Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers - Live Cover Versions, 1997

Here's the next in my long series of dealing with Tom P*tty and the Heartbreakers' live covers. The second half of the last one had songs from the band's famous month-long series of concerts at the Fillmore in San Francisco in 1997. All of this album is from those concerts, and nearly all of the next one is as well.

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

The reason there are so many songs from those Fillmore shows is because they opened up their set list and played all sorts of unusual songs. This time around, nearly all of the songs are from the 1960s or early 1970s. The most recent song is "Crazy Mama" by J. J. Cale in 1971. There are three songs from before the 1960s, two of them Chuck Berry songs ("Around and Around" and "Johnny B. Goode"), plus "Country Farm."

During these Fillmore shows, the band had a number of guest stars join them, typically figures who were major influences on them, such as John Lee Hooker or Bo Diddley. I didn't include any songs where it was a guest star singing their own songs. However, I did include Carl Perkins singing his 1969 song "Restless," because he did it as a duet with P*tty.

The sound quality is generally excellent. Four of the songs are officially released, so of course they sound great. Most of the rest are from soundboard bootlegs or concerts that were played live on the radio at the time, so those all sound great too. In fact, I'd say the sound quality is the best of the series so far. If you've been missing out on this series, this is a good place to start.

This album is 46 minutes long.

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/6BxHC3Nb 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/ADwbVp4E7M48GBc/file

As I mentioned with the last album, four concert posters were made for the Fillmore concerts that all had the same artistic style. I'm using all four for albums in this series. As usual with concert posters, I had to do some severe cropping to get the rectangular poster into a square shape.

The Kinks - Live in '65 - Selected Live Tracks (1965)

Unlike most major rock acts that were famous in the 1960s, the Kinks don't have a good live album from the 1960s. One could technically point to the 1967 live album "Live at Kelvin Hall," but I strongly dislike that album due to the fact that after it was recorded a loop of a screaming audience was overdubbed on top of all the songs, ruining the album for me.

Luckily, there are lots of recordings of the Kinks playing at the BBC in the 1960s. I've already posted a series of albums of their BBC recordings. But all but a couple of those songs were played in a studio, with no audience. Thus, I've put together this album, to try to capture the excitement of the Kinks playing in front of an audience, but one that doesn't drown them out.

The Kinks were a very popular live act from 1964 to 1966, and that's the era I'm focusing on here. Unfortunately, there's no single well recorded concert from that time period (at least that I know of). But there are some decent recordings of a few songs here and there. Funnily enough, all of them happen to be from 1965. Adding them all together, it makes for a nice 42 minute long album.

There are virtually no known bootlegs of Kinks concerts from this time period. But what does survive are TV appearances, and we can extract that audio from those. That's the case for all but two of the songs here ("Come On Now" and "Beautiful Delilah"). For the rest, you can find videos of all the other performances on YouTube. None of these performances have been officially released on album as far as I know.

I have to admit the sound quality isn't fantastic, generally speaking. But we're lucky to have any live recordings from the Kinks from their early years, and the sound was good enough for the TV shows of the time. It definitely captures more of the live energy than the BBC performances do.

One interesting thing to note is how many of the songs are sung mainly by Dave Davies, instead of the band's main singer and songwriter, his brother Ray Davies. Also, about half of the songs are covers.

By chance, virtually none of the songs I found were duplicates. One exception was that "You Really Got Me" was played at the first show here, an NME Poll Winners concert. (The songs are in chronological order of the days they were performed.) But it wasn't a very good version, and it's an overplayed song to begin with, so I left that off. But you can find that on YouTube as well.

01 Tired of Waiting for You (Kinks)
02 I Gotta Move (Kinks)
03 Bye Bye Johnny (Kinks)
04 Louie, Louie (Kinks)
05 You Really Got Me (Kinks)
06 Got Love If You Want It (Kinks)
07 Long Tall Shorty (Kinks)
08 All Day and All of the Night (Kinks)
09 Hide and Seek (Kinks)
10 Come On Now (Kinks)
11 Beautiful Delilah (Kinks)
12 A Well Respected Man (Kinks)
13 Milk Cow Blues (Kinks)
14 Till the End of the Day (Kinks)
15 I'm a Lover Not a Fighter (Kinks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uakRPugn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/QMrD7u2UUcrXiGV/file

I made the cover from a photo I found on the Internet. When I first posted this I didn't know when or where it was from exactly. But I have since been told that ti's from a January1965 appearance on the British TV show 'Thank Your Lucky Stars' where the Kinks performed "Tired of Waiting for You." So I'm glad (and lucky) it's from 1965.

Lucinda Williams - In My Girlish Days - Non-Album Tracks (1981-1986)

Lucinda Williams is another musician I really like. I plan on posting a lot of her music here.

Williams' career got off to a rather unusual start. She put out an acoustic all-covers album in 1979 called "Ramblin'" then an album of originals called "Happy Woman Blues" in 1980. So far, so good. But then she didn't release anything else all the way until 1988. That delay would have killed off the careers of most musicians. But her 1988 album, simply titled "Lucinda Williams," was so strong that it put her  on the map as a serious artist.

So what's the deal with that eight year gap between her second and third albums? Partially, it turned out she had a very tough time getting a record contract that she was satisfied with. But also, it turned out that she was a perfectionist. Her next two albums in particular also were delayed for years while she labored to get things exactly as she wanted them.

However, as it turned out, those eight years weren't wasted in terms of songwriting. I'm not a big fan of her 1980 album of originals. It's okay, but not great. However, her 1988 album is fantastic. Clearly, in the years in between, she made great strides in her songwriting. In fact, it turns out that many of the songs on her later albums, including at least half of her acclaimed 1992 album "Sweet Old World" were actually written during this eight-year period.

Furthermore, it turns out that she wrote even more songs during that period that fell by the wayside and were never officially released. Who knows just how many such songs there are, but we know some of them due to songs that have been made public through bootlegs. This album is a compilation of all the unreleased songs I could find.

The songs here come from four sources. The first three are from a 1981 radio show. One of the songs there, "Pancakes," was released on a various artists compilation in 1993, but that was a very different arrangement. The next five songs are from 1984 acoustic studio demos. One of those, "Out of Touch," was released on her 2001 album "Essence." But again it's a different arrangement, with somewhat different lyrics. The next three songs are from a 1985 radio show. The last song is from a 1986 studio session. A live version of that song, "Sundays," would be released on the 25th anniversary edition of the 1988 "Lucinda Williams" album. But again, that very is significantly different.

So, all in all, most of these songs are totally unreleased, but three of them have appeared elsewhere in other forms. All the songs are acoustic in nature, with a couple of musicians joining Williams for the first three songs and the last one. I'm not entirely sure, but as far as I know, the only song that wasn't written by Williams is "In My Girlish Days," which is a cover of a Memphis Minnie song.

I don't think this album is as great as the great 1988 album "Lucinda Williams." But I like it more than her 1980 album "Happy Woman Blues." It's quite different from both of those albums too, since the 1988 one is a lively mix of country, blues, and rock, and the 1980 one has a strong country feel, but this one is mellow and acoustic. If you're a Lucinda Williams fan, you should definitely give it a listen.

01 All I Want (Lucinda Williams)
02 Song for a Jewelry Maker (Lucinda Williams)
03 Pancakes (Lucinda Williams)
04 Out of Touch (Lucinda Williams)
05 Venetian Blinds (Lucinda Williams)
06 I Bet It (Lucinda Williams)
07 What I'm Living For (Lucinda Williams)
08 Hard Times (Lucinda Williams)
09 In My Girlish Days (Lucinda Williams)
10 This Is Not My Town (Lucinda Williams)
11 Lover of the Hour (Lucinda Williams)
12 Sundays (Lucinda Williams)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15191371/LucndaWllms_1981-1986_InMyGirlishDys_atse.zip.html

I figured "In My Girlish Days" is a good time, since the mid-1980s are "girlish days" when compared to the length of Williams' musical career since then. I'm not sure where the photo for the cover art comes from, or what year it's from, but I can guess her general age. It was damn hard for me to find any photos of Williams from the early to mid-1980s. I settled on a black and white one. But, over a year later, I colorized it.

Johnny Cash - American Outtakes (1993)

I'm kinda surprised I haven't posted this album yet, because it's exactly what this blog is all about. It's a classic example of an album that should exist, and I'm baffled that it still hasn't been officially released. If you're a Johnny Cash fan at all, you need to hear this.

I'm not a huge country music fan, but I am a big Johnny Cash fan. To me, he's one of the greatest musicians of all time. But after decades of success, his career had reached a low point in the early 1990s. His still had his vast musical catalog, of course, but few were interested in his new albums. Then producer Rick Rubin stepped in. He gave Cash's career a rebirth with the album "American Recordings," recorded in 1993 and released in 1994. Cash was recorded in totally stripped down mode, just him and his acoustic guitar, and he was given a bunch of very interesting songs to play. Personally, I consider "American Recordings" a five-star album, and it's my favorite Cash album.

But it turns out the 13 songs on "American Recordings" were far from the only songs recorded for that album. He played dozens more, then he and Rubin picked out their favorites for the album. So what happened to all the rest? In 2003, the same year Cash died, the box set "Unearthed" was released, and many more songs that Cash recorded in 1993 in acoustic mode appeared on that. But, surprisingly, many were not included on that, and remain officially unreleased to this day.

In the late 1990s, a bootleg appeared called "American Outtakes" that was nothing but outtakes from the 1993 Rubin-produced recording sessions. That came out before "Unearthed," so some songs on it later were officially released. What I've done here is remove all the released songs. Happily, that still leaves 45 minutes' worth of music, which is an ideal album length, in my opinion.

The bootleg has excellent sound. However, I've edited many of the songs, because the bootleg took a "warts and all" approach, including false starts. Most of those are just Cash playing a few seconds of the song and then stopping, often because he has to cough. So unless you're a big fan of hearing people cough, you're not missing anything from having the false starts removed. I also made an edit to "All of God's Children Ain't Free" because that, alone of all of the songs on the album, ended prematurely, right in the middle of a chorus. I patched in the rest of the chorus from earlier in the song to give it a proper ending.

Is this album as good as "American Recordings?" No. That album has some really great songs, many of them specifically written for it. This is more of a collection of traditional songs, and redone songs from earlier in Cash's career. But still, as Cash albums go, it's one of my favorites. Since Cash died in 2003, there have been some archival albums released, including some from the very end of his life when his voice was failing him. I honestly don't understand why that material has been released, and yet this hasn't, back when his voice and musical powers were at the best.

By the way, not all the songs are just Cash and his acoustic guitar. "I Witnessed a Crime" has Billy Gibbons, the guitarist from ZZ Top, playing guitar on it. Also, the last two songs have some other instruments on them. But they don't have drums of them, and they're still acoustic in nature.

01 What On Earth Will You Do for Heaven's Sake (Johnny Cash)
02 The Drifter (Johnny Cash)
03 I Witnessed a Crime (Johnny Cash with Billy Gibbons)
04 The Next Time I'm in Town (Johnny Cash)
05 To Beat the Devil (Johnny Cash)
06 Friends in California (Johnny Cash)
07 The Wonder of You (Johnny Cash)
08 East Virginia Blues (Johnny Cash)
09 Go On Blues (Johnny Cash)
10 Go Where I Send Thee (Johnny Cash)
11 Loving Her Was Easier [Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again] (Johnny Cash)
12 T for Texas [Solo Version] (Johnny Cash)
13 Bad News (Johnny Cash)
14 All of God's Children Ain't Free (Johnny Cash)
15 One More Ride (Johnny Cash)
16 Don't Sell Daddy Any More Whiskey (Johnny Cash)
17 The Devil (Johnny Cash)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602890/JohnnyC_1993_AmericnOuttakes_atse.zip.html

There have been various versions of this bootleg released, with various titles and covers. I picked a cover that I particularly liked. It's very much in line with the look of the "American Recordings" cover. I shortened the title.

Norah Jones - Butterflies - Non-Album Tracks (1999-2000)

Norah Jones continues to amaze me. As I've mentioned in this blog several times, I'm not a big fan of many of her official studio albums, but I love her other career, the vast amount of music that has not appeared on her albums. And what especially amazes me is how much of that non-album material there is. I keep thinking I've found it all, and then I find more.

Previously, I had only found a few of Jones's songs from 1999 or 2000. But I've just discovered a bunch more. In 1999, Jones was the sole vocalist as part of a band named "Laszlo." Laszlo only put out one album, and all the songs on it were originals (except for one, "Freak"), but written by other band members. I previously had only found three of these songs, but I was able to find the whole album. I've included all of the songs from it here, except for one, "Your Head's Too Big," because the lyrics for that one are really bad.

This Laszlo album, titled "Butterflies," is totally obscure, to the point that I given up on finding most of the songs on it. But I think it's pretty good. It sounds very much like the rest of Jones's stuff, with a kind of pop-jazz style. But it's more likely and rocking than her usual style, so I actually prefer it. Most importantly, even though the songwriters are totally obscure and apparently only did this one album, the songs are as good or better than those on her later studio albums, in my opinion.

But that's not all. The first eight songs here are from the Laszlo album. The last three are from 2000, and involve Jones working with other musicians. Jones sings lead on all three, and they're just as good. Two of the three are unreleased, but you'd never know based on the sound quality.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 Beloved (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
02 As We Fall (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
03 Traces (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
04 Song for Samuel (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
05 Wait (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
06 In a Whisper (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
07 Freak (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
08 Butterflies (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
09 Ain't Gonna Ask You (Norah Jones)
10 Angels (Wax Poetic & Norah Jones)
11 Technologie (Wax Poetic & Norah Jones)
12 Purple Elephants (Wax Poetic & Norah Jones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696762/NORHJNS1999-2000_Btterflies_atse.zip.html

In my opinion, given Jones's appealing looks, if you have an album with Jones as the lead singer, it's a no-brained to put her face on the cover. Maybe one reason Laszlo stayed so obscure is that they didn't do that. They titled the album "Butterflies," which I have done here as well, and made the cover some abstract art with a butterfly theme. I used that as the background for my cover, but pasted a photo of a young Norah Jones on top of it. (I'm not sure what year her photo is from). In case you're curious, or want to use the original cover, here it is.

After Jones hit it big and sold millions upon millions of albums, I'm surprised this album was never rereleased, with Jones's name and/or photo on the cover. But apparently that never happened. It wouldn't be false advertising, because she dominates the album.

Robyn Hitchcock - Acoustic Covers, Volume 4: 1999-2000

As I work my way chronologically through Robyn Hitchcock's extremely prolific career, I've been posting three kinds of albums: full-band stray track albums, all-acoustic versions of studio albums, and live cover versions albums.

It's been a long time since I've posted any of the last kind, and I've only posted two of those so far. But here's another. These will come more frequently from now on. Maybe part of that is that he started playing cover versions more often in concert. But I think more of it is that the number of bootlegged concerts increased, and the sound quality of such bootlegs increased too. If he's played a particular song many times over the years, I tried to go with the best sounding version. I'm glad to say the sound quality is pretty good on this album, even though every single song is from concert bootlegs. Most of them are from soundboard recordings.

Hitchcock loves the Beatles and Bob Dylan. So it's not that surprising that he covers four Beatles songs and three Dylan songs here. But he also does some less expected songs, such as tunes by R.E.M. ("Electrolyte") and Morrissey ("Every Day Is like Sunday").

Here's a list of the original artists for each song:

01 I'll Get You - Beatles
02 Let It Be Me - Everly Brothers
03 Peggy Sue - Buddy Holly
04 I've Got a Feeling - The Tracks of My Tears - Beatles - Smokey Robinson
05 Satellite of Love - Lou Reed
06 What Goes On - Velvet Underground
07 Too Much of Nothing - Bob Dylan
08 Waterloo Sunset [Acoustic Band Version] - Kinks
09 4th Time Around - Bob Dylan
10 Tangled Up in Blue - Bob Dylan
11 Everyday Is like Sunday - Morrissey
12 Only a Northern Song - Beatles
13 Old Brown Shoe - Beatles
14 Rock Your Baby - When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman - Kung Fu Fighting - George McCrae - Dr. Hook - Carl Douglas
15 All I Have to Do Is Dream - Everly Brothers

Here's the usual song list:

01 I'll Get You (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Let It Be Me (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Peggy Sue (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 I've Got a Feeling - The Tracks of My Tears (Robyn Hitchcock & Grant Lee Phillips)
05 Satellite of Love (Robyn Hitchcock & Grant Lee Phillips)
06 What Goes On (Robyn Hitchcock & Grant Lee Phillips)
07 Too Much of Nothing (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Waterloo Sunset [Acoustic Band Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 4th Time Around (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Tangled Up in Blue (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 Everyday Is like Sunday (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Only a Northern Song (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 Old Brown Shoe (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 Rock Me Baby - When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman - Kung Fu Fighting (Robyn Hitchcock & Grant Lee Phillips)
15 All I Have to Do Is Dream (Robyn Hitchcock & Grant Lee Phillips)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/j7vsyiPo

I couldn't find a good photo of Hitchcock with an acoustic guitar in 1999 or 2000. I'm not sure when this photo is from exactly, but judging by his hair, which was rapidly turning grey around this time, it's from roughly around 1999.

Belle & Sebastian - Live Cover Versions, Volume 2: 2002-2004

Belle and Sebastian had a neat habit of playing cover versions in concert back in the early 2000s. (They don't do that so much anymore, since they have so many originals to play instead.) But there are two things they did that were unusual. One, they picked some really interesting and unexpected songs to cover. Two, they typically only played them once.

This second thing is a big problem here, because only three of the songs here have been officially released. (All three of them are from a BBC album.) So if a song only gets played once in concert, the chances of it getting recorded well on a bootleg are small. It's a lucky thing if it gets bootlegged at all. I've found compilations of dozens and dozens of cover versions played in concert by Belle and Sebastian. The problem is, the vast majority of them have unacceptably poor sound quality to my ears. So this is my collection of just the ones that sounded good enough to me.

Even then, I had to make a couple of drastic edits. Note that for the song "Good Vibrations," most of the first verses and chorus was missing on the bootleg source that I found. So I edited it to start cleanly with the beginning of the second verse. I think that's much better than not including the song at all.

It's too bad so many songs didn't make it for sound quality reasons. I hope the band made their own recordings and will release some of them one day. But what's left on this album is still a lot of fun. Look at the rest of the song list - everything from Burt Bacharach to the Supremes to Sly and the Family Stone to Kraftwerk. They even did great versions of songs in Portuguese and French!

I explained more in the write-up for Volume 1 how it is that I found more songs that I'd previously missed. But note that all the songs with "[Edit]" in their titles are ones that I'd missed due to sound quality issues. However, I was able to use audio editing programs like X-Minus to fix most of the flaws, making them acceptable to my ears. As an example, the lead vocals to "Stayin' Alive" were too quiet compared to the instrumentation, so I boosted them.

Here are the original artists for each song:

01 Oliver's Army [Edit] - Elvis Costello
02 So You Want to Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star - Byrds
03 Darlin' [Edit] - Beach Boys
04 Stayin' Alive [Edit] - Bee Gees
05 Baby Love - Supremes
06 The Model [Das Modell] - Kraftwerk
07 Lucifer Sam - Pink Floyd
08 Runnin' Away - Sly and the Family Stone
09 My Little Red Book - Burt Bacharach / Love
10 The Train from Kansas City - Shangri-Las
11 This Guy's in Love with You - Burt Bacharach / Herb Alpert
12 Good Vibrations - Beach Boys
13 Comment te Dire Adieu - Francoise Hardy
14 The Boy with the Thorn in His Side - Smiths

And here's the usual song list:

01 Oliver's Army [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
02 So You Want to Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star (Belle & Sebastian)
03 Darlin' [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
04 Stayin' Alive [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Baby Love (Belle & Sebastian)
06 The Model [Das Modell] (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Lucifer Sam (Belle & Sebastian)
08 Runnin' Away (Belle & Sebastian)
09 My Little Red Book (Belle & Sebastian)
10 The Train from Kansas City [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
11 This Guy's in Love with You [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
12 Good Vibrations [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
13 Comment te Dire Adieu (Belle & Sebastian)
14 The Boy with the Thorn in His Side (Belle & Sebastian)

This album is 40 minutes long.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602300/BellenS_2002-2004_LivCoverVersionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

I wanted to use a photo of the entire Belle and Sebastian band playing in concert in the time period of this album. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any good ones. But I did find a good one of band leader Stuart Murdoch singing as part of the band at Wembley Arena in 2004, so I used that.

Nick Lowe - Bowi - Non-Album Tracks (1976-1979)

I've been in a mood to listen to Nick Lowe lately, so here's some more from him.

Lowe has had a long and impressive career. I think he's been exceptionally consistently good, except in the 1980s, when his albums were patchy. But my favorite time period of his career has to be the late 1970s. Not only did he put out his two best albums, "Jesus of Cool" in 1978 (also known as "Pure Pop for Now People" in the US), and "Labour of Lust" in 1979, but he toured extensively with Rockpile. I have a whole series of albums I plan to post covering his work with Dave Edmunds and Rockpile.

This stray tracks album covers the exact time of his career peak, so of course it's pretty damn good too. All but three songs here are from 1976 and 1977, which is when his solo career was slowly getting started, but before "Jesus of Cool" came out. There's been a compilation released of roughly this time period called "The Wilderness Years," and a lot of songs here come from that.

After some false starts documented on the 1975 stray tracks album I posted already, including some strange Bay City Rollers tribute songs released under a pseudonym, his solo career got started for real with his great single "So It Goes" in mid-1976. "So It Goes" is a fantastic song, and I'd love to have it here, but he included that exact same single version on "Jesus of Cool," so I don't want to duplicate that. The B-side, "Heart of the City," is nearly as great. That also made it on "Jesus of Cool," but the version there is a live one. The B-side version to "So It Goes" is the studio version, so I was able to include that.

Three of the songs here are from an EP Lowe put out in 1977 called "Bowi." There's a funny story behind that name. In 1977, David Bowie put out his acclaimed "Low" album. Lowe jokingly pretended that Bowie had named the album after him, but had left out the last letter of his name. So he responded with the EP "Bowi," with the last letter of Bowie's name missing. He even parodied the "Low" album cover, for instance using the same font and text location. I enjoyed this joke so much that I've used "Bowi" as the name for this album as a whole.

Lowe was a very prolific songwriter in this time period, so much so that he gave away lots of good songs to other artists without even recording any known versions for himself. Dr. Feelgood even had a ton ten hit with a song he co-wrote, "Milk and Alcohol." So it's not surprising that most of the songs on this album are Lowe originals. I'm not totally sure, but I think the only songs here he didn't at least co-write are "Born a Woman," "Halfway to Paradise," and "Endless Sleep."

A few songs need a little more explanation. "They Called It Rock" shows up here. It's basically the exact same song as "Shake and Pop" on "Jesus of Cool." The only difference is that the chorus of one is the phrase "they called it rock" repeated several times, and the other has the chorus of "shake and pop" repeated several times. Lowe wrote the song and preferred "Shake and Pop." However, his Rockpile band mate Dave Edmunds preferred the "They Called It Rock" version, so Rockpile always played it live that way. I'm not sure why Lowe recorded "They Called It Rock" as a B-side.

"Heart" is a song that appeared on Rockpile's 1980 album "Seconds of Pleasure." It sounds a lot like Lowe singing it, but that version is actually sung by band member Billy Bremner. The version here is sung by Lowe. He also did it on his 1982 album "Nick the Knife," but this has a different reggae styled arrangement.

"I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll)" is one of my favorite Lowe songs. Although he wrote it, he gave it to Edmunds for his 1977 album "Get It." When Rockpile would play live, Edmunds would always sing it. But this version from an obscure 1978 album has Lowe doing most of the singing. (I'm not sure who he's singing with, since Edmunds isn't on that recording.) Lowe would release his own studio version on his 1985 album "The Rose of England," but that has a very different arrangement.

01 Heart of the City (Nick Lowe)
02 Let's Go to the Disco (Nick Lowe)
03 Everybody Dance (Nick Lowe)
04 Keep It Out of Sight (Nick Lowe)
05 Truth Drug (Nick Lowe)
06 Born a Woman (Nick Lowe)
07 Endless Sleep (Nick Lowe)
08 Shake that Rat [Instrumental] (Nick Lowe)
09 Halfway to Paradise (Nick Lowe)
10 I Don't Want the Night to End (Nick Lowe)
11 I Love My Label (Nick Lowe)
12 Heart [Reggae Version] (Nick Lowe)
13 I Got a Job (Nick Lowe)
14 They Called It Rock (Nick Lowe)
15 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Nick Lowe)
16 Basing Street (Nick Lowe)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264508/NickL_1976-1979_Bwi_atse.zip.html

The cover is just the cover of the "Bowi" EP without any changes.

Joan Osborne - Under the Covers, Volume 2 (1992-1993)

Here's the second of three albums I've made of Joan Osborne doing covers of famous songs in the 1990s.

Osborne is best known for her hit "One of Us" in 1995, but she's much, much more than a one-hit wonder. Frankly, she's just a good songwriter, but she's got tons of soul and has a phenomenal voice, so she really shines when she does covers of famous songs.

As I explained with Volume 1, this is based on a bootleg compilation I'd discovered named "Under the Covers." But I made my own version from scratch because most of the songs on that were from average sounding audience bootlegs. Nearly all the songs here are from excellent soundboard bootlegs instead.

In my opinion, Osborne not only has a great voice, she has great taste in music. Just about all the songs here are classics. Some of the lesser known ones are "Moonlight Mile" by the Rolling Stones, "Midnight in Memphis" done by Bette Midler, and "His Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles" by Captain Beefheart.

01 Tupelo Honey (Joan Osborne)
02 Maggie May (Joan Osborne)
03 Moonlight Mile (Joan Osborne)
04 Hickory Wind [Acappella Version] (Joan Osborne)
05 Don't Let Me Down (Joan Osborne)
06 Angel from Montgomery [Acappella Version] (Joan Osborne)
07 I'll Go Crazy (Joan Osborne)
08 Get Ready (Joan Osborne)
09 Midnight in Memphis (Joan Osborne)
10 I Can't Stand the Rain (Joan Osborne)
11 His Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles (Joan Osborne)
12 Take Me to the River (Joan Osborne)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15847059/JoanO_1992-1993_UndrCovrsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The cover is based on a photo of Osborne singing at The Wetlands, a New York City club, in 1993.

Pink Floyd - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1968

I've already posted Pink Floyd stray tracks for 1967 and 1968. Then I posted an album of BBC performances from 1967. That's because BBC performances are so key for Pink Floyd in the late 1960s and early 1970s, due both to sound quality issues and the fact the band would play songs for the BBC they would rarely or never play in normal concerts. So I'm continuing that trend by posting an album of BBC performances from 1968.

As it so happens, all of the BBC performances from 1967 made up one normal length album, and it's the same for 1968. I love how nicely that works out.

Note that starting around this time, it can get confusing figuring out what Pink Floyd songs are what, due to the band using more than one name for a song. It some cases, they had an early name and then changed it to something else entirely by the time they officially recorded it. Whereas in other cases, they already had a recorded version, but then gave it a new name in order for it to fit into a new project, such as a concept album. Three of the songs here fit into either of those cases, so I've added the other names the songs are known as in parentheses in each title.

The first four songs aren't from the BBC, but are from a French TV show called "Bouton Rouge." It's basically the same though, because they were done live in studio, without an audience. You can find the video of the performances on YouTube. One of the songs, "Let There Be More Light," was also done later in the year for the BBC. Normally I don't like including two versions of the same song on one album, but for the sake of completeness I've included both versions.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 Astronomy Domine (Pink Floyd)
02 Flaming (Pink Floyd)
03 Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun (Pink Floyd)
04 Let There Be More Light [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
05 Instrumental Improvisation (Pink Floyd)
06 Murderotic Woman [Careful with that Axe Eugene] [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
07 The Massed Gadgets of Hercules [A Saucerful of Secrets] [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
08 Julia Dream (Pink Floyd)
09 Let There Be More Light (Pink Floyd)
10 Point Me at the Sky (Pink Floyd)
11 Embryo (Pink Floyd)
12 Baby Blue Shuffle in D Minor [The Narrow Way, Part 1] [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
13 Interstellar Overdrive [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/W9uUEx67

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5Xz4uhxTEDDVVZW/file

For the cover art, I found a publicity photo of the band in 1968. I'll bet Roger Waters would be chagrined to see himself in that fur coat. ;)

The Move - Blackberry Way - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

This is the second of my three stray tracks albums for the Move.

I mentioned in the last one how it was odd that the band didn't release a studio album in 1967, despite having plenty of songs to do so. They did put out an album in 1968, but then they didn't have one in 1969, despite again having enough songs to do. This essentially is that album.

The bulk of this album comes from the A- and B-sides to three singles. The first A-side, "Wild Tiger Woman," had no chart action at all despite being a good song. The second, "Blackberry Way," hit number one in Britain. The third, "Curly," made it to number 12 in Britain. None of these had any success at all in the US, since the Move was essentially unheard of there in the 1960s.

If I only had the seven songs from the three singles (one of them had two B-sides), that would only be a 24-minute long album. Luckily though, there are three more Move stray tracks from this time period that are not from the BBC, since I have a whole series of albums just dealing with their BBC performances. These three songs are from a live album of a 1969 concert, though it wasn't released until decades later. As I often do, I removed the audience noise from these songs so they'd fit with the studio tracks that make up the rest of the album. All three of those songs are covers, while all the other songs here are originals.

In my opinion, this album is just as good as the official one before it or after it. Note though that Jeff Lynne still hadn't joined the group at this time.

01 Wild Tiger Woman (Move)
02 Omnibus (Move)
03 Blackberry Way (Move)
04 Something (Move)
05 Curly (Move)
06 This Time Tomorrow (Move)
07 Second Class [She's Too Good For Me] (Move)
08 Goin' Back (Move)
09 Under the Ice (Move)
10 Open My Eyes (Move)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xh9VhUct

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/oGzDPog3XIyE1an/file

For the cover, I used the cover to the "Blackberry Way" single. However, I cleaned up some areas, removed the name of the B-side, and stretched the title to fill the space where the B-side name used to be.

David Bowie - Tonight - Alternate Version (1984)

So far, I've posted a series of stray tracks albums for David Bowie stretching from about 1966 to 1982. I said that's where the series ends, because I think the quality of his music goes way down for many years thereafter. But he does have one last hurrah with "Let's Dance" in 1983. It's just that i don't know of any stray tracks associated with it.

Then, the "Tonight" album in 1984 has some good moments. I think he jumped the shark with "Never Let Me Down" in 1987, which was just terrible. Even Bowie later pretty much admitted it was terrible. It took him a long time to find his groove again after that.

In my opinion, only about half of "Tonight" is worth hearing. But luckily, Bowie put out a handful of songs that were also good in 1985 and 1986 before things really went south for him for a while. It so happens that by adding the good songs from "Tonight" with the other good songs from that time, one gets an album's length of songs. So that's what I've done here.

The extra songs come from four sources. First, there's "This Is Not America," which Bowie did with Pat Metheny for a movie soundtrack. I think that's a great song that tends to get forgotten since it didn't make it on any Bowie album at the time. Next, there's "When the Wind Blows," the title song to an anti-nuclear movie. Then there are two songs from the "Absolute Beginners" soundtrack, and one more from the "Labyrinth" soundtrack. Actually, both of those soundtracks have more Bowie songs, but unfortunately I don't think those songs are very good.

In addition, I used an alternate version of the song "Loving the Alien." That song is on the "Tonight" album, but I think that version was way too long at over seven minutes. I'm using the single version, which is four and a half minutes long. (I don't have a problem with a long song if it stays interesting, but some long songs just repeat and get boring.)

If you add up everything on this album, it totals 43 minutes. Interestingly enough, this isn't that far off from the bonus tracks that were later added to the "Tonight" album. That adds three of the same five song I added. But I think with the "Tonight" album, less is more, and it's greatly improved by removing some of the songs.

Speaking of less being more, right during this time period, in 1985, Bowie and Mick Jagger made a duet version of the 1960s Motown classic "Dancing in the Street." It hit number one in Britain and was at least a top ten hit in many other countries. But that version is just awful! It, and its lame video, are widely mocked today. So this album is better off by not having that song on it. If you want to hear "Dancing in the Street," please listen to the awesome original by Martha and the Vandellas instead.

01 Loving the Alien [Remix Version] (David Bowie)
02 Tonight (David Bowie with Tina Turner)
03 Blue Jean (David Bowie)
04 Tumble and Twirl (David Bowie)
05 I Keep Forgetting (David Bowie)
06 This Is Not America (David Bowie & Pat Metheny)
07 When the Wind Blows (David Bowie)
08 That's Motivation (David Bowie)
09 Absolute Beginners (David Bowie)
10 As the World Falls Down (David Bowie)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15106889/DavidB_1984_TonghtAlternatVersion_atse.zip.html

For the cover, I just used the "Tonight" cover without any changes.

Richard Thompson - Real Gone - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (1986-1988)

I just posted one Richard Thompson album; here's another. I'm posting two because they're kind of companion albums to each other. The one I just posted has full-band stray tracks from the late 1980s, while this one is all acoustic stray tracks.

This album has a lot of songs on it, fifteen, but it only totals up to 45 minutes. That's because it has lots of short but sweet songs. Nearly all of them are cover versions. One exception is "Killerman Gold Posse," a song from the 1987 album "Live, Love, Larf & Loaf" by French, Frith, Kaiser & Thompson.

All but three of the songs here are officially unreleased. Luckily, Thompson is famous enough so that there are a decent number of soundboard bootlegs from this time period. As a result, the sound quality is generally excellent.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Don't Tell Secrets (Richard Thompson)
02 Sally Rackett [Hand 'Em Away] (Richard Thompson)
03 The Fool (Richard Thompson)
04 Killerman Gold Posse (Richard Thompson)
05 Air for Morris Ogg - Mrs. MacLeod's Reel [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
06 Here without You (Richard Thompson with Gregson & Collister)
07 It'll Be Me (Richard Thompson)
08 Wild Thing (Richard Thompson)
09 Candy Man (Richard Thompson)
10 She's a Real Gone Gal (Richard Thompson)
11 Heebie Jeebies (Richard Thompson)
12 Push and Shove (Richard Thompson)
13 Not Fade Away (Richard Thompson)
14 Teenage Partner (Richard Thompson)
15 As I Roved Out (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15268262/RichrdT_1986-1989_RealGneAcoustc_atse.zip.html

I found a photo of Thompson that I like for the cover art, but unfortunately it doesn't have any identifying information. However, from his appearances I figure it's from the late 1980s.

Richard Thompson - John the Gun - Non-Album Tracks (1985-1988)

I've got tons of Richard Thompson albums to post. They fall into various categories. This is a collection of full-band stray tracks.

Thompson typically doesn't have a lot of non-album original songs that reaches the public, either officially or unofficially. So most of the songs here are cover versions, or songs from much earlier in his career that are done in a different way. The latter kind are "The End of the Rainbow," "The Angels Took My Racehorse Away," and "Crash the Party." "Drowned Dog Black Night" is a Thompson original that appeared on the 1987 album "Live, Love, Larf & Loaf" by French, Frith, Kaiser & Thompson. Thompson was in that band, but this is one of the few songs from that album that he played solo in concert.

"John the Gun" was written by Sandy Denny, Thompson's bandmate in Fairport Convention, and Thompson played guitar and produced the version on Denny's album in 1971. The other songs on the album are also covers.

All but two of the songs here are officially released. The two are from soundboard bootlegs, so the sound quality is excellent on those too.

01 John the Gun (Richard Thompson)
02 The End of the Rainbow (Richard Thompson)
03 Flyin' Saucers Rock and Roll (Richard Thompson with John Kirkpatrick & Band)
04 Drowned Dog Black Night (Richard Thompson)
05 A Blind Step Away (Richard Thompson with French, Frith, & Kaiser)
06 The Angels Took My Racehorse Away (Richard Thompson)
07 We Got to Get Out of This Place (Richard Thompson)
08 Crash the Party (Richard Thompson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vWJAN8uH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bQWh50t8rXZz05L/file

For the cover art, I found a black and white publicity photo of Thompson from 1988. Much later, PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog colorized it. In January 2025, I improved the image with the Krea AI program.

Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers - Live Cover Versions, 1992-1997

Here's the next in my long series of albums of Tom P*tty and the Heartbreakers' live covers. This encompasses the years 1992 to 1997.

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

This album is basically split into two parts. The first half is songs from 1992 to 1995, with all but one of them officially released. That means the sound quality is excellent, though the one unreleased song ("On the Road Again") is only from a decent sounding audience bootleg.

In 1997, P*tty and his band played about twenty concerts in a row at the Fillmore in San Francisco. These shows are celebrated by fans as well as the band. Instead of playing their usual set list, they decided to let it all hang out and play lots of rarities and covers, as well as having a variety of special guests join them. The second half of this album comes from these Fillmore shows. But I have so many songs from these shows that they fill up all of the next album in this series, and most of the one after that.

Unfortunately, not much has been officially released from the 1997 Fillmore shows yet. (As I write this in 2019, I've heard these are vague plans for an eventual release of some sort, but who knows when or if that will happen.) Some of the concerts were played on the radio, so high quality bootlegs exist of them. But those are later in the series. The songs here are more of a mixed bag. Some of them were played only once, so we're lucky to have decent audience bootlegs. For instance, the song "Asshole" by Beck was only played a single time. Still, if the sound wasn't up to what I consider acceptable standards, I wouldn't have included it.

This album is 44 minutes long.

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/EJzP7AdQ 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/H0k9WJCXFnl2vxQ/file

For P*tty's 1997 Fillmore shows, four concert posters were made with very similar artwork. I'm using all four for covers, so here's the first one. As usual with concert posters, I had a problem changing the rectangular shape into a square shape, so I had to do some drastic cropping and make other adjustments.

Aimee Mann & 'Til Tuesday - The Best of 'Til Tuesday - Selected Best Tracks (1984-1988)

When it comes to female singers, the public puts a lot of weight on physical beauty and the singing voice. Songwriting has generally been less important, since songs can be written by others. But every now and then, a woman comes along who is beautiful, has a great voice, AND is a top notch songwriter. Kirsty MacColl is one example. Another is Aimee Mann.

Mann has gotten a lot of critical acclaim for her solo career, though her sales haven't been as great as they should be. However, a lot of people forget that she started out as the lead singer and main songwriter for the new wave band 'Til Tuesday back in the 1980s. I plan on posting a lot of albums of Mann's solo stuff. But I think before I do that, it makes sense to cover her 'Til Tuesday work.

Personally, I think 'Til Tuesday was very hit or miss. Sometimes, they came up with great songs, like their big hit "Voices Carry." Another example would be "Coming Up Close," which I'd consider one of the top five songs of Mann's entire career. "The Other End (Of the Telescope)," a song cowriten by Mann and Elvis Costello, is great too. But too often, the songs were just ordinary, and were marred by dated 1980s production values. So I've compiled my own 'Til Tuesday "best of" for people who don't want to own all three of their albums. There have been several official best ofs, but those have included some songs I don't like and left off some songs I do like.

In my opinion, Mann was still learning how to write and produce consistently excellent songs in her 'Til Tuesday years. This can be seen by the drastic improvement from the band's first album to their third one. The first album has the classic "Voices Carry" and not much else, while the third album has lots of good songs. So nearly half of this compilation comes from the third album.

It turns out 'Til Tuesday has lots of unreleased songs, at least an album's worth. I've listened to a bunch, and while they were as good as many of the songs on their albums, they didn't really stand out enough for me to include them here. But I did find one I like which I've included, called "Tension." If you want to hear more of their unreleased stuff, check out the band's live concerts on YouTube.

One song here, "Sign of Love," is credited to just Aimee Mann. But I think that's a mere technicality, since it was played in concert by 'Til Tuesday at the time, and sounds just like their other songs.

01 Love in a Vacuum [Demo] ('Til Tuesday)
02 Tension ('Til Tuesday)
03 Voices Carry ('Til Tuesday)
04 Coming Up Close ('Til Tuesday)
05 Have Mercy ('Til Tuesday)
06 What about Love ('Til Tuesday)
07 Yesterday ('Til Tuesday)
08 Do It Again ('Til Tuesday)
09 Sign of Love (Aimee Mann)
10 Everything's Different Now ('Til Tuesday)
11 Why Must I ('Til Tuesday)
12 J for Jules ('Til Tuesday)
13 [Believed You Were] Lucky ('Til Tuesday)
14 Limits to Love ('Til Tuesday)
15 The Other End [Of the Telescope] ('Til Tuesday)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687552/AIMEMNN1984-1988_BestofTilTuesdy_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art using a publicity photo of Aimee Mann from her 'Til Tuesday era.

Nick Lowe - Rollers Show - Non-Album Tracks (1975)

Now that I've posted a couple of albums of stray tracks from Brinsley Schwarz, Nick Lowe's early 1970s band, I can start posting albums of material from Lowe's solo career, as well as his work with Rockpile. I'm psyched, because I think Lowe is a great songwriter, and is still very underrated.

1975 was a transitional year for Lowe. Brinsley Schwarz fizzled out in 1975, after recording a final album, "It's All Over Now," in 1974, which wasn't released at the time. Lowe's solo career was slow in getting started. His first single under his own name wouldn't come out until 1976, and his first solo album wouldn't come out until 1978. So spent time writing songs, including for others, and producing for others.

One problem he had was that he was still signed to a record company that he didn't like. The company dropped everyone from Brinsley Schwarz except him, because they knew he was an excellent songwriter. In order to free himself, he came up with the idea to record some songs so bad and uncool that the company would lose interest in him. At the time, the Bay City Rollers were all the rage with kids, so he wrote a couple of cheesy novelty songs about that band. The problem was, he was too talented, and couldn't help but come up with some fun songs, even though they were about a pretty bad boy band. The record company loved his songs ("Bay City Rollers, We Love You" and "Rollers Show"), and one of them was actually a big hit in Japan (released under the name "Tartan Horde"). So it would take him another year of lying low before he could finally get released from his contract and sign a new one with a different company.

This album shows that Lowe certainly had enough good songs to have released a really nice album in 1975 if the circumstances had been different. And that's just with the songs we have recordings of. There are many other songs from the time that he gave to others, with no recordings of his versions yet to emerge. For instance, in 1975, he had such songs recorded by Dr. Feelgood ("Because You're Mine"), and the Kursaal Flyers ("Television"), with more in the next couple of years, including a top ten hit by Dr. Feelgood ("Milk and Alcohol").

Most of the songs on this album weren't released at the time. About half of them come from a bootleg of still unreleased demos, with most of them acoustic. This is rather unfortunate, since he was very much into rocking at this stage of his career, and the songs were the kind meant to be played with a full band. But what we have is better than nothing. In 1975, Lowe formed a band called Spick Ace and the Blue Sharks. They toured some that year in the Netherlands, and planned to release an EP, but it didn't come out due to the above-mentioned record company problems, and they soon broke up. Hopefully, that material will become public someday.

By the way, one of the acoustic demos, "Time and Time Again," was incomplete. It included a first verse, chorus, and second verse, but then stopped right as the chorus was about to repeat. So I copied the chorus from earlier in the song and pasted it in after the second verse to make the song more complete. I also removed a bad skip from this song and one of the other acoustic demos by patching in identical parts from elsewhere in the songs.

01 Fool Too Long (Nick Lowe)
02 Bay City Rollers, We Love You (Nick Lowe)
03 I Respect You for That (Nick Lowe)
04 Little Darlin' (Nick Lowe)
05 She's My Baby [Acoustic Demo] (Nick Lowe)
06 So Heavy (Nick Lowe)
07 Here She Comes Again [Early Version of Deborah] [Acoustic Demo] (Nick Lowe)
08 Tonight [Acoustic Demo] (Nick Lowe)
09 Cruel to Be Kind [Original Version] (Nick Lowe)
10 Living in the 70's [Early Version of Dose of You] [Acoustic Demo] (Nick Lowe)
11 Time and Time Again [Acoustic Demo] [Edit] (Nick Lowe)
12 Rollers Show (Nick Lowe)
13 Allorolla, Pt 1 [Instrumental] (Nick Lowe)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264430/NickL_1975_RollrsShw_atse.zip.html

I had great trouble finding a good picture of Lowe in 1975, since he kept a low profile that year. I found one I really liked of him in concert in 1978, so I used that one.

The Kinks - To the Bone (Studio) (1994-1996)

This post immediately follows a post of the other Kinks' "To the Bone" album. Check out that post for a detailed explanation about why I've done what I've done.

But the short version is that for both the British and US versions of the album (which are very different), there is a seemingly random mixture of live tracks from concerts and semi-acoustic tracks played in front of a small studio audience. The other post has all the live stuff grouped together. This one has all the (mostly) studio stuff.

Virtually everything on this album was recorded in one day in 1994. But, for the US version of the album, the Kinks tacked on two new songs, recorded in a studio in early 1996. These songs are excellent, especially "To the Bone," which is one of my favorite Kinks songs of all time (though that admittedly is a pretty long list since they're such a great band). So naturally I've stuck those two songs at the end here as well.

To be honest, the songs here aren't really that acoustic, generally speaking. They're done with the full band, including a drummer with a full drum kit. The main difference is that acoustic guitars are used instead of electric ones. Some of the songs are also rearranged in creative ways.

01 Apeman (Kinks)
02 Tired of Waiting for You (Kinks)
03 See My Friends (Kinks)
04 Death of a Clown (Kinks)
05 Muswell Hillbilly (Kinks)
06 Better Things (Kinks)
07 Don't Forget to Dance (Kinks)
08 Picture Book (Kinks)
09 The Village Green Preservation Society (Kinks)
10 Do You Remember Walter (Kinks)
11 Set Me Free (Kinks)
12 Dead End Street (Kinks)
13 A Gallon of Gas (Kinks)
14 Waterloo Sunset (Kinks)
15 Animal (Kinks)
16 To the Bone (Kinks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/khpx2FqD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/0MBvOeXJbzdXj1r/file

The US and British versions of "To the Bone" have completely different covers. I used the British cover for the live album, so I'm using the US one here.

The Kinks - To the Bone (Live) (1993-1994)

The Kinks are great! At this point, I've posted 11 stray tracks albums by them, plus another four BBC albums, plus several more by Ray or Dave Davies. But I'm not done with them, not by a long shot!

Next on my list is fixing their 1990s (albums) "To the Bone." It's hard to even say what year it came out in, because a single album version was released in Britain in 1994 and a double album version was released in the US in 1996. They were based on the same set of performances. But even though the British version was half as long as the US one, it contained two songs not on the US version ("Waterloo Sunset" and "Autumn Almanac").

So partly, I wanted to gather all the tracks from both versions in one place. But more important is that "To the Bone" really is two albums in one, and I wanted to separate the two. Basically, in 1994, the Kinks recorded a bunch of songs in a semi-acoustic style in front of a very small studio audience. It was the Kinks' attempt to ride the popular wave of "Unplugged" albums in the early 1990s. But for whatever reason they decided to mix in these recordings with some professionally recorded concerts from 1993 and 1994. Then they mixed the live and (mostly) studio tracks in no apparent order on both versions of the "To the Bone" albums.

What I've done is to simply make an album out of all the true concert tracks, and then another album out of all the in-the-studio semi-acoustic tracks. I think that makes a heck of a lot more sense, from a listening point of view. So here's the first of two albums, the live one.

The Kinks only released four live albums, including this one. Their previous one, "Live: The Road," from 1987, wasn't that good. So this serves as the last Kinks live album. They were in much better form in 1993 and 1994 than in 1987.

The vast majority of this album comes from two concerts, one in late 1993 and one in early 1994. So I've clustered the tracks from each show together, with the 1993 one naturally coming first. There's one more song taken from another 1993 concert. I stuck that at the very end, since the song in question is "You Really Got Me," and that's a great show closer.

I also stuck in one extra unreleased song, an acoustic version of "Scattered" that comes from a Swedish TV show in 1994. I put it here because I think it's a really nice performance, with just Ray and Dave Davies, and I didn't have any other good place to put it. (I'm planning on posting another album of performances from the BBC and other TV or radio appearances from this era, but that already has a different version of the same song on it.)

In case you're curious, this makes for a 57 minute long album. I'll follow this with the studio "To the Bone" album, which is around the same length.

01 Do It Again [Acoustic] (Kinks)
02 Do It Again (Kinks)
03 Celluloid Heroes (Kinks)
04 I'm Not like Everyone Else (Kinks)
05 Days (Kinks)
06 Scattered [Acoustic] (Kinks)
07 All Day and All of the Night (Kinks)
08 Sunny Afternoon [Acoustic] (Kinks)
09 Dedicated Follower of Fashion [Acoustic] (Kinks)
10 Autumn Almanac [Acoustic] (Kinks)
11 Lola (Kinks)
12 Come Dancing (Kinks)
13 Till the End of the Day (Kinks)
14 Give the People What They Want (Kinks)
15 State of Confusion (Kinks)
16 You Really Got Me (Kinks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/N9ixTMGA

alternate:

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

The British and US versions of "To the Bone" have totally different album covers. So it made sense to me to use one cover for each of the two albums I've made with the rearranged song orders. Since the British version came out in 1994, and all the songs here are from 1994 or earlier, I've used the British one here without making any changes to it.

Van Morrison - Live Rarities, Volume 2: 1971-1973

If you've been following this blog, you'll probably have noticed that I've posted a ton of Van Morrison music, nearly all of it from the late 1960s and 1970s. First, I posted a series of stray tracks albums. He has a phenomenal amount of quality songs from that time period that never made it onto album at the time.

Then, I started posting some live material from him. My live albums from him are meant to complement each other, with almost no instances of the same songs played twice. I recently posted an album called "Live Rarities, 1970-1971," which gathers up all the interesting songs he played in concert that I didn't include elsewhere. This is the second such "Live Rarities" collection. I have three more to go, covering 1973 to 1977.

I have to admit the sound quality on this album isn't always stellar. These often are songs that he played very rarely in concert, sometimes only once. As a result, we're lucky to get any bootleg recordings of them at all. I did use some quality control, omitting songs where the sound quality wasn't good enough for my standards. But some of this comes from audience bootlegs, not pristine soundboards.

Hopefully, the uniqueness of the song choices makes up for the sound quality. All the songs here were very rarely performed, at least in the 1970s. For instance, one might expect that he'd played "Brand New Day" a lot, since it's a popular song from his classic 1970 album "Moondance." But according to setlist.fm, he's only played the song in concert twice in his long career, both in 1973.

1972 is kind of a lost year for Morrison in terms of concert recordings. He played a lot of concerts that year, but very few were bootlegged, and most of those sound awful. So there were some songs he only ever played in 1972  Luckily, I found once decent bootleg and was able to rescue a few of those songs.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 I Found a Love (Van Morrison, Linda Tillery & Lydia Pense)
02 Rock Me Baby (Van Morrison, Linda Tillery & Lydia Pense)
03 I Will Be There (Van Morrison)
04 Old Old Woodstock (Van Morrison)
05 Little Girl - He Ain't Give You None (Van Morrison)
06 Flamingos Fly (Van Morrison)
07 Brand New Day (Van Morrison)
08 Hard Times [Instrumental] (Van Morrison)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15257173/VanMrsn_1971-1973_LivRritiesVolume2_atse.zip.html

The cover art is based on a concert poster from the Paramount Theatre in 1971. The odd color scheme is exactly the same as the original. However, I shifted up his name in order to squeeze it into a square shape. 

John Fogerty - John Fogerty's All-Stars, Chaplin Stage, Hollywood, CA, 5-31-1985

If you're a fan of John Fogerty, you need to hear this. Fogerty is the kind of guy who rarely plays any songs other than the ones on his albums. He might play the occasional cover song of a classic in concert, but that's about it. Except for this one concert in 1985, played in a studio in front of a small audience.

1985 was a very big year for Fogerty. Creedence Clearwater Revival broke up in 1972. Fogerty tried to have a solo career from 1973 to 1976, putting out two albums in that time (and one that never got released, which I've posted here). But his solo career never caught fire. Due to legal troubles with his record company, plus a lack of inspiration, he went into musical seclusion for nearly ten years, not playing in public or releasing any studio material in all that time. Then he released the "Centerfield" album in 1985, which was a big hit, selling over two million copies.

Given that success, it's not that big of a surprise that he managed to get an hour-long TV special promoting the new album later in 1985. But what's strange is that this special, which makes up this album, hardly promoted "Centerfield" at all. In it, he played a grand total of one song from the album, "Rock and Roll Girls." One! Instead, he played a variety of mostly obscure cover songs, most of which he's never played live before and never played since.

So this is practically a Fogerty covers album that hardly anyone knows about (nine covers plus the one song from the album), recorded at a time when he was at the peak of his musical powers, with his voice as good as it ever got.

There's only 29 minutes of music from the special, even though it was an hour-long show. That's because one has to deduct the time for commercials, plus the playing of the studio version of the song "Centerfield." On top of that, there are some lengthy talking sections between songs, but these were recorded elsewhere, generally outdoors, so I didn't consider including them.

However, the 29 minute length is rather short for an album, so I've added a couple of extra songs at the end. "Vanz Can't Dance" and "Knock on Wood" come from Fogerty's performance at 1985's Farm Aid, which was the very first Farm Aid benefit concert. Apparently, the only two concerts he did in 1985 were the TV special show plus Farm Aid.

At Farm Aid, he only played three songs. One of them, the hit "The Old Man Down the Road," was mostly played while the TV broadcast of the concert was on a commercial break. There is an audience recording of it, but the sound quality is poor, so I haven't included it. The sound of the other two songs is outstanding, at the same level as the 1985 TV special. And "Knock on Wood" is a real treat, because apparently this was the only time he's ever done the song in concert or on record.

The two extra songs make the album 37 minutes long, which sounds more like a full album to me.

01 Mary Don't You Weep (John Fogerty)
02 My Pretty Baby - Leave My Woman Alone (John Fogerty)
03 Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go (John Fogerty)
04 I Need Your Loving (John Fogerty)
05 I Confess (John Fogerty)
06 I'm a Man [Mannish Boy] (John Fogerty)
07 No Love in You (John Fogerty)
08 Rock and Roll Girls (John Fogerty)
09 My Toot Toot (John Fogerty)
10 Vanz Kant Danz (John Fogerty)
11 Knock On Wood (John Fogerty)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UZVsdnWP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yDvhWUGMEyW6jz5/file

For the album cover, I took a couple of screenshots of Fogerty's 1985 TV special, which can be found on YouTube. One of them has Fogerty in the foreground with some other musicians behind him. The other is a baseball pennant with the name of the special written on it.

Robyn Hitchcock - Bee Man Ray - Non-Album Tracks (1997-1998)

I've posted a gazillion Robyn Hitchcock stray tracks albums already, and I have another gazillion to go. This is just a straight up full-band collection of non-album tracks (as opposed to a collection of all acoustic stuff, or live cover versions).

The years covered are 1997 and 1998. He released the studio album "Moss Elixir" in 1996 and "Jewels for Sophia" in 1999. This falls in between. The live album "Storefront Hitchcock" was released in 1998, which is the soundtrack to a film of the same name. One songs here - "Let's Go Thundering" - is also on "Storefront Hitchcock." (Pretty much all the other songs on that are from previous albums.) Another song here, "Gene Hackman," would be a bonus track on his next album, "Jewels for Sophia." But this is a different version, done without an audience.

Two of the songs here are covers: "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" by Bob Dylan, and "Cirrus Minor" by Pink Floyd. I believe all the rest are originals.

This album is a bit short, at 37 minutes. But I believe this shows he had enough material to put out another album between his 1996 and 1999 albums (especially since I'm sure he had all sorts of other songs lying around). I'm not sure why he didn't put an album out at that time, except maybe he didn't want to confuse audiences by having an album to compete with "Storefront Hitchcock."

01 It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 If We Hear Music (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Loop the Loop (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Cirrus Minor (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Where Do You Go When You Die (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Let's Go Thundering (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Gene Hackman (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Nothing but Time (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Broken Heart (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Fleshhead (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15272402/RobynH_1997-1998_BeeManRayVariousSongs_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used a painting Hitchcock made to illustrate his song "Madonna of the Wasps." It depicts a wasp woman, not a bee man, but I figure it's close enough for horseshoes. ;) Maybe she's about to shoot a ray at the man to turn him into a bee.

Elliott Smith - Acoustic Versions, Volume 1: 1996-1998

I've posted six albums of Elliott Smith stray tracks. That's all I have in terms of original songs that didn't go on any of his studio albums of the time. But I have a lot of other material of his to post.

Such as this album. If you've been following this blog, you've probably noticed I have a special affinity for acoustic music. Smith's music was usually acoustic-based to begin with. But this album strips him down to the bone, usually just him and an acoustic guitar. This is the first of three albums I have like this. They're split according to chronological order.

Eleven of the 18 songs here were done in the studio. A few are recording session outtakes, but most are from in-person appearances at radio stations. The remaining seven songs were done in concert. But the recordings are so excellent that you can hardly tell the difference. Nearly all the songs here are unreleased, but of the seven done live, four of those have been officially released, and their sound is outstanding.

Thus, what you get is essentially Smith playing his best songs from his early years in a solo acoustic style, as if he was playing in your living room. All his best known songs from 1996 to 1998 are here. I was careful to keep digging until I found excellent versions of all the biggies. If there are some that are missing, they're probably on the next album in this series, as that has a few songs from his 1998 album "XO" on it.

01 Between the Bars (Elliott Smith)
02 Pretty Mary K [Other Version] (Elliott Smith)
03 Bottle Up and Explode [Piano Version] (Elliott Smith)
04 Antonio Carlos Jobim (Elliott Smith)
05 Say Yes (Elliott Smith)
06 The Morning After (Elliott Smith)
07 Division Day (Elliott Smith)
08 The Biggest Lie (Elliott Smith)
09 2;45 AM (Elliott Smith)
10 Alameda (Elliott Smith)
11 Pictures of Me (Elliott Smith)
12 Angeles (Elliott Smith)
13 Some Song (Elliott Smith)
14 Bled White (Elliott Smith)
15 Clementine (Elliott Smith)
16 Sweet Adeline (Elliott Smith)
17 Miss Misery [Piano Version] (Elliott Smith)
18 I Didn't Understand [Piano Version] (Elliott Smith)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UNnSL2hK

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/hbFnXpKX1CfOUeW/file

The cover art comes from a concert poster. I'm not sure what year it's from, since I believe it's from an annual Portland event called the Rose Parade. I replaced some text between the legs with the album title.

The White Stripes - Walking with a Ghost - Non-Album Tracks (2004-2005)

A couple of days ago, I accidentally posted a White Stripes stray tracks album I'd posted already. Luckily, The_Lighthouse noticed this right away, and I deleted it. This is the album I'd meant to post instead.

The White Stripes pretty much have an album of stray tracks for each studio album they released. This is essentially the companion album to their 2005 album "Get Behind Me Satan." About half of the songs here are officially released, with four of those from A- or B-sides, and another from an EP. There also is a Jack White solo song ("City Lights"), and two more songs related to a Loretta Lynn album he was heavily involved with at the time ("Van Lear Rose" and "Portland, Oregon,") "Whispering Sea" is a Lynn song from around 1960.

The unreleased songs that make up up the other half of this album generally come from concert bootlegs. I think more than any time before or since, the White Stripes in 2005 played a wide variety of cover songs in concert. I listened to several dozen rare songs played by them then. Unfortunately, I had to eliminate most of them due to sound quality issues, since they often played a song just once or twice, and the odds were it would only get recorded on an average sounding audience bootleg. Also, many times they would only play a minute or so of a song instead of the full thing, so I eliminated those too.

Happily, I was still left with a handful of songs. Generally speaking, they were the ones the band played a dozen times or more, enough so there was at least one well recorded version. Most of these are old blues songs drastically transformed into the White Stripes style, like Bob Dylan's "Outlaw Blues," or Son House's "Grinnin' in Your Face" or Robert Johnson's "Stones in My Passway." "Small Faces" is a 1968 song by the very obscure garage rock band "Public Nuisance." "Jack on Fire" is a 1980s song by the Gun Club. "Jack the Ripper" is from 1963, by Screaming Lord Sutch.

There are many more songs I wish I could have included, but didn't due to the sound quality issues I mentioned above. But I picked what I consider two of the best of these and added them as bonus tracks. "I'm Sorry" is a Bo Diddley song and "You Belong to Me" was a big hit in 1952.

01 Outlaw Blues - Jack the Ripper (White Stripes)
02 Walking with a Ghost (White Stripes)
03 Shelter of Your Arms (White Stripes)
04 Top Special (White Stripes)
05 Whispering Sea (White Stripes)
06 Though I Hear You Calling, I Will Not Answer (White Stripes)
07 Grinnin' in Your Face (White Stripes)
08 Van Lear Rose (Jack White)
09 Stones in My Passway (White Stripes)
10 Jack on Fire (White Stripes)
11 Portland, Oregon (Loretta Lynn & Jack White)
12 Small Faces (White Stripes)
13 Folk Singer (White Stripes)
14 City Lights (White Stripes)

I'm Sorry (White Stripes)
You Belong to Me (White Stripes)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701097/TWHITSTRPES2005_WlkingwthGhst_atse.zip.html

The cover is the cover to the "Walking with a Ghost" EP, with no changes whatsoever.

Joan Osborne - Under the Covers, Volume 1 (1991-1992)

Here's another musician I've never posted about before. I really like Joan Osborne, and I plan on posting a lot of her stuff.

Unfortunately, she's another one like Norah Jones or Maria McKee or Sheryl Crow, who are great singers but merely good songwriters. The problem with people like that is they generally fill their albums with original songs, when they shine better matching their great voices with great songs.

Luckily, Osborne hasn't entirely fallen into that trap, in that she's released entire albums of cover versions. But still, she's done lots of music that's never shown up on any of her albums, and I plan on focusing on that.

A few years ago, someone named George posted a bootleg compilation called "Under the Covers." It collected dozens of Osborne's cover versions from the early years of her career in one place. I liked that bootleg, and I'm naming this album in tribute to it. However, there were two problems with that compilation, in my opinion. First off, and the biggest one, was that the sound quality was a mixed bag, with most of the songs coming from audience bootlegs instead of soundboards. The second was a lack of sourcing for most of the songs, with no info on where or when the performance came from.

To fix these things, I made by own version, pretty much starting from scratch. Osborne spent a few years playing clubs before she hit the big time with her excellent album "Relish" and her hit single "One of Us." During those early club years, she played a wide variety of cover songs. Luckily, it turns out that her singing was so excellent that many soundboard recordings were made, despite the fact that she was a relative unknown at the time.

So I've managed to make three albums of her cover versions from the 1990s. This is the first one. My main issue was sound quality. With maybe only a couple of exceptions, I stuck to soundboard recordings for all three albums. The only covers I didn't include that sounded good enough were the few that she put on studio albums at the time, such as her covers of "Help Me" and "The Man in the Long Black Coat" off of "Relish."

She can really wail. She's like a throwback to another era, when there were lots of singers like Etta James and Aretha Franklin bursting with soul. She brings it here.

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 Use Me (Joan Osborne)
02 I Just Want to Make Love to You (Joan Osborne)
03 Damn Your Eyes (Joan Osborne)
04 Let's Stay Together (Joan Osborne)
05 Oh Darling (Joan Osborne)
06 I Shall Be Released (Joan Osborne)
07 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Joan Osborne)
08 When Something Is Wrong with My Baby (Joan Osborne & Warren Haynes)
09 Killing Floor (Joan Osborne)
10 Me and Bobby McGee (Joan Osborne)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15847028/JoanO_1991-1992_UndrCovrsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The cover is based on a photo of Osborne singing at The Wetlands, a New York City club, in 1992.