The Pretenders - Windows of the World - Non-Album Tracks (1986-1988)

Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders released a new solo album earlier this month, called "Value Bone Woe." I really like it. It's different than her usual stuff, going in a kind of jazzy chanteuse direction. I suggest you check it out.

Here's another album of stray tracks from the Pretenders in honor of her new release. From this point on, I'll be treating the Pretenders and Chrissie Hynde as essentially one and the same, because all the original members of the Pretenders were gone from the band, and it became Hynde plus a group of backing musicians. Also from this point on, she did a fair amount of recordings and performances under her own name.

The first three Pretenders albums are undeniable classics, in my book. This album deals with the time of the band's fourth album, 1986's "Get Close." That album was widely considered a step down, being seen as overproduced and not rocking enough. I have to agree with that critique, even though it still has a lot of good songs on it. Happily, the stray tracks from this time don't suffer those same problems.

This is around the time Hynde starting appearing in concert billed as herself instead of part of the Pretenders. She only performed a few songs here and there, but she played some unexpected songs instead of the usual Pretenders numbers. Four of the songs here come from her appearance at a benefit concert in early 1986. Another three are acoustic duets she did in concert with Elvis Costello. For all the live performances, I removed the audience noise to make them fit in with the other songs. Generally speaking, all the live songs are the only officially unreleased ones, but they sound very good.

I think all the songs but one are covers. The one exception is "Worlds Within Worlds." That was a bonus track for the "Get Close" album. "Reconsider Me" sounds a lot like a Hynde original, but it actually was written by Warren Zevon.

This is a very electric album, ranging from a cover of the proto punk rock song "1969" to the acoustic duets with Costello, plus a fair amount of reggae. Personally, I like this as much or more as "Get Close," because it doesn't suffer from the usual 1980s production issues.

Oh, by the way, this includes two versions of "Windows of the World," the classic anti-war song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Normally, I'm loathe to include two versions of the same song on one album, but I'm making an exception here because the two versions are quite different. One is a full band, album-ready version, and the other is one of the acoustic duets in concert with Costello.

01 Reconsider Me (Pretenders)
02 Worlds within Worlds (Pretenders)
03 Little Latin Lupe Lu (Chrissie Hynde)
04 In My Life (Chrissie Hynde)
05 Property of Jesus (Chrissie Hynde)
06 Give It Up (Annie Lennox & Chrissie Hynde)
07 Where Has Everybody Gone (Pretenders)
08 Windows of the World (Pretenders)
09 1969 (Pretenders)
10 Steppin' Razor (Chrissie Hynde with Coati Mundi, Sly & Robbie)
11 Breakfast in Bed (UB40 & Chrissie Hynde)
12 Days (Elvis Costello & Chrissie Hynde)
13 There's a Place (Elvis Costello & Chrissie Hynde)
14 Windows of the World [Live Acoustic] (Elvis Costello & Chrissie Hynde)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700870/TPRETNDRS1986-1988_WindwsoWrld_atse.zip.html

For the album cover photo, I used a photo of Hynde in concert with the Pretenders in 1987.

The Cars - Take Me Now - Non-Album Tracks (1977-1981)

Sadly, Ric Ocasek, lead singer for the Cars, died yesterday at the age of 75. In his honor, I've put a stray tracks album together from the band's early years.

When the Car's first album, simply called "The Cars," was released in 1978, it was a big success. Just about every song on it got played on the radio, even until today. The band members semi-jokingly called it their "greatest hits" album, because it was that good.

Why was it so good? Well, it turns out that the band had a lot more original material at that time, but chose only their very best songs for their first album. Then they pretty much forgot about all those other songs, even though most of them were also very good (if not their very best). The bulk of this album is made up of songs that could be considered outtakes from their first album. Only the last three songs after from later, and this would be a full-sized album even without those.

Now, clearly, this album considered as a whole isn't on par with the Car's first album. But few albums are. But if compared with other albums from that era, even some later Cars albums, I think this is pretty solid. The songs certainly don't deserve their obscurity. (They came out many years later on archival releases.) I believe all the songs are originals except for the last two.

Two of the songs here are from a live album (a very obscure one, "Live at the Agora," that only had a limited release in 2017). But those sound as good as studio tracks, especially since I removed all traces of audience noise. For one of those songs, "Take What You Want," I had a choice between this live version or a studio version. But I went with the live version because I felt it was a more energetic performance.

Slip Away" a song written by Ocasek, actually was a top forty hit for Ian Lloyd in 1979.

01 Leave or Stay (Cars)
02 Ta Ta Wayo Wayo (Cars)
03 Cool Fool (Cars)
04 Take Me Now (Cars)
05 They Won't See You (Cars)
06 Wake Me Up (Cars)
07 You Just Can't Push Me (Cars)
08 Hotel Queenie (Cars)
09 Take What You Want (Cars)
10 Night Spots (Cars)
11 Slip Away (Cars)
12 Don't Go to Pieces (Cars)
13 The Little Black Egg (Cars)
14 Funtime (Cars)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362743/TCARZ1977-1981TkeMeNw_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5TkUezgD

For the cover art, at first, I was going to use a photo of the band circa 1978. But before I did that, I asked myself, "What would the ultimate Cars album cover look like?" I decided it would be a drawing of a woman by Alberto Vargas sitting on the hood of a car. (They used Vargas pin-ups for a couple of their album covers.) So I found a drawing by Vargas that I liked, and a color pencil drawing of a car by the name of Willie E. Sims. I put the woman on the car and made some adjustments, including adding a shadow underneath her and some grass in the background. I'm pleased with the result. :)

Derek & the Dominos - Fillmore East, New York City, 10-24-1970, Late Show

See my post for the Derek and Dominos concert at the Fillmore East on October 23rd, 1970 late show for a full explanation of what this is about. Note that this is a recording of the late show from the following night, October 24, 1970.

As I said with that previous post, these two late shows are considered the best of all live Derek and the Dominos recordings, due to the flawless sound quality. In my opinion, they are one of the pinnacles of Eric Clapton's career.

The two shows have very similar setlists (though there are some differences). But you should listen to both shows anyway due to the large differences in the performances, especially Clapton's guitar soloing. He played with an energy and passion during his Derek and the Dominos days that he rarely showed in all the years since. If you want even more like this, also check out my post of the October 23rd early show, even though half of it is missing and half of what's there is not of stellar soundboard quality.

I only have a few more things to say specific to this show that I didn't say in the previous post. The song order for the October 23rd late show has generally been accurate for bootlegs, but for the October 24th late show, nearly all bootlegs have messed it up, including having the encore in the middle of the show. This version fixes that.

There have been some persistent problems with some of the performances. One example is the recording of "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out." A version of this has been officially released, but it missed about half a minute of Clapton's guitar soloing, for some strange reason. The bootlegs come from the same source material as the official recordings, so they also have been missing that same part of that song. I don't know how, but one bootleg has the full, unedited version. I've managed to track that down and I'm using it. So in that instance I'm going with a bootlegged recording for the whole song instead of the official one.

Another problem with bootlegs has been the song "Bottle of Red Wine." This was played on both nights, and the October 23rd version has been officially released. However, it seems that most bootlegs just used the October 23rd version played at a slower speed for the October 24th version. Happily though, just in the last year or so, the correct October 24th version has emerged, and the sound quality is great, so I've used that. (I carefully checked to make sure they actually were different performances.)

01 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Got to Get Better in a Little While (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Tell the Truth (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Nobody Knows When You're Down and Out (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Presence of the Lord (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
08 Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Derek & the Dominos)
09 Key to the Highway (Derek & the Dominos)
10 Bottle of Red Wine (Derek & the Dominos)
11 Roll It Over (Derek & the Dominos)
12 Let It Rain - Drum Solo - Let It Rain (Derek & the Dominos)
13 Little Wing (Derek & the Dominos)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bn6srhR7

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/sxj0Nztsa6c5voH/file

Regarding the cover art photo, see my comments for the cover of the October 23rd early show. I know the photo comes from a different concert, but I'm using it anyway because I don't have a better one from the actual photo. 

However, in May 2025, I replaced the photo, due to that one being blurry and low-res. The replacement is from the same concert and taken by the same photographer.

Derek & the Dominos - Fillmore East, New York City, 10-23-1970, Late Show

I just posted an album of Derek and the Dominos playing the early show at the Fillmore East in New York City, on October 23rd, 1970. You might not want to download that, because it only contains half of the set and only half of that is recorded in soundboard quality. However, if you like this band at all, you really need to get this one, the late show from that same night, as well as the late show from October 24th, which I will be posting next.

These two late shows are considered the "crown jewels" of all Derek and the Dominos live recordings, and for good reason. In terms of performance, the band had a very good night, but not one of their very best nights. (Surprisingly, they had no idea they were being recorded.) However, what makes the Fillmore shows so outstanding is the sound quality. Not only are they pristine soundboards that sound about as good as you could ever hope for, but ALL other live recordings from the band are audience bootlegs that sound markedly worse.

The band's Fillmore recordings sound so good that two official live albums have been made out of them. In 1973, the album "In Concert" was released, featuring a double albums' worth of songs for those concerts. In 1994, the album "Live at the Fillmore" was released, featuring even more from those same two concerts.

So, you may ask, why not just get one or both of the official albums instead of this? There are several reasons, but the main one is that some performances can only be found on one of the live albums, other performances are only on the other one, and still more aren't on either of them. Furthermore, the running orders for both official albums are a mess. What I'm presenting here are the complete late shows, in the correct track order, at the highest sound quality.

To be more specific, there are 17 officially released performed songs from both late shows in all (including one from the recently released soundtrack "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bar"). I've discovered an additional seven performed songs from bootlegs of the late shows that are in the same excellent soundboard quality as the officially released stuff. (This doesn't include the October 23rd early show that I just posted, which contains three more songs at soundboard quality and three songs at audience quality.)

I did some research on what die-hard Eric Clapton fan think of the sound qualities of various official and unofficial versions of these shows, so I could use only the best quality sources. Many fans (though not all) thought that the MFSL version of the "In Concert" tracks were superior to the "Live at the Fillmore" versions, so I used those whenever possible. In 2011, the super deluxe 40th anniversary edition of the "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" album included a remaster of the "In Concert" tracks, but the general opinion is that this remastering is inferior, so I've avoided that.

At first glance, bootleg versions of the late shows essentially sound as good as the official recordings, because they draw from the same source, a mix that was made in 1972 in preparation for the "in Concert" album. However, the bootlegged versions have a lot of hiss for the October 24th late show, and have generally combated that by using a lot of noise reduction. So the official versions are better, since they had more expert means to get rid of the hiss. Thus, I've used the official versions whenever possible.

To make matters more complicated, all the officially released versions have put those songs out of order, and even most bootlegs have the songs out of order. I researched this on the Internet until I got the song order right.

Keep in mind I'm not a total musical purist. I want music that I'll enjoy listening to, and if that means making some edits to fix what I consider flaws, so be it. With these late shows, I didn't make any edits to the music itself, but I did make some edits to the crowd noise before and after songs. One thing I generally do with live recordings is cut out the boring bits between songs, such as long stretches of guitar tuning or relative silence. I did some of that. (By the way, Clapton and the other band members almost never talked between songs, and I didn't cut any of what little talking that exists.)

But I had to do a surprising amount of work of the cheering after the songs ended. Typically, the officially released versions have just a few seconds of crowd noise, which slowly fades out. This isn't good, in my opinion, because it sounds obvious that edits were made. I discovered that the bootleg versions generally kept all the clapping until the audience got quiet again. So, in most cases, I used the official versions for the songs themselves and then pasted in the clapping from the bootlegs instead.

Note that there is no clapping at all after "Blues Power." This is because the band came to a complete stop at the end of the song, but only waited a couple of seconds before starting the next tune, giving the audience no time to react. I was able to confirm this by checking with some inferior sounding audience recordings of the late shows, that have it that exact way.

Also note that the first track, which consists of an MC introducing the band, is an audience recording. No soundboard version of this appears to exist. But if the recordings of the early show are any indication, the audience recording sounds better anyway, since the MC's microphone wasn't picked up by the soundboard.

01 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Got to Get Better in a Little While (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Key to the Highway (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Tell the Truth (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Derek & the Dominos)
08 Bottle of Red Wine (Derek & the Dominos)
09 Presence of the Lord (Derek & the Dominos)
10 Little Wing (Derek & the Dominos)
11 Let It Rain - Drum Solo - Let It Rain (Derek & the Dominos)
12 Crossroads (Derek & the Dominos)

https://www.imagenetz.de/ifd3g

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TELfQL9R

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/08GLyIXmZwgiA0j/file 

Regarding the cover art photo, see my comments for the cover of the October 23rd early show. I know the photo comes from a different concert, but I'm using it anyway because I don't have a better one from the actual photo and this one is so good. Actually, I like this photo so much that I made a painting of it when I was a teenager! I think the contrast of blues and reds looks really cool.

Derek & the Dominos - Fillmore East, New York City, 10-23-1970, Early Show

I'm going to start posting more live Derek and the Dominos, the short-lived band that, in my opinion, was the pinnacle of Eric Clapton's long career. When it comes to live music by this group, there are two concerts that tower above all others, due to sound quality: back to back nights at the Fillmore East in New York City, on October 23rd and 24th, 1970. The band only toured for a few months in the latter half of 1970, and these two concerts appear to be the only concerts by them that were professionally recorded as soundboards.

The band played two shows per evening, with each show lasting nearly two hours. Unfortunately, a only few songs from the early show on October 23rd recorded at soundboard quality are known to exist, and a few more songs from it were recorded as an audience bootleg. Even more frustratingly, no recordings of the early show on October 24th are known to exist whatsoever.

This, I'm making three albums out of the Fillmore performances: the October 23rd early show, the October 23rd late show, and the October 24th late show. The two late shows are the crown jewels of all Derek and the Dominos live recordings, with two hours each of the band playing at the highest sound quality.

The October 23rd early show is the runt of the litter by comparison. At slightly less than an hour long, it's only half of the early set, and about half of that is a mere audience recording. But it's also, by far, the least known of the Fillmore recordings, so I'm pleased to make these more available. And even though half of it comes from an audience bootleg, that portion still sounds at least as good as any other live recording of the band from any other concert except for the two Fillmore late shows.

All the officially released live Derek and the Dominos recordings come from those two late shows. I'll go into that in more detail in a subsequent post. But suffice to say here that nothing from the October 23rd early show has been officially released. In fact, nearly all bootlegs of the two Fillmore shows don't include any songs from the early show either.

Three songs here (the first two and the last one) are recorded in soundboard quality. Three more - "Blues Power," "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," and "Tell the Truth" are recorded in audience quality. I've heard that all of "Blues Power" and the first half of "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" do exist in soundboard quality, but I haven't been able to find a recording of that. If you know of one, please let me know.

All the songs through "Tell the Truth" appear in the order they were played in concert that night. But then even the audience recording comes to an end, after part of the song "Presence of the Lord." I haven't included that, since it's only the first couple minutes of the song. Then, somehow, the soundboard recording reemerged with all of "Little Wing," the last song of the early show.

By the way, what bootlegs exist of the early show usually claim to include a soundboard of "Presence of the Lord." However, the recording of that on those bootlegs are exactly the same as the recording of that song from the late show, only played at a slightly slower speed. So I haven't included that either. By the way, no one can remember what songs were played after "Presence of the Lord" and "Little Wing," though apparently it is known there were three of them.

All of the songs played in this early show were played at both of the late shows. But each performance of each song contained unique soloing, and could be very different from other performances. For instance, the version of "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad" from this early show is seven and a half minutes long, but the version of that song from the late show is 14 and a half minutes long. Given the lack of well recorded live music from this band, this early show has been unjustly forgotten.

By the way, the first track consists of an announcer introducing the band. I found both audience and soundboard recordings of this. But the audience version sounded much better (no doubt since the announcer's microphone wasn't connected to the soundboard), so I've used that.

I noticed the audience-sourced songs were at a slightly different pitch than the soundboard-sourced ones, so I changed the pitch on them to hopefully fix that.

Also, there was a sound problem with "Have You Ever Loved a Woman." The recording of the first verse (about two minutes into the song) was very messed up. There were some glitches there, but the main problem was the volume was so low that it was nearly inaudible. I tried increasing the volume to match the rest, but it sounded so hissy that it was really bad. So instead, I copied and pasted in the first verse from the October 24th late show version of the song. Then I matched the pitch and tempo, and patched that in. It's noticeable that the sound quality suddenly gets better for a little while, but I think that's much preferred to the sound getting horrible for a while. It only affects about thirty seconds of the song.

01 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Got to Get Better in a Little While (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Tell the Truth (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Little Wing (Derek & the Dominos)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vWwhdUPw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/q5bRQevzbVAruRZ/file

Photos of Eric Clapton with a beard and wearing a horizontally striped shirt are closely associated with the two Fillmore nights. For instance, the official live album "Live at the Fillmore" uses one such photo for the album cover. But, in fact, it turns out those photos were taken at a concert in Port Chester, New York, over a month later. At the time of the Fillmore shows, Clapton hadn't even grown his beard.

That said, I'm using one of the beard-and-striped-shirt photos for the cover anyway. In part that's because I can't find any good photos that actually come from the Fillmore. But also, I'm posting three albums from the Fillmore shows, and I've found three really nice photos (that actually come from Port Chester), allowing me to have a unified look for all three albums.

In May 2025, I upgraded the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

The Velvet Underground - Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams - Non-Album Tracks (1964-1967)

Here's the first of stray tracks collections for the Velvet Underground (VU).

I'm starting this with some songs from Lou Reed before the VU even formed. Reed started his musical career by working as a professional songwriter in the "Brill Building" factory assembly line style. Most of these songs weren't good, and most of them were sung by others. But even now and then, he'd come up with something that almost could have passed for a future VU song.

The first and foremost example of this is "The Ostrich." This is a great place to start, because it's where the VU begin. That song was a minor hit, the only one from Reed's time hired as a songwriter. The record company wanted Reed to tour to support the song, and he met and began working with John Cale when bringing that band together. The rest is history. "You're Driving Me Insane" and "Cycle Annie" are the other Reed songs from this early era.

I follow that with two songs from Nico, "I'm Not Sayin'" and "The Last Mile." I generally consider Nico's music career separate from the VU's, since she went in a different direction after her brief time as part of the band. But I have a few exceptions, such as these songs. They're the A- and B-sides of her only official release before she joined the VU.

The rest of the songs on this album actually are performed by the VU, during the time Nico was a member. Of course, "There She Goes Again" was on VU's classic first album, but this version has Nico singing lead vocals instead of Reed, and that's such a big difference that I figured it merited inclusion here.

The last two songs come from Nico's 1967 album "Chelsea Girl." Five of the songs from that album were performed by Nico backed by all the members of the VU, and they were written by Cale and/or Reed as well. So those five songs have made it on some VU collections, with good reason. I've included three here. I would have put all five on, but I want this album to have a reasonable length, so the other two will go on the next VU stray tracks album I post here.

I have "I'll It with Mine" as a bonus track. Nico did this song for her "Chelsea Girls" album. But this actually is a live version performed by Nico with the VU. The problem is, Nico's vocals were almost inaudible on the audience bootleg recording. So I took her vocal from her album and added them in, creating a mash-up of sorts. I posted that single song here a while back, and the reaction was mixed, so I'm only including it as a bonus track as a result. But I feel pretty strongly that the issue people have isn't with my mash-up, but with the way the VU played the song in concert. They didn't do it the normal way Nico did it, Dylan did it, and everyone else who covered the song did it. Instead, they added a totally different rock and roll rhythm that doesn't fit the song well. But it is interesting, so I figure it's worthy to have at least as a bonus track.

01 The Ostrich (Lou Reed & the Primitives)
02 You're Driving Me Insane (Lou Reed & the Roughnecks)
03 Cycle Annie (Lou Reed & the Beachnuts)
04 I'm Not Sayin' (Nico)
05 The Last Mile (Nico)
06 Miss Joanie Lee [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
08 There She Goes Again [Nico Vocals] (Velvet Underground)
09 Melody Laughter [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
10 Little Sister (Nico & the Velvet Underground)
11 Winter Song (Nico & the Velvet Underground)
12 Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (Nico & the Velvet Underground)

I'll Keep It with Mine [Edit] (Velvet Underground)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/sJHwjL92

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/EOhiQ3JLw0tNkck/file

The cover art photo is a publicity photo of Nico and the VU around 1966 or 1967. The VU were named after a book by Michael Leigh of the same title. I used the text from that book cover for that band name up top.

Richard Thompson - Put Your Trust in Me - Non-Album Tracks (1990-1994)

I've posted a lot of acoustic Richard Thompson music lately. This, by contrast, is him playing with a full band. It's a grab-bag of stray tracks from many different sources. Thompson is very consistent, so if you like his stuff, you'll like this.

This is a fairly even mix of originals that don't appear anywhere else, cover versions, and new versions of songs from earlier in Thompson's career. The latter are: "Time to Ring Some Changes," "Night Comes In," and "The Sun Never Shines on the Poor" from his years as part of the Richard and Linda Thompson duet, and "Now Be Thankful" from his time with Fairport Convention. All these songs are done differently when done as part of Thompson's solo career.

"Persuasion" is one of the better known songs by Thompson. This is an instrumental version from a movie soundtrack. Years later (I think 2001), Tin Finn from Crowded House wrote lyrics for the song. It's the sung version that has been well known, but the instrumental version is still nice.

Only the last two songs are officially unreleased. However, the sound quality on them is as good as the rest. For the live tracks, officially released or not, I removed the crowd noise, as I often do.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 Time to Ring Some Changes (Richard Thompson)
02 Oh I Swear (Richard Thompson)
03 Ca Plane pour Moi (Richard Thompson)
04 Night Comes In (Richard Thompson with Fairport Convention)
05 To Hang a Dream On (Richard Thompson)
06 Persuasion [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
07 Put Your Trust in Me (Richard Thompson)
08 Now Be Thankful (Richard Thompson)
09 She's Not There (Richard Thompson)
10 The Sun Never Shines on the Poor (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15268460/RichrdT_1990-1994_PutYourTrstinMe_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo of Thompson is from 1991.

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Back Home - Non-Album Tracks (2009-2014)

In late 2015, Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN) broke up. As i write this in 2019, it seems probable that CSN will never make music again, which is a big shame. CSN hadn't put out a studio album since 1999 (with Neil Young). But it's not for a lack of good songs. In the years right before they broke up, they had a real creative renaissance. That's so much the case that I was able to fill up two albums with stray tracks. This is the first of those two.

In 2003, David Crosby and Graham Nash released an album together, and Stephen Stills put out an album in 2004. After that, all three of them were mostly silent for about a decade. CSN made an effort to record an album around 2009 and 2010, but it was going to be an album of all covers. That made it seem that their songwriting had all but petered out. And it does seem that they did write very few songs for most of those years.

But around 2012, it seems that Crosby and Nash in particular got busy writing songs again, and very good songs. Both of them have been on a streak ever since, especially Crosby, who has put out a surprising number of good solo albums in recent years. Stills spent a lot of time with his new band with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, called the Rides. He didn't write many songs, but the few he did write were pretty good.

The songs come from a variety of sources. There were three new songs on a CSN live album from 2012, so I've included those. I've also included the three best songs from Crosby's 2014 solo album, called "Croz." The rest are from various sources, including some unreleased versions of songs played in concert.

The sound quality is generally excellent, including for the unreleased songs. One partial exception is "I'm Here for You," which sounds a bit echoy. But it was good enough to my ears to include.

If you're under the impression that CSN were washed up after the 1960s and 1970s, you should give this a listen. They did go downhill in terms of their career due to bad production, being way out of step with musical trends, ego clashes, and so on, but they never lost their talent for songwriting.

01 Almost Gone [The Ballad of Bradley Manning] (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 Radio (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
03 Wrong Thing to Do (Stephen Stills)
04 Exit Zero (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Time I Have (David Crosby)
06 In Your Name (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 Set that Baggage Down (David Crosby)
08 Low Barefoot Tolerance (Stephen Stills)
09 I'm Here for You (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 What's Broken (David Crosby)
11 Can't Get Enough (Stephen Stills & the Rides)
12 Back Home (Graham Nash)

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

For the album cover, I used an outtake for the cover for CSN's 2012 live album, simply called "CSN 2012." It's very similar to the cover for that album, but I don't mind because it seems very few people got that album. I found the lettering for the band's name from a CSN T-shirt.

Beck - Bad Blood - Non-Album Tracks (2009-2010)

In 2008, Beck put out the album "Modern Guilt." His next album after that was "Morning Phase." That's a gap of six years! That's remarkable, considering how prolific Beck has been in his career. He certainly didn't stop recording songs and playing concerts. It's as if he just lost interest in putting albums together. But I'll try to fill that six-year-gap with what's publicly available. This stray tracks album covers just 2009 and 2010.

One thing Beck did do during this time period was get together with a bunch of his musical friends and record covers of every single song from certain classic albums, doing each album in a single day. I'm only including a small number of songs from these albums. Many of the songs primarily feature Beck's friends instead of him (including on lead vocals). And these covers are often very experimental (such as a rap version of the folky Leonard Cohen song "Master's Song," which I've included here). But I'm not including the experiments that didn't work so well.

Six of the 13 songs here come from these album cover projects, which generally were released only on the Internet with next to no promotion. The rest of the songs come from a wide variety of sources and are mostly originals, though the first song is a Bob Dylan cover.

I made "Paradisco" merely a bonus track due to sound quality issues.

01 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Beck)
02 Green Light (Beck)
03 Black Angel's Death Song (Beck)
04 Lawrence of Euphoria (Beck)
05 Little Hands (Beck)
06 Master's Song (Beck, MGMT & Devendra Banhart)
07 Sunday Morning (Beck)
08 Fresh Hex (Tobacco with Beck)
09 Ramona (Beck)
10 Bad Blood (Beck)
11 The Loved One (Beck)
12 Let's Get Lost (Beck & Bat for Lashes)

Paradisco (Beck)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zVfeJ1w6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3nyuILB2lCjT66e/file

The cover art photo is from a 2010 Beck concert.

The Zombies - BBC Sessions (1964-1967)

I've already posted five stray tracks albums of the Zombies in the 1960s. In making those, I used songs they played at the BBC that weren't otherwise recorded anywhere. This contains all the other BBC performances the Zombies did from 1964 to 1967. In other words, BBC versions of songs that were on their singles and albums.

All but one of the songs here were officially released, and were on the great "Zombie Heaven" box set. The BBC performances sound great. Admittedly, the Zombies weren't exactly the Allman Brothers Band, doing long solos and playing their studio material differently in concert. These performances hew pretty close to the studio versions. But it's nice to see how tight and on they are, even with their harmonies, and they do show off soloing prowess within the confines of songs that weren't supposed to go over three minutes.

Note that none of the songs from their fantastic "Odessey and Oracle" album are here, except for one, "Friends of Mine." That's because the band broke up by the time that album came out in 1968, so there were no BBC or other live performances. "Friends of Mine" was recorded in 1967, just before the band called it quits.

It's been a long time since I edited these songs. But I recall very few to no instances of BBC DJs talking over the starts and ends of songs. As a result, I made few to no edits. I'm not sure why the Zombies got so lucky, since other BBC recordings from that time period have the DJs talking over a majority of the songs.

Unfortunately, I've discovered next to no live concert recordings of the Zombies in the 1960s. They did appear on TV a fair amount, but they often lip-synced to their records. One song here from "Zombie Heaven" actually was from a concert, "Just a Little Bit," and the one unreleased song, "Summertime," is also from a concert. And that's all I could find to fit here.

01 She's Not There (Zombies)
02 Road Runner (Zombies)
03 You Make Me Feel Good (Zombies)
04 Tell Her No (Zombies)
05 What More Can I Do (Zombies)
06 I'm Going Home (Zombies)
07 Tell Her No [Acoustic Piano Version] (Zombies)
08 Can't Nobody Love You (Zombies)
09 She's Coming Home (Zombies)
10 I Must Move (Zombies)
11 Just Out of Reach (Zombies)
12 If It Don't Work Out (Zombies)
13 Whenever You're Ready (Zombies)
14 Summertime (Zombies)
15 Just a Little Bit (Zombies)
16 Gotta Get a Hold of Myself (Zombies)
17 Goin' Out of My Head (Zombies)
18 Friends of Mine (Zombies)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/orT7AX5w 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/fmE0ZXNJBp4lnhD/file

The cover art photo features the Zombies playing the "Top of the Pops" TV show in September 1965. I found the "Zombies" lettering from somewhere else and pasted it on top.

Bonnie Raitt - Sigma Sound Studios, Philadelphia, PA, 2-22-1972

This is a great sounding soundboard from very early in Bonnie Raitt's career. It's one of my all-time favorite things from her, as well as her 1971 show at the Jabberwocky Club and the Sprague Hall show. All three are similar, but there are enough differences in the setlists and performances to warrant getting all three. And she talks a lot between songs in all three shows, which is fun.

There's not much else to say except that the last song here is actually from another concert. But it was a show from that same month, also done acoustically, so it fits right in.

This album is 59 minutes long.

01 Mighty Tight Woman (Bonnie Raitt)
02 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
03 Going Down to Louisiana - Rollin' and Tumblin' (Bonnie Raitt)
04 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
05 Any Day Woman (Bonnie Raitt)
06 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
07 Women Be Wise (Bonnie Raitt)
08 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
09 Thank You (Bonnie Raitt)
10 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
11 Bluebird (Bonnie Raitt)
12 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
13 Finest Lovin' Man (Bonnie Raitt)
14 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
15 Big Road (Bonnie Raitt)
16 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
17 Stayed Too Long at the Fair (Bonnie Raitt)
18 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
19 Under the Falling Sky (Bonnie Raitt)
20 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
21 Walking Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
22 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
23 Can't Find My Way Home (Bonnie Raitt)
24 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
25 Richland Woman Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
26 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
27 Blender Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
28 Since I Fell for You (Bonnie Raitt)
29 I Gave My Love a Candle (Bonnie Raitt)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/AtoqgxHx

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/LgATgqxQSIbf60W/file

The cover art photo isn't from this exact concert, but it's close. It's from a concert at the Troubadour in Los Angeles earlier in the month, on February 13th. The last song comes from that same location, but from a show that was two days later. Originally, this was a black and white photo, but many months after I first posted this album, I colorized it.

In 2025, I took another look at the colorization, didn't like it, and redid it. This time, I used the MyHeritage program, which I think does a better job.

Elliott Smith - Live Cover Versions, 1998-2003

I've posted a lot of acoustic music by Elliott Smith, but not much featuring him fronting a band. This is all Smith with a full band, performing cover versions in concert.

Unfortunately, there aren't that many songs compared to his acoustic stuff, so I only have one album's worth to present. I think that's because it's relatively easy for someone like Smith to play a song with just his acoustic guitar. But when there's a full band, there has to be a lot of practice to get things right. Take for instance his cover of "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult (the song of "More cowbell!" fame). I'm amazed he did the song at all, because it has a rocking yet intricate arrangement.

Also unfortunately, the sound quality is not that great for many songs here. All the songs here are officially unreleased. Smith only played some of these songs once or twice in concert, and we're lucky to have any bootlegs of them at all. At least the sound quality is clear for all the songs. But most of them are from audience recordings, and on some of them you can clearly hear people talking through the song. "Ballad of a Thin Man" is an example of this. However, the performance is so compelling that I think it's more than worth putting up with that.

Here are who did the originals:

01 I'm So Tired - Beatles
02 Stroke It Noel - Big Star
03 Ballad of a Thin Man - Bob Dylan
04 When I Paint My Masterpiece - Bob Dylan
05 I Me Mine - Beatles
06 Care of Cell 44 - Zombies
07 Don't Fear the Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
08 Yer Blues - Beatles
09 My Sweet Lord - George Harrison
10 Supersonic - Oasis
11 Car - Built to Spill
12 Do It Again - Kinks
13 Dead End Street - Kinks
14 Big Sky - Kinks

As you can see, Smith largely plays songs from the musical giants that came before him. It's interesting that he does an Oasis cover though. He got a lot of flack for playing that song in concert several times, even getting booed some. But I applaud him for seeing Oasis' talent, despite a certain hipster segment of his fan base thinking that's "uncool."

01 I'm So Tired (Elliott Smith)
02 Stroke It Noel (Elliott Smith)
03 Ballad of a Thin Man (Elliott Smith)
04 When I Paint My Masterpiece (Elliott Smith)
05 I Me Mine (Elliott Smith)
06 Care of Cell 44 (Elliott Smith)
07 Don't Fear the Reaper (Elliott Smith)
08 Yer Blues (Elliott Smith)
09 My Sweet Lord (Elliott Smith with Grandaddy)
10 Supersonic (Elliott Smith)
11 Car (Elliott Smith)
12 Do It Again (Elliott Smith)
13 Dead End Street (Elliott Smith)
14 Big Sky (Elliott Smith)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CDVCmDmB

alternate:

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

The cover art photo is of Smith playing at the Leeds Festival in 1998.

Various Artists - Nuggets 7: European Continent (1965-1972)

Every now and then, I've been posting various artists compilation albums that extend the concept of the two great "Nuggets" Rhino Records box sets. (If you don't know, a "nugget" is song from the mid- to late-1960s era that's influenced by garage rock and is generally done by lesser known bands.)

I've come up with my own songs that I think the "Nuggets" box sets should have included, and I've organized them geographically. Volume 3 covered the Netherlands, and volume 5 covered Scandinavia. Britain is a very big can of worms that makes up my Volume 2, which I haven't posted here yet. (Volume 1 is the US, in case you're curious.)

This volume is a kind of grab bag for all the other countries in Europe. (The following volume deals with all the other countries in the world outside of Europe, the US, and Canada.) Unfortunately, I have to admit that I'm not a "nuggets expert." I haven't listened to zillions of obscure compilations of obscure European bands. So I'm sure there are plenty of excellent songs that I've missed. If you know of any, please let me know and I'll consider adding them in. However, I have come across some songs here and there that I really like that fit the "nuggets" description, so here they are.

I have to admit that, as someone who speaks English but no other European languages, I have a bias in favor of English language songs. But there are a few here in other languages that I think can be appreciated even if you don't know the words.

Speaking of knowing the words, one song you definitely should listen to here is the last one, "Prisencolinensinaiciusol." As you may guess from the title, it's very strange. It's done by a famous Italian musician, Adriano Celentano, but it's not in Italian. As you listen to it, you'll think at first it's in English, but nothing is intelligible. Apparently, the song is some kind of commentary about how many young people in mainland Europe at the time were listening mostly to English songs on the radio without speaking English. So the vocals are made of English sounding noises without it actually being English!

Oh, and by the way, you should check out the video of the song on YouTube. It has over 2 million views, which is a heck of a lot for a song from Italy in 1972. There's something strangely entertaining about it, especially the way the singer dances and moves.

You'll probably recognize "Black Is Black," the one song here that was plucked from obscurity to be a big international hit. But in my opinion, in a better world, a bunch of these songs should have been big international hits. The fact that these bands were based on other countries meant they were almost certainly doomed not to make it in the US or Britain, because the world was much less connected in those days.

You may also recognize the instrumental "Psyche Rock," since the theme to the TV show "Futurama" is very heavily based on it.

This album is an hour and 11 minutes long.

01 But You'll Never Do It Babe (Boots)
02 Baluba Shake (Brunetta)
03 Black Is Black (Los Bravos)
04 El Muerto Vivo (Peret)
05 Gaby (Boots)
06 Going Nowhere (Los Bravos)
07 It's My Fault (Rattles)
08 Piangi con Me (Rokes)
09 Slaves Time (Slaves)
10 An Unknown Quantity (Bill Ramsey & the Jay Five)
11 Get on Your Knees (Los Canarios)
12 Peppermint Frappe (Los Canarios)
13 Psyche Rock (Les Yper Sound [Pierre Henry])
14 Animal on Est Mal (Gérard Manset)
15 Bring a Little Lovin' (Los Bravos)
16 Get Down from the Tree (Matadors)
17 Rain and Tears (Aphrodite's Child)
18 A Song of Joy (Miguel Rios)
19 Daydream (Wallace Collection)
20 Sad Soul (Ronnie Bird)
21 The Witch (Rattles)
22 Mamy Blue (Los Pop Tops)
23 Woman (Barrabas)
24 Prisencolinensinaiciusol (Adriano Celentano)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/y4Fus99N

Morning - Struck like Silver (1972)

Back in April 2018, not long after I started this blog, I posted the 1970 album "Morning" by the band Morning. I don't usually post a studio album without any changes, but I did in that case in part because that album is long out of print, but also because I think it's a really great, five-star album. It's strongly reminiscent of bands from that era like Crosby, Stills and Nash, the Eagles, and America, and it should have sold millions like those artists did. Instead, it's remained totally obscure.

You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/04/morning-morning-1970.html

Morning actually put out two albums in their short career. Yesterday, I got a request from someone who asked me to post their other album, "Struck like Silver" from 1972. It's also long out of print, and possibly even more obscure. I think that's a reasonable request, so here it is.

However, I need to say that the reason I didn't post it until now is that I consider it a merely good album, not a great one. The band members themselves were disappointed in that album, and split up shortly thereafter. Still, if you enjoy the early 1970s country rock sound, this is right up your alley.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 I Ain't Gonna Leave (Morning)
02 In a Better Frame of Mind (Morning)
03 Only to Say Goodnight (Morning)
04 [He Played Real Good] For Free (Morning)
05 Struck like Silver (Morning)
06 Understand My Ways (Morning)
07 Comin' in Love (Morning)
08 Jay's Movie Song (Morning)
09 And Now I Lay Me Down (Morning)
10 Never Been to Spain (Morning)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jBvGv5CQ

The album cover is just the exact cover from the released album.

Norah Jones - Easy - Non-Album Tracks (2007-2008)

First off, note that when I first posted this album, I called it "Any Other Day." But I've made some major changes after finding a bunch of her songs that I'd overlooked, and the song "Any Other Day" was moved to a different album. Thus, I now have named it after another song, "Easy."

This is the tenth Norah Jones album I've posted, with many more to come  By now, I should probably have a kind of boilerplate notice for those who missed it on my earlier posts: don't judge Jones by what you've heard on the radio, or even by her studio albums. Her stray tracks are way more interesting and diverse.

I should note that, starting around this time, Jones began putting out side project albums that also have been more interesting and diverse than her usual studio albums. This album has fours song from her country group the Little Willies. I'm really glad that she keeps branching out and trying new things with side groups, but I also feel inevitably that the best things these groups do are the songs sung by Jones. There's just something about her voice that's special. So I'm only including the Jones-sung songs from those groups.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Roly Poly (Little Willies featuring Norah Jones)
02 Love Me (Little Willies featuring Norah Jones)
03 What Time You Comin' Home (Little Willies featuring Norah Jones)
04 The Story (Norah Jones)
05 Court and Spark (Herbie Hancock with Norah Jones)
06 My Blue Heaven (Norah Jones)
07 2 Men (Norah Jones)
08 American Anthem (Norah Jones)
09 Easy (Anoushka Shankar & Karsh Kale with Norah Jones)
10 Lovesick Blues (Little Willies featuring Norah Jones)
11 Blue Bayou (M. Ward & Norah Jones)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ABycoXoV

The cover art photo comes from a 2008 series of promo photos. In October 2026, I used the Gemini program to improve the image quality.

Carole King - Beautiful - More Legendary Demos, Volume 3 (1970-1973)

This is the third and likely final volume in my series of Carole King demo albums. (I wish I could do more, but my source material runs out after this.) In practice, it largely plays out as a solo acoustic version of her classic 1971 album "Tapestry." So if you like that album, you should enjoy this.

This contains versions of all the songs from "Tapestry" except for "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," which was on the previous album in this series, and "Where You Lead." On top of that, there are six other performances of songs originally done on other albums. "Song of Long Ago" and "Carry Your Load" come from her other 1971 album "Music." "Eventually" is from her 1968 album "Now That Everything's Been Said." "No Easy Way Down" and "Up on the Roof" are from her 1970 album "Writer." Finally, there's an interesting live duet of King and Barry Mann on Mann's (and song "You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling," which was a massive hit for the Righteous Brothers.

The first five songs are from the official album "The Legendary Demos," and the last two are from an official live album. The other nine are unreleased. However, most or all of them come from soundboard bootlegs, so the sound quality is high throughout.

I kind of "faked" much of this album in that I didn't actually have that many real demos to work with this time, so I used solo acoustic versions of songs played in concert instead. Unfortunately, I couldn't use this method to keep going past 1971, because King seems to have stopped playing solo acoustic in concert after that time. (The two songs from 1973 here are exceptions, but they're "Tapestry" songs. I just chose the 1973 versions because they sounded the best.) That's a shame, because she went into a relative commercial decline after "Tapestry," and I think a lot of that had to do with the production of her albums (which wasn't that bad on a per song basis, but tended to make all the songs sound the same). I think it would be a revelation to hear those songs in solo acoustic format.

If you enjoy this album, definitely check out the other two albums in this series. I find it weird how millions of people bought the "Tapestry" album, but don't know about her earlier songs, the best of which were just as good as the "Tapestry" ones.

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 You've Got a Friend (Carole King)
02 It's Too Late (Carole King)
03 Beautiful (Carole King)
04 Tapestry (Carole King)
05 Way Over Yonder (Carole King)
06 Up on the Roof (Carole King with James Taylor)
07 I Feel the Earth Move (Carole King)
08 So Far Away (Carole King)
09 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Carole King)
10 Song of Long Ago (Carole King)
11 Carry Your Load (Carole King)
12 Eventually (Carole King)
13 No Easy Way Down (Carole King)
14 You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin' (Barry Mann & Carole King)
15 Smackwater Jack (Carole King)
16 Home Again (Carole King)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687664/CARLKNG1970-1973_Beautifl_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I once again used the template from the first album in this series. I just changed the basic background color. Plus, the photo of King is from 1971.

Stevie Wonder - Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley, CA, 3-4-1973

I said pretty much everything I wanted to say about this post in my last post. In short, I'm posting two Stevie Wonder concerts from back-to-back nights in 1973, and both are excellent soundboard recordings. Read the write-up at the other post for more.

By the way, the shows are very similar, but for anyone who downloads and listens to both of these, I'd be curious which one you like more. That might help others who only want to download one of them.

This album is an hour and 25 minutes long.

01 If You Really Love Me (Stevie Wonder)
02 Me and Mrs. Jones (Stevie Wonder)
03 Superwoman (Stevie Wonder)
04 You Were My First, but Not My Last (Stevie Wonder)
05 talk (Stevie Wonder)
06 I Think I'm on the Right Track (Stevie Wonder)
07 I Was Made to Love Her (Stevie Wonder)
08 talk (Stevie Wonder)
09 Feel It (Wonderlove & Stevie Wonder)
10 Killing Me Softly with His Song (Wonderlove & Stevie Wonder)
11 You Are the Sunshine of My Life (Stevie Wonder)
12 Big Brother (Stevie Wonder)
13 Blowin' in the Wind (Stevie Wonder)
14 What's Going On [Instrumental] (Stevie Wonder)
15 My Cherie Amour - Summer Breeze (Stevie Wonder)
16 Love Having You Around (Stevie Wonder)
17 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours - Party Jam (Stevie Wonder)
18 Jam [Instrumental] (Stevie Wonder)
19 Superstition [Incomplete] (Stevie Wonder)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700510/STEVIWNDR1973b_BrkeleyCommnityThetrBrkeleyCA__3-4-1973_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Wonder is from 1973, but I don't know the details.

Stevie Wonder - Winterland, San Francisco, CA, 3-3-1973

I'm doing something a little strange with this post and the one to immediately follow: I'm posting two Steve Wonder concerts from succeeding nights in 1973 that are very similar to each other. If you're a fan of Wonder's classic 1970s era, you really should listen to one of these. But you might not need both, since they are so very similar.

The reason I'm posting both concerts is because I believe that a very popular Wonder bootleg, of a concert at the Berkeley Community Theater, in Berkeley, California, on March 4, 1973, is actually a mix of songs from that show plus some songs from a concert the day earlier, at the Winterland, in San Francisco. There are very, very few excellent soundboard recordings from Wonder's career, especially from this era of his career. But for some reason, there are great concerts from two nights in a row in 1973.

The Berkeley concert is one of the most popular of his bootlegs. By contrast, the Winterland is very little known. I was able to find multiple bootlegs of both shows, each one a little different. Using some deductive reasoning, as well as accessing some setlist information from setlist.fm, I'm pretty sure I've been able to put together nearly full version of both shows for possibly the first time ever in the public domain. So I want to make both of these available, in hopes of finally clearing up some inaccuracies.

I don't want to go too deep into the weeds on how and why I figured out which songs belonged to which show. But to make a long story short, I figure that whoever put the popular Berkeley bootleg together combined the best of both shows. Because some songs were only played at once of the concerts or the other, but the bootleg generally has all of them.

I wish I could recommend one of these, for the casual fan who doesn't want both. But I can't do that, because they're both good, but in different ways. The Winterland show is short two songs: "For Once in My Life" and "You Are the Sunshine of My Life." I found only partial versions of those two, and I figured it was better not to include them when they get rudely cut off, especially since the other concert has the full versions. But, on the other hand, the Winterland show has the complete version of a long and interesting "Superstition," while the Berkeley show is missing roughly the end half of that song. So in terms of minutes, both shows are missing roughly the same about.

In my opinion, both shows are interesting, because even when Wonder is playing the same song on succeeding nights, he does them in different ways. A case in point is the jam that follows "Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours." The jam doesn't seem to have a name, but I call it "Party Jam," because "Party!" gets shouted a lot for the first few minutes on both nights. But then the performances diverge, with Wonder seemingly coming up with totally different lyrics on each night, as well as a lot of instrumental differences.

Anyway, both shows are here, and I figure it's better to have too many options instead of not enough. In terms of sound quality, both are stellar soundboards. Although on this Winterland show, there some rough noise near the end of "You Were My First, but Not My Last," and the next song, "Big Brother" fades in. But that trouble is only about two minutes out of the whole concert.

01 Instrumental Jam - For Once in My Life (Stevie Wonder)
02 If You Really Love Me (Stevie Wonder)
03 Me and Mrs. Jones (Stevie Wonder)
04 Superwoman (Stevie Wonder)
05 talk (Stevie Wonder)
06 I Wanna Be by Your Side (Stevie Wonder)
07 You Were My First, but Not My Last (Stevie Wonder)
08 Big Brother (Stevie Wonder)
09 Blowin' in the Wind (Stevie Wonder)
10 What's Going On [Instrumental] - My Cherie Amour (Stevie Wonder)
11 Love Having You Around (Stevie Wonder)
12 Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)
13 Party Jam (Stevie Wonder)
14 Papa Was a Rolling Stone (Stevie Wonder)
15 Jam [Instrumental] (Stevie Wonder)
16 Superstition (Stevie Wonder)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15274927/StevieW_1973a_WinterlndSnFranciscoCA__3-3-1973_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Wonder is from 1973, but I don't know the details.

Sheryl Crow - Straight to the Moon - Non-Album Tracks (1998-1999)

Here's another in a long line of Sheryl Crow stray tracks collections.

Crow is one of those artists like Norah Jones in which I think these stray tracks albums are often better than her official studio albums. She has written a lot of very nice hit songs, but her albums tend to contain some mediocre songs that tend to blend into each other. With these stray tracks albums, one gets a lot more variety.

This album is a particular case in point, because the range is greater than usual. She does everything from an old Johnny Cash country song ("Orange Blossom Special") to a cover of a Guns n' Roses hit ("Sweet Child O' Mine"), with a lot of points in between. And by the way, a lot of people criticize that "Sweet Child O' Mine" cover, but I like it. Good covers do something different instead of just slavishly copying the original.

Anyway, most of the songs here are covers, with the exceptions being a couple of songs she wrote for B-sides. Two songs are duets with Dan Wilson. In case you don't know who he is, he was the lead singer and songwriter for the 1990s band Semisonic, who had a hit with "Closing Time." But he's also written some hit songs for others, including Adele's mega-hit "Someone like You." 

The duets with Wilson, plus another duet with Neil Finn and another duet with Tim Smith are the only officially unreleased songs, but they basically have the same sound quality as the rest of the songs.

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Ode to Billy Joe (Sheryl Crow)
02 Is It like Today (Tim Smith & Sheryl Crow)
03 Merry Christmas Baby (Sheryl Crow with Eric Clapton)
04 Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree (Mary J. Blige & Sheryl Crow)
05 Four Seasons in One Day (Neil Finn & Sheryl Crow)
06 You Always Get Your Way (Sheryl Crow)
07 Straight to the Moon (Sheryl Crow)
08 Still (Sheryl Crow)
09 Sweet Child O' Mine (Sheryl Crow)
10 Drift Away (Sheryl Crow & Dan Wilson)
11 What Is Life (Sheryl Crow & Dan Wilson)
12 Orange Blossom Special (Sheryl Crow with Willie Nelson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15104658/SherylC_1998-1999_StrighttotheMoon_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Crow dates to the year 2000. As a change of pace, I thought it would be interesting to have a more serious face instead of the using smiling one.

Bonnie Raitt - Sprague Hall, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 12-2-1972

In deciding what music to post at this blog, I've generally been prioritizing my stray tracks collections, because I figure those usually are unique. But I have lots of unreleased full concerts, and I plan on posting a lot more of those once my stray tracks albums start to run out. I figure there are tons of ways one can get full concerts from the Internet these days.

In some cases though, I'm able to offer something that's different from the usual concert recordings that float through cyberspace. The Kinks 1974 concert I just posted is one example, where I found some extra songs and made some sonic adjustments. This is another example, where my version of the concert is different.

First off, I should mention that this is one of the best Bonnie Raitt bootlegs of all time. It may well be my personal favorite. Both sets on one night were recorded as a soundboard, because it all was played live over the radio. So it stands out in terms of length and sound quality. Also, for the first couple of years of Raitt's career, she played her concerts acoustically (usually just herself and a bassist, though this concert also has a piano player join in), so it's neat to hear the songs done quite differently than the full band album arrangements. On top of that, she played lots of songs that never made any of her albums. (I'm including those on my stray tracks collections, including using a few songs from this very show.)

To make a long story short, if you like Bonnie Raitt's music, especially from her early years when she was more folky and bluesy and less poppy and commercial, you should listen to this.

Now, as to what I've changed, this is another case of "less is more." I've removed all the songs from the second set that were played in this first set. I generally dislike having two versions of the same song on one album, but that's especially true here where the songs only occasionally have solos to distinguish them. Additionally, all through the concert, Raitt was bedeviled by her guitar getting out of tune, so she had to tune it up at length after nearly every song. At once point, she was so exasperated that she asked out loud why her guitar was getting out of tune so quickly, and at another point she apologized to the crowd for all the time wasted with the tuning.

But you don't have to waste time listening to Raitt endlessly tuning her guitar between songs. I lopped off about twenty minutes of that in total. But I still kept all of the between song banter, of which there is a lot. If she was talking while tuning, I generally kept that, so you do get some tuning, but not much. Also, she sometimes spoke quietly between songs. I adjusted the volume so you can better hear those bits. I suspect she had a cold (she mentioned it was cold and snowy outside), because she coughed between songs some too. I removed most of the coughing.

I was able to make some other changes too. For instance, the version of "Bluebird" in the first set was bad due to the recording being wavery, so I simply used the version from the second set instead. I think it makes for a much better listen. There were still other fixes, but I think you get the gist. The bottom line is, I've cut out the fat and made some changes so you can focus on the songs and the entertaining between song banter. I think that if this concert was readied to be an official release (and it should be!), the producers would make the same kinds of edits that I did.

By the way, one curious aspect to this recording is that Raitt pretty much appears in one stereo channel, and all the other musicians (the bassist, piano player, and Maria Muldaur singing back-up vocals on the last three songs) are on the other stereo channel. It's extreme separation. I didn't make any changes (except to tweak the stereo balance for a couple of songs), but I thought I'd mention it.

After all the changes mentioned above, the concert is an hour and 46 minutes long. The unedited version is two and a half hours long.

01 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
02 Love Me like a Man (Bonnie Raitt)
03 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
04 That Song about the Midway (Bonnie Raitt)
05 Going Down to Louisiana - Rollin' and Tumblin' (Bonnie Raitt)
06 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
07 You Got to Know How (Bonnie Raitt)
08 Nothing Seems to Matter (Bonnie Raitt)
09 Big Road (Bonnie Raitt)
10 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
11 Write Me a Few of Your Lines - Kokomo Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
12 Special Delivery Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
13 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
14 Too Long at the Fair (Bonnie Raitt)
15 Women Be Wise (Bonnie Raitt)
16 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
17 Love Has No Pride (Bonnie Raitt)
18 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
19 Walk On By (Bonnie Raitt)
20 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
21 Blender Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
22 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
23 Can't Find My Way Home (Bonnie Raitt)
24 Any Day Woman (Bonnie Raitt)
25 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
26 Under the Falling Sky (Bonnie Raitt)
27 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
28 I Ain't Blue (Bonnie Raitt)
29 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
30 Bluebird (Bonnie Raitt)
31 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
32 Walking Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
33 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
34 Since I Fell for You (Bonnie Raitt)
35 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur)
36 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
37 Baby What You Want Me to Do (Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur)
38 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
39 I Know (Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SYFyxDzX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/ESW3IJFsfaZSzdM/file

The cover art photo is from 1973, from Los Angeles in the summer of 1973.

The Kinks - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: In Concert, Hippodrome Theatre, London, Britain, 7-14-1974

Excellent sounding Kinks concert recordings are few and far between. So I'm going to continue to post more of their shows, at least from the years they were really great.

This concert was played over the radio in Britain as part of the BBC's "In Concert" series. Since it was the BBC, most of this concert has been officially released as part of a box set of the Kinks' BBC recordings. I've made my own series of albums for the Kinks at the BBC, I've add this to that series, but I've given it its own volume, since I figure it should be listened to on its own.

I'm glad to say I've made what I consider two important improvements over the officially released recordings of this show. First off, those recordings sound fantastic, except for one thing: the volume of Ray Davies' talking between songs was way too low. So I've moved all those bits to separate tracks, and increased the volume for them.

Secondly, and more importantly, I've found three songs that didn't get officially released. My theory on this is that the "In Concert" BBC program was an hour long, so if a band played more than an hour, those extra songs didn't get played on the radio, and generally got forgotten. The officially released songs make up an hour's show. I'm not sure how it happened, but I found three more songs on a bootleg that clearly come from the same show: "Alcohol," "Waterloo Sunset," and "Slum Kids." I know for sure they're from the same show, because all the other songs on that bootleg are from that show (though in jumbled up order), the sound quality is the same, and some of the between song banter for these three songs are EXACTLY the same as on the official recording, down to every last vocal inflection.

The only problem I've had is where these three extra songs go in the song order. It's quite possible that the songs chosen by the BBC to be played on the radio aren't in the exact same order as what was actually played in concert that day. It's also possible that there are still other songs that were played and didn't make it on that bootleg with the three extra songs either. One clue supporting this is that at one point, Davies tells the audience that he's going to play a couple of hits from the band's early days, and then only plays one, "Dedicated Follower of Fashion." The only setlists I've found merely include the songs that were played for the "In Concert" program, so they don't help. In fact, I think even the widely accepted date of the concert is off, because at one point, Davies says that the album "Preservation Act 2" is being released "tomorrow." But that album was released on May 7, 1974, and this concert supposedly took place on July 14, 1974. I suspect the concert was recorded on May 6th, then the BBC took some time to edit the tapes and played them on the radio on July 14th. But I can't be sure. If anyone can get to the bottom of this mystery, that would be nice. There must be some news articles from the time, though they would be very tough to track down.

Anyway, the bottom line is, I can made some educated guesses on where the three extra songs went in the setlist, based on overlapping between song chatter. But just to be on the safe side, I've put those three at the end of the concert. It works well to have the concert end with an all-time classic like "Waterloo Sunset" anyway.

I'm especially happy to have found the pristine version of "Slum Kids" that is one of the three extra songs. Apparently, the Kinks never recorded that song in the studio. The version that has been included as a bonus track for "Preservation Act 2" as well as for the box set "Picture Book" actually dates to 1979, if you examine the liner notes for the box set closely. So it's nice to have a version that actually dates from 1974, the year it should have been recorded and released.

Regarding the music, I'm not a big fan of the "Preservation Act 2" album. But it does have some good songs that are up to the typical Kinks high standards, and this concert features most of them (especially if you include "Slum Kids"). Many of the other songs are from early 1970s albums, which is a nice change from the setlists up through 1972, which were dominated by overplayed 1960s hits.

I have a serious gripe with the way the Kinks played snippets of hoary old "music hall" songs in the early 1970s. The "In Concert" show featured one of these, "Mr. Wonderful." I've kept it off, and I'm not even including it as a bonus track, sorry. In this case, less is more. Thankfully, 1974 was the last year the Kinks played that type of song in concert. In 1972 and 1973 especially, they actually played bits of "My Way," "Hava Nagilah," "Mammy," "Baby Face," and more of that ilk. I don't know what the heck they were thinking.

By the way, there are very few Kinks bootlegs from 1973. But that isn't a big loss, since the setlists were virtually the same as 1972, with almost no songs played from the album they released that year, "Preservation Act 1." But there's an excellent concert from 1975, so I'll be posting that too.

UPDATE: On October 22, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I renumbered the volume number in the title (from 4 to 5), and changed the artwork to match that.  

01 Victoria (Kinks)
02 Here Comes Yet Another Day (Kinks)
03 talk (Kinks)
04 Money Talks (Kinks)
05 talk (Kinks)
06 Dedicated Follower of Fashion (Kinks)
07 talk (Kinks)
08 Mirror of Love (Kinks)
09 talk (Kinks)
10 Celluloid Heroes (Kinks)
11 talk (Kinks)
12 You Really Got Me - All Day and All of the Night (Kinks)
13 talk (Kinks)
14 Daylight (Kinks)
15 talk (Kinks)
16 Here Comes Flash (Kinks)
17 talk (Kinks)
18 Demolition (Kinks)
19 talk (Kinks)
20 He's Evil (Kinks)
21 talk (Kinks)
22 Lola (Kinks)
23 talk (Kinks)
24 Skin and Bone - Dry Bones (Kinks)
25 Alcohol (Kinks)
26 talk (Kinks)
27 Slum Kids (Kinks)
28 Waterloo Sunset (Kinks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QLHDcogD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4VBaLaF6gyzLZtO/file

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any good color photos of the band in concert in 1974. But I did find one featuring singer Ray Davies, with keyboardist John Gosling in the background. So that'll have to do, unless someone else can come up with something better. When I updated the album in February 2021, I kept the same cover photo as before, but I removed the black background behind Ray Davies and replaced that with the same kind of background as all the other albums in the BBC Sessions series.

Van Morrison - Live Rarities, Volume 5: 1975-1977

So far, I've posted four collections of Van Morrison's live rarities. I've included interesting songs that aren't on any of the other many Morrison live albums I've posted here. This is the fifth and final album in that series. The reason it's the last is because I still really like Morrison's music in 1978 and 1979, but he played few to no rarities he hadn't played before, as far as I know. Then my interest in his music plummets after 1980, when he switched musical styles to some degree.

Unfortunately, the sound quality for these songs is merely okay. I believe they all come from audience bootlegs, except for the last song, which is from a TV show. The reason for this is because Morrison played less than 10 concerts in 1975, and then made only a smattering of special appearances in 1976 and 1977 (such as appearing in the Band's "Last Waltz" concert in 1976). But he played a really interesting bunch of songs in 1975, including some he never did before or again. That's why I'm willing to put up with the less than stellar sound.

The last song is a version of Morrison singing his classic song "Moondance." Boring, you'd think, right? He's done that a million times. But what makes this interesting are the guests he has on the song. It's a seven-minute-long version, and Morrison only singing a bit at the start and the end. Instead, it's a showcase for all those guests: Carlos Santana, George Benson, Dr John, Tom Scott & Etta James. Each of them take an instrumental solo, except for Etta James, who does some vocal scatting for her turn.

The other songs are all covers, and really unusual ones at that, except for one other. That's "T. B. Sheets," a song he recorded in 1967 and almost never played in the years since. According to setlist.fm, he's only played the song six times since 1968, and four of them were in 1975.

Even though the sound quality of these songs is not stellar, it has to be good enough for me to want to listen, or I wouldn't bother posting them. The one borderline case is with "Walking to Dog," so I've only included that as a bonus track.

01 I Have Finally Come to Realize (Van Morrison)
02 Alright, Okay, You Win (Van Morrison)
03 One of These Days (Van Morrison)
04 T. B. Sheets (Van Morrison)
05 You Move Me (Van Morrison)
06 Sweet Mary Blues (Van Morrison)
07 Moondance (Van Morrison, Carlos Santana, George Benson, Dr John, Tom Scott & Etta James)

Walking the Dog (Van Morrison)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tuH69EvW

The album cover is from the 1977 TV appearance where Morrison sang and played "Moondance" with all those guests.

Oingo Boingo - Graham Central Station, Phoenix, AZ, 9-14-1983

I continue to feel that Oingo Boingo are a very underrated band, and all too forgotten these days. One reason for this is because their best work was their first three albums, when they were very popular in Southern California but mostly unknown outside of it. They started to get more popular elsewhere after that, but they went into a slow decline as the band's singer and songwriter Danny Elfman refocused his attention on movie soundtracks (which he started doing in 1985).

I have long wanted to find an excellent concert bootleg to listen to from their early 1980s heyday. But the problem with Oingo Boingo is sound quality. Because they were a big band, they needed to be mixed properly with a very clear recording to make a concert listen worthwhile. I didn't find any worthy recording until a few days ago, when I stumbled on this one.

In short, the sound quality of this album is fantastic, as good as an official live album. After an Internet search, I concluded this is the only really excellent sounding (and soundboard) live bootleg from the band's first few years. The only downside is that it's incomplete. It's only 48 minutes long, and almost certainly isn't the full show, since it's missing some key songs the band played back then. But still, if you ever wanted to listen to Oingo Boingo live, give this a try.

By the way, the name of the concert venue needs a little explanation. Yes, it turns out the band played at a club in Phoenix called "Graham Central Station." This is confusing, because there was a popular funk band starting in the 1970s also using that name. I don't know if there's any connection, but I Googled it, and such a club did exist at the time, though it has closed since.

I found another concert from 1983 that has decent sound, though not as stellar as this Phoenix boot. It only had three full songs on it, however. I've included the two songs that weren't from the main show as bonus tracks.

01 Who Do You Want to Be (Oingo Boingo)
02 Private Life (Oingo Boingo)
03 Dead or Alive (Oingo Boingo)
04 Grey Matter (Oingo Boingo)
05 Insects (Oingo Boingo)
06 Wild Sex [In the Working Class] (Oingo Boingo)
07 Little Guns (Oingo Boingo)
08 What You See (Oingo Boingo)
09 Whole Day Off (Oingo Boingo)
10 Little Girls (Oingo Boingo)
11 On the Outside (Oingo Boingo)
12 Ain't This the Life (Oingo Boingo)
13 Only a Lad (Oingo Boingo)

Nothing Bad Ever Happens (Oingo Boingo)
Wake Up [It's 1984] (Oingo Boingo)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264852/OingBo_1983_GrhamCentrlStationPhoenixAZ__9-14-1983_atse.zip.html

I wish I had a better photo for the cover art. This is from a 1983 concert, which is good. But it only shows three band members at a time when there were eight members in the band. It's really hard to get close to that many people in a single photo when they're spread all over the stage.