The Pretenders - Get Out of London - Non-Album Tracks (1999-2002)

Here's the next stray tracks album from the Pretenders. Technically, a bunch of songs are credited to Chrissie Hynde, but it doesn't matter because by this point the Pretenders were just Hynde plus a bunch of back-up musicians. So I interchangeably mix her "band" and "solo" tracks.

All but one of the songs on this album are officially unreleased. They come from a variety of sources, mostly soundtracks and tribute albums. The one unreleased song, a cover of "The Loner" by Neil Young, comes from a concert bootleg. Admittedly, its sound quality is a little worse. But it's still good enough to include.

By the way, I especially like the song "Get Out of London." It's super rare. I was lucky to find a version of it on YouTube, because I couldn't find it anywhere else. If you're a Pretenders fan, you should check this out for that song alone.

01 Waiting in Vain (Chrissie Hynde)
02 The Needle and the Damage Done (Pretenders)
03 Loving You Is All I Know (Pretenders)
04 I Wish You Love (Chrissie Hynde)
05 She (Pretenders & Emmylou Harris)
06 The Loner (Pretenders)
07 Nebraska (Chrissie Hynde)
08 Mystery Train (Jeff Beck & Chrissie Hynde)
09 Bless You (Pretenders)
10 Out of This World (Chrissie Hynde & Jools Holland)
11 Get Out of London (Pretenders)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700868/TPRETNDRS1999-2002_GetOutLondn_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from a Bob Marley tribute concert in 1999.

Paul McCartney - Set This Town on Fire - Non-Album Tracks (1991-1993)

This is the next in a long series of stray tracks albums for Paul McCartney. This one deals with the years 1991 to 1993.

McCartney didn't release any new music in 1991 or 1992. But in 1993, he released the studio album "Off the Ground." The first two songs are unreleased rarities from 1991. The five songs after that are B-sides for singles from the "Off the Ground" album. There are a few more B-sides from this time period, but I only included the ones I liked.

Then the remaining songs are from soundchecks to concerts from his 1993 world tour. There actually are a ton of great soundcheck performances from his 1993 concerts. I have a few albums I'll be posting that are entirely songs from those. Because they're soundchecks, apparently recorded by McCartney and later released on his Oubu Joobu radio show, they sound fantastic and there's no crowd noise at all. The few soundcheck songs I've included here were selected because they're songs that he otherwise never (or only rarely) did.

I think most of the songs here are originals, especially the B-sides. But there are some covers too, such as "The Fool," "We're Gonna Move," "Mean Woman Blues," and "Singing the Blues."

01 Your School (Paul McCartney)
02 The Fool (Paul McCartney)
03 Kicked Around No More (Paul McCartney)
04 Long Leather Coat (Paul McCartney)
05 Big Boys Bickering (Paul McCartney)
06 Sweet Sweet Memories (Paul McCartney)
07 I Can't Imagine (Paul McCartney)
08 We're Gonna Move [There's a Leak in This Old Building] (Paul McCartney)
09 Pull Away (Paul McCartney)
10 Mean Woman Blues (Paul McCartney)
11 Set This Town on Fire (Paul McCartney)
12 Singing the Blues (Paul McCartney)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/W4Y7ns7H

The cover art photo is of McCartney in 1993. He's standing in front of a modern art painting.

David Bowie - The 1980 Floor Show, The Marquee Club, London, Britain, 10-20-1973

I've posted five albums of David Bowie's BBC's performances, and I have one more to go. But before I post that one, I'm posting this, which is related. This was an hour long TV show that was a special edition of the weekly musical show "The Midnight Special."

In late 1973, Bowie had a peak of popularity at the tail end of his "Ziggy Stardust" phase (he'd have other peaks later). He'd put out the "Aladdin Sane" album early in 1973, and then the "Pin Ups" covers album on October 19, 1973. This show was meant to promote that album. (Although there were live performances that were filmed from October 18th to 20th, it wasn't broadcast until November 16th.)

Variety TV shows were all the rage in the 1970s, and Bowie wasn't popular enough to carry the show all by himself, so he brought along some musical guests that he liked. The chief one was Marianne Faithfull. I've included her performances as well as Bowie's, because I like her stuff. Plus, they did a duet together. The Troggs and a Spanish flamenco group called Carmen also played a couple of songs each, but I didn't include them. I like the Troggs, but their performances didn't impress me (they were way past their 1960s prime). I also wasn't impressed with Carmen, so I left their stuff out as well. If you want the full show, there are other bootlegs that have them.

This recording is rather unusual in that there's no crowd noise at all. Bowie and the others rehearsed and filmed their performances for three days straight, and some of those have crowd noise and some don't. I picked the ones that don't, for greater sound quality.

Note that this show was the very last time Bowie heavily referenced his Ziggy Stardust persona with his appearance and costume. But he also was already looking forward to his "Diamond Dogs" persona, which would result in the album of the same name in 1974. The show had the strange title "The 1980 Floor Show" despite taking place in 1973, because of his song "1984," which he played and would feature on the "Diamond Dogs" album. It's a play on words - think "1984 show."

The songs are presented in the exact same order they did on the TV broadcast, minus the Troggs and Carmen songs.

01 1984 - Dodo (David Bowie)
02 Sorrow (David Bowie)
03 Everything's Alright (David Bowie)
04 Space Oddity (David Bowie)
05 I Can't Explain (David Bowie)
06 As Tears Go By (Marianne Faithfull)
07 Time (David Bowie)
08 The Jean Genie (David Bowie)
09 20th Century Blues (Marianne Faithfull)
10 I Got You Babe (David Bowie & Marianne Faithfull)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/euZ1LTtp

For the album cover, I started with the cover of a popular bootleg of the show, because I liked the font used. I made some changes to the text to include Marianne Faithfull's name. Then I found a good photo of Bowie and Faithfull together. However, they were separated by a couple of feet, so I edited the photo to move them closer together.

Robyn Hitchcock - Acoustic Covers, Volume 9: 2009-2011

This is part of my series of albums containing nothing but acoustic cover versions by Robyn Hitchcock. 

There's not much else to say. If you're familiar with the other albums in this series, it's more of the same good stuff.

Every single song on this album is officially unreleased. That means some variable sound quality, but overall the sound is pretty good.

Here is a list of the original artists for each song:

01 Free Ride - Nick Drake
02 First Girl I Loved - Incredible String Band
03 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere - Bob Dylan
04 Gigolo Aunt - Syd Barrett
05 Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival
06 Golden Years - David Bowie
07 Soul Kitchen - Doors
08 Rain - Beatles
09 My White Bicycle - Tomorrow
10 Reynardine - Fairport Convention
11 Are You Experienced - Jimi Hendrix
12 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue - Bob Dylan
13 Pink Moon - Nick Drake
14 Daydream - Lovin' Spoonful

And here is the song list:

01 Free Ride (Robyn Hitchcock & Graham Coxon)
02 First Girl I Loved (Robyn Hitchcock with Richard Thompson)
03 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Robyn Hitchcock with Steve Wynn)
04 Gigolo Aunt (Robyn Hitchcock with Steve Wynn)
05 Bad Moon Rising (Robyn Hitchcock with Steve Wynn)
06 Golden Years (Robyn Hitchcock with Steve Wynn)
07 Soul Kitchen (Robyn Hitchcock with Steve Wynn)
08 Rain (Robyn Hitchcock with Steve Wynn)
09 My White Bicycle (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Reynardine (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 Are You Experienced (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 Pink Moon (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 Daydream (Robyn Hitchcock)

This album is 47 minutes long.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15272985/RobynH_2009-2011_AcousticCoversVolume9_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is from a Carnegie Hall concert in 2010.

Robyn Hitchcock - Acoustic Covers, Volume 8: 2007-2008

This is one of my extensive series of albums of Robyn Hitchcock performing cover versions in the solo acoustic format, usually in concert. On March 17, 2020, I totally overhauled all the albums in this series. I found so many songs that I'd previously missed that sometimes I was able to make a new album between previously existing albums. This is an example of that.

Although this is a new album, there's a mix of songs I'd previously missed, and songs from other albums in this series that have been moved around. The vast majority of the songs are newly discovered, so I'll only mention the four that are not: "China Pig," "Sure 'Nuff 'N' Yes I Do," "If I Fell," and "Free Ride."

I had previously included "First Girl I Loved" as a bonus track on another album, due to its poor sound quality. But I was able to find a better sounding version of the same performance, so I've included that here, no longer as a bonus track.

Here are the original artists for each song:

01 Lo and Behold - Life During Wartime - Lo and Behold - Bob Dylan - Talking Heads
02 Look at Miss Ohio - Gillian Welch
03 Queen Jane Approximately - Bob Dylan
04 Not Fade Away - Bo Diddley - Buddy Holly - Bo Diddley
05 Shakin' All Over - Johnny Kidd and the Pirates
06 All You Need Is Love - Love Me Do - Beatles
07 The Weight - Band
08 Please Mrs. Henry - Bob Dylan & the Band
09 The Yellow Snake - Incredible String Band
10 China Pig - Captain Beefheart
11 Sure 'Nuff 'N' Yes I Do - Captain Beefheart
12 If I Fell - Beatles
13 While My Guitar Gently Weeps - Beatles

And here is the usual song list:

01 Lo and Behold - Life During Wartime - Lo and Behold (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Look at Miss Ohio (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Queen Jane Approximately (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Not Fade Away - Bo Diddley (Robyn Hitchcock with John Paul Jones)
05 Shakin' All Over (Robyn Hitchcock with John Paul Jones)
06 All You Need Is Love - Love Me Do (Robyn Hitchcock with John Paul Jones)
07 The Weight (Robyn Hitchcock with John Paul Jones)
08 Please Mrs. Henry (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 The Yellow Snake (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 China Pig (Robyn Hitchcock & Gary Lucas)
11 Sure 'Nuff 'N' Yes I Do (Robyn Hitchcock & Gary Lucas)
12 If I Fell (Robyn Hitchcock with Nick Lowe & Elvis Costello)
13 While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Robyn Hitchcock)

This album is 48 minutes long.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15272936/RobynH_2007-2008_AcousticCoversVolume8_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from the SXSW concert in Austin, Texas, in 2007.

Robyn Hitchcock - Acoustic Covers, Volume 3: 1996-1998

Recently, I did some more digging and found many more acoustic cover versions that Robyn Hitchcock has done over the years. As a result, I'm redoing all the albums in his "Acoustic Covers" series. I found so many new songs that I've been able to make some new albums. Here is one.

Note that most of the songs here were on the previous versions of these albums. But I've added three songs to this album: "Clear Spot," "The End," and "Billy 1." Plus, since I've found some extra songs for the two chronologically earlier albums in this series, I've moved some of the songs from the previous album onto this one. Basically, everything is reorganized, and the best thing to do is re-download all the albums. You can tell if the album in the series is updated if it has a volume number in the title, since I didn't have such numbers up until now.

In terms of content, every song on this album has been officially unreleased. They all come from concert bootlegs. As a result, the sound quality is variable. A couple of songs, such as "Steel and Glass," sound a bit rough. But overall, the sound is pretty good.

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

01 Steel and Glass - John Lennon
02 Clear Spot - Captain Beefheart
03 The End - Doors
04 Waterloo Sunset - Kinks
05 I'm Set Free - Velvet Underground
06 You Won't See Me - Beatles
07 Billy 1 - Bob Dylan
08 Astronomy Domine - Pink Floyd
09 Silver Dagger - traditional / Joan Baez
10 Blue Jay Way - Beatles
11 Electrolyte - R.E.M.
12 Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35 - Bob Dylan

And here's the song list:

01 Steel and Glass (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Clear Spot (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 The End (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Waterloo Sunset (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 I'm Set Free (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 You Won't See Me (Robyn Hitchcock with Dear Janes)
07 Billy 1 (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Astronomy Domine (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Silver Dagger (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Blue Jay Way (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 Electrolyte (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35 (Robyn Hitchcock)

This album is 49 minutes long.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15272161/RobynH_1996-1998_AcousticCoversVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a 1996 concert.

Fairport Convention - Tunes My Mother Taught Me - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Late 1970

I just posted an album dealing with Fairport Convention performing for the BBC in early 1970. This follows that up, with their BBC performances from late 1970.

The band's line-up was stable for all of 1970. The key personnel changes were that Sandy Denny left before the end of 1969, and Richard Thompson left right at the beginning of 1971. The band's sound was consistent throughout the year as well, focusing much more on traditional British folk music than before.

For the early 1970 BBC album, all of the songs came from the "Live at the BBC" box set. For this album, only two songs come from that. Three more come from other archival releases. That leaves three songs that are officially unreleased. But in terms of sound quality, those are about the same. To be honest, I suspect many of the officially released BBC performances are just releases of bootlegs anyway.

01 Tam Lin (Fairport Convention)
02 Bridge Over the River Ash [Instrumental] (Fairport Convention)
03 Staines Morris (Fairport Convention)
04 Tunes My Mother Taught Me [Early Version of Sir B. McKenzie's Daughter's Lament] [Instrumental] (Fairport Convention)
05 The Journeyman's Grace (Fairport Convention)
06 Sickness and Diseases [Edit] (Fairport Convention)
07 Sloth (Fairport Convention)
08 Sir B. McKenzie's Daughter's Lament for the 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat... [Instrumental] (Fairport Convention)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15115465/FairprtC_1970d_TunesMyMtherTaughtMeBBSessionsVolume5_atse.zip.html

The album cover photo comes from a 1970 photo session. If you look carefully, you'll notice that it's the same photo session as the cover for the "Now Be Thankful" stray tracks collection I made. They're wearing the same clothes.

Fairport Convention - Walk Awhile - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1970

Well, things have gotten pretty crazy really fast with the coronavirus. I hope everyone is keeping safe and practicing social distancing. This crisis is the real deal and not just hype, so please act accordingly. That said, life goes on, and I plan to keep on posting as usual.

Which brings us to some more Fairport Convention. I recently posted a stray tracks album of the band for 1970. This is also from 1970, but it's the band performing for the BBC. They played so many songs for the BBC that I've broken things into two albums. This one covers the first half of 1970 only.

For this album, all of the songs come from the "Live at the BBC" album. (It's a different story with the second 1970 album.) Thus, there's no problem with the sound quality at all.

Well, almost. The song "The Deserter" has also been officially released, on a different archival album. But the sound quality for that one is significantly worse than the rest, so I've only included it as a bonus track.

01 Walk Awhile (Fairport Convention)
02 Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman (Fairport Convention)
03 Doctor of Physick (Fairport Convention)
05 Sir Patrick Spens (Fairport Convention)
06 Bonny Bunch of Roses (Fairport Convention)
07 Flatback Caper [Instrumental] (Fairport Convention)
08 Now Be Thankful (Fairport Convention)
09 Dirty Linen [Instrumental] (Fairport Convention)

The Deserter (Fairport Convention)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15115382/FairprtC_1970c_WlkAwhileBBSessionsVolume4_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is of the band from around the middle of 1970.

Imelda May - Dreaming - Non-Album Tracks (2012-2014)

Here's the next stray tracks album from Imelda May. I live in the US, so I'm not totally sure, but I hear May is a big star in Britain and Ireland. But she's far less known everywhere else, including the US. That's a shame, because she has a great voice, great stage presence and beauty, and is a talented songwriter too. Her musical style is heavily influenced by earlier eras, and she's totally divorced from current pop trends. For me, that's a huge positive instead of a negative. If you like the other musicians I post at this blog, you're probably going to like her stuff too.

The songs come from singles, bonus tracks, various artists compilations, and so on. Five of the songs are officially unreleased and come from concert bootlegs. Those sound pretty good though, especially since two of them are from TV show appearances.

I'd hesitated to post the next in my series of stray tracks albums for her though, because I was missing two key songs. A week or so ago, a kind commenter here sent me one of them ("On My Radio"), so I'm proceeding with the next album.

(I'm still missing the other one, her version of "Rock Around with Ollie Vee," which has been officially released, but only as a bonus track to the various artists tribute album "Listen to Me: Buddy Holly." If anyone has it, please let me know, and I'll add it to this album.)

This album is from the time period when Imelda May was still heavily in her rockabilly phase. So expect some of that. But there's a wide variety of music here. For instance, the song "On My Radio" mentioned above is a cover of the ska hit by the Selekter. There's blues ("Spoonful"), traditional Irish (such as "Carolina Rua"), and even covers of songs by Blondie ("Dreaming") and Sonny and Cher ("Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)"). A lot of good stuff. I think this truly would make a nice album all on its own.

In terms of sound quality, four of the songs here are officially unreleased. But they generally sound pretty good. There's one more, "Important Words," that didn't quite make the cut as far as sound quality, so I bumped that one down to being a bonus track.

01 On My Radio (Imelda May)
02 Carolina Rua (Imelda May & the Chieftains)
03 Spoonful (Imelda May)
04 I Wish I Had Someone to Love Me (Imelda May & the Dubliners)
05 Mr. Five by Five (Imelda May)
06 Clint [Silence on Tourne] (Thomas Dutronc & Imelda May)
07 Meet You at the Moon [Acappella Version] (Imelda May)
08 Beautiful Day (Imelda May & the Levellers)
09 Zombie Girl (Imelda May)
10 Dreaming (Imelda May)
11 Amber Eyes (Imelda May)
12 Bang Bang [My Baby Shot Me Down] (Imelda May)

Important Words (Imelda May)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693306/IMELDMY2012-2014_Dremng_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is of Imelda May in concert in London in 2012.

Bonnie Raitt - The Color of Roses - Non-Album Tracks (1997-1998)

This is the next Bonnie Raitt stray tracks album. As far as stray tracks albums for different musicians go, I feel that Raitt's are especially strong. Including this one.

Generally speaking, the kind of songs that have gone onto Raitt's stray tracks albums I've made are different from the kinds of songs that have gone onto her studio albums. For one thing, she tends to do more covers of classic, well-known songs (which is always a good thing). For another, she does a lot of collaborations. You can see that again for this album. All but two of the songs have her working with other major artists. But I've only included songs where she either does all of the singing or shares the lead vocals.

Five of the nine songs are officially unreleased. All of those come from concert bootlegs. For a couple of those, such as "Have You Ever Loved a Man" (a gender-switched version of the blues classic "Have You Ever Loved a Woman") and "Rock Me Baby," the sound is less than pristine, but is still pretty good.

01 Cold, Cold, Cold (Bonnie Raitt & Little Feat)
02 I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town (Ruth Brown & Bonnie Raitt)
03 Low Down Dirty Blues (Joe Louis Walker & Bonnie Raitt)
04 The Color of Roses (Bonnie Raitt)
05 Kisses Sweeter than Wine (Jackson Brown & Bonnie Raitt)
06 Have You Ever Loved a Man (Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton & B.B. King)
07 Rock Me Baby (Bonnie Raitt)
08 Across the Borderline (Jackson Browne & Bonnie Raitt)
09 Feel like Going Home (Bonnie Raitt and Trisha Yearwood)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687594/BONNIRTT1997-1998_ColrofRses_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is a publicity photo from 1998. It looks so much like an album cover that I'm worried it might be used already. If it's used on some existing album cover, please let me know and I'll change it.

Eric Clapton - Sad Day - Non-Album Tracks (1980-1983)

This is the next Eric Clapton stray tracks album. If you liked the previous ones, you should enjoy this one too.

The first few years of the 1980s weren't good for Clapton, either personally or musically. Although he had quit heroin in the 1970s, he became a severe alcoholic. By 1982, he was at the end of his rope and almost suicidal. But he checked into a rehab clinic, quit alcohol, and started to turn his life around.

Given all that personal turmoil, perhaps it's not surprising that he doesn't have many stray tracks from this era. For most of the 1970s, I was able to make an album a year. But this album covers four years. That said, the songs on here are as good as the songs on the previous stray tracks albums I've made for him, in part because I've been choosy.

In 1979, he fired all but one member of the band he'd had for most the 1970s, Albert Lee. Then he hooked up with Gary Booker, the keyboardist and lead vocalist for Procul Harum. Clapton, Booker, and Lee recorded an album in 1980 called "Turn Up Down." It was to be billed as another Clapton solo album, but in reality Lee and Booker had large roles, singing and writing some of the songs on it.

Unfortunately for Clapton, his record company rejected the album. They wanted a proper Clapton solo album, and they didn't like the Booker or Lee songs. Also, the general tone of Clapton's songs on it were mellow, often even more mellow than his already laid-back 1970s solo style. So Clapton took a few of the songs from it and rerecorded them, plus he came up with more songs. That turned into the 1981 album "Another Ticket."

I've been selected with the "Turn Up Down" tracks, only including five of them here. I didn't include any of the Booker or Lee-led songs, in part because I don't think they fit well on a Clapton album, but also because I don't think most of them are very good. I also didn't include the Clapton songs that eventually showed up on "Another Ticket" (such as "Rita Mae," "Catch Me If You Can," and "Hold Me Lord." Although the "Turn Up Down" versions are different, they're not special, in my opinion. I also didn't include a couple of Clapton songs that I just didn't think were that good.

The remaining six songs are a motley bunch from 1981 to 1983. Only one of them, a live guitar duet with Jeff Beck, has been officially released. The rest mostly come from concert bootlegs, though one, "Say Hello to Billie Jean," is a good outtake from the "Another Ticket" album.

The album ends with, "Sweet Little Lisa," a song that sung by Clapton's second guitarist, Albert Lee. Although I didn't like Lee's "Turn Up Down" tracks, I do like this one. Clapton's guitar can be heard on it, and it was performed in lots of Clapton concerts around this era, always sung by Lee. Chronologically, it fits at the end, which works well, because you can include it or not, depending if you think it fits, since it's more of a Lee song than a Clapton one.

01 There Ain't No Money (Eric Clapton)
02 Freedom (Eric Clapton)
03 Games Up (Eric Clapton)
04 Oh How I Miss My Baby's Love (Eric Clapton)
05 I'd Love to Say I Love You (Eric Clapton)
06 Cause We've Ended as Lovers [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck & Eric Clapton)
07 Stay Away from My Baby (Eric Clapton)
08 Say Hello to Billie Jean (Eric Clapton)
09 Goodnight Irene (Eric Clapton)
10 Sad, Sad Day (Eric Clapton)
11 Sweet Little Lisa (Albert Lee & Eric Clapton)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15835868/EricC_1980-1983_SadDy_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo features Clapton in concert in 1983.

Fleetwood Mac - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 4-9-1970

Here is "Volume 6" of Fleetwood Mac's BBC Sessions. This contains all of a single show the band did for the BBC in April 1970. 

But there's a complication. It turns out that this full show actually has been officially released, as part of the archival double album "Show-Biz Blues." It makes up all of the second disc of that album, except for the first two songs from it. I didn't realize this at first because that album is so poorly annotated. It merely stated that the songs on the second disc were from a "London Concert, 1970." And while the official version included all the songs from it, in the correct order, they left out all the talking between songs. Instead, they added fake audience noise to cover for the lack of talking. They have the cheering continue onto the start of each subsequent song to make it seem as if the band kept playing with barely a pause between songs, when the bootleg version makes clear that isn't what happened at all.

I'm not sure, but I suspect the vagueness in the "Show-Biz Blues" liner notes is deliberate. It turns out there are a bunch of BBC performances on the first disc of that album as well, and they're all mislabeled as studio versions. For some reason, whoever put that together didn't want it known that many songs from it were from BBC sources. Maybe they didn't want to pay the BBC a share of the album profits? Had they kept the talking between songs, it would have been obvious that they were BBC tracks, since most of the talking was done by a BBC DJ.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that it turns out the bootleg version sounds great, almost as good as the "Show-Biz Blues" version. Plus, it's more complete with the talking, and doesn't have the fake audience noise at the start of each song. So I've used the bootleg version as my source here. But the "Show-Biz Blues" version was properly mixed and the bootleg version was raw. So I asked a friend named MZ, who has better sound editing skills than I do, to edit the files and improve the mix. He did, and his version is a definite improvement. That's what I'm posting here.

This concert was part of a weekly hour-long series hosted by BBC DJ John Peel called "In Concert." In ran every week in 1970 and 1971, and then less often for a few years after that. I've already posted a bunch of other concerts from that series, for instance concerts by Traffic, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, and so on. For this particular week, Peel was absent and was replaced by another BBC DJ, David Symonds. As I mentioned above, he did nearly all the talking between songs, acting like an MC and announcing nearly every song. 

Unfortunately, this is the last album in the Fleetwood Mac BBC series to feature guitarist Peter Green. Personally, I think his era of the band was most interesting towards the end, when they widened their repertoire beyond the blues. Luckily, this concert was recorded only about a month before he left the band. Some say he started to mentally deteriorate starting in early 1970 after taking too much LSD. Whether that's true or not, his lead guitar playing was still very sharp for this concert, and his singing was perfectly fine as well.

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
02 Rattlesnake Shake (Fleetwood Mac)
03 Underway [Instrumental] (Fleetwood Mac)
04 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Stranger Blues (Fleetwood Mac)
06 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
07 World in Harmony [Instrumental] (Fleetwood Mac)
08 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
09 Tiger (Fleetwood Mac)
10 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
11 The Green Manalishi [With the Two Prong Crown] (Fleetwood Mac)
12 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
13 Coming Your Way (Fleetwood Mac)
14 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
15 Great Balls of Fire (Fleetwood Mac)
16 Twist and Shout (Fleetwood Mac)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KBg1xrpC

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/AxNL4YGytkXfOQc/file

I have no idea when or where the cover art photo is from. I believe I took it from the liner notes to the "Live at the BBC" album. But it does seem to show the band's early 1970 line-up, including Peter Green. The coloring was a bit off. I did my best to fix in in Photoshop, but it still may be slightly off.

In 2025, I improved the detail of the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

U2 - Salome - Non-Album Tracks (1991-1992)

Yesterday, I posted an album of stray tracks from U2's "Achtung Baby" era. That album, by the way, has sold 20 million copies and is on many lists of the top 100 albums of all time. But U2 was so prolific during their recording sessions for that album that I was able to make not one, but two, albums of stray tracks. So here's the second one.

Check out my post for the other album, "Blow Your House Down," for a general overview. That album mostly consists of bonus tracks that were later released on a deluxe version of "Achtung Baby." By contrast, this album mostly consists of B-sides. Most of those were first released in 1992, because "Achtung Baby" was released in November 1991 and most of the singles came out in 1992. But it's a very good bet that most or all of these were actually recorded in 1991 while the band was working on the album.

This time, like the other U2 stray tracks album I posted for this period, I've included two unreleased songs, which happen to be the first two. Also as with that other album, I could have included a lot more, since there are plenty more unreleased songs available on bootleg, but I wanted to keep my standards high. Many of those others, in my opinion, are more early versions of songs that were released later instead of totally separate songs. You can hear on some of these how bits and pieces were recycled here and there. U2 did a lot of that in this time. Again, if you think I missed a particularly good unreleased song, please let me know and I'll reconsider.

Four of the songs here are covers of famous tunes: "Satellite of Love" by the Velvet Underground / Lou Reed, "Paint It, Black," by the Rolling Stones, "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and "Can't Help Falling in Love" made famous by Elvis Presley. I believe all the rest are U2 originals.

"Slow Dancing" is an unusual case. I have three different versions of this song that I'll be putting on three different stray tracks albums. First, there's this version recorded in concert that's basically a solo acoustic rendition from 1992. Then there's a studio version that was a B-side in 1993, which I'll put on my next album for the band. Finally, there's a 1997 studio version that's a duet with Willie Nelson, which will go on a still later album. Luckily, it's a good song, and all three versions are significantly different and interesting, or I wouldn't use all three.

01 Take You Down (U2)
02 Sweet Baby Jane (U2)
03 Satellite of Love (U2)
04 Alex Descends into Hell for a Bottle of Milk - Korova 1 (U2)
05 Paint It, Black (U2)
06 Lady with the Spinning Head [UVI] (U2)
07 Salome (U2)
08 Fortunate Son (U2)
09 Where Did It All Go Wrong (U2)
10 Can't Help Falling in Love [Triple Peaks Remix] (U2)
11 Slow Dancing [Live Acoustic] (U2)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xo5xd2b3

As I noted with the other stray tracks album from this era, U2 got very artistic with their covers during this time. Rather than try to duplicate that from scratch, I took the simpler path of using the covers to their singles from the album. I selected the cover to the "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" single. All I did was remove that song title from the top and replace it with my own.

Tommy Keene - Keene's Covers - Selected Cover Tracks (1979-2017)

I have to admit that I don't know much about Tommy Keene on his music. He had a limited but dedicated following in the "power pop" genre. He was best known for the minor hit "Places That Are Gone" in 1984. He died in 2017 due to heart failure. I've been meaning to hear more of his music, but I've got a mountain of stuff on my "to listen to" list, and I haven't gotten around to it.

So why the heck am I posting this?! Well, a musical acquaintance of mine who goes by Lil Panda liked some of the covers collections I've posted here, such as the one for Blondie, and has given me suggestions on some other artists who could benefit from the same treatment. So I plan to post more covers collections, by and by. In Keene's case, Lil Panda sent me a whole bunch of his cove versions. Then I went and found a few more he'd missed. I also removed some that I thought weren't that strong. The result is a 55-minute-long fun selection of rocking songs that anyone can enjoy, whether you're a fan of Keene's music or not.

I think the best way to get you to listen to this is show who did the original versions of these covers. If you like those artists, or power pop in general, chances are very good you'll like this.

01 Hippy Hippy Shake - Chan Romero / Beatles
02 Hey Little Child - Alex Chilton
03 Teenage Head - Flamin' Groovies
04 Kill Your Sons - Lou Reed
05 Our Car Club - Beach Boys
06 Shake Some Action - Flamin' Groovies
07 Tattoo - Who
08 Carrie Anne - Hollies
09 Lost a Number - Nils Lofgren
10 Have You Seen My Baby - Randy Newman / Flamin' Groovies
11 The Puppet - Echo & the Bunnymen
12 Much Too Much - Who
13 Ride On Baby - Rolling Stones
14 Nighttime - Big Star
15 Out of the Blue - Roxy Music
16 Love You To - Beatles
17 Raymond Chandler Evening - Robyn Hitchcock

So, basically, Tommy Keene had very good taste in music. ;) Pretty much all the music he likes to cover is the same stuff I like. I especially appreciate that he generally avoided the big hits in favor of lesser known gems. For instance, if someone is going to cover a Beatles song, what are the odds it would be "Love You To?" Or when you think of the Beach Boys, "Our Car Club" isn't exactly the first song to come to mind. So this is a nice way to bring more appreciation to some of those more obscure songs.

Three of the songs are officially unreleased: "Lost a Number," plus the last two, "Love You To," and "Raymond Chandler Evening." But I had very high sound quality standards for this album, so anything that didn't sound as good as the studio tracks got cut. I had to reject a handful of nice covers as a result.

A bunch of the songs come from Keene's one and only all-covers album, "Excitement at Your Feet," which was released in 2013. Frankly, I could have included all the songs from that album, since they're all good, but I didn't want to discourage people from buying it. Instead, if you like this, check that out and you'll find even more covers in the same vein.

01 Hippy Hippy Shake (Tommy Keene)
02 Hey Little Child (Tommy Keene)
03 Teenage Head (Tommy Keene)
04 Kill Your Sons (Tommy Keene)
05 Our Car Club (Tommy Keene)
06 Shake Some Action (Tommy Keene)
07 Tattoo (Tommy Keene)
08 Carrie Anne (Tommy Keene)
09 Lost a Number (Tommy Keene)
10 Have You Seen My Baby (Tommy Keene)
11 The Puppet (Tommy Keene)
12 Much Too Much (Tommy Keene)
13 Ride On Baby (Tommy Keene)
14 Nighttime (Tommy Keene)
15 Out of the Blue (Tommy Keene)
16 Love You To (Tommy Keene)
17 Raymond Chandler Evening (Tommy Keene)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15635019/TommyKne_1979-2017_KeensCovrs_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is a publicity photo from 2011.

Vitamin D

This post has nothing to do with music. I usually don't do this sort of thing, but everyone is concerned about the coronavirus these days, and I found a good health tip that I haven't seen anywhere else, so I thought I could help spread the word.

I just watched this video by a good doctor who is making daily videos about the coronavirus. He's a totally legit doctor who backs up everything he says with hard scientific evidence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmqgGwT6bw0

He makes the argument that daily supplements of Vitamin D cuts the chance of getting an acute respiratory infection in half. So while it's too soon to know if it helps with the coronavirus, it's likely it does, since that's what the coronavirus is. Taking a huge dose when you're sick doesn't help, and may even hurt. But taking a small amount every day is good prevention.

Anyway, I hope that's a helpful tip for some people, but now let's get back to the music.

U2 - Blow Your House Down - Non-Album Tracks (1990-1991)

I think a key reason that most U2 albums have been so successful both critically and commercially is that the band usually recorded enough songs for two albums, and then selected their favorites for just one album, leaving the rest to be B-sides and bonus tracks and the like. That's especially the case for one of their most celebrated albums, 1991's "Achtung Baby." They wrote enough music for three additional albums of outtakes, at least. There are so many extra songs that I was able to make two albums of stray tracks out of them, with this being the first one. Yet I was still able to some quality control and not include the ones I considered weak.

U2 had a problem with "Achtung Baby," because bootleg recordings of their album sessions were made public even before the album was released. A lot of those recordings were early versions of songs that ended up on "Achtung Baby" or its follow-up, "Zooropa." Sometimes, they took bits and pieces from some songs that didn't make the album and incorporated them into songs that did. You can hear some instances of that here if you listen carefully. In particular, "Down All the Days" has a lot in common with "Numb" on "Zooropa," even though it has totally different lyrics and many other differences.

U2 made a significant change to their sound for "Achtung Baby." The first sign of that new sound was a cover of the Cole Porter song "Night and Day," released in 1990. So this album naturally starts off with that. After that, to be honest, most of the best remaining songs wound up either as B-sides or bonus tracks when a deluxe version of the album came out many years later. The rest of this album is mostly bonus tracks, and the next one will mostly consist of B-sides. But there are some unreleased songs on both. This one has two, "Doctor Doctor" and "Back Mask," In terms of sound quality, they sound as good as the rest.

This album is relatively short, at 38 minutes. The next one that finishes off the "Achtung Baby" era is almost as short. I could have easily made both albums longer, since there are lots of unreleased songs I didn't include. But I wanted to keep the quality control level high. Those other songs pretty much remained unreleased for a good reason, in my opinion. The band did a lot of experimenting, and had many dead ends as well as winners. But the outtakes from this era are a confusing mess. If you think I've missed some good ones, let me know which ones and I'll possibly reconsider.

By the way, I think all the songs are U2 originals, except for "Night and Day" which I mentioned above as a Cole Porter song, and "Everybody Loves a Winner," which was a soul hit for William Bell in the 1960s.

01 Night and Day (U2)
02 Blow Your House Down (U2)
03 Down All the Days [Early Version of 'Numb'] (U2)
04 Heaven and Hell (U2)
05 Oh Berlin (U2)
06 Everybody Loves a Winner (U2 & Maria McKee)
07 Doctor Doctor (U2)
08 Back Mask (U2)
09 Near the Island [Instrumental] (U2)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZHE2TEw4

U2 got very artistic for their album covers in their "Achtung Baby" era. That's tough to convincingly replicate. So instead of trying to come up with something from scratch, in this case, I just used the covers to one of their singles. This is the "Mysterious Ways" cover. The only change I made was to replace the title "Mysterious Ways" with my own title, using the same font and angle.

Robyn Hitchcock - World Cafe, Philadelphia, PA, 3-26-2007

I've been chronologically making my way through Robyn Hitchcock's career, posting stray tracks albums, all-acoustic versions of studio albums, and live covers albums. So far, I've made it to about 2011. But those aren't the only kinds of albums I plan to post from him. I'm going to interrupt my usual progression and go back to something from 2007, because it's something I just discovered, and the friend who sent it to me (who goes by the nickname Lil Panda) has told me that it hasn't been publicly available anywhere. I've done some Internet searching, and I haven't seen any signs of it being traded.

So this is an extra special treat, because the sound on this is fantastic. It seems to have been professionally recorded and then broadcast on the World Cafe radio show. However, unlike a lot of World Cafe shows, which are relatively short and played alone in the studio, this is a full concert (an hour and forty minutes long) in front of a live audience. I don't know the exact location more precisely than Philadelphia, but I'm guessing Penn's Landing, since that's where many World Cafe concerts have been held.

Not only is this a soundboard, but it's such a pristine soundboard that it was a bit of a problem for me. What I mean is that while what happened on stage was recorded just great, there was so little crowd noise at the end of each song that it seemed strange. So I've done a lot of sound editing to boost the crowd noise. That still leaves the songs themselves pretty much sounding like they were recorded in ideal studio conditions.

In addition to making those changes, I also put all the between song banter on their own tracks, and then boosted the volume of them so they could be easily heard. And there's lots of such banter, because Hitchcock was talkative in this concert, as usual. His inventive commentary is just as entertaining as the music, in my opinion.

As for the music itself, I've posted a lot of acoustic Hitchcock music, because that's my favorite way to hear him, but this is a full band concert. However, it's a relatively small band, the Venus Three, which was a scaled down version of his band the Minus Five. The band consisted of Peter Buck from R.E.M. on lead guitar, Scott McCaughey from the Young Fresh Fellows on bass, and Bill Rieflin on drums. The first couple of songs were played solo acoustic, but then the rest of the band gradually joined in.

Often times, Hitchcock has played a lot of covers in concert, sometimes even doing all covers. But for this concert, it's pretty much all originals. I think the only cover is "Not Dark Yet" by Bob Dylan. He played songs from all eras of his career, even reaching back to do a couple of songs with his first band, the Soft Boys.

01 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Uncorrected Personality Traits (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Queen Elvis (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Red Locust Frenzy (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Sixteen Years (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Sally Was a Legend (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Ole Tarantula (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 The Afterlight (Robyn Hitchcock)
15 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
16 Balloon Man (Robyn Hitchcock)
17 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
18 Chinese Bones (Robyn Hitchcock)
19 Jewels for Sophia (Robyn Hitchcock)
20 The Underneath (Robyn Hitchcock)
21 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
22 The Authority Box (Robyn Hitchcock)
23 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
24 Brenda's Iron Sledge (Robyn Hitchcock)
25 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
26 City of Shame (Robyn Hitchcock)
27 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
28 Madonna of the Wasps (Robyn Hitchcock)
29 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
30 [A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations] Briggs (Robyn Hitchcock)
31 I Often Dream of Trains (Robyn Hitchcock)
32 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
33 Kingdom of Love (Robyn Hitchcock)
34 Not Dark Yet (Robyn Hitchcock)
35 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
36 Give It to the Soft Boys (Robyn Hitchcock)

The download has been split into two parts:

Part 1:

https://www.upload.ee/files/16068163/RobynH_2007_WrldCafePhiladelphiaPA__3-26-2007_Pt1_atse.zip.html

Part 2:

https://www.upload.ee/files/16068152/RobynH_2007_WrldCafePhiladelphiaPA__3-26-2007_Pt2_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo isn't from this exact concert, but it's close. It was taken at another concert in March 2007, with the same band, but at Athens, Georgia, instead. Peter Buck's face can be seen in the darkness behind Hitchcock, above the neck of Hitchcock's guitar.

Jimi Hendrix - Drifter's Escape - Non-Album Tracks (1970)

It's been months since I've posted any Jimi Hendrix albums. I had posted a bunch of stray tracks albums from him in chronological order, and I've had one more to go, which is this one. I delayed posting this because this deals with his 1970 recordings after the Band of Gypsys broke up, and those recordings are a confusing mess. But I'm finally ready to take a stab anyway.

If you're a fan of Hendrix's music, you probably know that he released the double album "Electric Ladyland" in late 1968, and then didn't put out any studio album from then until his death in late 1970. When he died, he was close to finishing a double or even triple album, which he probably was going to call "First Rays of the New Rising Sun," or possibly "Strate Ahead." That album is NOT an attempt to make something like that. I'll probably post something like that "lost album" eventually. This is more like an album of leftovers after you remove all the most likely suspects for what was going to go on that album. For instance, I haven't included a single performance that appears on the official version of "First Rays of the New Rising Sun," released in 1997.

Instead, this has songs that were never going to be part of that final album (whatever he called it), or alternate versions of songs that might have been a part of it. Most of the songs here come from the "West Coast Seattle Boy" box set or the "Jimi Hendrix Experience" box set. There also are two songs from "South Saturn Delta," and one from "War Heroes," which is long out of print. There's a version of "Drifting" that's still officially unreleased. And I'm very surprised that I found an unreleased version of "Further On Up the Road," given that it has Hendrix singing as well as playing on it.

With this album, I finally finish posting all of my stray tracks albums from him. But I still have a lot more of his music to post. Hopefully, I won't take nearly so long to get to it next time.

01 Peter Gunn Theme - Catastrophe (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Blue Suede Shoes (Jimi Hendrix)
03 Keep On Groovin' (Jimi Hendrix)
04 All God's Children [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Drifter's Escape (Jimi Hendrix)
06 Beginnings [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
07 Further On Up the Road (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Bolero [Instrumental] - Hey Baby [New Rising Sun] (Jimi Hendrix)
09 Pali Gap [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Come Down Hard on Me (Jimi Hendrix)
11 Slow Blues [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Drifting [Alternate Version] (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15121505/JimiH_1970c_DriftrsEscape_atse.zip.html

The album cover is based on a concert poster. I believe it's from a concert at the Fillmore East by the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1968. Given that it was the usual rectangular poster, I had to do some sneaky things to reshape things to fit without distorting the dimensions of his face.

Various Artists - Covered: Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Volume 6: 1974-2019

This is the sixth and final album in my "Covered" series that celebrates the songwriting of Gerry Goffin and Carole King. And this is the album where things get a bit weird.

What I mean by that is that, for this volume, the performances I'm including are probably wildly different from the ones most other people would include. Goffin and King stopped writing songs together at the end of the 1960s, but both of them continued to have success on their own, sometimes collaborating with others. But I'm not including a lot of the hits they had in the late 1970s and after. Both of them did a lot of poppy mainstream stuff that was commercially successful, but in my opinion is bland, overproduced, and forgettable. In their defense, it's not just them; it happened to popular music in general. They simply followed trends to stay successful.

So, far instance, Goffin had big hits with "Tonight I Celebrate My Love" by Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson in 1983, "Nothing's Going to Change My Love for You," a number one hit in Britain for Glenn Medeiros in 1988, "A Long and Lasting Love" by Crystal Gayle in 1985, and "Miss You like Crazy" by Natalie Cole in 1989, among others. King had some more hits as well, though they weren't as big. She did a lot better with remakes of her earlier hits. For instance, Kylie Minogue had a huge hit with a remake of "The Locomotion" in 1988. But I'm not including any of those for the reasons mentioned above.

Instead, I've included a bunch of songs that were hits in this time period, but I've also included many songs that were done by totally obscure artists of good Goffin and/or King songs that weren't covered by anyone else in earlier years. For certain songs I definitely wanted to include, I had to resort to finding versions on YouTube by people who apparently don't even have any officially released music. But I doubt you'll notice because those versions are just as good as the others.

By the way, Goffin's solo songwriting efforts were nearly shut out in the last two volumes in this series. But he made a comeback for this album. He had some massive hits, for instance "Theme from 'Mahogany' (Do You Know Where You're Going To)" which he co-wrote, and which was a number one hit in 1975. Similarly, "Saving All My Love for You" was a number one hit for Whitney Houston in 1985. But I've selected the original non-hit version by Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. (both of them formerly of the 5th Dimension) in 1978. It isn't as infected with the cheesy overproduction problems of the 1980s.

Goffin died in 2014 at the age of 75. As I write this, King is 78 years old and is still going strong with her music career as well as lots of charity projects. Long may she run.

One final note. John Lennon of the Beatles once said that he wanted his Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership to be the "Goffin and King of Britain." In my opinion, that's the ultimate compliment he could have made.

By the way, if anyone knows of good covers of Goffin and/or King songs that I've missed, please let me know. They wrote so many good songs that I'm sure I've missed some. 

This album is 52 minutes long.

01 Jazzman (Counts)
02 Theme from 'Mahogany' [Do You Know Where You're Going To] (Diana Ross)
03 Saving All My Love for You (Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis, Jr.)
04 I Can't Make It Alone (Maria McKee)
05 It's Not the Spotlight (Beth Orton)
06 Monday without You (Wilsons)
07 An Uncommon Love (Joan Osborne with the Chieftans)
08 Bitter with the Sweet (Samuel Purdey)
09 Wrap Around Joy (Candye Kane)
10 When My Little Girl Is Smiling (Paul Carrack)
11 Hard Rock Cafe (Anne Fox)
12 Being at War with Each Other (Rumer)
13 Sweet Young Thing (Carrington MacDuffie)
14 Nightingale (Justin Ploof & the Throwbacks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Kf5cygeG

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/BPDjA2ZzvvszU6x/file

The cover art photo comes from an awards show in 2012. For I think the only time in this entire series, I didn't have to do any Photoshop work to get their heads close together or the like.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Volume 5: 1971-1973

This is the fifth out of six volumes in the "Covered" series, celebrating the songwriting of Gerry Goffin and Carole King.

Things definitely have changed since the first three albums, which were mostly hits co-written by Goffin and King. After their divorce at the end of the 1960s, King went on to releasing one of the most popular albums of all time, with 1971's "Tapestry," while Goffin didn't have nearly the same songwriting success.

Like the last volume, this volume is still heavily dominated by King's songs, with a good number of songs from "Tapestry." Only the first one, "Smackwater Jack," is from 1971, but four others are later "Tapestry" covers ("It's Too Late," "So Far Away," "Tapestry," and Way Over Yonder"). Pretty much all the rest of the songs are covers of King's songs from her other solo albums, without any songwriting involvement from Goffin. However, "Smackwater Jack" was cowritten by him. Perhaps it was from a couple of years earlier when they were still married, though I don't know for sure.

That said, Goffin wasn't done yet. It's just that the early 1970s wasn't a particularly good time for him. He would bounce back and have a good number of hits without King's involvement. The first such big hit is here at the end, "I've Got to Use My Imagination," which was a Top Five hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips in 1973.

By the way, "Dixie Highway" is another rare case of a Carole King song from this era that apparently was never recorded and released by King.

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Smackwater Jack (Quincy Jones)
02 It's Too Late (Isley Brothers)
03 So Far Away (Marlena Shaw)
04 It's Going to Take Some Time (Carpenters)
05 Ferguson Road (Bobby Vee)
06 Walk On In (Lou Rawls)
07 Sweet Seasons (Isley Brothers)
08 Tapestry (Alice Babs)
09 Way Over Yonder (Judy Mowatt)
10 Corazon (Creative Source)
11 Eventually (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
12 Been to Canaan (Alice Babs)
13 Dixie Highway (Martha Reeves)
14 I've Got to Use My Imagination (Gladys Knight & the Pips)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xoNFyhNb

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/XhbA0vmpRqBqVNI/file

There's good news and bad news with the cover art photo here. The good news I've used a color photo of Goffin and King together. The bad news is it's not from the time period in question, or even close. I'm not sure, but I think it's from the 1990s. I wish I had something more fitting, but this was all I could come up with. There pretty much are no photos of Goffin and King together from the end of the 1960s until decades later, when they started appearing together at tributes and award shows and the like.

I also must admit that I edited the photo significantly. Goffin was significantly taller than King, so I raised King's head up relative to everything else so I could have both heads larger in the frame. And I moved their bodies so there wasn't a big gap between them, again allowing me to have their heads larger in the frame.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Richard Thompson - Mock Tudor - Acoustic Version (1999)

In 1996, Richard Thompson put out the double album "You? Me? Us?" which was a critical and commercial disappointment. In 1997, he put out "Industry," but only half of it was his music, and it was mostly ignored. In 1999, he put out "Mock Tudor," which was one of his best and most popular albums. This is the acoustic version of that, so it's very strong as well.

In the past, I've put out all-acoustic versions of some of Thompson's albums. I can only do that for some though, because sometimes he simply hasn't played enough of them in solo acoustic format in concert. For "Mock Tudor," there's just enough. The original album has 12 songs on it and lasts 55 minutes. I was able to find nine of those songs in acoustic format. Those nine only total 38 minutes. The studio versions of those nine songs totals to 39 minutes, so the acoustic versions about roughly the same length.

For the other three songs, he's played "Hard on Me" and "Two-Faced Love" occasionally in concert, but it seems he's always done them with a full band. Both of them are on the official live album "Semi-Detached Mock Tudor," which is pretty much a live, full-band version of "Mock Tudor." Many think it's better than the studio album.  The other song I don't have here, "That's All, Amen, Close the Door," apparently has only been played live twice, and I haven't been able to find any recordings of those. If you have such a thing, please let me know.

I'm happy to say the sound quality of the songs here are uniformly excellent, even though all but the first two are unreleased and come from concert bootlegs. As I usually do in cases like this, I've removed the audience noise to make it sound like a studio album. Also, as I do with these all-acoustic versions of albums, I used the best sounding performances I could find, regardless of year of performance. Most of the versions here are from 2000, but the full range goes from 1997 to 2013.

01 Cooksferry Queen (Richard Thompson)
02 Sibella (Richard Thompson)
03 Bathsheba Smiles (Richard Thompson)
04 Crawl Back [Under My Stone] (Richard Thompson)
05 Uninhabited Man (Richard Thompson)
06 Dry My Tears and Move On (Richard Thompson)
07 Walking the Long Miles Home (Richard Thompson)
08 Sights and Sounds of London Town (Richard Thompson)
09 Hope You'll Like the New Me (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15270958/RichrdT_1999_MockTdorAcoustc_atse.zip.html

This album cover is strange to me, because it's totally different from the studio album version, yet it seems to be an alternate cover approved by Thompson. I wish that sort of thing happened a lot more often! :)

Apparently there's a deluxe version of "Mock Tudor" that doesn't have extra music but does have some extra artwork, and this cover was included as part of that. If you look closely, it even has "Richard Thompson Mock Tudor" written into the artwork. All I did was reposition things a bit so I'd have room at the bottom, and then I added the text there. I used the same font and font colors as those on the studio album.

Various Artists - Covered: Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Volume 4: 1969-1971

This is the fourth of out six volumes in the "Covered" series for songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King.

This is a particularly important one, because it marks when Goffin and King stopped working together, yet continued to write hit songs separately. But, for a time, King was much more successful than Goffin. She put out solo albums in 1968 and 1970 that sold very little. Then, in 1971, she released her album "Tapestry." It sold 25 million copies, becoming one of the most successful album of all time! This album contains covers of a bunch of songs from "Tapestry." Most of the rest from that album will appear on the next album in this series.

Goffin, meanwhile, kept a low profile. He didn't release any of his own music at the time, and I don't think he had any hits as a songwriter either. He would, later. He's only a co-writer on a few songs here, which are remnants of the Goffin and King songwriting partnership, like "Take a Giant Step" and "Hi-De-Ho (That Old Sweet Roll)."

By the way, from this point on, pretty much all the King songs would first appear on King's own albums. But there are a few songs in the 1970s that she never released herself. "No Sad Song" and "A Fine Way to Go" are examples. Plus, "After All This Time" was only done in concert by her at the time, then was released on an archival live album decades later.

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 Take a Giant Step (Taj Mahal)
02 What Am I Gonna Do (Smith)
03 So Much Love (Dusty Springfield)
04 Sweet Sweetheart (Carla Thomas)
05 To Love (Matthews Southern Comfort)
06 Hi-De-Ho [That Old Sweet Roll] (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
07 I Feel the Earth Move (Vivian Reed)
08 Beautiful (Petula Clark)
09 Where You Lead (Barbra Streisand)
10 After All This Time (Merry Clayton)
11 No Sad Song (Helen Reddy)
12 Child of Mine (Anne Murray)
13 A Fine Way to Go (Lonnie Mack)
14 Home Again (Kate Taylor)
15 You've Got a Friend (James Taylor)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BAZKnT6Z

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/j9vKSDC1DbSMPhr/file

I'm not happy with the cover I made for this album. I found some black and white photos of Goffin and King to use for the 1960s albums in this series. I also found some much later color photos of Goffin and King to use in albums after this one. But at the start of the 1970s, neither Goffin nor King looked like how they did in the 1960s, nor did they look like how they did later. So I found separate photos of each of them from the era and Photoshopped them in together. The problem is, the lighting, coloring, texture, etc, doesn't really match. So I'm unhappy.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program. I'm happy now. :)

Fleetwood Mac - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: 1970-1971

This is the seventh of my albums of Fleetwood Mac performing for the BBC.

Their last appearance on the BBC for many, many years was in 1971. It seems a lot of bands stopped playing for the BBC in the early 1970s. I think that was mostly due to a change of formats for the BBC. Up until about 1971, bands often played a few songs in the BBC studios each time. But that largely stopped, and was replaced by broadcasts of live concerts that went on much longer. The next BBC album I have from the band isn't until 1990!

This volume is fairly different from all the previous ones in this series in that lead guitarist Peter Green left the band just before the time period covered here. Instead, lead guitarist Danny Kirwan plays a more prominent role. And Christine McVie finally joined the band, and played a prominent role too. Actually, the first two songs are from before McVie joined the band. Then the third to fifth songs are McVie performances during her brief time as a solo artist. The rest are when she was a part of Fleetwood Mac, and she sings lead on some of those.

Eight of the 16 songs here are officially unreleased. Seven of those are BBC performances that somehow got missed by all the official releases. "Lay It All Down" is unreleased because it actually isn't from the BBC. It's from the German TV show "Beat Club" instead. (The bonus track is a different version of "Dragonfly," also from Beat Club.) I would have included more TV or radio appearances other than BBC ones, except I couldn't find more. It doesn't help that the band's popularity declined a lot after about 1971, before reviving in a big way in 1975.

Four of the songs have "Edit" in their titles because I made big edits on them. The available version of "Station Man" didn't have an intro, probably due to some BBC DJ talking over the music, and started right when the vocals did. I fixed that by patching in some music from later in the song. "Get like You Used to Be" lacked a good ending. If I recall correctly, the recording faded out in the middle of McVie singing a verse. I also fixed that by patching in music from elsewhere in the song. For three other songs, "Dragonfly," "Purple Dancer," and "Morning Rain," I used the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe the BBC DJ talking while keeping the underlying music. 

As an aside, this version of the song "Morning Rain" usually has the title "Start Again" on bootlegs because the DJ said the band had just written it, and that was the title the decided on as they entered the BBC studio to record it. But obviously they later changed their minds, because it was called "Morning Rain" on the next studio album, so that's what I call it here.

This album is 51 minutes long, not counting the bonus track. 

UPDATE: On September 25, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. I found one song that had been missed, "Purple Dancer." I also found better versions of some other songs, and fixed the vocal mix of still other songs.

01 No Road Is the Right Road [Edit] (Christine McVie)
02 Jenny Lee (Fleetwood Mac)
03 When Will I Be Loved (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Honey Hush (Fleetwood Mac)
05 When I See My Baby (Fleetwood Mac)
06 Buddy's Song [Peggy Sue Got Married] (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Tell Me All the Things You Do (Fleetwood Mac)
08 Down at the Crown (Fleetwood Mac)
09 I Can't Stop Loving Her (Fleetwood Mac)
10 Crazy 'bout You Baby [Can't Hold Out Much Longer] (Fleetwood Mac)
11 Station Man [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
12 Purple Dancer [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
13 Dragonfly [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
14 Preachin' (Fleetwood Mac)
15 Morning Rain [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
16 Lay It All Down (Fleetwood Mac)

Dragonfly (Fleetwood Mac)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fs5gVVdk

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/hjoqIMT2mDRnRGa/file

The cover art photo is from 1971. It shows the band while it was mainly led by Christine McVie, Jeremy Spencer, and Danny Kirwan. Note how drummer Mick Fleetwood is a head above anyone else because he's a very tall guy and not standing on something.

Various Artists - Covered: Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Volume 3: 1966-1969

I'm trying to post these once a day until I'm done. So here's the third of out six albums in the "Covered" series celebrating the songwriting of Gerry Goffin and Carole King.

As I mentioned in the last volume, Goffin and King were married (since 1959) but their marriage started to fall apart in the mid-1960s due to Goffin's adultery. Adding to that, when LSD got trendy around 1967, Goffin began using LSD, and other drugs. That led to mental problems, including getting diagnosed with manic depression and being hospitalized. Their marriage staggered on for a little longer, but they finally divorced in 1969.

That also meant the end of their songwriting partnership. The vast majority of the songs on this volume are still credited to Goffin and King, but I'm not sure if that's true. Consider John Lennon and Paul McCartney, where they continued to put both their names of songs near the end of the Beatles even when just one of them had anything to do with the song. (For instance, Lennon's solo hit "Cold Turkey" was credited to Lennon and McCartney even though McCartney not only didn't have any role in it, he downright disliked it.)

In addition to Goffin's issues, one reason their songwriting partnership broke up was that King had generally written the melodies while Goffin wrote the words, but King increasingly wanted to express her own feelings by writing her own words, so she didn't need Goffin's help anymore. So the songs on this volume increasingly reflect King's point of view, even when they were written by both of them. A good example is the all-time classic "(You Make Me Feel LIke) A Natural Woman," which was definitely written by both of them, but clearly reflects a woman's personal feelings.

Despite the occasional huge hit like "A Natural Woman," the commercial success of Goffin and King was going down during the late 1960s, as musical trends changed and their poppy style partially went out of fashion. So an increasing number of songs here are non-hits, and sometimes fairly obscure. But I think they are all solid, and most of them probably would have been hits if they'd been released in a different era.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Goin' Back (Dusty Springfield)
02 Stage Door (Tony Jackson)
03 No Easy Way Down (Germz)
04 Pleasant Valley Sunday (Monkees)
05 [You Make Me Feel Like] A Natural Woman (Aretha Franklin)
06 Snow Queen (Roger Nichols & the Small Circle of Friends)
07 So Goes Love (Shirley Abicair)
08 I Don't Think You Know Me (American Breed)
09 Sometime in the Morning (Monkees)
10 A Man without a Dream (Ben E. King)
11 Road to Nowhere (Hearts & Flowers)
12 Wasn't Born to Follow (Byrds)
13 Now That Everything's Been Said (Peggy Lipton)
14 Porpoise Song ['Theme From Head'] (Monkees)
15 You're Just What I Was Looking for Today (Status Quo)
16 Something Better (Marianne Faithfull)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JzyUJBXU

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/jAEaV9Pz16kXiPA/file

Once again, I struck out trying to find any color photos of Goffin and King together in the 1960s. For the one I've included here, I don't know what year it's from, but I'm guessing it's from the mid-1960s based on the general look. I edited the photo slightly to move Goffin and King closer together, allowing me to make their heads larger in the picture frame.

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

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Rolling Stones - Madison Square Garden, New York City, 11-27-1969

There is a very strange story behind this album. On the last day of 2019, ABKCO, the record company in charge of the Rolling Stones' 1969 music catalog, released a bunch of Rolling Stones songs from 1969 on YouTube for about a day. This was due to a European copyright law, that states a legal entity has to make recordings publicly available within 50 years to maintain the copyright rights. They waited until almost literally the last minute of the last day to do so.

Lots of other big artists have had similar copyright extension releases, such as the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Beach Boys. But ABKCO went several steps further than other artists to be jerks about it: they only released the songs with a low bit rate, meaning poor quality sound, and then they added an annoying loud tone through all the songs that made them virtually unlistenable!

Here's an article about this strange situation:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/03/mystery-of-rolling-stones-tracks-posted-briefly-on-youtube

The problem is the Rolling Stones and ABKCO have been fighting each other since about 1969, because the band felt they'd signed a contract that ripped them off. There have been a few exceptions, but they generally have preferred not to release any previously unreleased 1960s material just to make sure ABKCO doesn't profit. So, aside from this one weird, brief release, these performances are likely to stay unreleased for a long time, or maybe forever.

Some of the performances were live, and others were from the studio. I'll deal with the studio material in a later post. Of the live material, most of it, frankly, sounds bad. ABKCO pretty much just posted versions of a few 1969 concerts already made popular by bootlegs, but with worse sound quality. And that's even taking into account that people figured out how to remove the constant buzzing noise without reducing the sound of the rest too badly.

One exception are a couple of concerts from Madison Square Garden, on November 27th and November 28th, 1969. These are previously unavailable soundboard versions (with the buzzing noise removed). The set lists are the same on both nights, but the November 27th show sounds slightly better. Also, the 28th show has some cuts and flaws in it, and the 27th doesn't. So I've directed my attention to the 27th show only. Also, it comes from the end of the band's 1969 tour, and they felt they got better and better as the tour went along, so both the sound quality and performance are the best.

But this concert is very similar to the officially released live album "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out." In fact, most of the songs on that album come from those two nights at the Madison Square Garden. But the band did two shows each night, and I think the only performance on the live album from this, the late show on the 27th, is the first song, "Jumpin' Jack Flash." Furthermore, the set list is exactly the same between this and "Ya-Ya's," since the band didn't vary their set list much at the time.

So, you may ask: why listen to this at all, when "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out" is professionally done and sounds better? That's true, but that album has been criticized for being overdubbed in the studio after the fact to fix or improve performances. For instance, it's known the lead vocals were redone for at least six of the songs, and there was more overdubbing of guitar parts, backing vocals, and so on. Furthermore, this has the songs in the order they were actually played, and "Ya-Ya's" has them all mixed up. If you want to hear what the Stones sounded like in "the raw," from just one concert, exactly as they did at the time, then this album is for you.

But the story gets more complicated, because although this is a professionally recorded soundboard, it's completely unmixed, and it had some serious flaws. When I heard it, what most disappointed me was that the lead vocals sounded a bit distant. Fixing that sort of thing goes beyond my limited sound editing skills. Luckily though, lately I've been getting sound editing help from someone named MZ. I sent him the files and asked if he could take a whack at them, and he did. He tells me that the main thing he did was reduce the bass and increase the tremble - which is where the lead vocals are. He also removed some clicks and other minor flaws. I think it sounds much better now.

On top of that, I did what limited sound editing I could do to help. I separated all the talking between songs onto their own tracks, as I usually do for concert recordings. Then I boosted the vocals of Mick Jagger's between song banter, because that was usually too low in the mix.

That left only one glaring problem, which was the start of the song "Under My Thumb." There was some weird flaw for about ten seconds of the opening riff, where they bass got way too loud and distorted. I got rid of that bit by patching in a repetition of the riff from a few seconds later. So it should sound good now, although it is odd that the intro riff is repeated three times before more instruments join in. I'm guessing it probably was repeated once more, but that part sounded so bad that it got edited out. But I'm not sure, so I've left it as it is.

Brian Jones was fired from the band before the start of their 1969 tour (and died shortly thereafter). He was replaced by Mick Taylor. So this features the Mick Taylor version of the band, which lasted until 1974. Personally, that's my favorite line-up.

By the way, Peter, who runs the "Albums I Wish Existed" blog, posted the studio portion of this copyright extension release last week. That's how I found it, and got inspired to track down the best of the live portion. You can get that at his blog here:

https://albumsiwishexisted.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-rolling-stones-1969-preservation.html

Also, I plan on posting my own version of that studio material here soon. I'm going to mix it in with other studio outtakes from the time, as well as stuff from the band's 1968 copyright extension release, which came out at the end of 2018.

01 talk (Rolling Stones)
02 Jumpin' Jack Flash (Rolling Stones)
03 talk (Rolling Stones)
04 Carol (Rolling Stones)
05 Sympathy for the Devil (Rolling Stones)
06 talk (Rolling Stones)
07 Stray Cat Blues (Rolling Stones)
08 talk (Rolling Stones)
09 Love in Vain (Rolling Stones)
10 talk (Rolling Stones)
11 Prodigal Son (Rolling Stones)
12 talk (Rolling Stones)
13 You Gotta Move (Rolling Stones)
14 Under My Thumb [Edit] - I'm Free (Rolling Stones)
15 Midnight Rambler (Rolling Stones)
16 talk (Rolling Stones)
17 Live with Me (Rolling Stones)
18 talk (Rolling Stones)
19 Little Queenie (Rolling Stones)
20 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Rolling Stones)
21 talk (Rolling Stones)
22 Honky Tonk Women (Rolling Stones)
23 Street Fighting Man (Rolling Stones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701103/TROLLNGSTNES1969_MdisonSqareGardnNwYrkC__11-27-1969_atse.zip.html

The copyright extension release has already started to be bootlegged, even though it's only a couple of months old as I write this. I used the cover of one such bootleg as my starting point. But I decided to replace most of the text, even though I kept the font. I also changed the photo. Luckily, there are a bunch of very good photos of the Madison Square Garden concerts on November 28th (though not the 27th, as far as I know). The bootleg cover used one, but it showed Mick Jagger only, and it was black and white. I found a better one that's in color and shows both Jagger and Keith Richards. (I didn't find any ones showing the whole band.) I manipulated it a bit to close a gap between the two of them, so I could make them larger. The two of them played a few acoustic songs in the middle of the concert ("Love in Vain," "Prodigal Son," and "You Gotta Move"), and the photo comes from that.