Donovan - The Bottom Line, New York City, 4-10-1976

This is one of my favorite Donovan concert recordings, if not the favorite. It's unreleased, but the sound quality is excellent, due to the fact that it was professionally recorded for live broadcast on the radio at the time. It's a solo acoustic concert, mostly, which allows one to hear many of his songs in a different way. (There are two other musicians subtly backing him up.) And it came at an interesting point in his career, resulting in some lessen known but still very good songs to get played.

Donovan is very closely associated with the 1960s. As a cultural phenomenon, the 60's actually started a few years into the 1960s, maybe around 1963 or 1964, and ended a few years into the 1970s. By 1976, Donovan's hippie image seemed increasingly out of step with cultural trends at the time. Then 1977 came along, with punk and disco, and his popular declined even more. So 1976 was the tail end of his most popular and creative era. For instance, note the archival retrospective album for him, "Troubadour," deals with that whole period, 1964 to 1976. After 1976, Donovan found it hard to even get record contracts to make new albums. But he was still going pretty strong up through 1976. I think a lot of his 1970s output is underappreciated.

So this turns out to be a really good time for a concert recording. He was still writing and performing excellent new songs, such as "Dark Eyed Blue Jean Angel," while also doing his older hits.

There were a few problems with the bootleg recording though. One of them was that the DJ for the radio station broadcasting the concert often cut in for station identification between songs. With some audio editing, I was able to remove all of that DJ talk while still keeping the appropriate amount of cheering after each song. The songs with "[Edit]" in their names are all cases where I had to make significant edits to get rid of the DJ chatter. Also, on a few songs, but only a few, the lead vocals were low in the mix. So I used the UVR5 audio editing program to fix that.

After those changes, this is a really top notch recording. If you're a Donovan fan at all, you should give it a listen.

This album is an hour and 16 minutes long.

01 Sunshine Superman (Donovan)
02 There Is a Mountain (Donovan)
03 talk (Donovan)
04 Dark Eyed Blue Jean Angel [Edit] (Donovan)
05 talk (Donovan)
06 Laughing River (Donovan)
07 talk (Donovan)
08 Take Your Time (Donovan)
09 talk (Donovan)
10 Friends (Donovan)
11 Woman's Work [Edit] (Donovan)
12 talk (Donovan)
13 Catch the Wind (Donovan)
14 talk (Donovan)
15 My My They Sigh (Donovan)
16 Season of the Witch [Edit] (Donovan)
17 Black Widow [Edit] (Donovan)
18 Happiness Runs (Donovan)
19 talk (Donovan)
20 Lalena [Edit] (Donovan)
21 talk (Donovan)
22 Atlantis (Donovan)
23 I Love My Shirt (Donovan)
24 Mellow Yellow (Donovan)
25 Saturday Night (Donovan)
26 Hurdy Gurdy Man (Donovan)

This album is an hour and 16 minutes long.

https://www.upload.ee/files/16571793/DONVN1976ThBttmLneNwYrkC__4-10-1976_atse.zip.html

Wow, that's quite a suit Donovan is wearing. I wonder if they still make suits like that today. Anyway, I couldn't find any good photos of him in concert in 1976. This one is "circa 1975," but I don't know anything beyond that.

Beck - Liquid Room, Tokyo, Japan, 3-31-2003

There are tons of Beck concert bootlegs (and NO official live albums), but there are surprisingly few with soundboard-level quality, for some reason. I'm posting an audience bootleg here. But before you run away, sometimes audience boots can sound just as good as a solid soundboard boot, and this is such a case. It was a long mostly acoustic concert with a solid performance, interesting banter, and lots of interesting song selections, including a bunch of cover versions he never officially released. This is one of the best Beck live recordings, period.

In 2003, Beck was still touring to support his acclaimed and most acoustic 2002 album "Sea Changes." So naturally there are lots of songs from that. 

For most of the first half, it was basically a solo acoustic concert. But other band members gradually joined in here and there. By the song "The Golden Age," it sounds like the full band was playing. Then the rest of the concert continued in more of a full-band sound while still retaining an acoustic vibe.

I had very little problem with the sound on this one, until the second half. When the full band joined in, Beck's vocals were drowned out a bit by all the instruments, compared to before. So I used the UVR5 audio editing program for all the songs from "The Golden Age" on to boost the lead vocals relative to the instruments. So even if you had this concert already, this version sounds better.

By the way, here are the covers: "Kangaroo," "Love," "Do You Realize," "Magnolia," "She Thinks I Still Care," "No Expectations," "Sleepless Nights," and "Sunday Morning." Note that I added a bunch of the cover versions from this exact concert to the stray tracks album I made for this time period. Oh, and there's a very strange "goth version" of "Loser" that's almost unrecognizable.

This album is just a few seconds shy of two hours long.

01 talk (Beck)
02 Guess I'm Doing Fine (Beck)
03 talk (Beck)
04 Kangaroo (Beck)
05 talk (Beck)
06 The Cherry Blossom Song (Beck)
07 talk (Beck)
08 Lost Cause (Beck)
09 talk (Beck)
10 Nobody's Fault but My Own [Harmonium Version] (Beck)
11 talk (Beck)
12 Love (Beck)
13 talk (Beck)
14 Do You Realize (Beck)
15 Asshole (Beck)
16 talk (Beck)
17 Debra (Beck)
18 talk (Beck)
19 Magnolia (Beck)
20 talk (Beck)
21 She Thinks I Still Care (Beck)
22 talk (Beck)
23 Side of the Road (Beck)
24 Round the Bend (Beck)
25 No Expectations (Beck)
26 talk (Beck)
27 Sleepless Nights (Beck)
28 talk (Beck)
29 The Golden Age (Beck)
30 talk (Beck)
31 Dead Melodies (Beck)
32 It's All in Your Mind (Beck)
33 talk (Beck)
34 Already Dead (Beck)
35 talk (Beck)
36 Ship in the Bottle (Beck)
37 Canceled Check (Beck)
38 talk (Beck)
39 We Live Again (Beck)
40 talk (Beck)
41 Loser [Goth Version] (Beck)
42 Little One (Beck)
43 Sexx Laws (Beck)
44 Get Real Paid (Beck)
45 Nicotine and Gravy (Beck)
46 talk (Beck)
47 Sunday Morning (Beck)
48 Lazy Flies (Beck)

https://www.imagenetz.de/dRW5c

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zD64DrBc

Luckily, the cover art is a photo from this exact concert, the only one I could find. From left to right, that's Joey Waronker, Smokey Hormel, JMJ, and Beck. There was one more band member, Greg Kurstin, who is not shown in this cover.

UPDATE: On October 1, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Bonnie Raitt - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: BBC 4 Sessions, Stoke Newington Town Hall, London, Britain, 6-17-2013

I've posted three BBC albums by Bonnie Raitt, all of them unreleased concerts with a band. Here's a fourth one, also an unreleased concert with a band. This is also the last one that I know of, at least up until now (2024).

The previous BBC concert took place in 2003, so this is ten years later, with many different songs. She was touring to support her 2012 album "Slipstream." Naturally, there are a lot of songs from that.

I'm glad to say the sound quality is excellent. For once, I hardly had to make any edits, other than breaking the banter into separate tracks. 

The songs are mostly what you'd expect, but she finished with a cover of the Elvis Presley hit "A Big Hunk o' Love," which she's never put on an album.

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
02 Used to Rule the World (Bonnie Raitt)
03 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
04 Right Down the Line (Bonnie Raitt)
05 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
06 Thing Called Love (Bonnie Raitt)
07 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
08 Million Miles (Bonnie Raitt)
09 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
10 Love Has No Pride (Bonnie Raitt)
11 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
12 Nick of Time (Bonnie Raitt)
13 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
14 Marriage Made in Hollywood (Bonnie Raitt)
15 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
16 Love Me like a Man (Bonnie Raitt)
17 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
18 I Can't Make You Love Me (Bonnie Raitt)
19 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
20 A Big Hunk o' Love (Bonnie Raitt)
21 talk (Bonnie Raitt)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16576793/BONNRITT2013BBSssonsVlum4BB4SssonsNwngtnTwnHllStkeBrtin__6-17-2013_atse.zip.html

There's a video of this concert on YouTube the last I checked. The cover photo is a screenshot taken from that video.

Fleetwood Mac - Mid-South Coliseum, Memphis, TN, 10-12-1982

I recently decided I wanted a concert recording from Fleetwood Mac's 1982 tour. This was the last tour with the band's most popular "Rumours" line-up all the way until 1997. So I came up with this one.

There's a disc of live recordings from this tour on the 2016 super deluxe edition of the band's 1982 album "Mirage." However, there are some problems with it. The songs come from two concerts (in Los Angeles) instead of one, and they're in a seemingly random order. Also, many songs played each night on the tour weren't included, and all the banter was cut out. I wanted a full concert with all the songs and banter, in the correct order, with the best possible sound. I looked around and found this Memphis concert was the only soundboard bootleg from the tour. (An Oakland concert from this tour is supposedly a soundboard, but in my opinion it's just an average audience boot.) So this is what I worked with.

However, there were some audio problems with it. The biggest was the lead vocals were down in the mix, a lot more on some songs than others. I used the audio editing program UVR5 to fix that. Also, the cheering at the end of each song had an annoying buzzing sound in it every single time. So I generally turned that way down and used the cheering from the super deluxe edition live tracks instead, while keeping shouted thank yous and things like that. The cheering was also really quiet, as it often is with soundboards. So at the same time I made sure to make it a lot louder.

Also, the band played the same exact songs in the same order every night of this tour, so it was easy to see that three songs were missing from the bootleg: "Love in Store," "Not That Funny," and "I'm So Afraid." By luck, the super deluxe edition live disc included all of those, so I used those versions. 

But also, parts of two other songs were missing. About the first minute of "Second Hand News" was gone, as well as the first minute of "Landslide." Neither of those were on the super deluxe edition live disc. So instead I resorted to using the Oakland audience boot for those. I removed the crowd noise on those parts using the MVSEP audio editing program so the sound would fit with the rest. That's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. Also, about five seconds of "Sisters of the Moon" was missing in the middle of the song. Luckily, it was in an instrumental riff section, so I was able to patch that up with music from elsewhere in the song. So that one has "[Edit]" in the title too.

Previously, this Memphis concert recording wasn't very popular due to the sound flaws and missing songs and sections of songs and so forth. But I feel it's sounding really great now. In my opinion, this now has to be the best recording from the band's 1982 tour, even more than the songs on the super deluxe edition, since this is a complete concert with essentially the same sound quality.

The band did a really long tour in 1979 and 1980 to support their 1989 album "Tusk." That resulted in a live album, simply called "Live." But that tour was a disaster filled with the typical drug and ego problems of famous bands. It nearly broke up the band. Key band members were often so high they were barely functional on stage. The 1982 tour was much more professionally done, resulting in better music. So I think this is better than the "Live" album too.

This album is an hour and 56 minutes long.

01 Second Hand News [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
02 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
03 The Chain (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Don't Stop (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Dreams (Fleetwood Mac)
06 Oh Well, Part 1 (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac)
08 Brown Eyes (Fleetwood Mac)
09 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
10 Eyes of the World (Fleetwood Mac)
11 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
12 Gypsy (Fleetwood Mac)
13 Love in Store (Fleetwood Mac)
14 Not That Funny (Fleetwood Mac)
15 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
16 Never Going Back Again (Fleetwood Mac)
17 Landslide [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
18 Tusk (Fleetwood Mac)
19 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
20 Sara (Fleetwood Mac)
21 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
22 Hold Me (Fleetwood Mac)
23 You Make Loving Fun (Fleetwood Mac)
24 I'm So Afraid (Fleetwood Mac)
25 Go Your Own Way (Fleetwood Mac)
26 Blue Letter (Fleetwood Mac)
27 Sisters of the Moon [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
28 Songbird (Fleetwood Mac)

https://www.imagenetz.de/mkgpa

The cover photo shows four out of the five band members in concert in 1982. Drummer Mick Fleetwood is the one not shown. I don't know exactly where and when the photo was taken.

Richard Thompson - The Fairport Convention Era - Home Concert, London, Britain, 9-27-2020

In 2020, the worst year of the Covid pandemic, Richard Thompson performed a few home concerts that were broadcast over the Internet. I could be wrong, but I believe I've already posted all but one of them at this blog. Here, finally, is the last one. 

Richard Thompson was a member of Fairport Convention from 1967 to 1971, the most celebrated years of the band's long musical history. For this solo acoustic home concert, he decided to perform just songs from his Fairport Convention era. I'm not aware of any other concert where he had this exclusive focus, this this is a special treat for both Richard Thompson solo and Fairport Convention fans.

The reason I've never posted this before is because when the concert happened, it was one of those "pay to view" deals. I don't want to deny Thompson of a revenue stream, especially considering it's become increasingly hard for musicians to make a living. But I figure enough time has passed, and I checked the download page for this, and it's defunct. There's no way to pay for it. (By the way, if anyone has any more of these types of "pay to view" shows from artists that are also expired, please let me know so I can help share them.) 

Thompson performed the concert with just his acoustic guitar. Because it was in his home, there was no audience. However, his girlfriend Zara Phillips, who is a talented musician in her own right, joined him near the end of the concert to sing song harmony vocals. He largely played the songs in chronological order of the years the songs were recorded. However, he saved up some harmony one for the end with Phillips.

This concert is especially interesting because Thompson only sang on a minority of songs when he was in Fairport Convention, since the band had other sings, especially Sandy Denny. But in this concert, he sang some songs in public for the very first time that were sang by Denny and others, in order to show off a full picture of the band in that era. He also played a few songs from his first solo album, "Henry the Human Fly" from 1972, apparently since he linked that with the Fairport years in his mind.

There's a lot of interesting banter between songs. In recent years especially, Thompson has an annoying habit of coughing quite a lot when he's on stage. (I'm guessing this is related to a stuttering problem he's had his whole life.) So I edited out most of the coughs.

This album is an hour and 28 minutes long.

01 talk (Richard Thompson)
02 Jack O'Diamonds (Richard Thompson)
03 talk (Richard Thompson)
04 One Sure Thing (Richard Thompson)
05 talk (Richard Thompson)
06 She Moves through the Fair (Richard Thompson)
07 talk (Richard Thompson)
08 Who Knows Where the Time Goes (Richard Thompson)
09 talk (Richard Thompson)
10 Reynardine (Richard Thompson)
11 talk (Richard Thompson)
12 Matty Groves (Richard Thompson)
13 talk (Richard Thompson)
14 The Deserter (Richard Thompson)
15 talk (Richard Thompson)
16 Crazy Man Michael (Richard Thompson)
17 talk (Richard Thompson)
18 Sir Patrick Spens (Richard Thompson)
19 talk (Richard Thompson)
20 Sloth (Richard Thompson)
21 talk (Richard Thompson)
22 Now Be Thankful (Richard Thompson)
23 talk (Richard Thompson)
24 Roll Over Vaughan Williams (Richard Thompson)
25 talk (Richard Thompson)
26 The Poor Ditching Boy (Richard Thompson)
27 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
28 I Still Miss Someone (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
29 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
30 Gone, Gone, Gone (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
31 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
32 Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
33 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
34 Genesis Hall (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
35 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
36 Meet on the Ledge (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
37 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)

NOTE: The download link has been removed due to a copyright issue, sorry. But check the comments below.

I used a promotional advertisement for the cover. The only change I made was that I swapped the text at the bottom.

Dwight Twilley - Moon Shadow, Atlanta, GA, 6-17-1984

Dwight Twilley is a frequently overlooked and underrated rocker. He's best known for two Top Twenty hits in the U.S., "I'm on Fire" in 1975 and "Girls" in 1984. But he had a long and fruitful music career before dying in 2023 at the age of 72. He released dozens of albums, but he had lots of trouble with his record companies, so they never got the attention they deserved. 

I believe there are only two official live albums from his long career. "Live from Agora" was recorded very early in his career, in 1976. "Live: All Access" was recorded relatively late, in 2006. So I figured it would be nice to have one from the middle of his career, when he arguably was in his prime.

I've come across very few bootlegs from him, and this one seemed to be the best and most popular. However, it had one very serious flaw: the lead vocals were way, way down in the mix. But that's something I could fix, so I did, using the UVR5 audio editing program.

This mostly consists of originals, including his two hits, "I'm on Fire" and "Girls." So it's a good introduction to his music, almost like a best of collection. It ends with two classic covers.

This album is an hour and three minutes long.

01 talk (Dwight Twilley)
02 Little Bit of Love (Dwight Twilley)
03 T.V. (Dwight Twilley)
04 Betsy Sue (Dwight Twilley)
05 talk (Dwight Twilley)
06 Long Lonely Nights (Dwight Twilley)
07 Jungle (Dwight Twilley)
08 I'm on Fire (Dwight Twilley)
09 talk (Dwight Twilley)
10 You Can Change It (Dwight Twilley)
11 Runaway (Dwight Twilley)
12 Looking for the Magic (Dwight Twilley)
13 Don't You Love Her (Dwight Twilley)
14 Somebody to Love (Dwight Twilley)
15 Band Introductions (Dwight Twilley)
16 talk (Dwight Twilley)
17 Girls (Dwight Twilley)
18 C.C Rider - Jenny Jenny (Dwight Twilley)
19 Money [That's What I Want] (Dwight Twilley)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16541817/DWIGHTTWLLY1984MonShdwAtlntGA__6-17-1984_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Twilley comes from an appearance on the "American Bandstand" TV show in March 1984.

The Allman Brothers Band - Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, 1-5-1980

Today (April 18, 2024), another musical legend passed away. This time, it was Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band. He was a key lead vocalist, lead guitarist, and songwriter in the band from its inception in 1969 until 2001. As I often do in such occasions, I wanted to post some music to pay tribute. I've already posted a ton of stuff by the Allman Brothers Band, but I decided this unreleased soundboard concert fits the bill.

One reason I don't post more live concerts from certain musical acts is because so many full concerts have already been officially released by them already. That's definitely the case with the Allman Brothers Band. There's a particular focus on their indisputably greatest era, the early 1970s (especially when Duane Allman was still alive). But the band had other peaks during their long musical career, and some have few to no official live albums to represent them.

The late 1970s are one such time. The Allman Brothers Band broke up in 1976 due to the usual drug and ego problems faced by famous musical acts. But in 1979, they reunited (with slightly different personnel) and put out the album "Enlightened Rogues." Personally, I really like it, and consider it almost as good as their late 1960s and early 1970s stuff. But they were way out of step with the music times, with disco and punk and new wave and so on. They put out a couple more albums in the early 1980s that weren't nearly as good, so the era tends to get overlooked. But for a while, in 1979 and 1980, the band was rejuvenated and musically inspired.

This is also a particularly good time to highlight Dickey Betts, because he played a large role in the band in the late 1970s. It took a while to develop his singing and songwriting chops. He didn't sing lead on an Allman Brothers Band album until 1972's "Eat a Peach," with "Blue Sky." But by "Enlightened Rogues" he dominated, writing five songs on the album compared to only one song by the band's other big songwriter, Gregg Allman. (Two other songs were covers.)

For some reason, this concert was professionally filmed and recorded, though there doesn't seem to have been any official release as a result. One can find the film footage on YouTube, but it's pretty low-res, and in black and white. 

Overall, the sound quality is excellent, like an official album. However, there were problems with two songs (which is why both have "[Edit]" in their names). For "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed," a chunk of the song is missing. (It's near the end, at least eight minutes into it.) I don't know how much is missing, but it could be a few minutes. I did an edit to try to hide the missing section, while keeping as much of the music as I could. For "Whipping Post," only a few seconds were missing. But unfortunately those few happened during a vocal line that wasn't repeated elsewhere. So I found a different soundboard recording of the song from 1979 and used that to patch in the missing bit.

If you haven't heard "Enlightened Rogues" before, this is a good way to get into it. It's a low-key album, without lots of long solos, but the songwriting and performance is very solid. Tracks 2, 5, 6, 7, and 9 come from it.

This album is two hours and 31 minutes long.

01 Don't Want You No More - It's Not My Cross to Bear (Allman Brothers Band)
02 Can't Take It with You (Allman Brothers Band)
03 Blue Sky (Allman Brothers Band)
04 Call It Stormy Monday (Allman Brothers Band)
05 Blind Love (Allman Brothers Band)
06 Crazy Love (Allman Brothers Band)
07 Just Ain't Easy (Allman Brothers Band)
08 In Memory of Elizabeth Reed [Instrumental] [Edit] (Allman Brothers Band)
09 Try It One More Time (Allman Brothers Band)
10 One Way Out (Allman Brothers Band)
11 Statesboro Blues (Allman Brothers Band)
12 Southbound (Allman Brothers Band)
13 Jessica [Instrumental] (Allman Brothers Band)
14 Whipping Post [Edit] (Allman Brothers Band)
15 talk (Allman Brothers Band)
16 Pegasus - Drums - Pegasus [Instrumental] (Allman Brothers Band)
17 talk (Allman Brothers Band)
18 Midnight Rider (Allman Brothers Band)
19 Will the Circle Be Unbroken (Allman Brothers Band)
20 talk (Allman Brothers Band)
21 Ramblin' Man (Allman Brothers Band)

https://www.imagenetz.de/jnZBq

The cover photo shows Gregg Allman on keyboards on the left and Dickey Betts on guitar on the right. This actually is a Photoshopped merging of two photos. Both were taken in Oakland, California, on May 17, 1979. The one of Allman had someone else standing right where I put Betts, so the size and placement and such should be roughly correct.

Electric Light Orchestra - Zoom Tour Live, Stage 36, CBS Television City, Los Angeles, CA, 4-24-2001

In 1986, Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) called it quits. Jeff Lynne, the band's lead singer and songwriter, went on to produce many albums and occasionally released an album of his own. In 2001, he put out a new ELO album, "Zoom." The plan was to tour to support the album, but ticket sales were below expectations, so the tour was cancelled. However, he did one full-length concert and had it filmed. It was later released as a DVD called "Zoom Tour Live." But it was never released in full in any audio format. I'm filling that gap by posting it here.

Note that I said it was never released "in full" in any audio format. In 2013, the album "Electric Light Orchestra Live" was released, consisting of highlights from this concert. But it was only 50 minutes long. That means an entire hour of the concert was left out.  

Note that four songs from the album, "Twilight," "Sweet Talkin' Woman," "Secret Messages," and "Confusion," weren't included on the DVD. So naturally I've included them here. However, there were still two problems. One, I didn't have an accurate complete set list, so I didn't know exactly where to insert these. I ultimately decided to bunch them together in the middle, since they didn't fit well either at the beginning or the end. The second problem was that there was no banter included with these four songs. There was nothing I could do about that.

Two more songs, "Rock 'n' Roll Is King" and "All She Wanted," weren't included in either the DVD or the live album. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have been bootlegged either, so they're not here at all.

When the ELO album "Zoom" came out in 2001, some people claimed that it was misleading to call it an ELO album, because Lynne pretty much did all the singing and played almost every instrument on every song. Only one other previous member of ELO, keyboardist Richard Tandy, played on the album, and he only played on one song. But Tandy played on all the songs in this concert, including the seven songs from "Zoom." And due to the necessity of having a band to perform a concert, this sounds different than "Zoom," carefully put together in the studio basically by one person.

This album is an hour and 52 minutes long.

01 Do Ya (Electric Light Orchestra)
02 Evil Woman (Electric Light Orchestra)
03 Showdown (Electric Light Orchestra)
04 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
05 Strange Magic (Electric Light Orchestra)
06 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
07 Livin' Thing (Electric Light Orchestra)
08 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
09 Alright (Electric Light Orchestra)
10 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
11 Lonesome Lullaby (Electric Light Orchestra)
12 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
13 Telephone Line (Electric Light Orchestra)
14 Confusion (Electric Light Orchestra)
15 Twilight (Electric Light Orchestra)
16 Secret Messages (Electric Light Orchestra)
18 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
17 Sweet Talkin' Woman (Electric Light Orchestra)
19 Turn to Stone (Electric Light Orchestra)
20 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
21 Just for Love (Electric Light Orchestra)
22 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
23 10538 Overture (Electric Light Orchestra)
24 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
25 Easy Money (Electric Light Orchestra)
26 Mr. Blue Sky (Electric Light Orchestra)
28 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
27 Ma-Ma-Ma Belle (Electric Light Orchestra)
30 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
29 One Summer Dream (Electric Light Orchestra)
31 Tightrope (Electric Light Orchestra)
32 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
33 State of Mind (Electric Light Orchestra)
34 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
35 Can't Get It Out of My Head (Electric Light Orchestra)
36 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
37 Moment in Paradise (Electric Light Orchestra)
38 Ordinary Dream (Electric Light Orchestra)
39 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
40 Shine a Little Love (Electric Light Orchestra)
41 Don't Bring Me Down (Electric Light Orchestra)
42 Roll Over Beethoven (Electric Light Orchestra)

https://www.imagenetz.de/kbs85

The cover image is a screenshot taken from the DVD of this exact concert.

Squeeze - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: 1982-1992

I'm gradually moving forward chronologically with BBC albums by the British band Squeeze. The first one was a collection of BBC studio sessions, then the next three were BBC concerts. Now, with this fifth album in the series, it's back to another collection of BBC studio sessions.

It seems Squeeze didn't do studio sessions for the BBC very often during this era, because this album deals with a ten-year time period. The first four tracks are from a 1982 session, then there's a big time jump to a 1989 session for the next four tracks. That's followed by a single song from 1990, "Another Nail in My Heart," which comes from an appearance on a BBC TV show. Finally, the last four songs are from a 1992 session.

Virtually all the songs here are released, from the album "The Complete BBC Sessions." The sole exception is that sole song from 1990, "Another Nail in My Heart," which is unreleased.

Oddly, the band seemed to avoid playing hits for the 1982 and 1989 sessions. But the 1992 session was composed entirely of older hits, done in acoustic styles.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Onto the Dance Floor (Squeeze)
02 Elephant Girl (Squeeze)
03 I Can't Hold On (Squeeze)
04 The Apple Tree (Squeeze)
05 She Doesn't Have to Shave (Squeeze)
06 Footprints in the Frost (Squeeze)
07 Is That Love (Squeeze)
08 Melody Motel (Squeeze)
09 Another Nail in My Heart (Squeeze)
10 Take Me, I'm Yours (Squeeze)
11 Up the Junction (Squeeze)
12 Pulling Mussels [From the Shell] (Squeeze)
13 Tempted (Squeeze)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16527319/SQUZE1982-1992BBSssonsVlum5_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a promo photo from 1988. I don't know other details.

Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren - Sunday Mornings with Elle & Toni, Volume 15: 2023-2024

Since 2020, I've posted the Sunday Mornings album series of cover versions by Reina del Cid and Toni Lindgren. But since I posted the most recent album in this series (the 14th!), the main singer-songwriter in this duo, Reina del Cid, decided to change her stage name to Elle Cordova. That was her real name all along, and "Reina del Cid" was just a nickname. Of course, that's her right, and I want to respect that, just as, say, "John Cougar" turned into "John Cougar Mellencamp" and then finally "John Mellencamp." 

But I thought it would be strange to have some albums posted under the name "Reina del Cid and Toni Lindgren" and other albums under the name "Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren," so I've just finished renaming ALL of their previous albums. That meant renaming all the songs and changing all the cover art. It was a pain in the rear, but now it's done. So you may well want to redownload all the previous albums, to get with what hopefully will be the permanent name going forward. Note also that they're calling their Sunday morning postings "Sunday Mornings with Elle and Toni," so that's what I'm using as well.

With that out of the way, let me get to this album. That's not much to say that hasn't been already said about previous albums in this series. As usual, it's all unreleased cover versions taken for the duo's YouTube page (which, by the way, is now simply called "Elle and Toni"). Most of the time, just the duo performs on the songs, with occasional extra guests. But for three of the songs, it's just Toni Lindgren, who is stepping up as a lead singer slightly more often.

This album is 48 minutes long.

Here are the original artists for each song: 

01 Never Going Back Again - Fleetwood Mac
02 Clay Pigeons - Blaze Foley / John Prine
03 Your Smiling Face - James Taylor
04 Cuckoo's Nest - traditional
05 Brand New Key - Melanie
06 Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under - Shania Twain
07 Wonderful World - Sam Cooke
08 After Hours - Velvet Underground
09 The Big Rock Candy Mountain - Harry McClintock
10 Somewhere Over the Rainbow - Judy Garland
11 Will You Love Me Tomorrow - Carole King / Shirelles
12 Cruella de Vil - 101 Dalmations (movie soundtrack)
13 Gentle on My Mind - Glen Campbell
14 Ripple - Grateful Dead
15 You Never Can Tell - Chuck Berry

Here's the usual song list:

01 Never Going Back Again (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
02 Clay Pigeons (Toni Lindgren)
03 Your Smiling Face (Elle Cordova, Toni Lindgren & Kent Nishimura)
04 Cuckoo's Nest [Instrumental] (Toni Lindgren)
05 Brand New Key (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
06 Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
07 Wonderful World (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren with Nataly Dawn & Lauren O'Connell)
08 After Hours (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
09 The Big Rock Candy Mountain (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
10 Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
11 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
12 Cruella de Vil (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
13 Gentle on My Mind (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
14 Ripple (Toni Lindgren)
15 You Never Can Tell (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17363708/ELLECRDVATNILINDRN2023-2024SndyMrnngswthEllTniVlum15_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RJymKbrW

The cover is a screenshot taken from the video for "After Hours" on this album.

Dave Edmunds - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: BBC Rock Hour, Uncle Sam's, Hull, MA, 11-21-1982

Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe were the two main figures in the band Rockpile in the late 1970s. Edmunds and Lowe parted ways around the start of 1981, but both of them kept going strongly with their solo careers. When it comes to Edmunds' solo career and the BBC, I've only found enough for two albums, both concerts. Here's the first one.

The peak of Edmunds' popularity was probably the early 1980s, and that's when this concert is from. Earlier in 1982, he released his solo album "D.E. 7th," so naturally there are some songs from that, though less than I'd expected ("From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)," "Dear Dad," and "Me and the Boys"). 

Many of the other songs were performed by Rockpile. In fact, this is much like a typically energetic Rockpile concert recording, except without any of the songs sung by Nick Lowe.

The concert is entirely unreleased. The sound quality is up to the usual BBC concert standards.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 talk (Dave Edmunds)
02 Crawlin' from the Wreckage (Dave Edmunds)
03 Dear Dad (Dave Edmunds)
04 Your True Love (Dave Edmunds)
05 talk (Dave Edmunds)
06 Nobody (Dave Edmunds)
07 talk (Dave Edmunds)
08 From Small Things [Big Things One Day Come] (Dave Edmunds)
09 talk (Dave Edmunds)
10 Blue Moon of Kentucky (Dave Edmunds)
11 Girls Talk (Dave Edmunds)
12 talk (Dave Edmunds)
13 Queen of Hearts (Dave Edmunds)
14 talk (Dave Edmunds)
15 It's My Own Business (Dave Edmunds)
16 talk (Dave Edmunds)
17 I Hear You Knocking (Dave Edmunds)
18 Ju Ju Man (Dave Edmunds)
19 talk (Dave Edmunds)
20 Bama Lama Bama Loo (Dave Edmunds)
21 Me and the Boys (Dave Edmunds)
22 Down Down Down (Dave Edmunds)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16531395/DVEDMNDS1982BBSssonsVlum1BBRckHurUnclSmsHllMA__11-21-1982_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from a concert at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey, on May 15, 1982.

Elvis Costello - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1977-1980

British singer-songwriter Elvis Costello has performed for the BBC many times over his long music career, and nearly all of it is unreleased. I have long wanted to start posting his BBC albums, but there was a problem: many of his early BBC sessions sounded pretty bad. However, I did a little more digging recently, and I discovered that while my versions had poor sound, there were other versions out there that sounded much better. I've fixed this for nearly all of the songs that concerned me, and now I'm ready to post.

Costello burst onto the music scene in 1977 with his classic debut album "My Aim Is True." He followed that with three more classic albums in the next three years. That's the exact time frame for this album of BBC studio sessions. All the songs here are from BBC shows hosted by famous DJ John Peel. The first four are from a 1977 session. The next four are from an early 1978 session. Then there's four from a later 1978 session. The last four are from a 1980 session.

When I first put this album together, I included two songs that were from other TV or radio shows, but not the BBC. However, later on I decided to keep this strictly a BBC thing, so those two songs got the axe. But what the heck, I'm still including them here as bonus tracks. "Hoover Factory" is from a Capitol Radio studio session in 1977, and the acoustic version of "Watching the Detectives" is from a 1977 Swedish TV show.

01 [The Angels Wanna Wear My] Red Shoes (Elvis Costello)
02 Mystery Dance (Elvis Costello)
03 Blame It on Cain (Elvis Costello)
04 Less than Zero (Elvis Costello)
05 Pump It Up (Elvis Costello)
06 [I Don't Want to Go To] Chelsea (Elvis Costello)
07 You Belong to Me (Elvis Costello)
08 The Beat (Elvis Costello)
09 Radio, Radio (Elvis Costello)
10 Stranger in the House (Elvis Costello)
11 I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself (Elvis Costello)
12 Really Mystified (Elvis Costello)
13 Beaten to the Punch (Elvis Costello)
14 Possession (Elvis Costello)
15 B Movie (Elvis Costello)
16 High Fidelity (Elvis Costello)

Hoover Factory (Elvis Costello)
Watching the Detectives (Elvis Costello)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16527216/ELVSCSTLLO1977-1980BBSssonsVlum1_atse.zip.html

All I know about the cover photo is that it was taken in concert around April 1978.

Chris Isaak - Acoustic, Volume 2, KCRW Studios, Los Angeles, CA, 4-1994 & 6-9-1995

One reason I like Chris Isaak's music is that he's not afraid to perform in solo acoustic mode. Here is the second of three albums I've made collecting such acoustic performances.

This album consists of two unreleased radio show performances, both from the same radio station, KCRW, but a year apart from each other. The first six songs are from a 1994 show, and the other seven are from a 1995 show.

Luckily for my purposes, there was only one repeat between the two shows. That repeat happens to be his most famous song by far, "Wicked Game." I've included both versions, since it's such a great song.

This album is 31 minutes long.

01 Devil Woman (Chris Isaak)
02 La Tumba Sera el Final (Chris Isaak)
03 Solitary Man (Chris Isaak)
04 Beautiful Homes (Chris Isaak)
05 Wicked Game (Chris Isaak)
06 5-15 (Chris Isaak)
07 Somebody's Crying (Chris Isaak)
08 Graduation Day (Chris Isaak)
09 Forever Blue (Chris Isaak)
10 Blue Day, Black Nights (Chris Isaak)
11 Wicked Game (Chris Isaak)
12 Blue Darling (Chris Isaak)
13 Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing (Chris Isaak)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16520386/CHRSISAK1994-1995AcustcVlum2KCRStdosLsAnglesCA__4-1994___6-9-1995_atse.zip.html

All I know about the cover photo is that it was taken in Paris in 1995.

Genesis (including Peter Gabriel): Six of the Best Reunion, National Bowl, Milton Keynes, Britain, 10-2-1982

Peter Gabriel was the lead singer for the British band Genesis from their start in 1967 until 1975, when he left for a very successful solo career. The band's drummer, Phil Collins, took over as lead singer and the popularity of Genesis soared as they switched from a prog rock style to pop rock. After Gabriel left, he only united with his old Genesis bandmates for a single concert in 1982 - this one. Unfortunately, it wasn't professionally recorded or filmed, so all we're left of it is audience bootleg recordings. I've taken the best such recording and significantly improved the sound quality, using the advances in audio technology that have become available in recent years. So even if you have this already, you need to hear this version.

Before I discuss the sonic improvements, I want to explain how this singular concert happened. After Gabriel left Genesis, he remained on good terms with his former bandmates. For instance, Collins played drums on several songs on Gabriel's 1980 solo album. Collins was even Gabriel's best man in his wedding in 2000. Earlier in 1982, Gabriel had arranged a concert called WOMAD (World of Music, Art and Dance), which included performers from dozens of countries (in addition to headliners like Gabriel). It was one of the first efforts to popularize world music in Britain. Unfortunately, the concert was in a difficult to reach location and there was a train worker strike, plus probably many people weren't ready for world music yet. As a result, Gabriel faced huge debts from that one concert. Worse, he owed money to some nasty people who began giving him death threats.

Being a big rock star, he could have raised the money eventually, but he needed it urgently. So he called up his old Genesis bandmates with the idea to have a one-off Genesis reunion to pay off those debts. The concert happened as expected (right at the end of a Genesis tour), and he was able to pay the debts. Since then, he's stuck with the WOMAD idea, and it's gone on to have many concerts over the years promoting world music, until the present day. So the story has a happy ending. But although the musicians involved in this concert claim to have enjoyed it, there has never been another reunion concert or tour since. All the original members of Genesis have occasionally gotten together for interviews and/or photo ops, but that's it. That's probably a reflection of how complicated the music from early Genesis is. It's not like being able to jam to a simple Chuck Berry song. To do the prog rock songs right, one needs a lot of group practice. But at least there was this one reunion.

The band was billed as "Six of the Best" instead of "Genesis." The six mentioned in the name were: Peter Gabriel (lead vocals), Phil Collins (drums), Tony Banks (keyboards), Mike Rutherford (guitars), Daryl Stuermer (guitars), and Chester Thompson (drums). The last two weren't official members of Genesis, but they regularly joined the band for concert tours. Additionally, Steve Hackett was a guitarist for Genesis from 1971 to 1977. He was touring in South America at the time, and only arrived back in Britain the day before the concert. Because he missed most of the rehearsals, he only joined the band for the encores ("I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" and "The Knife").

The concert went fairly well, despite the fact that it was held outdoors and it rained heavily for over 24 hours straight, leaving the audience totally wet and muddy. Gabriel started the show by rising from a coffin carried to the stage by four pallbearers, a stunt which was a surprise to even the other musicians on stage. The concert happened to take place on Rutherford's birthday, so the crowd sang 'Happy Birthday' to him during the show. 

All the songs were from the years Gabriel sang the lead vocals with Genesis, with two exceptions: "Solsbury Hill" was a 1977 solo hit for Gabriel (and the lyrics actually deal with his feelings about leaving Genesis!) and "Turn It On Again" was a 1980 hit for Genesis without Gabriel. That was the only song in the concert with lead vocals only by Collins. Gabriel attempted to play bongos on "Turn It On Again," but he was foiled by the surprisingly tricky and changing time signatures, and basically gave up before the song ended. 

Now, let me discuss the audit edits I made to this concert. As I mentioned above, the best available recording is an audience bootleg - someone in the audience with a tape recorder. But these can vary drastically in sound quality depending on various factors, such as their position relative to the stage and the quality of the tape recorder. I wouldn't have attempted to improve this except for the fact that I thought the audience boot was an unusually good one. 

The main problem, in my opinion, was that there was the sound of audience cheering during the songs as well as at the ends. No doubt, because of the unique nature of this Genesis reunion, the crowd was especially loud and excited. Luckily, there's a fix for that sort of thing these days. I used the MVSEP audio editing program to split the songs into crowd noise and all other sounds. Then I cut out all the crowd noise I didn't want, while keeping the applause at the ends of songs as well as other times when it felt appropriate. I also kept the crowd noise during the banter between songs, but lowered it a lot so the talking could be better heard.

After I did that, I edited all the songs again. This time, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to isolate the vocals from the instruments. Then I generally boosted the vocals on all the songs, as well as the banter, relative to the instruments. I also listened along, and carefully removed most unwanted vocals, such as fans shouting "WOOHOO!" in the middle of songs.

These edits took a lot of time and effort, but I think they made a big impact. I would argue that this recording now could easily be mistaken for a soundboard bootleg instead. Of course, it could still be even better in a perfect world, but I've heard plenty of soundboards that sound worse than this one does now. So if you've been avoiding this concert due to sound quality issues, I suggest you give it a listen.

Some die-hard fans made an entire booklet to go along with this concert that looks professionally done. So I've included that in the download files. It contains interesting quotes from all the band members about the concert. Furthermore, in case I missed mentioning key details, check out this Wikipedia page just about this one concert:

Six of the Best - Wikipedia

This fan page also has lots of good info about the concert:

Six Of The Best - Genesis (genesis-band.com)

Here are a couple of good quotes about the concert from that link:

Mike Rutherford: "I regret it now, but I was keen not to record the show. I thought it would be a bit rough and ready and that it was better to be there and in the moment."

Gabriel: "I was frustrated because it was very sloppy. I was certainly not sharp enough. You can memorize stuff and work on your own until you're blue in the face, but actually you need to be sitting in with the band and doing some warm-up gigs. So it was frustrating, and yet it felt a warm occasion, there was a nice feeling up on stage. A lot of fans seemed to enjoy it, even though it was very loose."

This album is an hour and 58 minutes long.

01 talk by Jonathan King (Genesis)
02 Back in N.Y.C. (Genesis)
03 Dancing with the Moonlit Knight [Part 1] (Genesis)
04 The Carpet Crawlers (Genesis)
05 talk (Genesis)
06 Firth of Fifth (Genesis)
07 talk (Genesis)
08 The Musical Box (Genesis)
09 talk (Genesis)
10 Solsbury Hill (Genesis)
11 talk (Genesis)
12 Turn It On Again (Genesis)
13 talk (Genesis)
14 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (Genesis)
15 Fly on a Windshield (Genesis)
16 Broadway Melody of 1974 (Genesis)
17 In the Cage (Genesis)
18 talk (Genesis)
19 Supper's Ready (Genesis)
20 I Know What I Like [In Your Wardrobe] (Genesis)
21 talk (Genesis)
22 The Knife (Genesis)
23 talk (Genesis)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gcNUP

The cover photo is from this exact concert, during the final encore. From left to right: Mike Rutherford, Daryl Stuermer, Chester Thompson, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett, and Peter Gabriel. Tony Banks can't be seen, but I believe that's his red jacket showing one arm between Hackett and Gabriel. Also, Hacket's face was mostly hidden in this photo, so I used another photo from the same sequence and pasted in his head just enough to make it visible behind Collins' shoulder. The "Six of the Best" text at the top is from promotional material for the concert.

The Hoodoo Gurus - Ethos Mama Club, Gabicce Mare, Italy, 7-17-1987

I have long been a fan of the Australian band the Hoodoo Gurus, especially their 1980s material. (They're still going as I write this in 2024.) I've particularly wanted to post a live album from them. They've posted one live album, but only as part of a multi-disc set called "Bite the Bullet," and it's compiled from lots of different concerts. I usually prefer hearing a full, unedited concert. The problem was, every time I came across a concert bootleg by the band, the sound quality was lacking - decent, but not excellent. A couple of days ago, I finally came across a concert with the sound quality I was looking for. So here it is.

I don't know much about the sourcing for this bootleg, except there's a video on YouTube of this exact show which these exact songs (broken up into several smaller videos), so this probably is taken from that, although I found the audio files of it instead. According to setlist.fm, there actually were some more songs played that didn't make this recording: "Hell for Leather," "Dig It Up," "Death Defying," and "Leilani." That's a shame, but at least it has "I Want You Back." In my opinion, in a better world, that's a great song that would have been a worldwide smash hit.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 In the Wild (Hoodoo Gurus)
02 On My Street (Hoodoo Gurus)
03 Good Times (Hoodoo Gurus)
04 Come and See Me [I'm Your Man] (Hoodoo Gurus)
05 talk (Hoodoo Gurus)
06 In the Middle of the Land (Hoodoo Gurus)
07 I Want You Back (Hoodoo Gurus)
08 Mars Needs Guitars (Hoodoo Gurus)
09 I Was the One (Hoodoo Gurus)
10 What's My Scene (Hoodoo Gurus)
11 Bittersweet (Hoodoo Gurus)
12 Like Now - Wipeout (Hoodoo Gurus)
13 Teenage Head (Hoodoo Gurus)
14 I Was a Kamikaze Pilot (Hoodoo Gurus)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16517240/THODOGRUS1987EthsMmaClbGbcceMreItaly__7-17-1987_atse.zip.html

The cover shows the band's lead singer Dave Faulker at a concert in Munich, Germany, in June 1987. I got the font for the band name at the top from a concert poster.

Ronnie Lane - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1973-1976

I've posted a couple of Ronnie Lane stray tracks albums. Now, I'll start turning my attention to what music he performed for the BBC. He was in the Small Faces, and then the Faces. But his time in the spotlight for his solo career only lasted for a few years due to having multiple sclerosis. (He was diagnosed in 1977, but in retrospect he was showing signs since the early 1970s.) Despite that short time frame, I found enough for four BBC albums. This one consists of studio sessions. The other three are all live concerts.

All but one of the performances here are officially released, and all of those come from the BBC compilation album "You Never Can Tell." The one exception is the song "You Never Can Tell" (ironically enough), which is from an appearance on the BBC TV show The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1975. 

The first four songs are from a 1973 session. The next four are from a 1974 session. The last four are from a 1976 session. (As usual, check the mp3 tags for more details.) Most of the songs are originals either from his solo career or his years with the Faces, plus one song ("All or Nothing") that he did with the Small Faces. "Sweet Virginia" is originally by the Rolling Stones and "You Never Can Tell" is originally by Chuck Berry.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Ooh La La (Ronnie Lane)
02 Flags and Banners (Ronnie Lane)
03 How Come (Ronnie Lane)
04 Careless Love (Ronnie Lane)
05 Anniversary (Ronnie Lane)
06 Sweet Virginia (Ronnie Lane)
07 Lovely (Ronnie Lane)
08 You Never Can Tell (Ronnie Lane)
09 Don't Try and Change My Mind (Ronnie Lane)
10 One for the Road (Ronnie Lane)
11 Steppin' and Reelin' (Ronnie Lane)
12 All or Nothing (Ronnie Lane)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16516504/RONNILNE1973-1976BBSssonsVlum1_atse.zip.html

I don't know anything about the cover photo except that it dates to the year 1974. 

The Bangles - Ritz Theater, New York City, 9-28-1984

I posted an unreleased Bangles concert from 1986 just a couple of days ago. Yet here I am, posting another one, this time from 1984. The reason is that, when it comes to the Bangles, I like their earliest stuff the best. My favorite music of theirs of all is their 1982 E.P. and other songs released before their first album in 1984. The reason is because they were more raw and rocking early on, and gradually got slicker until they broke up in 1989, and I generally don't like slick.

So, after posting the 1986 concert, I got to thinking about listening to another concert by them from an earlier year. The problem was, I'd investigated that previously and decided that the sound quality for all known concert in 1985 or before were a little bit lacking. But then it occurred to me that with the advances in audio editing technology in recent years, maybe something could be done about that.

I picked the best sounding of the early concerts, which is this one. It's the best because it was professionally recorded and broadcast live on the radio. However, there still were issues. The biggest one was that there was a lot of crowd noise, even during the songs. But that's something that can be fixed these days. So I used the audio editing program MVSEP and removed the cheering and hollering during the songs, while keeping it between the songs. But I also lowered in some during the banter, because it was quite high there too. Next, I boosted the volume of the vocals relative to the instruments using the UVR5 audio editing program. So all the songs got adjusted twice.

The end result makes this sound significantly better than ever before, on part with the two 1986 Bangles concerts I've posted. The songs are dominated by songs from the band's 1984 album "All Over the Place," which is my favorite from them (although their 1986 album "Different Light" is a close second). But there are a few cover versions added that didn't make any of their albums at the time: "Where Were You When I Needed You," "I'm Not Talkin'," "Going Home," and "7 and 7 Is." Those especially show how rocking the band could get.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 talk (Bangles)
02 Silent Treatment (Bangles)
03 The Real World (Bangles)
04 talk (Bangles)
05 Restless (Bangles)
06 Mary Street (Bangles)
07 talk (Bangles)
08 Live (Bangles)
09 talk (Bangles)
10 All about You (Bangles)
11 James (Bangles)
12 talk (Bangles)
13 Where Were You When I Needed You (Bangles)
14 talk (Bangles)
15 I'm in Line (Bangles)
16 He's Got a Secret (Bangles)
17 talk (Bangles)
18 Going Down to Liverpool (Bangles)
19 talk (Bangles)
20 Tell Me (Bangles)
21 talk (Bangles)
22 I Want You (Bangles)
23 Hero Takes the Fall (Bangles)
24 I'm Not Talkin' (Bangles)
25 talk (Bangles)
26 Going Home (Bangles)
27 7 and 7 Is (Bangles)
28 Dover Beach (Bangles)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16509110/TBANGLS1984RtzThtrNwYrkCty__9-28-1984_atse.zip.html

 The cover photo is from a Bangles concert at Les Bains Douches, in Paris, France, on February 19, 1985.

10cc - Apollo Theatre, Glasgow, Britain, 2-25-1982

The British band 10cc put out a lot of great albums and singles in the 1970s. But the 1980s weren't so kind to them, as they lost two of their four songwriters in 1976 (Kevin Godley and Lol Creme). But at the time of this concert the other two remained, Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart. Stewart would leave just one year later, in 1983.

So this is a good time for a 10cc concert. True, they already were past their peak of popularity and creativity. But the Gouldman and Stewart version of the band had some big hits after Godley and Creme left, such as "Good Morning Judge," "The Things We Do for Love," and "Dreadlock Holiday." This concert contains those songs, plus all the hits from the earlier years.

The band's commercial fortunes fell fast in the early 1980s as music trends were changing. The album they were promoting on this tour, 1981's "Ten Out of 10," failed to chart in either the U.S. or Britain. However, there are only four songs here from that album, and naturally they are the stronger ones.

This concert is completely unreleased. In fact, there's no official live album from this era (between when Godley and Creme left in 1976 and when Stewart left in 1983). But I picked this one because of the excellent sound quality. 

However, there was one flaw. I found a list of all the songs the band played in this concert, and three were missing. I'm guessing it was broadcast on the radio and those three were cut out. I wanted to hear what the full concert would have been, so I found other live versions with similar sound quality. I had to use a 1980 concert in Mainz, Germany for two of them, "From Rochdale to Ocho Rios" and the sole cover, "Roll Over Beethoven." I used a 1983 concert in Rotterdam, Netherlands, for the other one, "Lying Here with You."

This album is one hour and 32 minutes long.

01 The Power of Love (10cc)
02 The Wall Street Shuffle (10cc)
03 talk (10cc)
04 Don't Ask (10cc)
05 I'm Mandy, Fly Me (10cc)
06 talk (10cc)
07 Good Morning Judge (10cc)
08 talk (10cc)
09 Memories (10cc)
10 The Things We Do for Love (10cc)
11 Art for Art's Sake (10cc)
12 talk (10cc)
13 Lying Here with You (10cc)
14 From Rochdale to Ocho Rios (10cc)
15 Les Nouveaux Riches (10cc)
16 Dreadlock Holiday (10cc)
17 Feel the Benefit (10cc)
18 talk (10cc)
19 I'm Not in Love (10cc)
20 Rubber Bullets (10cc)
21 Silly Love (10cc)
22 Life Is a Minestrone (10cc)
23 Roll Over Beethoven (10cc)

https://www.imagenetz.de/fMVnG

I couldn't find any good photos of the band in concert in 1982, or even 1981 or 1983. So I had to resort to this, from May 1980. It's from an appearance on a German TV show.

Pete Townshend - Who Demos, Volume 8: Who Are You: 1977-1978

It's been so long since I posted an album in this series (it's been almost a year as I write this), that I thought I would try to catch up a bit by posting two albums in a row. So here's another album of Pete Townshend demos of songs that ended up appearing on albums by the Who. In this case, all the songs were for the band's 1978 album "Who Are You."

Five out of the nine songs here have been officially released. Decades later, Townshend released various versions of his 1971 "Lifehouse" project, such as "Lifehouse Chronicles" and "Lifehouse Elements." Most of those come from that (tracks 6 through 9). But the song "Empty Glass" is actually a Townshend demo that ended up as a bonus track on the "Who Are You" album. That song, plus one other here, "Keep on Working," eventually ended up on Townshend's 1980 solo album "Empty Glass."

There's one undisputedly great song on the "Who Are You" album: "Who Are You." There are two versions of that here. The second one is much longer.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Love Is Coming Down (Pete Townshend)
02 Who Are You (Pete Townshend)
03 Empty Glass (Pete Townshend)
04 Guitar and Pen (Pete Townshend)
05 Keep On Working (Pete Townshend)
06 Music Must Change (Pete Townshend)
07 New Song (Pete Townshend)
08 Sister Disco (Pete Townshend)
09 Who Are You [Long Version] (Pete Townshend)

NOTE: The download link has been removed due to copyright issues.

In 1978, a video was created of the Who performing the song "Who Are You" in Shepperton Studios in London. It's really great, you should watch it on YouTube. The cover is a screenshot of Townshend I took from that video.

Pete Townshend - Who Demos, Volume 7: Quadrophenia: 1972-1973

I've posted many albums of Pete Townsend demos, with still more to go. I posted a whole series of albums of his demos for songs that never made it onto albums by his band the Who. I'm still posting another series of albums of his demos for songs that did make it onto Who albums. As I've moved forward chronologically with that series, I've reached around 1973, the year the Who's classic double album "Quadrophenia" was released. 

I've been hesitant to post this album. I usually have a rule not to post something that has been officially released and still in print, when I haven't made any changes to it. But this is an exception. I figure I've been posting a whole series of Townshend's demos for the Who, and it would be odd to have a giant hole where the Quadrophenia sounds would be. In 2011, a super deluxe edition of the album was released, called "The Director's Cut." This is just two discs from that, combined, in the exact same song order.

The songs order generally follows the released 1973 version of the album. However, there are some exceptions, especially songs that didn't make the album, like "We Close Tonight," "You Came Back," "Joker James," "Wizardry (Electronic Wizardry)," and more. The Who eventually would release their versions of some of these in 1979, in conjunction with the release of a movie about the album.

One classic song from the album, "5:15," is not included here. That's because Townshend never made a demo for it. Instead, it was the only song on the album that was created spontaneously while the Who was jamming in the studio.

Note that Volume 5 in this series actually envelops this album chronologically, with demos from 1970 all the way to 1975. That includes some songs from the next Who album, "Who by Numbers," which was released in 1975. Most of the songs here were recorded in 1972 or 1973. Because it was a double album, it took a while for it to come together. Apparently, the "Drowned" demo dates all the way back to 1970, before Townshend even came up for the concept of the album.

This album is an hour and 43 minutes long.

01 The Real Me (Pete Townshend)
02 Quadrophenia - 4 Overtures [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
03 Cut My Hair (Pete Townshend)
04 Fill No. 1 - Get Out and Stay Out (Pete Townshend)
05 Quadrophenic Four Faces (Pete Townshend)
06 We Close Tonight (Pete Townshend)
07 You Came Back (Pete Townshend)
08 Get Inside (Pete Townshend)
09 Joker James (Pete Townshend)
10 The Punk and the Godfather (Pete Townshend)
11 I'm One (Pete Townshend)
12 Dirty Jobs (Pete Townshend)
13 Helpless Dancer (Pete Townshend)
14 Is It in My Head (Pete Townshend)
15 Any More (Pete Townshend)
16 I've Had Enough (Pete Townshend)
17 Fill No. 2 [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
18 Wizardry [Electronic Wizardry] [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
19 Sea and Sand (Pete Townshend)
20 Drowned (Pete Townshend)
21 Is It Me (Pete Townshend)
22 Bell Boy (Pete Townshend)
23 Doctor Jimmy (Pete Townshend)
24 Finale - The Rock [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
25 Love Reign O'er Me (Pete Townshend)

https://www.imagenetz.de/eJEkP

The original cover of the Quadrophenia was basically colorless. But a person named Stuart Gilbert colorized it. I thought that was interesting, so I've used it here as the cover.

Steely Dan - The Bear (1980)

It's not often that I post true "lost" studio albums, but here is one. This Steely Dan is contains completely unreleased material (save for one song), has fantastic sound quality, and is arguably at the same level of musical quality as their other albums. I've been aware of this collection of material for years, but I was waiting for some final pieces to fall into place before posting it here. Now they've fallen. So if you're a Steely Dan fan, this is a must have.

Here's the story behind this music as I understand it. Steely Dan put out a series of acclaimed albums from 1972 to 1977. But when it came time for them to complete their next album, "Gaucho," they ran into some problems that caused delays. 

One issue had to do with their record company planning to charge an extra dollar for the album over the other new studio albums they were selling, something the band members opposed. Another issue was a conflict with the record company over just who had the rights to do certain things. Yet another issue was that the band was down to just a duo by this time, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who were the two main creative forces since the beginning. But the relationship between them was becoming increasingly strained, largely due to Becker's increasing drug use. (A year after the album was released, the band would break up for more than a decade.) To make matters worse, Becker got in a car accident and was immobilized for six months. Furthermore, both of them were musical perfectionists, but they took that to new extremes, sometimes recording dozens of takes for seemingly trivial reasons.

The long and short of all that is that it took from 1977 to 1980 for "Gaucho" to be released, while they had previously released six albums in six years. Before, there had been almost no unused songs. Often, they had resorted to going back to earlier unreleased songs written before their first album (of which there were many) to fill up their albums. But with three years passing for "Gaucho," they had a big surplus this time. And since they had such high levels of consistency and quality, even their outtakes were generally very good. 

None of these songs have been officially released in any form, with one key exception that I was discuss later. But different versions have leaked to the public over the years, with one key leak of a song taking place only last year (2023). However, many of the versions were incomplete, and/or suffered sound quality issues. But also, in recent years, audio editing technology has increased by leaps and bounds, using many of the same aspects of generative AI that has made the news, such as Chat GPT. Using these new tools, fans have created mixes of these songs fixing the sound quality issues. Some musically talented fans have even gone further and added in their own musical instrumentation to fill in missing pieces, especially since some of the songs were never completely finished. 

All the songs here use special mixes done by others, so all I have to do was collect them. For that, I mostly followed the recommendations of a YouTuber named AE Collins. Two of the songs here are "outfakes," which I define to mean they had added music not on the original recordings. Those two are "Kulee Baba" and "Talkin' Bout My Home." Both of them contain vocals from the original recordings, but have music by a very talented person named Michael Caplin. In the case of Kulee Baba, I believe he added in all the instrumentation! But if you listen, you would never know, because it's played in the exact style of Steely Dan. 

The only song here that has been officially released is "FM (No Static at All)." This didn't appear on any Steely Dan album at the time, but it was released both as a single and on the soundtrack to the movie "FM" in 1978. There actually were four different versions released in total, including a long 12 Inch single version. Some versions contain a guitar solo, and other versions contain a saxophone solo. Different fans have combined them to create a maximally long version with both the guitar and saxophone solos. I've used that. So while the song is a well known hit, this is a special edit that is unreleased. As far as I know, it seems to be the only other non-album track from this era. Most versions of the "Gaucho" outtakes albums don't include it, but I think it fits in great.

If there was an alternate universe in which this album really was released, it's hard to say when exactly that would have been. Perhaps it would have come out in 1979, which would make the inclusion of "FM" from 1978 more fitting. Or perhaps it would have come out after "Gaucho," in 1981 or thereabouts. I'm going with 1980, since that's when I figure all the recording for all of these ended. 

By the way, the last song, "Were You Blind That Day," is the only one that isn't a totally unique song that didn't make any of the band's studio albums. Eventually, it was reworked into the song "Third World Man," which made it to the "Gaucho" album. But while the music is basically the same, the lyrics are totally different, so I figured it merited inclusion.

You can find more information about this topic at the Wikipedia entry on the "Gaucho" album. There's a whole section just on the outtakes. Here's the link:

Gaucho (album) - Wikipedia

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 Kulee Baba [Michael Caplin Outfake] (Steely Dan)
02 I Can't Write Home about You [Jive Miguel Mix] (Steely Dan)
03 Kind Spirit [Bleu's Audio Archive Mix] (Steely Dan)
04 Stand by the Seawall [Jive Miguel Mix] [Instrumental] (Steely Dan)
05 F.M. [No Static at All] [Extended Mix] (Steely Dan)
06 The Bear [Jive Miguel Mix 2] (Steely Dan)
07 Talkin' Bout My Home [Michael Caplin Outfake] (Steely Dan)
08 The Second Arrangement [Andreas Mixes Mix] (Steely Dan)
09 Were You Blind That Day [Early Version of Third World Man] (Steely Dan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16509254/STELYDN1980ThBer_atse.zip.html

Different people have come up with different names for this album of outtakes, such as "Gaucho II." "The Bear" seems to be a particularly popular name, after one of the songs. I did a Google search for "Steely Dan" and "The Bear," and found the image I used for the cover included in a YouTube video. I couldn't figure out who made it or what it's from, but I think it's a great fit. My only change is that I cropped it differently.

David Byrne - True Creatures Demos (1984)

In 1985, the Talking Heads put out the studio album "Little Creatures," which turned out to be their best seller. In 1986, they put out the album "True Stories," which was linked to a movie of the same name largely created by the band's main singer-songwriter, David Byrne. It turns out Byrne wrote most of the songs for both albums by 1984, and recorded demos of them. This is the entirely unreleased album of those demos. 

These demos have long been nicknamed the "True Creatures" (or "True Creature") demos, combining the titles of the "Little Creatures" and "True Stories" album. But that was almost certainly just an idea of some clever bootlegger, and not what they were actually called. They just as easily could be known as the "Little Stories" demos, I suppose. But I'm sticking with the name.

This album is also widely credited to the Talking Heads. But I'm changing that, because it's obvious to my ears that the only person on them is Byrne. Mind you, these aren't simply solo acoustic versions. He had incorporated drum machines into his songwriting since early in his music career, and there are drum machines all over this. Plus, he fleshed it out with backing vocals and other instruments. But still, it sounds like it's all him. For instance, the backing vocals sound like his voice as well.

These aren't radically different versions from the final ones. But still, it's interesting to hear how these songs originated. Plus, the sound quality is excellent. I'd had this in my music collection for many years. But I was inspired to finally post them after I saw a new version recently (April 2024) shared by someone named Mr. Sifter. This person used the recently developed AI tools of programs like Izotope to clean up the recordings. So even if you've had this already, this version sounds better than ever before. 

There are nine songs on "Little Creatures" and nine more on "True Stories." This has 12 songs. So it has a majority of songs from those albums, but definitely not all of them. I presume some were composed later.

This album is 54 minutes long. 

By the way, fun fact: the band Radiohead got their name from one of the songs here, "Radio Head."

01 Wild Wild Life (David Byrne)
02 Puzzlin' Evidence (David Byrne)
03 Love for Sale (David Byrne)
04 The Lady Don't Mind (David Byrne)
05 Hey Now (David Byrne)
06 Road to Nowhere (David Byrne)
07 Hey [Instrumental] (David Byrne)
08 Papa Legba (David Byrne)
09 People like Us (David Byrne)
10 City of Dreams (David Byrne)
11 Radio Head (David Byrne)
12 Give Me Back My Name (David Byrne)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16519362/DAVDBRYN1984TruCreturDmos_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is actually two images combined. I started with a photo of David Byrne, taken at a New York City party in 1986. The background was bland, so I came up with the idea of putting part of the cover to the "Little Creatures" album behind him.

Mark Knopfler - What Have I Got to Do - Non-Album Tracks (1990-1996)

I've posted some BBC albums from Mark Knopfler's solo career. Now I want to post a few stray tracks albums. This is the first one.

Knopfler's band Dire Straits kind of ended in 1986, after a long world tour supporting the massively successful "Brothers in Arms" album. He seemed exhausted by the stardom and basically took a few years off from music. Then in 1990, he revived the band, and put out a final studio album, "On Every Street," in 1991. Then, after another massive world tour, he retired the band again, this time for good. He later said, "I put the thing to bed because I wanted to get back to some kind of reality. It's self-protection, a survival thing. That kind of scale is dehumanizing."

Knopfler clearly didn't have the personality for that level of stardom, because he again took off a couple of years to recover before putting out his first solo album, "Golden Heart," in 1996.

But that's not the whole story of that time period, because he had some other music projects going on as well. The most important one was a role in another band, the Notting Hillbillies. That resulted in a 1990 album, "Missing... Presumed Having a Good Time." 

He also played a lot of concerts with guitarist Eric Clapton, and had a major role for a studio album by guitarist Chet Atkins. The first song here is a song he did with Clapton for the big 1990 Knebworth Festival. Technically, one could call this a Dire Straits performance, since there were other Dire Straits band members with him on stage at the time, even though they weren't officially reunited yet. But the original song was never officially released by Dire Straits or anyone else. The next four songs are from the 1990 album "Neck and Neck," which was billed as a Knopfler and Chet Atkins album. Knopfler produced it and played guitar all over it, but I've only included the four songs where Knopfler sang with Atkins as well. All the songs were covers, except "The Next Time I'm in Town," which was written by Knopfler.

After this, there's a big time jump to 1995, while Knopfler recovered and prepared for a proper solo career. He next emerged with an appearance on a 1995 album by the Chieftans, which is track 7, "The Lily of the West." Track 6, "No Wonder He's Confused," is an unreleased studio track, no doubt a song that he considered putting on his 1996 solo album "Golden Heart." Tracks 8 and 9 are B-sides from singles released from that album. The last song, "Blues Stay Away from Me" comes from an appearance on a 1996 album by guitarist Steve Phillips, who was one of his bandmates with the Notting Hillbillies.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Think I Love You Too Much (Mark Knopfler & Eric Clapton)
02 Poor Boy Blues (Mark Knopfler & Chet Atkins)
03 Just One Time (Mark Knopfler & Chet Atkins)
04 There'll Be Some Changes Made (Mark Knopfler & Chet Atkins)
05 The Next Time I'm in Town (Mark Knopfler & Chet Atkins)
06 No Wonder He's Confused (Mark Knopfler)
07 The Lily of the West (Chieftains with Mark Knopfler)
08 My Claim to Fame (Mark Knopfler)
09 What Have I Got to Do (Mark Knopfler)
10 Blues Stay Away from Me (Steve Phillips & Mark Knopfler)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16505919/MARKKNPFLR1990-1996WhtHveIGttDo_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a promo photo from 1995.

The Bangles - Catch a Rising Star, New York City, 10-22-1986

I really like the Bangles. I still think it's strange that they never released an official live album. I tried to fill that gap by posting a 1986 concert bootleg, which you can find here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-bangles-loft-berlin-germany-2-10.html

I thought that was the best live recording of the band from their 1980s heyday, but now I think this one is. This bootleg had a big flaw in that the vocals were low in the mix. But nowadays, we have the technology to fix that, and I did. I used the UVR5 audio editing program on all the songs.

Both shows are very good, and if you're a fan, you'll want both. There are some song selection differences. For instance, that one includes the cover "I'm Not Talking" and the great early track "I Want You," while this one includes the cover "Pushin' Too Hard" and the non-album track "I Got Nothing." That one had some holes I had to fill in with bits from another 1986 concert, whereas this one is complete. This one is also somewhat longer.

The reason this one sounds so good is because it was broadcast live on the radio. In the banter between songs, they kept referring to the concert as a "soundcheck." I'm guessing what they mean is it was a relatively short concert for the radio, and they played a longer concert later in the evening in the same city. Also, one nice thing about it is they played at a small club (with the unusual name "Catch a Rising Star"), despite the fact that they already had two huge hits earlier in the year with "Manic Monday" and "Walk like an Egyptian." I'm guessing that was done specially to help with the sound quality for the radio broadcast.

Note that there are conflicting dates about when this concert took place, with May and August being cited. But I looked into it and I'm convinced this is the correct date.

This album is an hour and eight minutes long.

01 talk (Bangles)
02 Intro (Bangles)
03 Let It Go (Bangles)
04 talk (Bangles)
05 Restless (Bangles)
06 talk (Bangles)
07 Live (Bangles)
08 Walking Down Your Street (Bangles)
09 James (Bangles)
10 I Got Nothing (Bangles)
11 talk (Bangles)
12 He's Got the Secret (Bangles)
13 talk (Bangles)
14 September Gurls (Bangles)
15 If She Knew What She Wants (Bangles)
16 talk (Bangles)
17 Return Post (Bangles)
18 In a Different Light (Bangles)
19 Going Down to Liverpool (Bangles)
20 Angel Don't Fall in Love (Bangles)
21 Hero Takes a Fall (Bangles)
22 talk (Bangles)
23 Manic Monday (Bangles)
24 talk (Bangles)
25 Walk like an Egyptian (Bangles)
26 talk (Bangles)
27 Dover Beach (Bangles)
28 Pushin' Too Hard (Bangles)
29 talk (Bangles)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16505975/TBANGLS1986cCtchaRsingStrNwYrkC__10-22-1986_atse.zip.html

I had a surprisingly difficult time finding a good color photo of the band in concert in 1986. I do like this one and it is in color, but I'm not sure when or where it's from exactly. But I'd guess that it's from 1986 or thereabouts.