Jorma Kaukonen - Shelter Coffee House, San Jose, CA, 6-25-1964

Occasionally, I'm amazed that a bootleg of a concert from a certain era of an artist's career exists at all, then I'm doubly amazed that the sound quality is so good. The 1963 Jackie deShannon concert I've posted here is one example, and the 1967 Grass Roots concert I've posted here is another. This concert also falls into that category.

I mean, who would expect to find a Jorma Kaukonen concert bootleg from all way back to 1964?! I didn't even know what he was doing musically prior to joining Jefferson Airplane in 1965. It turns out he played acoustic blues in folk clubs for a few years, starting in 1962 or earlier. He doesn't seem to have been very popular at that time. I found a couple of playbills with his name on it from those pre-Jefferson Airplane years on a Hot Tuna website. His name was way down in importance, in small letters. (By the way, at that time he was going by the name Jerry Kaukonen.) 

Yet here we have a full concert recording from him, an apparent soundboard in excellent sound quality! I just happened to stumble across it a couple of days ago. I consider myself quite lucky, because it's an extremely obscure bootleg. I literally only found three or four Google search results, but one of them had a link to download the full show. Hopefully by posting this, I'll help to give it more prominence. I figure few Jorma/ Hot Tuna fans have ever even thought to search for bootlegs from before his Jefferson Airplane days.

What I find most interesting about this is how fully formed his musical vision was then. Many of these songs were later done by him as part of Hot Tuna or as a solo artist, often in very similar versions. You also get the future Jefferson Airplane song "Good Shepherd." He already had an obsession with the music of the Reverend Gary Davis, something that's continued for the rest of his career. Virtually all of the song are blues or gospel covers ("Mann's Fate" is an original), and a handful were written by Davis.

The bootleg I took this from is over half an hour longer. This comes from two sets, and I removed all the duplicates: "Hesitation Blues," "San Francisco Bay Blues," "Follow the Drinking Gourd," "Death Don't Have No Mercy," and two versions of "Candy Man." I also cut out most of the guitar tuning between songs, of which there was quite a lot.

Unlike many bootlegs from the 1960s where the tape recorder was turned off between songs to save tape, this appears to be the full show of two sets. The best evidence of that is all the guitar tuning (that I often removed). So although there isn't much banter between songs, I think it's safe to say that's because he simply didn't talk much instead of those bits getting lost. Whenever he did talk, his voice was rather quiet, so I boosted the volume on those parts to help you hear what he was saying.

This album is an hour and 16 minutes long. If you're a fan of his music, I highly recommend you get this. It's interesting to hear the early versions of songs he would often play later. But I think it's even more interesting that about half of these songs are ones he apparently permanently dropped from his repertoire once he joined Jefferson Airplane.

01 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 Come Back Baby (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 Move to Kansas City (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 Worry No More (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 Follow the Drinking Gourd (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 Keep On Truckin' (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 Always (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 Nine Pound Hammer (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 Search My Heart (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 Mann's Fate [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 Good Shepherd (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 That'll Never Happen No More (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Death Don't Have No Mercy (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 San Francisco Bay Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 Lullaby [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 Late in the Evening Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
21 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
22 Hesitation Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
23 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
24 True Religion (Jorma Kaukonen)
25 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
26 Candy Man (Jorma Kaukonen)
27 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
28 Trouble in Mind (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TUMKVJeM

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5g3U3Q9soCaeTjl/file

When I decided to make this an album I would post on my blog, I went looking for a photo of Kaukonen from 1964. I must say I thought the odds of actually finding one were between slim and none, but I felt I had to at least look. To my surprise, I actually found a photo of him playing in a club in 1964! The only snag was that it was in black and white, so I colorized it. In 2026, I upgraded the image detail with the use of the Ask Gemini program.

Between this music and the photo, I'm quite amazed at what one can find on the Internet these days. :)

Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks - Acoustic Version (1974)

Bob Dylan's 1975 album "Blood on the Tracks" is an undisputed classic. Acclaimedmusic.net, which aggregates music reviews, currently lists it at the 22nd best album of all time.

The songs on the released version are mostly done with a band. For instance, six out of the ten songs have drums on them, and eight of them has bass. But when Dylan first began recording the album in 1974, he planned to put out a version that was just his voice, acoustic guitar, and harmonica. My idea here is to make the best acoustic version I could, using those earlier takes, with the exact same song order as the released album version.

This was a very easy task to do, thanks to the six disc 2018 box set "The Bootleg Series, Volume 14: More Blood, More Tracks." Not only does that include every take I could want to use, there was a single disc version, as well as a slightly different "sampler" version that generally featured the best versions. So nearly every version I selected here came from the single disc version and/or the sampler version.

The one exception to that is the version of "Up to Me." That and "Call Letter Blues" are kind of bonus tracks added to the end, since they're the only two original songs recorded for the album but not released on it. ("Call Letter Blues" basically has the same melody as "Meet Me in the Morning," but has totally different lyrics.) The version of "Up to Me" had the sound of buttons on Dylan's jacket repeatedly banging against his guitar, which I find annoying. I used a take that has almost none of that. Frankly, I'm puzzled why they chose the button clacking version as one of the best, but whatever.

Dylan did record one more song during these sessions: the cover version "Spanish Is the Loving Tongue." I've revised the mid-1970s stray tracks album "Abandoned Love" a bit, and I've put that song there.

Although "Blood on the Tracks" was released in early 1975, it could have easily been released in late 1974, so that's why I have 1974 in the headline. These recording sessions were all done in September 1974.  

Note that these versions aren't simply acoustic versions of the ones on the final released album. Many of them have drastically different lyrics, and often the feel of the songs are different. For instance, the album version of "Idiot Wind" has a lot of anger on it, whereas this version is more contemplative. Both are excellent, but in different ways.

This album is 56 minutes long without the two extra songs at the end. In comparison, the released 1975 version is 52 minutes long. If you add those two extra songs, it's an hour and five minutes long.

01 Tangled Up in Blue (Bob Dylan)
02 Simple Twist of Fate (Bob Dylan)
03 You're a Big Girl Now (Bob Dylan)
04 Idiot Wind (Bob Dylan)
05 You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Bob Dylan)
06 Meet Me in the Morning (Bob Dylan)
07 Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts (Bob Dylan)
08 If You See Her, Say Hello (Bob Dylan)
09 Shelter from the Storm (Bob Dylan)
10 Buckets of Rain (Bob Dylan)
11 Up to Me (Bob Dylan)
12 Call Letter Blues (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PPhCJ2AY

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Jj3t8ePoN9hhUvM/file

The cover art uses a photo taken during the "Blood on the Tracks" recording sessions. I used the exact same font and style as the official album for the text.

The Who - I Like Nightmares - Non-Album Tracks (1980-1981)

Slowly but surely, I've been posting stray tracks albums for the Who. It's taken me a couple of years, but I'm finally getting near the end. This album is for the years 1980 and 1981. I have two more after this that goes all the way to the current day.

The music from this album roughly fits the time frame of the 1981 Who album "Face Dances." Many of the songs here are outtakes from that album, usually released as bonus tracks many years later. I've included two versions of "Dance It Away" because neither version made the album (though a different version did get included as a Pete Townshend B-side at the time), and one version has Roger Daltrey singing lead and the other one has Townshend singing lead. I've also included an alternate version of one of the album tracks, "Don't Let Go the Coat," because this version has Townshend singing lead whereas the album version is sung by Daltrey.

However, "Face Dances" wasn't the only album released during this time period. I didn't include any Townshend solo songs, because I have a whole separate series of stray tracks for Townshend's solo career. But I consider the solo works of Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle fair game here. To be blunt, I think Townshend's solo albums are usually solid all the way through, whereas with Daltrey and Entwistle it's usually more a case of finding a good song here and there.

In 1980, Daltrey released an album called "McVicar" that was tied to a movie of the same name that he acted in. This album is very unusual for a Daltrey solo album in that the full Who backed him on some of the songs. I included two of those, as well as one song from the album without the Who that I consider one of its best songs.

Entwistle released his solo album "Too Late the Hero" in 1981. I particularly like two of the songs from it, so I've included those.

And that's it. Everything here is officially released either as a "Face Dances" outtake, or is from the Daltrey or Entwistle solo albums. The Who did play a lot of concerts during these two years, but there weren't any particularly interesting rarities that weren't done in other years.

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Don't Let Go the Coat [Pete Townshend Vocal Version] (Who)
02 My Time Is Gonna Come (Roger Daltrey)
03 Free Me (Roger Daltrey & the Who)
04 Without Your Love (Roger Daltrey & the Who)
05 Dance It Away [Pete Townshend Vocal Version] (Who)
06 I Like Nightmares (Who)
07 It's in Ya [It's in You] (Who)
08 Somebody Saved Me (Who)
09 Fallen Angel (John Entwistle)
10 Too Late the Hero (John Entwistle)
11 Dance It Away [Roger Daltrey Vocal Version] (Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/aWQcuYK1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/tnzdoN6hY99VNFd/file

For the album cover, I used a promotional photo from 1981.

Stephen Stills - Buffalo Springfield Era Acoustic Versions (1966-1968)

Previously, I posted an album of acoustic versions of Neil Young's songs from when he was a member of Buffalo Springfield (1966-1968). That was pretty easy to make, because acoustic versions of the vast majority of those songs exist, mostly thanks to his solo acoustic concerts. Then, yesterday, I posted an album of David Crosby's acoustic demos from 1968.

While I was putting these album together in recent days, I got to thinking: since those guys are two members of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, what about Stephen Stills and Graham Nash? With Nash, I might give it a try someday, but I doubt I have enough solo acoustic material from him from this time, and converting Hollies songs into acoustic versions would be tough. However, I decided I could do something with Stills. The Buffalo Springfield box set has eight acoustic demos he did that could get me part of the way there.

But that was only part way. For the rest, including his most famous Buffalo Springfield songs, I tried the sound editing program Spleeter to remove the bass and drums. This at least gave me something to work with most of the rest of his songs. But there were a couple, "Leave" and "Uno Mundo" where nothing I did sounded good enough for inclusion. So those are left out, but I think I managed to include all the other Stills songs he did with Buffalo Springfield where he sang lead vocals.

These Spleeter edits are far from ideal. Although they removed most of the bass and drums, they often left in other elements, such as backing vocals, piano, keyboards, electric guitar, and the like. That means they may be stripped down some, but they're not solo acoustic versions. Still, I figure they're interesting enough to be worth a listen. 

I tried using the sound editing program X-Minus to strip out the backing vocals, but that rarely worked because the other vocals were so close to the lead vocals. In fact, on a number of songs, Stills essentially did a co-lead vocal with band member Richie Furay. But I did manage to at least lessen the backing vocals on a few songs, such as "Pay the Price" and "Rock and Roll Woman." Mike Solof helped me with X-Minus file conversion in some cases.

"For What It's Worth" is a little different, because that's the only song where I had access to the multitrack recording. That's because it's such a famous song that it got included in the computer game Rock Band, which breaks songs down to each instrument. So that one sounds especially good. But even with that one, I couldn't get rid of the backing vocals entirely.

To get the best possible sound, I enlisted the help of musical friend MZ. He improved the equalization of all the songs. The one song he and I had the most trouble with was "Pretty Girl Why." There is what MZ called a "strange, low breathing sound" going through the whole song. I found two original versions of this song, and both of them had it. I think it's just some weird musical effect that's meant to be there, and it sounds good in the full version, but if you strip away many of the other instruments, it sounds weird. I used some editing tricks to lessen it, but it's still there in spots. 

This album has some sonic issues here and there. But consider that Stills, unlike Neil Young, has abandoned most of these songs after he left Buffalo Springfield, so acoustic versions simply don't exist in any form for most of them. This, at least, is an approximation, and hopefully gives you a different way to appreciate his many quality songs he did during this time period.

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 For What It's Worth [Stripped Mix] (Buffalo Springfield)
02 Go and Say Goodbye [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Hot Dusty Roads [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Sit Down, I Think I Love You [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
05 Pay the Price [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
06 Come On [Demo] [Edit] (Stephen Stills)
07 Baby Don't Scold Me [Demo] (Stephen Stills & Richie Furay)
08 Hello, I've Returned [Demo] [Edit] (Stephen Stills)
09 Neighbor Don't You Worry [Demo] (Stephen Stills & Richie Furay)
10 We'll See [Demo] (Stephen Stills & Richie Furay)
11 Bluebird [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Rock and Roll Woman [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
13 Everydays [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
14 So You've Got a Lover [Demo] (Stephen Stills)
15 Hung Upside Down [Demo] (Stephen Stills)
16 My Angel [Demo] (Stephen Stills)
17 49 Reasons [49 Bye-Byes] [Demo] (Stephen Stills)
18 Four Days Gone [Demo] (Stephen Stills)
19 Pretty Girl Why [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
20 Special Care [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
21 Questions [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/K9SES8ve

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/BcsxrPdCDJZ9OU1/file

For the album cover, I found a good photo of Stills that dates to 1967, in the middle of his time as part of Buffalo Springfield. In March 2025, I updated the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

David Crosby - Just Roll My Tape - Hollywood Recorders, Los Angeles, CA, 3-28-1968

In late 1967, David Crosby was kicked out of the Byrds. He didn't hook up with Graham Nash and Stephen Stills to form Crosby, Stills and Nash until about July 1968, resulting in their first album in 1969. In early 1968, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do next, but he was toying with the idea of recording a solo album. Although that never came to pass, he did take part in some solo recording sessions. 

The most intriguing of these sessions is one that took place on March 28, 1968. We only know a little bit about it due to the book "Crosby, Stills and Nash: The Biography," by Dave Zimmer. Here's a paragraph from the book that sums up pretty much all that is publicly known about this recording session:

"Over the next couple of hours, [Crosby] unveiled a batch of exciting new songs. Crosby's voice sounded warm and clear as he scatted around open-tuned chords throughout 'Song with No Words (Trees with No Leaves)' - which would be released more than two years later on his first solo LP. He played 'Games' and 'The Wall Song' (no words yet) - both later to be included on the first Crosby-Nash album. He added a certain Byrdsian twang to 'Laughing' - including simulated cymbal clashes with his voice. But perhaps the most startling piece of music he pulled out of his bag was a complicated series of chord and melody shifts that exploded into a rush of humming and guitar-flailing. This was a large chunk of what would ultimately become 'Wooden Ships.'"

I would have liked to put together this important recording in the history of Crosby's career. But although it sounds like the author Dave Zimmer got to hear it, only two of the songs from it have been publicly available on bootleg. That changed earlier this month (October 2021) when a deluxe edition of Crosby's first solo album "If I Could Only Remember My Name" was released. Four songs from Crosby's March 28, 1968 session were included as bonus tracks, and luckily they were different than the two available on bootleg ("Laughing" and "Wooden Ships"). So I decided I could try to put as much of this recording together as I could.

Only six songs from the actual March 28, 1968 session isn't a lot for an album. That only totals 17 minutes of music. But there are other acoustic demos he did prior to that point that have been made public: "Lady Friend" and "Everybody's Been Burned." I've put both of those on Crosby, Stills and Nash acoustic demo collections, but I think they fit here too. The recording of "Lady Friend" fades out early, so I edited it to give it a proper finish. 

There's a second version of "Laughing" that was recorded just three days later, on March 31, 1968. It's somewhat different from the first version, so I've included it as well. That version also was released on the deluxe version of "If I Could Only Remember My Name." It's highly likely that "Long Time Gone" and "Guinnevere" were recorded in that March 28th session as well, because demos of them recorded less than three months later (on June 13, 1968) have been released as part of the David Crosby box set "Voyage." This version of "Long Time Gone" had some other instruments added by Stephen Stills, but I edited the bass and drums out using the sound editing program Spleeter to make it fit in better with the other acoustic demos. And "Guinnevere" was played on an acoustic guitar plus a very prominent bass part, but I used Spleeter to lower the volume of the bass, again to help make it fit with the other songs.

Finally, we know from Zimmer's book that "The Wall Song" and "Song with No Words (Trees with No Leaves)" were recorded in that March 28th session, but no versions of those from that date has publicly emerged so far. But there are excellent acoustic demos of both songs included as more bonus tracks to the deluxe version of "If I Could Only Remember My Name." So I've included those at the end, even though they were recorded in 1970 and 1969 respectively (and Graham Nash sings backing vocals on "Song with No Words"). 

Chances are there are more songs that Crosby recorded on March 28th, maybe even a bunch more. But this is all we know for now. Put together, this makes for 42 minutes of quality acoustic songs. If he hadn't partnered up with Stills and Nash, he could have put out a solo album in 1968 that had the potential to be great.

As for the album title, I thought of the fact that there's a Stephen Stills archival album called "Just Roll Tape" that features him demoing some of his songs on acoustic guitar. Supposedly it was recorded in April 1968, but it's almost certain it was recorded around September 1968 instead. (In the months in between he got to know Judy Collins by producing one of her albums, fell in love with her, and was inspired to write "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," one of the songs on the album.) Anyway, regardless of the exact date, the idea of an album made up of a bunch of acoustic demos recorded in 1968 by a member of Crosby, Stills and Nash is extremely similar to this album. Thus, I wanted to call this "Just Roll Another Tape," until I realized this one actually took place before the Stills session (whether it was in April or September). So I called it "Just Roll My Tape" instead.

Hopefully someday an album of all the March 28, 1968 recording session will be officially released. Stills did well with releasing his "Just Roll Tape," so you'd think there would be a market for this too. But in the meantime, we'll have to make due with this.

01 Riff 1 (David Crosby)
02 Laughing (David Crosby)
03 Tamalpais High [At about 3] (David Crosby)
04 Kids and Dogs (David Crosby)
05 Games (David Crosby)
06 Wooden Ships (David Crosby)
07 Lady Friend [Edit] (David Crosby)
08 Everybody's Been Burned (David Crosby)
09 Laughing [Second Version] (David Crosby)
10 Long Time Gone [Edit] (David Crosby & Stephen Stills)
11 Guinnevere [Edit] (David Crosby)
12 The Wall Song (David Crosby)
13 Song with No Words [Tree with No Leaves] (David Crosby & Graham Nash)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nLkanVjT

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/Lv4tRtp5sy7RkfA/file

The cover art photo comes from February 1968. It's part of a series of photos taken in the same time and place showing Crosby, Joni Mitchell, and Eric Clapton hanging out in a field and playing acoustic guitars. Man, it would be awesome if there was a recording of the three of them playing together then!

Aretha Franklin - Hold On, I'm Coming - Selected Best Tracks (1980-1982)

Earlier this year, the Aretha Franklin box set "Aretha" was released. It dealt with all parts of her musical career. I haven't been that big on the later part of her career, from the early 1980s until her death in 2018, and I'm still not. But the box set made me realize there was a lot of good music from her later career that I'd missed. So I used to have two stray tracks albums for the early 1980s to the end of her career. I'm revamped that, so I now have four albums for that time period. Two of them are new, and two are radically changed. Here's the first new one.

My main problem with later music from her is the bad production. This album deals with three years at the start of the 1980s, before the production really got bad, in my opinion. For this album, anything she did is fair game. I included "School Days" from her 1980 album "Aretha," "Hold On, I'm Coming" from her 1981 album "Love All the Hurt Away," and "Jump to It" and "It's Your Thing" from her 1982 album "Jump to It."

As you can see, that means a majority of the songs don't come from her studio albums. I think non-album tracks tended to not suffer from the usual production problems from that time period. Three of those songs are officially unreleased: a version of "Sweet Sixteen" with B. B. King, "God Bless the Child," and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" with blues legend Big Mama Thornton. All three of those come from TV show appearances, so the sound quality is pretty good.

Two more songs come from the "Aretha" box set: "Amazing Grace" and a duet version of "I Say a Little Prayer" with Dionne Warwick. Finally, "Think" was a hit for her in 1968, but I prefer this version from the "Blues Brothers" movie soundtrack, because the original version only has one iteration of the chorus, and this version has two.

This album is 41 minutes long.

If you're interested in this time period of her career and you've download the early 1980s stray tracks album "Freeway of Love" already, I highly, highly recommend you get the updated version I'm posting at the same time I post this. That album has been radically transformed, with most of the songs different than before. Here's the link to the revised "Freeway of Love":

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/08/aretha-franklin-freeway-of-love-various.html

01 Think [1980 Version] (Blues Brothers with Aretha Franklin)
02 School Days (Aretha Franklin)
03 Sweet Sixteen (Aretha Franklin & B. B. King)
04 Amazing Grace (Aretha Franklin)
05 God Bless the Child (Aretha Franklin)
06 Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out (Aretha Franklin & Big Mama Thornton)
07 I Say a Little Prayer (Dionne Warwick & Aretha Franklin)
08 Hold On, I'm Coming (Aretha Franklin)
09 Jump to It (Aretha Franklin)
10 It's Your Thing (Aretha Franklin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15114694/ArethaF_1980-1982_HldOnComing_atse.zip.html

The cover uses a promotional photo from 1980. 

Aretha Franklin - Rolling in the Deep - Selected Best Tracks (2002-2014)

In late 2021, the Aretha Franklin box set "Aretha" was released. It dealt with her entire career. Listening to it, I realized I'd missed some good songs from the latter part of her career. I found enough to turn the two stray tracks albums from the early 1980s until her death in 2018 to four stray tracks albums. This is the last one. (Due to declining health, she didn't sing much in her last four years.)

Generally speaking, I found her music from the 1980s on to be marred by bad production. So only four songs here are from her studio albums. There's two songs from her 2011 album "A Woman Falling Out of Love": "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and "Sweet Sixteen." And there's two songs from her 2014 album "Sings the Great Diva Classics": "No One" and "Rolling in the Deep."

Speaking of "Rolling in the Deep," of course that was a huge hit by Adele. Personally, I think Adele's version is fantastic. It's such an inherently great song that Franklin's version is pretty good too, even though hers isn't nearly as good as Adele's. However, there's a big problem with Franklin's version, in my opinion: near the end, she switches into some of the soul classic "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." That's a problem, because the sentiment of that song is the exact opposite of "Rolling in the Deep!" It might work musically, but it's a disaster lyrically. So I've created my own version here where I've tried my best to cut out the "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" part. The edits aren't that great due the way different parts of the song overlap, but I did what I could.

As for the other songs here, two more have been officially released. "At Last," a duet with Lou Rawls, comes from the "Aretha" box set. And "You've Got a Friend," a duet with Ronald Isley, comes from a Ronald Isley album.

Although the remaining songs are officially unreleased, they generally sound very good. Some of them come from TV show performances.

This album is 49 minutes long.

In making this album, I radically transformed a different stray tracks album that used to cover this time period, "A Deeper Love." So if you get this, I highly recommend you get the updated version of that one. The link is here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/08/aretha-franklin-deeper-love-various.html

01 At Last (Aretha Franklin & Lou Rawls)
02 Until You Come Back to Me [That's What I'm Gonna Do] [Live] (Stevie Wonder & Aretha Franklin)
03 I Adore You [And I Abhor You] [Edit] (Aretha Franklin)
04 Make Them Hear You (Aretha Franklin)
05 You've Got a Friend (Aretha Franklin & Ronald Isley)
06 My Country 'Tis of Thee (Aretha Franklin)
07 Sweet Sixteen (Aretha Franklin)
08 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Aretha Franklin)
09 I Will Always Love You (Aretha Franklin)
10 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher (Aretha Franklin)
11 No One (Aretha Franklin)
12 Rolling in the Deep [Edit] (Aretha Franklin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zN2xCRNE

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/CDUoBSmJiWtzgY0/file

Franklin's version of "Rolling in the Deep" had a limited release as a single. The cover art I used here is simply the single cover. In March 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Bob Dylan - Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid - Alternate Version (1973)

The flood of Bob Dylan albums continues. We're starting to move a little deeper into the 1970s.

After the 1970 album "New Morning," Dylan wouldn't release another proper studio album until 1974's "Planet Waves." But in 1973, he had a prominent acting role in the movie "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," and he released a soundtrack for it containing all original songs. This wasn't considered a proper Dylan album though, because a majority of the songs were instrumentals, and of course Dylan is most famous for his lyrics. It did contain the hit "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." But it seems most fans got the hit and ignored the rest of the album.

I've tried to spice up the album some by adding five more vocal tracks and removing one instrumental track. This changes the nature of the album to something closer to a typical Dylan album with lots of singing and lyrics, though it still has a large instrumental element. 

One of the added songs was not part of the movie project. In 1973, Dylan helped Doug Sahm with the album "Doug Sahm and Band." He mostly had a background role, playing guitar and harmonica on some songs. But the cover song "Blues Stay Away with Me" is a duet between Dylan and Sahm. Its musical vibe fits right in with the other songs on this soundtrack, and it's also from 1973, so I added it.

The other four songs with vocals are actually unreleased outtakes from the "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" recording sessions. This is surprising to me, because they're generally better than the songs that were included on the soundtrack. These songs are: "Rock Me Mama (Wagon Wheel)," "Sweet Amarillo," "Goodbye Holly," and "Tom Turkey."

The biggest surprise is "Rock Me Mama (Wagon Wheel)." This is a rough sketch of a song with Dylan just singing sounds instead of actual words during the verse parts, because he hadn't written the words. Apparently it was left off the soundtrack because he never finished it. However, it was finished off by the Old Crow Medicine Show, with Dylan getting half of the songwriting credit. It was released by that group in 2004, and has improbably gone on to sell millions and become a folk music standard. Apparently, it's the only Dylan original to hit number one on the US (country) charts. It's covered so much to the point of being overplayed that some country music clubs actually put up "No Wagon Wheel Zone" signs. No bad for a song where the original is still an unreleased outtake!

Note that a problem with Dylan's version of  "Rock Me Mama (Wagon Wheel)" is that he quietly sung through parts of it. But I used the sound editing program Spleeter to boost his vocals on those parts. The song also broke down in the middle and then resumed. I edited that too, creating one continuous version. 

Furthermore, the song "Sweet Amarillo" began in the middle of a vocal chorus. Clearly, someone didn't turn the recorder on in time, or the bootlegger didn't get a full version of it. So I patched in a section from later in the song to fill in the rest of the chorus.

The one instrumental I removed is "Cantina Theme (Workin' for the Law)." It's pretty much just the same chord changes over and over without soloing or much variation. So I felt the album is stronger without it.

This still isn't a lost masterpiece on the part with "Blood on the Tracks." But if you've overlooked this album due to its marginal reputation, you should give it a listen. Not only does it have a bunch of nice Dylan originals with his voice and lyrics, but even his instrumentals are pretty good, and the whole thing has a nice mellow vibe to it.

01 Main Title Theme [Billy] [Instrumental] (Bob Dylan)
02 Rock Me Mama [Wagon Wheel] [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
03 Billy 1 (Bob Dylan)
04 Bunkhouse Theme [Instrumental] (Bob Dylan)
05 Billy 4 (Bob Dylan)
06 Sweet Amarillo [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
07 River Theme [Instrumental] (Bob Dylan)
08 Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan)
09 Billy 7 (Bob Dylan)
10 Blues Stay Away from Me (Doug Sahm & Bob Dylan)
11 Turkey Chase [Instrumental] (Bob Dylan)
12 Goodbye Holly (Bob Dylan)
13 Tom Turkey (Bob Dylan)
14 Final Theme [Instrumental] (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zd4Qo2Wn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/lDYhVYZykfFdNW8/file

The official album cover is basically just the album title in very large, black letters, on a white background. That seemed boring to me. So I used a still of Dylan from the movie as the main image. Then I added the text from the official cover, but in white instead of black. Later, I sharpened the image with the Krea AI program.

A New Backing Vocals Editing Trick

If you've been following this blog, you've probably noticed I've been singing the praises of the sound editing program Spleeter. To refresh your memory, it splits any song into five tracks: bass, drums, vocals, piano, and other. That has allowed me to edit songs in ways never before possible (unless one has the multi-track version, which almost never happens).

Anyway, the other day I was talking with my musical associate Mike Solof. He can't use Spleeter, because although it's free and easy to use, it only works for PC computer and he has a Mac. Instead, he found a similar program called X-Minus:

https://x-minus.pro/

It only splits a song into the vocals on one track and the instruments on another. But it does something else that Spleeter doesn't do, which is pretty remarkable, in my book: it can split the backing vocals from the lead vocals. I don't know how it does this - how can it tell which is which?! But I tried it out on one song, and it worked like a charm. So thanks for the tip, Mike!

The song I experimented on is "Mary Ann" by Bob Dylan, from the 1973 album "Dylan." I was considering including this song on my recent compilation album "A New Morning Portrait," but I didn't because I found the backing vocals too prominent and heavy-handed. So last night I tried to remove the backing vocals. Sure enough, they were all gone, even when they overlapped with Dylan's voice!

I have a zip file here with three versions of the song. One has the original version from the "Dylan" album, unchanged. Another has all the backing vocals removed, using X-Minus. The third is kind of a halfway point, where I used X-Minus to edit the backing vocals way down in the mix (and cutting out some backing vocal bits I didn't like altogether). I actually like that halfway version the best, and I'm adding it to the "A New Morning Portrait" album today.

Here's the zip so you can judge how the program works itself:

https://www115.zippyshare.com/v/CET6AAOH/file.html

Anyway, the rest I'm explaining all this is to let you know of this promising new editing possibility. If you know of any songs where it would sound better with the backing vocals removed, or the main vocals removed but the backing vocals remain, etc... these are now things that may work. I'm not sure just how effective this program is, since I've only used it with one song, but I'm so impressed with what it did to that one song that I thought I'd share this news.

And on a somewhat related note, in putting together the CSNY 1969 live compilation I posted yesterday, I discovered another neat editing trick using Spleeter. Getting rid of hiss is a common problem with bootlegs. One can apply noise reduction to that, but it's a crude tool that effects everything, and usually degrades the sound of the music. That's still a problem with songs. But if there's a track that's just talking, I've discovered that if I run that through Spleeter, it usually puts all the talking on one channel and all the hiss on a different channel. So it's a cleaner and more effective way to get rid of hiss. (The reason it only works for talking tracks is because if it's a song, some of the music ends up on the same channel as the hiss.)

So if you know of a concert bootleg with lots of hiss through the talking, this could do wonders. If you know of any such recordings, let me know. Or you or other people could make these fixes yourselves, since these are easy programs to use. If you do improve some recordings, please let me know that too, and maybe I can share them through this blog.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - The 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival and More (1969)

Here's something I'm especially proud of making. In my opinion, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) peaked early. They formed in 1969, and 1969 and 1970 were arguably their best years. However, when it comes to live material, there isn't that much that was recorded with great sound quality. 

I've already posted the CSNY set at Woodstock, which is a complete, great performance that sounds fantastic. But other than that, there's only parts of shows that have soundboard quality. I've collected all the best bits (not counting the Woodstock stuff) to make a kind of ultimate CSNY 1969 concert recording. It's two hours and 24 minutes long, and it's killer all the way through.

Virtually no live CSNY performances from 1969 are officially released, other than the Woodstock show (which can only be had as part of a massive box set), and a few songs here and there. I ended up only using a single such song, "I've Loved Her So Long," from Neil Young's "Archives, Volume 1." For the rest, I had to rely on bootlegs. Strangely, there are five CSNY boots from 1969 that are soundboards, but all of them are partial shows. 

The closest to a complete show comes from the Big Sur Folk Festival. At first glance it looks like a complete show, but this is an illusion, because CSNY actually played twice at that festival, on September 13th, and then again on September 14th, and the popular bootleg from this festival combines the two into one. Even then, it's incomplete. For instance, at one point, there's a spoken introduction to the song "I've Long Her So Long," but the song isn't there. To make matters worse, some parts of the shows sound great and seem to be from a soundboard, and others not so much, and seem to be from a high quality audience recording.

In addition to Big Sur, there are portions of three other soundboard bootlegs. There are six songs from Chicago on December 13th, six songs from Detroit on December 14th, and six songs from Houston on December 18th. Weird, huh? And they're all different songs, though some are incomplete. After those, the sound quality drops dramatically, to just average or poor sounding audience bootlegs.

So I used the Big Sur shows as the basis, and then added in as many songs as I could from the other soundboard concerts to create one big concert containing everything really worth hearing (not counting Woodstock), without ever using the same song multiple times. CSNY was pretty consistent in how they did their concerts, dividing their shows in a first acoustic set and then a second electric, full band set. And within those, there was a natural order. For instance, the acoustic set had them doing some songs together to start the show, then breaking off into individual mini-sets featuring just one member, then getting back them all together again for a song or two before ending the set. Because of this, I was able easily add in the extra songs where they more or less belonged.

Where things got more complicated is with the banter between songs. CSNY was very chatty in this time period. They talked before virtually every song, and sometimes talked for a few minutes. I wanted to replicate this aspect of their concerts too, because it showed their personality and camaraderie. Most of the time, the version of the songs I used had banter that went with the songs, so I used those. But in some cases the banter was missing, or it had sound quality issues. In many of those cases, I was able to find banter from some other show. For instance, the version of "Wooden Ships" here comes from one of the Big Sur shows. But banter before it had lots of hiss and crowd noise. I found different banter from the Chicago show where he explained the meaning of the song in depth, with much better sound quality, so I used that.

I put a lot of time and effort into making the best cohesive sounding concert with the limited raw material I had. Because I was mixing sources, I had to work to make sure the end of one track fit with the start of the next one. I did a lot of editing to make sure a song wouldn't end in the middle of audience applause or something like that. I also worked to improve the sound quality as much as possible. 

I discovered a new trick with Spleeter, which is that for banter tracks only, the vocals are usually put on one channel and the hiss on another channel. So I can just delete the hiss channel, and I can get rid of hiss better than any other noise reduction type tool. (It only works for banter tracks, because if there's music, the hiss ends up on the same channel as some of the music.) One thing I couldn't fix though is that some of the banter tracks have a lot of echo and/or reverb, and other such tracks don't. That can vary from time to time, so just try to ignore that.

I'm happy to say that I managed to find nearly all the important songs CSNY played in 1969. If one looks at the setlist.fm list of songs they played that year, and how many times they played them, there are only a few I missed that they played more than once: "49 Bye-Byes - America's Children," "Find the Cost of Freedom," "Broken Arrow," and "How Have You Been." I got really lucky! (One of the soundboard sources did have "49 Bye- Byes - America's Children," but half or more of it was missing, so I skipped it.)

The Big Sur shows were unusual in a couple of aspects. One oddity is that, during the CSNY set, they brought up Dave Mason, who recently left Traffic, and let him perform two of his songs. They even backed him up on the second one. I'm pretty sure that was the one and only time CSNY ever did that, at least in the 1969 and 1970 time frame. I chose to keep those songs in, since I like Mason and they're good songs.

Also, the Big Sur shows were filmed for a documentary movie and soundtrack, which was eventually released with the name "Celebration at Big Sur." In the movie, you can watch a scene in which CSNY gets heckled by an audience member. Stills left the stage to talk up close to the guy, and ended up getting in a tussle with him. The bootleg included all of this scene, which lasted several minutes. However, I cut the whole thing out. The main reason is that the audio quality of that second was particularly poor, and it mostly was just lots of crowd noise. But later on in the show, when Stills had his solo spot, right before the song "4+20," he spent about a minute talking about the heckler and his response. I left that in, because the sound quality was much better, and his commentary was interesting.

In 1969, CSNY varied the songs they played during their acoustic sets quite a lot, but they played pretty much the exact same songs in the same order during their electric sets. The result of that is the acoustic set is super sized with all the songs I gathered from here and there. Whereas I only added two extra songs to the electric set over what they played at Big Sur.

A few tracks have "[Edit]" in the title. The only actual song I edited is the Dave Mason song "Only You Know and I Know." There was a missing section near the end. It was during an instrumental section, so I managed to patch it using another part of the song where the same section was repeated. I also did a lot editing of the banter between songs. Sometimes I cut out portions that were boring, such as lots of guitar tuning or prolonged silences. Occasionally, I moved things around to have the flow from song to song make more sense. I added "[Edit]" to the ones where I made the biggest changes.

In addition to all the soundboard sourced songs I mentioned above, there are two songs where I used audience boots as the source. These are two songs that I simply thought were really cool, and I decided the sound quality was good enough for them to fit, even though they do sound slightly worse than the rest. Those two are "Mr. Soul" and "Go Back Home." They're interesting rarities. If setlist.fm is correct, CSNY only ever played them twice. (However, there's a better sounding version of "Mr. Soul" in the Woodstock concert.)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this. The sound does vary from time to time. But considering the poor quality of most 1969 CSNY bootlegs, this is the cream of the crop, all in one plus (minus Woodstock, of course).

Finally, I was so pleased with the result I made here that I decided to do the same thing for CSNY's 1970 concerts. I've taken the best of the best recordings, mostly from the Fillmore East, to make one ultimate concert for that year too. Look for that to be posted soon.

01 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
02 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
03 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
04 Blackbird (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
05 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
06 On the Way Home (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
07 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
08 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
10 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
11 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
12 Mr. Soul (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
13 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
14 Guinnevere (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
15 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
16 Triad (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
17 talk [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
18 Lady of the Island (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
19 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
20 Our House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
21 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
22 Country Girl (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
23 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
24 Birds (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
25 talk [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
26 I've Loved Her So Long (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
27 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
28 Helpless (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
29 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
30 Black Queen (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
31 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
32 4+20 (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
33 Go Back Home (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
34 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
35 You Don't Have to Cry (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
36 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
37 World in Changes (Dave Mason & Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
38 talk (Dave Mason & Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
39 Only You Know and I Know [Edit] (Dave Mason & Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
40 Pre-Road Downs (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
41 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
42 So Begins the Task (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
43 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
44 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
45 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
46 Woodstock (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
47 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
48 Bluebird Revisited (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
49 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
50 Sea of Madness (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
51 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
52 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
53 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
54 Down by the River (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gzZHa

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NZrb1YTu

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yQk5DubxNLHGDJg/file

As I mentioned above, the Big Sur Folk Festival was the subject of a documentary movie. I could have used some still shots from that for the album cover. However, the film quality was rather low-res and blurry. Instead, I found a few excellent photos of CSNY in concert in San Diego in 1969. 

But the problem there was I couldn't find a single good photo showing all four of them. So I used one with Crosby, Stills and Young as the basis. Then I used another one of the San Diego photos to crop out Nash and stick him in the middle of the photo. So yeah, it's kind of a fake, but consider that Nash was right there wearing those clothes with that lighting, just out of frame. I probably combined two photos that were taken at the same spot only minutes apart.

In case you're curious, here are how the two raw pics look separately. I didn't use the bottom one, even though it has all four of them, because Stills' head is turned away from the camera, and Crosby's head is partially blocked.

Various Artists - Covered: Curtis Mayfield, Volume 4: 1995-2020

Here is the fourth and last of the "Covered" series for soul great Curtis Mayfield.

Tragedy struck Mayfield in 1990. During a concert, some lighting equipment fell on him, paralyzing him from the neck down. Despite this, he managed to put out one more album in 1996, "New World Order," which was hailed as a musical comeback. Unfortunately, he died only three years after that, in 1999, at the relatively young age of 57.

This generally consists of covers of his songs from the 1960s and 1970s, although "Here but I'm Gone" is from his 1996 album. As one can see, his musical influence remains strong up until the present day.

There were a couple of songs I wanted to find covers for, but I couldn't find any released versions of them. Happily, I was able to find very good unreleased versions. Eric Clapton has only done "Here but I'm Gone" in concert. I was able to find a pretty good sounding version from a bootleg recorded in Osaka, Japan. And nobody at all seems to have covered "So in Love," even though it was a hit back in the 1970s. But I found a nice version done on YouTube by two artists that have put out their own records.

Although this is the end of the Curtis Mayfield Covered series, I have many, many more musicians I plan on featuring with their own Covered series.

01 We're a Winner (Mother Earth)
02 Kung Fu (Dirtbombs)
03 The Makings of You (Angie Stone)
04 Fool for You (Rory Block)
05 We Gotta Have Peace (Charlatans)
06 This Is My Country (Cyril Neville)
07 We People Who Are Darker than Blue (Sinead O'Connor)
08 Everybody Needs a Friend (Joan Osborne)
09 Here but I'm Gone (Eric Clapton with Doyle Bramhall II)
10 Talkin' about My Baby (Phil Collins)
11 Pusherman (Sheila E.)
12 So in Love (Adeaze & Tone6)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/M9c5r8gQ

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/E8e5wvvUnpyBxG2/file

The cover art photo comes from 1995.  

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

Bob Dylan - Live in 1971

The flood of Bob Dylan material continues! Dylan got in a motorcycle accident in 1966, and was burned out from the fame and pressure of stardom by that point anyway. He'd toured a lot prior to the accident, but didn't tour again until 1974. During those years, I believe the only concert appearances he made was playing a few songs at a Woody Guthrie tribute concert in 1968, then playing a full concert at the Isle of Wight in 1969, then three appearances in 1971. It's those 1971 appearances that are the subject of this album.

The first two of the 1971 concerts took place on the same day. These were the early and late shows for George Harrison's "Concert for Bangladesh" benefit concert. His late show set was included on the official album of the concert that was released a year later, so people are more familiar with that. The early set consisted of the same songs, done the same way, except there was one more song, "Love Minus Zero/No Limit." That got an official release on an expanded version of the Bangladesh concert decades later.

Also, in the rehearsal for the concert, Dylan sang a duet version of "If Not for You" with Harrison. This was later released on a DVD of the concert, though not on any version of the album yet. Both Harrison and Dylan had included this Dylan original on their most recent studio albums. Although it's only a rehearsal and there's no audience applause, I've added it to the start of the album because it's a great performance that doesn't fit anyone else. (I've also included it on the "Fear of Flying" album of Harrison stray tracks.)

The third 1971 concert was a reunion with his previous backing band, simply known as the Band. They had become very famous in their own right since they'd stopped closely working with Dylan. They put on a big series of concerts in New York City which were recorded for a live album. Dylan showed up to play in an encore on the last night. Although it was the Band's show, such was Dylan's stature that he sang lead on three of the four songs he took part in, and sang co-lead on the fourth one. These songs weren't released on the Band live album at the time (called "Rock of Ages"), but they did get released on an expanded version decades later. 

(Technically, Dylan performed with the Band shortly after midnight on New Year's Eve, 1971. So that made it a 1972 concert appearance. But I still consider it from 1971 since it was mainly a December 31, 1971 show that ran into the late hours a little bit.)

It's really neat how these different shows fit together. There's no overlap between any of the songs he did for the Concert for Bangladesh concerts and the encore with the Band. If you put them all together, it makes for a nice 49-minute-long album.

If you're a fan of Dylan's live performances at all, this is a must have because A) everything has great sound quality and performance and B) it and the Isle of Wight show are the only two major cases of him playing live from late 1966 until early 1974. 

01 If Not for You (Bob Dylan & George Harrison)
02 Love Minus Zero-No Limit (Bob Dylan)
03 A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Bob Dylan)
04 It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry (Bob Dylan)
05 Blowin' in the Wind (Bob Dylan)
06 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan)
07 Just like a Woman (Bob Dylan)
08 Crash on the Levee [Down in the Flood] (Bob Dylan & the Band)
09 When I Paint My Masterpiece (Bob Dylan & the Band)
10 Don't Ya Tell Henry (Bob Dylan & the Band)
11 talk (Bob Dylan & the Band)
12 Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan & the Band)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tkrHu39C

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/nZ7TfXy9u5FbaCM/file

The album cover shows Dylan at the Concert for Bangladesh. Yes, that's George Harrison in the background. I had a few different photos to choose from for the cover, and I thought it was a nice bonus to have Harrison in there as well. After all, Harrison did accompany Dylan during his set, though in a low key way without any soloing. Plus, the two of them sang "If Not for You" as a duet in rehearsals.

Various Artists - Covered: Curtis Mayfield, Volume 3: 1977-1994

Here's Volume 3 of my "Covered" series for Curtis Mayfield. As with the others in this series, these are cover versions of songs written by Mayfield, not his own versions.

Mayfield was a big star with lots of hits in the 1960s and early 1970s, but that petered out as the 1970s continued. He lost out to changing tastes and musical styles, especially the rise of disco. However, his musical legacy was tremendous, as can be seen by the wide variety of covers.

The songs here are generally those from his most successful years of the 1960s and early 1970s. We finally get covers of some of his biggest hits, like "People Get Ready" and "Superfly."

But this isn't the last volume. There's one more that scoops up all the key songs not included so far.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Right On for the Darkness (Willie Wright)
02 Move On Up (Jam)
03 Future Shock (Herbie Hancock)
04 People Get Ready (Rod Stewart & Jeff Beck)
05 Superfly (Blow Monkeys)
06 Freddie's Dead (Fishbone)
07 I'm So Proud (Steve Cropper & Lani Groves)
08 Got a Right to Cry (Angela Strehli)
09 It's All Right (Huey Lewis & the News)
10 She Don't Let Nobody [But Me] (Chaka Demus & Pliers)
11 Billy Jack (Lenny Kravitz)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/dsx1W2as

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3FQToxycoZBDkbk/file

The cover art photo was taken in 1981. This time, I didn't have to change anything. Even the background is as is.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program. Although there was nothing really wrong with the original, this just made it look a little better.

Susanna Hoffs - McCabe's Guitar Shop, Santa Monica, CA, 7-15-1994

Here's a nice Susanna Hoffs acoustic concert. Hoffs hasn't had nearly the success with her solo career as she's had being a member of the Bangles. I also don't think she's put that much work into it, judging by the limited number of solo albums and concerts. Furthermore, she often was dragged down by bad production. But this concert gets past any production problems due to its simple acoustic nature, with just Hoffs and a second guitarist. It revealed she had lots of very good songs in the early 1990s, as well as excellent taste in covers.

I suspect this is an audience recording, not a soundboard. But the fact that I'm not sure shows it doesn't matter much. This is very listenable. Sometimes, her comments between songs were too quiet, but I've boosted the volume on those.

In the early 1990s, Hoffs' record company wanted to push her as a pop star based on her beautiful looks and wasn't that interested in her musical talent. She mostly went their way with her 1991 album "When I Was a Boy," so it wasn't that good. She tried to go in a different direction with a 1994 album, but her record company rejected it and dropped her from the label. Ironically, this concert seems to be promoting that album that didn't actually exist. 

She wouldn't release another album until 1996, the simply titled "Susanna Hoffs." It would use a few of the songs here, like "Enormous Wings," "Happy Place," and "Darling One." But others - "Go," "Ghost of His Smile," "Right by You," and "You Lost My Mind" - fell by the wayside and remain officially unreleased by her to this day. ("You Lost My Mind" was written by Sam Phillips.) The rest of the songs are Bangles hits or covers of famous songs.

The last song, "Manic Monday," was almost certainly performed in this concert because it was her closing song for all her concerts that year. But it wasn't included in the bootleg recording. I've found a version from a different concert as a substitute. The sound quality isn't as good, but it gets the job done for just one song.

This album is an hour and nine minutes long.

01 Walking on a Wire (Susanna Hoffs)
02 Enormous Wings (Susanna Hoffs)
03 Go (Susanna Hoffs)
04 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
05 A Hazy Shade of Winter (Susanna Hoffs)
06 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
07 Happy Place (Susanna Hoffs)
08 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
09 Ghost of His Smile (Susanna Hoffs)
10 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
11 Catch the Wind (Susanna Hoffs)
12 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
13 Right by You (Susanna Hoffs)
14 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
15 If She Knew Want She Wants (Susanna Hoffs)
16 Darling One (Susanna Hoffs)
17 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
18 Turning Over (Susanna Hoffs)
19 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
20 Walk like an Egyptian (Susanna Hoffs)
21 Hero Takes a Fall (Susanna Hoffs)
22 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
23 To Sir with Love (Susanna Hoffs)
24 Eternal Flame (Susanna Hoffs)
25 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
26 You Lost My Mind (Susanna Hoffs)
27 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
28 Stop (Susanna Hoffs)
29 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
30 Manic Monday (Susanna Hoffs)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292652/SusannaH_1994_McCabeGuitarShpSantaMonicaCA__7-15-1994_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any photos of Hoffs in concert in 1994 or around that time. So I used a photo of her at a movie premiere in January 1994.

Various Artists - Covered: Curtis Mayfield, Volume 2: 1971-1976

Yesterday, I posted Volume 1 in the "Covered" series for Curtis Mayfield. Here's Volume 2. 

In 1970, Curtis Mayfield left his band, the Impressions. It wasn't that much of a change, since he did all the lead vocals, songwriting, and production for the Impressions already. But it coincided with a shift from writing mostly about romance to addressing social and political concerns more overtly than before. This culminated in his his hugely successful soundtrack from the movie "Superfly" in 1972.

You can see that shift in focus here. However, it isn't as evident as it might be, because some of the covers of his big hits from this period that I picked weren't recorded until much later, so they don't appear until Volumes 3 or 4. 

Most of the songs here were originally done by Mayfield himself. But he continued to successfully write some hit songs for others, such as "On and On," "Let's Do It Again," and "Something He Can Feel."

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 [Don't Worry] If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go (East of Underground)
02 Stone Junkie (Ruby Jones)
03 Running (Baby Huey)
04 Stop the War (Impressions)
05 Ain't No Love Lost (Patti Jo)
06 I've Been Trying (Heptones)
07 Eddie You Should Know Better (Natural Four)
08 Make Me Believe in You (Patti Jo)
09 On and On (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 Let's Do It Again (Staple Singers)
11 Look into Your Heart (Aretha Franklin)
12 Something He Can Feel (Aretha Franklin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kRGVkFjg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/t2AQWw45EMLITKQ/file

Although the early 1970s was the peak of Mayfield's popularity, I had a surprisingly difficult time finding a good color photo of him. Most of them have his head tilted this way or that, and in this series I like ones with the musician staring straight ahead. I finally found one from 1973, though I'm not happy with his hand by his head. And in this one, he was looking to the side, so I adjusted his eyes to (hopefully) make it look like he's staring straight ahead. I also removed the background because I found it distracting. If anyone knows of a better photo of him from this time, please let me know.

Bob Dylan - New Morning - Alternate Version (1970)

Here's the third and final album I've made to reorganize the 1970 Bob Dylan recording sessions that resulted in the albums "Self Portrait" and "New Morning." This is an alternate version of the "New Morning" album. It contains every song from that album, in the exact order they appeared on the official version. But every single version here is different than the versions on that album. 

Personally, I think "New Morning" is a great album. All the songs are originals, It has a unified sound, with some consistent themes about living a simple family life, yet there's a lot of diversity in the songs too.

It seems that Dylan was searching for a musical direction in 1970 more than usual, so he often attempted these songs in significantly different versions. Also, we're very lucky that many of these alternate versions have been officially released, making putting together an alternate version like this possible. About half of these versions come from "The Bootleg Series, Volume 10: Another Self Portrait." The other half comes from "Anniversary Collection 1970," which was a very limited release in order to secure legal copyrights in Europe.

Luckily, all there are alternate versions of all but one of the "New Morning" songs. That one exception is "The Man in Me." I wanted to have an alternate version of every song, so I created an "outfake" of that song. Using the sound editing program Spleeter, I removed the bass and drums. I think it sounds okay, enough for me to at least have something for that song.

In several cases, there was more than one good alternate version to choose from. So I picked the one I liked the best, leaning on whichever one sounded more different than the official album version. In some cases, they're stripped down to acoustic versions, but in other cases extra instruments are added.

I've added five alternate versions that I didn't use as bonus tracks at the end. In case you prefer any of these, you could swap them out. Note that I didn't include every single alternate version. For instance, there are about five alternate takes of "If Not for You." But I included all the significant ones. The ones I skipped generally only had minor differences.

In addition to the "New Morning" songs, there are released alternate versions of two songs from 1971 that don't fit well anywhere else, "Wallflower" and "When I Paint My Masterpiece." So I've added those at the end.

01 If Not for You [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan)
02 Day of the Locusts [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan)
03 Time Passes Slowly [Alternate Version 2] (Bob Dylan)
04 Went to See the Gypsy [Demo] (Bob Dylan)
05 Winterlude [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan)
06 If Dogs Run Free [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan)
07 New Morning [With Horn Overdubs] (Bob Dylan)
08 Sign on the Window [Acoustic Version] (Bob Dylan)
09 One More Weekend [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan)
10 The Man in Me [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
11 Three Angels [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan)
12 Father of Night [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan)
13 Wallflower [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan)
14 When I Paint My Masterpiece [Demo Version] (Bob Dylan)

If Not for You [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan with George Harrison)
New Morning [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan)
Sign on the Window [With Orchestral Overdubs] (Bob Dylan)
Time Passes Slowly [Alternate Version 1] (Bob Dylan)
Went to See the Gypsy [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rc4fit4f

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/kE0FOWLq0xukl8K/file

For the album cover, I wanted to make something similar to the official "New Morning" cover, but different. That one has a photo of Dylan in the middle that's tinted yellow with a wide band of yellow on the edges, and no text whatsoever. So I did the exact same thing, except I used a sepia tone instead of yellow. And, naturally, I picked a different photo from 1970. I tried adding some text, but I ultimately decided to do without, and keep it more like the official cover.

Bob Dylan - A New Morning Portrait - Non-Album Tracks (1970)

Yesterday, I posted what I consider the best of the recording sessions that led to Bob Dylan's 1970 "Self Portrait" album. That album was recorded entirely in three days in early March 1970, though some songs from 1969 were included.

The conventional wisdom for many years was that "Self Portrait," an album mostly made up of covers, was such a critical disaster that Dylan quickly returned to the studio and recorded an album of originals, "New Morning," that restored his reputation. But that's not how it actually happened. Nearly all the songs for "New Morning" were recorded in sessions in May and early June 1970, before "Self Portrait' as released later in June. ("New Morning" was released in October 1970.)

Furthermore, the style of the two albums were blurred together. A few of the "New Morning" songs were first recorded in the March sessions, but held back for the next album. More importantly for this album, Dylan's sudden fondness for doing cover versions continued in the "New Morning" sessions. He originally planned on including at least a couple of covers in "New Morning," so a bunch were recorded to see which ones worked the best. In fact, two covers, "Mr. Bojangles" and "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," were selected for inclusion and only dropped at the last minute due to him finishing off a couple more originals.

The result of this is that there's an album's worth of good outtakes from "New Morning," so that's what this album is. The vast majority are covers, though there's one original, "Telephone Wire," and two Dylan originals from the early 1960s done is drastically different arrangements, "Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance" and "Tomorrow Is a Long Time." So what one gets is mainly a sonic continuation of the types of cover songs Dylan did in the "Self Portrait" sessions. I suppose that's not so surprising considering these sessions only took place three and four months later. Thus, I call this album "A New Morning Portrait" because it's like a cross between "New Morning" and "Self Portrait."

These songs were recorded too late for inclusion on "Self Portrait." In 1973, the album "Dylan" was released by one record company after Dylan had switched to a different record company in a spiteful move. Only four songs here are from that: "Mr. Bojangles," "Sarah Jane," "Mary Ann," and "The Ballad of Ira Hayes." Another song, "Bring Me a Little Water," eventually found released on "The Bootleg Series, Volume 10: Another Self Portrait." All the other songs come from "Anniversary Collection 1970," an extremely limited release to retain legal copyrights in Europe. In two cases, I used bootleg versions instead because the "Anniversary Collection 1970" version had a couple of seconds cut off and the sound quality is the same.

Note that the same problem that plagued the "Self Portrait" recordings also happened to many of these here, namely that the producer after the fact sweetened them with unnecessary strings, horns, and backing vocals. So in one case I was able to use alternate versions from those on the 1973 "Dylan"album without the overproduction: "Lily of the West."

There's some speculation that the record company that released "Dylan" in 1973 purposefully picked bad songs and bad versions in an extra bitter and spiteful move. I don't know if that's true, but I don't like some of those songs, and I didn't include any version of them. In some cases, it was exactly what happened with the "Self Portrait" album, where Dylan sang covers that weren't right from him, in part because the famous, excellent versions people were familiar with, for instance "Can't Help Falling in Love" and "Big Yellow Taxi."

I made significant edits to three songs. "Your True Love" is a Carl Perkins song done as a rough but fun duet between Dylan and George Harrison. Unfortunately, it seems Harrison wasn't close to a microphone, so his vocals were rather low. I used the sound editing program Spleeter to boost his vocals some. 

I massively changed the song "Long Black Veil." The released version on "Anniversary Collection 1970" is almost seven minutes long, because Dylan and his band played the entire song and then without stopping played the entire song again. So I edited it down to be only one pass through the song (the second one). 

Finally, I originally didn't include the song "Mary Ann" from the "Dylan" album because I thought the backing vocals were too prominent and heavy-handed, ruining the song. But a couple of days after posting this album, I discovered a sound editing program called "X-Minus" that has the ability to remove backing vocals. I used it on "Mary Ann," and ultimately decided to cut the volume of the backing vocals way down, so they're subtle, instead of removing them altogether.

A final note: I moved one song, "Tomorrow Is a Long Time," from my 1971 stray tracks album "Watching the River Flow" to this album. That's because it was recorded during these 1970 sessions, and all the other songs on that album are from 1971, so it fits much better here. So you might want to redownload that album to avoid having the same song on both.

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Telephone Wire (Bob Dylan)
02 Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance [1970 Version] (Bob Dylan)
03 Your True Love [Edit] (Bob Dylan & George Harrison)
04 Matchbox (Bob Dylan with George Harrison)
05 Sarah Jane (Bob Dylan)
06 Alligator Man [Country Version] (Bob Dylan)
07 The Ballad of Ira Hayes (Bob Dylan)
08 Mr. Bojangles (Bob Dylan)
09 Mary Ann [Lowered Backing Vocals Version] [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
10 Jamaica Farewell (Bob Dylan)
11 Long Black Veil [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
12 Bring Me a Little Water (Bob Dylan)
13 Tomorrow Is a Long Time [1970 Version] (Bob Dylan)
14 I Forgot to Remember to Forget (Bob Dylan)
15 Lily of the West (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6oMj8qEV

alternate: 

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

The cover photo was taken in 1970.

Bob Dylan - A Different Self Portrait - Non-Album Tracks (1970)

I have been slowly and steadily working my way through Bob Dylan's music career. I've been trying to go chronologically, though I've made many exceptions to that. One sticking point I've had is what to do with the recording sessions surrounding Dylan's 1970 double album "Self Portrait." Happily, I've been going through a Dylan phase lately, so I listened to this material a bunch of times and I have it worked out.

Frankly, the "Self Portrait" album as it was originally released is a mess. An infamous review in Rolling Stone Magazine started out by asking, "What is this shit?" It's a strange mishmash of material, mostly done in the studio but with some live tracks included, and mostly covers but with a few lightweight originals, and many songs done simply but many others being heavily overproduced.

It seems likely that the album was a deliberate career self-sabotage. At the time, Dylan was considered the voice for his generation, and the expectations for him were sky-high. Many people expected him to lead the counterculture protest movement with more insightful protest songs. He probably wanted to release an album mostly made up of covers to puncture those expectations. He denied the sabotage idea when the album came out, but he admitted as much in a 1984 interview:

“I said, 'Well, fuck it. I wish these people would just forget about me. I wanna do something they can't possibly like, they can't relate to. They'll see it and they'll listen and they'll say, 'Well, let's go on to the next person. He ain't sayin' it no more. He ain't givin' us what we want, you know?'"

However, in my opinion, much of the "sabotage" of the album can be blamed on the producer Bob Johnston. Dylan did select a handful of clunkers that couldn't be redeemed in any version., but most of the many songs on the double album were actually pretty good. Unfortunately, after Dylan was done with the album, Johnston took the tapes and added layers of horns, strings, and backing vocals, all without Dylan's input. In my opinion, it's mainly that overproduction that has given the album such a negative reputation. (Well, that and the shock over the simple fact that it was mostly an album of cover material.)

Given that history, it was quite a revelation in 2013 when the archival album "The Bootleg Series, Volume 10: Another Self Portrait" was released. It got high praise, drastically upgrading the reputation of this phase of Dylan's career. It contains many songs from the time period that were previously unreleased, and many alternate versions of songs without the overproduction. Yes, it's mostly made of covers, but they're generally good, little known songs, and Dylan's singing was arguably the best of his long career. (His voice in 1969 and 1970 was significantly different than how he's sounded before and after that. Some say that's due to him not smoking for a few years.)

My goal here has been to create the best version of all this "Self Portrait" era material. The problem with "Another Self Portrait" is that is disorganized. In addition to "Self Portrait" outtakes, it contains a few outtakes from Dylan's 1969 album "Nashville Skyline," many outtakes from his "New Morning" album later in 1970, and even a few outtakes from 1971. I've already included the good outtakes from 1969 on the stray tracks album "I Ain't Got No Home." As for the rest, I've divided them into two groups: the songs actually recorded for "Self Portrait," which is this album here, and the songs recorded for "New Morning" (and later), which will be posted later.

Here's the method to my madness for this album. I only included three songs from the original "Self Portrait" without any changes: "Early Morning Rain," "It Hurts Me Too," and "Gotta Travel On." I eliminated all the songs that I didn't like, no matter the version. Mostly, they're covers of famous classics that just don't sound right when done by Dylan: "Blue Moon," "The Boxer," "Take a Message to Mary," and "Let It Be Me." I removed all the live tracks. (I've already posted the full concert where they come from, the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival.) I removed two originals that are forgettable or downright annoying, in my opinion: "All the Tired Horses," and "Woogie Boogie."

Instead, I used a bunch of good songs from "Another Self Portrait," plus all the versions without the Bob Johnston overdubs. I also included one song ("Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies") from "Anniversary Collection 1970," a very limited release to secure copyright rights in Europe. I ordered the songs chronologically, according to the days they were recorded. However, that didn't sort things much, since the entire album was recorded in just three days in early March 1970. I made a chonological exception with the two versions of "Little Sadie," putting one near the start and the other near the end.

I think the final result is an album that's not only better than "Self Portrait," but is even better than highly praised "Another Self Portrait." But before you judge that last comment, consider I will actually be posting two albums of "New Morning" outtakes, drawing heavily on "Another Self Portrait" material to do so. One of those albums consists entirely of songs not included on "New Morning." The other one is an alternate version of "New Morning," containing different versions of every song from that album.

The original "Self Portrait" is 73 minutes long. Despite all the many changes made here, this album is nearly the same length, at 70 minutes long.

I would have liked to call this album "Another Self Portrait." But since that's been used already, I went with "A Different Self Portrait."

01 Pretty Saro (Bob Dylan)
02 Little Sadie [No Overdubs Version] (Bob Dylan)
03 These Hands (Bob Dylan)
04 Copper Kettle [No Overdubs Version] (Bob Dylan)
05 It Hurts Me Too (Bob Dylan)
06 Belle Isle [No Overdubs Version] (Bob Dylan)
07 Annies's Going to Sing Her Song (Bob Dylan)
08 Early Morning Rain (Bob Dylan)
09 Railroad Bill (Bob Dylan)
10 Thirsty Boots (Bob Dylan)
11 This Evening So Soon (Bob Dylan)
12 House Carpenter (Bob Dylan)
13 Wigwam [No Overdubs Version] (Bob Dylan)
14 Days of '49 [No Overdubs Version] (Bob Dylan)
15 Tattle O'Day (Bob Dylan)
16 Spanish Is the Loving Tongue [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan)
17 Alberta [Alternate Version] (Bob Dylan)
18 Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies (Bob Dylan)
19 Little Sadie, No. 2 [No Overdubs Version] (Bob Dylan)
20 Gotta Travel On (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ecSvED61

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/qYX2P74KaaiTZiG/file

Both "Self Portrait" and "Another Self Portrait" had covers that were self portraits painted by Dylan. I would have loved to use another such painting, but I couldn't find one. So I went with a nice photo that apparently was taken in 1970. Later, I sharpened the image with the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Curtis Mayfield, Volume 1: 1958-1971

It's been a while, but here's another major songwriter for my "Covered" series. To refresh your memory, this series highlights important songwriters, but only with cover versions of their songs, not versions they did themselves. Curtis Mayfield was a very successful musician and lead vocalist, first as part of the Impressions in the 1960s and then on his own from the 1970s until his death in 1999. But he had many successes writing songs for others. In fact, he was kind of a one man Motown, writing and producing tons of hits for others, and eventually having a record company of his own. 

I found four albums worth of cover material from him. They're a mix of covers that he wrote for others and covers of the songs that he made famous with his own versions. Note that if you look at any given volume, you might think that some key songs are missing. But this is ordered chronologically by the year the cover versions were done, and some of the ones I chose didn't come out until long after the song was first released.

This album largely overlaps with his years as a member of the Impressions, which lasted from 1956 until 1970. He wrote and sang lead on virtually everything they did, while they had a long series of hit singles. About the only key hit single not included in this series is "Amen," because Mayfield didn't write that one. The one exception to him singing lead on their hits is their very first hit, "For Your Precious Love" in 1958. Jerry Butler sang lead with Mayfield being one of the backing singers. But Butler left shortly after that for a long and successful solo career. I've included that song here even though Mayfield was part of the group at the time because he didn't sing lead on it.

Even as he was having great success with the Impressions, he was writing many more songs for others. Such big hits included "He Will Break Your Heart" by Jerry Butler, "Mama Didn't Lie" by Jan Bradley, "The Monkey Time" and "Um Um Um Um Um Um," both by Major Lance. Frankly, he had many, many more songs he wrote for others. But most of them were just okay, in my opinion, so I didn't include that many. Not surprisingly, he saved the best for himself and his group at the time, the Impressions.

I'm not going to say much more about his life and career. So if you want to read more, here' s the Wikipedia page on him:

Curtis Mayfield - Wikipedia 

This album is 48 minutes long. The three other albums in the series have similar lengths.

01 For Your Precious Love (Jerry Butler & the Impressions)
02 He Will Break Your Heart (Jerry Butler)
03 Mama Didn't Lie (Jan Bradley)
04 The Monkey Time (Major Lance)
05 You Must Believe Me (Don Covay)
06 Um Um Um Um Um Um (Major Lance)
07 Woman's Got Soul (Joe Williams)
08 Queen Majesty (Techniques)
09 Girls Are Out to Get You (Fascinations)
10 I'm the One Who Loves You (Five Stairsteps)
11 Man's Temptation (Al Kooper & Michael Bloomfield)
12 I Thank You Baby (Donny Hathaway & June Conquest)
13 Choice of Colors (Della Reese)
14 Keep On Moving (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
15 Gypsy Woman (Brian Hyland)
16 Mighty Mighty [Spade and Whitey] (Alexis Korner)
17 Hard Times (Baby Huey)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Cwf4FkrX

alternate:

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

Typically, I have a really hard time finding color photos of these songwriters early in their careers. That was the case here. But I managed to find a good color photo of him off one of the earliest Impressions album covers (from around 1960, if I recall correctly). But I had to make some edits. I cropped the group photo to focus on him, and then edited out the background and other band members, since that stuff was distracting. Also, his eyes were looking to the side, so I edited them to hopefully make it look like he's staring straight ahead.

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