Cat Stevens - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Cafe Session, Porchester Hall, London, Britain, 3-1-2007

A couple of days ago, I posted a Cat Stevens BBC concert that I'd missed, from 1979. Here's another one that I'd missed, from 2007. Funnily enough, it seems that 1979 concert was his very last concert until this one.

After a very long time away from pop music, Stevens released a new studio album in late 2006, "An Other Cup." (He put out some albums with heavily Islamic themes from 1995 to 2006.) This concert was meant to support that album. So naturally, he played some songs from that album. But they fit in nicely with his older classics, plus a cover of the 1960s hit "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood."

Note that by this time, he changed his name to "Yusuf Islam," and sometimes just "Yusuf." But I'm still calling him "Cat Stevens" not out of disrespect for his changed name, but so people can easily find all his albums together here with the labels feature and keyword searches and so forth. 

This album has been officially released as "Yusuf's Cafe Session," the same month it happened. But it seems to have been a limited release, and remains fairly obscure.

This concert is an hour and one minute long.

01 The Reed [Instrumental] (Cat Stevens)
02 Wind East and West (Cat Stevens)
03 The Wind (Cat Stevens)
04 Midday [Avoid City After Dark] (Cat Stevens)
05 talk (Cat Stevens)
06 Don't Be Shy (Cat Stevens)
07 talk (Cat Stevens)
08 Maybe There's a World (Cat Stevens)
09 In the End (Cat Stevens)
10 Where Do All the Children Play (Cat Stevens)
11 talk (Cat Stevens)
12 The Little Ones (Cat Stevens)
13 I Think I See the Light (Cat Stevens)
14 Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Cat Stevens)
15 talk (Cat Stevens)
16 Heaven - Where True Love Goes (Cat Stevens)
17 How Long - Peace Train Blues (Cat Stevens)
18 The Beloved (Cat Stevens)
19 talk (Cat Stevens)
20 Father and Son (Cat Stevens)
21 talk (Cat Stevens)
22 Wild World [Zulu Version] (Cat Stevens)
23 Peace Train (Cat Stevens)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SNCvddjZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/2tW2Y0amkiw3kSM/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Cat Stevens - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: UNICEF Year of the Child Concert, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 11-22-1979

I thought I was done with posting Cat Stevens BBC albums, but it turns out I'd missed two BBC concerts. So here's the first one, from 1979.

In the late 1970s, Cat Stevens' musical career was winding down. He later said that it a become "a chore, and not an inspiration anymore." Instead, he increasingly grew interested in religion. He converted to Islam in 1977 after years of spiritual searching. His last studio album (for the era) was "Back to Earth" in 1978. In 1978, he changed his name to "Yusuf Islam." In 1979, he auctioned off all his guitars, and soon stopped playing music altogether, even at home.

However, Stevens has also been heavily involved in charitable causes for most of his life. He was persuaded to perform one last concert in 1979, which is this one. It was a big benefit concert to benefit the UNICEF charity, with lots of stars on the bill, including David Essex, Gary Numan, and Wishbone Ash. It was broadcast on TV at the time. (You can find video footage on YouTube, but the image quality is extremely poor.) He appeared quite different than before, with a new beard and his hair closely cut, as well as wearing a religious shawl over his shoulders. This would be his last public musical performance until 2002. He eventually fully resumed his musical career around 2006.

This appears to be the full set. It was rather short, since he was on a bill with several other acts. A highlight was the last song, "Child for a Day," written especially for the occasion by David Gordon, Stevens' brother. David Essex and Richard Thompson came on stage to help with the song. I watched the video of this. Essex sang a little bit of the lead vocals, but Thompson just played guitar, which didn't include a solo.

This album is 36 minutes long.

01 talk by Paul Gambaccini (Cat Stevens)
02 The Wind (Cat Stevens)
03 On the Road to Find Out (Cat Stevens)
04 talk (Cat Stevens)
05 Just Another Night (Cat Stevens)
06 Daytime - Where Do the Children Play (Cat Stevens)
07 talk (Cat Stevens)
08 Father and Son (Cat Stevens)
09 Morning Has Broken (Cat Stevens)
10 Peace Train (Cat Stevens)
11 talk (Cat Stevens)
12 Child for a Day (Cat Stevens with David Essex & Richard Thompson)
13 talk (Cat Stevens)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TKKm7A5u

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/1HxwsnleNnULpkq/file

The cover photo is of this concert. I had a hard time with this one. I looked high and low to find a good photo from the concert, since the YouTube footage was so poor. I eventually found one in black in white. Then I colorized it using the Kolorize program. I made sure to match the colors shown (barely) in the YouTube video. Finally, I used Krea AI to improve the image.

Cat Stevens with Dr. John and Linda Ronstadt - Moon and Star: ABC In Concert, Aquarius Theater, Hollywood, CA, 11-9-1973

Here's a really nice Cat Stevens concert bootleg. I've known about it for a long time, but I avoided posting it because the sound quality was just okay. However, I found a better version, good enough to share.

Stevens did very little touring or promotion in 1972 or 1973 after doing a lot in 1970 and 1971. That was so much the case that there was a rumor he'd been stricken with tuberculosis again, like he'd been back in 1969. That wasn't the case. He probably was just tired of the star making merry-go-round. 

But in late 1973, he put out a new studio album, "Foreigner," with a single song, "Foreigner Suite," that was 18 minutes long and took up half of the album. That was new musical territory for him, and he wanted people to hear it. He basically put all of his promotional eggs in this one basket. ABC already had a music show called "In Concert" that was an hour long, and usually featured different hit performers. But this was an hour and a half long special episode that was devoted just to Stevens. Well, almost, probably to broaden the appeal, Dr. John sang one song and Linda Ronstadt sang two. But in a nice twist, the songs they sang were written by Stevens and had never been recorded by them before (or since). 

This episode was called "Moon and Star," not "Moon and Stars." (I found some ads for the show, so I'm sure.) That no doubt named after his song, "The Boy with the Moon and Star on His Head."

I've read a review or two of this concert, thanks to a Cat Stevens fan site. Clearly, there were bits that are missing from this recording, because there's no banter at all between songs. However, there was very little of that. The reviews noted that Stevens basically did no talking. In the 1970s, it was very popular of TV shows like this to have a monologue with jokes, or skirts, etc... It's very cheesy in retrospect. But Stevens avoided all that and just played his songs. It was basically a normal concert in a normal club in the Los Angeles area, but with a film crew there.

The recording of this concert I found did have a few words of a DJ talking. But I cut that out since it was literally only a few words at the tail end of sentence. Getting the songs to flow was a problem, because typically one track would end with lots of applause suddenly cut off, and then the next track would begin with relative silence. So I usually patched in more applause from elsewhere in the concert, then had that trail off or fade out, so it would fit with how the next song started. Hopefully, the concert show flow well now.

This concert is an hour and ten minutes long. The only twenty minutes for the hour and a half show were for brief introductions plus commercials.

01 Father and Son (Cat Stevens)
02 Wild World (Cat Stevens)
03 Morning Has Broken (Cat Stevens)
04 18th Avenue (Cat Stevens)
05 talk - Moonshadow Prologue (Cat Stevens)
06 Moonshadow (Cat Stevens)
07 talk - Moonshadow Epilogue (Cat Stevens)
08 Pop Star (Dr. John)
09 King of Trees (Cat Stevens)
10 A Bad Penny (Cat Stevens)
11 Fill My Eyes (Linda Ronstadt)
12 The First Cut Is the Deepest (Linda Ronstadt)
13 The Boy with the Moon and Star on His Head (Cat Stevens)
14 The Hurt (Cat Stevens)
15 Foreigner Suite (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15998470/CatSvns_1973_MoonnStarABCInConcrtAquariusTheatrHllywoodCA__11-9-1973_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Cat Stevens - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-25-2023

In June 2023, Cat Stevens (a.k.a. Yusuf, or Yusuf Islam) released a new studio album, "King of a Land." It amazes me that he still sounds so good, since his heyday was about 50 years ago, and he spent a couple of decades since then not even playing music at all. But even though he's 74 years old as I write this in 2023, his voice sounds as good as ever. And I like his new album. His first couple of comeback albums didn't do much for me, but in my opinion, his recent albums are better than anything he did since the early 1970s.

There's only been one official Stevens live album, recorded in 1976, which was not the best time period for him. Since his musical comeback began in 2006 he hasn't toured much, and bootleg recordings have been few and far between. So the fact that he headlined one of the nights at the 2023 Glastonbury Festival was great news, because most everything from that festival gets professionally recorded and broadcast by the BBC. Indeed, I was able to find a high quality video of his set, and converted it to mp3s. The sound quality is excellent.

The set list is about what you'd expect. He mostly played his classics from the late 1960s and early 1970s. He only did three songs from his new album ("Take the World Apart," "Highness," and "Pagan Run"). He also did two cover versions, "Here Comes the Sun" and "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood." Most importantly, he sounds great. Some other legends his age have been losing their voices in recent years, like Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, and Neil Young. But Stevens' voice still sounds so good that it's almost uncanny.

This album is an hour and 15 minutes long.

UPDATE: On February 7, 2025, I upgraded the mp3 download file. The music is the same, but I renamed the title from "Volume 5" to "Volume 7" after finding not two BBC albums I'd missed.

01 talk (Cat Stevens)
02 The Wind (Cat Stevens)
03 Moonshadow (Cat Stevens)
04 talk (Cat Stevens)
05 Here Comes My Baby (Cat Stevens)
06 The First Cut Is the Deepest (Cat Stevens)
07 talk (Cat Stevens)
08 Matthew and Son (Cat Stevens)
09 talk (Cat Stevens)
10 Where Do the Children Play (Cat Stevens)
11 Oh Very Young (Cat Stevens)
12 talk (Cat Stevens)
13 Hard Headed Woman (Cat Stevens)
14 talk (Cat Stevens)
15 Sitting (Cat Stevens)
16 talk (Cat Stevens)
17 Tea for the Tillerman (Cat Stevens)
18 talk (Cat Stevens)
19 [Remember the Days of The] Old Schoolyard (Cat Stevens)
20 talk (Cat Stevens)
21 If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out (Cat Stevens)
22 talk (Cat Stevens)
23 Morning Has Broken (Cat Stevens)
24 talk (Cat Stevens)
25 Take the World Apart (Cat Stevens)
26 talk (Cat Stevens)
27 Here Comes the Sun (Cat Stevens)
28 talk (Cat Stevens)
29 Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Cat Stevens)
30 talk (Cat Stevens)
31 Highness (Cat Stevens)
32 talk (Cat Stevens)
33 Peace Train (Cat Stevens)
34 talk (Cat Stevens)
35 Pagan Run (Cat Stevens)
36 Wild World (Cat Stevens)
37 Father and Son (Cat Stevens)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/meLFuuoF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/XAVyon7j6EbOks9/file

The cover photo was taken at the concert featured here.

Cat Stevens - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: In Concert, Radio Theatre, London, Britain, 6-3-2009

This is kind of a new album, and kind of something I posted previously. Let me explain. Back in 2009, I posted a Cat Stevens (a.k.a. Yusuf Islam or Yusuf) album which I called "Two Radio Shows." It contained music from two radio shows he did in 2009, each of them being about half an hour long. Since then, I've really gotten into posting BBC material. So I've deleted that album and replaced it with this one. It still contains material from those two 2009 shows, but I've included the full BBC concert, which is nearly an hour long, and then just three songs from the other concert, done for the Morning Becomes Eclectic radio show. It turns out those were the only three songs that weren't also played in the BBC concert.

In 2006, Stevens returned to secular music with the album "An Other Cup." In 2009, he followed that up with a second album, "Roadsinger." To promote "Roadsinger," he did a lot of live appearances. Two radio shows stand out for their exceptional sound, one on "Morning Becomes Eclectic" in California on May 12th, and one for the BBC in Britain on June 3rd. The shows were very similar, with the same small, mostly acoustic band. Both these shows are from bootlegs, but they were played on TV and/or the radio, and were professionally recorded. So this is as good as if they had been recorded for an official album.

I stated in my last Cat Stevens post that I wasn't impressed with his first couple of albums after his return to secular music. I still feel that way, and I also feel they've gotten better with each new album, with his 2017 album "The Laughing Apple" the best (comeback) one yet. But only six out of 18 songs here are from his 2006 or 2009 comeback albums, and he generally played the strongest ones. Mostly, he did his classics from the early 1970s, but with some nice unexpected choices, such as "Portobello Road" and "Blackness of the Night" from his 1960s pop era, or "Ruins," one of his better songs from later in the 1970s.

This album is an hour and six minutes long.

UPDATE: On February 7, 2025, I updated the download file. The music is the same, but I renamed the album from "Volume 4" to "Volume 6" after finding two BBC concerts by him that I'd missed.

01 talk by Johnnie Walker (Cat Stevens)
02 Oh Very Young (Cat Stevens)
03 Where Do the Children Play (Cat Stevens)
04 talk (Cat Stevens)
05 Thinking about You (Cat Stevens)
06 talk (Cat Stevens)
07 Miles from Nowhere (Cat Stevens)
08 Wild World [Zulu Version] (Cat Stevens)
09 talk (Cat Stevens)
10 Portobello Road (Cat Stevens)
11 talk (Cat Stevens)
12 Blackness of the Night (Cat Stevens)
13 Into White (Cat Stevens)
14 talk (Cat Stevens)
15 Roadsinger (Cat Stevens)
16 talk (Cat Stevens)
17 Boots and Sand (Cat Stevens)
18 talk (Cat Stevens)
19 Father and Son (Cat Stevens)
20 All Kinds of Roses (Cat Stevens)
21 Don't Be Shy (Cat Stevens)
22 talk (Cat Stevens)
23 To Be What You Must (Cat Stevens)
24 Welcome Home (Cat Stevens)
25 Lilywhite (Cat Stevens)
26 Ruins (Cat Stevens)
27 Maybe You're Right (Cat Stevens)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/yqsLsnKK

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/QoqJFCmSxyEEWr5/file

The photo I used for the cover art comes from a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London in December 2009. I stuck with the same photo I used for the "Two Radio Shows" version of this album, except I completely redid the text, using the same font color and type as earlier albums in this BBC series.

Cat Stevens - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1970-1971

This is the second BBC album by Cat Stevens. It contains BBC studio sessions from 1970 and 1971.

On the downside, I can't find anything from 1972 or after. It seems his efforts to promote his music plummeted for a while there. For instance, as far as I can tell, he only played in public once in 1973, for a TV show. So it seems these three albums are all these is as far as early Cat Stevens at the BBC goes.

Pretty much everything here is done in solo acoustic format. The versions sound very similar to the solo acoustic studio demo versions I've already posted elsewhere, but still, I think it's worth posting all of his BBC stuff. Everything here has been officially released, thanks to super deluxe editions of the "Tea for the Tillerman" and "Teaser and the Firecat" albums that came out in 2021. 

Note that two of the songs actually aren't from BBC sessions. "Wild World" comes from a performance on the German TV show "Beat Club." "Father and Son' comes from a British TV show called "Out Front." I used several other songs from "Out Front" as extra songs on the "BBC Sessions, Volume 3" album. But I didn't use this one because it would have repeated another song there. So I figured why not stick it here instead. 

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Lady D’Arbanville (Cat Stevens)
02 Trouble (Cat Stevens)
03 Katmandu (Cat Stevens)
04 Tea for the Tillerman (Cat Stevens)
05 Wild World (Cat Stevens)
06 Tuesday's Dead (Cat Stevens)
07 How Can I Tell You (Cat Stevens)
08 Peace Train (Cat Stevens)
09 Moonshadow (Cat Stevens)
10 Bitterblue (Cat Stevens)
11 Father and Son (Cat Stevens)
12 If I Laugh (Cat Stevens)
13 Changes IV (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15430733/CatSvns_1970-1971_BBSessionsVolum2_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a performance he did in 1971 for the BBC TV show "Top of the Pops."

Cat Stevens - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, London, Britain, 11-27-1971

In a recent blog post, I said I've been digging deep into BBC material and I plan on posting a lot of that soon. Some musical acts have official BBC collections that are well done and complete, but others are flawed and/or incomplete, and a surprising number still don't have such an official collection at all. I think that's a really big share for music from the 1960s and early 1970s because there wasn't a lot of music being saved back then aside from the released albums and singles. Yet BBC recordings generally have excellent sound quality, and often contain unique songs that otherwise would have been lost forever.

Here's something that isn't revelatory in terms of unique material, but is a lovely album to have just the same if you're a Cat Stevens fan. In fact, in terms of live music from his early 1970s time, I'd say this is the best of the best due to the sheer sound quality. It's also fairly long compared to other live recordings from that time, and has lots of entertaining banter between songs. It's also acoustic, which makes it somewhat different than his semi-acoustic records of that time.

There's not much else to say. The recording is so well done that I didn't have to make any changes. It's 54 minutes long.

UPDATE: On February 14, 2022, I made a minor update. I didn't add or remove any songs. However, since I have two BBC albums that chronologically come before this one, I added "Volume 3" to the title and the cover art.

01 Where Do the Children Play (Cat Stevens)
02 talk (Cat Stevens)
03 Longer Boats (Cat Stevens)
04 talk (Cat Stevens)
05 Sad Lisa (Cat Stevens)
06 Hard Headed Woman (Cat Stevens)
07 talk (Cat Stevens)
08 Tuesday's Dead (Cat Stevens)
09 Moonshadow (Cat Stevens)
10 talk (Cat Stevens)
11 Wild World (Cat Stevens)
12 talk (Cat Stevens)
13 How Can I Tell You (Cat Stevens)
14 talk (Cat Stevens)
15 Maybe You're Right (Cat Stevens)
16 talk (Cat Stevens)
17 I Love My Dog (Cat Stevens)
18 talk (Cat Stevens)
19 Bitterblue (Cat Stevens)
20 talk (Cat Stevens)
21 Changes IV (Cat Stevens)
22 talk (Cat Stevens)
23 Into White (Cat Stevens)
24 talk (Cat Stevens)
25 Father and Son (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15430763/CatSvns_1971e_BBSessionsVolum3InConcrtLondnBrtain__11-27-1971_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I took a screenshot from the BBC video. The text at the top is also exactly from the video. I added the text at the bottom in the same style.

Note though that since I first posted this, I've gone on to post Volumes 4 and 5 in this series, and all the others in the series use the same font color and type. So I've created an alternate cover, for those who want the same look to all the volumes in the series. The same screenshot is used in both versions.

Cat Stevens - KCET Studios, Los Angeles, CA, 6-8-1971

I'm a very big fan of Cat Stevens' early 1970s music, which was his commercial and critical success. In terms of live recordings, 1971 seems to be the best. By chance, there's very little that's recorded well from 1970 or 1972 (although I've posted a very good 1970 recording here recently), and by 1973 his music changed and he played with a full band. That leaves 1971. Luckily, he played a few concerts that were recorded very well. 

This one has excellent sound because it was broadcast on PBS. This concert hasn't been officially released in full, though I think a track here and there has been included as bonus tracks on archival releases. The one snag with it is that it's relatively short. The portion of this album from the KCET Studios show broadcast on PBS is only 30 minutes long.

I wanted it longer. So I found another concert he played later that month in Berkeley, California, and added in just the songs from it that weren't on the PBS recording. That added another 15 minutes, making the whole thing 45 minutes long. As you'll probably notice when listening to this, the sound quality isn't as good. It still is fairly good, but there's some boomy echo. 

The only problem with the PBS portion is that it got cut off in the middle of the song "Hard Headed Woman." I surmise the TV show just played what they could until time ran out. (That makes me wonder if the rest of the concert was recorded at that same excellent quality, and if we'll ever be able to hear the whole thing.) I edited the song so the first half is from the PBS recording and the second half is from the Berkeley recording. Again, you'll probably notice the change, but I figure that's better than not including the song at all.

01 Moonshadow (Cat Stevens)
02 talk (Cat Stevens)
03 On the Road to Find Out (Cat Stevens)
04 Where Do the Children Play (Cat Stevens)
05 talk (Cat Stevens)
06 Wild World (Cat Stevens)
07 talk (Cat Stevens)
08 Miles from Nowhere (Cat Stevens)
09 talk (Cat Stevens)
10 Longer Boats (Cat Stevens)
11 talk (Cat Stevens)
12 Father and Son (Cat Stevens)
13 talk (Cat Stevens)
14 Hard Headed Woman [Edit] (Cat Stevens)
15 Time (Cat Stevens)
16 Fill My Eyes (Cat Stevens)
17 talk (Cat Stevens)
18 Peace Train (Cat Stevens)
19 talk (Cat Stevens)
20 On the Road to Find Out (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687686/CATSTVNS1971b_KCETStdiosLosAnglesCA__6-8-1971_atse.zip.html

I was surprised that I could find any really excellent concert photos in color from 1971. So I used a black and white one and colorized it using the Pixbim program. This photo was taken in London in September 1971.

Cat Stevens - Buddha and the Chocolate Box - Alternate Version (1974)

I just posted a Cat Stevens concert yesterday. While I was looking at my Stevens albums, I decided, what the heck, I'll post this one too. I've made a lot of alternate versions of albums, though I haven't posted many on my blog. Sometimes, an album is pretty good, but if you remove a few songs and add in some others, it becomes much better. That's the case here.

Stevens had his greatest success in the early 1970s, with four killer albums in a row: "Mona Bone Jakon," "Tea for the Tillerman," "Teaser and the Firecat," and "Catch Bull at Four." In my opinion, the quality of his albums took a big hit after that. He still wrote lots of excellent songs, but the albums were hit and miss.

His 1973 album "Foreigner" was a particular disappointment. It was a significant departure from his earlier folky style, and it only had five songs on it, since the "Foreigner Suite" took up half of the album. It sold well, but that was mostly due to inertia from his previous albums. His 1974 album "Buddha and the Chocolate Box" did better, both commercially and critically. But it also is hit and miss. I've removed the songs I like the least: "Sun/C79," "Jesus," and "Home in the Sky."

I've replaced those with a bunch of songs. First, I've added in the three best songs from the "Foreigner" album. "The Hurt" was a minor hit. "Love" and "Heaven" are both excerpts from the 18-minute long "Foreigner Suite," They're the best part of that, by far, and they stand on their own as individual songs.

I've removed three songs and added three songs. But "Buddha and the Chocolate Box" is a short album at only 32 minutes long, so I've added in some more, to make it 38 minutes long. "A Bad Penny" was on that album, but the overproduction (complete with strings) marred the song for me. Instead, I've chosen a live version that was put on his 2001 box set. The last two songs, though, take this album to another level. "Another Saturday Night" is a cover of a Sam Cooke song. Stevens only released it as an A-side in 1974. "Two Fine People" is another A-Side, and also appeared on his "Greatest Hits" album in 1975. Both songs were Top 40 hits in the US. 

Including "Two Fine People" is a bit of a stretch since it came out in 1975 instead of 1974, but he didn't put out an album in 1975, and in my opinion it doesn't have a better album home than this.

In my opinion, after making these changes, this album is just as strong as his four early 1970s albums mentioned above. So if you have those but have shied away from his other 1970s albums, give this a try.

01 The Hurt (Cat Stevens)
02 The Foreigner Suite- Love (Cat Stevens)
03 The Foreigner Suite- Heaven (Cat Stevens)
04 Music (Cat Stevens)
05 Oh Very Young (Cat Stevens)
06 Ghost Town (Cat Stevens)
07 Ready (Cat Stevens)
08 King of Trees (Cat Stevens)
09 A Bad Penny (Cat Stevens)
10 Another Saturday Night (Cat Stevens)
11 Two Fine People (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687688/CATSTVNS1974_BddhaChcolateBoxAlternte_atse.zip.html

The cover is the official cover, with no changes.

Cat Stevens - The Troubadour, Los Angeles, CA, 12-8-1970

There are surprisingly few publicly available Cat Stevens concert recordings from his prime early 1970s. Even the bootlegs are scanty, with most of those from 1971 and almost nothing good from 1970, 1972 or 1973. But recently (as I write this), a super deluxe version of his 1970 album "Mona Bone Jakon" was released. It contains a previously unbootlegged and unknown concert recording of Stevens playing at the Troubadour in Los Angeles in December 1970. This recording sounds fantastic, so I'm sharing it here.

In 1970 and 1971, it seems Stevens played all his concerts in acoustic format, always with second guitarist Alun Davies accompanying him. That's the case here. 

The Troubadour songs on the super deluxe release only add up to 28 minutes. It's a shame more weren't included, because the concert must have been longer than that. In fact, one more song from it was included on a deluxe edition of "Teaser and the Firecat" (with an incorrect date). So I've added that in as well. That still made for a short album. So I've added three more songs at the end that also have just become available on the "Mona Bone Jakon" super deluxe edition. All three of those come from a French TV show recorded in Paris just one month earlier. The sound of these are virtually identical to the rest, with acoustic performances in front of small crowds. 

The super deluxe edition contains five songs recorded at another 1970 concert, at the Plumpton Racecourse in Britain in August 1970. A couple of the songs are different than the ones here, so I was tempted to add them as well. But unfortunately, the sound quality for those is poor, clearly coming from an audience bootleg that had been publicly available for years. The sound quality is such a step down from everyone else here that I decided to not even include them as bonus tracks.

By the way, I'm not entirely sure what the exact date of this concert is. Stevens played the Troubadour six nights in a row, from December 8th to December 13th. The super deluxe edition doesn't mention the specific date, though they give dates for all the other live recordings. But I came across another mention of a recording from December 8th long before the super deluxe edition came out, so that's my best guess.

This album is 41 minutes long, including the three songs at the end from the French TV show.

01 talk (Cat Stevens)
02 Where Do the Children Play (Cat Stevens)
03 talk (Cat Stevens)
04 Hard Headed Woman (Cat Stevens)
05 Longer Boats (Cat Stevens)
06 talk (Cat Stevens)
07 Wild World (Cat Stevens)
08 On the Road to Find Out (Cat Stevens)
09 Father and Son (Cat Stevens)
10 talk (Cat Stevens)
11 Into White (Cat Stevens)
12 talk (Cat Stevens)
13 Moonshadow (Cat Stevens)
14 Katmandu (Cat Stevens)
15 Maybe You’re Right (Cat Stevens)
16 Lady D’Arbanville (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687658/CATSTVNS1970_TrubdurLosAnglesCA__12-8-1970_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from an appearance on the British "Top of the Pops" TV show some time in 1970.

Cat Stevens - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1966-1967

I'm delighted to present this album, because it's something that's very hard to find. As you may know, Cat Stevens had a couple of years as a young star in a poppy style in the late 1960s before disappearing for about a year due to illness and then reinventing himself as a sensitive singer-songwriter. He had a lot of success in his poppy phase, including the songs "I Love My Dog," "Matthew and Son," and "The First Cut Is the Deepest," but it tends to be overlooked in favor of his even more popular later style.

I knew that Stevens performed for the BBC a lot in the 1960s, but I'd assumed most or all of that material had been lost. For instance, there's no videos of that on YouTube, nor can bootlegs of it be found. Until now, that is. Although he played on lots of BBC radio shows, it seems that just his performances from the show "Top of the Pops" have emerged in recent years. (Note that's not to be confused with a BBC TV show of the same name.) So it's pretty remarkable to have this material at all.

But what's even better is that the sound is fantastic. You'd be forgiven if you thought at first that these were simply the studio album versions, especially because they all have the same full production as those versions, often with horns and/or orchestra. But if you listen carefully you'll notice they're all completely different performances, both vocally and instrumentally. There's even a song here that has never been officially released in any form, as far as I can tell: "(You and Your) Shiny Golden Hair."

What's also nice is that even though we only get a sampling of all of his BBC performances, this is a great selection of his 1960s material, and includes his hits from that era. Actually, one of his best known songs from the time, "The First Cut Is the Deepest," wasn't included with the Top of the Pops material. But I found a live version from 1967. It's the one and only fully live version of any song I could find from that era. (There are a few videos of him lip-syncing, or singing new vocals to a backing track, but those aren't worthy of inclusion here.) Its sound quality is a bit rougher than the rest, but I included it since it's possibly the only chance to get a hint of what he sounded like on stage in those early years.

As for the rest of the songs, there was one significant sound problem, which is something that often bedevils me with BBC recordings. Namely, the annoying DJs who talk over the music. Ugh! That happened several times here, always to the starts of the songs. (I've marked those by adding "Edit" to the song titles.) However, I fixed them using the audio editing program X-Minus.

The songs total up to 44 minutes, which makes for a nice album length. This also serves as a de facto greatest hits for his 1960s material, which was made up of two studio albums plus a few singles. The source material lacked any detail about when the songs were recorded, but I did some deep Internet research and managed to figure it all out. But in some cases I may be using the dates the songs were recorded, and in others the dates they were broadcast. The information I found was sometimes vague about that.

UPDATE: On February 14, 2022, I updated the mp3 download file. No songs were added or removed. But because I made a later BBC sessions album by this one, I added "Volume 1" to the title. I changed the cover art to match. More importantly, I fixed the BBC DJ talking over the music problem better than I did originally, thanks to my discovery of programs like X-Minus.

01 I Love My Dog (Cat Stevens)
02 [You and Your] Shiny Golden Hair [Edit] (Cat Stevens)
03 The Tramp [Edit] (Cat Stevens)
04 Matthew and Son (Cat Stevens)
05 Granny [Edit] (Cat Stevens)
06 Portabello Road (Cat Stevens)
07 School Is Out (Cat Stevens)
08 I'm Gonna Get Me a Gun (Cat Stevens)
09 Hummingbird (Cat Stevens)
10 Lady [Edit] (Cat Stevens)
11 I Found a Love [Edit] (Cat Stevens)
12 The Laughing Apple (Cat Stevens)
13 A Bad Night (Cat Stevens)
14 Moonstone (Cat Stevens)
15 Kitty (Cat Stevens)
16 Blackness of the Night [Edit] (Cat Stevens)
17 I Love Them All [Edit] (Cat Stevens)
18 The First Cut Is the Deepest (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15430731/CatSvns_1966-1967_BBSessionsVolum1_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I used a photo that is said to be of Stevens "circa 1967."

Cat Stevens - Man with No Country - Non-Album Tracks (2001-2017)

In the mid-1970s, Cat Stevens converted to Islam. It became such a big part of his life that at the end of the 1970s, he gave up his musical career altogether. He didn't even play the guitar for a couple of decades. Then, in the 1990s, under the name "Yusuf Islam," he resumed making records, but all of his songs were about Islam, and appealed pretty much exclusively to a limited Islamic audience. In 2006, he finally resumed making secular music with his album "An Other Cup." Since then, he's made more secular albums and toured some, reconnecting with his classic older music.

This album collects his stray tracks for this second phase of his secular music career (so far). He hasn't done that much in terms of non-album tracks, but this album covers a nearly 20-year timespan, which is enough to collect an album's worth of good songs.

Note that I'm not a religious person, so I have no interest in his Islamic-themed music. But I did include one song from the tail-end of that era of his career, "I Look, I See." Yes, it has a religious theme, but it's also a damn fine pop song that in my opinion has the same songwriting magic of his classic late-1960s/early 1970s period. And by the way, I'm only calling him "Cat Stevens" here even though he generally called himself "Yusuf Islam," and then just "Yusuf," for most of this time period. On his most recent album he's gone back to calling himself "Cat Stevens," and I think it's pretty obvious that that's the name his music will be remembered by.

Most of the songs here are cover versions, though there are a few originals, such as the previously mentioned "I Look, I See," as well as "Indian Ocean," "My People," and "He Was Alone." It's clear he's a big Beatles fan, and especially a George Harrison fan, because he covers two Beatles songs, one of them written by Harrison, and two Harrison solo songs. That makes perfect sense, because he and Harrison have shared an intense interest in religious matters.

Most of the songs have been officially released. Only four have not. But those four generally sound as good as official releases. The only one that doesn't is his version of "Somewhere," a song originally from "West Side Story." The sound quality on that is a bit rough, but still very acceptable. The rest of the songs come from singles, various artists compilations, and the like.

As I write this in 2021, Stevens is 71 years old. Yet I swear his voice sounds exactly like he did in the 1970s. It's uncanny, like he just popped out of a time machine. His musical sensibilities are very much the same too. Basically, if you enjoy his classic era stuff, you should like this.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Peace Train [Acappella Version] (Cat Stevens)
02 I Look, I See (Cat Stevens)
03 Indian Ocean (Cat Stevens)
04 Man with No Country (Cat Stevens)
05 Saturn (Cat Stevens)
06 Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Cat Stevens)
07 All Things Must Pass (Cat Stevens & Klaus Voormann)
08 The Day the World Gets 'Round (Cat Stevens & Klaus Voormann)
09 How Long - Peace Train Blues (Cat Stevens)
10 My People (Cat Stevens)
11 The Long and Winding Road (Cat Stevens)
12 Somewhere (Cat Stevens)
13 He Was Alone (Cat Stevens)
14 Here Comes the Sun (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687687/CATSTVNS2001-2017_MnwithNoCountry_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a Stevens concert in Dublin in 2006.

Cat Stevens - Vina del Mar Festival, Quinta Vergara, Vina del Mar, Chile, 2-27-2015

In the past few years, Cat Stevens has had a really impressive career renaissance that I think most people have missed. In my opinion, in terms of live shows, this is the best representation of that. His voice sounds exactly the same as it did in the 1970s. Really!

In my opinion, Stevens' creative heyday was in the early 1970s, and his record sales reflect that. As the 1970s went on, his songwriting declined and the production on his records got worse. He quit the music industry entirely by the end of that decade, and devoted his life to his new religion of Islam. For a time, he changed his name to Yusuf Islam, and then just to Yusuf. For his most recent album, released in 2017, he's gone back to "Cat Stevens," so I'm calling him that for consistency's sake.

In the 1990s, Stevens gradually returned to music, but he put out albums about Islam and sang mostly in Arabic, so that had limited appeal. He returned to English secular music with the 2006 album "An Other Cup," and then with the album "Roadsinger" in 2009. But in my opinion, although the production on those albums was okay, his songwriting didn't have the special magic of his 1970s heyday.

That takes us to 2014, and this concert. He put out the album "Tell 'Em I'm Gone," which was mostly filled with bluesy covers. But they were done really well, and the few originals on it were the best songs he did since the 1970s, in my opinion. He's followed that with a 2017 album, "The Laughing Apple," which I think is even better. It sounds exactly like it was recorded in 1971, and a lot of the songs on it actually were written in the late 1960s. If you're a Cat Stevens fan, you really need to check it out. It's amazing to me that he has his mojo back after so many years.

Since 2014 especially, Stevens has been touring a fair amount, doing his first tours of the US and Europe since the 1970s. But unfortunately, he hasn't put out a live album, and all the bootlegs from that time that I've sampled have average to poor sound quality.

Except for this one show, thankfully. Apparently, this concert was professionally recorded and shown on TV in Chile. The video of it has made its way to YouTube (where you can still watch it), and it's been seen by a couple of million people. Unfortunately, I downloaded that video, and it's only in mono. But I discovered the concert organizers uploaded each individual song to YouTube as well, and those are in stereo.

So that's what this is, a compilation of all those stereo YouTube videos, converted to mp3 and put in their proper order. One snag was that the individual videos generally faded out in the middle of the applause at the end of each song, and the next song would begin with the clapping still going on. So I went through all the songs and carefully removed all the annoying fade ins and fade outs while still keeping the applause. I also cut out several minutes of announcers talking in Spanish at the beginning of the concert, then again at the start of the encore to give Stevens an award, and more at the very end.

The end result is an hour and a half concert that probably has the best sound quality of any live recording of Stevens' entire career (since recording technology wasn't as good in the 1970s). The setlist is great. He does his classic 1960s and 1970s songs, with a few covers from his 2014 album sprinkled in. It's played with a full band (including Alun Davies, who has been his right hand man and lead guitarist since 1970, incredibly enough).

01 Wild World (Cat Stevens)
02 Where Do the Children Play (Cat Stevens)
03 The First Cut Is the Deepest (Cat Stevens)
04 Here Comes My Baby (Cat Stevens)
05 talk (Cat Stevens)
06 Dying to Live (Cat Stevens)
07 talk (Cat Stevens)
08 You Are My Sunshine (Cat Stevens)
09 Oh Very Young (Cat Stevens)
10 [Remember the Days of the] Old Schoolyard (Cat Stevens)
11 Sad Lisa (Cat Stevens)
12 Miles from Nowhere (Cat Stevens)
13 talk (Cat Stevens)
14 People Get Ready (Cat Stevens)
15 Maybe There's a World - All You Need Is Love (Cat Stevens)
16 talk (Cat Stevens)
17 If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out (Cat Stevens)
18 talk (Cat Stevens)
19 How Can I Tell You (Cat Stevens)
20 talk (Cat Stevens)
21 Roadsinger (Cat Stevens)
22 Moonshadow (Cat Stevens)
23 talk (Cat Stevens)
24 The Devil Came from Kansas (Cat Stevens)
25 Trouble (Cat Stevens)
26 Sitting (Cat Stevens)
27 talk (Cat Stevens)
28 Big Boss Man (Cat Stevens)
29 Rubylove (Cat Stevens)
30 Morning Has Broken (Cat Stevens)
31 talk (Cat Stevens)
32 Peace Train (Cat Stevens)
33 talk (Cat Stevens)
34 Father and Son (Cat Stevens)
35 talk (Cat Stevens)
36 Another Saturday Night (Cat Stevens)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gtsiD

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/XvhenLiP

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/FfmKNO2x18fe03D/file

For the album cover, I've used a photo of Stevens from 2015, but it's from the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards ceremony about two months after this concert.

Cat Stevens - Don't Be Shy - Non-Album Tracks (1969-1972)

I like a lot of Cat Stevens' music, but my favorite era from him by far is 1970 to 1972, covering his "Mona Bone Jakon," "Tea for the Tillerman," "Teaser and the Firecat" and "Catch Bull at Four" albums. Those are the albums of his that have sold the most, by far. Sometimes a musician is in "the zone" when just about anything they did was excellent, and he was in the zone then.

This album covers pretty much that exact same time period, 1969 to 1972. The stray tracks here aren't quite as solid as the four albums mentioned above, but they're pretty darn close, and contain some of his best songs, like "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out," and "I've Got a Thing about Seeing My Grandson Grow Old." If you like classic Cat Stevens music, you should have the songs on this album.

Aside from the first two songs here, which were an obscure single, and the last two, which were B-sides, none of the songs on this album were released until many years after they were recorded. Two of the songs, "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out" and "Don't Be Shy," were prominently featured in the movie "Harold and Maude," but there was no soundtrack released, and the songs didn't get an official release until they were included on a greatest hits album in 1984. Most of the rest didn't come out until a box set in 2001.

But even then, there still are three songs here that remain officially unreleased until this day. One, "But I Might Die Tonight," also appears on his 1971 "Tea for the Tillerman" album. However, this version was featured in a movie called "Deep End" the year before, and it's got a significantly different arrangement. I don't know why the other two unreleased songs ("Can This Be Love" and "The Fisherman" are still unreleased, because I think they're just as good as the others here.

There's one more original song from this time period that only shows up on bootleg which I have no included, called "It's So Good." Unfortunately, "It's So Bad" would be a better title. I think it's one of the worst songs he ever wrote, so I'm not even going to dignify it by including it as a bonus track.

By the way, if you enjoy this era of Stevens' music, definitely check out the other two albums by him that I've posted on this blog. They're excellent sounding acoustic demos.

Oh, also, I strongly recommend his 2017 album "The Laughing Apple." I'm not much of a fan of his music since his first retirement around 1979. He started putting out secular music again in 2006, but I don't think most of his new songs had that special something his songs from his peak era did. However, "The Laughing Apple" is a very big exception. It sounds exactly like it could have been released in 1972, which his songwriting and production just as good as it was back then, and his voice hasn't changed at all!  

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Where Are You (Cat Stevens)
02 The View from the Top (Cat Stevens)
03 If Only Mother Can See Me Now (Cat Stevens)
04 I've Got a Thing about Seeing My Grandson Grow Old (Cat Stevens)
05 Honey Man (Cat Stevens with Elton John)
06 Love Lives in the Sky [Land O' Freelove and Goodbye] (Cat Stevens)
07 I Want Some Sun (Cat Stevens)
08 The Joke (Cat Stevens)
09 But I Might Die Tonight [Deep End Version] (Cat Stevens)
10 Can This Be Love (Cat Stevens)
11 Fisherman Song (Cat Stevens)
12 Don't Be Shy (Cat Stevens)
13 If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out (Cat Stevens)
14 The Day They Make Me Tsar (Cat Stevens)
15 I Want to Live in a Wigwam (Cat Stevens)
16 Crab Dance [Instrumental] (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687666/CATSTVNS1969-1972_DntBShy_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art based on a photo of Stevens around 1970.

Cat Stevens - Morgan Studios Demos 1971

Here's the second of the two acoustic Cat Stevens albums. Don't be fooled by the similar album covers and titles - these contain completely different songs, with no overlap.

I said pretty much all I needed to be said when I posted the first one. So I'll just emphasize that if you like Cat Stevens' music at all, you really need to listen to this. The sound quality is great.

Also, sadly, there's no publicly available demos from 1972 or beyond. Even the live acoustic shows disappear after 1971. I suppose he switched to more of a full band sound at that point.

Note that since I first posted this album around 2019, super deluxe editions of his albums "Tea for the Tillerman" and "Teaser and the Firecat" have been released. Between them, the vast majority of these versions have now been officially released.

Three of the songs here are still unreleased though: "Trouble," "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out," and "Peace Train." However, in my opinion, the bootleg sound quality is so good that you can't tell the difference. I carefully checked the official and unofficial versions, and I discovered that two of them were totally different performances. So I've put one of each of those on the "Morgan Studio Demos 1970" album, and one here. Those are the first two songs on this one.

This album is 36 minutes long.

01 Trouble [Alternate Version] (Cat Stevens)
02 If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out [Alternate Version] (Cat Stevens)
03 Tuesday's Dead (Cat Stevens)
04 Moonshadow (Cat Stevens)
05 Peace Train (Cat Stevens)
06 Don't Be Shy (Cat Stevens)
07 Rubylove (Cat Stevens)
08 If I Laugh (Cat Stevens)
09 Changes IV (Cat Stevens)
10 How Can I Tell You (Cat Stevens)
11 Morning Has Broken (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687685/CATSTVNS1971a_MorgnStudiosDmos1971_atse.zip.html

I'm not sure what year the cover art photo is from exactly, but it's around 1971.

Cat Stevens - Morgan Studios Demos 1970

As I mentioned previously, I have a particular love for when songs are stripped down to their acoustic basics, and here's one of my favorites when it comes to that. The songs on Cat Stevens' early 1970s albums were already lightly produced, but this is usually just him on guitar (or sometimes piano), plus he's typically accompanied by second guitarist Alun Davies.

This is based on a bootleg that came out a few years ago. The sound quality and performance is so superb that they really need to be officially released. I split the bootleg into two albums, because some songs were recorded in 1970 and some in 1971. Here's the first.

When I first posted this album in 2019, the vast majority of the versions were officially unreleased. But since then, super deluxe editions of the albums "Mona Bone Jakon" and "Tea for the Tillerman" were released. Both of them included some, but not all, of these acoustic demos. I think the record company missed a golden opportunity - an album of just acoustic demos would have done well. But at least some released are better than none. Only three remain officially unreleased: "I've Got a Thing about Seeing My Grandson Grow Old," "Lady D'Arbanville," and "Tea for the Tillerman."

Some of the official versions were previously unbootlegged, so that's nice. One of those, the demo for "Mona Bone Jakon," sounds rougher than the rest, but it's still acceptable. Frankly, the sound quality of the bootleg and released versions were nearly identical, overall.

Note that the last song, "Hard Headed Woman," isn't actually a studio demo. Instead, it comes from a performance on the German TV show "Beat Club." But it's done in a solo acoustic style, and fits in well with the others, so I couldn't resist adding it in.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 I've Got a Thing about Seeing My Grandson Grow Old (Cat Stevens)
02 Katmandu (Cat Stevens)
03 Time (Cat Stevens)
04 Fill My Eyes (Cat Stevens)
05 Lady D'Arbanville (Cat Stevens)
06 Tea for the Tillerman (Cat Stevens)
07 Trouble (Cat Stevens)
08 Maybe You're Right (Cat Stevens)
09 I Think I See the Light (Cat Stevens)
10 Mona Bone Jakon (Cat Stevens)
11 I Wish, I Wish (Cat Stevens)
12 If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out (Cat Stevens)
13 Miles from Nowhere (Cat Stevens)
14 Wild World (Cat Stevens)
15 Hard Headed Woman (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687660/CATSTVNS1970_MorgnStudiosDmos1970_atse.zip.html

I made the cover using an early 1970s photo by George Wilke.