Chris Clark - Love Gone Bad - Selected Best Tracks (1965-1966)

I'm a very big fan of music from the Motown record label in the 1960s and early 1970s. Their songs were very hit or miss, but when they hit, it was fantastic. But as great as those many Motown hits were, there were many songs, and even entire artists, who were overlooked. Chris Clark is one of those overlooked artists, so I'm going to try to raise her profile here.

In the 1960s, Clark had a remarkable, soulful voice. But she was white. Not only that, but she was white, tall (six feet high), and had platinum blonde hair. This was a problem, because she didn't just want to do "blue-eyed soul" mainly targeted at white audiences, like the Righteous Brothers or Mitch Ryder did, she wanted to do the same type of music as the big Motown stars, and be treated like them. But the 1960s were a decade of great racial tensions. When her songs were played on the radio, listeners would assume that she was black at first. But then her records often would no longer be played when it was eventually discovered she was white, and she sometimes even got booed when she played in front of black audiences. And yet her music was too "soulful" for most white audiences.

On top of all that, it turns out that Clark was romantically linked to Berry Gordy, the head of Motown Records, for a couple of years. This led many people to assume that she probably had no talent and was just given a chance to record some songs due to sleeping with the boss. On top of that, Gordy was black, and interracial romances were controversial back in those days.

But it turns out she was more than just a pretty face, or even just a pretty face with a great voice. She had many talents beyond singing. For instance, she actually cowrote many of her songs, though she usually went uncredited. After her singing career petered out at the end of the 1960s, she stayed with Motown and took on a variety of creative roles, eventually becoming "head of creative affairs" for the whole company. She got an Academy Award nomination for cowriting the screenplay to the movie "Lady Sings the Blues." Later in life, she's made a career out of being a painter. In an alternate universe, she could have had a big and long singing career if she'd been able to direct that creative energy towards music.

Ironically, given her romance with Gordy, she actually was treated badly by Gordy and Motown when it came to her musical career. Gordy had a consistent history of pushing the vast majority of his company's resources to promote his favorite artists, especially the Supremes, and all but ignoring many other artists who arguably had more potential. Clark was in the latter category. Motown did release some singles from her, and two albums, one in 1967 and the other in 1969. But she generally got the leftover songs the big Motown stars didn't want, and the vast majority of what she recorded never got released until decades later.

This is the first of three Chris Clark albums I plan on posting. There isn't much overlap between the songs on those three albums and her two studio albums, since most of her best stuff remained in the can at the time.

One song on this album, "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday," is a case in point. Clark was the very first artist to record this song, in 1966. Her version should have been a hit, but it went unreleased. Stevie Wonder later did a version of it that was closely modeled on Clark's version, and he had a big hit with it in 1969, going all the way to number two with it in Britain.

Clark's recorded output is littered with similar should-have-been hits, including songs that actually were released as singles but went nowhere. For instance, "Love's Gone Bad" is her best known song. It has become better known over the years, thanks to it being included in lots of Motown various artists hit compilations. If you listen to it, it sounds like a sure-fire hit. But actually, it only made it to 105 on the US pop chart, and 41 on the US R&B chart. So even that one wasn't a hit. Perhaps her being a white woman singing soul music at a time of considerable racial tension doomed her chances, but I think more of it had to do with Motown merely going through the motions of promoting her.

Happily, the things that held her back in the 1960s become increasingly moot as time moves on. Today, we can just listen to the music and not worry much about what was unreleased or not promoted, and judge it on its own merits. I think Clark was a great soul singer who would often take B-quality material and make it sound like A-quality material. In a better world (including a color-blind world), she should have been one of the Motown greats, especially if she'd been given better material. I hope you'll listen and agree.

All the songs on this album pre-date her first album, which would come out in 1967, though a couple of the songs would end up on it. Only five of the 13 songs here were released at the time. I haven't come close to including all of her stuff. Gordy had a bad habit of trying to saddle his Motown artists with "supper club" music, cheesy mainstream pop supposed to appeal to white audiences. I've tended to avoid that and favored her more upbeat songs that are truer to the real Motown sound.

This album is only 37 minutes long, but that was typical of Motown albums for that era. In fact, it's probably longer than average. Clark's 1967 album, which I will deal with in my next post about her, was 31 minutes long.

01 Do Right Baby, Do Right (Chris Clark)
02 Don't Be Too Long (Chris Clark)
03 In the Neighbourhood (Chris Clark)
04 I Just Can't Forget Him (Chris Clark)
05 Check Yourself (Chris Clark)
06 Everything Is Good about You (Chris Clark)
07 Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday (Chris Clark)
08 Do I Love You [Indeed I Do] (Chris Clark)
09 Love's Gone Bad (Chris Clark)
10 Mighty Good Lovin' (Chris Clark)
11 Put Yourself in My Place (Chris Clark)
12 Something's Wrong (Chris Clark)
13 Never Trust a Man (Chris Clark)
14 I Still Love You (Chris Clark)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15100181/ChrisCrk_1965-1966_LoveGoneBad_atse.zip.html

I named this album "Love Gone Bad" instead of "Love's Gone Bad," the title of her almost-hit, because of this  cover I found that uses the phrase "Love Gone Bad." (I'm guessing it was some kind of repackaging of her first album.) I made a change by replacing a "mono" logo with a "stereo" one, since most or all of the songs are in stereo.

Kirsty MacColl - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: London Fleadh Festival, London, Britain, 6-10-1995

Kirsty MacColl isn't well known for her live performances. She never released a live album, and there aren't even many popular bootlegs for her. She was a naturally shy person and didn't tour that much. But she also was an excellent vocalist, and she could "bring it" in a live setting, as she did here. The setlist pretty much serves as a "best of" for her career to that point.

It seems most of her shows were less than an hour long, and that's the case here. When I first posted this, I used an excellent soundboard bootleg source. In 2023, it was released as part of a box set, but the sound quality was basically unchanged.

The last song actually wasn't part of MacColl's set. The concert was part of a festival with lots of artists, and one of the other artists was Shane MacGowan and the Popes. Since MacColl had a hit duet with MacGown and the Pogues a few years earlier with the song "Fairytale of New York," it made sense that she would join MacGowan's set for that song, which she did. (MacGowan can also be heard at the very start of this album as the one who introduced MacColl's set.) MacGowan was clearly drunk and barely able to get to his lines sometimes, but that should come as no surprise to those who have followed his career.

I believe all the songs are MacColl originals except for "Miss Otis Regrets" (by Cole Porter), "I Wanna Be Sedated" (by the Ramones), "A New England" (by Billy Bragg), and "Fairytale of New York" (by the Pogues).

This concert is only 47 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On November 26, 2023, I updated the album title and the cover art. I found out this concert was broadcast by the BBC, so I've made it "Volume 4" in my BBC series. However, the music remains the same.

01 Tread Lightly (Kirsty MacColl)
02 Caroline (Kirsty MacColl)
03 They Don't Know (Kirsty MacColl)
04 Innocence (Kirsty MacColl)
05 Free World (Kirsty MacColl)
06 Miss Otis Regrets (Kirsty MacColl)
07 talk (Kirsty MacColl)
08 My Affair (Kirsty MacColl)
09 Don't Come the Cowboy with Me, Sonny Jim (Kirsty MacColl)
10 Walking Down Madison (Kirsty MacColl)
11 A New England (Kirsty MacColl)
12 I Wanna Be Sedated (Kirsty MacColl)
13 Fairytale of New York (Kirsty MacColl & Shane MacGowan & the Popes)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15987508/KirstyMacC_1995c_BBSessonsVolum4LondnFleadhFstivlLondnBrtain__6-10-1995_atse.zip.html

I'm happy to say that the photo of MacColl actually comes from the concert in question. Note that even though she's holding an acoustic guitar, this is a full-band performance, not a solo acoustic one.

Bonnie Raitt - Special Delivery Blues - Non-Album Tracks (1972-1974)

Recently, I posted several albums from early in Bonnie Raitt's career. One, which I titled "Blender Blues," is a stray tracks album covering 1970 to 1972. This is the sequel to that, with more stray tracks from 1972 to 1974. The other albums are complete live concerts from 1971 and 1972. I have many more stray tracks compilations to come, since she's had a long and successful career.

With these stray tracks albums, my goal is to gather all the good songs not on the studio albums of that time. That means that the exact versions of the first four songs here come from one of those concerts I posted in full. I wish I could have used different versions, but there aren't many bootlegs from Raitt's early years, so we're lucky to have these songs at all.

The rest of the songs are not on anything else I've posted. All of them are unreleased versions from concerts. Some of them are exceedingly rare, even for bootlegs. For instance, I've never seen  her version of the Rolling Stones' "Under My Thumb" on any bootleg. Instead, I found it as a free download from an online music magazine. "The Spider and the Fly," another early Rolling Stones song, is similarly rare.

For the first few years of Raitt's career, she didn't make enough money to be able to hire a full band to back her in concerts. As a result, the first few songs here are done acoustically, with just a bassist and some other instrumentation occasionally. But by 1973 she did start performing with a full band, so this album transitions to a fuller sound as it proceeds chronologically.

Although Raitt can and does write very good songs, she's only done so occasionally, and the vast majority of her repertoire is made up of covers. I believe all the songs here are cover versions. 

I've included "Big Road" even though a version of it is on her 1971 album "Bonnie Raitt." That's because this version is very different. Three well known blues musicians joined her in concert for this version, and they all take turns soloing.

I've only included "I Almost Lost My Mind" as a bonus track because it's mostly a performance by another blues musician, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. The difference with "Big Road" is that Raitt does all the singing for "Big Road," but Crudup dominates on this song, with Raitt, basically reduced to backing vocals.  But still, it's interesting, so it makes it here as a bonus track.

01 Special Delivery Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
02 Can't Find My Way Home (Bonnie Raitt)
03 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur)
04 Baby What You Want Me to Do (Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur)
05 Under My Thumb (Bonnie Raitt)
06 The Spider and the Fly (Bonnie Raitt)
07 Baby, I Love You (Bonnie Raitt)
08 Big Boy Pete - Function at the Junction (Jackson Browne & Bonnie Raitt)
09 Don't Fight It (Bonnie Raitt)
10 Don't Talk Now (Bonnie Raitt)
11 Big Road (Bonnie Raitt with Junior Wells, Buddy Guy & A. C. Reed)

I Almost Lost My Mind (Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup & Bonnie Raitt)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SBdkuKx6 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/82osfwfg26v6JHq/file

I don't remember where I found the cover art photo, but I believe it's from around 1972.

The Allman Brothers Band - Stormy Monday - Non-Album Tracks (1970)

First things first: who had the "brilliant" idea to have the Allman Brothers Band pose completely naked for a photo shoot? (In the photo I've used for the cover art, their private parts are strategically hidden, but that's not the case in some other photos from that shoot.) Somehow, I don't think that would fly today, at least for their type of music. But those definitely were different times. I suspect a lot of mushrooms were consumed. Anyway...

As I do with my stray tracks albums, I've collected all the songs I could find that didn't appear on studio albums at the time. A couple of songs here should be very familiar to fans of the band: "Statesboro Blues" and "Hoochie Coochie Man." Both of those have featured on popular live albums. But I've included them because they never were on any studio albums. "Statesboro Blues" is a studio version. For "Hoochie Coochie Man," I took a lesser known live version and removed the audience noise.

All the other songs are much less known, I'd imagine. "One More Ride" is an original (cowritten by Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts). It was never played live, and only an instrumental version has been officially released. I've edited the song, added the vocals from a muddy sounding bootleg version with vocals to the instrumental version. However, some people might not like what I did, or don't mind the muddy sound. So I've included the muddy version as a bonus track. It's three minutes longer, with a drum solo and then a second guitar solo. But the edited version I've put as the first track features a different guitar solo.

The remaining three songs are cover versions that the band occasionally did in concert. "Call It Stormy Monday" and "I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town" are well known blues songs, and I was able to find versions with excellent sound. (I removed the audience noise, as I often do.) "Oh Pretty Woman" is much less known. Note that this is NOT the huge Roy Orbison hit "Oh, Pretty Woman" with a comma after the "Oh." Instead, it's a song by Albert King. Unfortunately, the band played this very rarely (with bassist Berry Oakley on vocals, as he is on "Hoochie Coochie Man), and the best version I could find only has decent sound, from an audience bootleg. But I still think it's worth inclusion, since the band didn't play that many different songs back in 1970.

This album is 38 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 One More Ride [Edit] (Allman Brothers Band)
02 Statesboro Blues (Allman Brothers Band)
03 Oh Pretty Woman (Allman Brothers Band)
04 Hoochie Coochie Man (Allman Brothers Band)
05 I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town (Allman Brothers Band)
06 Call It Stormy Monday (Allman Brothers Band)

One More Ride [Long Version] (Allman Brothers Band)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15285353/TAllmanBB_1970_StrmyMondy_atse.zip.html

The naked photo used for the cover art (discussed above) comes from some album art by the band in 1970. But they didn't use it as the cover art, so I figure it's fair game to use here. I stole the text for the band name from the "Beginnings" compilation album.

U2 - Wide Awake in America - Expanded Version (1984-1985)

In 1984, U2 released the acclaimed album "The Unforgettable Fire." In 1985, they weren't ready to put out a new album yet (and in fact they wouldn't do so until 1987), so to fill the gap they released an EP called "Wide Awake in America." One side consisted of two songs that were outtakes from "The Unforgettable Fire" sessions, and the other side contained two live versions of songs from that album.

This album includes the two studio songs from "Wide Awake in America." I've decided to keep that title and cover art, but this has a lot more, adding nine more songs to it into a normal length studio album. Four songs are B-sides. Two more songs would later be released on a deluxe version of "The Unforgettable Fire."

That leaves just three songs at the end. One, "Sweet Jane," is a live Lone Justice cover of the famous Velvet Underground. Although it's essentially a Lone Justice song, from one of their compilation albums, I decided to include it because Bono joined them and sang about half of the lyrics. "Silver and Gold" is a U2 song released on a 1985 various artists album. Finally, "Driving to Midnight Mass, Dublin, Christmas Eve" is a poem that Bono recites (though he didn't write it).

The eleven songs here (not counting the bonus tracks discussed below) total 43 minutes, which makes for a nice album length. U2 was into creating moody soundscapes during this time period, so four of the songs are instrumentals. Maybe that's why they felt they didn't have enough material for another album in 1985.

I've added three bonus tracks. One is a cover of U2 doing the Bruce Springsteen song "My Hometown." Springsteen had a hit with it just the year before. It seems odd at first that U2 would cover it, especially since U2 hardly did any covers at all at the time. But consider the lyrics of the song, and consider that the band played the song in Dublin, their hometown, with members of their families in the audience. I'm only including it as a bonus track due to the sound quality. It comes from an audience bootleg. The sound is okay, but not up to the level of all the other songs, which are officially released.

The other two bonus tracks are the two live songs from the "Wide Awake in America" EP. Personally, I put these elsewhere in my music collection, with other live U2 songs from that era. But you may well organize things differently, so I'm including them here to give you options.

01 Boomerang I [Instrumental] (U2)
02 Love Comes Tumbling (U2)
03 The Three Sunrises (U2)
04 60 Seconds in Kingdom Come [Instrumental] (U2)
05 Boomerang II (U2)
06 Bass Trap [Instrumental] (U2)
07 Disappearing Act (U2)
08 Yoshino Blossom [Instrumental] (U2)
09 Sweet Jane (Lone Justice & Bono)
10 Silver and Gold [Sun City Version] (U2)
11 Driving to Midnight Mass, Dublin, Christmas Eve (Bono)

A Sort of Homecoming [Live] (U2)
Bad [Live] (U2)
My Hometown (U2)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wNY6zh5M

The cover art is just the official cover of the EP.

The Pretty Things - Wild and Free - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1971)

Sigh. I feel bad for the Pretty Things. I've already posted four albums by them, showing that the material they released in the 1960s was only about half of what they should have made widely available, both in terms of quality and quantity. It turns out their problems continued into the 1970s, as this post shows.

In June 1970, the Pretty Things released the album "Parachute," which was widely acclaimed but didn't sell well. They didn't release their next album, "Freeway Madness," until the end of 1972. By the time they did, their style had changed, going in more of a glam rock or hard rock direction. It turns out they had enough material to release a quality album in 1971. This is that album.

What they did instead was release six songs exclusively as A- and B-sides to singles in 1970. Then, in 1971, they recorded three more good songs that didn't get released until decades later. Plus, they played two songs at the BBC not appearing anywhere else that also didn't get released until decades later. If you add it all up, it makes for an album that's 42 minutes long, which would have been an ideal album length back in those days.

I like all these songs, but I'm not a big fan of the musical direction the band pursued from 1972 onwards. So I don't plan to post any more another albums of studio stray tracks from this band. However, I do have some albums of them playing at the BBC in the 1960s and early 1970s that I plan on posting later.

01 Blue Serge Blues (Pretty Things)
02 October 26 (Pretty Things)
03 Cold Stone (Pretty Things)
04 Stone-Hearted Mama (Pretty Things)
05 Summertime (Pretty Things)
06 Circus Mind (Pretty Things)
07 I’d Love Her If I Knew What to Do (Pretty Things)
08 Everything You Do Is Fine (Pretty Things)
09 Wild and Free (Pretty Things)
10 Slow Beginnings (Pretty Things)
11 Sweet Orphan Lady [Spider Woman] (Pretty Things)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700877/TPRETTYTHGS1970-1971_WldndFree_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is of the band in 1971.

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.