David Crosby & Jerry Garcia - "David & the Dorks" - The Matrix, San Francisco, CA, 12-15-1970

In 2022, a deluxe edition of David Crosby's 1971 solo album "If I Could Only Remember My Name" was released. It's great stuff, with a second disc of interesting previously unreleased material. In celebration of that release, I'm posting this concert.

The guys in Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young) were friends with the guys in the Grateful Dead. David Crosby was particularly close with the Dead's lead guitarist Jerry Garcia. In late 1970, Garcia got heavily involved with the recording of Crosby's "If I Could Only Remember My Name," taking part in many daily recording sessions. In fact, a who's who of the best and most famous San Francisco musicians took part in recording that album. Members of this loose group sometimes recorded their own song as well as Crosby's. This would turn into a short-lived musical collaboration often known as P.E.R.R.O., which stands for the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra.

Somehow, out of this, with both Crosby and Garcia working on some of each other's new songs, the two of them decided to take their songs to a few concerts in San Francisco Bay Area clubs. They played three nights in a row at the Matrix, a club usually considered too small for the likes of big names like Crosby and Garcia. They also did one more concert at another venue a few days later (the Pepperland in Marin County). Then, just as quickly as it happened, this short lived experiment was over. Crosby and Garcia never jointly led a band in concert again. This experiment would have largely been forgotten except for the fact that a soundboard recording was made of one of the concerts, as well as some of their practice sessions in the hours before one of the shows.

Now, I need to better explain just who was in the band, and what it's called, because it's complicated. In addition to Crosby on lead vocals and rhythm guitar and Garcia on lead vocals and lead guitar, there was a bassist and drummer. There's no doubt about the bassist: Phil Lesh from the Grateful Dead. And we know the drummer was also from the Dead, but the band had two drummers, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, and it's not certain who played this show. Most of the information about these concerts say it's Hart, but there's reason to believe it's Kreutzmann. For the band's final show, there are a few photos, and one is clearly of Kreutzmann. But Garcia has talked about these concerts, and he's mentioned both drummers. It could be one or the other played at any given time, depending on who was available.

The band's name is even more complicated. In the limited promotion of the shows, it was listed as "Jerry Garcia and Friends." But on stage, Garcia gave the jokey name "David and the Dorks." Yet also on stage, Crosby used the jokey name "Jerry and the Jerks." The truth is, because there never was a formal band as such, but just some musical friends playing together for a few days, they didn't have a name. And "Jerry Garcia and Friends" doesn't really work, because most of the songs and lead vocals were done by Crosby. So I'm billing this under "David Crosby and Jerry Garcia."

As far as I know, Crosby has never said much about these shows. But Garcia discussed them a couple decades later, when his memory was already a bit hazy on the details:

"We had a little band called David and the Dorks. He was the star and it was his trip that we were doing and it was right around the time he was doing his If I Could Only Remember My Name album and he was in the Bay Area a lot. One time me and Phil and Bill and Mickey, we backed up David. We did maybe two or three shows. I think they were all at the Matrix in San Francisco. They weren't announced or anything, we just went in there on a Monday night and had a lot of fun and the sound was cool. In fact, that was the core of the band that played on David's album: David and the Dorks. It was a fine band and a short-lived band. Almost legendary. We had a lot of fun."

(See the problem figuring out the drummer? He mentioned both!)

Now, let me explain some about the music here. The first six songs are from a rehearsal before one of the concerts, so there's no audience noise. I made significant edits to most of them. For "Alabama Bound," at first I thought it was an instrumental, but then I listened closely and head Crosby's voice buried deep in the mix in a couple of places. I used the sound editing program Spleeter to bring them up in the mix. I could only do so much - the louder I made them, the more some sonic flaws would show. But at least you can hear a little bit of him now.

For "Eight Miles High" (which Crosby co-wrote when he was in the Byrds), there was about four minutes of instrumental jam, which then petered out to a complete stop. After some silence, Crosby then sang one of the verses, before that too came to a stop. It seemed more logical to me to have his singing first, so I changed the order. Then I tried to merge the two bits together. It doesn't quite work because there was a change of rhythm, but still, I like it better this way than having it in two parts.

The same problem happened with all the remaining songs from the rehearsal. Namely, the band would hit a tricky spot and stop. Then, after figuring out what went wrong, they'd resume. I simply edited the break in the middle of the song out to make one continuous version. Generally, there was just one stop, but for "Cowboy Movie" there were several. 

Note that even with these edits, these were rehearsals and the versions were pretty rough. For instance, "Cowboy Movie" petered out before all the verses were sung. And "Bird Song," a brand new song at the time, was especially rough, petering out about halfway through. I also cut out many minutes at the start of "Bertha," where Garcia was teaching the song to the others by playing the same chords over and over. (That also was a new song, by the way. The Dead wouldn't play either "Bertha" or "Bird Song" in concert until February 1971.)

The rehearsal makes up their first half hour and the first six songs. The remainder, another hour and two minutes, consists of the Matrix show done in front of an audience. Personally, I think the sound quality is excellent, and the music is fascinating. Crosby has said in interviews that he wished he could have joined the Dead. He essentially got to live out that dream for a few days with these concerts, since he was backed by three members of the Dead. 

It's fascinating to consider that virtually NONE of these songs would have been familiar to the audience at the time, unless one counts the Jefferson Airplane version of "Triad" which came out in 1969, or they were familiar with some of the cover songs. Crosby's songs wouldn't be released until the "If I Could Only Remember My Name" album came out in early 1971. And, as I mentioned, the Garcia original played at the actual concert, "Bertha," hadn't been played in public (or appeared on album) yet. On top of that, they did some rare covers. "Deep Elem Blues" was played by the Dead from time to time, starting in early 1970, but they hadn't put it on album yet. "Drop Down Mama" wouldn't get on a Crosby album until 1989. And "Motherless Children" doesn't seem to have been done by Crosby or Garcia except for these shows.

Now, while the sound of the music is very good, there were some big problems between the songs. It seems that the owners of the Matrix club liked to record particularly interesting concerts, which is why this soundboard recording survives. But at the time it wasn't uncommon to turn the recording device off between songs in order to save tape. That's clearly what happened here. Usually, there's just a couple seconds of applause, which then gets suddenly cut off. Also, the applause was very quiet, because the soundboard picked up what was happening on stage nicely, but very little of the audience. So I boosted the audience volume a lot. I also did some copying and pasting, then editing, to get more applause after each song and have the volume of it rise and fall as one would expect. It doesn't sound great because I only had little bits and pieces to work with (and they sometimes had hiss or other issues), but at least it should be good enough to have the concert flow with an audience presence, as one would expect.

The other problem with the recording device getting turned off between songs is that there is no banter whatsoever. There isn't even a single "thank you" to be heard. There's nothing I could do about that. However, Crosby did speak a bit at the start of "Cowboy Movie," after the music had already started. His voice was very low, but I boosted it a lot so you can hopefully make out what he's saying.

If you're a fan of Crosby, Still and Nash and/or the Grateful Dead, you should give this a listen. We're lucky that any recording of such a unique concert has survived, much less a quality soundboard. If you don't like the rehearsal section, due to my edits or otherwise, you can still cut that out and you're left with a concert that's over an hour long.

01 Alabama Bound [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
02 Eight Miles High [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
03 Cowboy Movie [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
04 The Wall Song [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
05 Bertha [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
06 Bird Song [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
07 Drop Down Mama (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
08 Cowboy Movie (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
09 Triad (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
10 The Wall Song (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
11 Bertha (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
12 Deep Elem Blues (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
13 Motherless Children (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
14 Laughing (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/F2mPx5p2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/0LwxBr2zAqD7Bgg/file

There are a few photos of this band playing at their fourth and last show, at the Pepperland in Marin County, a few days later. However, those photos are black and white, and of poor quality. Furthermore, none of them clearly show Crosby and Garcia together. So instead, I found a photo of Crosby and Garcia in the studio from late 1970, while working on Crosby's "If Only I Could Remember My Name" album. Neil Young was also playing with them, but I cropped him out so you only see some of the back of the neck of his guitar in front of Crosby's guitar. I believe that's Phil Lesh on bass in the background.

As I've mentioned many times on this blog, I really dislike using black and white photos for cover art. So I colorized it.

Peter Gabriel - Rarities, Volume 2: Live in 1977 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

First off, my apologies to Mike for having to wait a long time before posting this. Hopefully I'll be much faster next time. As you can see from the title, this is another Mike Solof guest post, continuing his long series of Peter Gabriel solo material.

As usual, Mike has included a PDF file that explains things in detail (and with pictures). But just so you know what you're getting, this album collects all the songs Peter Gabriel did in his first solo tour, in 1977. The vast majority of it relies on a soundboard bootleg from Cleveland. (I've gotta say the sound quality is good but not great, but it's the best available from that tour.) However, Mike rearranged the songs in the order of Gabriel's first solo album, simply called "Peter Gabriel." Then the songs that didn't appear on that album come after that.

There are a few songs done on the tour that weren't played at that Cleveland show. So Mike found the best sounding versions of them and added them to the end. The sound quality slowly declines, to the point that two of the songs didn't make the usual standards and so only appear as bonus tracks. The rest are certainly listenable though.

01 Here Comes the Flood [Piano Version] (Peter Gabriel)
02 Moribund the Burgermeister (Peter Gabriel)
03 Solisbury Hill (Peter Gabriel)
04 talk (Peter Gabriel)
05 Modern Love (Peter Gabriel)
06 talk (Peter Gabriel)
07 Excuse Me (Peter Gabriel)
08 Humdrum (Peter Gabriel)
09 talk (Peter Gabriel)
10 Slowburn (Peter Gabriel)
11 Waiting for the Big One (Peter Gabriel)
12 Down the Dolce Vita (Peter Gabriel)
13 Here Comes the Flood [Band Version] (Peter Gabriel)
14 Back in N. Y. C. (Peter Gabriel)
15 On the Air (Peter Gabriel)
16 talk (Peter Gabriel)
17 A Song without Words [Early Version of Indigo] (Peter Gabriel)
18 Ain't That Peculiar (Peter Gabriel)
19 Why Don't We (Peter Gabriel)
20 All Day and All of the Night (Peter Gabriel)
21 I Heard It Through the Grapevine (Peter Gabriel)
22 White Shadow [Slow Version] (Peter Gabriel)

Animal Magic (Peter Gabriel)
D. I. Y. [Instrumental Version] (Peter Gabriel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4TSg8m3g

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bwYBfPy5FLm4AkY/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/frB8F

The cover was selected by Mike. Hopefully he can explain where and when it's from, 'cos I don't know.

Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home - Acoustic Version (1965)

In my opinion, Bob Dylan's "Bringing It All Back Home" is one of the greatest albums of all time. The website acclaimedmusic.net, which aggregates critics' ratings, has it as the 85th best album of all time. I'd put it even higher than that, maybe in my top ten. 

Up until this album, all of Dylan's recordings had been acoustic. But with this album, he boldly released rocking music recorded with a full band, kicking off the folk-rock music trend. However, only half the album was done with a band. The first side was, but the second side was just Dylan and his acoustic guitar, like all his previous albums. 

What if Dylan's move to rock came later and this album was done in a purely acoustic format? I've put together such a version. It turns out that version is possible because he did record acoustic versions for most of the full-band songs. (By comparison, his next album, "Highway 61 Revisited," was even more electric, and he didn't bother with acoustic takes, so making an album like this wouldn't work.) Most of these versions have been released on "The Cutting Edge" official box set, but scattered here and there. All I had to do was gather them up and put them in the same order as the released album.

However, there was a snag: I couldn't find any acoustic version of the song "Maggie's Farm." All the other songs for the album had multiple studio takes, but that song was done in just one take, with a full band. It's a very rocking song, probably the most rocking one on the album. To make matters worse, when Dylan played concerts later that year, he only did it with a band. In fact, those live recordings are even more rocking.

So how could I made an acoustic version?! I resorted to using the Spleeter sound editing program. I've talked about this problem a lot in the last month or two. It can do great things, but within limits. Turning the one electric studio version of "Maggie's Farm" into an acoustic version is pretty much beyond its limit. It could take out the drums and bass, mostly, but one still gets the rocking electric guitar. Furthermore, by making such a drastic change, some noticeable sonic flaws were created here and there. Like I said, Spleeter has its limits. But I didn't want to leave the song out altogether. And I didn't want to include it unchanged, because it would stick out like a sore thumb. So I figure this is the best of my bad options. Thank goodness there's only a problem with this one song.

I could have simply posted the second side of the album (the last four songs) as it is on the official record, since that's all solo acoustic already. (With the exception of a bass player on "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue.") However, I thought that would be rather boring. So I tried to come up with alternate versions that had the same sound quality as the album versions. For "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," I found a nice version from "The Cutting Edge" release. For the other three, I used performances done for the BBC in May 1965, a few months after the album was released. These had audience applause after each song, but the audience was very polite and didn't trip over the music at all. I simply cut the songs before the applause kicked it, making them sound just like studio takes. 

Admittedly, these alternate versions of the second side songs don't sound that different. Dylan had been playing them in concert for months before the album was released, and his versions were very consistent from performance to performance at that time. But still, I figure little differences may make this a more interesting listen.

This album is 49 minutes long, which, weirdly enough, is two minutes longer than the official studio album.

01 Subterranean Homesick Blues (Bob Dylan)
02 She Belongs to Me (Bob Dylan)
03 Maggie's Farm [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
04 Love Minus Zero-No Limit (Bob Dylan)
05 Outlaw Blues (Bob Dylan)
06 On the Road Again (Bob Dylan)
07 Bob Dylan's 115th Dream (Bob Dylan)
08 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan)
09 Gates of Eden (Bob Dylan)
10 It's Alright, Ma [I'm Only Bleeding] (Bob Dylan)
11 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Rvkx75tP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/FXqdtU5IvsfCPmv/file

At first glance, you might think I just used the official album cover for my cover, and added the words "Acoustic Version" at the bottom. But while I aped the look of the official version, I actually used a different photo taken at the same photo session. If you look at the official cover, you'll see it has a swirly blur effect added around the edges. There are many other differences, such as a fallout shelter sign prominent in the lower left corner.

J. J. Cale - Rare Studio Tracks, 1973-2013

Here's something that's a de facto guest post. My musical friend MZ is a big fan of laid back guitarist J. J. Cale, and collected a bunch of his rare studio tracks. I saw that he missed some, and managed to find some more. So we did this together, but most of the work was his. Thanks, MZ!

Cale has left a lot of good songs off his albums, for whatever reason. He's released two archival albums consisting of entirely previously unreleased songs, "Rewind" in 2009, and "Stay Around" in 2019, which was six years after his death in 2013. Even so, there's more. All the songs here are different than the ones on those two albums. 

Since this only includes rare studio tracks, not live ones, the vast majority are officially released songs. Five songs come from the "Anyway the Wind Blows" compilation album. Some more are from an EP, B-sides, bonus tracks, a DVD, his contributions to other people's albums (where he sang as well as played guitar), and the like. There's only one song that's unreleased, and that's "King City." It was done for an in person radio station appearance, so the sound quality is as good as the rest.

Note that two songs, "Artificial Paradise" and "Stone River," are alternate versions of songs that did make his albums. They're different enough to merit inclusion. Also, I wanted to help make them more available, because much of this stuff is extremely difficult to find.

Now, some people are really big J. J. Cale fans, and love everything he's done. MZ is like that, but I'm not. I like some, but not all. So, I'm posting two versions of this album. One is effectively a double album, an hour and 21 minutes long, that contains all the rare songs MZ and I could find. The other is a "best of," 41 minutes long, that contains just the songs that I liked the best. Take your choice.

As far as I can tell, the vast majority of the songs here are Cale originals, or at least co-written by him. If anyone knows of songs here he didn't have a hand in writing, let me know and I'll add that info in. I think MZ and I got just about all the rare studio tracks out there. We found all the ones on our want list, at least. But if anyone knows of anything we missed (that isn't in our early Cale compilation already posted here, called "The Early Years"), let me know and I'll see if we can make additions.

As for rare live tracks, Cale has a bunch of those two. They're a different breed, with a lot more covers, often more soloing, and sometimes a different sound quality, so MZ and I have made a separate collection of those. I plan on posting that soon here as well.

Thanks again to MZ for making this possible. I hadn't planned on doing this otherwise, since I didn't know Cale had so many rare songs. 

Here's the song list for the complete version, followed by the download link:

01 Midnight In Memphis [Instrumental] (J. J. Cale)
02 Durango [Instrumental] (J. J. Cale)
03 Woke Up This Morning (J. J. Cale)
04 Things Ain't Simple (J. J. Cale)
05 Juarez Blues (J. J. Cale)
06 It's Good to Be in Austin (J. J. Cale)
07 Santa Cruz (J. J. Cale)
08 Artificial Paradise [Alternate Version] (J. J. Cale)
09 Feels like Rain (J. J. Cale)
10 Blond-Headed Woman (J. J. Cale)
11 Hang Ups (J. J. Cale)
12 Danny's Song [Instrumental] (J. J. Cale)
13 Love Is Hard to Find (J. J. Cale)
14 Stone River [Alternate Version] (J. J. Cale)
15 King City (J. J. Cale)
16 Daylight (Jamie Oldaker & J. J. Cale)
17 Gasoline (J. J. Cale)
18 Bus Rider (J. J. Cale)
19 High School [Instrumental] (J. J. Cale)
20 Bird's Song [Instrumental] (J. J. Cale)
21 On Tour (J. J. Cale)
22 Louvelda (Tony Joe White & J. J. Cale)
23 Worrying Off My Mind (J. J. Cale)
24 The Taker (J. J. Cale)
25 Top of the Hill (J. J. Cale)
26 Angel (Eric Clapton & J. J. Cale)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15102047/JJCal_1973-2013_RareStudioTracks_atse.zip.html

Here's the song list for the "best of" version, followed by its download link:

01 Things Ain't Simple (J. J. Cale)
02 Juarez Blues (J. J. Cale)
03 Santa Cruz (J. J. Cale)
04 Blond-Headed Woman (J. J. Cale)
05 Hang Ups (J. J. Cale)
06 Danny's Song [Instrumental] (J. J. Cale)
07 Love Is Hard to Find (J. J. Cale)
08 King City (J. J. Cale)
09 Daylight (Jamie Oldaker & J. J. Cale)
10 Gasoline (J. J. Cale)
11 Bus Rider (J. J. Cale)
12 On Tour (J. J. Cale)
13 Top of the Hill (J. J. Cale)
14 Angel (Eric Clapton & J. J. Cale)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15106865/JJCal_1973-2013_RareStudioTracks_BestOfVersion_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Cale was taken near his home in San Diego in 1989.

Bob Dylan - In Concert- Royal Festival Hall, London, Britain, 5-17-1964

Here's another one of what I consider Bob Dylan's essential bootleg recordings. 

In 1964, Dylan released two studio albums, and he played more concerts than the year before. But, for whatever reason, there are very few decent concert recordings from this year. There's one that stands out: on Halloween, he played a concert in New York City that was professionally recorded. The whole thing was eventually released as the album "The Bootleg Series, Volume 4: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall." But aside from that one, most recordings are incomplete and/or sound pretty bad. 

This concert is the other big exception. All of it came out on the "Anniversary Collection" for 1964, which is an extremely limited release to extend copyright control over the recordings in Europe. This comes from that source, since it's the best sounding one. In my opinion, the sound quality is just as good as that for the Halloween concert, and some say the performance was even better. The set list is somewhat different because it took place six months earlier. 

However, there's one thing lacking with this concert recording: there's no banter between songs whatsoever. One doesn't even get the sound of guitar tuning, or anything else. There's just a couple of seconds of clapping, and then bam, the next song already. This clearly couldn't have been how the concert actually went. Dylan has gone long stretches in his concert tours when he's said nothing whatsoever between songs, but this wasn't one of those times. Take for instance that Halloween concert later in the year, where he wasn't loquacious, but he at least said something before almost every song. Plus, of course, he would have needed to tune his guitar from time to time. I searched for other versions of this concert in hopes of finding one with some talking, but I couldn't find any such version. So this will have to do.

This album is an hour and 33 minutes long.

01 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Bob Dylan)
02 Girl from the North Country (Bob Dylan)
03 Who Killed Davey Moore (Bob Dylan)
04 Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues (Bob Dylan)
05 The Ballad of Hollis Brown (Bob Dylan)
06 It Ain't Me, Babe (Bob Dylan)
07 Walls of Red Wing (Bob Dylan)
08 Chimes of Freedom (Bob Dylan)
09 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan)
10 Eternal Circle (Bob Dylan)
11 A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall (Bob Dylan)
12 Talkin' World War III Blues (Bob Dylan)
13 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (Bob Dylan)
14 Only a Pawn in Their Game (Bob Dylan)
15 With God on Our Side (Bob Dylan)
16 The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Bob Dylan)
17 Restless Farewell (Bob Dylan)
18 When the Ship Comes In (Bob Dylan)

https://www.imagenetz.de/dhMLQ

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/R8mDeYpt

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/P9GYyySg0ZqBXHY/file

In 1963, a couple of Dylan concerts were professionally recorded for a planned live album. The album never happened, but it came so close to being released that a cover was designed for it. In 2005, an EP of six songs from a 1963 concert called "Live at Carnegie Hall 1963" was released. It's not well known because it's so short. But it used almost the exact same cover as the planned 1963 one. However, the lettering was changed, with "Bob Dylan In Concert" changed to "Bob Dylan Live at Carnegie Hall 1963." I've used the "Carnegie Hall" cover as the basis of this one, because it has higher picture quality. But I changed the text back to "Bob Dylan In Concert." I also added some more text at the bottom.

David Crosby, Graham Nash, Jackson Browne & Bonnie Raitt - Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Hiroshima Bombing, Santa Cruz City Park, Santa Cruz, CA, 8-5-1995

Here's an interesting concert bootleg: David Crosby, Graham Nash, Jackson Browne, and Bonnie Raitt performing in different combinations. They were the headliners for a benefit concert that commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. It goes without staying those behind the concert were anti-war activists trying to make sure that event wouldn't be forgotten, so mistakes wouldn't be repeated.

This concert is relatively short, 49 minutes. But it stands out in three respects. One, although the four musicians here didn't do much at all with all four of them together, they did guest a lot of each other's songs. Two, due to the concert's theme, pretty much all the songs are anti-war in nature. (The one exception seems to be "Carry Me," but I think that was done because it was spiritual in nature, coming just after a silent prayer.) 

And three, the sound quality is absolutely fantastic, as good as it gets. The concert was broadcast live over the Internet, and it may have been the first major concert to be broadcast like that. (Recall the Internet didn't really explode in popularity until about 1996 or 1997.) It was professionally recorded for that reason, and someone must have kept an excellent copy.

However, I haven't seen this concert in the usual places one goes on the Internet to find bootleg recordings, so I hope this will help make it better known. It appears it was released on album in 2020, but it's one of those "grey market" releases where dodgy companies that don't actually have the legal rights nevertheless sell the albums at Amazon and places like that.

I've made some significant changes to differ from that version, though. One problem with it was that it included all the DJ talking between songs. And there was a lot. A couple of Santa Cruz DJs couldn't help talking most any time songs weren't being played or people weren't talking on stage. They sometimes talked over the musician banter between songs too, so I had to cut those bits when multiple voices were talking at once. Also, thanks to that DJ talking, and the resulting edits, there wasn't much audience applause after each song. So I made up for the lost bits by adding in more applause, using copy and paste from the few spots with a decent amount of applause. I think the end result is that it sounds like a normal concert, with the typical expected amount of applause after each song. 

I did some more editing on Jackson Browne's song "World in Motion," which is why "[Edit]" appears in the title. At one point in the song, he forgot some of the lyrics, and floundered around a bit before he remembered the next line and finished the song. I removed his flub. Also, further in the song, there was some kind of sonic glitch that resulted in lots of static, marring the music. Luckily, this was in a short section between singing. I was able to patch it up using another section of the song, so there's only a little bit of static remaining, hopefully not enough for you to notice.

Oh, and since I'm in a big fan of acoustic music, I also like the fact that this concert was totally acoustic in nature, just vocals and acoustic guitars.

I tried to keep in all the banter between songs as I could. Note that Bonnie Raitt actually is a very politically progressive person who has taken part in many benefit concerts for liberal causes, like this one. However, she pretty much has never included political songs on her albums. But she sang a couple of anti-war songs here, and also gave a min-speech about two and a half minutes long, which I gather is pretty rare from her. I've included the whole thing. 

David Crosby also made some anti-war remarks almost two minutes long. That led up to a silent prayer for the victims of the Hiroshima bombing. However, the recording I found had that prayer edited out. Probably a long silent prayer didn't make for good radio. So I cut out some of Crosby's comments near the end of his banter, since they didn't make sense referring to a silent prayer that isn't there.

There were some other musicians who played at this concert, but they weren't nearly as well known - Mary McCaslin, Homefire, RST, Blue Prairie, etc... - so I'm guessing they didn't get played on the radio. My source material started with the Jackson Browne song "How Long" without any intro, so that's how I've had to start it too.

01 How Long (Jackson Browne)
02 talk (Jackson Browne)
03 Crow on the Cradle (Jackson Browne with Graham Nash)
04 talk (Jackson Browne with David Crosby & Graham Nash)
05 Lives in the Balance (Jackson Browne with David Crosby & Graham Nash)
06 talk (Jackson Browne)
07 World in Motion [Edit] (Jackson Browne with David Crosby & Graham Nash)
08 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
09 El Salvador (Bonnie Raitt)
10 talk (Bonnie Raitt with David Crosby & Graham Nash)
11 For What It's Worth (Bonnie Raitt with David Crosby & Graham Nash)
12 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
13 Military Madness (Crosby & Nash)
14 talk (Crosby & Nash)
15 Carry Me (Crosby & Nash)
16 Long Time Gone (Crosby & Nash)
17 talk (David Crosby)
18 Teach Your Children (David Crosby, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt & Jackson Browne)
19 talk (David Crosby)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kuUGc7pJ

The cover art photo is a bit of a fake. I found some photos of the actual concert in question. Unfortunately, the best I could find was three of the four big names together, not all four. The one missing was Bonnie Raitt. I did find a photo of her with Graham Nash, and another with Jackson Browne, and some by herself (all from this concert). So I used Photoshop to edit her into the picture I chose. That's the only change, putting her in behind Nash, the rest of the photo is exactly what you see here. And by the way they were all together on stage for the last song ("Teach Your Children").

The Faces - Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino, CA, 3-7-1975

I recently posted seven albums of the Faces performing for the BBC, from 1969 to 1973. The Faces stayed together for two more years after that, though without key member Ronnie Lane. However, it doesn't appear that they recorded anything for the BBC during that time. I think the BBC albums show the Faces live at their best, due to the excellent sound quality. To finish things off, I picked the one 1975 concert bootleg that is a soundboard and matches the sound quality of the BBC stuff. Here it is.

Three of the performances here come from the official box set "Five Guys Walk into a Bar..." But if you ask me, it doesn't really make any difference in terms of sound quality. It all sounds great. I only had to make some minor tweaks here and there, such as boosting the volume during the banter between songs.

The Faces released one live album while they were still together, and it was recorded in 1973 with the same line-up here (meaning no Ronnie Lane). It had the unwieldy title "Rod Stewart / Faces Live: Coast to Coast - Overtures and Beginners." It's not a very good album by Faces standards, mostly due to the surprisingly poor sound quality. This one is way better.

This album is an hour and 17 minutes long.

01 Take a Look at the Guy (Faces)
02 talk (Faces)
03 [I Know] I'm Losing You (Faces)
04 talk (Faces)
05 Bring It on Home to Me - You Send Me (Faces)
06 talk (Faces)
07 Sweet Little Rock and Roller (Faces)
08 I'd Rather Go Blind (Faces)
09 talk (Faces)
10 Too Bad - Every Picture Tells a Story (Faces)
11 Angel (Faces)
12 Stay with Me (Faces)
13 I Can Feel the Fire (Faces)
14 Motherless Children - Memo from Turner - Gasoline Alley [Instrumental] (Faces)
15 talk (Faces)
16 You Wear It Well (Faces)
17 Maggie May (Faces)
18 talk (Faces)
19 Twistin' the Night Away (Faces)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292909/TFacs_1975_SwngAuditriumSnBernardinoCA__3-7-1975_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo was taken in concert in 1974. It only shows three band members (left to right): Ronnie Wood, the new bassist Tetsu Yaumachi, and Rod Stewart. I would have liked a photo with all the band members, but this was the best looking concert photo with this line-up that I could find.

Bob Dylan - Folksinger's Choice with Cynthia Gooding, New York City, 2-16-1962

I'm continuing to post what I consider the "must have" Bob Dylan bootlegs. This has to be one of the best, so long as you enjoy his very early stuff when he was mostly doing cover material. It's from a radio show with no audience, and the sound quality is fantastic. But what's special about it is that he was interviewed by the radio host and talked extensively between nearly every song. 

The radio host's name was Cynthia Gooding. She wasn't just some generic DJ, but someone Dylan probably had a lot of respect for. She had a music career of her own, releasing nine albums of folk music from 1951 to 1962. So I'm sure she knew much about Dylan and he knew much about her, back at a time when Dylan was unheard of outside New York City, shortly before his first album was released. 

When this was recorded, Gooding hosted this episode of a WBAI radio show called "Folksinger's Choice." What's great is that unlike most radio station appearances which are short, this one seemed to have no time pressure at all. This recording lasts an hour and eleven minutes. Gooding asked good questions and got good answers, while keeping the mood light and playful. It really is a one-of-a-kind recording in Dylan's long career. 

For the most part, Dylan played covers, but there are some exceptions. The originals are: "The Death of Emmett Till," "Standing on the Highway," "Hard Times in New York Town," and "The Ballad of Donald White." Although they're not entirely originals, because Dylan was still in the habit of adding his own lyrics to traditional folk tunes. Still, even at this early date, it was clear that there was something very special about him. Consider for instance how Gooding is (understandably) floored by Dylan's new racial injustice song "The Ballad of Emmett Till," calling it "one of the greatest contemporary ballads I've ever heard."

At the time, Dylan had so many cover songs in his repertoire that there isn't much overlap between the songs here and the songs from the other albums I've posted from around this time, like "Carnegie Chapter Hall" and "The Hotel Tape," both recorded just a few months earlier. For many of these songs, these are the only high-quality recordings that survive. Surprisingly, none of the performances have ever been officially released, although parts of the interview have been released on the CD-ROM "Highway 61 Interactive" and the DVD "No Direction Home."

By the way, it seems that only the first 21 tracks here were played on the radio at the time. The remaining eight tracks appear to be the parts that got cut due to time restrictions. You'd never know from listening to it though, since the flow is seamless, including Gooding signing off at the very end. On a couple of those cut songs, "Wichita Blues" and "Acne," you can hear additional voices singing along. I don't know who those voices are, but apparently several other people were at the taping of the show who otherwise stayed totally quiet and unmentioned: Dylan's friends Mel and Lillian Bailey, Dylan's long-term girlfriend Suze Rotolo, and Gooding's daughters Leyla and Ayshe. So it could be any combination of them, as well as maybe Cynthia Gooding too.

Now, I have to admit that I made two drastic edits that some people might object to. I cut out sections of Dylan's comments in tracks 12 and 16. The reason for this is because Dylan made up some outrageous lies, and it pains me to hear them, so I cut all the lying. In short, when Dylan started his music career, he made up an outrageous backstory to his life in order to help draw attention to himself. In this interview, he claimed to have left school early and that he worked in a traveling carnival for six years, when in fact he did no such things. He didn't drop out of school until the end of his first year in college. So yeah, I have trouble listening to those bits, and edited them out. Sorry.

01 [I Heard That] Lonesome Whistle (Bob Dylan)
02 talk (Bob Dylan)
03 Fixin' to Die (Bob Dylan)
04 talk (Bob Dylan)
05 Smokestack Lightning (Bob Dylan)
06 talk (Bob Dylan)
07 Hard Travelin' (Bob Dylan)
08 talk (Bob Dylan)
09 The Death of Emmett Till (Bob Dylan)
10 talk (Bob Dylan)
11 Standing on the Highway (Bob Dylan)
12 talk [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
13 Roll On, John (Bob Dylan)
14 talk (Bob Dylan)
15 Stealin' (Bob Dylan)
16 talk [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
17 [It Makes A] Long Time Man Feel Bad (Bob Dylan)
18 talk (Bob Dylan)
19 Baby, Please Don't Go (Bob Dylan)
20 talk (Bob Dylan)
21 Hard Times in New York Town (Bob Dylan)
22 The Ballad of Donald White (Bob Dylan)
23 Wichita Blues [Going to Louisiana] (Bob Dylan)
24 talk (Bob Dylan)
25 Acne [Teenager in Love] (Bob Dylan)
26 talk (Bob Dylan)
27 Rocks and Gravel [Solid Road - Alabama Woman] (Bob Dylan)
28 Long Time Man (Bob Dylan)
29 talk (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/za7AqZtv

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/SREBBd5frCnRKEM/file

I'm pleased at how the cover art turned out here. I wish I was able to find a photo of Dylan and Gooding together, but I couldn't find one (if any such photo exists). However, I did find a photo from around this time period when Dylan was in a recording studio with his girlfriend mentioned above, Suze Rotolo. I cropped it so all you can see are some of Rotolo's legs. Hopefully, if you didn't read this paragraph, you'd assume the photo come from this very recording session. The only snag was that this color was in black and white, and I hate that, so I colorized it. Later, I sharpened the image with the Krea AI program.

I also was keen to have a photo of Dylan wearing a black cap. That was kind of his trademark look at the time, and Gooding teased him about it multiple times during the recording, so you know he was wearing it then.

Neil Young - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere - Acoustic Version (1969)

I just posted an acoustic version of Neil Young's first solo album, 1968's "Neil Young." As I explained in my write-up for that album, I'm experimenting with using the sound editing program Spleeter. I think one of the more interesting things that program can do is remove the drums and bass from songs to make acoustic mixes. With Young's first album, I actually only used Spleeter on one song, since he's performed solo acoustic versions of all the other songs, and I could use them. So I want to post this too, an acoustic version of his second solo album, "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," to give you a better idea of how Spleeter is helping my edits.

For 1969's "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," Young was backed by the band Crazy Horse, who would occasionally work with him for decades to come. As a result, it had more of a rocking sound than his first album. The album had two songs with long guitar solos, a nine-minute long "Down by the River," and a ten-minute long "Cowgirl in the Sand." "Cinnamon Girl" is a lot shorter, but it has a really rocking arrangement.

Normally, I wouldn't be able to create acoustic versions out of those kinds of songs. I consider Spleeter good for making minor changes, not completely transforming a song. But luckily for this album version, Young came up with solo acoustic arrangements for all three of those songs. So I've used concert versions for those, recorded from 1969 to 1971. In the case of "Cinnamon Girl," he usually played that on guitar, but I used an interesting piano version instead.

The song "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" was also payed in solo acoustic style in concert, so I was able to use one of those versions. "The Losing End" was played in solo acoustic style three times in 1969, but unfortunately no recordings of those versions are publicly available. He played the song later, starting in 1973, but generally such versions were done with a band until many years later. "Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets)" has been played in concert just twice, and that was all the way in 2019. "Round and Round (It Won't Be Long)" has never been played in concert.

For "Round and Round," luckily, Young recorded a solo acoustic demo in 1967, so I was able to use that. But for "The Losing End" and "Running Dry," I decided my best option would be to use Spleeter to remove the bass and drums. So that's what I did, and I think those versions sound pretty decent.

If one replaces the long electric versions of "Down by the River" and "Cowgirl in the Sand" with short acoustic ones, it makes the album significantly shorter. In fact, this version is only 27 minutes long. But it so happens that Young came up with some more good original songs he didn't release at the time, plus two songs that would appear on the 1970 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album "Deja Vu." I've chosen to include them here because they were recorded in 1969.

Nearly all these extra songs were performed in solo acoustic mode in 1969, so I was able to use those versions. All of those, plus two more from the main album, are taken from an officially unreleased 1969 Canterbury House concert that is a pristine soundboard. (As I often do, with those and other live versions, I removed the audience noise to make them sound more like studio versions.)

Only one of these extra songs turned out to be a problem for me. I'm referring to "Sea of Madness." This song was performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in concert a number of times in late 1969, and a version they did appeared on the Woodstock movie soundtrack. However, no studio version was ever released, and Young has never tried the song in concert on his own. It turns out CSNY did attempt a studio version, but it remains officially unreleased. I used Spleeter on that version, removing the bass and drums. 

But in this case, it didn't work so well. The performance is fundamentally a band version, with the organ as the main instrument, and lots of backing vocals (which Spleeter can't remove). Turning that into an acoustic version isn't ideal. I've included it as the last song, so you can choose to keep it, or not.

This album is 46 minutes long. I think it's quite interesting, with significantly different versions for many songs, all in excellent sound quality.

If people like these acoustic versions, I can continue the series pretty easily with acoustic versions of his next two albums, "After the Gold Rush" and "Harvest." But beyond that it's much harder to find good acoustic versions of many songs, so I'm not sure how doable some of those albums would be.

01 Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young)
02 Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Neil Young)
03 Round and Round [It Won't Be Long] (Neil Young)
04 Down by the River (Neil Young)
05 The Losing End [Edit] (Neil Young)
06 Running Dry [Requiem for the Rockets] [Edit] (Neil Young)
07 Cowgirl in the Sand (Neil Young)
08 Wonderin' (Neil Young)
09 Everybody's Alone (Neil Young)
10 Dance Dance Dance (Neil Young)
11 Helpless (Neil Young)
12 Country Girl (Neil Young)
13 Sea of Madness [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15848224/NeilY_1969c_EvrybdyKnwsThisIsNwhereAcoustc_atse.zip.html

Since I'm making an alternate version of an album, it would be nice to use an alternate version of the album cover. Most of the time, good alternates don't exist. In this case, the cover photo continued onto the back side of the album. I found a version of the back side without any writing on it, so I used that. I added in the text in a different spot, using the same font as the original.

Obviously, Neil Young isn't in the photo. But since the album title is "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," I thought it was fitting that he's nowhere to be seen.

Neil Young - Neil Young - Acoustic Version (1968)

First off, I want to say that last month when I posted a compilation of Neil Young's three 1969 acoustic Canterbury shows, I used a source that had some problems. Specifically, the bass was way too loud. I was able to find a different source, and I fixed the album. It sounds much better now. It makes a big difference, so I highly recommend you hear the updated version.

Here's the link for that:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/08/neil-young-canterbury-house-ann-arbor.html

Now, let's get to this album. If you've been following this blog, you may have seen a post I made some weeks back about a relatively new sound editing program called Spleeter. To make a long story short, this program allows one to separate out the different instruments in a song, which previously had been next to impossible for the ordinary person. It doesn't work all the time, but sometimes one can do really interesting things with it.

I'm a particular fan of acoustic music. I've been intrigued by the idea of using Spleeter to remove the bass and drums in songs and thus create acoustic mixes. As I said, Spleeter doesn't work all the time, and I think it's best for songs that are largely acoustic already, but with bass and drums. As an experiment, I thought I could try to create all acoustic versions of albums. The early Neil Young solo albums (1968 to 1972) seem like a good possibility, because he's performed solo acoustic versions of most of the songs in concert anyway, so I wouldn't have to use Spleeter on many songs.

This is the first result of that experiment. Neil Young's first solo album, released in November 1968 and simply titled "Neil Young," has two short instrumentals that are atypical of his usual style, "The Emperor of Wyoming" and "Excerpt from Whiskey Boot Hill." I tried to use Spleeter on them but it didn't sound that good, especially since the songs relied heavily on orchestral arrangements and thus didn't really fit into an acoustic album mode. So I've left those songs off this version.

With the rest of the songs, all but one of them have been performed in solo acoustic mode in concert. Furthermore, excellent sounding versions exist. I used officially released versions of concerts from 1968 or 1969, plus an unreleased version of one song ("Here We Are in the Years") from a pristine 1969 soundboard. I removed the crowd noise at the ends of songs so they'd sound more like studio versions.

Thus, I only had to use Spleeter on one song, "What Did You Do to My Life." Unfortunately, Young has never performed this song in concert. So, using an alternate version released on the "Archives, Volume 1" box set, I removed the bass and drums. I think it sounds pretty good, although some other instruments remain other than just acoustic guitar.

This album was rather short because I didn't include the two instrumental songs. I wanted to add other songs he did from around the time the album was made. It turns out there weren't many because most of his songs up until that point had been associated with his time in Buffalo Springfield (which lasted through mid-1968). The only other song I know of that was being performed by him in late 1968 and didn't appear on a later album is "Sugar Mountain," so I added a version of that at the end.

So here's an acoustic version of "Neil Young." It's not super different, but I think it's a nice listen just the same. At the time, Young was experimenting some with using orchestration, a production style he would soon abandon. So it's especially interesting to hear these songs with that production stripped away.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 The Loner (Neil Young)
02 If I Could Have Her Tonight (Neil Young)
03 I've Been Waiting for You (Neil Young)
04 The Old Laughing Lady (Neil Young)
05 Here We Are in the Years (Neil Young)
06 What Did You Do to My Life [Alternate Mix] [Edit] (Neil Young) (Neil Young)
07 I've Loved Her So Long (Neil Young)
08 The Last Trip to Tulsa (Neil Young)
09 Sugar Mountain (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376611/NEILYNG1968cNilYngAcustc_atse.zip.html

There are two versions of the official album cover for this version. One is just a painting of Neil Young's head with no text whatsoever. Probably the record company thought that was hurting sales, because when it was released with a new mix in early 1969, the painting was cropped to make room for Neil Young's name in big letters at the top. I've used the version with text, because I wanted to add some text of my own, "Acoustic Version," at the bottom.

Grace Potter - Twilight Hour, Volume 8 - Home Concert, Burlington, VT, 7-27-2020 to 8-3-2020

I'm making a concerted effort to post more of the 2020 home concerts that I've been sitting on for months. If you're aware of any of the previous ones from Grace Potter, you should know the deal. She played (mostly) weekly home concerts with a small band, sometimes doing covers and sometimes doing originals. I only selected the full songs from longer concerts that contained lots of talking and some snippets of songs.

This one combines two concerts. Only the first three songs are from the first concert. The performances actually date to a soundcheck she did in early March 2020, right before the global pandemic hit hard and all concerts got cancelled. The second show consists of songs with a space theme. (Apparently, she's a really big Star Trek fan.) They're all covers of famous songs, with the exception of one space-related original ("Stars").

The last song is a bonus track of sorts. She played one song with a different band for a Tom Petty tribute concert roughly around this time period. Since the album wasn't that long, I threw it on at the end. It makes the full album 48 minutes long.

Unfortunately for this album series, she's only done two more "Twilight Hour" home concerts since this show. One was a Christmas themed show in December 2020. I have that, but there are only a few usable songs. The other was a Valentine's Day themed show in February 2021. I don't have that one. If anyone else does, and could share it with me, I probably could put together a ninth album in this series.

The reason her home concerts have ended is because she's resumed doing concerts in front of audiences, though in Covid-safe ways, like playing to people in cars in drive-through movie theaters.

01 Hot Summer Night - Delirious (Grace Potter)
02 Helpless (Grace Potter)
03 Joey (Grace Potter)
04 Supersonic Rocket Ship (Grace Potter)
05 When You Wish upon a Star (Grace Potter)
06 Fly Me to the Moon [In Other Words] (Grace Potter)
07 Rocket Man [I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time] (Grace Potter)
08 Space Cowboy (Grace Potter)
09 Stars [Acoustic Guitar Version] (Grace Potter)
10 Honey Bee (Grace Potter with Resynator)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15328392/GraceP_2020_TwilghtHourVolme8HmeConcrtBurlingtonVT__7-27-2020_to_8-3-2020_atse.zip.html

To promote the space-themed show, Potter took some photos of herself in a Star Trek uniform. So that's what I've used here. I took the "Twilight Hour" lettering from the promotional artwork of another one of her home concerts.

Bob Dylan - The Hotel Tape - Bonnie Beecher's Appartment, Minneapolis, MN, 12-22-1961

As I continue to be going through a Bob Dylan phase, I'm going to post more of his stuff. For now, I'm focusing on his early 1960s material before moving to later in his long music career.

And speaking of early, this is really early! I posted his first real concert from October 1961 a few days ago. This took place just one month later. Those two recordings sound way better than you'd expect for anything recorded in 1961 outside of a professional recording studio. This one was good enough for three of the songs to get official release. "Hard Times in New York Town" was released on "The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3: Rare and Unreleased." "Dink's Song (Fare Thee Well)" and "I Was Young When I Left Home (900 Miles)" were released on "The Bootleg Series, Volume 7: No Direction Home." But the whole thing is of the same quality, and the whole thing deserves an official release someday.

Here's the quick story behind this recording. By December 1961, Dylan had just won a recording contract, but he hadn't released anything yet. He had connections in the art community back in Minneapolis, Minnesota, near his home town of Hibbing, from people he met while going to college for a year. When he went home for Christmas vacation, he reconnected with people in that community. One was Bonnie Beecher, a minor actress and singer (she'd have roles in episodes of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek). He'd dated her briefly in college, and she would go on to marry the comedian Wavy Gravy. Around this time, her Minnesota apartment was so frequently used as a crash pad for artists coming through town that people joked it was like a hotel. Thus, this recording has been known as "The Hotel Tape," including by Dylan at the time.

Beecher can be heard singing a bit on an earlier tape made that summer (which has poorer sound quality), but it seems she wasn't around when this tape was recorded. Instead, a musician named Tony Glover helped Dylan make the recording, and he can be heard making a comment or two at the very end of it. Glover was a blues musician, and part of the trio Koerner, Ray and Glover. (I have their albums in my collection - very good stuff.)  That's about all I know, except I've heard Dylan and Glover started drinking heavily while the recording went on, to the point that Dylan's performance started to decline just a little bit towards the end, with him asking to stop the recording right at the very end.

That said, if he got drunk you can't tell, since the performance is solid. Plus, the sound quality is outstanding, just as good as a studio recording of the time period, in my opinion. Dylan apparently liked it enough to give copies to friends and family at the time, since it was the best recording he'd done prior to the release of his first album in 1962. 

I cleaned up the recording a bit, but I didn't have to do much. I deleted a few seconds here and there, for instance when there was the sound of the tape recorder getting turned on or off. But I didn't cut out any music or talking. By the way, there's almost no talking, except for the track "Tale of East Orange, New Jersey," which is a spoken joke-story instead of a song. Oh, the one important change I did is that there seems to be no silent pauses between songs in the versions I've heard. I added the typical two seconds of silence after each song. Plus, some songs got cut off a couple of seconds too soon, so I helped them fade out better.

At this time, Dylan had written very few originals, so this consists almost entirely of covers. "Hard Times in New York Town" is an original. "I Was Young When I Left Home" kind of is, but it's so heavily based on the traditional folk song "900 Miles" that that's debatable. Similarly, in one of his rare comments, Dylan claimed "It's Hard to Be Blind" was an original (which he called "It's Hard to Be Poor"), but it's another traditional folk song with some slightly changed lyrics. (That was a common and acceptable thing to do in the folk world at the time.)

I feel like addressing the fact that there are four songs in a row near the end all about V. D. - venereal disease. Surprisingly, these are all written by Woody Guthrie. The reason for that is that in 1949, the government had a national health drive to educate people about venereal disease. As part of that, they had some radio programs with songs on the subject to help break the taboo about discussing it. Major musical figures of the day were recruited to sing on this topic, including Hank Williams, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Merle Travis, Roy Acuff, and Guthrie. Guthrie actually wrote nine songs on the subject, and Dylan was such a Guthrie fan at the time that he learned them all.

And if you think that's weird, consider that in the 1930s, the government commissioned Guthrie to write an entire album of songs praising dams! That was to drum up public support for the public works projects being done at the time, such as the massive Hoover Dam. Dylan actually covered one of those in 1968, "Grand Coulee Dam." I included it on the stray tracks album I made called "I Ain't Got No Home."

Anyway, this recording is about an hour and twenty minutes long. In my opinion, this one plus the October 1961 Carnegie Chapter Hall concert I posted a few days ago are heads and shoulders above all the other Dylan recordings from 1961 or earlier, which generally sound pretty dodgy. The vast majority of songs here have never been officially released by him in any form, and most of them don't even show up on any other decent sounding bootlegs, since his repertoire changed rapidly during this time.

01 Candy Man (Bob Dylan)
02 Baby, Please Don't Go (Bob Dylan)
03 Hard Times in New York Town (Bob Dylan)
04 Stealin' (Bob Dylan)
05 Poor Lazarus (Bob Dylan)
06 I Ain't Got No Home (Bob Dylan)
07 talk (Bob Dylan)
08 It's Hard to Be Blind (Bob Dylan)
09 Dink's Song [Fare Thee Well] (Bob Dylan)
10 talk (Bob Dylan)
11 Man of Constant Sorrow (Bob Dylan)
12 Omie Wise [Naomi Wise] (Bob Dylan)
13 Tale of East Orange, New Jersey (Bob Dylan)
14 Wade in the Water (Bob Dylan)
15 I Was Young When I Left Home [Nine Hundred Miles] (Bob Dylan)
16 In the Evening (Bob Dylan)
17 Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (Bob Dylan)
18 Sally Gal (Bob Dylan)
19 Gospel Plow (Bob Dylan)
20 Roll On, John (Bob Dylan)
21 Cocaine Blues (Bob Dylan)
22 V. D. Blues (Bob Dylan)
23 V. D. Waltz (Bob Dylan)
24 V. D. City (Bob Dylan)
25 V. D. Gunner's Blues [Landlady] (Bob Dylan)
26 Ramblin' Round (Bob Dylan)
27 talk (Bob Dylan)
28 Black Cross [Hezikiah Jones] (Bob Dylan)
29 talk (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/whxUZWzD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/cOMePmh5iOWknur/file

Not surprisingly, I couldn't find any color photos of Dylan from 1961. However, I found a nice black and white one of him from November 1961, just a month before this recording took place. This was taken during the recording of his first album, simply called "Bob Dylan." I colorized it. Later, I sharpened the image with the Krea AI program.

Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready - Home Concerts 4: Vote Your Values Benefit, Maple Valley, WA, 10-9-2020

Sigh. I still have a bunch of home concerts from 2020 that I haven't gotten around to posting yet. There's too much good music in the world to keep track of it all! But a couple of days ago as I write this, Brandi Carlile released a new studio album called "In These Silent Days." That reminded me I have more to post from her. So here's the next one.

Hopefully you know who Brandi Carlile is from previous posts here, or from the fact that she's a famous musician. In case you don't know Mike McCready, he's the lead guitarist for Pearl Jam. It turns out he lives near Carlile, and the two of them are very good friends. They did a relatively short acoustic benefit concert together, with Carlile doing the lead vocals and McCready supporting on lead guitar. 

That show was only 30 minutes long. But it turns out Carlile played four other songs here and there in the same month, two of them with McCready. So I added three songs at the start and one at the end (to put them in chronological order). Added together, it makes an album that's 48 minutes long. I highly doubt you'd notice this wasn't one concert if I didn't tell you, because the instrumentation is the same, the sound quality is the same, and there's banter throughout.

This album is a nice mix of covers and originals. The covers are "Wish You Were Here" (Pink Floyd), "Red Dirl Girl" (Emmylou Harris), "Madman Across the Water" (Elton John), "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (Bob Dylan), and "Wildflowers" (Tom Petty).

01 Wish You Were Here (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
02 talk (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
03 Red Dirt Girl (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
04 Madman Across the Water (Brandi Carlile)
05 talk (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
06 The Story (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
07 talk (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
08 I Belong to You (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
09 talk (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
10 The Mother (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
11 talk (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
12 The Joke (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
13 talk (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
14 Hold Out Your Hand (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
15 talk (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
16 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
17 talk (Brandi Carlile with Mike McCready)
18 talk (Brandi Carlile)
19 Wildflowers (Brandi Carlile)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15281113/BrandiC_2020_HomeConcrts4VoteYurValuesBnefitMpleValleyWA__10-9-2020_atse.zip.html

The image of Carlile and McCready comes from a screenshot of the concert featured here. For the top section, I used some of the artwork designed to promote the concert. But I changed some of the text.

The Guess Who - Let's Go, Volume 3: 1968-1970

I previously posted a couple of albums of the Guess Who performing on the Canadian TV show "Let's Go." Since the band isn't British, they didn't do any BBC sessions in the late 1960s, but this effectively serves the same function, allowing the band to play lots of covers and originals in a studio setting without an audience. Here's the third and final volume. 

For the first two volumes in this series, the vast majority of the performances actually came from the "Let's Go" TV show. For this one, that's only true for the first four songs. At some point, I figure around early 1969, the band got so popular that they outgrew their role as the house band for that weekly show. However, I found some other things that fill out the rest of the band's era when Randy Bachman (later of Bachman-Turner Overdrive fame) was the lead guitarist. He left in mid-1970, just after the band hit it really big with their "American Woman" single and album.

Songs five through eight, plus twelve, come from other TV show appearances. That means the sound quality is similarly high, even though they're all officially unreleased. 

Unfortunately, I couldn't find many TV show performances where the band wasn't forced to lip-sync. There were some really key songs left out. So I resorted to finding versions of those songs in different ways. Songs nine through eleven are bonus tracks to the "American Woman" album. They're alternate versions, so they're much like versions performed on TV shows without an audience.

Finally, I turned to bootleg concert recordings. Unfortunately, there's almost nothing from the Randy Bachman era that has really excellent sound quality. It turns out there's one great soundboard from that time, but it's only 14 minutes long! So that's what makes up the last three songs.

I would be happy to keep this series going into 1971 and beyond, but there just isn't the proper material for it. Even though the band was very popular for a few years, I could only find one or two brief TV show appearances. However, there are some quality bootlegs of entire shows, so I think that's a better way to go for different versions of songs in those years.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Minstrel Boy (Guess Who)
02 Ramblin' Gamblin' Man (Guess Who)
03 No Time (Guess Who)
04 Touch Me (Guess Who)
05 Shakin' All Over (Guess Who)
06 All My Loving (Guess Who)
07 With a Little Help from My Friends (Guess Who)
08 These Eyes (Guess Who with the Neil Harris Singers)
09 Laughing (Guess Who)
10 Talisman [Alternate Version] (Guess Who)
11 No Sugar Tonight - New Mother Nature [Alternate Version] (Guess Who)
12 American Woman [Alternate Version] (Guess Who)
13 Share the Land (Guess Who)
14 Hand Me Down World (Guess Who)
15 American Woman Blues (Guess Who)
16 American Woman (Guess Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RBah4zML

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/D9hVJOAa2XUEKvB/file

The cover art is a screenshot I took of the band playing the song "Laughing" on a TV show in 1969.

Neil Young - Folksinger II (Acoustic Buffalo Springfield Demos) (1966-1968)

Some time back, I posted a Neil Young album called "Folksinger" that mostly consists of acoustic demos he recorded in 1965. I recently decided it would make sense to make another album consisting of acoustic versions of the songs he did while a member of Buffalo Springfield. I've already posted two albums of Buffalo Springfield demos, and many of the exact same performances are on those albums. But some here are not, and anyway, I think it makes for an interesting listen to hear all these versions together.

When I put this together, I removed five songs from the "Folksinger" album that fit better here. So if you have that, I suggest you get the latest version to avoid duplication of those songs. That said, three songs from that album ARE duplicated here - "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing," "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong," and "There Goes My Babe" - because these are different performances. I figure the first two especially are too important as Buffalo Springfield songs not to be included.

The songs are arranged in rough chronological order from when they were first done by Young (with or without Buffalo Springfield) at the time. All the versions are from the 1960s, but some are from a bit later. For instance, the song "Down to the Wire" was played in public by Young only one time in his long career, in a solo acoustic version in 1969. So I've included that, but with other 1966 songs, since that's when Buffalo Springfield recorded their version. Also, the best acoustic version of "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong" I could find is from another 1969 concert, so I've used that, but also put it in with other 1966 songs. I also used a lot of live versions from 1968. (But for all the live versions, I removed the audience noise to make them sound like acoustic demos.)

This year, 2021, I've gained new sound editing capabilities thanks to the new program Spleeter. I've used that here to create mostly acoustic versions of the songs "Sell Out" and "Burned." The sound quality isn't great, since Spleeter can only do so much in removing the drums and bass, but I figure it's good enough for inclusion. Note that these the only actual Buffalo Springfield recordings here. There aren't more because Young's unusual voice was considered non-commercial at the time, so he didn't get to sing lead vocals in the band on many songs.

Thus, a few songs he did during this time period aren't represented here, because there's nothing close to an acoustic version existing, and often no version with him singing lead at all. Those songs are: "Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It," "Whatever Happened to Saturday Night," and "It's So Hard to Wait." (That last one was co-written by Young and Richie Furay.)

As I said above, I'm not totally happy with the versions of "Sell Out" and "Burned" I created with Spleeter. But I figure especially with "Burned," it's hard to have a collection of Young's songs with the band without that one. Also, we're unlikely to ever hear an acoustic version, since Young never played the song in concert until 2009, and that was with a full band, with his voice significantly changed. This version has a lot of backing vocals and other instruments, but it does sound interesting, in my opinion, without the bass and drums. Although note there are two short breaks with just bass guitar. I kept the bass for those bits, because it sounded weird having silence instead.

Also, this version of "Sell Out" is almost a minute longer than the only officially released version on the "Buffalo Springfield" box set. That's because Young didn't like some sections where he just sang "la la's" instead of words, and edited them out. But a bootleg version with the "la's" is available, so I edited those bits back into the released version, before using Spleeter on it.

Note that "Down, Down, Down" later became one section of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song "Country Girl."

When Young released his "Archives, Volume 1" box set in 2009, he posted some extra performances that didn't make the cut on his website. I've used four of those here: "Runaround Babe," "High School Graduation," "Expecting to Fly," and "Broken Arrow." I've included them here to help bring these rarities more to light. I probably would have used a different version of "Expecting to Fly" since this one has double vocals, and I'd prefer single vocals for an acoustic album, but this version is fine, and like I said, rare.

There are two bonus tracks. There's nothing wrong with them in terms of sound quality. The reason they're bonus tracks is because they appeared on his 1969 solo albums. I plan on making all-acoustic versions of those albums, so you might not want them here and also on those albums.

This album is 45 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks.

01 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Neil Young)
02 Flying on the Ground Is Wrong (Neil Young)
03 Out of My Mind (Neil Young)
04 Down to the Wire (Neil Young)
05 Burned [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
06 Down, Down, Down (Neil Young)
07 There Goes My Babe (Neil Young)
08 One More Sign (Neil Young)
09 Runaround Babe (Neil Young)
10 Sell Out [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
11 High School Graduation (Neil Young)
12 Mr. Soul (Neil Young)
13 Expecting to Fly (Neil Young)
14 Broken Arrow (Neil Young)
15 On the Way Home (Neil Young)
16 I Am a Child (Neil Young)

Round and Round (Neil Young)
The Old Laughing Lady (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696653/NELYNG1966-1968_FolksingrIIAcoustcBuffloSprngfieldDmos_atse.zip.html

The photo of Neil Young dates to 1967. I don't know the details beyond that.

A Slight Change, and a Dylan Update

I haven't mentioned it until now, but for the last month or more, I've changed how I put information in the mp3 tags of songs. Previously, I had the album title and the source info in the album title tag. This always worked fine for me, though I got a few complaints in the comments. Then in August I went on a big vacation where I had to use an iPhone to listen to music for an extended period of time. I found the iPhone sorts the music by the album title, and it gets confused by my style, thinking each different source is a different album. Obviously, there are tons of people who use iPhones or other music programs that operate in a similar way, so I realized I need to make a change.

Thus, since getting back from that trip, I've been putting just the album name in the album title tag, and putting the source info in the comments tag. I'd previously put an X in the comments tag to indicate which songs were done live. That now is moved to the otherwise unused genre tag. I think this system works better. However, I've posted about 1,500 albums here. It's going to take me a long time to covert all the old albums to the new system. At the same time, I also have gotten better at balancing volume levels between songs, so I need to make improvements with that for the vast majority of albums I've posted.

Making these two fixes is such a big task that I'm dealing with it bit by bit. For instance, whenever a link dies and I get a request for a new link, I change the mp3 tags to the new system and I make improvements on the song to song volume balance, if necessary. 

Which brings me to Bob Dylan. As I mentioned a day or two ago, I'm in the middle of a Dylan listening kick right now. So I just updated all the Dylan albums I'd previously posted with the new mp3 tag system and the better volume balancing. Also, I added a song to the "Introducing Bob Dylan" album, and added and removed some songs to the "I Ain't Got No Home" and "Abandoned Love" albums. So if you're a big Dylan fan, and especially one who uses iPhones, you might want to download all those albums again.

Aretha Franklin - Anything Goes - Non-Album Tracks (1975-1979)

A couple of years ago, I posted a single album that contained what I considered all the best of Aretha Franklin's meager late 1970s output. I have since reconsidered, and decided that time is worthy of two albums. I just posted a drastic overhaul of the album I previously posted, called "Rock with Me." It only contains the best songs from her late 1970s albums.

This album deals with that exact same time period, but it only contains non-album songs. The vast majority of them remain unreleased, but two of them finally got a release on the 2021 box set "Aretha." 

Here's my theory about the music in here. In the late 1970s, Aretha Franklin was still considered a musical legend, and was popular enough for many TV shows to want to have her on. But because her recent albums weren't very good, and generally lacked any hit singles, there wasn't much desire for her to play those songs. So instead she often performed well-known songs that she'd never put on any of her albums.

So this album has her doing a really wide variety of songs in different styles. That's why the title "Anything Goes" - one of the songs she does here - fits particularly well. She did everything from old Duke Ellington songs from the 1930s ("Mood Indigo") to mega-hits that had just recently left the charts ("Nobody Does It Better" and "You Light Up My Life.") Creatively, she was treading water, but in retrospect it's nice to have her versions of these classic songs. 

Although most of the songs are officially unreleased, the vast majority come from TV shows or soundboard bootlegs, so the sound quality is generally pretty high. Still, these songs don't sound as good as studio versions of them would.

The two bonus tracks are songs that also come from TV shows, but for whatever reason the recordings of them don't sound as good as the others.

01 The Way We Were (Aretha Franklin)
02 MacArthur Park (Aretha Franklin)
03 Midnight Train to Georgia (Aretha Franklin)
04 God Bless America (Aretha Franklin)
05 Perdido (Aretha Franklin)
06 Shiny Stockings - Mood Indigo (Aretha Franklin)
07 Singing in the Rain (Aretha Franklin)
08 The Greatest Love of All (Aretha Franklin)
09 Anything Goes (Aretha Franklin)
10 Nobody Does It Better (Aretha Franklin)
11 Yesterday (Aretha Franklin)
12 You Light Up My Life (Aretha Franklin)
13 Mary Don't You Weep (Aretha Franklin)
14 Ooo Baby Baby (Aretha Franklin & Smokey Robinson)

He's Got the Whole Word in His Hands (Aretha Franklin)
Isn't She Lovely (Aretha Franklin & the Four Tops)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15114686/ArethaF_1975-1979_AnythingGos_atse.zip.html

One of the highlights of this album is a duet she and Smokey Robinson with his song "Ooh Baby Baby" in 1979. I happened to find a photo from that performance, so I've used it for the cover.

Aretha Franklin - Rock with Me - Selected Best Tracks (1975-1979)

If you've downloaded the Aretha Franklin albums that I've posted here, perhaps you'll recognize this one. I previously posted an album with this exact same name and cover art. But I'm deleting that and reposting this as a new album, because I've drastically changed it.

This album used to contain everything I consider good from her rather fallow late 1970s output. About half of it came from songs released on her albums, and about half were unreleased songs that she largely did on TV shows. But about a month ago as I write this (October 2021), a new box set called "Aretha" was released. It made me realize there was more to this time period that I'd missed.

So I've made two albums that cover that same late 1970s time period. This one collects the best songs from her rather spotty late 1970s albums. The other one, which I'm also posting today, collects the unreleased songs she did in those same years. This works out nicely in that both resulting albums are in the typical 40 to 50 minute album length range.

I think it's undisputed that the prime of her career was from 1967 to 1974. I have all of her albums from that era. But starting around 1975, she took a big dive, both in terms of commercial success and critical acclaim. What happened to her happened to nearly all big soul artists around that time. Disco started to become big, and other musical changes happened like a new prominence of synthesizers and drum machines. Most soul artists changed their sound in order to sound contemporary, and it was a disaster. Franklin's disco music has to be the nadir of her long career. She rebounded some in the 1980s, especially commercially, but still, her music after 1974 was a shadow of her glory days, in my opinion.

Her best album from this time period has to be "Sparkle," released in 1976. It was entirely written and produced by soul great Curtis Mayfield, and his involvement seems to have helped matters a lot. So I've included five songs from that album, but even that one is hit or miss. 

As the 1970s went on, things went from bad to worse, the more disco took hold. Her 1978 and 1979 albums, "Almighty Fire" and "La Dita" have to be her low point. I tried to include at least one song from each of her five late 1970s albums, but it was tough to come up with even one good song from each of those.

So yeah, individually, most of these albums aren't that good. But by picking out the best songs, I think it makes for a good album, overall.

If you think I missed some gems, please let me know.

01 Mr. D.J. [5 for the D.J.] (Aretha Franklin)
02 It Only Happens [When I Look at You] (Aretha Franklin)
03 Rock with Me (Aretha Franklin)
04 Look into Your Heart (Aretha Franklin)
05 Something He Can Feel (Aretha Franklin)
06 Sparkle (Aretha Franklin)
07 Hooked On Your Love (Aretha Franklin)
08 Break It to Me Gently (Aretha Franklin)
09 Mumbles - I've Got the Music in Me (Aretha Franklin)
10 When I Think about You (Aretha Franklin)
11 Honey I Need Your Love (Aretha Franklin)
12 I'm Your Speed (Aretha Franklin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/t9ZLzjxL

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/mi4ygPxrtZZMzhx/file

I made the cover based on a photo from the 1970s but I don't know the exact year.In March 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Bob Dylan - Free Trade Hall, Manchester, Britain, 5-7-1965

In my opinion, this is one of the greatest Bob Dylan concert recordings out there. Definitely in the top five. What makes it particularly interesting to me is that it came at the very end of his acoustic period. Up until this point, he'd done all of his albums and concerts in solo acoustic mode. But only three days after this was his last fully acoustic concert. Then he got a band together, and two months later, shocked the folk music world with his first electric concert at the Newport Folk Festival.

In 1965, Dylan was on fire. He released two albums, "Bringing It All Back Home" and "Highway 61 Revisited," that are usually on the best albums of all time lists. This concert has a mixture of his new surrealistic songwriting style, thanks to the inclusion of six songs from "Bringing It All Back Home" plus a recent single ("If You Gotta Go, Go Now"), while the rest are from his previous protest singer mode.

It's pretty shocking to me that this concert still remains essentially unreleased. (It was included in "Anniversary Collection 1965," a very limited release of only about 100 copies, meant to retain the copyrights in Europe.) Seemingly every studio take and every concert he did in 1966 has been released by now, but only the studio work from 1965 has been released. So there's a big gap of no live album from 1965. Luckily, this concert is a professionally recorded soundboard, easily the best sounding concert recording of his from 1965.

If you somehow managed to get that "Anniversary Collection 1965" release, you'd miss out, because that doesn't include any banter between songs, and the applause following each song fades out after just a couple of seconds. Luckily, a better version had already been bootlegged that is complete, so I've used that. Admittedly, Dylan doesn't talk much between songs, but he does say a few things here and there. 

I did use the official version for "Talking World War III Blues" though, because the other version had some issues, including missing the first ten seconds or so. But I edited that one to include the full applause from the other version.

The last two songs are essentially bonus tracks taken from other concerts that same year. Dylan did a great version of "Desolation Row" for a show at the Hollywood Bowl in September 1965, shortly after he wrote it. He would go on to play this song acoustically for many 1966 shows, but I particularly like this version.

He also played "Tombstone Blues" for a small audience in July 1965, shortly after writing that one. That clearly is meant to be performed with a full band, but we luckily have this one version that's done acoustically. The last couple of lines sung in the song sound worse than the rest - perhaps his microphone failed him? I used Spleeter to boost their volume a bit, and I think that helps some, but I couldn't do anything to improve the sound quality. The rest of the band still sounds fine for that brief time, it's just his vocals that are wonky.

This concert is an hour and 14 minutes long without the two bonus tracks. If you add them, it's an hour and a half exactly.

01 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Bob Dylan)
02 To Ramona (Bob Dylan)
03 talk (Bob Dylan)
04 Gates of Eden (Bob Dylan)
05 If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Bob Dylan)
06 talk (Bob Dylan)
07 It's Alright, Ma [I'm Only Bleeding] (Bob Dylan)
08 talk (Bob Dylan)
09 Love Minus Zero-No Limit (Bob Dylan)
10 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan)
11 Talking World War III Blues [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
12 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (Bob Dylan)
13 With God on Our Side (Bob Dylan)
14 She Belongs to Me (Bob Dylan)
15 It Ain't Me, Babe (Bob Dylan)
16 talk (Bob Dylan)
17 The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Bob Dylan)
18 All I Really Want to Do (Bob Dylan)
19 talk (Bob Dylan)
20 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan)
21 talk (Bob Dylan)
22 Desolation Row (Bob Dylan)
23 Tombstone Blues (Bob Dylan)

https://www.imagenetz.de/fkqqp

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/esFjjjea

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/oj6OnllrXy7iMeO/file

Less than one month later, in early June, Dylan would perform a short show for the BBC. It was broadcast on TV, but unfortunately the footage was lost. However, this color photo from it does survive, so I used it for the cover art. It's one of the very few color photos I've found of him in concert from 1965.