The Beatles - The Beatles Uncovered, Volume 14: Mike's Mixes (1964-2007) (A MIKE SOLOF GUEST POST)

I didn't know if I would have time to post this before leaving for my vacation, but I managed to get the packing done in time. So here's another guest post by Mike Solof, another one of his great Beatles remix albums.

The last volume in this series was a bit weird, kind of Mike's B-team choices to go with unlucky Volume 13. But for this volume, he's back to his usual. 

And speaking of usual, Mike has included a PDF with detailed notes on all the songs and their edits, as he usually does. So please give that a read for more information on this album. 

This album is 59 minutes long. 

01 I'm Losing You [Mike's Mix 2025] (John Lennon with Cheap Trick)
02 And I Love Her [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
03 Sour Milk Sea [Mashup Version] [Mike's Mix 2025] (George Harrison, the Beatles & Eric Clapton)
04 Here Comes the Sun [Mike's Mix 2025, Version 2] (Beatles)
05 You've Really Got a Hold on Me [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
06 What You're Doing [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
07 Got to Get You into My Life [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
08 Rain [Take 5, Actual Speed] [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
09 This Song Is about You [Mike's Mix 2025] (Ringo Starr & the Roundheads)
10 I Should Have Known Better [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
11 Any Time at All [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
12 It s All Too Much [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
13 Yellow Submarine [Mostly Song Writing Demo] [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
14 I'm Only Sleeping [Edit of Takes 1 & 2] [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
15 I Want You [She's So Heavy] [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
16 Love You To [Take 7, Rehearsal and Commercial Version] [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
17 Band on the Run [One Hand Clapping Version] [Mike's Mix 2025] (Paul McCartney & Wings) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fKuWH4uz

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/5KP7ajM4CZ69ThF/file

The cover photo is something Mike found on the Internet, another AI-generated "what if" picture of John and Paul. 

Another Vacation

It being summer and all, I'm off for another vacation. This time, I have the good fortune of spending the next two and a half weeks in French Polynesia. There will be no posting while I'm gone. I've heard that the Internet is spotty over there. However, I may be able to check in and respond to comments here from time to time, or at least read them. But I look forward to making up for lost time when I get back.

Until then, take care. 

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 9-1-1969, Part 10: Sly & the Family Stone

Finally, we come to the tenth and last album from the third and last day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. The closing act was Sly and the Family Stone.

Like fellow festival stars Janis Joplin and Johnny Winter, Sly Stone was born in Texas. In fact, he was born quite close to the festival, on the outskirts of Dallas, just as the festival was on the outskirts of the city. However, the media didn't notice this. That's probably because he moved with his family to the San Francisco Bay area by the time he was a teenager. 

In 1969,  Sly and the Family Stone hit it big, with multiple hits that year. Even as the festival was going on, one of their songs, "Hot Fun in the Summertime," was Number Two in the U.S. charts. That was fitting, since the festival took place at the tail end of summer, and it was very hot for all three days.

Sly Stone was notorious for going on stage late, if he managed to make it at all, often due to heavy drug use. That was a problem with this festival too. The band's set started well after midnight, and over an hour after the previous musical act left the stage. But once the band started playing music, they put on an excellent performance. The next day, the Dallas Morning News reported that "because of the later hour, they could not perform nearly as long as the audience wanted them to." However, "Although the crowd was long on its feet, the mood continued to soar," with the song "Higher" being a highlight, as it usually was. 

Note also that the band the Nazz performed at the festival, and a little bit of their music has survived. However, I haven't included it for a couple of reasons. For one, the bootleg of it is an audience boot, and it sounds worse than the other audience boot sections of the festival. But also, the main singer and songwriter in the band was Todd Rundgren, and he'd left the band by the time this festival happened. But if you want to hear what they did, you can find 18 minutes of their set on YouTube. 

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 M'Lady [Edit] (Sly & the Family Stone)
02 Sing a Simple Song [Edit] (Sly & the Family Stone)
03 You Can Make It If You Try [Edit] (Sly & the Family Stone)
04 Stand - Love City (Sly & the Family Stone)
05 talk (Sly & the Family Stone)
06 Everyday People [Edit] (Sly & the Family Stone)
07 Dance to the Music - Music Lover [Edit] (Sly & the Family Stone)
08 Higher - I Wanna Take You Higher [Edit] (Sly & the Family Stone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/E4b5oEgb

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/qiYBztR8McLSotF/file 

The cover photo of Sly Stone is from this exact concert.

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 9-1-1969, Part 9: Johnny Winter

Here's the ninth out of ten albums for the third day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. It features blues guitarist Johnny Winter.

Johnny Winter's music career began back around 1960, when he released his first single. But he became a star in 1969, when he was signed to a major record label and released two albums that went into the charts. He also performed at the Woodstock festival prior to this festival.

However, he was not happy to perform at this festival. Like Janis Joplin, who also performed at the festival, he was born and raised in Texas. But he wasn't keen on going back. He later was quoted in a book, "Neither me nor Janis Joplin wanted to go back to Texas, man. That place was a thing of our past." There was some hoopla in the media about the festival being a "homecoming" for him and Joplin, but he called that "a bunch of crap the promoters rigged up." Furthermore, he didn't like the heavy drug use in the audience, saying that by the time he went on stage, it "seemed like everyone was blown away on acid." He personally vowed to stay clear of any drugs. But some time before going onstage, a pretty young woman run up to him and gave him a deep kiss, slipping some tabs of acid down his throat. He was not pleased by this, to say the least. "I was blown away for two days. I didn't even know my name. People like that girl thought she was doin' me a favor."

Despite all that, he played an excellent set. Even he personally declared the music of festival "unbelievable." The next day, a review in the Dallas Morning News commented, "Although its his voice that he is primarily noted for, he is a guitarist par excellence."

This recording came from a soundboard source, I think. However, there were issues. Three of the songs had missing parts. Since that includes the end of the last one, it's possible there was more music after that. I found other live recordings he did from 1969, and used them to fill in the missing sections. That's why those three songs have "[Edit]" in their names. Also, the lead vocals were low in the mix, so I boosted them using the MVSEP program. That makes me wonder if it might be an audience bootleg instead. But either way, the sound quality is pretty good, but not great.

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 talk (Johnny Winter)
02 Mean Town Blues (Johnny Winter)
03 Black Cat Bone (Johnny Winter)
04 Mean Mistreater (Johnny Winter)
05 Mama, Talk to Your Daughter [Edit] (Johnny Winter)
06 talk (Johnny Winter)
07 Leland Mississippi Blues (Johnny Winter)
08 talk (Johnny Winter)
09 I'm Not Sure (Johnny Winter)
10 You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now [Edit] (Johnny Winter)
11 Johnny B. Goode [Edit] (Johnny Winter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rt6Lnk4E

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ae1dKPM4dkOB2ni/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

The Carpenters - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, New London Theatre, London, Britain, 11-28-1976

Back in 2022, I posted an album of the Carpenters performing for the BBC in concert in 1971. I thought that was all they did for the BBC (being an American band and all). However, I have found a second BBC concert, from 1976. Here it is.

Note that, since I found this one, I naturally wanted to change the name of the first one to "Volume 1." You can find the renamed version here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-carpenters-with-tony-joe-white-bbc.html

The Carpenters had a great run of singles in the early and mid-1970s. But in the late 1970s, things took a darker turn due to self-inflicted health problems, with eating disorder issues for Karen Carpenter and drug problems for Richard Carpenter. Those problems didn't improve, and Karen died in 1983. So I'd say 1976 was near the end of their peak era. Thus, this was a good time for a BBC concert, as it allowed them to include nearly all of their most popular songs.

I normally try not to do this, but I deliberately took out of a couple of songs. One of them was a kind of comedy thing by Richard Carpenter, which apparently was a sort of homage to comedic musician Spike Jones. I found it pretty unlistenable, so it got the axe. Another was a long classical number by Richard, which was okay, but I thought it really bogged down the momentum of the concert. So that got the axe too. Sorry, but sometimes less is more. Plus, when I listen to the Carpenters, I want to hear Karen Carpenter singing, since she had one of the most interesting vocals in pop music history. If you want the whole thing, you can find the video of this on YouTube. If you watch that, you'll see the drum solo at the end of "Strike Up the Band" was performed by Karen. Her vocals were so exceptional that people tended to forget she was the drummer in the band as well, and a very good one at that. 

This album remains unreleased. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, many of the band's hits were performed in medley format. And curiously, one of their biggest original hits, "Yesterday Once More," wasn't sung at all. (There was an instrumental version performed at the end during the display of the credits in the video that I also cut out, because it was very short and then faded out.)

This album is 36 minutes long.

01 Only Yesterday [Instrumental Version] (Carpenters)
02 There's a Kind of Hush (Carpenters)
03 I Need to Be in Love (Carpenters)
04 talk (Carpenters)
05 Strike Up the Band - Drums (Carpenters)
06 talk (Carpenters)
07 From This Moment On (Carpenters)
08 talk (Carpenters)
09 [They Long to Be] Close to You - For All We Know - Top of the World - Ticket to Ride (Carpenters)
10 I Won't Last a Day without You - Hurting Each Other (Carpenters)
11 Superstar [Groupie] (Carpenters)
12 Rainy Days and Mondays (Carpenters)
13 Goodbye to Love (Carpenters)
14 We've Only Just Begun (Carpenters) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mWPPHu8D

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/2DhViTT5GGIPOvv/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from a video of this concert. As with many such videos, the image quality was low-res. So I used the Krea AI program to improve the quality. 

Don McLean - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 10-15-1973

Here's another album of singer-songwriter Don McLean performing for the BBC. This time, it's another acoustic concert, just like "Volume 2" was.

If you look at the BBC website, there's a page for this concert that shows a 45 minute concert. This is not that. Unfortunately, that link is dead and probably has been for years. However, I was able to cobble together enough for an album from other sources. No doubt there's a lot of overlap with that BBC broadcast, but it's possible some songs here are from the part of a longer concert that didn't make the 45 minute broadcast version.

Beware, because the sound quality varies a lot, due to different sourcing. The best sounding songs are tracks 6, 7, and 8. These are the only officially released ones, from the archival collection "Favorites and Rarities." Of the rest, a couple of the songs came from YouTube. Those have the poorest quality. But most of the rest came from a Don McLean super fan, who sent me some mp3 files downloaded off McLean's official website years ago. They have since been taken down, so that was a really fortunate save.

The same month this concert took place, McLean released the studio album "Playin' Favorites." Up until that point, his albums consisted of original songs, but this album was entirely made up of cover versions. One of them is included here, "Mountains O' Mourne." But he also played a couple of covers he didn't put on album at the time, "And Her Mother Came Too" and "Yonkers Girl."

Hopefully someday the BBC will rebroadcast this show, as they sometimes do and/or someone else will step forward who recorded it. In the meantime, this version will have to suffice. I have no idea about the song order, since this came from different sources and I couldn't find a definitive set list. So I just made up an order. 

This album is 37 minutes long. 

01 Winterwood (Don McLean)
02 Great Big Man (Don McLean)
03 Respectable (Don McLean)
04 Over the Waterfall - Babylon (Don McLean)
05 talk (Don McLean)
06 Mountains O' Mourne (Don McLean)
07 And Her Mother Came Too (Don McLean)
08 Yonkers Girl (Don McLean)
09 American Pie (Don McLean)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cVPzm19P

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/atmgXGg9uwYdHdU/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Elkie Brooks - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1977-1987

Here's a third volume (out of four) of British singer Elkie Brooks performing for the BBC. In this case, every song comes from appearances on BBC TV shows.

The first album in this series consisted of BBC studio sessions. It ended in 1977, which was the year Brooks had her first big hits. The second one was a full concert from 1977. In Volume 1, I only had two of her hits, "Pearl's a Singer" and "Lilac Wine." But from 1977 until 1987, she had lots of hits in Britain (while she never had any hits in the U.S.). So I tried to put this collection together to deal with that period. 

Everything here is unreleased. I often had to dig deep to find the material. For instance, I found she did some appearances on the BBC TV show "The Two Ronnies" in 1980, but none of them were on YouTube. So I downloaded all the episodes of that show that year from SoulseekQT and went through them, found the songs she did, and turned them into mp3s. Those are tracks 4, 5, and 6.

As for the other tracks, the first three plus tracks 9 and 13 are from the "Top of the Pops" BBC TV show (not to be confused with the BBC radio show of the same name). I rarely use that as a source for my BBC projects, because the vast majority of performers on it lip-synced when on the show. However, Brooks usually did not. In ease case, I carefully compared those versions with the album versions to make sure. They're from 1977, 1978, 1979, 1982, and 1987 respectively.

Tracks 7 and 8 are from the TV show "Parkinson" in 1982. Tracks 10 and 11 are from a 1983 TV show hosted by singer Leo Sayer. Track 12 is from a TV show called "Wogan" in 1987. Generally speaking, I used the MVSEP program to get rid of crowd noise on the songs where there was crowd noise.

I searched for more BBC TV appearances after 1987, but I couldn't find any good ones until way later, and those were mostly repeats of earlier hits. That makes sense, because she didn't have any significant appearances after that year. Between this volume and "Volume 1" in this series, you'd have a pretty good "greatest hits" collection for her entire career, with only a couple of key songs missing.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Sunshine After the Rain (Elkie Brooks)
02 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Elkie Brooks)
03 The Runaway (Elkie Brooks)
04 Don't Cry Out Loud (Elkie Brooks)
05 Paint Your Pretty Picture (Elkie Brooks)
06 Dance Away (Elkie Brooks)
07 Fool [If You Think It's Over] (Elkie Brooks)
08 Superstar [Groupie] (Elkie Brooks)
09 Nights in White Satin (Elkie Brooks)
10 Gasoline Alley (Elkie Brooks)
11 Giving You Hope (Elkie Brooks)
12 We've Got Tonite (Elkie Brooks)
13 No More the Fool (Elkie Brooks) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/me7Fh3Yn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/V2ubR7qCxIoT7jV/file

The cover photo was taken circa 1980. I don't know more details.

Steve Winwood - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 8-27-2004

Here's another episode from that great TV show, "PBS Soundstage." This time, it stars Steve Winwood.

In 2003, Winwood released the studio album "About Time." Despite this concert taking place about a year after the release, he was still touring to support that album. So four of the songs performed come from that album: "Different Light," "Bully," "Walking On," and "Why Can't We Live Together." None of the songs from that album were a hit, so it's possible you might not know them. However, "Why Can't We Live Together" is a cover of a soul hit in the 1970s by Timmy Thomas. 

Otherwise, he played some songs from his time with Blind Faith and Traffic in the 1960s and 70s, plus only one of his big solo hits from the 1980s ("Back in the High Life Again").

Typical episodes of this show were an hour long. However, this episode is close to an hour and a half long. That's because a DVD was released from it later, and the audio here comes from the DVD. Thus, the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and 22 minutes long.

01 Can't Find My Way Home (Steve Winwood)
02 Different Light (Steve Winwood)
03 Empty Pages (Steve Winwood)
04 Bully (Steve Winwood)
05 Glad [Instrumental] (Steve Winwood)
06 Freedom Rider (Steve Winwood)
07 Back in the High Life Again (Steve Winwood)
08 Dear Mr. Fantasy (Steve Winwood)
09 Walking On (Steve Winwood)
10 talk (Steve Winwood)
11 Rainmaker (Steve Winwood)
12 Why Can't We Live Together (Steve Winwood)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KwycBTh7

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/vYZ9ZUPiWQpc7m9/file

The cover is from this exact concert. I took a screenshot from a video. Then I used the Krea AI program to improve the image quality a bit.

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 9-1-1969, Part 8: Sweetwater

Here's another album from the third day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. It's the eighth set from that day, with two more to go. This one is a set by the band Sweetwater.

Sweetwater was a talented band with a lot of potential. They put out their debut album in 1968, simply called "Sweetwater." Their big break came when they performed at the Woodstock festival in August 1969. I've posted their performance there. Here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/12/sweetwater-woodstock-festival-max.html

Unfortunately, a couple of months after this concert, the band's lead singer, Nancy Nevins, was in a car crash. She was in a coma for ten days. She survived, but just barely. Her vocal chords were damaged, and her voice never fully recovered. That pretty much killed off the band's momentum. You can read more about it in the write-up I did for their Woodstock set.

Live recordings from this band are extremely rare. As far as I can tell, there's just this and the Woodstock one. Unfortunately, this one is quite short. But on the positive side, at least it's from a soundboard source. The last song was cut off, so I used a bit from the Woodstock performance to finish it off. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title.

I found a little bit about what happened during this set. The band delighted the crowd by throwing Frisbees and candy bars into the audience. Performing after dark, they asked the crowd to light matches or lighters and hold them up, which also had happened at Woodstock. Soon, the whole crowd was aglow.

On a different note, since I don't have a lot to say about this set, I want to mention something that happened at some point during this last day of the festival. 

The festival was so relatively problem-free that near the end of this day, both the Lewisville mayor and the police chief, Ralph Adams, went onstage and congratulated the audience on its good behavior. Adams gave a short speech which included this quote: "You are really teaching the older people here a lesson. Today, I can tell you that we have not made one arrest of anyone attending this festival simply because none of you has given us any reason to. Instead, our only trouble has come from the sightseers outside the festival grounds. People have asked me how I can manage to keep the peace at an event like this. I have told them the same thing that I told our police force - these people are human beings too and all you have to do is treat them that way." He even held up a peace sign, and added, "You are welcome back here anytime you want to. The town is yours."

After a standing ovation, one of the festival organizers took the microphone, and said, "There are a few bad cops in Dallas, like there are in every city. And some places like Chicago have pigs. But the Dallas police here are peace officers."

Given the culture clash between the festival crowd, largely made up of hippies, and the conservative opposition from rural Texas, it's nice to see that some people were able to rise above those differences. 

This album is 18 minutes long. 

01 What's Wrong (Sweetwater)
02 talk (Sweetwater)
03 Why Oh Why [Edit] (Sweetwater)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/yaQr3JM8

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/n3f2l624OaR6z9y/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Nancy Nevins, the band's lead singer. For once for this festival, the original photo was actually in color. However, it was very blurry and low-res. I used the Krea AI program several times to sharpen it up and add detail. 

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 9-1-1969, Part 7: Spirit

Here's another album from the third day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. This is a set by the band Spirit.

It so happens that there are very few live recordings of Spirit in their late 1960s prime, considering how popular they were at the time. This is one of three with excellent sound quality. I've already posted the other two on this blog (Boston Tea Party in 1969 and Fillmore West in 1970). Actually, I had posted this one already as well. But I deleted it months ago, knowing that I would repost it with different artwork and such as part of this festival. So here it finally is again.

Happily, this bootleg comes from a soundboard source. I made some edits to improve the sound. The biggest was boosting the lead vocals relative to the instruments. I think this now sounds better than the version I posted before.

In late 1968, the band released "I've Got a Line on You" as a single. It was their biggest hit, reaching Number 25 on the U.S. singles chart. So it's not surprising that was performed here, near the end of their set. In August 1969, the band released their third studio album, "Clear." Five of the songs here come from that album.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Trancas Fog-Out [Instrumental] (Spirit)
02 I'm Truckin' (Spirit)
03 Fresh Garbage (Spirit)
04 Poor Richard (Spirit)
05 Caught [Instrumental] (Spirit)
06 Ground Hog (Spirit)
07 Policeman's Ball (Spirit)
08 Drum Solo - Mechanical World (Spirit)
09 I've Got a Line on You (Spirit)
10 Aren't You Glad (Spirit)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1BAgCe8K

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ARVP7R4JKBw3StY/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Jay Ferguson, one of the band's two lead vocalists. I could only find two photos of the band from this concert. The other one showed band members Mark Andes on bass and John Locke on keyboards. Both photos were in black and white. I chose this one mainly because it was a lot easier to colorize (which I did using the Kolorize program).

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 9-1-1969, Part 6: Freddie King

I'm back with more from the third day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. Here's a set by blues legend Freddie King.

Freddie King was a key blues singer and guitarist, starting in the 1950s. However, he died young, in 1976, at the age of 42 years old, from a combination of stomach ulcers and acute pancreatitis. Due to his untimely death, there aren't that many concert bootlegs from him (though there are a good number of official live albums).

Most of the surviving recordings from this festival are soundboard bootlegs, but in this case, it's an audience bootleg. It's one that was only made public in the early 2020s, and it hasn't been widely shared until now. The sound quality is pretty good for an audience boot. I tried to help by doing my usual tricks, using MVSEP to reduce the crowd noise during the songs, and using UVR5 to boost the lead vocals relative to the instruments. (I don't know why so many boots have the lead vocals low in the mix, but it's a surprisingly common problem.) 

King was known for his lead guitar playing as much or more as his vocals. So three of the six songs here are instrumentals, including "Hideaway," which became a surprise pop hit in 1960.

Since this album is relatively short compared to others from the festival, I think the odds are good that there's more that didn't get recorded. The odds of that are greater because there were chunks missing from the last two songs, suggesting the taper stopped at least once. I used other live recordings from 1969 to fill in missing bits there, which is why those two have "[Edit]" in their titles. At least we do get a DJ announcing the end of the set at the end of the last song, though there could have been an encore after that. 

Many acts at the festival performed on more than one day, but this was King's only performance in the festival. 

This album is 32 minutes long.

01 San Ho Zay [Instrumental] (Freddie King)
02 I'm Tore Down (Freddie King)
03 You Got to Love Her with a Feeling (Freddie King)
04 Hideaway [Instrumental] (Freddie King)
05 Play It Cool [Edit] (Freddie King)
06 Sen Say Shun [Instrumental] [Edit] (Freddie King)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1sHzrYcH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/WM7UyxpTCTi8vlU/file

The cover is from this exact concert. It's kind of amazing to me how often I was able to find one, but just one, photo of each musical act from this festival. This is another case of that. The original of this photo was in black and white, but I used the program Kolorize to colorize it. 

The Police - Unsynced- An Alternate Version of Synchronicity (1983) (A MIKE SOLOF GUEST POST)

Here's an alternate version of the blockbuster 1983 album by the Police, "Syncronicity." This was one of the best selling albums of the era. It also wound up fairly high on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the top 500 albums of all time.

Guest poster Mike Solof recently got himself the 6 CD super deluxe edition of the album, which was released in 2024. It has some less interesting stuff on it, as well as a full concert from that time period. Mike boiled down the best studio outtakes to one album, which he presents here. Please read his PDF included in the download zip for more information, plus lots of photos.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long.

01 Synchronicity I [Demo] (Police)
02 Walking in Your Footsteps [Alternate Version] (Police)
03 O My God [Demo] (Police)
04 Mother [Alternate Version] (Police)
05 Miss Gradenko [Alternate Mix] (Police)
06 King of Pain [Demo] (Police)
06 Synchronicity II [Demo] (Police)
07 Every Breath You Take [Demo] (Police)
09 Wrapped Around Your Finger [Demo] (Police)
10 Tea in the Sahara [Alternate Mix] (Police)
11 Murder by Numbers [Demo] (Police)
12 I'm Blind [Demo] (Police)
13 Three Steps to Heaven (Police)
14 Truth Hits Everybody [Remix Outtake] (Police)
15 I Burn for You (Police)
16 Every Bomb You Make (Police)
17 King of Pain [Alternate Version] (Police)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iEKQLPpA

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/BkbDYtOOdXlH9tk/file

The cover image was found by Mike. It's from some photo shoot the Police did around the time of the release of the Syncronicity album. A couple of the photos made it onto the artwork for singles related to the album.

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 9-1-1969, Part 5: Ten Years After

The fifth album from the third day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival is a set by the British blues band Ten Years After.

Like the two musical acts I just posted from this festival, Ten Years After was a band on the rise at this time in 1969. They were formed in 1967, and put out their first album that year, which didn't make the charts anywhere. They put out their second album in early 1969. It made the Top Ten in Britain, but didn't dent the U.S. charts at all. Then, in August 1969, they performed a well-received set at the Woodstock festival. That was a big breakthrough for them in the U.S., especially once the Woodstock movie and album were released. 

However, at this point, I imagine they still were largely unknown by the audience at this festival, though some may have heard of the buzz from the Woodstock performance. Just like at Woodstock, the audience loved their energetic jamming. When they finished, they got one of the longest standing ovations from the festival.

The recording is another "good news, bad news" situation. The good news is, this is either all of their set, or at least nearly all of it. The recording ran out partway through the last song here, so it could be they played a song or two after that. But at over an hour, they played longer than most acts, so there probably wasn't much more. The bad news though is that this comes from an audience bootleg, not a soundboard one. That means lower sound quality. And that's especially the case because their style of loud and electrified music demands good sound quality. (Acoustic recordings, for instance, are much more forgiving.) I did my best, using the MVSEP program to reduce the crowd noise during the songs, and using the UVR5 program to boost the lead vocals relative to the instruments. But still, one can tell this doesn't sound as good as the soundboards from the festival.

Also, I found a different live recording from 1969 for their last song, "Help Me," and used that to patch in the missing section. And I did more extensive editing work on the songs than usual, for instance sometimes boosting specific lines in songs when they were extra quiet. But still, I could only do so much. So beware this doesn't sound fantastic.

This album is an hour and nine minutes long. 

01 Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl (Ten Years After)
02 talk (Ten Years After)
03 I Can't Keep from Cryin' Sometimes (Ten Years After)
04 talk (Ten Years After)
05 Hobbit [Instrumental] (Ten Years After)
06 Spoonful (Ten Years After)
07 I'm Goin' Home (Ten Years After)
08 Help Me [Edit] (Ten Years After)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/XhZtux42 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/VaLh49Fd1WqHrZ1/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows lead guitarist and vocalist Alvin Lee. The original was in black and white. I used the Kolorize program to colorize it.

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 9-1-1969, Part 4: Tony Joe White

Here's the fourth album (out of ten) from the third day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. This one is a set by singer-songwriter Tony Joe White.

Just like the previous act I posted, Delaney and Bonnie, Tony Joe White was suddenly "hot" by the time of this concert. He started his recording career by releasing five singles in 1967 and 1968, but none of them made the charts. However, the last one, "Polk Salad Annie," was a slow grower. Over half a year after its release, it entered the charts in July 1969, thanks to a D.J. in Los Angeles who started frequently playing it. Right at the time of this concert, it peaked it the charts, reaching Number Eight in the U.S. It would be the biggest hit of his career, by far. But that hit had a big impact, because it caused people to look at his other songs, revealing that he was a very talented songwriter. People started covering his songs. For instance, Brook Benton released a single of his "Rainy Night in Georgia" at the end of 1969, and it almost went to the top of the charts in the U.S.

As expected, White played "Polk Salad Annie" in his set. Sadly, "Rainy Night in Georgia" wasn't included, nor was his "Willie and Laura Mae Jones," which was a minor hit for Dusty Springfield in 1969. But chances are very strong that this isn't the full set, since it's quite short, so we have no idea what other songs he performed. In any case, his set was very well received by the crowd. A review in "The Dallas Morning News" newspaper the next day remarked that White "put forth that down-home sound which is rapidly gaining momentum," and "the crowd ate it up."

Although this set is short, it's all from a soundboard bootleg source, so at least the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 23 minutes long.

01 Polk Salad Annie (Tony Joe White)
02 Aspen, Colorado (Tony Joe White)
03 Can You See the Lightning (Tony Joe White)
04 talk (Tony Joe White)
05 Roosevelt and Ira Lee (Tony Joe White)
06 Hard to Handle (Tony Joe White)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JtxsXKPR 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/2d1atZ8V6Wm8FIm/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. For once, the original was in color and I didn't have to do any editing on it.

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 9-1-1969, Part 3: Delaney & Bonnie

This is the third album from the third day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. It features the duo Delaney and Bonnie. (Technically, they were billed, as usual, as "Delaney and Bonnie and Friends.")

The good news is, this recording is a soundboard bootleg. The bad news is, it's only 20 minutes long. I'm sure they played more than that. This wasn't the kind of concert, like Live Aid, where music acts had to be kept to short sets due to time concerns. But as we've seen with some other music acts already, for whatever reason, we often only get parts of sets. Grand Funk Railroad is a case in point, where only one song has emerged in soundboard quality. And while I was able to find more songs from an audience bootleg for that band, there is all I could find here.

At the time of this concert, Delaney and Bonnie hadn't had much success yet. They had just released their second album a couple of months earlier, but it only reached the lower rungs of the album charts. However, their albums were critically praised, and they were clearly a band on the rise. They toured the U.S. extensively in the months prior to this concert, opening for big name bands like Blind Faith (Eric Clapton's band at the time) and Led Zeppelin. To show just how hot they were, later in the year, both Clapton and George Harrison of the Beatles went on tour with them, playing lead guitar in their band! 

Here's a Wikipedia article about them: 

Delaney & Bonnie - Wikipedia 

This album is 20 minutes long. Had it been any shorter, I would have paired it with another short set.

01 We Got to Get Ourselves Together (Delaney & Bonnie)
02 The Ghetto (Delaney & Bonnie)
03 When the Battle Is Over (Delaney & Bonnie)
04 Things Get Better (Delaney & Bonnie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mip1LpCm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/EB3SsN6tzl49ngG/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. There are some home videos and news reports from this festival, and in one of them I was able to find a short clip of Delaney and Bonnie. I took a screenshot from that, which means this is in color. I then used the Krea AI to improve the image detail.

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 9-1-1969, Part 2: B. B. King

Here's the second act from the third day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival: blues legend B.B. King. (Unfortunately, I'm mostly just guessing on the performance order for this and most albums on this day.)

1969 was a pivotal year for B.B. King. He'd been releasing albums since 1956. However, they pretty much had only appealed to fans of blues music. But in the late 1960s, electric blues got to be very popular, thanks mostly to British bands like Cream and Fleetwood Mac. So King's popularity rose. He released two albums in 1969, and both of them rose higher on the pop charts (about Top Forty) and R&B charts (about the Top Ten) than any of his previous albums.

One of those albums, "Completely Well," contained the song "The Thrill Is Gone." That would become his biggest hit and his signature song. Unfortunately, that song wasn't released a single until December, a few months after this. So it's not performed here.

A bunch of acts performed twice over the course of the three days of the festival. Few performed three times, but King was one of them. Apparently, his set caused some amusement, because he didn't realize that most of the audience stayed for all three sets, and he played the same songs with most of the same banter between songs. But despite that glitch, his music went over very well. A review in the "Times Herald" newspaper said that King "seemed to improve with each performance, flawless, hitting those low blues-filled notes and proving his birthright to the title of King of the Blues." 

King also was more savvy than most blues musicians of his generation by playing festivals full of hippies like this. In between songs, he King told the audience, "Now you can go let everyone know that we can get together outside of Woodstock and have a good time." 

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 talk (B. B. King)
02 Sweet Sixteen (B. B. King)
03 Please Accept My Love (B. B. King)
04 talk (B. B. King)
05 Everybody Wants to Know Why I Sing the Blues (B. B. King)
06 Don't Want a Soul Hanging Around (B. B. King)
07 What's Wrong Little Mama (B. B. King)
08 How Blue Can You Get (B. B. King)
09 Whole Lot of Lovin' (B. B. King)
10 Everyday I Have the Blues (B. B. King) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/R9fc7uBt

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/DhmPBDoFFQauK9K/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. The original was in black and white, and quite blurry in places. I used Kolorize to colorize. I tried to use Krea AI to reduce the blurriness, but you still see that with his hand and guitar.

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 9-1-1969, Part 1: Grand Funk Railroad

It's time for more music for the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. With this album, I'm starting to post albums from the third and final day of the festival, September 1, 1969. So we're back to "Part 1" again. This time, it's Grand Funk Railroad.

Grand Funk Railroad were one of the best-selling music acts in the early 1970s. In fact, although their debut album "On Time" had been released two months earlier, they were pretty much complete unknowns. In fact, the band had only been together for a few months already. They did play the Atlanta International Pop Festival about a month earlier, and got a good response to that. But still, they weren't well known enough to be invited to perform at the festival. 

However, they agreed to play for free, and even covered their own expenses. The first day of the festival began relatively late, at 4 P.M. So they warmed up the crowd for about an hour prior to the official start time. That performance went over so well that they were asked to be the opening act for the remaining two days of the festival. They ended up performing all three days. They went over well with the crowd all three times, which gave the band a lot of positive buzz, making this a pivotal moment in their music career. 

As it so happens, even though they performed three times during the festival (like many other acts that performed multiple times during it), we only have recordings from this day (or mainly from this day - see below). I often don't know the exact order of the acts on each day. But in this case I do, since all accounts say Grand Funk Railroad was the first act of the day. 

One twist though was that the concert started earlier than expected. The two previous days, the concert began at 4 P.M. But one of the promoters was quoted in a newspaper saying they changed it to 11 A.M. on this day because "We just didn't want another ending as late as we got Saturday." Unfortunately, word of the change didn't get out to everyone. So Grand Funk Railroad played to probably the smallest crowd of the entire festival.

This recording has two sources. The intro talk plus the first song, "Are You Ready," is from a soundboard bootleg. One can also find a video of that song's performance on YouTube. I'm not entirely sure which day that is from. Everything else is from an audience bootleg, which is labeled as being from this date, September 1st. Thus, the sound quality for that part is poorer. To help out, I used my usual editing tricks for this kind of circumstance. I used MVSEP to lower the amount of crowd noise during songs, and I used UVR5 to boost the lead vocals in the mix. Overall, it's a good audience bootleg as far as such things go, but it's still an audience bootleg, so beware.

Note also that the first part of the first song and last part of the last song of the audience tape were both cut off. So clearly this is only part of their set. We don't know how many more songs they played. I found other live versions from 1970 and used those to fill in the missing parts of those songs. That's why those two have "[Edit]" in their titles.

By the way, I'm pretty sure this is the only known bootleg recording of the band from 1969. 

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 talk (Grand Funk Railroad)
02 Are You Ready (Grand Funk Railroad)
03 In Need [Edit] (Grand Funk Railroad)
04 talk (Grand Funk Railroad)
05 Heartbreaker (Grand Funk Railroad)
06 talk (Grand Funk Railroad)
07 Inside Looking Out (Grand Funk Railroad)
08 Ups and Downs (Grand Funk Railroad)
09 Into the Sun [Edit] (Grand Funk Railroad)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KAx3LXPv

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/2OporCnq1NASJp8/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. It shows lead guitarist Mark Farner. This was the only decent photo I could find of the band from the concert. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it using the Kolorize program, as well as some tinkering in Photoshop.

The Beatles - The Beatles Uncovered, Volume 13: Mike's Mixes (1963-1969) (A MIKE SOLOF GUEST POST)

It's time again for another volume of Beatles remixes by guest poster Mike Solof. 

This one is different than all the previous ones. Basically, Mike decided to use the "unlucky 13" volume to include all the mixes that he was less than totally psyched about. If you read the PDF Mike always includes with these albums, he is surprisingly harsh about his own album. But I listened to this, and it's perfectly fine. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it's hard to go wrong with any mix of any Beatles song, in my opinion. But because this is like the outtakes from earlier albums he made, it's shorter than usual. Also, he didn't include song-by-song explanations in his PDF.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Because [Mike's Mix 4 2025] (Beatles)
02 Baby's in Black [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
03 Can You Take Me Back [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
04 Good Night, Take 10 [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
05 Got to Get You into My Life [Mike's Mix 2 2025] (Beatles)
06 Birthday [Mike's Mix 2024] (Beatles)
07 Hey Bulldog [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
08 I Don't Want to Spoil the Party [Mike's Mix 2024] (Beatles)
09 Dig It [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
10 Dizzy Miss Lizzy [Mike's Mix 2024] (Beatles)
11 Eleanor Rigby [Mike's Mix 2024] (Beatles)
12 For No One [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
13 I'll Cry Instead [Mike's Mix 2024] (Beatles)
14 Roll Over Beethoven [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
15 Rock and Roll Music [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
16 With a Little Help from My Friends, Take 10 [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)
17 Things We Said Today [Mike's Mix 2024] (Beatles)
18 Please, Please Me [Mike's Mix 2025] (Beatles)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6785v1eV 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/8DjvSgMg1Z5Q0jV/file

The cover is an image Mike creating using AI. It plays off the whole "Paul is dead" rumor.

Elkie Brooks - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: Golders Green Hippodrome, London, Britain, 10-8-1977

This is the second of four BBC albums I'm posting for British singer Elkie Brooks. The first one consisted of studio sessions, but this one is a full concert.

Elkie Brooks began releasing singles as far back as 1964. But for many years, success eluded her. Then everything thing changed for her in 1977. She had her first hit early in the year, with the song "Pearl's a Singer." Later in the year, she had a second hit with "Sunshine After the Rain." Both of those reached the Top Ten in Britain. (She never had any hits in the U.S.) From that year on, it was like a switch was flipped, and she became a hit-making machine in Britain for the rest of the 1970s and all through the 1980s.

This concert catches her at the end of that pivotal year for her, 1977. It came after her two big hits that year, and both of them are included. It also includes "Lilac Wine," which wasn't released by her yet, but would be another hit for her in early 1978.

Brooks always had a great voice, but she'd never had success writing her own songs. However, by 1977 at least, she and/or her producers (the songwriting team of Leiber and Stoller) developed a knack for finding the right songs for her to sing. As an example, both of her 1977 hits, "Pearl's a Singer" and "Sunshine After the Rain" had been released by other artists years earlier, but they hadn't met with success until she did her versions. For most of the rest of the concert, she stuck with classic songs that had been hits in previous decades, going as far back as "Sophisticated Lady" from the 1930s.

The music here remains unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 I'm Gonna Make You Love Me (Elkie Brooks)
02 Be Positive (Elkie Brooks)
03 talk (Elkie Brooks)
04 Rich Man's Woman (Elkie Brooks)
05 Love Potion No. 9 (Elkie Brooks)
06 Sunshine After the Rain (Elkie Brooks)
07 Mojo Hannah (Elkie Brooks)
08 Slippin' and Slidin' (Elkie Brooks)
09 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Elkie Brooks)
10 Sophisticated Lady (Elkie Brooks)
11 Lilac Wine (Elkie Brooks)
12 If the World Was Run by Little Children - Mercedes Benz (Elkie Brooks)
13 Pearl's a Singer (Elkie Brooks)
14 Saved (Elkie Brooks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7NCsRu5f

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/XeDj2biQQydugLO/file

The cover image comes from this exact concert. I took a screenshot from a YouTube video. The original was very blurry and low-res. I used Krea AI to fix it up, but it could only do so much with a bad source.

The Fortunes - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1967-1972

Here's the third and final album of the Fortunes performing for the BBC. Like the first two, it consists of studio sessions.

As I mentioned in my comments in the previous volumes, the Fortunes had unusual commercial, well, fortune. They had three big hits in 1965 and 1966, then pretty much disappeared from the charts for a bunch of years, only to return with more hits in 1971 and 1972. Then the disappeared again, and became an oldies act. 

Specifically their later hits were "Here Comes that Rainy Day Feeling Again" and "Freedom Come, Freedom Go" in 1971, and "Storm in a Teacup" in 1972. The first one almost made the Top Ten in the U.S., and the last two did make the Top Ten in Britain. The key to their revival was the use of professional songwriters, since the band never excelled writing hits on their own.  

This album starts out with their commercial prospects declining, and getting worse. All the songs are from the pop hit focused BBC radio show "Top of the Pops." The first two songs are from 1967. That's a continuation from "Volume 2," when they had five more songs in 1967. Tracks 3 through 5 are from 1968. Then tracks 6 and 7 are from 1969. They had no tracks from 1970. So, as you can see, it looks like they were getting less attention from the BBC every year, until it seems they dropped off the radar altogether. But then they had that second burst of hits, so they got three more songs on the BBC in 1971 (tracks 8 through 10) and six more in 1972 (tracks 11 through 16). 

As with the two previous volumes, everything here is from the official album "Live at the BBC." But many of these versions are different because I removed the BBC DJs talking over the music, using the UVR5 audio editing program. Those are the ones with "[Edit]" in their titles. As you can see, the last bunch of songs are free of that problem, since the DJs finally stopped this bad habit around 1972. 

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 The Idol (Fortunes)
02 I Was Made to Love Her [Edit] (Fortunes)
03 Loving Cup [Edit] (Fortunes)
04 Do You Know the Way to San Jose [Edit] (Fortunes)
05 Time for Living [Edit] (Fortunes)
06 Ballad of the Alamo [Edit] (Fortunes)
07 Sad Sad Sad [Edit] (Fortunes)
08 Here Comes that Rainy Day Feeling Again [Edit] (Fortunes)
09 Freedom Come, Freedom Go [Edit] (Fortunes)
10 People I've Gotta Dream (Fortunes)
11 Storm in a Teacup (Fortunes)
12 Baby by the Way (Fortunes)
13 Everything Is Out of Season (Fortunes)
14 Wait Until September (Fortunes)
15 Secret Love (Fortunes)
16 Just a Line to Let You Know (Fortunes)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/R9jQNEne

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5K08uKAzU3ijdgl/file

The cover photo shows the band in 1972. I used Krea AI to improve it a bit.

Peter Frampton - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 1-18-2007

Here's another from a long series of episodes of the TV show "PBS Soundstage." This time, it's an extra long episode, featuring Peter Frampton. I believe this actually was two hour-long episodes that made up a single concert.

Peter Frampton will always be associated with one album, and a double live album at that: "Frampton Comes Alive." Released in 1976, it was the best selling album of the year, and went on to have sales of more than eight million albums in the U.S. alone. But weirdly, he didn't have much commercial success before or after that. His second best selling album was "I'm in You," released in 1977, which sold a million in the U.S.

I think Frampton got kind of a raw deal out of this, with most people reducing his career to that one album. He actually put out a lot of good music in a career that's lasted over 50 years and is still going as I write this in 2025. This concert recording includes the big songs from "Frampton Comes Alive," sure, but it has lots of other good songs that weren't on that album. Frampton sings and writes songs, sure, but I think he's especially underappreciated as a lead guitarist. 

Everything here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. I found video files, converted them to audio, then broke them into mp3s. So this is probably the first time this concert has been shared as an album. 

This album is an hour and 47 minutes long.  

01 Off the Hook (Peter Frampton)
02 Lying (Peter Frampton)
03 talk (Peter Frampton)
04 Lines on My Face (Peter Frampton)
05 talk (Peter Frampton)
06 Show Me the Way (Peter Frampton)
07 Black Hole Sun [Instrumental Version] (Peter Frampton)
08 Nasssau - Baby, I Love Your Way (Peter Frampton)
09 talk (Peter Frampton)
10 Do You Feel like We Do (Peter Frampton)
11 All I Want to Be [Is by Your Side] (Peter Frampton)
12 talk (Peter Frampton)
13 Wind of Change (Peter Frampton)
14 I Need Ground (Peter Frampton)
15 Money [I'll Give You That] (Peter Frampton)
16 talk (Peter Frampton)
17 Can't Take That Away (Peter Frampton)
18 I Don't Need No Doctor (Peter Frampton)
19 While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Peter Frampton)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3dUYdGGZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ctRVLzfwx30eop3/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. 

Don McLean - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: Sounds for Saturday, London, Britain, 7-29-1972

A few weeks ago (writing this in June 2025), I posted a different "Volume 2" for Don McLean's BBC sessions, which was a concert from 1975. I have since found two more BBC concerts he did. So here's a brand new "Volume 2," a concert from 1972. I'll be posting another concert from 1973 as "Volume 3," and renaming that 1975 concert as "Volume 4." Sorry about the numbering confusion, but the bottom line is there's more good music to hear from Don McLean.

These newly discovered concerts are thanks to a Don McLean super fan who contacted me with the missing material I was looking for. That person also came up with a couple of extra songs I'd missed for "Volume 1," as well as three songs I'd missed for the 1975 concert that now makes up "Volume 4." I also removed a couple of songs from "Volume 1" because those exact versions are now on one of these extra full concerts I'm posting. So if you're a fan, I strongly suggest re-downloading those. Here are the links to the updated versions.

Volume 1: 

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2025/05/don-mclean-bbc-sessions-volume-1-1972.html

Volume 4: 

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2025/06/don-mclean-bbc-sessions-volume-2-in.html

"Volume 3" will be posted soon. Then there are two more volumes coming after that. So there's a bumper crop of Don McLean music on the way.

Okay, with all that explained, let me focus on this album. In 1972, McLean was probably at the peak of his popularity, thanks to the huge success of the hits "American Pie" and "Vincent." So we have this BBC concert, done in a solo acoustic format. It includes those two songs, plus other classics like "Empty Chairs" and "Castles in the Air." I don't know the name of song I've called "Turkey in the Straw Medley." I only know "Turkey in the Straw" is part of it. If anyone knows the other parts of the medley, please let me know. 

All the songs are unreleased except for "Everyday." That comes from the archival album "Favorites and Rarities." It turns out there's a 50-minute version of this concert as well. In fact, one can find the audio of it on YouTube (though it's poorly labeled). But there's a flaw with the sound all the way through that makes that version unusable for me. However, from that version I was able to find out that "Everyday" was the last song performed, so I was able to put it in its proper place. If anyone has the longer version with good sound quality, please let me know. 

This album is 38 minutes long. 

01 Magdalene Lane (Don McLean)
02 Empty Chairs (Don McLean)
03 And Her Mother Came Too (Don McLean)
04 She Was Poor but She Was Honest (Don McLean)
05 talk (Don McLean)
06 Turkey in the Straw Medley [Instrumental] (Don McLean)
07 Castles in the Air (Don McLean)
08 talk (Don McLean)
09 Where Were You, Baby (Don McLean)
10 American Pie (Don McLean)
11 Vincent (Don McLean)
12 Everyday (Don McLean)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/z8Sgzaov

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Ws2YqaNxaCiFd3Y/file

The cover image is from this exact concert.

Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to Brian Wilson, Hollywood Palladium, Hollywood, CA, 2-11-2005

As I mentioned in my last post, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys died a few days ago as I write this, on June 11, 2025. He's such an important musical figure that I considered it a must to post something in his memory. I did a little Internet browsing, and came across mentions of this tribute concert. However, I could only find a few songs from it, far from the whole thing. But luckily I've recently been getting some assistance from Fabio from Rio, who is a big Brian Wilson / Beach Boys fan. It turned out he had the DVD of this. He then figured out how to convert it to audio format, and sent it to me. So here you are. Earlier today, I posted an album that pays tribute to Brian Wilson created by Fabio, but two tribute albums is better than one.

MusiCares is a non-profit charity that is connected to the organization that runs the yearly Grammy music awards. Since 1991, they've been giving out a yearly award, MusiCares Person of the Year. They have a benefit concert celebrate the music of that person. It takes place in the same town and week as the Grammy awards, so lots of music stars are there to perform on stage or at least attend. The money raised from the benefit concert (and other activities) goes to an organization that helps struggling musicians, for instance those who are having medical trouble or drug addiction and can't afford treatment.

It seems that bootlegs of these yearly MusiCares concerts are basically non-existent. The audiences are relatively small and are mostly made up of music industry insiders who aren't likely to secretly tape record the show and then share that with the public. However, a handful of the concerts have been officially released on DVD. These are generally rare and already out of print. But I've managed to find most of them, concerts for: Paul Simon, James Taylor, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, and Bruce Springsteen (plus this one). I plan on posting all of those here eventually. I know of two more that exist: Barbra Streisand and Carole King. I'm not that interested in the Streisand one, but I'd be very interested in the King one, if anyone has that. (Or, heck, if anyone has any of the other concerts not on DVD!)

For this album, I don't feel I need to explain what happened in the concert, because I found not one, but two, articles that give good summaries. Here they are (with the second one from Rolling Stone): 

MusiCares Celebrates Brian Wilson As Person Of The Year | RECORDINGACADEMY.com 

Musicians Serenade Brian Wilson at MusiCares Gala 

I do want to mention though that I'm very disappointed this isn't the complete concert. Almost complete, but a couple of songs are missing, at least. One song that got left off the DVD, and thus left off this album, is a performance by Neil Young of the Beach Boys classic "In My Room." It seems to be the one and only time Young ever publicly performed this song, so it's a real loss. Another one that wasn't included is a duet between India.Arie and Brian Wilson on the even greater classic "God Only Knows." If anyone has either or both of those, please let me know so I can add them in.

Thanks again to Fabio from Rio. I looked everywhere and couldn't find this, so I was very pleasantly surprised to find he had it. After he sent it to me, I broke the audio into mp3s. So I think it's a safe bet that this is the first time this full concert is being shared in an audio format. 

This album is an hour and nine minutes long. 

01 talk (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
02 I Get Around (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
03 talk (Richie Sambora)
04 City Blues (Richie Sambora)
05 Sail On, Sailor (Jamie Cullum)
06 talk (Barenaked Ladies)
07 Brian Wilson - 'Til I Die (Barenaked Ladies)
08 talk (John Legend)
09 I Just Wasn't Made for These Times (John Legend)
10 talk (Backstreet Boys)
11 When I Grow Up [To Be a Man] (Backstreet Boys)
12 talk (Shelby Lynne)
13 Surfer Girl (Shelby Lynne)
14 talk (Michael McDonald & Billy Preston)
15 Don't Worry Baby (Michael McDonald & Billy Preston)
16 Surf's Up [Instrumental Version] (Jeff Beck)
17 Surfin' U.S.A. (Jeff Beck)
18 talk (Earth, Wind & Fire)
19 Don't Talk [Put Your Head on My Shoulder] (Earth, Wind & Fire)
20 talk (Darlene Love)
21 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Darlene Love)
22 Pet Sounds [Instrumental] (Brian Wilson Band)
23 talk (Neil Portnow & Brian Wilson)
24 Our Prayer - Heroes and Villains (Brian Wilson)
25 Good Vibrations (Brian Wilson)
26 Fun, Fun, Fun (Brian Wilson)
27 Love and Mercy (Brian Wilson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/gzQuD2sf

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/6nJGwuHSdbQCB1H/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. That's India.Arie with Brian Wilson. 

Various Artists - Songs in the Key of Brian - Remembering Brian Wilson (1975-2021) (GUEST POST BY FABIO FROM RIO)

One of the all-time great musical geniuses, Brian Wilson, died a few days ago, on June 11, 2025. He was 82 years old. I wanted to post something to mark his passing. Luckily, I've recently been collaborating with a new musical friend, who goes by the name Fabio from Rio. He's a big fan of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, and came up with the idea of creating an album consisting entirely of songs about Brian Wilson. So that's what this is. I gave him free reign, and only helped him some with suggestions on song selection.

I would have never come up with the idea for this album, because I had no idea that there would be enough songs about Brian Wilson to make up an entire album. I knew of the song "Brian Wilson" by Barenaked Ladies, since that was a hit back in the 1990s, but that was about it. But Fabio must be a really big fan, because he found so many songs that we had to cut some out to keep the album from getting too long.

The album starts with a rare demo written and sung by Wilson himself. It also ends with two more written and sung by him, including a rare live version of "Love and Mercy." Fabio explained the reasoning for this in an email, which I liked. I'll just paste in his explanation here:

"The Wilson tunes are bookends, as they serve to introduce and close the 'main event' (all the tracks written to him or about him) while bringing a personal Brian touch to the collection. The first song, a 1975, demo works as a prelude (acknowledging Brian's fragility and strength both simultaneously contained in his voice), 'The Last Song' is the epilogue, and 'Love and Mercy' is a coda." 

Regarding the rest of the songs, what Fabio calls the "main event," tracks 2 through 13, are basically divided into two parts. Tracks 2 through 8 are direct tributes to Brian. That's obvious by their titles, but it's not just that: the lyrics and musical style ooze reference and admiration for the man. That's followed by tracks 9 through 13, which are indirect tributes to Brian, or direct tributes to things related to him (the Beach Boys, his health shop, girls, his genius, family), all mentioning him either in the title or lyrics.

So, a big thanks to Fabio from Rio for coming up with the idea for this album and then finding and selecting the songs. As you could guess from the name, he's Brazilian, and hopefully in the future he'll be able to assist in sharing more music from Brazil. I like a lot of music from Brazil, despite not speaking Portuguese at all. I haven't really shared any music from Brazil until now, because I don't have worthy rarities. But he does, so look forward to that in the future. He also has some other plans, including creating one or more albums as a further tribute to Wilson that will consist of songs in a Beach Boys style composed by other musical acts. 

Fabio has also taped a great number of concerts in Brazil. You can find some of them on his YouTube page, here: 

https://www.youtube.com/@musicadequalidade2020/videos

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 In the Back of My Mind [Demo] (Brian Wilson)
02 The Love Songs of B. Douglas Wilson (Splitsville)
03 Mr. Wilson (Hormones)
04 Dear Brian (Chris Rainbow)
05 Brian Wilson Said (Tears for Fears)
06 Brian Wilson (Barenaked Ladies)
07 Mr. Wilson (John Cale)
08 Brian Wilson (Queers)
09 Crazy = Genius (Panic at the Disco)
10 Radiant Radish (Pearl & the Oysters)
11 Brian Wilson Is My Dad (Breakup Shoes)
12 Minnesota Girls (Shackletons)
13 Since God Invented Girls (Elton John)
14 The Last Song (Brian Wilson)
15 Love and Mercy (Brian Wilson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Kn42WH9u

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/EMCkcQ343EW7g0m/file

The cover photo shows Wilson in 2007. I added the font colors and type to match those used on the cover of the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" album.

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 8-31-1969, Part 4: Led Zeppelin

Here is the fourth and last album I have of music from the second day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. This time, it's Led Zeppelin. According to die-hard fans, this often ranks in the top five in polls of their best live recordings, due to both sound quality and performance.

Led Zeppelin had only released their debut album at this point (in January 1969), but it was such a smash that they were one of the biggest stars of the festival. The two music acts that were paid the most, $10,000 each, were Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin, so that's a good sign they were the two most anticipated performances. That can also be seen in the fact that they had the prized closing spot on the second day. (I think they went on right after B.B. King, but I'm not sure.)

In 2024, the band's lead guitarist Jimmy Page posted some photos of himself at this festival. He also wrote a little bit about it, which I include here: 

"Festivals were starting to become well-established in the US and the Texas Pop Festival offered a substantial bill of performing artists. I watched Sam & Dave perform and hung out with Janis Joplin, whom I had hung out with at Steve Paul's Scene Club in New York in the Yardbirds days. Led Zeppelin played a good set on this day."

There also is an interesting story about events that led up to this performance. They played Fair Park Coliseum, in Dallas, Texas, on August 4th, a mere three weeks before the festival. Angus Wynne III, promoter for this festival, saw a chance for some publicity. Wynne later said, "We found [Led Zeppelin's] road manager, and we said we wanted to make sure the band recognized the festival from the stage. And he said, 'Well, the fellows think they're going to be on vacation then. They don't know about it.' The band gets on stage, and after a couple of songs, [lead singer] Robert Plant says, 'Anyone heard of the Texas International Pop Festival? We got into town today and saw the posters with our name on them. We've never heard of it. It's a classic ripoff, and if you have tickets, you need to get your money back.'"

Wynne had recently signed the band to perform at his festival, so he was furious. He found the road manager locked inside a limousine. He and some friends pounded on the windows and almost tipped the car over before the manager emerged. Wynne said, "He ran out there [on stage] and he pulls Plant over to the side and whispers in his ear. Then Plant grabs him by the lapels and starts shaking him. At the end of the song, Plant goes to the microphone and says, 'Yeah, we're going to play [at the festival]. Our weasel road manager just told us.'"

So that's why, if you listen to the banter between songs in this album, Plant says: "It's very nice to be back in Texas. Last time we were here, it was a near disaster when we said we weren’t doing the festival and everything. We'd like to, this is the last date before we go back to England. So we really want it to be, have a nice time."

It seems likely to me that the band was supposed to be back in England by the time of this festival, but the band's management couldn't resist the $10,000 prize for doing this festival, so they signed a contract for it without consulting the band members first. The band members were pissed because it meant their trip back home was cut short. Happily though, it all worked out in the end, and the band happened to perform one of their best concerts.

This performance was professionally filmed. Unfortunately, nothing was done with it, and it seems most of it was lost or destroyed. There are some short clips you can find on YouTube. Also, in the 2025 documentary "Becoming Led Zeppelin," a minute or two of "Dazed and Confused" can be seen from this film. But that supports the suggestion that most of the film no longer exists, because most of that song cuts to a different performance at a different concert. (One can tell by a sudden change in the clothes, and other factors.) 

If you want to know more about this performance, the website ledzeppelin.com has a webpage about it. It includes excepts from reviews in newspaper articles, as well as photos of the band, memorabilia, and photos of more newspaper articles about the whole festival. Here's a link:

Texas International Pop Festival - August 31, 1969 / Lewisville | Led Zeppelin Official Website 

Although this is the last of only four albums from the second day of the festival, I have ten albums for the third and final day of the festival. Those will be coming soon.

This album is an hour and four minutes long. 

01 talk (Led Zeppelin)
02 Train Kept A-Rollin' (Led Zeppelin)
03 I Can't Quit You Babe (Led Zeppelin)
04 talk (Led Zeppelin)
05 Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)
06 talk (Led Zeppelin)
07 You Shook Me - Rock Me Baby - You Shook Me (Led Zeppelin)
08 How Many More Times (Led Zeppelin)
09 The Hunter - The Lemon Song - Bye Bye Baby (Led Zeppelin)
10 How Many More Times [Reprise] (Led Zeppelin)
11 talk (Led Zeppelin)
12 Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1kXJhtqa 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/oyVob9ClcUWrBAx/file 

I found two photos from this concert that I really liked, one of Jimmy Page and one of Robert Plant. Instead of picking one over the other, I used Photoshop to include both of them. Page is the one in the purple shirt.

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 8-31-1969, Part 3: Santana

The third album from the second day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival is a set by Santana.

A key thing to keep in mind here is that at the time of this concert, almost nobody in the audience would have known the music of Santana. Their first album, "Santana," was released on August 22, 1969, only about ten days prior to this performance. The first single from it, "Jingo," didn't make much of an impact on the charts. They also performed at the Woodstock festival earlier in August, and that was their big break that put them on the road to stardom. But most of the impact of that would come later, for instance after the Woodstock album and concert came out. Later in 1969, the single "Evil Ways" would be released from their first album and go on to be a big hit, resulting in them getting on prominent TV shows, like "The Ed Sullivan Show." But all that was still in the future. Maybe some people at this festival had also been at the Woodstock festival and spread some word-of-mouth news about them, but that was probably it.

The set list was very similar to their Woodstock set list, except even shorter. Their Woodstock set was 48 minutes long, and this one is only 33. I don't know if that's because this one is incomplete, or if it was just a rather short set. Since they weren't well known yet, it's possible this is the whole thing.

This album is 33 minutes long. 

01 Evil Ways (Santana)
02 talk (Santana)
03 You Just Don't Care (Santana)
04 talk (Santana)
05 Shades of Time [Instrumental] (Santana)
06 Jingo (Santana)
07 talk (Santana)
08 Treat (Santana)
09 talk (Santana)
10 Soul Sacrifice [Instrumental] (Santana)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1FQz8Dbp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/qDf1JWX5REJCBDj/file

The cover photo of Carlos Santana is from this exact concert. It was the only photo of the band I could find from this concert, and I had to do a lot of work on it to make it look good. It was in black and white, so I converted it to color using Kolorize, plus I did some work in Photoshop, like making the colors of the flags in the background match other pictures from the festival. Santana's face was blurry, so I had to do some extra work to make that look better, using Krea AI and Photoshop.

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 8-31-1969, Part 2: Sam & Dave

Here's the second album of the second day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. It's a set by soul music duo Sam and Dave.

Note, by the way, that I don't know the exact order of the performances on the second day, with a couple of exceptions. So this order is just a guess.

We're very lucky to have this album, because there are very few recordings of Sam and Dave performing live in the 1960s prime (at least that are publicly available). They never released a live album, and there are virtually no bootlegs. The only partial exception with bootlegs is a 1967 concert in Norway that I've posted, which includes a Sam and Dave set that lasts only 20 minutes. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/07/various-artists-stax-volt-revue.html 

Sam and Dave had lots of hits from 1965 to 1969. But they had a change of record companies and producers, and lost the use of some key songwriters who had been working them, and the hits suddenly dried up. They broke up in early 1970, ending their peak era. They got back together multiple times, starting in 1971, but the magic was gone. They basically became an oldies act, doing it to make a living. They typically would show up separately for shows, require separate dressing rooms, not look at each other onstage, and communicate through intermediaries. So it's good to have this recording from the tail end of their peak era, right before everything went to hell for them.

For some reason, a common bootleg of this festival only includes two songs by Sam and Dave, "I've Been Loving You Too Long" and "May I, Baby." But in fact, there are all these songs, with soundboard quality.

This album is 35 minutes long.

01 Sing a Simple Song [Instrumental Version] (Sam & Dave)
02 I Take What I Want (Sam & Dave)
03 talk (Sam & Dave)
04 I've Been Loving You Too Long (Sam & Dave)
05 May I, Baby (Sam & Dave)
06 Soul Man (Sam & Dave)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QrRRwprE

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/YOnN14e4yEbDzrI/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert. As with many of the acts for this festival, I was lucky to find just one photo actually from the festival. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it using the Kolorize program. I also improved the detail with the use of the Krea AI program.