James Taylor - VH-1 Storytellers, VH-1 Storytellers Studio, New York City, 5-31-1997

Next up for "VH-1 Storytellers" is an episode featuring singer-songwriter James Taylor.

This one is twice as long as a typical episode of this TV show. I don't know if that's because it was broken into two episodes or if it's a bootleg that contained the full concert. But either way, we get lots of music.

In 1997, Taylor released the studio album "Hourglass," his first studio album in six years. It was seen as a comeback for him, both commercially and critically. It was his first Top Ten album in the U.S. in 16 years, selling over a million copies. It also won him a Grammy Award for Best Pop Album.

He performed six songs from his new album: "Line 'Em Up," "Hangnail," "Jump Up Behind Me," "Enough to Be on Your Way," "Little More Time with You," and "Another Day." His other songs were generally classics from older albums. On some songs he played solo acoustic, while on others he was backed by a small band.

Note that one song from this performance was officially released: "Mexico." It appeared on a various artists collection of Storytellers highlights.

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long.

01 talk (James Taylor)
02 Carolina in My Mind (James Taylor)
03 talk (James Taylor)
04 Sweet Baby James (James Taylor)
05 talk (James Taylor)
06 Jump Up Behind Me (James Taylor)
07 talk (James Taylor)
08 Mexico (James Taylor)
09 talk (James Taylor)
10 Mona (James Taylor)
11 talk (James Taylor)
12 Enough to Be on Your Way (James Taylor)
13 talk (James Taylor)
14 Little More Time with You (James Taylor)
15 talk (James Taylor)
16 Steamroller (James Taylor)
17 Copperline (James Taylor)
18 talk (James Taylor)
19 The Frozen Man (James Taylor)
20 talk (James Taylor)
21 Riding on the Railroad (James Taylor)
22 talk (James Taylor)
23 Hangnail (James Taylor)
24 talk (James Taylor)
25 Fire and Rain (James Taylor)
26 talk (James Taylor)
27 Another Day (James Taylor)
28 talk (James Taylor)
29 Line 'Em Up (James Taylor)
30 talk (James Taylor)
31 Valentine's Day (James Taylor)
32 talk (James Taylor)
33 Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon (James Taylor)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17187506/JAMSTYLR1997StrytllrsStrytllrsStdoNwYrkC__5-31-1997_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/h5zNseeB

The cover is a screenshot from this exact concert. It was rather low-res, so I used the Krea AI program to sharpen it up.

More Picture Fixes with AI

I made a post a few days ago about how I've been making upgrades to some of the album covers thanks to a new computer program I've discovered called Krea AI. Since then, I've been using it some more to revamp some old album covers that I considered subpar. I was asked to put the results in a zip file so one can easily grab them all, so here they are. You can also download the individual albums and you'll get the improved covers there too.

This zip file contains 78 revised covers. Hopefully other zip files will follow as I fix more. These mostly contain covers from the recent "VH-1 Storytellers" albums I've been making, since many of the covers were low-res screenshots, and covers from the Covered series of singer-songwriters that I've made in the past. There were a lot of dodgy covers there, owing to the fact I highlighted many songwriters who very rarely were photographed well, especially songwriter duos pictured together. I'm much happier with the results now.

The Krea AI program isn't perfect by any means, but overall, I'm really impressed with the results. And I've learned a little trick, which is that I overlay the new version over the old version in Photoshop, and for any area where the new version doesn't look good, I partially or totally erase it, allowing the older version to dominate. This is especially helpful around the eyes. They say the eyes are the "windows to the soul." If the eyes are just a little bit different it doesn't look like the right person, so I often resort to using the "old" eyes while updating most everything else.

To show how much things can change, compare the original black and white version of a Chris Hillman album cover I found with the final version, after I colorized it, modified it, and ran it through Krea AI. I think the difference is pretty remarkable.

Here's the zip file. You'll have to figure out which ones go with which albums. But that shouldn't be hard since the album and artist names are always mentioned on the covers.

https://www.upload.ee/files/17187431/PictureFixeswithAIVolume01.zip.html 

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/a1AmMz3e

If anyone has specific covers they'd like to see upgraded, please let me know. Thanks.

By the way, also note that whenever I update a link now for whatever reason, I try to add in a Pixeldrain link as well.