I'm back on Soulseek

As I explained previously in this blog, in mid-December 2020 I had a computer hard drive fail on me. Luckily, my music collection wasn't affected, but I had to get a new computer. As part of that, I also lost my SoulseekQT account. But in the past few days, I've managed to put all the albums I've shared here back on Soulseek. My user name is the same as before: albumsthatshouldexist. So if you have trouble with Zippyshare or just want a better and/or different way to access my music, I highly recommend doing so through Soulseek.

My computer trouble, plus the trouble PJ at his Albums I Wish Existed blog around the same time did have a silver lining. When PJ's blog was unexpectedly and suddenly taken down, he resumed it at a new URL (check my list of links for that). But he also decided to share his files through Soulseek. To help people find his files there, he renamed all of the folders he was sharing, adding "aiwe" to them (for "Albums I Wish Existed"). 

I realized this was a good idea. Since I had to reshare all my folders for Soulseek anyway, I also have added something to each folder to help people find the files. In my case, I chose "atse," which naturally is short for "Albums That Should Exist." You probably can find the files anyway, but this should make it easier. Soulseek can be a bit erratic. 

For one thing, I have to be online and with the Soulseek program open for the files to be shared. But also, sometimes if you search for a specific thing, you might or might not find it depending on the search terms you use. For example, I recently posted the album "Acoustic Demos" by Jim Croce. Maybe if you search for "acoustic demos" and "jim croce" the album will come up, but if you search for "acoustic demos" and just "croce" it won't, or vice versa. It's hard to tell, because Soulseek can be erratic, as I said. But adding in "atse" to your searches from now on should help a lot. PJ had noticed much more success with people finding the albums they're looking for since he's done that.

Oh, one final point. Make sure you're using the program "SoulseekQT" and not just "Soulseek." (I just call it "Soulseek" most of the time because it's easier.) I don't know why there are two programs with such similar names, especially since Wikipedia says they're run by the same management, but "SoulseekQT" is used by way more people and has at least five times the number of shared files, so that's what I use. 

By the way, the program is free and awesome. If you're not using it already, you really should. Here's the Wikipedia entry on it. You can find the link to download it there:

Soulseek - Wikipedia

Beck - Gimme - Non-Album Tracks (2013)

Here's the next in my long series of stray tracks albums for Beck. Despite being a prolific songwriter, he didn't release a studio album between 2008 and 2014. However, he remained busy. In 2013 alone, he performed enough new and unique songs for me to be able to compile this album. In that same year, he also did his very unusual "Song Reader" project, but I'll deal with that in a different post. None of the songs here were a part of that project.

The songs here are a grab bag of different things. Four of the songs are A-sides to singles, and another is a B-side. All those are originals. "Evil Things" is also an original, but that comes from a concert bootleg. "I Am the Cosmos" and "Sound and Vision" are covers played in concert, and were originally done by Chris Bell of the band Big Star, and David Bowie, respectively. I also included the medley of Beck's hits "Devil's Haircut" and "Where It's At" because it's a very rare acoustic version that I like.

My version of the song "Gimme" is unique. Beck put out an A-side version of that song that's only about two and a half minutes long. He also put out another version that is split in two and totals over 20 minutes long. I thought the short version is too short and the long version is way too long. So instead I made my own edit of the first half of the long version that's about six minutes long.

The bonus track, "Heaven Can Wait," is a duet between Beck and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who is the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg, one of Beck's musical heroes. In 2009, she released the album "IRM" with all the songs either written or co-written by Beck. He also produced the album. Beck generally has never played these songs himself, but in 2013 he played a concert in Paris where Charlotte Gainsbourg lives, and that's why they played a duet of this song on stage. But unfortunately the sound quality of the bootleg recording is just okay, so it only merits being a bonus track.

01 Defriended (Beck)
02 I Won't Be Long (Beck)
03 Evil Things (Beck)
04 Gimme, Part 1 [Edit] (Beck)
05 Back to You (Beck)
06 I Am the Cosmos (Beck)
07 Devil's Haircut - Where It's At [Live Acoustic] (Beck)
09 I Just Started Hating Some People Today (Beck with Jack White)
09 Blue Randy (Beck with Jack White)
10 Sound and Vision (Beck)

Heaven Can Wait (Beck & Charlotte Gainsbourg)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15127428/BeckH_2013_Gmme_atse.zip.html

The album cover is heavily based on the cover to Beck's "Gimme" single. However, to distinguish it from that, I increased the size of the text at the top, and also increased the size of the main painting. What that replaced was merely white space.
 

David Bowie - Toy (2001)

One well known "lost album" is "Toy" by David Bowie. Around 2000, Bowie had what I consider to be the excellent idea of revisiting some of his little-known songs from the very start of his career. He performed all new versions of these songs with drastically different arrangements, as well as three brand new songs. He was ready to release this as his next album in 2001, but there were problems with his record company, which wouldn't let him release the album. So instead a number of the songs dribbled out as B-sides and on compilations. Then, in 2011, the entire album as it was originally conceived was released onto the Internet. It is widely speculated that Bowie himself did this.

There are two different versions, but with the same song order. The versions differ slightly with the productions of the songs. I've chosen the less well known version, if only to help spread it around a little more. Both are equally good, in my opinion.

I could say a lot more, but for once I don't have to, since there's a Wikipedia entry that explains it all quite well. That can be found here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_(David_Bowie_album)

That lists where the original versions can be found, and where some of the revised versions can be found. Two of the songs, "Uncle Floyd" (also known as "Slip Away") and "Afraid" appeared on his next studio album, "Heathen."

The album is fairly long, being exactly an hour in length. Perhaps some of the songs would have been cut had it actually been released in 2001.

UPDATE: On November 29, 2021, I drastically updated the mp3 download file. Earlier that month, an official version of the album was finally released, as part of the "Brilliant Adventure" box set. However, only 12 of the 16 songs were included. So I've posted those twelve, plus the extra four at the end. 

01 I Dig Everything (David Bowie)
02 You've Got a Habit of Leaving (David Bowie)
03 The London Boys (David Bowie)
04 Karma Man (David Bowie)
05 Conversation Piece (David Bowie)
06 Shadow Man (David Bowie)
07 Let Me Sleep Beside You (David Bowie)
08 Hole in the Ground (David Bowie)
09 Baby Loves That Way (David Bowie)
10 Can't Help Thinking about Me (David Bowie)
11 Silly Boy Blue (David Bowie)
12 Toy [Your Turn to Drive] (David Bowie)
13 Uncle Floyd [Slip Away] (David Bowie)
14 Afraid (David Bowie)
15 Liza Jane (David Bowie)
16 In the Heat of the Morning (David Bowie)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15129408/DavidB_2001_Ty_atse.zip.html

When I searched the Internet for a good cover art photo, I was surprised to find many fan-made versions already existed. I don't know of any cover that was approved to be the real one back in 2001. So instead I just picked the one out of those that I liked the best. I like this one because it's based on the cover of his 1967 album, simply called "David Bowie," except it has different text and uses a photo of him from around 2001.

Various Artists - Covered: Graham Gouldman, Volume 1: 1964-1967

It's been months, but I'm very glad to announce that my "Covered" series is back! For this series, I've highlighted the best songs of the most famous and talented songwriters. So far, I've mostly focused on those who got started in the 1950s. But I'm starting to move to those who made it in the 1960s.

Graham Gouldman is one of my favorite songwriters. He's known for some great 1960s classics such as "Bus Stop" by the Hollies, "No Milk Today" by the Herman's Hermits, and "For Your Love" by the Yardbirds. Then in the 1970s he was part of the band 10cc, and co-wrote most of their big hits, such as "The Things I Do for Love" and "Dreadlock Holiday." You can read more about his long career, with his still leading 10cc at 74 years old as I write this, at his Wikipedia entry:

Graham Gouldman - Wikipedia

What I like about Gouldman's songwriting is that he writes very catchy pop songs, yet he uses unusual chord changes, especially utilizing minor chords, to separate his songs from the pack. Although lots of different artists are featured on this album, in my opinion there is some sort of musical continuity that identifies them all as Gouldman songs. 

He has so many excellent songs that I've created three albums for him in this series. However, he differs from many songwriters in that he was a very capable singer and performer, and has put out a lot of his own material. This series avoids all of that, including everything he did with 10cc. This series is contains his songs, but performed by others. Later, I plan on posting some other album collections of his best songs outside of 10cc where he was the lead vocalist.

This album has a lot of songs on it, but they're generally short, so the total length of the album is only 44 minutes.

01 For Your Love (Yardbirds)
02 I'm Gonna Take You There (Dave Berry)
03 Evil Hearted You (Yardbirds)
04 Behind the Door (St. Louis Union)
05 Heart Full of Soul (Yardbirds)
06 The Cost of Living (Downliners Sect)
07 Look through Any Window (Hollies)
08 East West (Herman's Hermits)
09 People Passing By (High Society)
10 I'm 28 (Toni Basil)
11 You Stole My Love (Mike Furber & the Bowery Boys)
12 Listen People (Herman's Hermits)
13 Bus Stop (Hollies)
14 Pamela, Pamela (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
15 No Milk Today (Herman's Hermits)
16 Star of Eastern Street (High Society)
17 London Look (Hifis)
18 Going Home (Normie Rowe & the Playboys)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jjQwUqC5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/PEMrlt0qeHOqtTb/file

I'm not sure when or where the cover art photo is from, but clearly it looks to be from 1964 or 1965. It was black and white, but I colorized it.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Norah Jones - Home Concerts 13, New York City, 10-22-2020 to 11-5-2020

Here's another in a long line of Norah Jones home concert albums. I waited a little bit to see how things would shake out for the next album or two. She has slowed down a lot, for the first time, for the Christmas holidays. But she's promised to post more in the new year.

Hopefully by now I don't need to explain much. If you've listened to any of the previous home concerts in this series, you should know the drill. This is about 45 minutes of her playing songs solo from her home in her unique style.

Perhaps the most notable thing about this particular album is the cover. This is a compilation of three performances of four songs each. (I didn't include any songs that she played in previous home concerts, and I think there was one or two of those here.) The middle performance took place very close to Halloween. So for that she dressed up in a Halloween costume, as the Hamburglar from the McDonalds fast food chain. Note also in the back two kids in their own costumes. I'm assuming those are her kids. They came out and danced around for one of the songs.

01 Picture in a Frame (Norah Jones)
02 talk (Norah Jones)
03 Just a Little Bit (Norah Jones)
04 Blue Bayou (Norah Jones)
05 talk (Norah Jones)
08 My Dear Country (Norah Jones)
09 talk (Norah Jones)
10 Wake Me Up (Norah Jones)
11 talk (Norah Jones)
12 Man of the Hour (Norah Jones)
13 Down by the River (Norah Jones)
14 talk (Norah Jones)
15 Rosie's Lullaby (Norah Jones)
16 Sleep Won't Come (Norah Jones)
17 talk (Norah Jones)
18 Hands on the Wheel (Norah Jones) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634401/NorahJ_2020_HomeCncerts13__10-22-2020_to_11-5-2020_atse.zip.html

I discussed the album cover above. It comes from a screenshot I took. I couldn't find an ideal screenshot clearly featuring both children. But you can see the head of one (in an alien mask) on one side of her, and part of the body of the other one on her other side.

Colorization

Good news - I have a new computer, finally, and I have Photoshop again. Thanks a ton to PJ at his Albums I Wish Existed blog for making a bunch of album covers in the last couple of weeks while I couldn't. By the way, in case you haven't heard, his blog was taken down due to a copyright takedown notice. He's replicated his blog here:

https://albumsiwishexisted2.blogspot.com/

However, he's taken down all links and instead will share music through SoulseekQT. As an aside, my music files currently are not being shared through Soulseek. However, now that I have my new computer, I plan on bringing them back to Soulseek in the next few days. I'll let you know when that happens.

One plus to working with PJ on album covers these past couple weeks is that he turned me onto a program called Pixbim Color Surprise AI. Basically, it takes black and white images and colorizes them. What's cool is that it uses some analysis to determine what the image is about and then makes intelligent guesses as to what the colors probably are. For instance, if it identifies light colored hair, it'll turn that blonde and if it identifies dark colored hair it'll turn that brown.

Normally, I'm not in favor of colorization because it doesn't look good. But I'm so impressed with this program that I bought it and I plan on using it to colorize the several dozen black and white album covers I have posted here. 

Let me give you an example. Up above is the cover I made for a Neil Young album some months ago. It's from so early in his career (1965 to 1967) that there are no color photos of him, so I took a black and white one and tinted it brown.

Whereas here is the version I just colorized using the Pixbim program a few minutes ago. What do you think? Is it better? Should I colorize more?  Personally, I'm pretty happy with it, and the colorization is mostly automated, so it's easy to do.

By the way, here's the link to the album in question, in case you missed it:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/01/neil-young-folksinger-demos-1964-1967.html

Here's another example, of a Joni Mitchell album cover. The old version is at top and the new version is at the bottom. I think the change is pretty damn amazing.

Here's one more that I feel I have to highlight. For some of the others that I've just done, I did some touch up work, either in the program itself or in Photoshop. But for this below cover of songwriters Bacharach and David I did basically NO touch up work. This is all what the program did on its own. (Note that I'm referring to the main image and not the text, which is a separate thing.) The program decided the shirts should be blue, and the background brown, and all the rest. So I was able to make this change literally in a minute.

Crosby, Stills and Nash - Unplugged in Saratoga (Paul Mason Winery, Saratoga, CA, 6-26-1991)

In the early 1990s, "MTV Unplugged" acoustic concerts were all the rage. Some artists who got started in the 1960s and had lost much of their commercial appeal sold millions upon millions of their "unplugged" albums. For instance, Eric Clapton's "Unplugged" album sold no less than 26 million copies! Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN) have made many, many boneheaded decisions on what to release or not release. In my opinion, one of their biggest mistakes was to not release an acoustic live album at the peak of the "unplugged" trend. They excelled at the acoustic format, so you'd think they would have been all over that. The only thing they did was release a DVD called "The Acoustic Concert," but it was short and stripped of most of their banter.

So, still in keeping with my mental "alternate universe" in which CSN(Y) released many more albums than they actually did, I've crafted an unplugged album for them that probably would have come out in 1992, which was the same year as many other huge sellers. Nearly all of it comes from a soundboard bootleg of a concert in Saratoga, California. The sound quality of it is stellar, and there's lots of entertaining banter between songs.

I made a few changes or additions. I added "Wasted on the Way" to the start of the concert, because that was their typical first song on all their concerts that year, but it wasn't on the bootleg. Similarly, they typically ended with "Teach Your Children," and that wasn't there either, so I added that too. Also, in the middle, the song "Soldiers of Peace" was played. I really don't like that song. I'm all in favor of peace, but it's just not a good song despite the message of it. Since that was during Graham Nash's solo spot, I replaced it with another Nash song, "These Empty Days."

Luckily, there are a few other soundboard bootlegs from that year, so I was able to take the songs from those. I found a couple more that didn't get played at this particular concert but I thought would improve the concert: "4+20" and "Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom." So I added those to the very end.

I made some minor adjustments, generally boosting the volume of the banter and removing some dead air moments, like guitar tuning. But there wasn't much of that. Also, I generally boosted the volume of the audience applause after each song. One trickier thing was that there were a few singalong moments during a couple of songs, where the audience was supposed to take over the singing for a little while. In those cases, I boosted the audience noise a lot so there wouldn't be a strange mostly silent gap there.

All in all, this is a long concert, at two hours and 32 minutes. Nearly all their classic songs got played, plus some new ones for the time that in my opinion kept up their high standards. I imagine had CSN actually released a live album at this time it wouldn't have been that long, but I don't need to be limited by album lengths.

01 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 Wasted on the Way (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
04 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Blackbird (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 The Lee Shore (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 You Don't Have to Cry (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 Just a Song Before I Go (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
13 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
14 Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
15 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
16 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
17 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
19 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
20 Wind on the Water (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
21 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
22 On the Other Side of Town (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
23 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
24 These Empty Days (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
25 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
26 Thousand Roads (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
27 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
28 Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
29 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
30 Guinnevere (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
31 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
32 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
33 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
34 For What It's Worth (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
35 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
36 Southern Cross (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
39 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
40 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
41 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
42 Our House (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
43 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
44 4+20 (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
45 Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom (Crosby, Stills & Nash)

https://www.imagenetz.de/cUvsa

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8XbpAvhK

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/v8Rd1Fk0giq0Gpo/file

The cover photo comes from a concert in Portland in 1991. I moved Crosby so he'd be closer to the other two.

Jim Croce - Acoustic Demos (1971)

This is my first Jim Croce post, but it won't be the last. I feel that his music is sadly overlooked in this era, in part due to his early death in a 1973 plane crash only about a year after he became a star. 

This collection is something I've never seen gathered together before, and frankly I don't know much about it. In short, these are many of his classic songs in demo form, stripped down to his lead vocals and acoustic guitar. Croce's songs are generally acoustic sounding, but the studio versions often had strings, drums, and other instruments added. I love acoustic versions, so I really enjoy these versions.

I only recently came across this material as I was digging deeper into his music. Most of these songs are officially released, but on rather obscure releases, and spread out here and there. What little I know about the backstory comes from the liner notes to one of his collections ("The Studio Album Collection"), and goes like this. In 1969, Croce released an album that was performed with his wife Ingrid, and is known as either "Croce" or "Jim and Ingrid Croce." It didn't sell well at all, and his record company dropped him. Around that time, Ingrid got pregnant. He and she stopped touring and focused on their new baby and making enough money to get by. But staying at home, Croce had lots of time to write new songs. 

In February 1971, he recorded acoustic demos for a bunch of new songs, and this new material was so strong that he got a new record contract. That resulted in the album "You Don't Mess Around with Jim," released in April 1972. It was a surprise hit, with two hit songs, "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" and "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)." Plus, after his death, the song "Time in a Bottle" was released from the album and went to number one.

I know that lots of these performances are from that demo, but I don't know which ones exactly. I realized that they include every single one of the 12 songs on the "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" album, so I've sorted the first 12 songs to duplicate that album order exactly. I'm guessing that February 1971 tape included most or all of those. But that still leaves another six songs. I've arranged it so the next four songs all come from his subsequent album "Life and Times." The penultimate song "Lover's Cross" comes from his last album, "I Got a Name." That just leaves the final song, "Mississippi Lady." It was first released on "The Faces I've Been," an album released in 1975 that gathered up some stray tracks. I'm pretty sure it was an outtake from the "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" album.

So that's all I know. I'm guessing these are from 1971, but it could well be that some are from 1972 or 1973. If anyone knows more, please let me know. 

Most of the songs here come from three different official collections. But I searched on YouTube and found four additional songs that apparently remain unreleased, or perhaps are from some other official source that I missed. In any case, these four sound just as good as the rest. All the performances are excellent, but note that "Speedball Tucker" is less than a minute long. Since that's one of the officially released ones, I surmise that he hadn't finished the song when he recorded the demo.

01 You Don't Mess Around with Jim (Jim Croce)
02 Tomorrow's Going to Be a Brighter Day (Jim Croce)
03 New York's Not My Home (Jim Croce)
04 Hard Time Losin' Man (Jim Croce)
05 Photographs and Memories (Jim Croce)
06 Walkin' Back to Georgia (Jim Croce)
07 Operator [That's Not the Way It Feels] (Jim Croce)
08 Time in a Bottle (Jim Croce)
09 Rapid Roy [The Stock Car Boy] (Jim Croce)
10 Box No. 10 (Jim Croce)
11 A Long Time Ago (Jim Croce)
12 Hey Tomorrow (Jim Croce)
13 A Good Time Man like Me Ain't Got No Business (Jim Croce)
14 Bad, Bad Leroy Brown (Jim Croce)
15 These Dreams (Jim Croce)
16 Speedball Tucker (Jim Croce)
17 Lover's Cross (Jim Croce)
18 Mississippi Lady (Jim Croce)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15102046/JimCr_1971_AcoustcDemos_atse.zip.html

Yet again, the album cover art was made by PJ of his "Albums I Wish Exist" blog.

The Jeff Beck Group - BBC Sessions (1967-1968)

In the late 1960s, the Jeff Beck Group was known for featuring Jeff Beck on lead guitar and Rod Stewart on lead vocals. This album consists of songs they played for the BBC (with one exception, which I will explain below). There have been so many official albums of BBC material by different artists over the decades that I'm surprised none of these performances have been officially released.

The sound quality is generally very good, but it's variable. Some of the BBC sessions were recorded very well, some not so well, and some weren't recorded at all and apparently have been lost forever. There also have been multiple versions of some songs floating around on bootlegs. I carefully checked all the versions I could find and picked the best ones. There were only a couple of songs performed more than once that made it to bootlegs. I didn't include any duplicates, because the extra versions weren't that different and has poorer sound quality.

One typical problem with BBC recordings is when the BBC DJs talked over the beginnings or endings of songs. Luckily, the DJs seemed to respect the musicianship of the band enough to not talk over the music much. There were only about three cases where I had to make edits to patch over the talking. Those have "[Edit]" in the song titles.

The song "Shapes of Things" was especially tricky. Sometimes, the BBC performances were broadcast overseas in versions without the DJ talking. That was the case here with "Shapes of Things." Furthermore, by chance, the overseas version was recorded with much better quality. But unfortunately, about a minute of Jeff Beck's guitar solo was edited out of that version. So what I did was I edited the guitar solo in from the lower quality version. There were brief pauses in the music at both ends of the cut out section, so it was easy to add back in. Although the quality for that section is noticeably lower, it isn't so bad since there aren't any vocals there.

As I mentioned above, all the songs here are from the BBC, except for one. That one is "Love Is Blue." Apparently, the band only played the song in concert once, even though they released it as a single. The recording of that song comes from a bootleg with excellent quality - except for the vocals, which are terrible. But since this song is an instrumental, that doesn't matter. Due to the great sound quality, and the lack of any audible crowd noise, I figure it fits in well with the other songs here.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Hi Ho Silver Lining (Jeff Beck Group)
02 [I Know] I'm Losing You [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
03 Let Me Love You (Jeff Beck Group)
04 Stone Crazy [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
05 Rock My Plimsoul [Rock Me Baby] (Jeff Beck Group)
06 The Sun Is Shining [This Morning] [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
07 Tallyman (Jeff Beck Group)
08 I Ain't Superstitious (Jeff Beck Group)
09 Beck's Bolero [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck Group)
10 You'll Never Get to Heaven [If You Break My Heart] (Jeff Beck Group)
11 You Shook Me (Jeff Beck Group)
12 Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever (Jeff Beck Group)
13 Love Is Blue [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck Group)
14 Shapes of Things [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
15 Sweet Little Angel (Jeff Beck Group)
16 Rice Pudding [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck Group)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693321/JEFFBCK1967-1968_BBSessons_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is a promotional photo from 1967. Once again, thank to PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog, who put the cover together for me.

Rod Stewart - Don't You Tell Nobody - Non-Album Tracks (1964-1969)

It used to be that Rod Stewart had a widespread, well-regarded musical reputation. His work with the Jeff Beck Group in the late 1960s was great, and his early 1970s solo and Faces albums were excellent. Then he got too slick and commercial for my tastes, except for a usual good hit song or two per album. So the only reason I've made this collection of his very early stuff is because it's good music, heavily influenced by blues and soul. So if you're into British 1960s rhythm and blues, forget all about that later day Rod Stewart stuff and enjoy this.

Stewart had a long slow start to his musical career. He began singing in public in 1961, if not earlier. In 1963, he saw soul great Otis Redding in concert and became fascinated by soul music. The problem was, for several years, he lacked a steady band or musical identity. As you can see from the credits here, he joined and left various bands while sometimes putting out solo records. Nothing fully clicked until 1967, when he became the leader singer for the Jeff Beck Group and had two hit albums. But even that was temporary since he and Jeff Beck clashed. It wasn't until 1969 when he released his first solo album and also joined the Faces where he really established himself as a major star.

This album contains his various experiments and efforts as he struggled to make a name for himself. There's at least twice the amount of material from this time period, but I cherry picked that for what I thought was the best stuff. Note that I didn't include anything from the Jeff Beck Group. They do have some rarities from the Rod Stewart era, but I'll deal with those at another time.

One song here, "In a Broken Dream," was a big hit, but in a very odd way. It was a song by the band Python Lee Jackson. But their lead vocalist felt he didn't have the right voice for the song, so Stewart was brought in to sing on it plus two other songs, in mid-1969, while he was between bands and working as a session musician. Stewart was paid by being given new seat covers for his car! The song was released in a single in 1970, but went ignored. Then, in 1972, after Stewart was a big star, it was released again. This time, it became a number three hit in Britain.

This album is 51 minutes long. That would have been a stretch for albums of that time, but it would have been possible.

UPDATE: On March 19, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file by removing two songs. Those songs ("Wonderful One" and "Can I Get a Witness") were done by Stewart when he was a part of the band the Steampacket. I got rid of them because I've posted an entire album of music by that band, with those two songs and many more sung by Stewart, so they're no longer needed here.

01 Don't You Tell Nobody (Rod Stewart & Long John Baldry & the Hoochie Coochie Men)
02 Just like I Treat You (Rod Stewart & Long John Baldry & the Hoochie Coochie Men)
03 Good Morning Little Schoolgirl (Rod Stewart)
04 I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town (Rod Stewart)
05 The Day Will Come (Rod Stewart)
06 Why Does It Go On (Rod Stewart)
07 I Just Got Some (Rod Stewart)
08 Come Home Baby (P. P Arnold & Rod Stewart)
09 Stone Crazy (Rod Stewart, Peter Green, Aynsley Dunbar & Jack Bruce)
10 I Could Feel the Whole World Turn Round (Rod Stewart & the Shotgun Express)
11 Little Miss Understood (Rod Stewart)
12 So Much to Say (Rod Stewart)
13 In a Broken Dream (Python Lee Jackson with Rod Stewart)
14 Cloud Nine (Python Lee Jackson with Rod Stewart)
15 How Blue Can You Get (Python Lee Jackson with Rod Stewart)
16 Diamond Joe (Rod Stewart & Quiet Melon)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697083/RODSTWRT1964-1969_DontYuTllNbody_atse.zip.html

Once again, the album cover was made by PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog. It dates to a TV performance he made to promote his first solo single in 1964.

Beck - Spiral Staircase - Non-Album Tracks (2010-2012)

It's been a long time since I last posted a stray tracks album from Beck. But I recently went through my entire Beck collection making audio fixes, so I hope to post a lot more of his stuff soon. Here's the next one in my long stray tracks series from him.

Beck is a prolific song writer. But, strangely, he didn't release any albums between 2008 and 2014, despite writing lots of songs in those years. This comes from the middle of those years. We don't know what lies in his private vaults, and there have been very little bootlegging of his studio material from this time period. So what we're left with are songs he did for various projects plus rarities played in concert. Many of the songs here are from movie soundtracks and various artists collections. Only one, "Ah Melody," is from a concert bootleg.

A few of the songs have been heavily edited, so they need some special explanation. The first two songs are rare cases of bootlegged studio material. Beck did a number of original songs for the "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" movie, but these two didn't get included in the movie or the soundtrack. Both of them were very short, only about a minute long. I repeated some sections to make them long enough to come across as proper songs. Now, they're about two minutes long each.

"Silk Pillow" is a song that was a collaboration between Beck and Childish Gambino (a.k.a. Donald Glover). I removed a big chunk of the song in the middle that was pretty much all a Childish Gambino rap. I simply didn't like it that much, so this is very much a personal preference thing. 

In a similar way, Beck's song "NYC 73 - 78" is over 20 freakin' minutes long. I found that to be way, way too long, since it's not filled with instrumental solos or anything like that, mostly just lots of repetition. So I drastically cut it down to less than five minutes, the length of a normal song.

The songs "Cities" and "Spiral Staircase" present a highly unusual case. Both these songs, plus one more, "Touch the People" were recorded by Beck for the video game "Sound Shapes." They've never been released in any audio format, but one can hear them through the video game. However, there's a twist: the songs are broken into various pieces, and in the game you can put them together in any way you like to create your own versions of these songs. There's no definitive right version. 

I simply didn't like the song "Touch the People," which is a generic instrumental, so I didn't include that one. I found a mix of "Cities" that someone else did that I liked a lot, so I used that. (It was a long time ago, so I've lost track of whose version it was.) For "Spiral Staircase" though, I didn't find any version that I thought really nailed it. I didn't have the video game, but I took two different versions of the song that I found on YouTube and used audio editing software to make a version that worked for me.

By the way, the songs "Stormbringer," "Ah Melody," "Michelangelo Antonioni," and "Corrina, Corrina" are cover versions. "Michelangelo Antonioni" is by Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso, and his version is in Portuguese. Beck's version is very different in that the lyrics are in English. But I don't know if it's a straight translation or Beck's own lyrics or what.

The three bonus tracks are merely bonus tracks due to sound quality issues. "Nefertiti" and "Teeny Weeny Bobbie" as well as "Ah Melody" are Serge Gainsbourg songs that Beck played at a tribute concert. All three come from the same source, but for some reason I found the sound quality of "Ah Melody" good enough for the album, but the other two only good enough for bonus track status. For these songs, Beck generally sung in French.

01 Disgusting Rainbow [Edit] (Beck)
02 Gasoline Eyes [Edit] (Beck)
03 Stormbringer (Beck)
04 Iron Horse (Beck)
05 Curfew (Beck)
06 Ah Melody (Beck)
07 Looking for a Sign (Beck)
08 Silk Pillow [Edit] (Beck & Childish Gambino)
09 Cities (Beck)
10 Spiral Staircase (Beck)
11 Michelangelo Antonioni (Beck)
12 Corrina, Corrina (Beck)
13 NYC 73 - 78 [Edit] (Beck)

Nefertiti (Beck)
Pocahontas (Beck with Neil Young)
Teenie Weenie Boppie (Beck)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15127434/BeckH_2010-2012_SpirlStaircase_atse.zip.html

Once again, I was helped by PJ of the "Albums I Wish Existed" blog to make the album cover. Beck often has artistic covers instead of a photo of himself, so I decided to go for a literal interpretation of the "Spiral Staircase" album title. The art is by Barbara Berney. PJ added the text.

Ray Davies - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-27-2010

In 2009, Ray Davies, the lead singer and main songwriter for the Kinks, released an album called "The Kinks Choral Collection." As you can guess from the title, he did Kinks songs with a full-sized choir. 

This concert is from a year after the release of that studio album, but he kept going with the choir concept. As you can see from the album cover, he played the massive Glastonbury Festival with a full-sized choir. (The cover only shows a part of the choir.)

One thing that's really great about this concert is the sound quality. I'm a big Kinks fan, and I've taken a close look at the Ray Davies solo concert bootlegs out there. Very few are soundboards or have soundboard level quality, but this one does, because it was professionally recorded and filmed for a webcast by the BBC.

The other thing that makes this stand out, of course, is the use of the choir. He only used a choir for that 2009 album and the subsequent tour. They do add something if you're looking for different takes on the usual big Kinks songs. 

This concert recording is 57 minutes long. I believe I'm missing two songs played near the start of the concert, "I Need You" and "I'm Not like Everybody Else." If you have those, please let me know so I can add them in.

UPDATE: On February 11, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is the same, but I changed the name of the album to "BBC Sessions, Volume 3" after finding a BBC concert from 2007 that I'd missed.

01 Dedicated Follower of Fashion (Ray Davies)
02 talk (Ray Davies)
03 Till the End of the Day (Ray Davies)
04 After the Fall (Ray Davies)
05 talk (Ray Davies)
06 Sunny Afternoon (Ray Davies)
07 Instrumental (Ray Davies)
08 talk (Ray Davies)
09 You Really Got Me (Ray Davies)
10 talk (Ray Davies)
11 Shangri-La (Ray Davies)
12 talk (Ray Davies)
13 Victoria (Ray Davies)
14 talk (Ray Davies)
15 See My Friends (Ray Davies)
16 talk (Ray Davies)
17 Working Man's Cafe (Ray Davies)
18 talk (Ray Davies)
19 Johnny Thunder (Ray Davies)
20 talk (Ray Davies)
21 Lola (Ray Davies)
22 talk (Ray Davies)
23 Waterloo Sunset (Ray Davies)
24 Days (Ray Davies)
25 All Day and All of the Night (Ray Davies)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rPQmgbcv

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/wvBC9jOg10jNsWT/file

I took a screenshot from a YouTube video of the exact concert in question. It was rather low-res, so in February 2025, I improved it somewhat thanks to the Krea AI program.

The Monkees - Pleasant Valley Monday - Live (1986-2020) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's something special for you. It's the first guest post for this blog. It was put together by a friend named Mike Solof, who has recently been helping me behind the scenes with this blog.

Mike has written a thorough explanation about what he did in a PDF file, which is included in the download file. I recommend you read that. If you want to know why the title is "Pleasant Valley Monday" instead of "Pleasant Valley Sunday," you'll have to read the PDF to find out.

But in summary, the Monkees weren't known for their live shows in the 1960s, due to loudly screaming fans and other sound and performance issues. They did much better during occasional reunion concerts from 1986 to 2020. But it was very rare for all four Monkees to get together and play a full set of songs. So Mike has put together a kind of ultimate dream concert that lasts 2 hours and 15 minutes and contains every song of theirs you'd want to hear. 

Mike has pulled out all the stops to perfect this concert. He's only used performances of the best sound quality, with many of them taken from official live albums that are exceedingly rare, only sold at concerts and now out of print. In compiling this, he was left with a bunch of songs that were interesting but of slightly lower sound quality. So he's compiled those into a separate bonus zip file that's 37 minutes long and a de facto extra live album.

Furthermore, he spent some time adding crowd noise at the end of each song when necessary, to help make it sound live one seamless concert recording. But sound editing programs always seem to leave little microgaps between songs, and he found that annoying. So he's also created a version with all the songs merged into one, in order to eliminate those little gaps and give you a "you are there" uninterrupted concert experience.

Thus, there are actually three zip downloads here. This is the first one, the main concert, with each song a separate track. Note that after each song title, you'll find listed in brackets which of the original four Monkees took part in that particular performance.

01 NBC 1966 Logo Intro (Monkees)
02 [Theme From] The Monkees (Monkees [Michael, Micky, Peter & Davy])
03 Last Train to Clarksville (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
04 A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
05 talk (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
06 Long Title [Do I Have to Do This All Over Again] (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
07 Mary, Mary (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
08 talk (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
09 For Pete’s Sake (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
10 Look Out [Here Comes Tomorrow] (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
11 Door into Summer (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
12 You Just May Be the One (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
13 The Girl I Knew Somewhere (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
14 She (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
15 talk (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
16 Your Aunty Grizelda (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
17 Shades of Grey (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
18 St. Matthew (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
19 As We Go Along (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
20 talk (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
21 I Wanna Be Free (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
22 [I'll] Love You Forever (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
23 talk (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
24 Papa Gene's Blues (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
25 Randy Scouse Git (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
26 Nine Times Blue (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
27 I'll Spend My Life with You (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
28 Me and Magdalena (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
29 Daydream Believer (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
30 MGBGT (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
31 No Time (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
32 Valerie (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
33 She Hangs Out (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
34 Circle Sky (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
35 I'm a Believer (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
36 talk (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
37 It's Nice to Be with You (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
38 Girl (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
39 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
40 Different Drum (Monkees [Michael])
41 Porpoise Song [Theme from 'Head'] (Monkees [Micky Dolenz, Circe Link & Christian Nesmith])
42 Good Morning, Good Morning (Monkees [Micky Dolenz, Circe Link & Christian Nesmith])
43 Cuddly Toy (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
44 That Was Then, This Is Now (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
45 Sweet Young Thing (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
46 [I’m Not Your] Stepping Stone (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
47 Listen to the Band (Monkees [Michael & Micky])
48 The Grand Ennui (Monkees [Michael])
49 talk (Monkees [Michael, Micky & Peter])
50 Tapioca Tundra (Monkees [Michael, Micky & Peter])
51 Pleasant Valley Sunday (Monkees [Michael & Micky with Peter & Davy on video])
01 Intro to You Bring the Summer (Monkees [Micky & Peter])
02 You Bring the Summer (Monkees [Micky & Peter])
03 She Makes Me Laugh (Monkees [Micky & Peter])
04 Let's Dance On (Monkees [Micky & Peter])
05 Saturday's Child (Monkees [Micky & Peter])
06 Steam Engine (Monkees [Michael, Micky & Peter])
07 Good Clean Fun (Monkees [Mike & Micky])
08 Papa Gene's Blues (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
09 Take a Giant Step (Monkees [Peter & Micky])
10 Sometime in the Morning (Monkees [Micky])
11 Intro to Shades of Grey (Monkees [Michael, Micky & Peter with Davy on Video])
12 Shades of Grey (Monkees [Michael, Micky & Peter with Davy on Video])
13 Porpoise Song [Theme from 'Head'] (Monkees [Micky, Peter & Davy])
14 We Wish You a Merry Christmas - Jingle Bell Rock - I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - Happy Xmas [War Is Over] (Monkees [Micky & Peter])

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WvRJE17y

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/6m8svTMqT5Vt4GW/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/cQeqJ

For the second zip file, here is the exact same concert, except all the mp3s have been merged into one in order to eliminate the microgaps between songs:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QS9HcCY6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/qm6pX4uPLEVWo4r/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/fXXuZ

Thanks again to Mike for this nice album. I assisted him here and there, but the vast majority of the effort was his. Plus, he came up with this unusual idea, and it's something I wouldn't have thought of or done without him.

Regarding the album cover, Mike selected the photo, which is a promo photo from 1996. I added the text.

Beck - Another Foot in the Grave - Non-Album Tracks (1994)

Before I talk about this album, check out my previous post about volume balance issues. In short, I was sloppy about volume balance from song to song with the albums I posted in the first year or so of this blog, and I'm belatedly trying to fix that. For starters, I just reuploaded all the Beck albums I've ever posted here to improve volume balance. So if you're a Beck fan, I suggest you redownload those.

I've been torn about posting this album, because there's so little for me to do. In 1994, Beck released the album "One Foot in the Grave." It was mostly acoustic, though it was assisted by a small band on some songs. In 2009, the album was released with bonus tracks - lots of bonus tracks. in fact, there were so many extra songs added, all recorded in 1994, that it doubled the album length, from 37 minutes to 73 minutes. 

So all I've done here is package all those bonus tracks into their own album, in the exact same order as on the official 2009 release. There seemed to be only one logical name to give this. Since the first album was "One Foot in the Grave," this has to be "Another Foot in the Grave." All those songs are of the same acoustic bent. In my opinion, 73 minutes of that is too much in one sitting. It's better to split this into two albums.

For some reason, it seems Beck didn't like these songs as much as those on the original "One Foot in the Grave." With a few exceptions, he's hardly ever played any of them live. But in my opinion, "Another Foot" is just as good as "One Foot, "or at least close to it. At the time, Beck was on a creative hot streak and was simply writing way more songs than he knew what to do with, so some got lost in the shuffle.

By the way, confusingly, the song "One Foot in the Grave" did not appear on the album "One Foot in the Grave." Instead, it was a track on another 1994 album he did, "Stereopathic Soul Manure." But that song was included also as one of the 2009 bonus tracks, so you'll find it here. 

Also, none of the songs here were released at the time, as far as I can tell, except for three: "It's All in Your Mind," "Feather in Your Cap," and "Whiskey Can Can." The first one was the A-side and the other two were the B-sides to an obscure single he released in 1995. He then did a different version of "It's All in Your Mind" for his 2002 album "Sea Change." A couple other songs here were also done by him in different versions of other releases, such as "Leave Me on the Moon" and "I Get Lonesome."

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 It's All in Your Mind (Beck)
02 Whiskey Can Can (Beck)
03 Last Night I Traded My Soul's Innermost (Beck)
04 Mattress (Beck)
05 Leave Me on the Moon (Beck)
06 Woe on Me (Beck)
07 Teenage Wastebasket [Electric Version] (Beck)
08 Your Love Is Weird (Beck)
09 Favorite Nerve (Beck)
10 Piss on the Door (Beck)
11 Close to God (Beck)
12 Sweet Satan (Beck)
13 Burning Boyfriend [Beck Will Die] (Beck)
14 Black Lake Morning [Instrumental] (Beck)
15 Feather in Your Cap (Beck)
16 One Foot in the Grave (Beck)
17 Teenage Wastebasket [Acoustic Version] (Beck)
18 I Get Lonesome [Alternate Version] (Beck)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15124575/BeckH_1994e_AnothrFootintheGrave_atse.zip.html

The gatefold artwork for "One Foot in the Grave" has some photos of Beck's band members, as well as a second one of Beck. I selected that second photo as the cover. PJ of the "Albums I Wish Existed" blog did a really excellent job on the cover, in my opinion. He found the exact same font, font color, and font design, to make this look as good as I could have imagined it. Thanks again, PJ!

Volume Balance (and Beck)

I've never written about it before at this blog, but one issue with posting albums here that has been a constant bother for me is volume balance. What I mean is, some songs are mixed much louder than others, so when I put together an album from different sources, I need to do something about that to make them sound good together. 

Unfortunately, for the past few decades, there has been a growing "loudness war," where songs are mixed to be louder and louder, in order to get more attention on the radio and on iTunes playlists and such. This has led to a problem known as "brickwalling," where if you look at the sound profile of a song, it can look like one solid block, much like a brick wall. The result is that much of the subtlety in the music is lost, such as the contrast between the loud and quiet parts of the songs.

I hate brickwalling, and I've tried my best to combat it. To help with that, I've used a program called "mp3gain." If you run it on some songs, it attempts to detect songs that are too loud or too quiet and set them at a standard volume. But I've discovered over time that it's from perfect. In can crudely get the songs in the right ballpark, but to really get them right I have to check each sound profile and make further adjustments. It's as much an art as a science. For instance, what if you have one song that has a consistent volume all the way through, compared to another song that's mostly quiet but has a couple of very loud sections? The same maximum volume doesn't work well if you apply it the same to both.

The differences caused by the "loudness war" can be dramatic. A song that is brickwalled can be two or three times as loud as one that is not. So if you listen to my albums, and then some other albums, mine may be on the quiet side. But there would be a problem like that no matter what I do, because there's such inconsistency and variability in the loudness from album to album these days. I refuse to fall into the loudness war trap by making things extra loud, and have stuck to the recommended average volume suggested by mp3gain. I suggest you use a volume normalizer program like mp3gain to bring the brickwalled albums in your music collection down to more reasonable and consistent levels.

Posting albums on this blog has been a learning experience for me. When I started out over two years ago, I pretty much entirely relied on the program mp3gain for the volume adjustments. Now, when I listen to some of the albums I posted in the first year or so of this blog, sometimes I'm embarrassed by how inconsistent the volume levels can be from song to song. So in the last week or so, I've started trying to fix those albums posted in the first year. 

It's going to be a long and time consuming task, since I often have to look at the sound profile of every single song. If anyone knows of any tools to help with this other than mp3gain, please let me know! I've started out by redoing ALL of the albums by Beck that I've posted here. Most of those were posted in the first year, and most of them needed volume balance work. I just redid all the links today, so I invite you to redownload those, if you care about this volume balance issue. I believe I updated 13 of his albums.

If and when I update the links for other major artists because of volume balance, I'll let you know. Also, if anyone wants to help me fix the volume levels of the albums I've posted, I sure would appreciate it. Then I could concentrate all my focus here on posting more new music instead.

Sweetwater - Woodstock Festival, Max Yasgur's Farm, Bethel, NY, 8-15-1969

Last week, I posted a couple of performances from the famous 1969 Woodstock concert that otherwise are not widely available. I have a few more of those to post, and here's the next one.

Chances are you're never heard of Sweetwater. Here's their Wikipedia entry if you want to know more:

Sweetwater (band) - Wikipedia

Let me give you a quick summary. The band put out their debut album in 1968. They were led by female vocalist Nancy Nivens. Many people likened them to the Jefferson Airplane, with Nivens sounding a bit like Grace Slick. Wikipedia calls their style "psychedelic folk." 

Their appearance at Woodstock was their big break. They started to get some TV appearances, and it seemed like they were going to become a major band. But then, just a few months after Woodstock, Nivens was severely injured when a car that was hit by a drunk driver. She was in a coma for ten days and she almost died. Her vocal chords were damaged when she had a tracheotomy surgery to help save her life. Afterwards, she could still sing, but she lost much of her vocal range and things were never the same. She only sang a few songs on their next album. Without Nivens' vocals, the band struggled and broke up a couple of years later.

In my opinion, this tragic series of events explains why Sweetwater isn't better known. But they were a very good band, and luckily we have an excellent recording of them at their full power at Woodstock. So if you like the music of that era and want to try something new, given this a listen, or their debut album (which is simply called "Sweetwater").

Sweetwater was one of the first full band to play at Woodstock. (Richie Havens and a couple of folk musicians came before them.) As a result, although this is a soundboard recording, I think the recorders were still working some kinks out. I had to make some adjustments that I didn't have to make for other artists who appeared later in the festival. One thing is that the audience applause was very quiet. So I boosted that somewhat when I could.

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 talk (Sweetwater)
02 Motherless Child (Sweetwater)
03 talk (Sweetwater)
04 Look Out (Sweetwater)
05 talk (Sweetwater)
06 For Pete's Sake (Sweetwater)
07 talk (Sweetwater)
08 Day Song (Sweetwater)
09 talk (Sweetwater)
10 What's Wrong (Sweetwater)
11 talk (Sweetwater)
12 My Crystal Spider (Sweetwater)
13 Two Worlds (Sweetwater)
14 talk (Sweetwater)
15 Why Oh Why (Sweetwater)
16 Let the Sunshine In (Sweetwater)
17 Oh Happy Day (Sweetwater)
18 talk (Sweetwater)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15175659/Sweetwtr_1969_WoodstckFestivlMaxYasgursFarmBethlNY__8-15-1969_atse.zip.html

The album cover is another one I made before my recent computer troubles. The photo is less than ideal, but I used it because it's from their Woodstock performance. If anyone has a better one, please let me know. Nancy Nivens is the one female shown.

Norah Jones - Lady Secret - Non-Album Tracks (2016-2017)

I've been so busy posting Norah Jones's 2020 home concert material that I've fallen behind posting her earlier material. So here's another one of her stray tracks albums. Hopefully by now I've posted so much of her music that I don't have to keep repeating myself that her non-album material is more varied and interesting, in my opinion, so you might like this even if you aren't a big fan of her well-known hits.

The song "Lady Secret" is a great example of why her stray tracks are more varied and interesting than her album material. I love her willingness to try just about anything. This is a comedic song done as part of a trio. The words are very funny, and the video is great too. (Search for it on YouTube.)

Another example of her variety here is that she does a solo acoustic guitar version of "It's Raining Tacos," a novelty song by Parry Gripp. I have no idea why she did that song, of all songs, but it probably had something to do with the fact that she had some young kids at the time. It's a good example of how she'll try all sorts of things if not on album, whereas she plays it safe with what she puts on her albums.

Four of the songs here are officially unreleased (not counting the bonus tracks). But I'm maintaining a high level of sound quality, so those four sound just fine. As for the two bonus tracks, "You Don't Know How It Feels" is fairly rough, but I wanted to include it as a bonus track since it's such a great Tom Petty song. "Hickory Wind" sounds better, but just barely missed the cut.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Time to Move On (Norah Jones with Kristen Wiig)
02 Move Along (Candles with Norah Jones)
03 You Are So Beautiful (Charles Lloyd & the Marvels with Norah Jones)
04 It's Raining Tacos (Norah Jones)
05 It's Not Christmas 'Till You Come Home (Norah Jones)
06 Unchained Melody (Norah Jones)
07 Bad Wind Blowing (Jack Grace & Norah Jones)
08 Lady Secret (Norah Jones, Sarah Oda & Tarriona Tank Ball)
09 Ripple (Norah Jones)
10 Love Has No Pride (Tedeschi Trucks Band & Norah Jones)
11 Black Hole Sun (Norah Jones)

Hickory Wind (Norah Jones & Cory Chisel)
You Don't Know How It Feels (Norah Jones with Kristen Wiig)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15848911/NorahJ_2016-2017_LadySecrt_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from the Petty Fest in Los Angeles in 2016. The first song and one of the bonus tracks were played at that concert. The photo was drenched in red light, and I thought that looked cool,so I used it without making any changes.

John Denver - The Wise Owl Coffeehouse, Cincinnati, OH, 5-10-1969

This is the third and final of the 1969 solo acoustic concerts I'm posting. If you're going to listen to just one, you might want to check out this one, because at an hour and forty minutes it's the longest of the bunch by half an hour.

I'm already written what these are about in the blog posts for the two previous concerts in this series. I'm summarize very briefly here: these concerts stand out for their remarkable sound quality, since they're excellent soundboard bootlegs. All but three of the songs are covers.

I find this to be an interesting peek at someone who was just another little known folk singer at the time, but who would soon become a household name. When this concert took place he'd just signed the record contract for his first solo album. It wouldn't be until 1971 when he had his first hit with the number one hit "Take Me Home, Country Roads." However, one could already hear his exceptional talent and charisma in this concert. And although there are only three original songs here, one of them is "Leaving on a Jet Plane," which would be a number one hit for Peter, Paul and Mary later in 1969.

Even though this concert is an hour and forty minutes long, it's not the whole thing. As with the other two 1969 concert recordings, the person who recorded it has only made some of the songs available to the public. There are 24 songs here, but setlist.fm lists 12 more songs played that evening.

One interesting aspect of the concert is how much he was into the Beatles. Of course, it probably was hard to find someone who didn't enjoy the Beatles in 1969. But in addition to the three Beatles songs on this recording, he played four more: "Blackbird," "Hey Jude," "Here, There and Everywhere," and "Lady Madonna." I'm sure that was unusual for a folk singer in that era, or any era. Perhaps his love of the Beatles helps explain his own later success as a songwriter.

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

01 Ann - Billy Ed Wheeler / Kingston Trio
02 It's a Sin to Tell a Lie - Billy Mayhew
03 Today - New Christy Minstrels
04 The Wherefore and the Why - Gordon Lightfoot
05 Everybody's Talkin' - Fred Neil
06 The Bells of Rhymney - Pete Seeger
07 [You Dun Stomped] My Heart - Mason Williams
08 Catch Another Butterfly - Mike Williams
09 Rhymes and Reasons - John Denver
10 What's That I Hear - Phil Ochs
11 Leaving on a Jet Plane - John Denver
12 You Certainly Have Got a Pretty Fantastic Bod - Michael Peter Smith
13 When I'm 64 - Beatles
14 Civil War Trilogy- First Battalion - Yes I See - Two Brothers - Bob Gibson
15 Business Goes on as Usual - Chad Mitchell Trio
16 What a Friend We Have in Congress - Pete Seeger
17 Games People Play - Joe South
18 Eleanor Rigby - Beatles
19 But You Know I Love You - Mike Settle and Pierre Delanoe
20 Bookends - Simon & Garfunkel
21 Old Folks - Jacques Brel
22 Amsterdam - Jacques Brel
23 In My Life - Beatles
24 Today Is the First Day of the Rest of My Life - John Denver

Here's the usual song list:

01 talk (John Denver)
02 Ann (John Denver)
03 It's a Sin to Tell a Lie (John Denver)
04 Today (John Denver)
05 talk (John Denver)
06 The Wherefore and the Why (John Denver)
07 Everybody's Talkin' (John Denver)
08 The Bells of Rhymney (John Denver)
09 [You Dun Stomped] My Heart (John Denver)
10 talk (John Denver)
11 Catch Another Butterfly (John Denver)
12 talk (John Denver)
13 Rhymes and Reasons (John Denver)
14 What's That I Hear (John Denver)
15 Leaving on a Jet Plane (John Denver)
16 You Certainly Have Got a Pretty Fantastic Bod (John Denver)
17 talk (John Denver)
18 When I'm 64 (John Denver)
19 talk (John Denver)
20 Civil War Trilogy- First Battalion - Yes I See - Two Brothers (John Denver)
21 Business Goes on as Usual (John Denver)
22 talk (John Denver)
23 What a Friend We Have in Congress (John Denver)
24 Games People Play (John Denver)
25 Eleanor Rigby (John Denver)
26 talk (John Denver)
27 But You Know I Love You (John Denver)
28 Bookends (John Denver)
29 talk (John Denver)
30 Old Folks (John Denver)
31 talk (John Denver)
32 Amsterdam (John Denver)
33 talk (John Denver)
34 In My Life (John Denver)
35 talk (John Denver)
36 Today Is the First Day of the Rest of My Life (John Denver)
37 talk (John Denver)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Q2QsvxTH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/y3SkVXt87ewKcfc/file

PJ of the "Albums I Wish Existed" blog helped me with the album cover yet again. Like the other two in this series, there don't seem to be any good color photos of him in concert in 1969, so this one dates to 1970. In February 2025, I upgraded the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Beck - Angel Orensanz Centre, New York City, 10-22-2006

Beck has yet to release an official live album, which is a shame because he's a great live performer. His full band concerts are a fun party. But when it comes to live recordings, I prefer his acoustic concerts. I'm partial to acoustic music in general. But in his case, hearing his songs stripped down can be revelatory. For this concert, Beck had a handful of other musicians backing him, but they were there to add guitar solos and the like while keeping things in acoustic mode.

Unfortunately when it comes to Beck's concerts, there are very few soundboard or radio/webcast broadcast bootlegs. The few like that tend to be the full band style shows. This concert is an audience bootleg. But that's fine, because the sound quality is as good as many soundboards. Plus, he played for just over an hour and a half, with an interesting set list. Overall, I would put this in my top three best acoustic-mode concert recordings from him.

Most of the songs Beck played were originals. But he did a handful of covers: "Winter Is Blue" by Vashti Bunyan, "No Expectations" by the Rolling Stones, "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" by the Korgis, "Stormbringer" by John Martyn, and "You're Running Wild" by Buddy Miller. I put three of those on one of my stray tracks albums, the one I called "Timebomb."

As I often do, I boosted the volume of his banter between songs, and made those talking bits separate tracks. Since this is an audience bootleg, I also had to lower the volume of the audience clapping sometimes. But other than that, I didn't have any problems.

01 Black Tambourine (Beck)
02 talk (Beck)
03 Scarecrow (Beck)
04 talk (Beck)
05 No Complaints (Beck)
06 talk (Beck)
07 Lost Cause (Beck)
08 talk (Beck)
09 End of the Day (Beck)
10 talk (Beck)
11 Movie Theme (Beck)
12 talk (Beck)
13 We Dance Alone (Beck)
14 Think I'm in Love (Beck)
15 talk (Beck)
16 Winter Is Blue (Beck)
17 Rowboat (Beck)
18 talk (Beck)
19 Guess I'm Doing Fine (Beck)
20 No Expectations (Beck)
21 talk (Beck)
22 Cellphone's Dead (Beck)
23 Strange Apparition (Beck)
24 talk (Beck)
25 Cold Brains (Beck)
26 talk (Beck)
27 Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime (Beck)
28 Sissyneck (Beck)
29 talk (Beck)
30 Where It's At (Beck)
31 talk (Beck)
32 Stormbringer (Beck)
33 talk (Beck)
34 The Golden Age (Beck)
35 Clap Hands - One Foot in the Grave - Emergency Exit (Beck)
36 talk (Beck)
37 You're Running Wild (Beck)
38 Girl (Beck)
39 Nausea (Beck)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pwtZvGUy

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/D58LTpwiKYxfBBg/file

UPDATE: On September 28, 2024, I replaced the cover photo. I happened to come across another photo from this exact concert that is less blurry than the previous one. It shows Beck and his band members playing glasses and other objects while supposedly eating a meal on stage.

Steely Dan - Rainbow Theatre, London, Britain, 5-20-1974

In the 1970s, Steely Dan was known as a band that liked to perfect their songs in the studio. After just a couple years of success, they stopped touring altogether so they could focus entirely on their studio work. But they actually were a cracking live band for the limited time they played concerts. This concert took place during their last tour in the 1970s. 

I'm not an expert on the band, but I've looked around and it seems to me this is their best concert recording, mostly due to sound quality. If you want just one Steely Dan live album, I recommend this one. This even beats the one officially released live album of the time period, "La La Land." That was released in 2019. But they picked a show that had some mixing problems. The sound quality on this is arguably better, even though it's a bootleg, and this concert was 25 minutes longer (at an hour and 22 minutes).

Steely Dan are known as the duo of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. But at the time of this concert, they had a full crack band with the likes of Danny Dias, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, Jim Hodder, Jeff Percaro, and Michael McDonald. (By the way, that's the same Michael McDonald who would become the star lead vocalist for the Doobie Brothers, but here he just assisted on keyboards and backing vocals without his distinctive gruff vocal sound.)

In terms of sound quality, this soundboard sounded so good that I didn't have to do much. But I did boost the volume of the banter between songs, and well as cutting out some of the dead air, such as tuning and noodling. There wasn't much to cut though.

By the way, the last song, "This All Too Mobile Home," was never attempted in the studio. It remains officially unreleased, except for the version on the above-mentioned "La La Land" live album.

01 talk (Steely Dan)
02 Bodhisattva (Steely Dan)
03 talk (Steely Dan)
04 The Boston Rag (Steely Dan)
05 talk (Steely Dan)
06 Do It Again (Steely Dan)
07 talk (Steely Dan)
08 Brooklyn [Owes the Charmer Under Me] (Steely Dan)
09 talk (Steely Dan)
10 King of the World (Steely Dan)
11 talk (Steely Dan)
12 Rikki, Don't Lose that Number (Steely Dan)
13 talk (Steely Dan)
14 Pretzel Logic (Steely Dan)
15 talk (Steely Dan)
16 My Old School (Steely Dan)
17 Dirty Work (Steely Dan)
18 Your Gold Teeth II [Instrumental] (Steely Dan)
19 Reelin' in the Years (Steely Dan)
20 talk (Steely Dan)
21 Show Biz Kids (Steely Dan)
22 talk (Steely Dan)
23 This All Too Mobile Home (Steely Dan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700497/STELYDN1974_RanbwThetreLondnBrtin__5-20-1974_atse.zip.html

PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog once again helped make the album cover. While the photo is a bit dark and murky, it comes from the exact concert in question. 

The Petersens - Christmas Songs - Home Concerts, Branson, MO, 2019-2020

As I write this, it's Christmas Eve, and here is a very Christmas-y album. It's a little late for the season, but hopefully still in time for the Christmas. 

I waited until this last minute to post this because this year and last year the Petersens have posted some Christmas songs in the weeks leading up to the holiday, and last year they actually posted a song on Christmas Day. if there are one or more late arrivals this year, I'll update this album accordingly.

I've posted a couple of albums by the Petersens already. They're a family band that does a wide variety of songs with an acoustic bluegrass feel. Normally, I wouldn't be into this type of music, but they've come out of nowhere to have songs with millions of hits on YouTube, and for good reason. They have a pleasing style, and you don't have to be a serious bluegrass fan to enjoy their music.

This is a very uncharacteristic album for me to post. These are Christmas songs, many with a overt Christian theme, done in a bluegrass style, yet I'm normally not into bluegrass, Christmas music, or Christian music. But, like I said, they have a pleasing style, and I definitely do enjoy the acoustic focus. If I'm going to put on a Christmas album, I'd rather be this "down home" kind than the usual and overproduced slick type with drums and strings.

Note that, this year, the Petersens have released a Christmas album called "Christmas with the Petersens." It has many of the same songs, but a few here aren't on that, and vice versa. So if you really like this, I suggest you pick that up. All the performances here are from the band's YouTube videos, which are different performances than the ones on their album.

By the way, I don't think the song "I Am the Man, Thomas" is a Christmas song, per se. But it is a song about Jesus, so I figured it was close enough for horseshoes. As I said above, normally I'm not into Christian themed music, but I liked that song enough to want to include it here.

01 What Child Is This (Petersens)
02 O Come, O Come, Emmanuel - Come Thou Long Expected Jesus (Petersens)
03 Silent Night (Petersens)
04 I Am the Man, Thomas (Petersens)
05 Christmas Time's A-Comin' (Petersens)
06 God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Petersens)
07 Santa Train - Sleigh Ride (Petersens)
08 I'll Be Home for Christmas (Petersens)
09 Mele Kalikimaka (Petersens)
10 Joy to the World (Petersens)
11 I Heard the Bells (Petersens)
12 Go Tell It on the Mountain (Petersens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15271274/TPetersns_2019-2020_ChrstmsSongsHmeConcrtsBransnMO__2019-2020_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, once again I relied on the help of PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog while I continue to resolve my computer problems. I took a screenshot of the band in Christmas sweaters from one of their YouTube videos. Then I asked PJ to make a cover as Christmas-y as possible. He came through with exactly the sort of cover I was looking for, so a big thanks to PJ. :)

Note that while the four Petersen siblings are shown, a couple of the band members are not. Both the bass player and lead guitarist didn't play on this particular song, so they weren't included in the video. But I picked this image because it was the most overtly Christmas-y one I found.

John Denver - The Nowhere Coffeehouse, Cincinnati, OH, 5-9-1969

A couple of days ago, I posted a 1969 John Denver concert, recorded at the Bandersnatch Coffeehouse near Cincinnati, Ohio. It's the first of three such concerts from him that I'm posting. All three are similar in that he plays solo acoustic, he mostly plays cover songs, and the recordings are soundboard bootlegs from the Cincinnati area that have awesome sound quality for their era. As I said with that previous post, this is for anyone who enjoys 1960s folk music and not just John Denver fans, since virtually none of his well-known songs are played here.

That's just as much the case for this concert. Only five of the 16 songs here are Denver originals. Of those, only one, "For Baby (For Bobbie)" is a well known song that appears on some of his "best of" albums. Read the write up for the previous concert for a full explanation about all three of these concerts and how they came to be recorded so well. But suffice to say that all three took place before he even released his first solo album, so he was a virtual musical unknown at the time.

Again, my write-up for the previous (Bandersnatch Coffeehouse) concert explains it in detail, but the songs here mostly come from a high quality bootleg, while further songs and banter come from a YouTube video that is also high quality though a bit lower due to YouTube sound quality limitations. I used an accurate set list from setlist.fm to put the banter and songs in their correct order as much as possible. 

It was a long concert, and the hour and one minute recording here is less than half of the total performance that night. But don't worry too much about the missing songs, because virtually all the ones that didn't get included here got included on one of the other two 1969 concert bootlegs. The person who released selected songs generally only released one performance of each song, though there are a few duplicates, but very few. For instance, I believe "Circus" is the only song to appear here and at the previously posted concert at the Bandersnatch.

Unfortunately, I surmise Denver talked between most every song, but some of that is missing too. However, most of the songs here do have banter before them. Tracks 8 and 9 are two talking tracks in a row, because one comes from one source (the YouTube one) and is commentary about the previous song, and the next is from a different source and is commentary about the next song. You can probably notice the difference in quality with the two of them juxtaposed like that.

The third concert in this series will be posted here soon. Although the two different sources have appeared here and there on the Internet, I believe this is the first time they've been combined together and put in the proper song order for each concert.

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

01 That's the Way It's Gonna Be - Phil Ochs
02 Deal with the Ladies - John Denver
03 Two Little Boys - Theodore Morse & Edward Madden / Rolf Harris
04 Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream - Ed McCurdy
05 Circus - John Denver
06 Mr. Bojangles - Jerry Jeff Walker / Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
07 Farewell Party - Bob Gibson
08 Both Sides Now - Joni Mitchell
09 My God, I Appreciate Your Bod - Michael Peter Smith
10 Yellow Cat - Steve Fromholz
11 California Dreamin' - Mamas & the Papas
12 Lady Madonna - Beatles
13 For Baby [For Bobbie] - John Denver
14 Daydream - John Denver
15 The Last Thing on My Mind - Tom Paxton
16 I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free - John Denver

Here's the usual song list:

01 talk (John Denver)
02 That's the Way It's Gonna Be (John Denver)
03 talk (John Denver)
04 Deal with the Ladies (John Denver)
05 talk (John Denver)
06 Two Little Boys (John Denver)
07 Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream (John Denver)
08 talk (John Denver)
09 talk (John Denver)
10 Circus (John Denver)
11 talk (John Denver)
12 Mr. Bojangles (John Denver)
13 Farewell Party (John Denver)
14 Both Sides Now (John Denver)
15 My God, I Appreciate Your Bod (John Denver)
16 talk (John Denver)
17 My God, I Appreciate Your Bod [Reprise] (John Denver) (John Denver)
18 talk (John Denver)
19 Yellow Cat (John Denver)
20 California Dreamin' (John Denver)
21 Lady Madonna (John Denver)
22 talk (John Denver)
23 For Baby [For Bobbie] (John Denver)
24 talk (John Denver)
25 Daydream (John Denver)
26 talk (John Denver)
27 The Last Thing on My Mind (John Denver)
28 talk (John Denver)
29 I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free (John Denver)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PPmnedSy

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/W6hz1vLdUEGd3of/file

Once again, PJ from his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog was kind enough to make the album cover. Also like the previous John Denver concert posted here, no good photos from 1969 were found, so one presumably from 1970 was used instead. In February 2025, I upgraded the image with the use of the Krea AI program.