Robyn Hitchcock - Acoustic Syd Barrett Songs (2000-2017)

Note that this entirely contains versions of songs that I'm including on other albums that I'm posting here. I've been posting lots of albums of Robyn Hitchcock's acoustic cover versions. I have many most albums in that series to post. But I just thought it would be fun and interesting to compile all the covers of Syd Barrett songs from those albums into one album. That's what I've done here.

Hitchcock has always been a huge fan of Syd Barrett's work. I think it's safe to say that the three biggest musical influences on him have been the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Syd Barrett (both for his work as part of Pink Floyd and as a solo artist). There are zillions of other artists who have been influenced by the Beatles and Dylan, and countless thousands of cover versions of their songs. But that's not the case with Barrett. While Barrett's musical legacy has been very influential, it's also been considered too idiosyncratic for many to cover his songs.

But clearly that's not the case with Hitchcock, thus this album. It starts in 2000 and continues to 2017, with the songs arranged in chronological order. But the only reason I didn't include songs from earlier in Hitchcock's career is that I went for the versions with the best sound quality, and they often are the more recent ones. Hitchcock has been heavily influenced by Barrett since the very start of his career, for instance covering Barrett's "Vegetable Man" on a record back in 1980 when he led the band the Soft Boys. (I didn't include that here because that was done with a full band and this is only acoustic versions.)

Barrett is best known for his Pink Floyd song, despite the fact that he wasn't in that band for very long. But not in Hitchcock's world. Only four of the songs here are Pink Floyd songs ("Astronomy Domine," "Bike," "Chapter 24," and "Arnold Layne.") The rest are from Barrett's solo career. I suspect the reason there aren't more Pink Floyd songs is because most of those really need a full band to do them justice, and again, this just includes acoustic versions.

Hitchcock has done covers of other songs with a full band, such as "See Emily Play," and even had a concert in which he played all the songs from "Piper at the Gates of Dawn," the only Pink Floyd album where Barrett was a full participant. But that's the subject for music to be posted here at another time.

As for this album, I think this is a great foot in the door for people who haven't gotten into Barrett's solo work much yet.

All the songs here are officially unreleased. However, two songs can be seen on a DVD video called "The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story." Generally speaking, the sound quality for these songs is very good, though there are a few exceptions. "Astronomy Domine" has some crowd noise in the middle of the song at a few points. A couple of the other songs sound a bit muffled or distant. But I think the sound is perfectly acceptable even on those. Note that I've removed audience noise whenever possible, as I sometimes do.

The album is 45 minutes long, which is pretty much the ideal length for vinyl albums.

01 Astronomy Domine (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Dominoes (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 It Is Obvious (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Baby Lemonade (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Chapter 24 (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Gigolo Aunt (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Bike (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Terrapin (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Waving My Arms in the Air (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 I Never Lied to You (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 Long Gone (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Arnold Layne (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 Dark Globe (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 Wined and Dined (Robyn Hitchcock)
15 Wolfpack (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697076/ROBYNHTCHCK2000-2017_AcusticSydBSngs_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I tried to do something different and creative. I found a photo of Syd Barrett (from 1967) looking straight ahead, and another one of Hitchcock doing the same (from 1986). Then I manipulated the photos so Barrett makes up half of a head and Hitchcock makes up the other half. I also colorized them, with Barrett being green and Hitchcock blue. I'm pleased at how nicely the two faces fit together.

Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers - Volume Two - Non-Album Tracks (1990-2007)

In terms of officially recorded output, the Honeydrippers barely exist. The band put out one EP of five songs in 1984 called "Volume One," and there's never been a "Volume Two." Until now, that is. Because, in practice, "the Honeydrippers" is the name Robert Plant has used whenever he's been in the mood to sing covers of the songs he loved when he was a kid. I take that to mean songs from the era before the mid-1960s when the Beatles and others drastically changed music.

A few months ago, I posted my version of "Volume One." I took the original 18 minutes of the EP and expanded it to 45 minutes by adding other songs Plant did from 1984 to 1986 that fit the criterion I mentioned above. There happened to be a lot, because Plant was in the mood for that early style of music at times, even while he was having a very successful career as a star of "modern rock" music.

Here's a link to that, by the way:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/01/robert-plant-honeydrippers-volume-one.html

I'm daring to make a "Volume Two" here, even though the "Honeydrippers" as such pretty much didn't exist for the time in question. (Plant did use that name for a concert of nothing but rootsy covers in 2007, but I'm not including anything from that because the whole concert is something I'd like to post here at a later date.) What I've done is collected Plant's covers of pre-mid-1960s songs that didn't make it to any of his studio albums. Luckily for my collection, it turns out he's often participated in tribute albums to the musical heroes of his youth, so I've used a lot of those performances. He's also done the occasional cover in concert that fits the bill. But in the case of bootlegs, I've only used performances that are from excellent soundboards where all the audience noise can be edited out. Happily, there are a few of those too.

The original Honeydrippers EP was basically Plant's baby, but it also featured guitar solos from his former Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page as well as Jeff Beck. Happily, I've been able to duplicate that somewhat, because three of the songs feature Page and another song features Beck. Other guitar heroes make appearances, such as Brian May (on Plant's performance with Queen) and Eric Clapton.

Note that the musical variety here ranges from rockabilly to blues to soul to ballads, such all those types of music were popular in the 1950s or thereabouts. Be warned that the first song starts out as kind of a fake out, with about 30 minutes of traditional country music before it drastically switches gears.

It would be nice if I could make a "Volume Three" eventually, but I doubt that's going to happen. Plant doesn't seem to play in a rockabilly style music anymore, since his musical styles naturally evolve and mellow as he gets older. Plus, he's been putting more of his cover versions on his studio albums, and doesn't seem to be taking part in as many tribute albums. But who knows, maybe as time goes on more music of this type from him will emerge. If you know of good songs for me to include, please let me know.

Five of the 13 songs are officially unreleased, but since I used pristine soundboard bootlegs for those (as mentioned above), I doubt you'll be able to tell which ones those are from listening. The album totals 47 minutes, which makes for a nice album length.

01 Let's Have a Party (Robert Plant)
02 Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Robert Plant & Queen)
03 Louie, Louie (Robert Plant)
04 If It's Really Got to Be This Way (Robert Plant)
05 Gonna Shoot You Right Down [Boom Boom] (Robert Plant & Jimmy Rogers with Jimmy Page & Eric Clapton)
06 Think (Robert Plant)
07 A Wondrous Place (Robert Plant)
08 As Long as I Have You (Robert Plant)
09 Baby Let's Play House (Jimmy Page & Robert Plant)
10 My Bucket's Got a Hole in It (Jimmy Page & Robert Plant)
11 Let the Boogie Woogie Roll (Robert Plant with Jools Holland)
12 Look Out Mabel (Robert Plant with Jeff Beck & the Big Town Playboys)
13 Valley of Tears (Robert Plant & the Soweto Gospel Choir)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4aYNsFKB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/wJMboz3tSmAR6H2/file

At first, I didn't have a clue what kind of photo I should use for the album cover, since the "Honeydrippers" didn't actually exist during this time period. But I looked through a bunch of photos of Plant from the 1990s, and I came across one of him holding up a vintage style guitar. It works for me. This photo is from 1995. I also used the text from the cover of the 1984 Honeydrippers EP, except of course I changed "Volume One" to "Volume Two."

David Bowie - Love All Around - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

When I first made David Bowie stray tracks albums, I didn't make this one. But I found more and more material from this time period, causing me to squeeze this album in later.

The main reason I was able to get more material was the release of "Spying through a Keyhole," which contains four Bowie songs that were not only officially unreleased, but also unbootlegged. It also contains the original acoustic demo of "Space Oddity," which has some lyrics that were changed in all later versions.

There also has been the release of "The Mercury Demos," an album of acoustic songs all recorded in one sitting. I'm not planning on posting "The Mercury Demos" here since I want to encourage people to buy it themselves. But I am including one song from it, "Love Song," a cover of a Leslie Duncan song, because it's the only song from that that isn't available in a different version somewhere else. Furthermore, another 1969 song here, "Life Is a Circus," comes from yet another new release, "Clareville Grove Demos." It also isn't available anywhere else (except that a different version is on "The Mercury Demos."

By the way, I believe the reason there was a flurry of new releases of Bowie material after many years of no such new releases is due to European copyright law, which states that a copyright is lost unless material is made public within 50 years. These songs from 1968 and 1969 are just making it under the wire for the 2018 and 2019 deadlines.

Aside from "Love Song" and "Life Is a Circus" mentioned above, all the other songs are from 1968. In addition to the five newly released songs also mentioned above, there are five more 1968 songs from a variety of sources, including two that are still unreleased.

A couple of the songs here are available elsewhere in different versions. For instance, Bowie completely redid "London Bye Ta-Ta" in 1970.

01 London Bye Ta-Ta (David Bowie)
02 When I'm Five (David Bowie)
03 April's Tooth of Gold (David Bowie)
04 Ching-A-Ling (David Bowie, Hermione Farthingale & John Hutchinson)
05 In the Heat of the Morning (David Bowie)
06 Mother Grey (David Bowie)
07 Goodbye Threepenny Joe (David Bowie)
08 Love All Around (David Bowie)
09 Angel Angel Grubby Face (David Bowie)
10 Space Oddity [Original Acoustic Demo] (David Bowie)
11 Love Song (David Bowie)
12 Life Is a Circus (David Bowie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/gXX4mxyy 

I'm not sure where the photo for the cover art comes from. Based on Bowie's haircut and face, it almost certainly is from 1969.

I used the AI Krea program to improve the image.

Jackie DeShannon - Don't Doubt Yourself Babe - Acoustic Demos (1965)

I'm very pleased to be able to offer this album. All but one song is officially unreleased, and this material is very very rare, even as a bootleg. All the songs feature Jackie DeShannon singing and playing in a solo acoustic format.

DeShannon is known for her 1960s pop hits like "What the World Needs Now" and "Put a Little Love in Your Heart." She definitely isn't known for playing in a solo acoustic style, since none of her single or album tracks are performed that way. Yet a few weeks ago I posted an unreleased concert of hers in that format from 1963, and now I have these demo recordings from 1965. DeShannon is a much better songwriter than most people realize, writing hits for others like "Needles and Pins," "When You Walk in the Room," and "Betty Davis Eyes." (She claims she cowrote "Needle and Pins," but she didn't get official credit for it.) I'm not entirely sure, but I believe all the songs here are written by her.

DeShannon was a musical chameleon of sorts, able to sing and even write songs in a wide variety of styles. But that turned out to be one of the biggest problems of her career, because her record companies usually didn't know how to take advantage of her skills. One of the worst aspects was that they consistently undervalued her songwriting, which is why some of the songs she wrote ended up as hits for others, and some of her own hits were written by others.

This album is a case in point. DeShannon wrote an excellent bunch of folky songs right at a time when folk-rock was a booming genre. (In fact, she'd practically invented the genre with her songs "Needles and Pins" and "When You Walk in the Room" back in 1963.) You would think the logical thing to do was release these songs as an album with a folk rock backing.

But, for whatever reason, that didn't happen, and most of these went unreleased in any form. One song here, "Don't Doubt Yourself Babe," was covered by the Byrds for their classic album "Mr. Tambourine Man." Another, "Splendor in the Grass," was done in a folk-rock style, in which she actually was backed by all five of the original Byrds! But it was only released in 1966 as a B-side to a little-noticed single.

It's a hint at what might have been. How awesome would it have been had the Byrds backed her for an entire album? Had that happened, the arc of the rest of her career may have gone very differently, in which her songwriting talents would have been properly respected and emphasized. Remember that this was a time, pre-Joni Mitchell, when female singer songwriters were almost unheard of, and there was a huge bias against any women who tried to do more than just sing. As it was, most of her albums were dominated by cover versions, since her record companies wanted to choose the songs for her.

These demos apparently were recorded on May 27, 1965, though I'm not sure if that date is accurate. That could also be the date the record company received or processed them (and then ignored them). Undoubtedly, many of the songs were written before that, since the Byrds' version of "Don't Doubt Yourself Babe" had already been publicly released by then. The first 12 songs here later became a bootleg called "Girl of Yesterday." But it was extremely rare. It was sold by a DeShannon fan club, but that club went defunct about a decade ago. I'd had this on my "want list" for years, and I looked all over for it without any success. I finally found it on SoulSeek today, so I'm posting it here straight away.

The two last songs are bonus tracks of sorts that I've added. I don't know where or when "I Don't Wanna Be without You" is from. I found it on YouTube. But it clearly has the same sound, so it almost certainly is from 1964 or 1965. I also don't know the details of where "Only You Can Free My Mind" is from. It's officially released, but only a various artists album of songs written by DeShannon, with that one the only one actually performed by her. In addition to acoustic guitar, it also does have some light drumming.

Including the two songs I added to the end, this makes a 39-minute-long album. It amazes me this hasn't been officially released, especially since the sound quality is very good.

01 Too Far Out (Jackie DeShannon)
02 Your Heart Is Missing (Jackie DeShannon)
03 What's It All About (Jackie DeShannon)
04 Splendor in the Grass (Jackie DeShannon)
05 New Thoughts (Jackie DeShannon)
06 Hand-Made Silver Ring (Jackie DeShannon)
07 To Be Myself (Jackie DeShannon)
08 The Girl of Yesterday (Jackie DeShannon)
09 Don't Doubt Yourself Babe [It's Gonna Be Alright] (Jackie DeShannon)
10 With You in Mind [Come Along] (Jackie DeShannon)
11 You Could Break My Heart (Jackie DeShannon)
12 Still Around [Away Brought Down] (Jackie DeShannon)
13 I Don't Wanna Be without You (Jackie DeShannon)
14 Only You Can Free My Mind (Jackie DeShannon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/XoZ1ius1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/RUoDUg5fDuOus3p/file

I'm not sure when or where the cover art photo of DeShannon is from. But it certainly looks like it dates from around 1965. Probably, it was from a TV appearance. The photo was black and white, so I added a colorized it. In February 2025, I upgraded it with the Krea AI program. The background was an incoherent mess already, and the program couldn't fix it, so I replaced it with black.

Arthur Lee - That's the Way It Goes - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (1992)

First off, just to be clear, Arthur Lee was the singer and songwriter for the vast majority of songs by Love, the band best known for the classic 1967 album "Forever Changes." By the end of the 1960s, Love basically became Lee plus a changing group of back-up musicians, with all the other original members gone. He often continued to bill himself as "Love," but this is basically a collection of solo acoustic recordings, so it seems appropriate to me to bill this to Lee instead of using a band name.

In many cases, a musician and/or band has a heyday and I have very little interest in what they do decades later. But Arthur Lee is a different case. He had many lost years, including spending 1996 to 2002 in prison for "negligent discharge of a firearm." (An appeals court later overturned the conviction, and the prosecutor was found guilty of misconduct.) He often had trouble with drug addiction as well. Sadly, he died of leukemia in 2006. But in the 1990s and 2000s, from time to time, he got his act together and wrote new songs that were just as good as the Love songs from the best years of that band.

The early 1990s were one of those times when Lee got his act together and wrote and performed at a high level. As a sign that he still "had it," one song he wrote around that time, "Five String Serenade," was later covered by Mazzy Star, Jack White of the White Stripes. However, one problem about Lee in his later decades was that he never really got his act together enough to record any well-produced albums of his new songs. (There were a few attempts, but each of them are problematic for various reasons.)

Luckily, we can enjoy many of Lee's quality new songs due to the fact that he played them in solo acoustic format in 1992. (He actually played songs in acoustic format occasionally in the 1990s and 2000s, but for whatever reason, the best sounding recordings all seem to come from 1992.)

Most of the songs here come from an officially released box set of Love's live recordings called "Coming through to You." However, the vast majority of the songs on this four disc box set are full-band performances. I think it makes sense to pull out the acoustic performances and listen to them separately. Some are from radio shows, and others are from concerts where I've removed the audience noise.

On top of that, I've included three songs that were recorded in a studio around 1992, but never released (at least not in those acoustic versions). Ironically, these studio performances probably sound the worst of all the songs on this album. But that's only true in a relative sense. The sound quality is still fairly high all the way through.

Most of the songs here were written by Lee long after Love's heyday in the 1960s. But there are four exceptions: "Alone Again Or," "Hey Joe" (which is a cover done famously by Jimi Hendrix), "Signed D.C.," and a medley of Lee's "Everybody's Got to Live" and John Lennon's "Instant Karma." The reason I'm including these is because they are probably the only quality versions of Lee doing this songs in an acoustic format.

In conclusion, if you enjoy "Forever Changes" and the other great Love music from the 1960s, you really should give this a listen. Don't be put off by the year. Lee definitely had a worthy creative resurgence, and this is probably the best way to listen to it.

01 Five String Serenade (Arthur Lee)
02 Ninety Miles Away (Arthur Lee)
03 Passing By - Hoochie Coochie Man (Arthur Lee)
04 Girl on Fire (Arthur Lee)
05 You're the Prettiest Song (Arthur Lee)
06 I Believe in You (Arthur Lee)
07 Alone Again Or (Arthur Lee)
08 Hey Joe (Arthur Lee)
09 Somebody's Watching You (Arthur Lee)
10 L.A. Calocoa (Arthur Lee)
11 That's the Way It Goes (Arthur Lee)
12 Signed D.C. (Arthur Lee)
13 Everybody's Gotta Live - Instant Karma (Arthur Lee)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16695524/LOVEE1992_ThatstheWyItGoes_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is of Lee playing in concert in San Francisco in 1992. I lightened the background some, because otherwise, Lee is visually lost with his dark clothes in a dark room. I wish I could find a photo of him playing acoustically around 1992, but I haven't had any luck with that.

Dusty Springfield - Dusty Sings Bacharach & David (1964-1970)

Here's something somewhat different, because it's mostly a repackaging of material I've posted already. Dusty Springfield was one of the best interpreters of songs written by the famous team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. She did enough of their songs to make an album-length compilation, yet no such album has ever been compiled... until now.

If you've been following this blog, you probably know that I've posted many Springfield albums already. She probably has as many unreleased songs from the 1960s and early 1970s as released songs, due to all the songs she did for TV and radio shows.

For this album, I've found 13 Bacharach and David songs she did (not counting the two bonus tracks, which I will get to in a minute). Eight of them included here were officially released. The other five are unreleased, and I've included those on my "On TV and Radio" series of albums for her. Two of the unreleased songs at the end of this album actually feature Burt Bacharach, with him playing piano, and the other a duet between Springfield and him. (Bacharach has done lots of recording and public perfomring while David, who wrote the lyrics, has not.) I didn't include Springfield's studio version of "The Look of Love" because I went with the version with Bacharach instead.

The sound quality is excellent for all the songs. There are two more unreleased songs that sound worse than that "The Love of a Boy" and "Wives and Lovers," so I've only included them as bonus tracks.

In conclusion, in my opinion, Bacharach and David were one of the great songwriting teams of all time, and their 1960s songs have a special charm. Dionne Warwick is the best known interpreter of their songs. But Springfield should be right up there with her. There really should be an official album like this, letting a listener hear all of her Bacharach and David covers together.

This album is 41 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks.

01 I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself (Dusty Springfield)
02 Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa (Dusty Springfield)
03 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Dusty Springfield)
04 Wishin' and Hopin' (Dusty Springfield)
05 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Dusty Springfield)
06 Long After Tonight Is Over (Dusty Springfield)
07 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Dusty Springfield)
08 This Girl's in Love with You (Dusty Springfield)
09 Another Night (Dusty Springfield)
10 In the Land of Make Believe (Dusty Springfield)
11 I Say a Little Prayer (Dusty Springfield)
12 Knowing When to Leave (Dusty Springfield)
13 The Look of Love (Dusty Springfield with Burt Bacharach)
14 A House Is Not a Home (Dusty Springfield & Burt Bacharach)

The Love of a Boy (Dusty Springfield)
Wives and Lovers (Dusty Springfield)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/h45GkXLN

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/aULPFGYdNwIGW7N/file

The cover art photo comes from a TV appearance Springfield and Bacharach did together in 1970. The last two songs here come from that same appearance.

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

The Red Hot Chili Peppers - Love Rollercoaster - Non-Album Tracks (1991-1997)

I've already posted one album of Red Hot Chili Peppers stray tracks. Here's the second.

Except for the first two songs, which were released in 1994 but actually were recorded in 1991, this covers the Dave Navarro era of the band, which lasted from 1993 to 1998. Guitarist John Frusciante was a very key member of the band, since he was a major songwriter as well as lead guitarist. He left the band in 1992 and was replaced by Navarro, who previously played in Jane's Addiction. Frusiante rejoined the band in time for the 1999 album "Californication."

As a result of these personnel shifts, the Dave Navarro years have been mostly left behind by the band in the years since. They put out the album "One Hot Minute" during this era, but they've pretty much ignored playing the songs from that album in concert, except for a couple of the hits.

The songs on this album have also fallen down that black hole. But I think this makes for a good listen just the same. "Love Rollercoaster," a cover of a song by the Ohio Players, was a minor hit. A few of the other songs here are covers too, such as "Waiting Room" by Fugazi, "I Found Out" by John Lennon, and "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by Iggy Pop and the Stooges. The first two songs are originals from the "Out in L.A." album, which was a surprisingly bad album of leftovers except for these two songs. Most of the rest are original bonus tracks or B-sides.

Three of the songs are officially unreleased, but I think the sound quality for those are still good.

I've added a bonus track. It's just a bonus track because it's not a "real" track. Instead, it's the exact hit version of "Under the Bridge" from 1991, except it's stripped down to just the lead vocals and the acoustic guitar. This is possible due to multritrack versions of this song being made public, allowing one to pick and choose which parts of the song to include or remove. I really like this "unplugged" version.

01 Blues for Meister (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
02 What It Is (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
03 Bob (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
04 Melancholy Mechanics (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
05 I Found Out (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
06 Let's Make Evil (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
07 Stretch You Out (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
08 I Wanna Be Your Dog (Red Hot Chili Peppers with Iggy Pop)
09 Love Rollercoaster (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
10 Waiting Room (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
11 Circle of the Noose (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Under the Bridge [Acoustic Mix] (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701027/TREDHTCHLIPPPRS1991-1997_LovRollrcostr_atse.zip.html

The cover art is based on a publicity photo from 1995. I've added the text from a promotional single of "Love Rollercoaster," with the tettering meant to rise and fall like a rollercoaster.

Rosanne Cash - The Winding Stream - Non-Album Tracks (2004-2007)

Here's another stray tracks album for Rosanne Cash, this time for the years 2004 to 2007.

I don't have much to say except that Cash is fantastic and underrated, as usual. This is very similar to the Lucinda Williams stray tracks album I just posted in that the vast majority of the songs are from various artists compilations or duet appearances on other people's albums.

Only two of the songs are officially unreleased. One - a cover of her father Johnny Cash's "Big River" - is from a televised BBC performance, so the sound quality is very good. The other - a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Who Will Stop the Rain" - is from a concert bootleg. I don't believe it's from a soundboard, and the sound quality is a little below the others. But it still sounds fine enough to be included.

Cash put out a very good album of original material during this time, 2006's "Black Cadillac." However, I believe all or nearly all the songs here aren't written by her.

01 How to Be Strong (Rosanne Cash)
02 Fiona's Song (Rosanne Cash & Black 47)
03 The Winding Stream (Rosanne Cash)
04 Who'll Stop the Rain (Rosanne Cash)
05 Loving Him Was Easier [Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again] (Rosanne Cash)
07 Forty Shades of Green (Rosanne Cash with Paul Brady)
08 Big River (Rosanne Cash)
09 I Can't Help It If I'm Still in Love with You (Holmes Brothers & Rosanne Cash)
10 Wings of Angels (Rosanne Cash)
11 The Unfaithful Servant (Rosanne Cash)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15103769/RosanneC_2004-2007_TheWndingSteam_atse.zip.html

The cover comes from a publicity photo of Cash in 2006.

Lucinda Williams - Don't Tell Me - Non-Album Tracks (2001-2004)

Here's the next stray tracks collection from Lucinda Williams, covering 2001 to 2004.

By this point in her career, Williams had established a name for herself. As a result, she was invited to take part in a lot of various artists compilations, mostly tribute albums. Four of the songs here are from such albums (where she naturally does cover versions of the artists who are subject of the tribute). For most of the rest, she duets on other people's studio albums. Only one song is unreleased, and that also is a duet ("Poisoned Rose" with Elvis Costello).

Since nearly all the songs are officially released, it's no surprise that the sound is excellent. The one exception, that duet with Costello, comes from a TV show, so the sound is very good there as well.

Basically, if you liked the previous Williams stray tracks albums I've made, you're sure to like this one.

01 Nothin' (Lucinda Williams)
02 Cold, Cold Heart (Lucinda Williams)
03 The Ship (Chip Taylor & Lucinda Williams)
04 Angels Laid Him Away (Lucinda Williams)
05 Farther Along (Ralph Stanley & Lucinda Williams)
06 Poisoned Rose (Lucinda Williams & Elvis Costello)
07 Lately (Lucinda Williams)
08 Buick Blues (Lucinda Williams)
09 Don't Tell Me (Colin Linden & Lucinda Williams)
10 Hard Time Killing Floor Blues (Lucinda Williams)
11 Hang Down Your Head (Lucinda Williams)
12 Closing In on the Fire (Tony Joe White & Lucinda Williams)
13 Two of Us (Doug Pettibone & Lucinda Williams)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376585/LUCNDWLLMS2001-2004DntTllMe_atse.zip.html

The album cover photo is from a 2003 concert.

Bob Dylan & the Band - Isle of Wight Festival, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-31-1969

This is something that has been officially released, is still in print, and I haven't made any changes. That's unusual for me. But I'm posting it here because it's only available as a bonus disc for the deluxe version of Bob Dylan's "Bootleg Series No. 10: Another Self Portrait," and it should be much better known. It definitely deserves its own release.

This is a remarkable concert for Dylan, mainly because it was the ONLY full concert he performed after getting in a motorcycle accident in 1966 until 1973. That's six years right in the heart of the peak of Dylan's career (I'd consider his main peak from about 1963 to 1976, though he's had other peaks since then). That also makes it the only concert when he sang in his smooth "Lay, Lady, Lay" voice. Plus, the whole concert is done with the Band backing him. And, thanks to the official release, the sound quality is excellent.

I'm too young to have lived through the time of this concert, but from what I understand, it was a very, very big deal at the time. The famous Woodstock festival was held pretty much right in Dylan's backyard in upper New York state in the hopes that that would encourage Dylan to make an appearance. But he didn't, and played this concert instead. All the Beatles except Paul McCartney showed up to watch Dylan, alongside many other celebrities. Dylan's return to the stage was so a big deal that one journalist later claimed it "inflated into the gig of the decade." Given its importance to Dylan's career and the 1960s counterculture movement as a whole, it's practically criminal that the official release has been buried as a bonus disc on a super deluxe edition release only.

Here's a Wikipedia article about the festival:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Wight_Festival_1969

I guess at the time the concert was a bit disappointing simply because expectations were so sky-high. (For instance, it was widely rumored that the Beatles would join him on stage, which they did not.) But in retrospect, I think it was a great show. Definitely every Dylan fan should give it a listen, which is why I'm posting it here.

By the way, four performances from the concert - "Like a Rolling Stone," "The Mighty Quinn," "Minstrel Boy," and "She Belongs to Me" - were included on Dylan's 1970 album "Self Portrait." They fit much better being heard in context of the whole concert.

01 talk (Bob Dylan & the Band)
02 She Belongs to Me (Bob Dylan & the Band)
03 I Threw It All Away (Bob Dylan & the Band)
04 Maggie's Farm (Bob Dylan & the Band)
05 Wild Mountain Thyme (Bob Dylan & the Band)
06 It Ain't Me Babe (Bob Dylan & the Band)
07 To Ramona (Bob Dylan & the Band)
08 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan & the Band)
09 I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine (Bob Dylan & the Band)
10 Lay Lady Lay (Bob Dylan & the Band)
11 Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan & the Band)
12 One Too Many Morning (Bob Dylan & the Band)
13 I Pity the Poor Immigrant (Bob Dylan & the Band)
14 Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan & the Band)
15 I'll Be Your Baby Tonight (Bob Dylan & the Band)
16 The Mighty Quinn [Quinn the Eskimo] (Bob Dylan & the Band)
17 Minstrel Boy (Bob Dylan & the Band)
18 Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35 (Bob Dylan & the Band)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HFbuwF9t

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/5lCqkoOUOq3bFCc/file

For the album cover, I used a photo of Dylan at the concert. For some reason, there was practically a forest of microphones and microphone stands in front of him, at least a dozen. So I chose a rare photo that didn't have him buried behind all that. I also edited the photo to move some of the microphones further from his face. The lettering comes straight from a poster for the concert.

The Allman Brothers Band - One More Ride (Edited Song) (1970)

Here's something I'm pretty psyched about. I feel like I've created a "new classic Allman Brothers Band song from their heyday! Maybe not, but I'd be curious what you think.

I don't know anything about this song except that it was co-written in 1970 by band members Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts. It first appeared as an instrumental just under three minutes long on the 1988 box set "Dreams." Then an instrumental "remix" just under four minutes long appeared as a bonus track on a "super deluxe" edition of the "Idlewild South" album in 2015.

Yet there's another version of the song available only as a bootleg that's seven minutes long, and it has vocals by Gregg Allman, with perfectly good lyrics! So it's not really meant to be an instrumental after all. If you listen to the instrumental versions, there are long stretches where not much is happening, for instance no soloing. Clearly, those are the parts where the vocals were supposed to go.

Normally, I would just put the superior version with vocals on one of my stray tracks compilations. But unfortunately, the sound quality for that version sucks. It sounds really muddy and muffled. That's probably why that version is hard to find even on bootleg. So I decided to try to merge the two versions together.

First, I used a sound editing program to try to reduce the muddiness of the vocal version. I only had limited success, since I'm far from an expert in this kind of thing, and there's usually only so much even experts can do. But I think it helped some. Then I patched the vocal parts into the longer of the two instrumental versions. I had a hard time getting the timing just right, because there were slight changes in the speed of the song as it went along, in both versions, since they were recorded by fallible human beings many years before most recordings became computerized and the variability of drumming was lost in favor of metronome-like consistency (and soullessness). Still, after a lot of tinkering, I think I got pretty close on the timing.

I also had to put an instrumental version of the verse at the start of the song, because otherwise the vocals came in when the intro drumming bit was still going on, and it didn't sound good. I think this change works out fine, because there's a little guitar riff going on that keeps the instrumental version of the song interesting.

The end result doesn't sound perfect by any means, but hopefully it's close enough for horseshoes. One can clearly hear the change in sound quality each time the vocals come in. But I feel it's better to have it like that than have the whole song in poor sound quality.

By the way, the unreleased version is longer than the others in part because it has a drum solo in the middle that lasts for about two minutes. I don't think it's a big loss missing that, since most people aren't fans of drum solos (including myself). In fact, I think the song works a lot better here at four minutes long. It could and should have been played on the radio.

I've put the song on a stray tracks album for the band. Here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-allman-brothers-band-stormy-monday.html

I really like the vocal version of this song. I could totally imagine it being a regular concert staple for the band. I am baffled why the vocal version has been left officially unreleased until now. Surely the professionals could do a good job (better than mine!) improving the sound quality of that version, if there's a problem with it. But I think it's much more likely that there's no problem if one works from the master recordings, and it's the usual bootleg copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy problem that created the poor sound. So I don't see any excuse.

As mentioned above, a "super deluxe" version of "Idlewild South" has been released in recent years and the vocal version wasn't included on that, A box set of Duane Allman's guitar playing, "Skydog," was also released in recent years, and it wasn't included on that either, even though it features a very nice Duane Allman guitar solo. So I think the odds are low that that version will ever be officially released.

It's very baffling that this song slipped through the cracks, especially since the Allman Brothers Band were not prolific songwriters. It's not like the lyrics are objectionable, or it sounds too much like some other song, or it's a poor performance, etc... And I don't think the song was ever played live, either with vocals or as an instrumental. But at least there's this.

I put this together while I was working on posting another album of Allman Brothers Band stray tracks soon. I imagine I'll include this edit on that once I have that ready, unless I get feedback that I screwed this up somehow.

Badfinger - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Golders Green Hippodrome, London, Britain, 8-10-1973

This is essentially a continuation of my last post (Badfinger's "In Concert at the Paris Theatre"). As I said in that, there's only one good official live Badfinger album, called "BBC In Concert." But it's taken from two concerts, and I think it works better as two albums. So here's the second part, taken from a concert professionally recorded by the BBC at the Hippodrome in London in 1973.

But it's not that simple. The actual Hippodrome part is only 29 minutes long, which is rather short for an album. I wanted to use this (and the other live Badfinger album I just posted) to gather all the remaining live Badfinger in excellent sound quality that I didn't post already or are repeats of songs. So I've fleshed this out with four songs recorded for a short-lived British TV show called "Set of Six," plus another song played on the TV show "The Midnight Special" in 1973.

I haven't changed the songs at all, but I've edited the crowd noise after the extra songs to make it sound like they all came from the same concert. Some of those extra songs had no audience noise at all, or only a few seconds before the recording came to a sudden halt. So I reused crowd noise from other songs, but edited them to remove specific noises making it obvious that it was a repeat.

The end result is an album that's 46 minutes long. One benefit of splitting the BBC album in two is that it's okay to have some repeats between this album and the Paris Theatre one I just posted.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any good live Badfinger recordings after 1973, until the band fell apart in 1975.  There is a popular bootleg recorded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1974. But the audio quality was too poor to interest me, even as bonus tracks.

By the way, the recording of "Day After Day" was missing about the first 30 seconds. So I found a different version of that song and patched that in. You can probably hear the transition if you listen for it, but I figured it was better to do it that way than just having the start of the song missing.

01 Day After Day (Badfinger)
02 Sweet Tuesday Morning (Badfinger)
03 Take It All (Badfinger)
04 Better Days (Badfinger)
05 No Matter What (Badfinger)
06 Love Is Easy (Badfinger)
07 Blind Owl (Badfinger)
08 Constitution (Badfinger)
09 Icicles (Badfinger)
10 Matted Spam (Badfinger)
11 Suitcase (Badfinger)
12 I Can't Take It (Badfinger)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5Bne9BaF

I made the cover art using a photo of the band playing on the British TV show "Top of the Pops" in 1973. (I assume the recording of that performance is either lost or was a lip-sync to a record.)

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

Badfinger - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 6-8-1972

I'm trying to improve the problem of Badfinger live recordings. There are only two official live albums of the band in their early 1970s prime, and one ("Day After Day") is best forgotten. (It was a bad recording to begin with, and horrible 1980s drums were added to it, among other problems.) The one good live album, "BBC In Concert," has its own issues, but I'm going to try to fix them with this post and the next one.

"BBC In Concert" is largely based on two concerts recorded in front of audiences for the BBC, one at the Paris Theatre (which is located in London, not Paris, by the way) in 1972, and the other at the Hippodrome (also in London) in 1973. The songs all sound great, since these two shows were professionally recorded and played on the radio by the BBC. The only real problem is that it should be two albums, not one. So I've split them up. Here's the first one.

The vast majority of live Badfinger bootleg material sounds poor to awful. I've already posted two albums here, one of a soundboard quality concert in 1970, and the other of actual performances in the BBC studios with no audiences.

Aside from those, and the live BBC album, it's pretty slim pickings in terms of sound quality. But by splitting the BBC album in two, I ended up with two rather short live albums that had room for some bonus tracks. So Ive added the few unreleased live songs recorded in high quality that aren't repeats. I've added two songs to the start of this album, from another 1972 concert.

The result is an album that's 44 minutes long. The album I've made of the rest of "BBC In Concert" ends up being about the same length.

01 No Matter What (Badfinger)
02 Sometimes (Badfinger)
03 Better Days (Badfinger)
04 Only You Know and I Know (Badfinger)
05 We're for the Dark (Badfinger)
06 Sweet Tuesday Morning (Badfinger)
07 Feelin' Alright (Badfinger)
08 Take It All (Badfinger)
09 Suitcase (Badfinger)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/onKHSZ1T

For the album cover, I found some photos of Badfinger playing at the BBC in early 1972. I think it was one of the times they lip-synced to their songs, not this show. The photos happened to include four good close-ups of each band member, so I've put four photos together for the cover.

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

The Who - Acoustic Duo, 2005-2014

I'm able to post a lot of albums here in a relatively short period of time because I spent decades collecting this music and organizing it before I ever started this blog. But sometimes I come across new stuff, and today was one of those days. In double checking that I have all the good stuff for the Pete Townshend album I just posted, I came across some material by the Who, and I'm so pleased with it that I want to post it straight away.

Clearly, the Who are a rocking band, and I like them that way. But many of their songs sound good in solo acoustic format, as Pete Townshend has shown with various acoustic performances over the years. I knew the Who played in a stripped down format for the Bridge School Benefit in 1999 and some other occasions, but that included a bass player and drummer. What I didn't know until today is that Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey have played just as an acoustic duo on some very rare occasions in the last fifteen years or so.

They've only done a couple of songs here and there, seemingly for promotional appearances when the rest of the band wasn't available. So I searched out all the acoustic duo performances I could find and compiled them into this album. Luckily, it turns out that all of these performances have very good sound, usually professionally recorded sound. As a result, in my opinion, it sounds like one longer concert instead of a bunch of short ones.

In 2006, the Who put out an album of new songs called "Endless Wire." Four of the songs here are from that album. But, in my opinion, they sound better stripped down to the acoustic basics. All the other songs are Who classics from the 1960s and 70s, plus a cover of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire."

Speaking of that cover, that performance plus "Who Are You" actually only feature Daltrey. But you'd be hard pressed to hear that, because Daltrey plays acoustic guitar as he sings in a very impressive Townshend-esque style. I didn't know he had it in him to play guitar that well!

I included those two Daltrey solo tracks but not any Townshend solo tracks because I have tons of versions of Townshend playing Who songs in solo acoustic format. I don't really collect Daltrey solo stuff, but I figure those two Daltrey solo acoustic songs must be very unusual for him. Besides, including them here keeps the focus on Daltrey singing lead for the vast majority of the time on these songs.

The Who has raised some waves earlier in 2019 for acoustic performances of "Won't Get Fooled Again." I see one version has three million views on YouTube. So I'm glad to say I have an acoustic version of that song here, from 2014, when Daltrey's voice was in better shape. But also, if you liked hearing that in an acoustic version, check out the rest of these songs, because they all sound interesting that way.

On a minor note, Daltrey really screwed up the lyrics to "Bargain." He mostly sang the right lines, but in a mixed up order. So I carefully did some audio cutting and pasting to fix his most obvious errors.

I like it when I can put together albums that are between 35 and 50 minutes - long enough to set a mood and make a statement but not being too long to outstay its welcome. By chance, this is 47 minutes long, which is right in that sweet spot.

01 talk (Who)
02 Real Good Looking Boy (Who)
03 Man in a Purple Dress (Who)
04 Behind Blue Eyes (Who)
05 talk (Who)
06 Mike Post Theme (Who)
07 Tea and Theatre (Who)
08 Who Are You (Roger Daltrey)
09 Ring of Fire (Roger Daltrey)
10 Pinball Wizard (Who)
11 talk (Who)
12 Substitute (Who)
13 Bargain (Who)
14 The Kids Are Alright (Who)
15 talk (Who)
16 Won't Get Fooled Again (Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eHoV1BLQ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/JamiUNMZ4EFGesi/file

The last four songs come from a performance at Ronnie Scott's, a club in London, in 2014. The cover photo comes from that show. Daltrey and Townshend were situated rather far from each other on stage, so I cut out some of the space between them so I could show both of them with decent size.

Pete Townshend - It Must Be Done - Non-Album Tracks (2004-2015)

I've posted a long series of albums of Pete Townshend stray tracks. This is the last one, at least until more songs come to light. I must admit I don't think his stray tracks from the 1990s were consistently strong when compared to his earlier work. But, in my opinion, he does better here. Yes, it covers a decade of time, but this makes for a consistently solid listen.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think I count five cover versions: "Stone (Evolution)" by Ronnie Lane, "No Face, No Name, No Number" by Traffic, "Three Steps to Heaven" by Eddie Cochran, "Corrina, Corrina," a traditional song famously done by Bob Dylan, and "Chameleon" done by and with Des Horsfall's Kuschty Rye.

The latter, by the way, is a band that is extremely influenced by Ronnie Lane's music, naming themselves after one of his songs and including some members of his band. So "Chameleon" sounds uncannily (in a good way) like a Townshend-Lane collaboration that could have been found on their 1977 album together, "Rough Mix."

Two of the original songs, "In the Ether" and "Endless Wire," are solo versions of songs from the 2006 Who album "Endless Wire." They sound very different (and in my opinion better) in stripped down versions here, without any Roger Daltrey. Note that the era of this album overlaps with the "in the Attic" recordings Townshend did from 2005 to 2007. I haven't included any performances here that are on that, though a couple of the song are the same, but different versions.

Here's the link to the "In the Attic" album. If you've a Townshend or Who fan at all, you really should give it a listen:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/04/pete-townshend-in-attic-2005-2007.html

One of the most recent songs here, "Guantanamo," is going to be on a new Who album coming out at the end of 2019, which will simply be called "Who." This version of the song came out on a 2015 Pete Townshend greatest hits album. But the Who version is going to be called "Ball and Chain," even though the lyrics indicate it's the same song. So I've included that new name as a subtitle.

Six of the songs are officially unreleased. For a few of those, the sound quality is a little less than the others, notably "Three Steps to Heaven." But it's nothing too bad.

I haven't found anything worthy of inclusion from after 2015, so this should be the last album in this stray tracks series, as I mentioned above.

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Stone [Evolution] (Pete Townshend & Slim Chance)
02 Heart to Hang On To (Pete Townshend & Sam Brown)
03 In the Ether (Pete Townshend)
04 Endless Wire (Pete Townshend)
05 No Face, No Name, No Number (Pete Townshend)
06 Three Steps to Heaven (Eric Clapton & Friends with Pete Townshend)
07 Corrina, Corrina (Pete Townshend)
08 Guitar Instrumental (Pete Townshend)
09 It Must Be Done (Pete Townshend & Nathan Barr)
10 You Stand by Me (Pete Townshend & Eddie Vedder)
11 Chameleon (Pete Townshend & Des Horsfall's Kuschty Rye)
12 How Can I Help You (Pete Townshend)
13 Guantanamo [Ball and Chain] (Pete Townshend)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/45MVHUvt

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/sGSilD0qbyHmuJE/file

For the album cover, I used a photo of Townshend from a 2014 awards ceremony.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ray Davies - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: Sold on Song, BBC Studios, London, Britain, 4-1-2006

I love Ray Davies of the Kinks, and I love acoustic music, so it's kind of a mystery to me why I haven't posted this concert already. If you like the Kinks at all, you should listen to this.

In 2005 and 2006, the BBC had a series much like VH1's "Storytellers." Famous musicians were invited to tell stories about their songs as well as playing them, usually in an acoustic format. I've already posted Paul McCartney's appearance on the show (I actually combined it with another similarly formatted show he did one day apart). You can get that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/07/paul-mccartney-chaos-and-creation-at.html

Anyway, Davies decided to go the full acoustic route, playing with just his acoustic guitar plus another acoustic guitarist. He talked a lot between songs, telling interesting stories with a focus on the songwriting process. But best of all, he played an interesting set of songs, mixing songs from the 1960s and early 1970s with songs from his 2006 solo album "Other People's Lives." Happily, he avoided overplayed hits like "You Really Got Me" and "Lola."

The concert is 56 minutes long, with about ten minutes of those talking. I put the talking on separate tracks.

One really great thing about this is the sound quality. Although he played in front of a small audience and there is clapping, the BBC professionally recorded the show for TV and it sounds fantastic. (Davies played live as an acoustic duo for about ten years, but unfortunately virtually none of the bootlegs of him were recorded with soundboard quality.)

I've added a bonus track of sorts. When he played the song "All She Wrote," he stopped twice in mid-song to make some interesting comments about the song's lyrics. While interesting, those comments broke up the flow of the song. So the bonus track is the exact same performance of the song, but I edited out the talking parts.

UPDATE: On February 11, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same, but i changed the name of the album to "BBC Sessions, Volume 1" after finding a 2007 BBC concert I'd missed, plus realizing a 2010 Glastonbury Festival concert he did was another BBC concert.

01 Intro (Ray Davies)
02 Dead End Street (Ray Davies)
03 talk (Ray Davies)
04 20th Century Man (Ray Davies)
05 talk (Ray Davies)
06 The Village Green Preservation Society (Ray Davies)
07 Picture Book (Ray Davies)
08 Big Sky (Ray Davies)
09 Do You Remember Walter (Ray Davies)
10 talk (Ray Davies)
11 Sunny Afternoon (Ray Davies)
12 talk (Ray Davies)
13 I Go to Sleep (Ray Davies)
14 talk (Ray Davies)
15 All She Wrote (Ray Davies)
16 talk (Ray Davies)
17 Other Peoples' Lives (Ray Davies)
18 Muswell Hillbilly (Ray Davies)
19 talk (Ray Davies)
20 Oklahoma U.S.A. (Ray Davies)
21 talk (Ray Davies)
22 The Getaway [Lonesome Train] (Ray Davies)
23 After the Fall (Ray Davies)
24 Harry Rag (Ray Davies)
25 Outro (Ray Davies)

All She Wrote [Dialogue Free Version] (Ray Davies)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/85AyPt7H

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/RxYjtzsxNI169z8/file

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any good photos of Davies at the actual "Sold On Song" performance. However, this is his playing an acoustic guitar from the same year.

Paul Weller - Wild Wood Demos (1993)

Paul Weller's 1993 album "Wild Wood" is still my favorite out of his many solo albums, though some others are close. So here's a somewhat different way to listen to that great album.

A deluxe version of "Wild Wood" was eventually released with an entire second disc of extra material. Most of that was demos. Generally speaking, these aren't solo acoustic demos. Instead, they're band performances, but usually simple and stripped down arrangements.

I took a few of the songs from the deluxe edition extra disc and put them on different albums, usually when they were songs he never did anywhere else and not just alternate versions of "Wild Wood" songs. That leaves the first eight songs here as demos of "Wild Wood" songs, following the song order on the album. The last three songs are demos of other songs from the time that ultimately made it onto the "More Wood" album instead. Add them up and you get 47 minutes of music, which makes a nice album length.

01 Sunflower [Demo] (Paul Weller)
02 Wild Wood [Demo] (Paul Weller)
03 All the Pictures on the Wall [Demo] (Paul Weller)
04 Country [Demo] (Paul Weller)
05 5th Season [Demo] (Paul Weller)
06 The Weaver [Demo] (Paul Weller)
07 Shadow of the Sun [Demo] (Paul Weller)
08 Moon on Your Pyjamas [Demo] (Paul Weller)
09 Ends of the Earth [Demo] (Paul Weller)
10 The Loved [Demo] (Paul Weller)
11 Everything Has a Price to Pay [Demo] (Paul Weller)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PsJrtVCZ

I got lucky with this album cover. The photo I used actually shows Weller in the studio in the spring of 1993, working on the demos for the "Wild Wood" album. It was black and white, so I added the sepia tone. In October 2026, I used the Gemini program to improve the image quality, as well as colorize the image.

Raspberries - Palace Theatre, New York City, 11-7-1973

I have to admit I'm not much of a Raspberries fan. (And by the way, they're known as just "Raspberries," not "The Raspberries.") I consider them a greatest hits type band. They had some really fantastic songs, but not a deep catalog.

So I don't have a lot of their stuff, and I wasn't planning on posting anything by them. But I recently came across a concert bootleg of theirs that seems to be very little known. They never released a live album when they were together in the 1970s (there's a reunion live album from decades later). They should just release this. It's got a great setlist, including some interesting covers ("Roll Over Beethoven" and "Be My Baby"), and it includes most of their best songs (though "Overnight Sensation" came a year too later to fit).

Most importantly, it has fantastic sound. It's definitely a soundboard, and sounds as good as any official live album you'd expect from that era. Apparently, the concert was professionally recorded in order for it to be shown on the TV show "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert," but only a few of the songs actually were shown on TV. From what I can tell, this bootleg is miles better than most other of the relatively few bootlegs by them, due to the sound quality issue.

Since the concert is a bit on the short side, I added "Let's Pretend" to the end. It's from a 1973 TV performance. That makes the whole thing 41 minutes long.

Although I said above I'm not a big Raspberries fan, I do think they get unfairly overlooked. They were marketed as a bubblegum-type band, wearing very uncool matching white suits most of the time, and they only lasted a few years. It doesn't help that lead singer Eric Carmen pretty much gave up on rock and roll after leaving the band, and went in the dreaded "adult contemporary" direction. But if you forget the image and just listen to the music, they should be counted with Big Star and Badfinger as the founders of power pop.

01 Tonight (Raspberries)
02 Making It Easy (Raspberries)
03 Roll Over Beethoven (Raspberries)
04 Last Dance (Raspberries)
05 I Wanna Be with You (Raspberries)
06 I Can Remember (Raspberries)
07 Be My Baby (Raspberries)
08 Drivin' Around (Raspberries)
09 Go All the Way (Raspberries)
10 Let's Pretend (Raspberries)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701019/TRASPBRRIS1973_PalceThetreNwYrkC__11-7-1973_atse.zip.html

I don't know where or when the cover art photo comes from. But it does show Raspberries in concert in their early 1970s heyday. Too bad it only shows three of the four band members.

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.