Lone Justice - Little Diva and Sugar Jones - Non-Album Tracks (1985-1987)

I just posted a Lone Justice stray tracks album, and said it was the first of two, from 1983 to 1984. Here's the second.

This one covers 1985 to 1987. During that time, they released the albums "Lone Justice" in 1985 and "Shelter" in 1986. Yet they were prolific enough to have this album's worth of different songs as well.

Lone Justice was practically two bands, because between the first and second albums, all the personnel changed except for lead singer Maria McKee and guitarist Ryan Hedgecock. The first four songs are from 1985, and feature the first version of the band. Two of those are from the unreleased concert I've posted already. You can get the full concert here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/08/lone-justice-ritz-new-york-city-9-18.html

Note that another of these first four songs is "Sweet Jane," the Velvet Underground song. I included a studio version on my 1983 to 1984 stray tracks album. This one is a live version. I figured it's worthy of inclusion because it's significantly different, including being three minutes longer.

The rest of the songs are from the second version of the band, from 1986 to 1987. The first two of those are B-sides, and the third one comes from an archival live album. That leaves the last four songs. All of those are unreleased, but are studio recordings in excellent sound quality. They come from recording sessions for the band's planned third album. I don't know why, but McKee decided to break up the band mid-way through those sessions, so a third album never happened. The song "Panic Beach" (which by the way I think is great) would later be recorded for McKee's first solo album. But the other three appear to have never been released in any form, even though they all seem to be good originals.

By the way, the first song on this album, "Go 'Way Little Boy," is a rare case of a song Bob Dylan specifically wrote for another artist, and then never officially released any version of it for himself. "Fortunate Son" and "Cry Baby" are cover versions of famous songs (along with "Sweet Jane"), but I think the rest of the songs are originals.

01 Go 'Way Little Boy (Lone Justice)
02 Fortunate Son (Lone Justice)
03 Cry Baby (Lone Justice)
04 Sweet Jane (Lone Justice)
05 I Can't Look Back (Lone Justice)
06 If You Don't like Rain (Lone Justice)
07 Heaven (Lone Justice)
08 Friends for a While (Lone Justice)
09 Panic Beach (Lone Justice)
10 Little Diva and Sugar Jones (Lone Justice)
11 Much Too Good at Goodbye (Lone Justice)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15262413/LoneJus_1985-1987_LittleDvaandSugarJons_atse.zip.html

I don't know where or when this photo comes from. But it's definitely of McKee during her Lone Justice years, and I liked it enough to use it. As for the album title I chose, I think "Little Diva and Sugar Jones" refer to McKee and Hedgecock, the two founders of Lone Justice, but I'm not sure.

Lone Justice - Rattlesnake Mama - Non-Album Tracks (1983-1984)

I've posted a 1985 concert from Lone Justice, Maria McKee's 1980s band, and I've posted a bunch of Maria McKee's solo stuff, with more to come. But it occurred to me that I haven't posted Lone Justice stray tracks yet, so I'm going to do that now. There are enough so that I've been able to make two albums out of them. Here's the first one.

Lone Justice was formed in 1982, but they didn't put their first album until 1985, the first of only two. It turns out they did a fair amount of recording in 1983 and 1984, and had enough material for an album, but didn't release it, for some reason. Many fans believe their 1985 and 1986 albums were overproduced, and didn't reflect how great the band was in concert. Those fans generally prefer their 1983 and 1984 recordings as being more authentic to their "cowpunk" sound. (Personally, I like their first album, but I think their second one was overcooked.)

The vast majority of songs here have been officially released, but almost all of them came out on archival releases many years later. Only "Never Be You," a Maria McKee solo track released as part of a movie soundtrack, came out at the time. Three of the songs - "Sweet Jane," "The Highway Song," and "Jackson" - are still unreleased. But those are studio recordings, and they have excellent sound. The vast majority of the songs were written by McKee and/or other Lone Justice band members, though there are a few exceptions, such as the above-mentioned "Sweet Jane" and "Jackson," as well as "Working Man's Blues" and "This World Is Not My Home" and probably a couple of others.

All in all, it's very strange that Lone Justice didn't release an album by 1984 that contained many of these songs. I suspect their record company saw so much potential in McKee and her fantastic voice that they wanted to try to hit a home run with her right away, and didn't let the band develop in an organic way. At least we have these recordings.

Two songs have been included as bonus tracks. One, "Sweet Dr. Jesus," was recorded in 1981, when McKee was just 15 years old. She sings it with Bryan McLean of the 1960s band Love, who, believe it or not, was her much older half-brother. The other bonus track, "Mama Said You're Doing Me Wrong," is a fine song from 1984 that I otherwise would have included, but the only recording I know of comes from an audience concert bootleg, and the sound quality is rather rough. By the way, that song was co-written by McKee and McLean.

01 Drugstore Cowboy (Lone Justice)
02 Nothing Can Stop My Loving You (Lone Justice)
03 Dustbowl Depression Time (Lone Justice)
04 Grapes of Wrath (Lone Justice)
05 Rattlesnake Mama (Lone Justice)
06 Working Man's Blues (Lone Justice)
07 Cactus Rose (Lone Justice)
08 Cotton Belt (Lone Justice)
09 This World Is Not My Home [I Ain't Got No Home] (Lone Justice)
10 How Lonesome Life Has Been (Lone Justice)
11 Sweet Jane (Lone Justice)
12 The Highway Song (Lone Justice)
13 Never Be You (Maria McKee)
14 The Train (Lone Justice)
15 Jackson (Lone Justice)

Mama Said You're Doing Me Wrong (Lone Justice)
Sweet Dr. Jesus (Maria McKee with Bryan MacLean)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16695507/LONJSTCE1983-1984_RttlesnkeMma_atse.zip.html

I'm not sure when or where the cover art photo is from exactly, but I'm guessing it's from 1985.

The Kinks - Winterland, San Francisco, CA, 2-19-1977

Here's a really great concert from the Kinks, in great sound. If you like the band, you should check this out.

In 1977, the Kinks made some major changes. They switched record companies. Their new record company wanted them to drop all the concept albums and return to more straight ahead rock and roll, so they did. They also changed bass players, and dropped the brass and back-up singers in their concerts for a more streamlined sound. The result of all this was the album "Sleepwalker." It marked the beginning of a new surge in popularity for the band, which peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

This concert takes place just one week after "Sleepwalker" was released. The concert was recorded for radio and apparently broadcast live over some or all of the US. As a result, the sound is excellent. It's basically exactly like an official album from the era, with soundboard quality, but also the right amount of audience noise.

This is a popular bootleg, but strangely, most versions lack the very first song and the last two. The first song is mostly just a repetition of the "You Really Got Me" riff to get the crowd excited. But the last two - "Life on the Road" and "Victoria" are very worthy additions. These extra songs come from a different source that isn't quite as good, but that's quibbling. It's still excellent soundboard quality.

The song list is a great summary of the Kinks' career to that point, with songs from most of the years of the band's existence, for nearly two hours of music. There's a slight emphasis on "Sleepwalker," with six songs from that album. There's a fair amount of talking between songs. As I usually do, I've put all the talking on separate tracks.

This album is an hour and 52 minutes long.

01 You Really Got Me [Introduction] (Kinks)
02 talk (Kinks)
03 One of the Survivors (Kinks)
04 Sleepwalker (Kinks)
05 Rush Hour Blues (Kinks)
06 You Make It All Worthwhile - Ordinary People - Everybody's a Star [Starmaker] (Kinks)
07 talk (Kinks)
08 Day-O [The Banana Boat Song] (Kinks)
09 A Well Respected Man (Kinks)
10 Sunny Afternoon (Kinks)
11 talk (Kinks)
12 Waterloo Sunset (Kinks)
13 talk (Kinks)
14 Celluloid Heroes (Kinks)
15 talk (Kinks)
16 Schooldays (Kinks)
17 Schooldays [Instrumental] (Kinks)
18 The Hard Way (Kinks)
19 talk (Kinks)
20 Education (Kinks)
21 talk (Kinks)
22 Brother (Kinks)
23 talk (Kinks)
24 Stormy Sky (Kinks)
25 talk (Kinks)
26 Life Goes On (Kinks)
27 Full Moon (Kinks)
28 talk (Kinks)
29 Lola (Kinks)
30 talk (Kinks)
31 Alcohol (Kinks)
32 talk (Kinks)
33 You Really Got Me - All Day and All of the Night (Kinks)
34 talk (Kinks)
35 Life on the Road (Kinks)
36 talk (Kinks)
37 Victoria (Kinks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7udRV5qZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/qZCWR8W3axOuwNy/file

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any photos of the band from the concert in question. But I got pretty close. I used a photo of Ray and Dave Davies on stage in concert one month later, at the Rainbow Theatre in London, on March 24, 1977. Ray is the one in the orange light.

Aimee Mann - At the Edge of the World - Non-Album Tracks (2005-2009)

Here's the next in my serious of Aimee Mann stray tracks albums. Even though it's a grab bag of songs from all sorts of sources, Mann has high and consistent standards.

All but four of the songs here have been officially released. Of the four, three of them come from a concert in 2007 celebrating and performing the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album. Mann played two songs from that album, "Fixing a Hole" and "Lovely Rita," plus "Blackbird" from the Beatles' "White Album." Unfortunately, the sound quality of those three songs are a bit below the rest. But they're still good enough for inclusion. The other unreleased song is a cover of Elton John's "My Father's Gun." It was played on a British TV show, and sounds fine.

Regarding the other songs, most of them come from various artists collections, as well as duets that appeared on other artists' albums. The last two, "Engine Driver" and "Salvation," come from an mp3 collection called "Rarities" that was posted for sale on Mann's website in 2009 but has since disappeared. There were a lot of other interesting songs on that collection, but I've included all the unique songs on this or earlier stray tracks collections by going to the original sources.

The bonus track, "Walking on a Dream" is a duet of Mann and Ben Lee of a song by the band Empire of the Sun. They only played this a couple of times in concert in Australia in 2009. Unfortunately, I had to include it as a bonus track because the sound quality is a clear notch below all the others.

01 Who Knows (Aimee Mann)
02 Blackbird (Aimee Mann)
03 Fixing a Hole (Aimee Mann)
04 Lovely Rita (Aimee Mann)
05 At the Edge of the World (Aimee Mann & Zach Gill)
06 Once I Loved [Amor Em Paz] (Till Bronner & Aimee Mann)
07 Lullaby (Aimee Mann)
08 Hearts (Tim & Eric with Aimee Mann)
09 My Father's Gun (Aimee Mann)
10 Too Many People (Aimee Mann)
11 Engine Driver (Aimee Mann & the Decemberists)
12 Salvation (Aimee Mann)

Walking on a Dream (Aimee Mann & Ben Lee)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6YXsy5GS

The cover art photo uses a photo of Mann in concert in 2005.

In September 2026, I used the Ask Gemini program to improve the image quality.

Oasis - Take Me - Non-Album Tracks (1991-1993)

I have to admit that I like Oasis. Yeah, the feuding of the Gallagher brothers has been an embarrassment, and they've put out some bad music, and their production (especially wanting to "brickwall" everything) has often ruined things. But when they've been on, such as with their 1995 album "(What's the Story) Morning Glory," they've often achieved greatness.

I plan on posting a bunch of albums to separate the wheat from the chaff. They have a surprising number of really good songs that never made any album, and their acoustic versions of their songs have been consistently excellent, and also avoid the overproduction issues of most of their albums.

Naturally, I want to start at the beginning. Oasis began as a band called "the Rain," which featured Liam Gallagher on lead vocals. They already were developing their famous Oasis sound, but they had very little in the way of good original songs. Liam's older brother Noel had been writing lots of songs, and joined the band in 1991, around the time they changed the name to Oasis. They didn't start to hit it big until mid-1994, when their first single was officially released.

This album deals with their years before they got famous or had a record contract. Luckily, they made a bunch of well-recorded demos of songs that they left behind. Also luckily, a lot of those songs were pretty good. I've been very choosy here, including only the songs I like, and only the ones with very good sound quality. Happily, that turns out to be exactly one album's worth of music (52 minutes).

I believe three of the songs towards the start of this album, "Alice," "Reminisce," and "Take Me," were written by Liam Gallagher and Bonehead, rather than Noel. The first two were recorded before Noel joined the band, possibly while they were still called the Rain. It's pretty hard to tell though, since they already sound very much like Oasis.

The songs generally get better as the album goes along, showing how the band was steadily improving. The fact that one 1992 reject, "All Around the World," would become a number one hit in 1997 despite not changing much shows that most or all of these songs were worthy of release. But only two of them came out as early B-sides ("I Will Believe" and "Alive"), while another eventually got released as a bonus track ("Strange Thing"). Everything else here remains officially unreleased.

The last song, "Coming On Strong," is basically the exact same song as "Setting Son," which was a 1996 hit for the Chemical Brothers with Noel Gallagher singing lead vocals. The lyrics and melody are the same, and just the instrumentation and production are significantly different. "Lock All the Doors" later morphed into "My Sister Lover," a 1997 B-side. It also was reworked and included on the 2015 Noel Gallagher album "Chasing Yesterday."

In my opinion, Oasis were at their best prior to the 1997 album "Be Here Now," and were only occasionally brilliant after that, because they were undone by drugs, fame, and ego. I consider this album part of their early peak.

01 Alice (Oasis)
02 Reminisce (Oasis)
03 Colour My Life (Oasis)
04 Take Me (Oasis)
05 See the Sun (Oasis)
06 Life in Vain (Oasis)
07 All Around the World (Oasis)
08 I Will Believe (Oasis)
09 Lock All the Doors [Early Version of My Sister Lover] (Oasis)
10 Alive (Oasis)
11 Strange Thing (Oasis)
12 Coming On Strong [Early Version of Setting Sun] (Oasis)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15909057/Osis_1991-1993_TakMe_atse.zip.html

There's a YouTube video of Oasis performing "All Around the World" in somebody's house in 1992. The picture I used as the cover art is a still taken from that video. It's kind of low resolution, and only singer Liam Gallagher can be seen, but I thought it sums up early Oasis perfectly, because you can see a Beatles poster in the background, along with the British flag stenciled on the wall.

Paul McCartney - Flying to My Home - Non-Album Tracks (1988-1990)

Paul McCartney has had such a prolific musical career that I still have a tong of stray tracks albums to post from him. So here's the next one. It mostly covers 1988 and 1989. It seems he was too busy in 1990 to do much recording, but there's one live song from that year too.

The first four songs were part of the songwriting collaboration between McCartney and Elvis Costello. I've already posted an album of acoustic versions the two of them did together. But these four songs are full-band versions by just McCartney of the relatively few songs from that collaboration that he didn't officially release at the time. They all come from the 2017 deluxe version of "Flowers in the Dirt."

Most of the rest of the songs are A-sides or B-sides. One of the A-sides is a cover of "Ferry 'Cross the Mersey" that was done to benefit the victims of the Hillsborough disaster, in which 95 people from Liverpool were killed. It has some different artists collaborating, as these sorts of things usually do, but their number is small and the performance is largely McCartney's in my opinion, so I've included it. That was a number one hit in Britain. The other A-side here is a live version of the folk song "All My Trials." It barely made the top 40 in Britain. Strangely enough, Nick Drake also did a cover of that song.

There are three unreleased songs as well. One, "In Liverpool," is a very nice original, acoustic McCartney song that has only appeared on his "Liverpool Oratorio" DVD, for some reason. The other "New Moon Over Jamaica," is a demo of a song written by McCartney, Johnny Cash, and Tom T. Hall. Both Cash and McCartney liked to vacation in Jamaica a lot. A McCartney and Cash duet of the song appeared on a 1988 Cash album, but the demo only features McCartney. The third one is a cover of the Ray Charles classic "Hit the Road Jack," done at a soundcheck in 1990.

I've included "Rave On" as a bonus track. McCartney is a huge Buddy Holly fan. It would seem a natural for him to record this Holly classic at some point, but as far as I know there are only a few rough live versions of him doing it. I'm only making it a bonus track because the sound quality don't match up to the rest of the album.

01 Tommy's Coming Home (Paul McCartney)
02 Twenty Fine Fingers (Paul McCartney)
03 Playboy to a Man (Paul McCartney)
04 So like Candy (Paul McCartney)
05 I Wanna Cry (Paul McCartney)
06 In Liverpool (Paul McCartney)
07 New Moon Over Jamaica (Paul McCartney)
08 Flying to My Home (Paul McCartney)
09 Ferry 'Cross the Mersey (Paul McCartney, Gerry Marsden, Holly Johnson & the Christians)
10 Loveliest Thing (Paul McCartney)
11 Hit the Road Jack (Paul McCartney)
12 All My Trials (Paul McCartney)

Rave On (Paul McCartney)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696790/PALMCCRTNY1988-1990_FlyngtoMyHme_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I've used the cover art for the "My Brave Face" single. The song "Flying to My Home" was a B-side to that song. The original cover just said "McCartney" in big letters. I've added the "Flying to My Home" title in the same font. Plus, I squeezed in "Paul" to the side.

Kirsty MacColl - Boxed Set, Scottish Television Studio, Glasgow, Britain, 3-14-2000

In my opinion, most musical artists have ten or less prime years towards the beginning of their career (but after they "make it"), and then have a long slow decline. But Kirsty MacColl was different. Her recorded career started quite good way back in 1979, and then slowly but steadily got better. I think this was because she was very serious about songwriting and was always improving her craft.

In my opinion, her best album is her last one, 2000's "Tropical Brainstorm." She'd spent the previous few years absorbing Latin American music in a deep way. She was primed to start an entire new and exciting phase of her career, only to die later in 2000 in a tragic boating accident.

This concert comes from 2000, right before "Tropical Brainstorm" was released. Most of the songs on it are from that album. It's the recording of an hour-long TV show called "Boxed Set" (not to be confused with a recorded box set). The music is about 45 minutes - I assume that's the hour minus commercials and such.

The best thing about this concert is the sound. The sound quality is excellent, as good as you'd expect from an official live album. There isn't much talking between songs, and the versions aren't that different from the studio album versions. But MacColl had been shy for most of her career, not performing concerts at all until the 1990s. It's nice to see that she totally nails these songs on stage. It also serves as a kind of greatest hits, with the best songs from "Tropical Brainstorm," plus a smattering of her best songs from earlier in her career.

01 In These Shoes (Kirsty MacColl)
02 England 2 Colombia 0 (Kirsty MacColl)
03 Walking Down Madison (Kirsty MacColl)
04 Celestine (Kirsty MacColl)
05 Us Amazonians (Kirsty MacColl)
06 Wrong Again (Kirsty MacColl)
07 Head (Kirsty MacColl)
08 Here Comes that Man Again (Kirsty MacColl)
09 My Affair (Kirsty MacColl)
10 A New England (Kirsty MacColl)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15260766/KirstyMacC_2000a_BoxdSetScottshTelevisionStdio__3-14-2000_atse.zip.html

I could have used a screenshot from the actual Boxed Set performance for the cover art, but that would be too low resolution for my tastes. Instead, this photo comes from the 2000 Fleadh music festival in London, in June 2000.

The Band - Cahoots - Alternate Version (1971)

The first two albums by the Band - "Music from Big Pink" and "The Band" - are considered all-time classics. Their third album, "Stagefright," is pretty good. But their fourth album, "Cahoots," is widely seen as a disappointment, and I agree. It has a few excellent songs, but some clunkers too. This is my effort to "fix" "Cahoots" by replacing those clunkers with some stray tracks from that same year.

Here are the four songs I've removed: "Where Do We Go from Here," "Shoot Out in Chinatown," "The Moon Struck One," and "Thinkin' Out Loud." They're just okay and forgettable, and not up to the high standards the Band set with their first three albums. I also rejected some stray tracks from the time period. For instance, "Move Me," an "original" written by Rick Danko, in fact is so very similar to the 1970 King Floyd hit "Groove Me" that the Band surely would have lost a lawsuit if they'd tried to release it at the time. Even the title is hardly changed!

To replace these songs, the most obvious contender is "Endless Highway." This is a great original song that was played a lot in concert by the Band in the 1970s, but no studio version of it was released at the time. It turns out a studio version was recorded in 1971, but apparently just after "Cahoots" was released.

I've also added three fun cover versions. The Motown hit "Baby Don't You Do It (Don't Do It)" was recorded in the studio, and was a concert staple for the Band, but the studio version wasn't released at the time either. "(I Don't Want to) Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes" and "Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever" are songs the Band also played in concert, and both were released on the "Rock of Ages" live album that was recorded in 1971 and released in 1972. I've found unreleased performances of both songs that came from the same series of concerts that were recorded for the "Rock of Ages" album. Both are fantastic soundboard recordings that no doubt were considered for the live album. I've managed the remove the audience noise so well that they sound just like studio versions.

I've sprinkled the replacement songs throughout the album, because "The River Hymn" is still a natural album closer.

I've also included another cover song, "Slippin' and Slidin'" as a bonus track. It's a live version that was released on the "A Musical History" box set. The reason it's only a bonus track is because it dates from 1970, not 1971. It arguably belongs with the "Stagefright" album.

With four songs removed and another four songs added, the album ends up being about the same length, at 45 minutes long. In my opinion,  it's a much stronger album after these changes, one that might even compare to their great first two. I suppose the group wanted all original songs, but chief songwriter Robbie Robertson was losing his inspiration around this time, as could be seen by the fact that it would be four more years before they put out another album of originals. They would have done much better to include more cover versions.

01 Life Is a Carnival (Band)
02 When I Paint My Masterpiece (Band)
03 Last of the Blacksmiths (Band)
04 4% Pantomime (Band & Van Morrison)
05 [I Don't Want To] Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes (Band)
06 Smoke Signal (Band)
07 Volcano (Band)
08 Baby Don't You Do It [Don't Do It] (Band)
09 Endless Highway (Band)
10 Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever (Band)
11 The River Hymn (Band)

Slippin' and Slidin' (Band)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/q5sRHYTQ

The album cover is simply the unchanged original cover.

Los Lobos - Ride This: The Covers - Alternate Version (2004)

In 2004, Los Lobos released "The Ride," a studio album of all new material. Around the same time, they released "Ride This - The Covers EP," which, as it says, is an EP of cover versions. This album starts with the songs from the EP, then adds more cover versions to turn it into a full album.

The original EP is fairly long as far as EPs go. It's seven songs and 29 minutes, which is longer than some albums. Some big name guests appeared on "The Ride," and most of these extra songs have Los Lobos pay their respects to those guests. For instance, Richard Thompson played guitar on the album track "Wreck of the Carlos Rey," so they played his song "Shoot Out the Lights" as one of the EP tracks. That was also the case with Ruben Blades, Tom Waits, Dave Alvin of the Blasters, Elvis Costello, Bobby Womack, and others. Note that "Marie, Marie" (originally by the Blasters) is a live version that actually dates to 1999.

On top of that EP, I've added five more cover versions that all date to 2004 or 2003. Three of them come from various artists collections. One, "Mexicano Americano" is a song by Runel Fuentes that was recorded in 2004 but came out as part of the "Acoustic en Vivo" album one year later. "Baby What You Want Me to Do" is an unreleased live version, but it's from a soundboard bootleg and sounds just as good as all the other songs.

With the added songs, the album is now 47 minutes long instead of 29. Personally, I feel that, by 2004, Los Lobos's songwriting had declined since their 1990s "Kiko" peak. But they still were an excellent band, so of course they do a great job here.

01 Jockey Full of Bourbon (Los Lobos)
02 More than I Can Stand (Los Lobos)
03 Uncomplicated (Los Lobos)
04 Patria (Los Lobos)
05 Shoot Out the Lights (Los Lobos)
06 It'll Never Be Over for Me (Los Lobos)
07 Marie, Marie (Los Lobos)
08 Baby What You Want Me to Do (Los Lobos)
09 Never Take the Place of You (Los Lobos)
10 Mexico Americano (Los Lobos)
11 On a Night like This (Los Lobos)
12 Voodoo Music (Los Lobos)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15262580/LosLbs_2004b_RideThsTheCovrsAlternte_atse.zip.html

I used the exact cover of the "Ride This" EP... almost. For that cover, the words "The Covers EP" was written on the lower part of the image of the cassette tape. I edited and rearranged that slightly to just say "The Covers," since it's no longer an EP.

Various Artists - Covered: Bert Berns & Jerry Ragovoy, Volume 2: 1967-1971

Here's the second of two volumes in my "Covered" series, focusing on the songwriting of Bert Berns and/or Jerry Ragovoy. As with the first, you probably don't know who these people are, but trust me, they were very talented songwriters, and these albums are full of great music.

I said most everything I needed to say with the first volume. Note that Berns died at the end of 1967. As a result, more of the songs in this album were written by Ragovoy. But there still are some Berns songs, especially in the 1967 to 1968 time frame. For instance, "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" was a hit for Solomon Burke in 1963. But I chose a 1967 by Wilson Pickett, because it's a faster version that most later artists imitated, such as the version by the Blues Brothers in 1980.

Generally speaking, I have a rule not to include more than one version of the same song. For instance, the Strangeloves had a hit with Berns' song "I Want Candy" in 1965, and then Bow Wow Wow had a hit with that song in 1982, but I forced myself to pick one. However, I included one song here that I also included in the first volume: "As Long as I Have You." The original version was a minor hit by Garnet Mimms in 1964. Then Led Zeppelin played the song in concert in 1969. Their version was vastly different, and part of a much longer medley. I included that still-unreleased medley version on a Led Zeppelin stray tracks album I've posted here already:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/09/led-zeppelin-born-in-darkness-various.html

For the version I included here, I edited it to remove the other songs in the medley, so it's purely a version of "As Long as I Have You." I think it's an excellent version that's totally Led Zeppelin and very different from the Mimms version. I have no idea why it remains officially unreleased.

"Twenty-Five Miles" seems like the odd one out on this album, because that was a big hit for Motown artist Edwin Starr, and Motown almost always had hits with their own songwriters. It turns out neither Berns nor Ragovoy ever wrote for Motown. However, Berns and Ragovoy wrote a relatively obscure tune called "32 Miles Out of Waycross," and "Twenty-Five Miles" was so similar to that song that Berns and Ragovoy were added to the composer credits.

Ragovoy lived until 2011. However, musical trends changed, and the pop-soul style that both Berns and Ragovoy excelled in lost favor in the early 1970s. Like Berns, Ragovoy was also a successful producer. He continued to produce a fair amount after 1971, but he rarely had a prominently placed new song after that year. 

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Everybody Needs Somebody to Love (Wilson Pickett)
02 Am I Grooving You (Freddie Scott)
03 What's It Gonna Be (Dusty Springfield)
04 Pata Pata (Miriam Makeba)
05 Goodbye Baby [Baby Goodbye] (Van Morrison)
06 Baby Come On Home (Led Zeppelin)
07 Piece of My Heart (Janis Joplin)
08 Twenty-Five Miles (Edwin Starr)
09 Try [Just a Little Bit Harder] (Janis Joplin)
10 As Long as I Have You (Led Zeppelin)
11 Stop (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Down in the Alley (Ronnie Hawkins)
13 Cry Baby (Janis Joplin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uZWfaoJb

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/iEQVzMOkZcSfE2m/file

I couldn't find any photos of Berns and Ragovoy together. So I used separate photos of them and united them in Photoshop.

UPDATE: On May 12, 2026, I entirely redid the cover with new source material.

Various Artists - Covered: Bert Berns & Jerry Ragovoy, Volume 1: 1961-1967

If you thought I was done with my "Covered" series, don't worry. I'm just getting warmed up! This time, I'm taking a look at two people you may not have ever heard of: Bert Berns and Jerry Ragovoy. But they were just as good as other major songwriters who are a lot more famous. Together or separately, they wrote many all-time classic songs, as you'll see below.

As usual with this series, I don't want to write up an entire essay about the songwriters. Instead, I'll direct you to their Wikipedia pages to learn more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Berns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Ragovoy

But what I do feel the need to write about is who did what. Some songs here, such as the classics "Cry to Me" and "Piece of My Heart" were written by Berns and Rogovoy together, but most were written apart, or with others. Still, I felt the two of them belong together in this compilation because they had such similar musical styles. Most notably, both were white, Jewish guys who were fascinated by soul music.

Of the songs they wrote alone, I would guess that there is a fairly even split here between Berns songs and Ragovoy songs. But Berns is much more famous than Ragovoy. Perhaps that's because he died very young, in 1967, due to persistent health issues, when he was only 38 years old. So he makes for a tragic figure like others who died young. Thus, there have been some documentaries about him, such as "Bang! The Bert Berns Story," but none about Ragovoy. But also, Berns was a much more charismatic figure, an extrovert, while Ragovoy was very low profile. In fact, I had a hard time finding any good photos of a young Ragovoy at all.

Regarding song selection, I could have included many more songs, since both of them were prolific2. But I've limited this to just the hits, as well as non-hits that I think are especially good. I tried to stick to the original hit versions whenever possible, though I've used non-hit versions in a few cases.

I've made two albums of Berns and/or Ragovoy songs. I'll post the second volume immediately after this one. Each one is between 45 and 50 minutes long.

01 A Little Bit of Soap (Jarmels)
02 Cry to Me (Solomon Burke)
03 Twist and Shout (Isley Brothers)
04 Tell Him (Exciters)
05 You'll Never Leave Him (Isley Brothers)
06 He's Just a Playboy (Drifters)
07 As Long as I Have You (Garnet Mimms)
08 I Want Candy (Strangeloves)
09 Hang On Sloopy (McCoys)
10 Here Comes the Night (Them)
11 Time Is on My Side (Rolling Stones)
12 I'll Come Running Over (Lulu)
13 Ain't Nobody Home (Howard Tate)
14 Stay with Me (Lorraine Ellison)
15 Are You Lonely for Me (Freddie Scott)
16 I Can't Wait until I See My Baby's Face (Dusty Springfield)
17 Get It While You Can (Howard Tate)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/B2wTf5CN

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/iGUPhZe3U46WFGs/file

I have to admit that I've cheated big time in making the cover art. I couldn't find a single photo of Berns and Ragovoy together. So I found different photos and put them together. Ragovoy's head seems unusually large and long, but from all the photos I've seen of him, that's just how he looked. 

Months later, I figured out a way to colorize the photo, so I did so.

UPDATE: On September 26, 2024, I further upgraded the cover art using the program Krea AI. I also reduced the background to just light blue.

Derek & the Dominos - Electric Factory Theatre, Philadelphia, PA, 10-16-1970

Here's another concert from Derek and the Dominos, Eric Clapton's stellar band in 1970.

Note that only two nights at the Fillmore East were the only concerts by this band that were recorded at soundboard quality. After those shows, which I've posted here already, the sound quality of all other shows by the band drops dramatically. But there are still two other shows that I consider worthy of owning and frequently listening to. I've posted one of those (played at the Cincinnati Music Hall) and this is the other one.

Yes, the sound quality is merely good, not excellent. But this is Derek and the Dominos, which in my opinion and the opinion of many others were the pinnacle of Clapton's long career. The sound is definitely listenable, with no major flaws. It's an audience recording, but you never hear any annoying aspects of that, such as people talking over the music. The problem is just that the sound is a bit distant and muffled.

But I took care to use the bootleg with the best sound, based on what die-hard Clapton fans claim. And the performance more than makes up for the minor sound issue, in my opinion. As usual when he played with the Dominos, Clapton was on fire. For instance, many think that this (sixteen-minute long) version of "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad" was one of the best soloing of his career. Also, there are some interesting rarities played, despite there being only seven songs played in this seventy-minute long show: "Ramblin' On My Mind," "Mean Old World" and "Motherless Children." In particular, this may have been the only time "Motherless Children" was played by the band, yet the arrangement closely matches the version that would appear on Clapton's 1974 album "461 Ocean Boulevard."

Note that I previously posted a "Live and Rare" album of Derek and the Dominos live rarities. But I didn't include any songs from this show in that one, knowing that I'd post it here later.

So basically, if you like this band as much as I do and you want to hear their live recordings, you should have all three albums I've made of the Fillmore East shows first and foremost, plus the Cincinnati concert I've posted, plus this one, plus the "Live and Rare" compilation. The rest has sound quality that's too poor for my tastes, sadly including the Tampa concert with Duane Allman, which is only listenable in parts.

01 Ramblin' On My Mind (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Mean Old World (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Motherless Child (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Let It Rain (Derek & the Dominos)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ThUznfX4

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/vb2Hi9UyU5QdFRd/file

For the album cover, I used a publicity photo of the band (plus a dog) as the main photo. But I also found a logo of the concert venue, the Electric Factory Theatre, and I added that in as well. Good color photos of the band are few and far between. All I could find was a black and white one. But over a year after first posting this album, I colorized the cover. Then, in May 2025, I upgraded the image quality with the use of the Krea AI program. 

Note that a commenter later identified the dog as "Jeep," Clapton's dog at the time. Apparently, this dog was immortalized in the name of an instrumental jam on George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" album, "I Remember Jeep."

Traffic - Open Your Heart - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1972)

I've already posted most of my interesting stuff by the band Traffic. But here's another Traffic stray tracks album that I somehow overlooked. This deals with the years 1970 to 1972, after Dave Mason left the group and when some other members joined.

This album is a mixed bag of very different things. The first song is a live version of "Can't Find My Way Home." That was a song written and sung by Traffic member Steve Winwood when he was a member of Blind Faith in 1969. Traffic only rarely played the song in concert, and this recording comes from an audience bootleg.

The next song, "Gimme Some Lovin'" was first done by Winwood's first band, the Spencer Davis Group. Traffic recorded a version for their live album "Welcome to the Canteen." This is a single version that's half as long and a much tighter edit.

Two more songs, "It's So Hard" and "Easter Weekend" have a strange history. Jim Gordon was the drummer for Eric Clapton's band Derek and the Dominos. He fancied himself a singer-songwriter as well as a drummer, and did at least the song "It's So Hard" for the Dominos. But that band fell apart in mid-1971, and he became a member of Traffic instead. These recordings have him singing his two songs as part of Traffic, with band member Jim Capaldi singing as well.

However, neither song was ever included on a Traffic album, even though they're good songs. I suspect this is because Gordon was a very good drummer, but he also was increasingly mentally unstable. He only was part of Traffic for about a year. He later got a very long prison sentence after murdering his mother in 1983. Due to that shocking fact, I suspect his songs have been ignored even for archival releases.

Traffic almost never played cover versions, either in the studio or in concert. But I've found an unreleased one from a concert, "Get Me Back on Time, Engine Number 9." This is mislabeled on bootlegs as "Keep On Moving." It's mostly instrumental, but there are some vocals, which makes clear it's a version of a minor hit by Wilson Pickett. It comes from an audience bootleg, so the sound quality is just good, not great.

The last three songs are from Jim Capaldi's first solo album, released in 1972, but I've included them because they're kind of Traffic songs. "Big Thirst" prominently features former Traffic member Dave Mason, and it was co-written by him and Capaldi. The song "Open Your Heart" is actually an outtake from the Traffic album "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys," but it was bumped to Capaldi's solo album instead. I suspect that's the case with "How Much Can a Man Really Take" as well, since all the members of Traffic at the time appear on that also.

Steve Winwood sang lead on the vast majority of Traffic songs. On this album, two are sung by Gordon and three more by Capaldi., which is kind of strange But keep in mind that Capaldi did sing lead on Traffic songs sometimes, such as "Rock and Roll Stew," and he also co-wrote the vast majority of the band's songs.

01 Can't Find My Way Home (Traffic)
02 Gimme Some Lovin', Part 1 [Single Edit] (Traffic)
03 It's So Hard (Traffic)
04 Sittin' Here Thinkin' of My Love (Traffic)
05 Easter Weekend (Traffic)
06 Get Me Back on Time, Engine Number 9 (Traffic)
07 Big Thirst (Jim Capaldi with Dave Mason)
08 Open Your Heart (Jim Capaldi & Traffic)
09 How Much Can a Man Really Take (Jim Capaldi & Traffic)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700889/TRAFFC1970-1972_OpnYurHert_atse.zip.html

The cover art uses a photo from a Traffic concert in Amsterdam in 1971. A couple of the band members are out of the frame. I added the Traffic logo at the bottom, since the band loved sticking that on their album covers.

More on Soulseek

Good news. I've been slowly working to share all the albums I've posted here on the Soulseek file sharing program. I believe I finally have finished that process. I might have missed a few, but at least 95% should be shared there. So if you're unable to use Zippyshare for whatever reason, that's another option.

Note that I'm only sharing the albums I've posted here and not others because I have a lot of albums I've compiled that are still in process, and are likely to undergo more changes before they get posted.

As I post new albums here, I'll try to share the matching folders at Soulseek at the same time. So far, it seems like some people can't always see or access my files when using Soulseek. I'm not sure why that is. But hopefully others will share these albums, making it easier to spread further. If anyone wants to share everything on Soulseek, that would be great, in my opinion.

Nick Lowe - Crying Inside - Non-Album Tracks (2018-2019)

I rarely post music that has been first released in the past couple of years, because I don't want to discourage sales of new albums. But I'm making kind of an exception here.

Nick Lowe has had a long and successful solo career, and has found a successful niche for himself after significantly changing his style to a more mellow and sophisticated music since the 1990s onwards. But he hasn't released a studio album since 2013, and even then, that was a Christmas album. So why the long wait?

It turns out he actually has released the equivalent of a new album in the last couple of years. It's just that he's unfortunately released it in dribs and drabs. Most of it has come out on two EPs, one released in 2018 ("Tokyo Bay") and the other in 2019 ("Love Starvation"). I think this is a strange and bad decision. EPs, or "extended plays," have never been a popular format. So I've taken the four songs each from those EPs and added four other songs to create an album that's 39 minutes long.

Luckily, the two EPs and the extra songs all have a similar sound that's very much in keeping with the mellow sound Lowe has favored since the 1990s. Thus, all the songs sound as if they fit together. Also luckily, two of the extra songs are studio releases on other people's albums. The other two extra songs are unreleased performances from a concert, but it's a concert that was broadcast over the Internet, and the sound quality is excellent. I've been able to remove the crowd noise from those two songs, so they pretty much sound exactly like all the others.

This is the album that Lowe should have released earlier this year. I imagine that none of these will be released on future albums of his, except possibly the two live ones. So if you like the older and more mature Lowe style, you definitely need to listen to this.

By the way, I have a lot more of Lowe's solo material to post. Now that I've finished posting four Rockpile stray tracks albums (with Lowe featuring prominently in them), I'll get to those soon, in chronological order. But I wanted to get this out first.

01 Secret of a Long Lasting Love (Blackie & the Rodeo Kings with Nick Lowe)
02 Tokyo Bay (Nick Lowe)
03 Crying Inside (Nick Lowe)
04 Heartbreaker (Nick Lowe)
05 Travellin' Light (Nick Lowe)
06 Small Town Talk (Per Gessle & Nick Lowe)
07 Love Starvation (Nick Lowe)
08 Blue on Blue (Nick Lowe)
09 Trombone (Nick Lowe)
10 Raincoat in the River (Nick Lowe)
11 Lay It on Me Baby (Nick Lowe)
12 Here Comes that Feeling (Nick Lowe)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264514/NickL_2018-2019_CryingInsde_atse.zip.html

The cover art I've used for this album is a mystery to me. I randomly stumbled across it while surfing the Internet. It comes from a single release of the song "Crying Inside." That song is on one of the EPs, and the release came after the release of the EP as a repackaging of the material.  Due to coming across this art, I decided to name the album "Crying Inside" to take advantage of it.

Robyn Hitchcock - Spooked - Acoustic Versions (2004)

If you've been following my postings about Robyn Hitchcock, you've probably noticed that I like to post an all-acoustic version of each of his studio albums whenever that's possible (and it usually is). This album is another one of those. And this time, I'm happy to say, it's a fairly complete version. I was able to find acoustic versions of 10 of the 12 songs on "Spooked," his album from 2004.

Happily, the sound quality of these performances range from very good to excellent, even though every single song is officially unreleased. It seems that Hitchcock did a lot of in-person radio appearances to promote his album, and five of the ten songs here come from such appearances. Those recordings basically sound as good as professional studio recordings. The other five were done live in concert. But most or all of those are soundboards, and at least two of them were played live over the radio.

So, all in all, the sound quality is good, and "Spooked" happens to be a particularly strong Hitchcock album.

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Television (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 If You Know Time (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 English Girl (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Demons and Fiends (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Creeped Out (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Sometimes a Blonde (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 We're Gonna Live in the Trees (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Tryin' to Get to Heaven (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Full Moon in My Soul (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Flanagan's Song (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15272873/RobynH_2004_SpookdAcousticVersions_atse.zip.html

I think I got lucky with the cover art. The official "Spooked" cover used a portion of a Hitchcock painting. I was able to find a photo of the whole painting. So I've included most of it. (I wish I could have included all of it, but it was a little wider than tall, so I had to crop some of the sides.) The "Spooked" cover just focuses on the cat-like creature with two pointy ears and a half-black face.

Pete Townshend - Who Demos, Volume 2: 1966

I recently posted an album of Pete Townshend's demos of Who songs from 1964 to 1965. This is a sequel to that, dealing with the year 1966. Naturally, the series will continue until the end of the Who's main era, through 1982.

I love virtually all of the Who's studio work, but I especially enjoy this era, roughly covering the "A Quick One" album, plus assorted singles. It seems we only are lucky enough to get a random grab bag of demos from this time.

Only five of the songs here have been officially released, all of them on the demo compilations "Scoop" and "Another Scoop," or the super deluxe edition of "The Who Sell Out." But that's okay, because the other songs generally have a similar sound quality. One exception is "I'm a Boy." The sound quality for that one is pretty good, except there's a fair amount of popping and crackling. I'm guessing someone recorded an acetate record, which quickly degraded each time it was played. But the song is still worth inclusion, especially because it's a lot longer than the single, and has some extra lyrics.

Some of the other songs have significant differences with the Who versions, for instance "Magic Bus."  But, generally speaking, these demos aren't like normal demos in that they sound good enough to be released at the time.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 Substitute (Pete Townshend)
02 Run Run Run [Version 1] (Pete Townshend)
03 Disguises (Pete Townshend)
04 Happy Jack (Pete Townshend)
05 Don't Look Away (Pete Townshend)
06 I'm a Boy (Pete Townshend)
07 Relax [Version 1] (Pete Townshend)
08 So Sad about Us (Pete Townshend)
09 Magic Bus (Pete Townshend)
10 Run Run Run [Version 2] (Pete Townshend)
11 Sunrise [Version 2] (Pete Townshend)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/AoqKhsgE

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/jbPCi342zwtUnm1/file

I'm not sure when or where the photo for the cover art comes from. But clearly Townshend is playing a 12-string guitar in a studio. Based on his appearance, I'd guess it's from 1966 or 1967. Oh, by the way, the photo ended right above Townshend's head. I did a little Photoshop work to extend the background higher.

U2 - Hallelujah Here She Comes - Non-Album Tracks (1988-1989)

In my opinion, U2 has a lot of great non-album tracks, and so many that I'm able to make about one stray tracks compilation album for every studio album the band released. This is that type of album for the "Rattle and Hum" era in 1988 and 1989. I think that out of all of the U2 stray tracks albums I've made, this is probably the strongest musically.

The album is a mix of originals and covers. The originals are very solid. For instance, I think "Hallelujah Here She Comes" is a drastically underrated song that should have been on "Rattle and Hum" and might have even been a hit. "She's a Mystery to Me" is a great song. U2 wrote it for Roy Orbison, and he did a version for his last album right before he died. U2 did a studio version, but for some reason it's never been officially released or even bootlegged. So instead I've included a rare live version.

There are more covers than originals. I think they're some of the best covers U2 ever did, such as "Dancing Barefoot" by Patti Smith and "Everlasting Love," a classic soul hit from the 1960s. The first five songs are all B-sides. The next two are from various artists compilations. The next one, "Wild Irish Rose," is unreleased, but it's a studio cut from a TV documentary. Only the last two are from bootlegs of live performances.

If you like U2, you should get this.

01 Hallelujah Here She Comes (U2)
02 Dancing Barefoot (U2)
03 A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel (U2)
04 Everlasting Love (U2)
05 Unchained Melody (U2)
06 Christmas [Baby, Please Come Home] (U2)
07 Jesus Christ (U2)
08 Wild Irish Rose (U2)
09 Happy Xmas [War Is Over] (U2)
10 She's a Mystery to Me (U2)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jjyrscZ6

For the cover art, I chose a photo that is similar in style to the artwork in the "Rattle and Hum" era. In fact, the picture is from the inside of the "Desire" single. But I moved the drummer, Larry Mullen Jr. closer to the others because he was way to the side in the original. Rest of the colors and artwork also match the general style of U2 art from that era.

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.

Dusty Springfield - Alternate TV and Radio Appearances, Volume 4: 1969-1973

This is the fourth and last of the albums dealing with Dusty Springfield performing songs on TV or radio that she'd released on record. I've posted an entire separate series of albums of her performing songs on TV and radio that she didn't release on record. So with this album, I'm finishing up posting all the stuff I've had from her on TV and radio.

As I said before, there never has been any official live album from her prime years in the 1960s and early 1970s, and not even any bootlegs from that time. So these TV and radio performances is probably all we're ever going to get in terms of hearing her perform live from that time period.

Like the last album in this series, only two of the songs have been officially released, "The Windmills of Your Mind," and "Son of a Preacher Man." The other ones generally are very good in terms of sound quality. But there are some that sound a little worse, mostly due to slightly muffled recording of her TV show appearances, taken from YouTube videos.

Unfortunately, the amount of performances peters out in the early 1970s. She was still popular in 1969 with her big hit "Son of a Preacher Man," but her popularity slid after that, which meant she had fewer opportunities to appear on TV or the radio. After about 1973, her career pretty much petered out altogether, apparently hindered by lots of drug use. Happily, she pulled herself together and had a career comeback in the late 1970s that continued through the end of her life. But I personally am far less interested in that phrase of her career. Her singing ability was still great, but I have issues with both the production and song choices (not just with her, but with musical trends in general).

Thus, this is where this series ends. 

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Morning [Bom Dia] (Dusty Springfield)
02 Love Power (Dusty Springfield)
03 Am I the Same Girl (Dusty Springfield)
04 No Stranger Am I (Dusty Springfield)
05 The Windmills of Your Mind (Dusty Springfield)
06 A Brand New Me (Dusty Springfield)
07 Son of a Preacher Man (Dusty Springfield)
08 Silly, Silly Fool (Dusty Springfield)
09 How Can I Be Sure (Dusty Springfield)
10 I Wanna Be a Free Girl (Dusty Springfield)
11 Just a Little Lovin' (Dusty Springfield)
12 Won't Be Long (Dusty Springfield)
13 Packin' Up (Dusty Springfield)
14 Yesterday When I Was Young (Dusty Springfield)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pNBwHLJ6

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/yFuzcTDY944HljP/file

I'm not sure when or where the photo for the cover art comes from, but my notes say it's probably from 1969.

In August 2025, I improved the cover detail with the help of the Krea AI program. 

David Bowie - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1967-1970

I've posted a bunch of Davie Bowie stray tracks albums. I've gone as far as I want to go with that, ending in the mid-1980s. Now, I want to start posting his BBC performances. There was an official double album called "Bowie at the Beeb." That was a great release, but unfortunately, it's incomplete. Thus, I felt a need to fix things.

This album is a case in point. Eight of the 14 songs on it are from "Bowie at the Beeb." When I first posted this, five other songs were unreleased, but four of those have since been released, so I've upgraded those.

On top of all that, I've added in non-BBC performances if they are of interesting songs and were played live on the TV or radio. There's only one such instance here. That's a performance of "Space Oddity" done at an awards show in Britain. I could be wrong, but I think it was the first time Bowie played a song on TV anywhere. It's the only performance here that's still unreleased.

The album is exactly an hour long. I have four more BBC albums to post, going through 1973, so you can see I'm including a lot of material not on the official release (which goes through 1972).

UPDATE: On November 21, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. I was able to update the first three songs from an official release, as bonus tracks on a new version of the 1967 "David Bowie" album. Plus, the fourth song came out officially on the new archival album "Conversation Piece." I upgraded that one too.

01 Love You Till Tuesday (David Bowie)
02 When I Live My Dream (David Bowie)
03 Little Bombardier (David Bowie)
04 When I'm Five (David Bowie)
05 In the Heat of the Morning (David Bowie)
06 London Bye Ta-Ta (David Bowie)
07 Karma Man (David Bowie)
08 Silly Boy Blue (David Bowie)
09 Let Me Sleep Beside You (David Bowie)
10 Janine (David Bowie)
11 Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed (David Bowie)
12 Space Oddity (David Bowie)
13 I'm Waiting for the Man (David Bowie)
14 The Width of a Circle (David Bowie)
15 Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud (David Bowie)
16 The Supermen (David Bowie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/75f9wcb1

I believe the cover art photo is from 1967. I don't know the exact source. I changed the colors a bit because the photo originally was bleached of colors, almost like a black and white photo. When I upped the color intensity it looked a lot better, but that made the background too drastically colored, so I dulled that some.

Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers - VH-1 Storytellers, Soundstage One, Burbank, CA, 3-31-1999

Here's a nice little concert from Tom P. and the Heartbreakers. It's not the full show, but this is what was shown on the VH-1 TV show "Storytellers." Some performers on that show played in a solo acoustic format. P. did some of that, but most of the songs were performed with the rest of the Heartbreakers.

(Note that I'm not using the full name of this artist due to concerns about copyright issues.)  

However, what differed from a typical concert by the band is that P. stuck to the format of talking a lot between songs, mostly to explain what his inspirations were behind the songs he chose. He was very entertaining and charming with his dialogue.

The album is only 43 minutes long, which is the length of an hour long TV show minus the commercials. About 13 minutes of that is made up of P. talking between songs.

The sound quality is consistently excellent, like a professionally recorded live album in front of a small audience. I don't believe any of the performances have been officially released.

I'm not including the track list due to copyright issues. But you can find it in the mp3 download file.

https://pixeldrain.com/u/sYabav3h

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5e3eeDjF9mPghXS/file

For the album cover, I found a screenshot of P. from a YouTube video of the "Storytellers" show. I later upgraded it using the Krea AI program.

Blondie - Cover This: Live Covers, 1977-1982

Some bands pretty much never play cover versions in concerts while others play a lot. I hadn't realized it until a few days ago, but it turns out Blondie in their first era together played a lot of fun covers. I was listening to a bootleg concert that had a few covers I really liked, and I went to the website setlist.fm to see if there were many others. It turned out that not only were there a bunch, but most of them were in excellent sound quality. So I'm very happy to say I was able to put this album together.

The vast majority of Blondie songs were originals, but they did some covers on records, including a few of their hits (for instance "Denis" and "Hanging on the Telephone"). I'm not including any such covers that were recorded for any of their albums.

The band had an impressive variety of sources for their covers. They did some classics from the 1960s, but also some songs that were very current at the time. For instance, "I Love Playing with Fire" was released by the Runaways on an album earlier that same year. I like Blondie's version better, and I think they could have had a hit with it. Other songs like "Sister Midnight," "Heroes," "Funtime," "I Feel Love," and even "Start Me Up" were only originally released about a year or less when Blondie covered them.

01 Heart Full of Soul - Yardbirds
02 I Love Playing with Fire - Runaways
03 My Obsession - Rolling Stones
04 Moonlight Drive - Doors
05 Goldfinger - Shirley Bassey
06 Bang a Gong [Get It On] - T. Rex
07 Sister Midnight - Iggy Pop
08 Little G.T.O. - Ronny & the Dakotas
09 Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash
10 Funtime - Iggy Pop
11 Seven Rooms of Gloom - Four Tops
12 Heroes - David Bowie
13 I Feel Love - Donna Summer
14 I Got You [I Feel Good] - James Brown
15 Start Me Up - Rolling Stones

I made some edits to a couple of the songs. "Heart Full of Soul" was the first part of a medley, and I thought the way it ended sounded incomplete. So I cut it abruptly after two repetitions of the opening riff and then used some sound editing tricks to make the third repeat of that riff sound like a final chord instead. For the song "Goldfinger," the final seconds, with a crucial last scream, faded out. I tried my best to undo the fade by carefully boosting the sound bit by bit for those last seconds. I think I mostly succeeded, but the song still ends somewhat abruptly.

I've only included one studio track, and that's "Little G.T.O." For some reason, Blondie backed up the obscure group Rodney and the Brunettes for this song. Blondie's lead singer Deborah Harry did a guide vocal to show them how it was sung. But the other band's unscrupulous record company released the guide vocal version as a single under the band name "The New York Blondes with Madame X." A legal injunction quickly put an end to the sale of that version, but of course some copies were saved for posterity. So I figure this is fair game for this compilation, since most Blondie fans won't have it. Also, Blondie did play the song sometimes in concert in 1977, so this is just like having the best recorded version of one of those performances.

Oddly, there was very little audience noise at the end of most songs. Perhaps this is due to some of the recordings coming from soundboard bootlegs where little to none of the audience was recorded. If the audience cheering was very quiet, I tended to remove it altogether. There are only a few songs near the end where you can hear a lot of cheering.

I was very picky in terms of crowd noise when it came to deciding which songs to include. There were a few more I left out due to sound quality issues, such as covers of "(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave," "Bilbao Song," "Palisades Park," "Little Red Rooster," "Oh Oh I Love Her So," "Femme Fatale," "Louie, Louie," Jet Boy," and more. And that was only with limiting myself to the band's first era together, ending in 1982. They've done many more intriguing covers exclusively in concert since reuniting in 1997.

I didn't make any bonus track out of some of the songs that were on the bubble because I also felt those versions weren't particularly good. For instance, "Little Red Rooster." Blondie just didn't perform that song very impressively. In almost all cases, it worked out nicely that the best performed songs also happened to be the ones with the best sound quality.

Unfortunately, because I was so strict on the sound quality standard, I was left with almost exactly one hour of music. That's long for a single album but too short for two. Oh well, this will just be a single album unless enough quality versions of songs later emerge so I can split this in two.

All but five of these versions are officially unreleased. "Little G.T.O." was released as a single, as discussed above. Four more were released as B-sides, bonus tracks, or both.

01 Heart Full of Soul (Blondie)
02 I Love Playing with Fire (Blondie)
03 My Obsession (Blondie)
04 Moonlight Drive (Blondie)
05 Goldfinger (Blondie)
06 Bang a Gong [Get It On] (Blondie)
07 Sister Midnight (Blondie with Robert Fripp)
08 Little G.T.O. (Blondie)
09 Ring of Fire (Blondie)
10 Funtime (Blondie)
11 Seven Rooms of Gloom (Blondie)
12 Heroes (Blondie with Robert Fripp)
13 I Feel Love (Blondie)
14 I Got You [I Feel Good] (Blondie)
15 Start Me Up (Blondie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/W77zST7i

In my opinion, Blondie lead singer Deborah Harry achieved peak gorgeousness in the video for the song "Heart of Glass." So I chose a still from that video for the cover art photo.

Dusty Springfield - Alternate TV and Radio Appearances, Volume 2: 1966-1968

I previously posted a bunch of albums called "On TV and Radio" that are filled with songs Dusty Springfield sang on TV and radio in the 1960s and early 1970s that she didn't put on any records. This second series of four albums deals with the songs she performed on TV and radio that she did put on record.

All but five of the songs are officially unreleased. The five that have been released are: "Every Ounce of Strength," "Won'’t Be Long," "Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa," "Don't Let Me Lose This Dream," and "It Was Easier to Hurt Him."

The vast majority of songs are from a BBC show she hosted in 1966 and 1967, simply called "Dusty." These songs were performed live in front of an audience, but I've minimized the cheering after the songs.

As far as sound quality goes, some of the unreleased songs sound merely good instead of great. Sometimes, there's a bit of muffling or distance. 

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Every Ounce of Strength (Dusty Springfield)
02 Goin' Back (Dusty Springfield)
03 Won'’t Be Long (Dusty Springfield)
04 Bring Him Back (Dusty Springfield)
05 Some of Your Lovin' (Dusty Springfield)
06 Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa (Dusty Springfield)
07 Live It Up (Dusty Springfield)
08 I'll Try Anything (Dusty Springfield)
09 I Only Wanna Laugh (Dusty Springfield)
10 Don't Let Me Lose This Dream (Dusty Springfield)
11 Sunny (Dusty Springfield)
12 Time After Time (Dusty Springfield)
13 It Was Easier to Hurt Him (Dusty Springfield)
14 Sweet Lover No More (Dusty Springfield)
15 It's Over (Dusty Springfield)
16 Come Back to Me (Dusty Springfield)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cmW1EgE1

alternate: 

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

This cover photo dates from 1965. That's just outside the time frame of the music here, but the picture quality was so good for this one I decided to use it anyway. Besides, unlike most musicians during those fast-changing years, her appearance didn't change much.

Midnight Oil - Spirit of the Age - Non-Album Tracks (1996-2002)

This is the last of four stray tracks albums from Midnight Oil. It covers the last years from the main part of the band's career. (The band has reunited since 2017.)

The songs come from a wide variety of sources. In 2000, the band put out an album called "The Real Thing." Three of the songs were new, full-band studio tracks, and the rest were acoustic versions. I've included the three new ones here. I plan on putting all the rest into an all-acoustic album instead.

Only one song, the medley "Advance Australia Fair - Birdman," is officially unreleased. (Not counting the bonus track, that is.) This song was played on a TV show and there's an excellent recording of it, so the sound quality matches the other songs.

The bonus track, "Stand Your Ground," is a Midnight Oil original. But it was only played a few times in concert, and the recording is from an audience bootleg that isn't very good. Thus I only included it as a bonus track.

01 Land [Australian Lyrics Version] (Midnight Oil)
02 Cemetery in My Mind [True Believers Blind Version] (Midnight Oil)
03 Heaven and Earth (Midnight Oil)
04 Dreams of Ordinary Men (Peter Garrett with Jimmy Barnes)
05 Speak No Evil (Peter Garrett)
06 Advance Australia Fair - Birdman [Instrumental] (Midnight Oil)
07 Pub with No Beer (Midnight Oil)
08 The Real Thing (Midnight Oil)
09 Spirit of the Age (Midnight Oil)
10 The Last of the Diggers (Midnight Oil)
11 No Man's Land (Midnight Oil)
12 Kiss that Girl (Midnight Oil)

Stand Your Ground (Midnight Oil)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mjm8Mi75

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/380ql1sSApIFZMu/file

The cover art photo is of the band's lead singer Peter Garrett, in concert in 1996.