 so he could work full time with a non-profit dedicated to stopping the killing and/or exploitation of dolphins worldwide. This benefit was to "save the whales," a progressive cause that was very popular in the 1970s. (Happily, the consumption of whale meat has gone way down since then and whale populations have increased, so the cause has declined in importance.) I read an article or two about this show, and it sounds like the organizers took the topic very seriously. There was a full day of speeches, films, and exhibits about whales before a concert in the evening. Fred Neil played a set, as did John Sebastian, Country Joe McDonald, and others. Unfortunately, I only have Mitchell's set. 

If you're interested, here's a Rolling Stone Magazine article about the show:

Joni Mitchell Library - Whale of a Benefit Concert: Rolling Stone, December 30, 1976

As that article notes, Mitchell's set started unexpectedly late, at one A.M., and she complained about being sleepy. But she sounded just fine, in my opinion. I don't know if the last song is from Neil's set earlier in the evening or if he came back to sing his song "The Dolphins" as a final duet with Mitchell. Either way, it's a nice version.

Also, the reason the show took place in Sacramento is because that's the capital of California. Jerry Brown was the governor at the time, and he seems to have been very involved in the event. He spent all day at the concert with his date, none other than singer Linda Ronstadt.

This album is 40 minutes long.

01 talk (Joni Mitchell)
02 Coyote (Joni Mitchell)
03 Shadows and Light (Joni Mitchell)
04 talk (Joni Mitchell)
05 Jericho (Joni Mitchell)
06 Jaco's Solo [Instrumental] (Jaco Pastorius & Joni Mitchell)
07 Edith and the Kingpin (Joni Mitchell)
08 Furry Sings the Blues (Joni Mitchell)
09 talk (Joni Mitchell)
10 Song for Sharon (Joni Mitchell)
11 The Dolphins (Fred Neil & Joni Mitchell)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15522009/JoniMchl_1976_SvetheWhalsBenfitMemrialAuditriumSacrmntoCA__11-20-1976_atse.zip.html

I wanted a photo from this exact concert. I found several, all black and white. Since there are zillions of photos of Joni Mitchell out there, I chose one of her singing with Fred Neil. I used the Palette computer program to colorize it, then did some touch-ups.

Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck - Morning Becomes Eclectic, KCRW, Santa Monica, CA, 1-27-2010

This is part of my recent effort to post all the major appearances Beck has done on the Morning Becomes Eclectic radio show. But while this features Beck singing and/or playing guitar on every track, it's much more of a Charlotte Gainsbourg album.

I need to give some background to this. Charlotte Gainsbourg is a French-British actress and singer-songwriter. She is the daughter of French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg and British actress and singer Jane Birkin. Serge Gainsbourg in particular is kind of a musical legend in France (and Beck is a huge fan of his work), so she's had some very big shoes to fill. But although her album releases have been sporadic and her sales haven't been that great, her music has been critically acclaimed. Personally, I really like her stuff. I can easily see why Beck wanted to collaborate her, and not just as a nod to her father (who died in 1991, by the way).

In 2010, Charlotte Gainsbourg released the album "IRM." It's almost like a Beck album but with Gainsbourg singing the lead vocals, because Beck was the sole songwriter for all but three of the 13 songs, and he even co-wrote two of those. Furthermore, he produced the album, played instruments on all the songs, did backing vocals, and sang a duet on one song, "Heaven Can Wait."

But Beck naturally was also very busy with his own music career, so I haven't seen any sign that he went on tour with Gainsbourg to promote the album. However, they did do this one radio show together, so it's pretty unique. As with the album, Gainsbourg sang lead on nearly all the songs (with the exception of the "Heaven Can Wait" duet again). But Beck sang backing vocals so prominently that some of the other songs veered on duets too, and he played guitar on everything as well.

If you're a Beck fan, you could look at this, and the "IRM" album, almost like a lost Beck album. But also, it hopefully can be a gateway for people to discover Charlotte Gainsbourg's talent. Although virtually all the songs were written by Beck, her own songs are usually on the same high level.

This album is 30 minutes long.

01 Songs that We Sing (Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck)
02 Time of the Assassins (Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck)
03 Dandelion (Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck)
04 Heaven Can Wait (Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck)
05 In the End (Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck)
06 Masters Hands (Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck)
07 Me and Jane Doe (Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck)
08 The Collector (Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck)
09 Trick Pony (Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck)
10 Vanities (Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15514874/CharltteGnBeck_2010_MornngBcomsEclcticSntaMoncaCA__1-27-2010_atse.zip.html

The cover comes from a video of this exact radio show. However, Gainsbourg and Beck were sitting in different parts of the room. So I took screenshots of each of them and placed them side by side.

Liz Phair - Freak of Nature - Non-Album Tracks (1996-1998)

Here's the next in my series of non-album tracks for Liz Phair. That time period culminated in the release of her 1998 studio album "Whitechocolatespaceegg."

In my opinion, the vast majority of Phair's original songs are very good, but she's made mistakes about which songs to put on her albums and overly slick/ commercial production choices. As a result, it's often the case that the songs left off her albums are as good as the ones on her albums. I think that's largely the case here, although they don't fit together as well as typical albums do.

Five of the songs here are officially unreleased. One of them, "Oh My God - That's the Way I Like It," was played on TV at one point. The other four (tracks 4, 5, 6, and 8) are studio outtakes that sound very good. As for the rest, it's a typical mix of B-sides, bonus tracks, and soundtrack songs.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 Oh My God - That's the Way I Like It (Liz Phair)
02 Rocket Boy [Edit] (Liz Phair)
03 Six-Dick Pimp (Liz Phair)
04 Bars of the Bed (Liz Phair)
05 Blood Keeper (Liz Phair)
06 Russian Girl (Liz Phair)
07 Stuck on an Island (Liz Phair)
08 Tell Me You Like Me (Liz Phair)
09 Erecting a Movie Star (Liz Phair with Shudder to Think)
10 Freak of Nature (Liz Phair)
11 Greased Lightning (Liz Phair)
12 Hurricane Cindy [Original Version] (Liz Phair)
13 White Bird of Texas (Liz Phair)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15514759/LizPh_1996-1998_FreakoNture_atse.zip.html

The cover is a promotional photo from 1998.

Announcement: No More "Various Songs"

I've posted a lot of albums here with "Various Songs" in the title. Since I started to post some albums to YouTube lately, I decided it was time to change that. In retrospect, "Various Songs" sounds a bit silly to me. I meant that they came from various sources, but it could be argued that any collection of songs is a bunch of various songs. So instead I'm calling those "Non-Album Tracks." That's more accurate, because what I mean is those are collections of songs not on the artist's usual studio albums (though they could come from other albums, like soundtracks). 

I've also created a new link category called "Non-Album Tracks" if you want to search just for those. And while I was at it, I also created the categories of "Alternate Version" for when I've created my own versions of studio albums, and "Expanded Version," for when I've expanded EPs or other short collections. Oh, and I also added the category of "Non-BBC Radio Show," since those are something different than studio tracks or concert tracks. I'm keeping that one only for radio station studio sessions, not concerts in front of audiences, by the way.

By the way, I'm continuing to slowly but surely post more music to YouTube. I have about 100 albums there as I write this. I'm amazed at how many more people seem to listen to music there than here, even though this is where one can easily get mp3 downloads of all the albums. Oh well. I hope at least some people will get interested enough to come here where they can find over 2,000 albums instead of just 100. 

It's also frustrating in that many albums can't be posted at YouTube due to copyright issues, and even ones that are approved at first can be taken down at any time. For instance, I posted a David Bowie BBC album that got the copyright okay a week ago, only to have it taken down today. But on the positive side, I haven't had any new copyright problems at this blog for the past couple of weeks, so maybe that flurry of five albums that got hidden a couple of weeks ago was a fluke. Knock on wood.

Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 12-26-1979 to 12-29-1979: Day 4: Elvis Costello, Rockpile & Paul McCartney

This is the fourth and final part of the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, featuring music from the fourth night. Like the two previous nights, there were three music acts: Elvis Costello, Rockpile, and Paul McCartney. Technically, McCartney was billed as "Paul McCartney and Wings." This was the last Wings concert ever. Also, Robert Plant was the guest lead singer for one song in Rockpile's set.

As with the previous parts, I've only included the songs with what I consider worthy sound quality. I got lucky with those parts in that I found a decent amount of music from each of the acts. But I wasn't so lucky this time. I was only able to include two songs by Elvis Costello and three by Rockpile (including the one with Robert Plant). I couldn't find any more, not even with terrible sound quality.

I also didn't do that well with McCartney's set. I found a bootleg with all of the songs from his set, but most of it comes from an audience bootleg with poor sound quality. I didn't deem any of that worth keeping. (If anyone has any of the missing songs, please let me know. I saw some mentions that some more songs by McCartney exist in good sounding versions, like "Getting Closer," but I couldn't find them.) 

As a result of that, everything here sounds very good, but this is the shortest part out of the four. The other three parts are all at least an hour and 10 minutes long, with one of them being an hour and a half long, but this one is only 48 minutes long. The first track here is track 68, in case you want to put all four parts into one folder and play this as one massive concert.

The sourcing was pretty much the same as for the previous two parts. I relied on the official double album, long out of print, and a bootleg of high quality outtakes that had been considered for inclusion to the double album. One song by Elvis Costello, two by Rockpile, and six by McCartney are from the official album. Most of the rest are from that bootleg. But I believe I found McCartney's "Hot as Sun" elsewhere, since it was in the movie of the concerts but not the album. I also found some of McCartney's banter from the poor sounding bootleg of his set. Those talking bits didn't sound bad. I suspect some of them came from the movie, because they sounded a lot better than the other songs and even other banter.

The last three songs were performed by a rather curious McCartney-led "supergroup" called "Rockestra." McCartney had previously gathered lots of big names to play on two songs for his 1979 album "Back to the Egg," including the "Rockestra Theme." Most of those reprised their roles for this concert. Some who played in this version of Rockestra for the concert included: Pete Townshend, Gary Brooker, John Bonham, John Paul Jones, and Dave Edmunds. But in my opinion, it was kind of a waste of all that talent, because they only did three relatively short songs, all led by McCartney, and they pretty much sound like the other McCartney songs.

As mentioned above, this album is 48 minutes long.

68 The Imposter (Elvis Costello)
69 You Belong to Me (Elvis Costello)
70 Three Time Loser (Rockpile)
71 Crawling from the Wreckage (Rockpile)
72 Little Sister (Rockpile with Robert Plant)
73 Introduction [Instrumental] (Paul McCartney)
74 Got to Get You into My Life (Paul McCartney)
75 talk (Paul McCartney)
76 Every Night (Paul McCartney)
77 talk (Paul McCartney)
78 I've Had Enough (Paul McCartney)
79 Hot as Sun [Instrumental] (Paul McCartney)
80 talk (Paul McCartney)
81 Twenty Flight Rock (Paul McCartney)
82 talk (Paul McCartney)
83 Coming Up (Paul McCartney)
84 Lucille (Paul McCartney & Rockestra)
85 talk (Paul McCartney & Rockestra)
86 Let It Be (Paul McCartney & Rockestra)
87 talk (Paul McCartney & Rockestra)
88 Rockestra Theme (Paul McCartney & Rockestra)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362756/VA-ConcrtsfrthPeplofKmpchea1979Day4CstelloRckpileMcCartny_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/E9X4FPne

The cover photo is from the Rockestra portion of this show. From left to right in the front is Denny Laine, Pete Townshend, and Paul McCartney. I improved the pic using Krea AI program.

Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 12-26-1979 to 12-29-1979: Day 3: The Pretenders, the Specials & the Who

Here's Part Three of the four-part Concerts for the People of Kampuchea. It has the highlights from the third night. Just like Part Two, there were three big music acts. This time, it was the Pretenders, the Specials, and the Who.

If you want to know more about these concerts in general, check out my write-up for Part One. The track numbering here begins with track 47 in case you want to put all four parts in one folder. If you do, you'll have a mega-concert nearly five hours long.

As I mentioned previously, there was an official double album released of these concerts, but it is long out of print. Three songs by the Pretenders, one song by the Specials, and four songs by the Who come from that. In addition, a bootleg of outtakes from the official album was made public eventually. The rest of the Pretenders and Specials songs come from that, as well as some of the Who songs. 

But on top of all that, I found a bootleg of the entire set by the Who. However, I've only included some of the songs from that, for a couple of reasons. One reason is that while the sound quality is very good, it's not quite as good as the songs from the other sources. 

The other reason is that it was an off night for the Who. Lead guitarist (and occasional lead singer) Pete Townshend was going through a phase where he was going overboard with drugs and especially alcohol. It was very obvious to concert goers that he was very drunk during this concert. He danced around much more than usual, but sometimes flubbed his guitar or vocal parts. He also gave a kind of political speech during the "Dancing in the Street - Dance It Away" medley. It was meant to support the goals of the benefit concert, but it was done in a sarcastic style that could have been easily misunderstood.

Because of all that, I tried to only pick the Who songs that sounded the best and didn't have obvious flubs. 

I would have liked to have more songs by the Pretenders and the Specials, but I think there's just enough for both acts to put up a good showing. But for all three acts, there were many more songs played that what's included here. I'm sure about the song order for the Who set, but the songs might be a bit mixed up for the other two acts, I'm not sure. Also, I'm guessing some of the banter between songs is missing. But since I've heard the full Who set, I know there was no banter before the starts of any of their songs.

This album is an hour and 33 minutes long.

47 The Wait (Pretenders)
48 Precious (Pretenders)
49 Tattooed Love Boys (Pretenders)
50 Brass in Pocket (Pretenders)
51 Private Life (Pretenders)
52 Monkey Man (Specials)
53 talk (Specials)
54 It Doesn't Make It Alright (Specials)
55 Stupid Marriage (Specials)
56 talk (Specials)
57 Too Much, Too Young (Specials)
58 Baba O'Riley (Who)
59 Sister Disco (Who)
60 Behind Blue Eyes (Who)
61 Who Are You (Who)
62 See Me, Feel Me (Who)
63 I Can See for Miles (Who)
64 Won't Get Fooled Again (Who)
65 Summertime Blues (Who)
66 Dancing in the Street - Dance It Away (Who)
67 The Real Me (Who)

https://www.imagenetz.de/ij28m

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/gzEBJYFB

The cover photo is from this exact concert. Pete Townshend is closest to the camera. Roger Daltrey is in the middle ground, and John Entwistle is farthest away. I sharpened the picture using Krea AI, and made some additional changes in Photoshop.

Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 12-26-1979 to 12-29-1979: Part 2: Ian Dury & the Blockheads, Matumbi & the Clash

This is Part 2 of the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea. It was actually a series of four concerts in a row, so it makes sense to post each of the concerts separately.

For the first night, the only musical act was Queen. But for this second night, there were three acts: Ian Dury & the Blockheads, Matumbi, and the Clash, in that order. I've numbered the songs so you can put all four parts together in the same folder if you want. That's why the first track here is already track 25.

I explained some in my Part 1 write-up how the only officially released album from this concerts was a double album that is now long out of print. Merely two of the songs here come from that. Luckily, a lot of music has come out unofficially on bootleg. Decades later, one bootleg emerged that was about as long as the official double album and had excellent sound quality. It seems these all were songs that were being considered for the album but didn't quite make the cut. That's where I got all but one of the songs but Ian Dury and the Blockheads and all the songs by Matumbi.

But the only full set to emerge from this show was the one by the Clash. Unfortunately, although it's supposedly a soundboard recording, that recording merely sounds okay. My intention has been to only use the songs that had very good sound quality. So first I included the songs from either the official album - "Armagideon Time" - and the ones from that bootleg mentioned above - "Bankrobber" and "London Calling." 

Then I listened to the bootleg of the Clash's full set to see if any more songs sounded good enough to fit here. I decided on three more: "Jimmy Jazz," "Train in Vain," and "Jamie Jones." I picked them mainly on the basis on the instruments. When certain instruments were prominent, the recording sounded murkier. I also tinkered with those three to make them sound better. But there was only so much I could do, so those three still sound rougher than the others here. By the way, this version of "Train in Vain" is interesting for how unusually fast the tempo is compared to how the band usually played the song.

I had never heard of Matumbi before this. They were one of the most popular British reggae bands in the late 1970s. However, their 1979 song "Point of View [Squeeze a Little Lovin']" was their only Top Forty hit in Britain. They fizzled out then broke up in the early 1980s.

There's a lot more music played than what is presented here. Since there is a bootleg of the whole Clash set, we know they played 16 songs, yet I've only included six of them. I assume it was similar with Ian Dury and the Blockheads and Matumbi, though maybe their sets were shorter since they were the opening acts. If anyone has any of the other songs for this concert or the other ones with worthy sound quality, please let me know and I'll add them in.

This album is an hour and 11 minutes long.

25 talk (Ian Dury & the Blockheads)
26 Clever Trevor (Ian Dury & the Blockheads)
27 Blackmail Man (Ian Dury & the Blockheads)
28 Blockheads (Ian Dury & the Blockheads)
29 talk (Ian Dury & the Blockheads)
30 My Ol' Man (Ian Dury & the Blockheads)
31 Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick (Ian Dury & the Blockheads)
32 talk (Ian Dury & the Blockheads)
33 Sweet Gene Vincent (Ian Dury & the Blockheads with Mick Jones)
34 Empire Road (Matumbi)
35 talk (Matumbi)
36 Come with Me (Matumbi)
37 After Tonight (Matumbi)
38 talk (Matumbi)
39 Point of View [Squeeze a Little Lovin'] (Matumbi)
40 Jimmy Jazz (Clash)
41 talk (Clash)
42 Train in Vain (Clash)
43 Bankrobber (Clash)
44 Janie Jones (Clash)
45 Armagideon Time (Clash)
46 London Calling (Clash)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362757/VA-ConcrtsfrthPeplofKmpchea1979Day2IanDryMtumbiClsh_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bQ4anA9w

The cover photo is of the Clash and was taken from this exact concert. On the right side in the background, you can see a big, round United Nations logo used for the Kampuchea concerts. I sharpened the image using Krea AI program.

Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 12-26-1979 to 12-29-1979: Part 1: Queen

I mentioned the other day that I'm going to put more effort into posting big "various artists" concerts (with Live Aid being the most famous example), since those seem to get overlooked. A commenter then made the suggestion that I post the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea because the official double album that was released of those 1979 concerts was only ever released on vinyl and is long out of print. I decided that was a very good idea, because I don't think anyone else has ever put together all the well recorded songs for it.

The Concerts for the People of Kampuchea were actually a series of four concerts at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, from December 26 to December 29, 1979. These benefit concerts took place for the timely and controversial issue of what had happened to the country of Cambodia, as it is generally known in the West, or Kampuchea, as it is generally known in the East, including by the people of that country. I'm going to refer to it as Cambodia, since that's what I'm used to. Anyway, from 1975 to 1978, the country was ruled by Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge, a Communist political party. The country was devastated by their extreme measures, with about two million, or one-fourth of the entire population, killed during those few years. At the end of 1978, the neighboring country of Vietnam invaded Cambodia and easily took it over, since most Cambodians wanted the reign of terror to end by then.

Paul McCartney was the main musical force behind organizing the concerts, just as his fellow Beatle George Harrison organized the Concert for Bangladesh back in 1971. But, unusually for a rock concert, the United Nations was also officially involved with the concerts. I gather they handled the relief efforts from the money the concerts raised. Cambodia had been devastated by war even before the Khmer Rouge took it over, so they definitely needed help then. But for some people it was controversial for Western, capitalist countries to help a country that had recently been conquered by Vietnam, a Communist country at the time. A few years later, the US and its allies put an economic boycott on Vietnam because they refused to withdraw their army from Cambodia. But Vietnam withdrew in 1992 and the boycott ended. Cambodia slowly recovered, though remnants of the Khmer Rouge sustained an insurgency until the end of the 1990s. Unfortunately, its government is basically a dictatorship as I write this in 2023.

Anyway, let's get to the music. A double album of highlights from the four nights of music was released in 1981. However, it didn't do that well since it only had a couple, or sometimes even just one, song per artist, and often they weren't their best known songs. For instance, the only Queen song on the album was "Now I'm Here," which is a nice song, but far from one of their better known ones. The album quickly went out of print, and has stayed that way due to the difficulty of keeping the legal rights to all the different musical acts.

Luckily though, I was able to find a lot more material than just what was on the official album. In the case of Queen, they played a full concert that was nearly two hours long. They were the one and only musical act for the first night out of the four nights. Many more songs somehow emerged in soundboard quality on bootlegs. However, for some of the songs, there are only audience bootleg versions. I decided to keep the sound quality high for this entire series of concerts, so I have only included here the songs with soundboard level quality. That makes up a majority of the Queen show, including most of their best known songs, but not all of it. What's here is about an hour and ten minutes from a concert that was about an hour and 50 minutes long.

However, one extremely key song wasn't one of those with soundboard quality: "Bohemian Rhapsody." That's become their best known song, and is considered one of the most famous songs of all time, so I felt I couldn't leave it out. Instead, I took the audience bootleg version and used whatever audio editing tricks I had to try to make it sound a little better. One thing that helped me is that the vocals in the middle section, the acappella "opera section," were in fact just a recording from the record version. This was standard procedure for Queen concerts, because they felt they couldn't do that section justice with live vocals due to many, many vocal overdubs for that part. So I patched in the record version for that section, essentially replacing the vocals there. As expected, it was an exact match for the timing and the musical key, and it sounded much better. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in the title.

I also put in some effort to make sure this recording flowed smoothly, despite the missing songs. Sometimes I had to fiddle with the song transitions to do that, for instance if the recording of one song ended with lots of cheering and the next song started out with near silence. It should all sound good now.

This album is one hour and ten minutes long.

01 We Will Rock You [Fast Version] (Queen)
02 talk (Queen)
03 Let Me Entertain You (Queen)
04 Somebody to Love (Queen)
05 talk (Queen)
06 Death on Two Legs (Queen)
07 Killer Queen (Queen)
08 I'm in Love with My Car (Queen)
09 You're My Best Friend (Queen)
10 talk (Queen)
11 Save Me (Queen)
12 Now I'm Here (Queen)
13 Don't Stop Me Now (Queen)
14 Love of My Life (Queen)
15 talk (Queen)
16 '39 (Queen)
17 talk (Queen)
18 Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Queen)
19 Bohemian Rhapsody [Edit] (Queen)
20 Tie Your Mother Down (Queen)
21 Sheer Heart Attack (Queen)
22 talk (Queen)
23 We Will Rock You - We Are the Champions (Queen)
24 talk (Queen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362751/VA-ConcrtsfrthPeplofKmpchea1979Day1Quen_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/REPPC7zX

The cover photo is from this exact concert. However, it only shows lead singer Freddie Mercury and guitarist Brian May.

Ric Ocasek - Solo Acoustic- Spinhouse, New York City, 10-14-2005

I already posted the gist of this album back in 2020. But today I'm deleting that and posting this instead because I've changed most of the music. I found a new source that makes up the bulk of it, causing me to change the name as well. Before, the album was only 23 minutes long, but now it's a more respectable 35 minutes (not including the bonus track.)

Ric Ocasek was the main songwriter and lead singer for the Cars, although Ben Orr had a prominent role too. I found some YouTube videos of Ocasek playing songs in the solo acoustic format. This really intrigued me. For one thing, I really enjoy acoustic versions in general (as you've probably noticed if you follow this blog). But while I like how the Cars produced their songs, it was definitely a heavily produced almost "wall of sound" approach. So acoustic versions are a drastic and interesting contrast.

All the performances here are unreleased. All of them were performed in front of audiences. However, there's virtually no banter between songs.

Ocasek very rarely played in the solo acoustic format, so I had to bring together some songs from very different years. The first song is from 1992, the next two are from 1997, and the rest are from 2005. But in my opinion, there's no way to tell, due to the simple solo acoustic format. Plus, Ocasek's voice hardly changed at all. All the 2005 songs (tracks 4 through 10) come from the single performance mentioned in the title.

In 2005, he released his last studio album, "Nexterday." Three of the songs - "Bottom Dollar," "Carousel," and "Crackpot" - are from that. "People We Know" and "Time Bomb" are from his 1997 solo album "Troublizing." The rest are Cars songs.

The bonus track, "Since You're Gone," is a bonus track because it sounds a lot rougher than the rest. It's from an audience bootleg at a club, and you can hear lots of talking and ambient noise all through it. But I thought it was interesting enough to at least merit bonus track status.

01 Just What I Needed (Ric Ocasek)
02 People We Know (Ric Ocasek)
03 Time Bomb (Ric Ocasek)
04 Moving in Stereo (Ric Ocasek)
05 Bottom Dollar (Ric Ocasek)
06 Carousel (Ric Ocasek)
07 Crackpot (Ric Ocasek)
08 I'm Not the One (Ric Ocasek)
09 My Best Friend's Girl (Ric Ocasek)
10 Drive (Ric Ocasek)

Since You're Gone (Ric Ocasek)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15505782/RicOcask_2005_SoloAcoustcSpnhouseNewYrkC__10-14-2005_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo of Ocasek comes from a concert at the CBGB's club in New York City in 2005. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any acoustic music from that performance.

Sinead O'Connor - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 4-24-1990

As I write this on July 27, 2023, Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O'Connor died yesterday. She was 56 years old, and the cause of her death was not disclosed. Due to her death, someone asked me today if I could post some of her music as part of my big BBC project. It so happens that I already had two BBC concerts that she did in my big pile of music to be processed and then posted here. So I processed it today, and here it is. I hope to post the other one soon.

This concert took place at the peak of her commercial success, due to the international Number One hit "Nothing Compares 2 U." Not surprisingly, in this concert she played that song, as well as many other songs from her 1990 "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got." The rest generally come from her one previous album at the time, "The Lion and the Cobra."

The sound quality of this album was pretty good, but not as great as one usually gets from BBC broadcasts. However, I analyzed the music and saw the vocals were rather low in the mix. So I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the vocals relative to the instruments. I think it sounds much better now.

This album is one hour long.

01 Feel So Different (Sinead O'Connor)
02 The Emperor's New Clothes (Sinead O'Connor)
03 I Want Your [Hands on Me] (Sinead O'Connor)
04 You Cause So Much Sorrow (Sinead O'Connor)
05 Three Babies (Sinead O'Connor)
06 Black Boys on Mopeds (Sinead O'Connor)
07 Last Day of Our Acquaintance (Sinead O'Connor)
08 Nothing Compares 2 U (Sinead O'Connor)
09 Jump in the River (Sinead O'Connor)
10 Jerusalem (Sinead O'Connor)
11 Mandinka (Sinead O'Connor)
12 Troy (Sinead O'Connor)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15571282/SineadOC_1990_BBSessionsVolum1InConcrtHammrsmithOdeonLondnBrtain__4-24-1990_atse.zip.html

I got lucky with the cover photo. It appears to be from this exact concert. 

Shawn Colvin - Home Concerts 3, Austin, TX, 5-15-2020 to 12-25-2020

Phew. I'm glad to get this monkey off my back. I should have posted this two years ago, but at least it's done now.

This album is very much like the last one. It's a collection of home concert performances, typically just one or two songs at a time. I collected everything that fit that I could find from May to December 2020. I search for similar videos from 2021, but I didn't find a single one. So this is a good point to end the series.

A couple of the songs, "Everybody's Talkin'" and "I'm Gone," are only partial versions. She did them as teasers to promote a new album called "Live From These Four Walls - My Favorite Movie Songs." It's pretty obscure, but you can find it (and pay for it) on Bandcamp. I kept them because I don't have that one and wouldn't share it if I did, since it's an officially released album, but she put these versions out for anyone for free on YouTube. Plus, there's some interesting banter that goes with them.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 talk (Shawn Colvin)
02 The Facts about Jimmy (Shawn Colvin)
03 talk (Shawn Colvin)
04 Summer Dress (Shawn Colvin)
05 American Tune (Shawn Colvin)
06 talk (Shawn Colvin)
07 The Phoenix (Shawn Colvin)
08 talk (Shawn Colvin)
09 There's a Rugged Road (Shawn Colvin)
10 Cry like an Angel (Shawn Colvin)
11 Everybody's Talkin' (Shawn Colvin)
12 talk (Shawn Colvin)
13 I'm Gone (Shawn Colvin)
14 talk (Shawn Colvin)
15 talk (Shawn Colvin)
16 In the Bleak Midwinter (Shawn Colvin)
17 talk (Shawn Colvin)
18 Little Road to Bethlehem (Shawn Colvin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15492164/ShawnC_2020_HomeConcrts3AustinTX__5-15-2020_to_12-25-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot from the YouTube video of the last song here.

Beck - Morning Becomes Eclectic, KCRW Studios, Santa Monica, CA, 10-31-2006

First off, my apologies, because I've just changed a Beck album I posted only a week ago. I posted his "Morning Becomes Eclectic" KCRW radio show performance in 2005, and added three songs from his 2008 performance on that show. At that time, I didn't realize he did a 2006 performance too, but I did and I'm posting it here. So it makes better sense to move those three 2008 songs here, since 2006 is closer to 2008 than 2005 is.

Beck returned in 2006 because he was promoting his new studio album at the time, "The Information." Naturally, he mainly played song from that album. He was accompanied by a band.

I like these KCRW shows because there are surprisingly few Beck concert recordings with soundboard quality. Although these shows are usually short, half an hour or less, the sound quality can't be beat.

The last three songs come from another KCRW performance on November 18, 2008. I've stuck those at the end as quasi bonus tracks because Beck only played three songs (with a small trio) when he visited the "Morning Becomes Eclectic" show in 2008, so that wasn't nearly enough for its own album.

This album is 41 minutes long. The 2006 show is only 30 minutes long, but there are those three songs from 2008 added at the end.

01 Motorcade (Beck)
02 Cellphone's Dead (Beck)
03 No Complaints (Beck)
04 Movie Theme (Beck)
05 We Dance Alone (Beck)
06 Nausea (Beck)
07 Dark Star (Beck)
08 Strange Apparition (Beck)
09 I Think I'm in Love (Beck)
10 Gamma Ray (Beck)
11 Modern Guilt (Beck)
12 Orphans (Beck)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15490032/BeckH_2005_MornngBecomesEclecticSantaMonicaCA__10-31-2006_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a concert at the Bonnaroo Festival in Memphis, Tennessee, in June 2006.

Norah Jones - Theatre Antique, Vienne, France, 7-11-2023

As I write this in late July 2023, I was very pleased to find a Norah Jones concert from only about ten days ago, July 11, 2023. What caught my interest is the fact that this Paris concert was broadcast on French radio, so the sound quality is excellent.

However, I kind of regret posting this concert, because there were more problems than I anticipated. But don't worry about that, because I think I've overcome most of them and made this a good listen.

According to setlist.fm, the first four songs are missing: "Just a Little Bit," "I'm Alive," "Can You Believe," and "Something Is Calling You." That's unfortunate, but there's nothing I could do about that.

But it turns out most of the applause after each song was missing, as well as nearly all of the banter between songs. My guess is that's because there was as French DJ who talked at virtually any time there wasn't any actual music playing, in order to translate banter into French and/or make commentary. That's a pretty certain guess, because there were a few examples of that left on the recording. (I cut that out, although I was able to keep one bit of banter, track 13, after even more careful editing.) So that left me the problem of fixing the ends of nearly every song, patching in applause from other songs to make it sound like a normal crowd response each time. That turned out to be more difficult than expected, because there were only a few spots I could use of crowd noise without talking over it. Hopefully, it will sound good from the listener's perspective, even though I ended up using some crowd noise bits over and over.

Then I realized there was another problem: the bass levels were way too loud. So I had to edit each song for that, changing the mix to have less bass.

It's still unfortunate that this isn't a complete concert recording, and I'm especially annoyed about the missing banter. But the other problems have been fixed, leaving you with a professionally recorded concert from only about ten days ago at the time I post this.

This album is an hour and nine minutes long.

01 What Am I to You (Norah Jones)
02 Sunrise (Norah Jones)
03 Flame Twin (Norah Jones)
04 This Life (Norah Jones)
05 Killing Time (Norah Jones)
06 Little Broken Hearts (Norah Jones)
07 Rosie's Lullaby (Norah Jones)
08 All a Dream (Norah Jones)
09 The Nearness of You (Norah Jones)
10 Say No More (Norah Jones)
11 Come Away with Me (Norah Jones)
12 Nightingale (Norah Jones)
13 talk [Edit] (Norah Jones)
14 Don't Know Why (Norah Jones)
15 I've Got to See You Again (Norah Jones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15488524/NorahJ_2023_TheatrAntqueViennFrnce__7-11-2023_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Various Artists - Prince's Trust Rock Gala, Dominion Theatre, London, Britain, 7-7-1982

I had decided that, in addition to working on my big BBC project and having other musical attentions, I want to make a more concerted effort to post "various artists" concerts. People know of the big ones, like Woodstock and Live Aid, but there are many lesser ones that often slip through the cracks, where they don't get officially released in full or at all, yet bootlegs aren't common either since there isn't one big performance by someone famous to draw attention.

Here's one such example. It's the first of several semi-annual Prince's Trust concerts from the 1980s that I plan on posting. I don't know much about these concerts since I'm not British and only recently discovered recordings of them. But I looked up the Prince's Trust on Wikipedia. It's a charity that was founded in 1978 by then Prince Charles, who is now King Charles III as I write this in 2023. It funds a variety of programs to help troubled youths. According to Wikipedia, it has been very successful and is the country's biggest youth-targeted charity.

This was the first benefit concert for the charity. More would be held in the 1980s, though not every year. They stopped happening around 1990, but then have resumed occasionally in the 2010s. The 1980s versions typically had impressive line-ups of usually British musical acts. 

What I think is particularly interesting about them is that different stars didn't just perform with their usual backing bands and then leave the stage. That was sometimes the case, but other times, a house band would be formed that played for a bunch of different artists. For this show, Madness started out with a 26-minute long set, easily the longest of the show, and it was just them. Then came a reggae band called Unity, and it was just them. Joan Armatrading performed two songs next, alone on stage with her acoustic guitar.

After that, Phil Collins played his classic "In the Air Tonight" in an unusual stripped down version with just him on piano and no drums. From that point on, I'm pretty sure he didn't leave the stage for the rest of the concert. He backed "Jethro Tull" on drums. I put that name in quotes because it was really just lead singer Ian Anderson. Then the same band stayed on stage for the rest of the concert. It featured some big names playing together, including Phil Collins on drums, Pete Townshend on lead guitar, and Gary Brooker on keyboards. I found it especially interesting having Townshend playing guitar behind the likes of Kate Bush and Robert Plant. I don't know if that's happened on other occasions. You can watch the whole concert on YouTube if you want to see who played what exactly.

Speaking of Townshend, he was still mostly preoccupied being a member of the Who at this time and almost never performed in concert without them. So that's interesting all by itself. But he also said that his performance of "Slit Skirts" was the first time he'd played piano in public. But what really surprised the heck out of me is that the final song of the concert, "I Want to Take You Higher," was a cover of the Sly and the Family Stone classic funk sung mostly by Townsend (with Robert Plant on backing vocals). I looked it up on setlist.fm, and that's the only time he ever performed that.

Speaking of rare, Kate Bush concert appearances are slightly less rare than hen's teeth. She only sang one song and then left the stage. But this seems to be the only time she ever sang "The Wedding List" in front of an audience.

In case you're curious, Prince Charles and his new wife Princess Diana (they married the year before) sat in the balcony and watched the entire show. I wonder if they really enjoyed these musical styles or if they were just being polite.

The sound quality is pretty good, but not great. I took it from YouTube videos, and there was some loss of quality along the way. However, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the lead vocals relative to the instruments in some cases, and that helped. I especially did a lot of that for "In the Air Tonight." In the beginning of the song especially, the vocals were very low. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title.

The album is an hour and 25 minutes long.

01 God Save the Queen (Madness)
02 House of Fun - Shut Up (Madness)
03 talk (Madness)
04 Tomorrow's Dream (Madness)
05 Madness (Madness)
06 talk (Madness)
07 One Step Beyond (Madness)
08 Baggy Trousers (Madness)
09 Driving in My Car (Madness)
10 It Must Be Love (Madness)
11 talk (Unity)
12 Crab Race (Unity)
13 talk (Joan Armatrading)
14 Love and Affection (Joan Armatrading)
15 talk (Joan Armatrading)
16 Steppin' Out (Joan Armatrading)
17 In the Air Tonight [Edit] (Phil Collins)
18 Jack in the Green (Jethro Tull with Phil Collins)
19 talk (Jethro Tull with Phil Collins)
20 Pussy Willow (Jethro Tull with Phil Collins)
21 talk (Midge Ure)
22 No Regrets (Midge Ure)
23 Let My Love Open the Door (Pete Townshend)
24 talk (Pete Townshend)
25 Slit Skirts (Pete Townshend)
26 A Whiter Shade of Pale (Gary Brooker)
27 talk (Gary Brooker)
28 The Wedding List (Kate Bush)
29 talk (Pete Townshend)
30 Worse than Detroit (Robert Plant)
31 I Want to Take You Higher (Pete Townshend & Everyone)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15483233/VarArtsts_1982_PrincsTrstRckGalaDomnionTheatrLondnBritain__7-7-1982_atse.zip.html

I could have taken a screenshot of the video for the cover art, but the video quality was merely okay. Luckily, I found a couple of photos. I chose one with Robert Plant (left), Mick Karn (center, the bassist in the band Japan), and Pete Townshend (right). The photo was in black and white, but I knew the colors from the video, so I made sure they matched, especially Plant's "Where's Waldo"-styled red and white shirt.

Shawn Colvin - Home Concerts 2, Austin, TX, 3-22-2020 to 5-11-2020

I must admit that I feel embarrassed to post this album. It's Shawn Colvin home concert stuff recorded in 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic. I duly collected it at the time, posted "Home Concerts 1," and then forget about the rest. Sigh! 

But in my defense, I think one reason I didn't post it then was because I thought the sound quality was a bit iffy. Her "Home Concerts 1" was recorded in a single setting, and generally sounded pretty good. But this is a collection of different sessions, some just a single song, and some sounded better than others. Luckily, since 2020 audio editing technology has advanced quite a lot. So I used the programs Audacity and UVR5 to make these sound better. They still don't sound fantastic, since it's obvious Colvin just turned on a microphone in her house and didn't have optional studio conditions, but it's very listenable now.

As you'd expect from home concert recordings from a pandemic, all of this is solo acoustic. And Colvin is quite talkative between songs, usually giving more insight into the songs and how they were created.

There's one more volume of her home concerts. If I don't post it in the next few days, someone please remind me so I don't wait another couple years before I remember!

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 talk (Shawn Colvin)
02 Tenderness on the Block (Shawn Colvin)
03 talk (Shawn Colvin)
04 Venetian Blue (Shawn Colvin)
05 talk (Shawn Colvin)
06 Matter of Minutes (Shawn Colvin)
07 Before the Deluge (Shawn Colvin)
08 Climb On [A Back That's Strong] (Shawn Colvin)
09 talk (Shawn Colvin)
10 Cinnamon Road (Shawn Colvin)
11 talk (Shawn Colvin)
12 Lovers in a Dangerous Time (Shawn Colvin)
13 talk (Shawn Colvin)
14 Kill the Messenger (Shawn Colvin)
15 talk (Shawn Colvin)
16 These Four Walls (Shawn Colvin)
17 talk (Shawn Colvin)
18 Ricochet in Time (Shawn Colvin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15485042/ShawnC_2020_HomeConcrts2AustinTX__3-22-2020_to_5-11-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover is a screenshot I took of her YouTube video of the performance included here of "Lovers in a Dangerous Time."

Honeybus - Proof Enough - Non-Album Tracks (1972-1977)

First off, I'm happy to report that the previous Honeybus stray tracks album I had posted - "Broken Wings" - had been banned here, but now it has been unbanned. With this blog, I don't get told any details why something is banned, other than it's a copyright problem. But with YouTube, they'll tell the exact song or songs causing the problem. So I tried uploading that album to YouTube and discovered that just one song was the problem, "Delighted to See You." And luckily that was just a demo, and I'd posted the studio version on the earlier stray tracks album "I Can't Let Maggie Go." So I reposted that album without that one song, and it hasn't been flagged again.

Here's the link to that one again, in case you missed it due to the quick banning:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/07/honeybus-broken-wings-various-songs.html

Now, moving on to this album... This is the fourth and last Honeybus stray tracks album. That's pretty remarkable when you consider they only released one album, "Story," in 1970, when they were together. (A second album, "Recital," was supposed to be released in 1972, but the record company kept it in the vaults for several decades.)

The first nine songs here were recorded in 1972, probably during the "Recital" sessions. Those all were only released much later, on the "She Flies like a Bird" anthology. The last three songs are technically solo singles from band members. Two are from Pete Dello and one is from Ray Cane. But I read in an interview that pretty much all solo works by Honeybus members were actually recorded with other guys in Honeybus, so I'm assuming that's the case here too.

Unfortunately, the commercial prospects of Honeybus, which were never that strong to begin with, slowly faded out in the 1970s. Even their solo efforts petered out. The last thing I could find was the A-side of a single from 1977. Pete Dello left the music industry in the mid-1970s and became a music teacher. The band's other main singer-songwriter, Ray Kane, eventually released some more music in the 2000s, but that's beyond the scope of these albums.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 Music (Honeybus)
02 Madam, Chairman of the Committee (Honeybus)
03 In the End Is My Beginning (Honeybus)
04 Jug of Water (Honeybus)
05 Proof Enough (Honeybus)
06 Like Me like You Used to Do (Honeybus)
07 Lovely Ladies 'n' Things (Honeybus)
08 Caterina (Honeybus)
09 Slow Rock (Honeybus)
10 Working Class Man (Red Herring [Pete Dello & Honeybus])
11 Tattered Robe (Magenta [Pete Dello & Honeybus])
12 The Losing Game (Ray Cane & Honeybus)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15482301/Honeybs_1972-1977_ProfEngh_atse.zip.html

Photos of Honeybus are few and far between. All I know about this one is that it's from the early 1970s instead of the late 1960s.

Various Artists - Stax-Volt Revue - Njardhallen, Oslo, Norway, 4-7-1967

Here's something a little different. In the 1960s, there were two distinctive and influential record labels when it came to soul music: Motown in Detroit and Stax in Memphis. (Stax is sometimes referred to as Stax/Volt, as it is here, due to Stax having a sister record label called Volt that was basically the same.)

At the time, instead of having individual musical artists doing entire concerts by themselves, it was typical in soul music to have a "revue" with a bunch of different artists. Not surprisingly, the Stax artists were usually packaged together, just as the Motown artists were.

Around 1966 and 1967, there was a huge surge of interest in soul music in Europe. This is because most soul records hadn't been available, and then they suddenly became available, and Europe found out about all kinds of great, classic songs in a short time. The Stax record company realized this and had their Stax revue tour Europe in the summer of 1967. They were greeted by very enthusiastic crowds everywhere they went, even though they were typically all white crowds of people generally new to soul music.

By some lucky chance, one such concert in Olso, Norway, was filmed, and the footage survived. This is very important footage, especially since Otis Redding was the main star and he died about half a year later. This footage has been released as a DVD, but I don't think there's any corresponding album release. So I converted the video to audio and broke it up into mp3s.

The concert starts with a bunch of instrumentals. Some are credited to "Booker T. & the MGs" and some are credits to the "Mar-Keys," but they're the same musicians, including the likes of guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Duck Dunn. They are then the house band for all the acts in the rest of the concert. (That was typically the case on the records as well.)

After that are relatively brief spots by Arthur Conley and Eddie Floyd. (I must say I'm really surprised Floyd's huge 1966 hit "Knock on Wood" wasn't included.) Then Sam and Dave and Otis Redding got larger slots of about 20 minutes each, because they were bigger acts.

If you're a fan of 1960s soul music, this is a priceless historical document, and a fun listen.

This album is an hour and 12 minutes long.

01 Red Beans and Rice [Instrumental] (Booker T. & the MGs)
02 Green Onions [Instrumental] (Booker T. & the MGs)
03 Philly Dog [Instrumental] (Mar-Keys)
04 Grab This Thing [Instrumental] (Mar-Keys)
05 Last Night [Instrumental] (Mar-Keys)
06 In the Midnight Hour (Arthur Conley)
07 Sweet Soul Music (Arthur Conley)
08 Raise Your Hand (Eddie Floyd)
09 You Don't Know like I Know (Sam & Dave)
10 Soothe Me (Sam & Dave)
11 When Something Is Wrong with My Baby (Sam & Dave)
12 Hold On, I'm Coming (Sam & Dave)
13 Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa [Sad Song] (Otis Redding)
14 My Girl (Otis Redding)
15 Shake (Otis Redding)
16 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Otis Redding)
17 Try a Little Tenderness (Otis Redding)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15481730/StxVltRevue_1967_NjardhallnOsloNorwy__4-7-1967_atse.zip.html

The cover is based on the cover of the DVD. However, that was rectangular in shape, in keeping with the concert posters of the time, including fully copying the artistic style. So I used Photoshop to squish things vertically while not squishing the black and white photos that were included in the art. 

Joni Mitchell - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Old Grey Whistle Test, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 4-24-1983

The previous four volumes of Joni Mitchell at the BBC all date from the first half of the 1970s. As far as I can tell, the only time she performed for the BBC after that was this concert in 1983. It was for the BBC TV show "The Old Grey Whistle Test." I figured these are only selections from a longer concert, but I couldn't find the rest. I figure having some of it is better than nothing.

The 1980s were not a good musical decade for Mitchell. Like many musical greats who were big in the 1960s and/or 1970s, she tried to move with the musical trends of the times, but in retrospect, the 1980s production techniques on her albums haven't aged well and didn't really suit her music.

That said, she sounds great here. It actually doesn't have much to do with her 1980s music, because the BBC only selected two songs from her 1982 album "Wild Things Run Fast:" "Solid Love" and "Chinese Cafe - Unchained Melody." (And "Unchained Melody" is a classic ballad from the 1950s.) Otherwise, this concert sounds like it could have been from the mid-1970s. She played all the songs with a band, but it wasn't as jazzy as her late 1970s stuff.

The sound quality is excellent. At first, I thought the banter between songs was cut by the BBC. But I looked at a couple other concerts she did in 1983, and she barely had any banter in those concerts either, so I guess she just wasn't much for talking in concert that year.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Free Man in Paris (Joni Mitchell)
02 talk (Joni Mitchell)
03 Song for Sharon (Joni Mitchell)
04 God Must Be a Boogie Man (Joni Mitchell)
05 Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell)
06 A Case of You (Joni Mitchell)
07 Carey (Joni Mitchell)
08 Amelia (Joni Mitchell)
09 [You're So Square] Baby, I Don't Care (Joni Mitchell)
10 Solid Love (Joni Mitchell)
11 Chinese Cafe - Unchained Melody (Joni Mitchell)
12 Woodstock (Joni Mitchell)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15480061/JoniMchl_1983_BBSessionsVolum5OldGryWhistlTstWemblyArnaLondnBrtain__4-24-1983_atse.zip.html 

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Announcement: Some Thoughts on My YouTube Channel

As I mentioned yesterday, I've just started a new YouTube channel in order to circumvent the increasingly busy copyright police targeting this blog. Here are my initial thoughts.

I uploaded all of what I consider my albums of completely unreleased material for the letter A. Those are mostly full concerts. Of those, I was allowed to post 17, and four have been blocked. The blocked ones are of AC/DC, Adele, America, and the Allman Brothers. It turns out though that ALL but one of the albums I uploaded have copyright issues, it's just that YouTube allows the posting of copyrighted material in most cases. YouTube runs some kind of analysis program as you're uploading material that checks for copyright issues. If there's so much as a similar melody to a copyrighted song, that gets flagged before it gets posted.

So basically my distinction of released and unreleased is irrelevant from YouTube's point of view, because any version of any copyrighted song is a copyright issue. Even if I were to sing and play a cover version and upload that, that would be an issue. I read somewhere though that Google, which owns YouTube, has paid the major record companies for the rights to have their music on YouTube, which is why so much gets allowed there. It's just some artists and/or record labels didn't agree which causes problems.

But at least there seems to be some logic and consistency with YouTube's policies. What's weird is that, as a test, I uploaded two albums that had recently been hidden here, one by Graham Nash and the other by the Doobie Brothers. Both of them passed the copyright check on YouTube and are currently available there! For those two only, I've included the direct download links on their YouTube pages. (For the others, I typically post the link to the relevant page of this blog, where they can find the links.) So if you want those, you can now get them there. 

I'm going to experiment with posting other stuff on YouTube that gets hidden here. I'll un-hide those albums here, but with the download links removed, and direct people to go to the relevant YouTube page for the downloads instead. So hopefully if something gets blocked/hidden here, it'll be available there, and vice versa. 

However, I'm going to hold off on posting lots of stuff at YouTube for the time being, to see how things play out there. It's nice that one gets a copyright check before posting, so you can choose not to post if there's a problem. As opposed to what's been happening recently on this blog, where albums that have already been posted get seemingly randomly hidden at random times. That way, one doesn't get any strikes against their account. But it's still possible for a strike and/or warning to come along later, and your account gets totally banned if there are three strikes in a six month time period. (And by the way, what's crazy is that YouTube and blogger.com are both owned by Google, so you'd think they'd flag the same music in the same way, but they definitely don't.)

So I don't want to post a lot of stuff at YouTube just yet, only to possibly have my account get banned and lose all that work. For now, I'll mostly stick to posting complete, unreleased concerts, and wait some months to see if they stay available or if any further copyright problems develop.

Anyway, thanks for your patience with all this. One way or another, I'm determined to make and keep this music publicly available.

The Doobie Brothers - BBC In Concert, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 3-16-1995

As I mentioned in a recent announcement, I had a Doobie Brothers concert I posted last month get hidden yesterday due to a copyright issue. I find this puzzling, because it's an unreleased performance, as far as I know. I'm still trying to figure out the logic or pattern to such take-downs (if any), so I'm posting a different unreleased Doobie Brothers concert to see if it gets flagged too. You might want to grab this one quickly.

I had been planning on posting this one soon anyway because I have a special focus on posting BBC material, and this seems to be the one and only thing the Doobie Brothers did for the BBC. 

Also, this is the kind of Doobie Brothers concert I had been looking for. To clarify, I'm not a big fan of the singer Michael McDonald. It's not that I don't think he's talented - he clearly is - but for whatever reason I don't jibe with his style. He's basically dominated the singing in the band in the late 1970s and early 1980s. When the band reunited in the late 1980s, they put out two albums without him. He still wasn't part of the band when this concert took place. Later in 1995, he would rejoin the band for a big tour. Since then, he's come and gone as a special guest. 

So I like this has an emphasis on the band's early 1970s stuff before the late 1970s McDonald-dominated era. They did do one big hit originally sung by McDonald, "Takin' It to the Streets." I'm surprised though that they didn't play "The Doctor," their big comeback hit from 1989.

The sound quality is excellent. It's been a while since I added this to my music collection, but I'm pretty sure I used an audio editing program to boost the low lead vocals relative to the instruments for all the songs. I think the first song, "Dangerous" has "'[Edit]" in the title because the vocals were especially low and I had to take extra steps to make that one sound good.

This concert is 55 minutes long.

01 Dangerous [Edit] (Doobie Brothers)
02 Jesus Is Just Alright (Doobie Brothers)
03 Dependin' on You (Doobie Brothers)
04 talk (Doobie Brothers)
05 South City [Instrumental] (Doobie Brothers)
06 South City Midnight Lady (Doobie Brothers)
07 talk (Doobie Brothers)
08 One Step Closer (Doobie Brothers)
09 talk (Doobie Brothers)
10 Takin' It to the Streets (Doobie Brothers)
11 Black Water (Doobie Brothers)
12 Take Me in Your Arms [Rock Me] (Doobie Brothers)
13 Long Train Runnin' (Doobie Brothers)
14 China Grove (Doobie Brothers)
15 talk (Doobie Brothers)
16 Listen to the Music (Doobie Brothers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15473537/TDoobieBrs_1995_BBInConcrtWemblyArnaLondnBrtain__3-16-1995_atse.zip.html

The cover photo features most of the band members in concert in Paris, France on March 18, 1995, just two days after the concert featured here.

Eric Burdon & War - Live on European TV (1970-1971)

After posting an Animals concert from 1983, I realized I have one more Animals related album worth posting, so here it is before I get distracted and forget.

The Animals broke up in 1968, after many line-up changes, with lead singer Eric Burdon remaining the one constant member. Burdon then got involved with a then-unknown and unsigned funk band from California called "War." He put out two albums with them in 1970, and they hit a big hit single with the song "Spill the Wine." But in early 1971, Burdon and War went their separate ways. Burdon struggled to have much commercial success in a solo career, while War was very successful, with a bunch of hit singles.

There's no official live album of Burdon and War together, and only a few bootlegs. The ones I saw were both short and of middling sound quality. So I think this is just about everything that exists of them performing live with excellent sound quality. The first four songs come from an appearance on the German TV show "Beat Club" in September 1970. Although they played live in the studio, there was no audience. The remaining three songs are from a Danish TV show, "TV-Byen," recorded in January 1971. This performance did have an audience. By lucky chance, all the songs played in the two performances were different.

Apparently, Eric Burdon and War liked to jam out their songs, because every song here is at least six minutes long, and three are at least 12 minutes long. Since the album is roughly evenly divided between two performances, I've called this album "Live on European TV," since both unreleased performances were for TV shows in Europe.

This concert is an hour and 11 minutes long.

01 Paint It, Black (Eric Burdon & War)
02 Spill the Wine (Eric Burdon & War)
03 Tobacco Road (Eric Burdon & War)
04 Bear Back Rider (Eric Burdon & War)
05 Spirit (Eric Burdon & War)
06 Love Is All Around (Eric Burdon & War)
07 Mystery Train (Eric Burdon & War)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15473487/ErcBurdnWar_1970-1971_LveonEurpeanTV_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot I took of a YouTube video of the Beat Club performance.

Beck - Morning Becomes Eclectic, KCRW Studios, Santa Monica, CA, 3-31-2005

Beck likes to perform for the KCRW radio station every couple of years, and I've been occasionally posting his more significant performances there. So here's another one.

This album actually has three sources, all of them unreleased. The first seven songs come from the KCRW show in 2005 mentioned in the title, played with a band. Tracks 8 and 9 come from a band performance on a German TV show sometime in 2005. I included that mainly because Beck somehow failed to play the song "Clap Hands" in the KCRW performance, and that's my favorite song he did in 2005. (He apparently didn't like it that much, since it only came out as a bonus track.) 

This album is 33 minutes long.

01 E-Pro (Beck)
02 Black Tambourine (Beck)
03 Broken Drum (Beck)
04 Hell Yes (Beck)
05 Girl (Beck)
06 Guero (Beck)
07 Scarecrow (Beck)
08 Tropicalia (Beck)
09 Clap Hands (Beck)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15492107/BeckH_2005_MornngBecomesEclecticSantaMonicaCA__3-31-2005_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot taken from the YouTube video of the German TV show ("Sarah Kuttner - Die Show") performance of "Clap Hands" included here. I strongly recommend you watch the YouTube video, because it's lots of fun. In it, Beck sings and plays the song on guitar while his backing band sitting at a table and gets served a meal by a waiter. But as they're doing that, they're beating out complicated rhythms on the table using their silverware and glasses and other implements! It's really cool and sounds great.

Apparently, when Beck went on tour in 2005, they did this table thing at every concert. Beck would do an acoustic set in the middle of the show. His backing band would actually sit at the table behind him on stage and eat a meal while Beck sang his songs. Then when he got to this song at the end of the acoustic set, it would quickly become clear the band members had stopped eating and were playing rhythm with everything in reach at the table. People say it was the highlight of the shows.

The Allman Brothers Band - Winterland, San Francisco, CA, 9-26-1973

I haven't posted any full Allman Brothers Band concert recordings until now mostly because they're pretty well covered with officially released ones. I just checked, and there are about 20 live albums by them, from all phases of their career. However, here's a really excellent one that has so far slipped through the cracks.

Musically, the band suffered a great loss when guitarist Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident in 1971, and then again when bassist Berry Oakley died in a motorcycle accident in 1972. (Motorcycles are dangerous!) But, in my opinion, the band remained at a musical peak at least through 1973. That year certainly was their commercial peak, thanks mostly to the song "Ramblin' Man" from the album "Brothers and Sisters" hitting Number Two in the US charts. But, as so often happens, big success led to the usual drug and ego problems. The band slowly fell apart over the next couple of years, then broke up altogether in 1976, only to reunite a couple of years after that.

The point of all that is, in my opinion, this concert took place before those problems got in the way of the music. This concert happened only a month after the release of the "Brothers and Sisters" album, their most successful album, which would go on to sell over seven million copies worldwide. So they still hadn't been overwhelmed by the massive success that was just starting to hit them.

This is a flawless soundboard recording. There were no problems needing fixing. There's also next to no banter between songs.

This album is two hours and 23 minutes long.

01 talk (Allman Brothers Band)
02 Wasted Words (Allman Brothers Band)
03 Done Somebody Wrong (Allman Brothers Band)
04 One Way Out (Allman Brothers Band)
05 Call It Stormy Monday (Allman Brothers Band)
06 Midnight Rider (Allman Brothers Band)
07 Ramblin' Man (Allman Brothers Band)
08 In Memory of Elizabeth Reed [Instrumental] (Allman Brothers Band)
09 Statesboro Blues (Allman Brothers Band)
10 Come and Go Blues (Allman Brothers Band)
11 Southbound (Allman Brothers Band)
12 Jessica [Instrumental] (Allman Brothers Band)
13 You Don't Love Me - Amazing Grace (Allman Brothers Band)
14 Les Brers in A Minor [Instrumental] (Allman Brothers Band)
15 Blue Sky (Allman Brothers Band)
16 Trouble No More (Allman Brothers Band)
17 Whipping Post (Allman Brothers Band)

https://www.imagenetz.de/jvr9o

The cover photo of the band is from a concert in Little Rock, Arkansas, on August 17, 1983, about a month prior to this concert.

Announcement: A New YouTube Channel!

I posted an announcement yesterday that the host of this blog, blogger.com, seems to be suddenly getting tougher on what it will allow me to post. In fact, not only did three albums I recently posted get hidden yesterday, but another one got hidden today, the Doobie Brothers concert at the SNACK benefit in 1975. That one also is completely unreleased music, as far as I know, and it was posted last month but only flagged today. So I have no idea what's going on or how much more of this kind of thing will follow.

But on the plus side, this trouble has forced me to finally get my butt in gear and start a YouTube channel. I'd had that on my mental to-do list for years, but today I actually did it. You can find it here:

Paul ATSE (Albums That Should Exist) - YouTube

So far, I've only posted on album there, the live Animals concert I also posted here today. But I figured out how to post things (it's kind of a pain in the butt, and there's a lot of waiting for uploading involved), so I plan to post a lot more in the future. I'm going to focus on posting completely unreleased concerts there for the time being, so I don't run the risk of getting in trouble there too.

If you're a fan of this blog, please bookmark or otherwise note the URL of my YouTube channel so if this blog suddenly goes "POOF," at least I'll still be reachable there. I would like to move this blog to somewhere safer in the near future, but they might zap me before I manage to do that. In such a case, I can let you know where to find the new location through my YouTube page.

Sheesh. It's not easy running a blog like this these days, but I'm not going to let them run me off.

The Animals - Mid-Hudson Civic Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, 9-7-1983

The Animals had a really good run from 1964 to 1968, with lots of critical acclaim and hit songs. Lead singer Eric Burdon had more success through 1970, especially with the hit song "Spill the Wine" done with the band War. But then Burdon's commercial profile went way down, with his singles and albums usually not even making the charts.

So it wasn't so surprising that the Animals eventually reunited. What was surprising was that all five members of the original band got together, including keyboardist Alan Price, who left in 1965 and had a fairly successful solo career, as well as bassist Chas Chandler who quite playing music in 1966, becoming a manager and record producer. (He's best known for managing Jimi Hendrix and Slade.) The reunited band released an album in 1977, "Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted," which was critically acclaimed by ignored by record buyers, since new sounds like punk and disco were all the rage in 1977. They didn't play any concerts to promote the album.

The Animals disbanded again for a few years after that. But with none of them having much success with solo careers, all five original members reunited again in 1983. They put out another album of new material that year, entitled "Ark." This one was not so well received critically, and the sales also were poor. The new wave sound was the thing, and the band tried to modernize their sound to some degree. It still wasn't a good time for 1960s bands to reunite. For instance, the original Hollies also reunited in 1983, and were pretty much ignored too. 

The Animals disbanded yet again. They never really got back together again, not even to be indicted into the Roll and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, although individual members sometimes called their bands "the Animals" or "the New Animals" or even "the Animals II."

That said, I'm posting this for a couple of reasons. One, there's almost no live recordings of the 1960s Animals with good sound quality, other than their BBC recordings. The only full length concert recordings are from this 1983 tour. And two, they actually were still really good in their 1983 concerts. Although their album was only okay, they just played the best songs from it, which helped, as well as recent solo songs, and some other new songs that didn't get released until later, like "It's Too Late" and "Young Girls." It helped a lot that the live versions were more raw, without most of the 1980s production touches on the "Ark" album that didn't suit the band. But of course a good chunk of the concerts were their best 1960s songs. Burdon's voice would decline later, but he still sounded great here.

Two official live albums of their 1983 tour have been released, one called "Rip It to Shreds: Greatest Hits Live," and the other one "The Last Live Show." Those are from different concerts than this one. But both of those are fairly short, at about 40 to 45 minutes each, while this is nearly two hours long, so that's very different. They don't even sound that good. But this is an excellent bootleg, due to it being professionally recorded in order to be broadcast by a local radio station. So if you want just one live performance from the original Animals, this is the best one to get, by far, in my opinion, despite it being from 1983.

The last three songs actually are from another show on the same tour. That also is a soundboard quality boot. I added those because they were all good songs that weren't played on this night. "O Lucky Man" was a hit for Alan Price in 1973, and he sang this version too.

The album is an hour and 56 minutes long. If you don't include the last three songs from the different concert, the concert is an hour and 42 minutes long.

01 talk (Animals)
02 It's Too Late (Animals)
03 Melt Down (Animals)
04 Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Animals)
05 The Night (Animals)
06 My Favourite Enemy (Animals)
07 Tryin' to Get to You (Animals)
08 Loose Change (Animals)
09 Just Can't Get Enough (Animals)
10 I'm Crying (Animals)
11 No John No (Animals)
12 talk (Animals)
13 Bring It on Home to Me (Animals)
14 Prisoner of the Light (Animals)
15 Love Is for All Time (Animals)
16 Heart Attack (Animals)
17 talk (Animals)
18 The House of the Rising Sun (Animals)
19 Hard Times (Animals)
20 Being There (Animals)
21 It's My Life - Don't Bring Me Down (Animals)
22 talk (Animals)
23 Young Girls (Animals)
24 Boom Boom (Animals)
25 talk (Animals)
26 We've Gotta Get Out of This Place (Animals)
27 When I Was Young (Animals)
28 O Lucky Man (Animals)
29 San Francisco Nights (Animals)

https://www.imagenetz.de/bUQRa

The cover photo is just of lead singer Eric Burdon in 1983. I don't know exactly where or when it's from beyond that though.