Heatwave Festival, Mosport Park, Bowmanville, Canada, 8-23-1980, Part 2: Rockpile

The second set I have from the 1980 Heatwave Festival was performed by Rockpile, a rocking foursome led by both Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds.

Rockpile played many concerts from 1977 to 1981, but Lowe and Edmunds were on different record labels, so they were only able to release one studio album, "Seconds of Pleasure," in 1980. That album actually came out two months after this concert, so none of the songs here are from it. But there are some songs from the most recent solo albums by Edmunds ("Repeat When Necessary") and Lowe ("Labour of Lust").

This album perhaps is a bit redundant, because two official Rockpile live albums were eventually released that are from 1980 concerts, "Live at Montreux 1980" and "Live at Rockpalast." But in my opinion, it's hard to have too much live Rockpile, at least when it has this level of sound quality, since this unreleased concert is from a soundboard source. 

There was a problem with one song, "Sweet Little Lisa." The sound balance was really off for most of the song, with the overall volume fluctuating and different instruments out of whack. But I was able to fix that in Audacity, so it should sound pretty normal now. This kind of thing sometimes happens with the first songs of concerts, while the sound mix was being adjusted on the fly.

This album is 55 minutes long.

Note that the song numbering continues from where the last album in the festival left off, in case one wants to hear all the songs from it in a row. Also, I have zeroes at the start of the track numbers because there were over a 100 songs in the festival.

023 talk (Rockpile)
024 Sweet Little Lisa [Edit] (Rockpile)
025 So It Goes (Rockpile)
026 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Rockpile)
027 talk (Rockpile)
028 Queen of Hearts (Rockpile)
029 Switchboard Susan (Rockpile)
030 Trouble Boys (Rockpile)
031 Girls Talk (Rockpile)
032 Three Time Loser (Rockpile)
033 talk (Rockpile)
034 You Ain't Nothing but Fine (Rockpile)
035 Crawling from the Wreckage (Rockpile)
036 talk (Rockpile)
037 Let It Rock (Rockpile)
038 Singing the Blues (Rockpile)
039 I Hear You Knocking (Rockpile)
040 They Called It Rock (Rockpile)
041 Ju Ju Man (Rockpile)
042 Down Down Down (Rockpile)
043 Let's Talk about Us (Rockpile)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17315605/VA-HtwveFstivlMsprtPrkBwmnvlleCnda__8-23-1980_02Rckple.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/imXeAsYt

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. That's Edmunds on the left and Lowe on the right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As mentioned above, this album is 48 minutes long.

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

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

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/E9X4FPne

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

Rockpile - The Bottom Line, New York City, 10-24-1978

I love Rockpile, the late 1970s band with Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds. They had lots of great songs, and they could really rock. It's a shame they never got their due, in my opinion largely due to the fact that Lowe and Edmunds were on different record labels, so Rockpile was only ever able to record one studio album, right when they broke up.

Rockpile definitely excelled on stage. It's too bad they never released a live album while they were still together. One was released decades later, but that's a concert from 1980. This show is from 1978, with a significantly different song list. This concert from The Bottom Line in New York City is a great one. It was played live on the radio, so the sound quality is as good as a professionally recorded live album. Just listening to it, I can almost see and smell the sweat from a tightly packed crowd dancing to the relentlessly energetic songs. If you like good ol' rock and roll, give this a listen! 

There were some issues with the bootleg recording that I had to fix. The music was just fine, but sometimes things got a little problematic with the applause after some songs. In two cases, a DJ for the radio station recording and playing the concert over the radio spoke over the applause to remind listeners what station they were listening to. I removed those. In a few other cases, the applause at the ends of songs was missing or cut short. So I did my usual trick of patching in applause from the ends of other songs.

There are two notable things about the last song, "Let It Rock," a Chuck Berry number. First, it features Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones as an additional lead guitarist. Two, it's not actually from the concert in question. But, it's from the very next night, at the same venue. The recording of that night is also excellent. The set list was the same with the exception of this one song with Richards, so I've only included that song at the end.

By the way, Lowe once wrote an interesting account of Richards playing "Let It Rock." It's probably from the appearance that is included here, though it's possible he played with the band more than one. Lowe claims it was at the Bottom Line, but in 1979, but he could have the timing wrong. Anyway, here's the link to the short story:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/keith-richards-meets-rockpile-1979.86634/

The concert is 59 minutes long, including the extra song with Richards. If you own listen to just one Rockpile concert, I recommend this one, even over their official album "Live at Montreux 1980."

01 Down, Down, Down (Rockpile)
02 So It Goes (Rockpile)
03 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Rockpile)
04 talk (Rockpile)
05 Deborah (Rockpile)
06 talk (Rockpile)
07 I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass (Rockpile)
08 talk (Rockpile)
09 No More Mr. Nice Guy (Rockpile)
10 Trouble Boys (Rockpile)
11 It's My Own Business (Rockpile)
12 talk (Rockpile)
13 Never Been in Love (Rockpile)
14 Love So Fine (Rockpile)
15 Promised Land (Rockpile)
16 talk (Rockpile)
17 I Hear You Knocking (Rockpile)
18 They Called It Rock (Rockpile)
19 Heart of the City (Rockpile)
20 Ju Ju Man (Rockpile)
21 Here Comes the Weekend (Rockpile)
22 Let It Rock (Rockpile with Keith Richards)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697075/ROCKPLE1978_BottmLneNwYrkC__10-24-1978_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo features just Nick Lowe (left) and Dave Edmunds (right). I could have used a photo with all four band members, but I liked this one the best. It's from a concert in New York City in August 1979, probably the Palladium.

Rockpile - Rip It Up - Non-Album Tracks (1980)

In 1980, the band Rockpile released their one and only studio album, "Seconds of Pleasure." Keep in mind that Rockpile basically was a musical alliance between Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe. This is the fourth of four stray tracks albums I've put together of Rockpile performances that don't include performances from Edmunds or Lowe solo albums, even when they were backed by all four members of Rockpile. I also didn't include any songs that were also on the "Seconds of Pleasure," whether they were the exact same performances or not. Yet I still was able to find enough unique songs from that same year of 1980 to fill up an album of stray tracks.

The vast majority of songs here are fun cover versions, often of famous songs. Nearly all are unreleased, and come from live performances. But there are a couple of suggestions. "Loud Music in Cars" is the name of a minor hit by Billy Bremner, Rockpile's other guitarist who occasionally sang lead. The single came out in 1981, but this is a very similar demo version that was done in 1980. Also, in 1979, Edmunds had a solo hit with the song "Girls Talk," which was written by Elvis Costello. In 1980, Rockpile released "Boys Talk," which was cowritten by Lowe and Edmunds and has no similarity to "Girls Talk" except for the very similar title. It was released as a B-side.

Regarding the live performances on this album, the problem with some of them is the sound quality. Some of these were done only rarely in concert, so we only have versions from audience bootlegs, which can sound rather rough. The two roughest, "Hey Baby" and "What Did I Do Last Night" have been demoted to bonus tracks. But frankly, a couple of the others don't sound a lot better, in terms of sound quality. But I think the sound quantity issue is more than made up for by the musical performance.

01 Sweet Little Lisa (Rockpile)
02 Baby Ride Easy (Carlene Carter & Rockpile)
03 You'll Never Get Me Up in One of Those (Rockpile)
04 Loud Music in Cars [Demo] (Billy Bremner)
05 Singing the Blues (Rockpile)
06 Cry, Cry, Cry (Rockpile)
07 Big Blond Baby (Rockpile)
08 Boys Talk (Rockpile)
09 Rip It Up - Ready Teddy (Rockpile)
10 The Wanderer (Rockpile)
11 Don't Fight It (Rockpile)

Hey Baby (Rockpile)
What Did I Do Last Night (Rockpile)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266546/Rockpl_1980_RpItUp_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mNPFm8UL

The cover art photo of the band comes from 1980.

Rockpile - Let It Rock - Non-Album Tracks (1979)

This is the third of four stray tracks Rockpile albums I'm posting. It's kind of an imaginary alternate history, pretending that Rockpile put out an album every year while they were still in existence.

Rockpile, as you may know, was basically a musical alliance between guitarist Dave Edmunds and bassist and songwriter Nick Lowe, with the two of them talking turns being the lead singer. It was a strange situation, because from 1977 to 1980, Rockpile never put out a studio (or live) album until 1980, because Lowe and Edmunds were on different record labels. Yet during those years Edmunds and Lowe always toured together as part of Rockpile.

As with the other albums in this series, I have avoided using any of the studio tracks from Edmunds or Lowe, when they were usually backed by all of Rockpile. Instead, this is entirely made up of live versions of songs Rockpile did in concert.

Edmunds put out an album in 1979 called "Repeat When Necessary." Three of the songs here are versions of songs from that album. Lowe also put out an album in 1979, "Labour of Love." Four of the songs here are versions of songs from that. That counts for seven of the 13 songs. The others are generally cover versions that never appeared on album, such as versions of the classic songs "Let It Rock" by Chuck Berry and "Jailhouse Rock" by Elvis Presley.

Note there's one kind of strange song here, "Little Sister." What's unusual about it is that the lead singer is actually Robert Plant, while he was still part of Led Zeppelin. This is because in 1979 there was a benefit concert known as the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea. Rockpile played, and Led Zeppelin didn't, but Plant joined them as a guest for this one song, which is a cover of an Elvis Presley hit.

That song, plus another one from that same concert, "Crawling from the Wreckage," were officially released as part of a live album for that benefit. The rest are all officially unreleased. But the sound quality is generally very good for the unreleased songs too. Most of them come from a concert that was professionally recorded and played live on the radio at the time. The last song, "What Looks Best on You," clearly comes from an audience bootleg and is rougher sounding than the rest, but it's still very listenable.

01 Rockin' Little Angel (Rockpile)
02 Girls Talk (Rockpile)
03 Cracking Up (Rockpile)
04 Switchboard Susan (Rockpile)
05 Queen of Hearts (Rockpile)
06 Let It Rock (Rockpile)
07 Jailhouse Rock (Rockpile)
08 Born Fighter (Rockpile)
09 Cruel to Be Kind (Rockpile)
10 Little Sister (Rockpile with Robert Plant)
11 Crawling from the Wreckage (Rockpile)
12 Three Time Loser (Rockpile)
13 What Looks Best on You (Rockpile)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266516/Rockpl_1979_LtItRock_atse.zip.html

The photo for the cover art was taken in Chicago in November 1980. I'm using it because I was able to find lots of good photos of the band in 1980 but none in 1979.

Rockpile - Fool Too Long - Non-Album Tracks (1978)

Some days ago, I posted an album of stray tracks from Rockpile, the band where Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds joined forces from 1977 to 1980. During those years, Lowe and Edmunds generally put out solo albums every year or two, and they usually were backed by all four members of Rockpile for those albums. The challenge I've given myself in this series of albums is to not use any of the performances from those albums, since I listen a lot to those albums anyway.

Instead, I'm using versions of songs from those albums as well as other songs Rockpile did that didn't make it onto any of those albums. The vast majority of these performances come from concerts, since there is very little studio material available from the band other than those albums, yet they toured frequently while they were together. I believe three of the songs were not recorded in different versions on any of those solo albums: "Fool Too Long," "Let's Eat," "Stuck in the Fog,"

Two of those exclusive songs - "Let's Eat" and "Stuck in the Fog" - have been officially released. All these rest come from concert bootlegs. Luckily, there are enough bootlegs for me to find versions of these songs with good sound quality, even though some of them are from audience recordings, not soundboards. As I often do, I removed the audience noise to make these all consistently sound like studio tracks.

01 So It Goes (Rockpile)
02 Goodbye Mr. Good Guy (Rockpile)
03 I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass (Rockpile)
04 It's My Own Business (Rockpile)
05 Fool Too Long (Rockpile)
06 Trouble Boys (Rockpile)
07 Never Been in Love (Rockpile)
08 Let's Eat (Nick Lowe & Rockpile)
09 Stuck in the Fog (Billy Bremner)
10 Here Comes the Weekend (Rockpile)
11 Love So Fine (Rockpile)
12 Deborah (Rockpile)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697074/ROCKPLE1978_FolTooLng_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any good photos from 1978. This one was taken in Toronto, Canada, in 1980. I used Photoshop to move the two band members at the bottom higher up.

Rockpile - A Mess of Blues - Non-Album Tracks (1977)

I'm very happy to present this album. I really love Rockpile, and I think this is great music that really rocks. You should check it out.

I should explain a bit about Rockpile, because they were a band with a rather unusual history. They basically were the merger of the careers of Dave Edmunds (on vocals and guitar) and Nick Lowe (on vocals and bass), with Billy Bremner (on vocals and guitar) and Terry Williams (on drums) rounding out the group. Edmunds would sing about half the songs and Lowe the other half, with Bremner getting to sing a song every now and then.

What made them unusual was that the band was together for about five years, and yet they only put out one studio album, near the end of their time together. This is because Edmunds was on one record label and Lowe was on another, and both wanted to pursue solo careers. So Rockpile was the backing band on all the songs for one of Lowe's solo albums and two of Edmunds', as well as backing some songs on their other solo albums. But while that was going on, neither Lowe or Edmunds did solo concerts. Nearly all their concerts from 1977 to the end of 1980 were done with Rockpile. Such concerts were billed as "Rockpile" despite the band not having any albums or even singles released. I guess word of mouth spread who Rockpile really was.

I've made four stray tracks albums for Rockpile; this is the first one. It would have been easy for me to simply collect the performances from the various Edmunds and Lowe solo albums and put them together to make Rockpile albums. But I didn't do that, because I think all those albums are really good as they are. Instead, I limited myself to everything else I could find. Since Rockpile was a very active live band, that mainly meant using recordings from live shows.

All the performances here are from 1977. About half the songs are different versions of songs from either Edmunds' or Lowe's solo albums at the time. Three more songs are versions of songs from Edmunds albums in 1970 or 1972 ("Down, Down, Down," "The Promised Land," and "I Hear You Knocking").

That leaves four songs. "A Mess of Blues" is a cover of a song made famous by Elvis Presley. "Downtown Hoedown" was recorded by Billy Bremner right before he joined Rockpile, but not released until many years after the band broke up. "Annie's Back - I Need Love" are a medley of obscure covers sung by Bremner. And "As Lovers Do" was the B-side to a Edmunds single. I've included it because it was a duet with Lowe.

01 Heart of the City (Rockpile)
02 Ju Ju Man (Rockpile)
03 Down, Down, Down (Rockpile)
04 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Rockpile)
05 Back to School Days (Rockpile)
06 They Called It Rock (Rockpile)
07 A Mess of Blues (Rockpile)
08 I Hear You Knocking (Rockpile)
09 Downtown Hoedown (Billy Bremner)
10 The Promised Land (Rockpile)
11 Let's Talk about Us (Rockpile)
12 Annie's Back - I Need Love (Rockpile)
13 As Lovers Do (Dave Edmunds with Nick Lowe)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266518/Rockpl_1977_AMssBlues_atse.zip.html

I haven't been able to find lot of good color photos of Rockpile in color. For the album cover, I found a cover of a Rockpile bootleg that looked great. So I used it with only minor changes. I don't know where or when the photo is from.

Rockpile - Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds Sing the Everly Brothers - Expanded Version (1979)

This is a fun little thing. In August 1979, Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds of Rockpile played an session for the BBC with just the two of them and their acoustic guitars. They must have been in a big Everly Brothers mood, because they played five Everly Brothers songs in a row, then two of their own songs, then two other old cover songs. They jokingly called themselves the "Beverly Brothers."

A year later, Rockpile finally released a studio album (Seconds of Pleasure) after backing each other's solo albums for a few years, and they included four of the Everly Brothers covers from this session as a bonus EP. But the other songs were never released, except on a bootleg that didn't include the released songs. Here are all of the songs, together and in the order they were performed. They're short songs, so it's only a 22 minute album, but it's a fun one.

01 Problems, Problems (Rockpile)
02 Take a Message to Mary (Rockpile)
03 Crying in the Rain (Rockpile)
04 Poor Jenny (Rockpile)
05 When Will I Be Loved (Rockpile)
06 What Looks Best on You (Rockpile)
07 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Rockpile)
08 Blue Moon of Kentucky (Rockpile)
09 The Race Is On (Rockpile)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266508/Rockpl_1979_SingEvrlyBrthersExpnded_atse.zip.html

The cover art is based on the EP cover, but I made some changes. (The original specifically mentioned four song titles, but that doesn't work anymore when there's nine songs.)