Paul McCartney - Tour Rehearsal, The Barn, Sussex, Britain, 4-1989

I have many more Paul McCartney stray tracks albums to post. But my next album from him is a detour. It's an album of tour rehearsals from April 1989, in preparation for his big world tour later that year.

This is an worthy listen for two reasons, in my opinion. First off, even though all the songs are unreleased, they all come from McCartney's 1995 "Oobu Joobu" radio show. As such, the sound quality is outstanding, just as good as professional studio recordings.

The second reason needs more explanation. I'm not a big fan of live recordings from McCartney concert tours. That's because he almost always plays the expected Beatles and solo hits, and does them in the expected crowd-pleasing manner that closely matches the hit versions. I'm sure it's a lot of fun to witness in person, but it's not so great to listen to at home.

By contrast, McCartney has more of a loose, letting-it-all-hang-out approach during these rehearsals. In some cases, he's actually shouting out the chord changes for the other band members as he goes, so you know it's loose! He plays some off the wall choices that he would never do in a huge concert arena, such as "Three Cool Cats," a Coasters song the Beatles recorded but didn't release back in 1962. (And that version was sung by George Harrison.) Even when he plays the hits, he often does them in playful or mocking versions.

The rehearsal songs make up 49 minutes of music. At the end, I've added two songs from a very different source, as kind of quasi bonus tracks. They were recorded a year earlier than the rehearsals, and they're live versions. What makes them interesting in my book is that they're songs he's only played rarely. "Listen to What the Man Said" was played once in 1987, then this performance in 1988. Then it wasn't until 2012 when he began to play the song somewhat more often. "Once Upon a Long Ago" was only played twice, period, in 1987 and again here.

01 It's Now or Never (Paul McCartney)
02 Got to Get You into My Life (Paul McCartney)
03 Don't Get Around Much Anymore (Paul McCartney)
04 Get Back (Paul McCartney)
05 Coming Up (Paul McCartney)
06 The Fool on the Hill (Paul McCartney)
07 How Many People (Paul McCartney)
08 We Got Married (Paul McCartney)
09 This One [Mock Version] (Paul McCartney)
10 Put It There [Mock Version] (Paul McCartney)
11 Three Cool Cats (Paul McCartney)
12 Hey Jude (Paul McCartney)
13 Tutti Frutti (Paul McCartney)
14 Yellow Submarine (Paul McCartney)
15 Put It There - Hello, Goodbye (Paul McCartney)
16 Ain't That a Shame (Paul McCartney)
17 Back in the U.S.S.R. (Paul McCartney)
18 Blackbird (Paul McCartney)
19 Once Upon a Long Ago (Paul McCartney)
20 Listen to What the Man Said (Paul McCartney)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376613/PAULMCCRTNY1989TurRherslTheBrn__4-1989_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo of McCartney hanging from a pole may seem totally unrelated at first glance. But it turns out this was taken in July 1989, just outside the barn where these rehearsals took place, during a break from some additional rehearsal sessions.

Maria McKee - The Ocean of Helena Lee - Non-Album Tracks (2013-2018)

I'm posting this next collection of Maria McKee stray tracks in celebration of the news that she has a new album coming out in early 2020. It's about time! Her last album was released in 2007.

I'm not sure why McKee pretty much ended her musical career for over ten years. I guess a lot of it had to do with the fact that she married someone named Jim Akin, who writes, directs, and edits indie films. McKee got involved as an actress and co-producer for two films, released in 2013 and 2015. I heard she's supposed to be the main actress in a third one due to be released in 2019, but I guess it's been delayed.

Anyway, while her musical career was put on the back burner for those years, it didn't end entirely. This album collects the new songs I've found that she did.  Three of them come from various artists collections, and three more come from some of her very rare concert performances. But the majority come from the soundtrack to the 2015 movie "The Ocean of Helena Lee," which is why I've given it that title. That's one of the films mainly created by her husband.

A soundtrack of that movie has been released, but it's very hard to find, since McKee's career has been essentially put on hold for many years, and Akin's films play only to a limited art film crowd. The soundtrack has 33 songs on it, all of them by McKee and/or Akin. As you might guess from the number of songs, most of them are short, often less than a minute long. Frankly, in my opinion, most of them aren't very good as songs. That's because they're not meant to be: they're just background instrumental mood setting music for whatever was going on in the movie at that time.

I've selected a mere seven songs from that album for this album. They're generally longer and prominently feature McKee, although I did select one instrumental. They average in length only about two minutes each, but these are the ones that work best as songs and not just mood pieces, in my opinion.

All in all, this is a pretty eclectic, non-commercial bunch of songs. Clearly, she's been following her artistic muse and isn't worried about selling lots of records. I find it interesting or I wouldn't be posting it here, but it's not for everyone.

By the way, McKee has played the occasional concert in recent years, and I have a good recording of one of them, from 2015. The cover of the Aretha Franklin hit "Save Me" on this album comes from that. I plan on posting the whole concert here later. It occurred just after the release of "The Ocean of Helena Lee" and mostly features her songs from that film. They're largely the same songs I picked here, but they come across differently when they're played live.

This album is 41 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 Awkward Age (Maria McKee)
02 Ol' Mother Earth - I Still Exist (Maria McKee & Massar Egbari)
03 Luisa's Lullaby (Maria McKee)
04 I Am Not You (Maria McKee)
05 I Like My Life, I Love You [Instrumental] (Maria McKee)
06 Surf Suit (Maria McKee)
07 My Little Fish (Maria McKee)
08 I'm Here (Maria McKee)
09 Letting It Hang Out Further than Ever (Maria McKee)
10 Jenny Rebecca (Maria McKee)
11 Save Me (Maria McKee)
12 Let Your Light Shine on Me - God Don't Never Change The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson (Maria McKee)
13 Constant Reminder (Sulo & Maria McKee)

She Was Born to Be My Unicorn - Ride a White Swan (Maria McKee & Gavin Friday)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15848225/MariMcK_2013-2018_OceanofHlenaLee_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I chose a photo that actually is a still of McKee from her supporting actress role in the "Ocean of Helena Lee" movie. The font and text also comes from the movie's promotional material.

Bonnie Raitt - Trick or Treat - Non-Album Tracks (1989-1993)

Here's another stray tracks collection for Bonnie Raitt.

In 1989, after a twenty-year music career, Raitt went from a niche artist to a superstar, thanks to her album "Nick of Time." Thanks to that, she suddenly was in much greater demand for duets and appearances on various artists compilations. She took advantage of that by playing with some of her favorite musicians, both famous and more obscure. So eight of the ten songs here are collaborations.

Four of the songs are officially unreleased. But they come from TV shows or other high profile events, so the sound quality is pretty much as good as the released tracks.

Note that on the "Nick of Time" album, Raitt performed a song called "Love Letter." The duet with Elton John here is of a song called "Love Letters," with an "S" at the end. Those are two totally different songs.

By the way, John Raitt was Bonnie's father. He had a long and successful musical career. Their musical paths didn't cross much though, because he generally belted out Broadway musical type songs. This album has a rare collaboration between father and daughter on one such tune, "It's Wonderful."

01 Think (Bonnie Raitt & Charles Brown)
02 Candy Man (Bonnie Raitt)
03 Right Time, Wrong Place (Bonnie Raitt & B.B. King)
04 Trick or Treat (Paul Brady & Bonnie Raitt)
05 Someone to Love (Charles Brown & Bonnie Raitt)
06 Merry Christmas Baby (Charles Brown & Bonnie Raitt)
07 It's Wonderful (Bonnie Raitt & John Raitt)
08 Love Letters (Elton John & Bonnie Raitt)
09 Mississippi Road (Bonnie Raitt)
10 Getting Over You (Willie Nelson & Bonnie Raitt)
11 Night Life (B. B. King & Bonnie Raitt)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687593/BONNIRTT1989-1993_TrckorTreat_atse.zip.html

I'm not sure where the photo I used for the cover art comes from, but I do know it dates to 1990.

Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Sunday in Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 4-1-1971

Here's my final album out of the five albums I've made of Led Zeppelin playing for the BBC.

This one is a full concert that lasts an hour and a half. By around 1970, the BBC did a lot less of having bands play a few songs in their studios each time, and did a lot more of simply recording bands playing live for half an hour, an hour, or even longer. So this fits in with that trend. The good news is, the sound quality is excellent when there really aren't that many Led Zeppelin concerts with pristine soundboard quality. Unfortunately, it was the last time the band recorded anything for the BBC.

In November 1971, the band released "Led Zeppelin IV," surely one of the greatest albums of all time by anybody. This concert was held in April, but it contains three songs from that album, "Black Dog," Stairway to Heaven," and "Going to California." "Stairway to Heaven" had only been played live twice before this, in two shows the month before in Ireland. Since this was broadcast by the BBC a few days later, this was the de facto public unveiling of that song. It's weird to think there was a time when that was just considered another new song, with an uncertain future.

Anyway, in addition to "Led Zeppelin IV" songs, and songs from "Led Zeppelin III" (sadly, just three of them) and earlier, this show also features some rare cover versions. There's a couple I missed for my stray tracks collections, because these are all buried as snippets within a long version of "Whole Lotta Love." I've broken them up into separate tracks, since they're often played that way. "A Mess of Blues," a song made famous by Elvis Presley, is particularly interesting in that it's essentially played whole, with a clear start and finish.

This concert was officially released as part of the "Complete BBC Sessions" album, but there was a couple of problems with that. One was that the show was broken up, with some songs on the second disc, and then a few more added to the third disc, which contained all the songs they'd left out on the original two disc version. This presents all the songs in their correct order.

Furthermore, the 20-minute long "Whole Lotta Love" medley was shortened by seven minutes, removing some of the snippets of cover songs. (Maybe that was done for copyright reasons, I don't know.) I found the longer version, and patched in the missing minutes. The sound quality is basically the same, so I don't think you'll notice the difference.

Another problem I'm only guessing exists is that virtually all of the between-song banter has been cut. I'm assuming this is the case because it would have been extremely rare for Robert Plant to never speak between songs, since he would usually at least say something. The only significant dialogue is the first track, and I took that from a bootleg. The official version just has a few seconds of DJ John Peel's comments as a lead in to the first song. I'm guessing the BBC were pushing their usual limits in having an hour-and-a-half long show aired, and they edited out all the banter to keep it as short as they could. If anyone knows of any bootlegs that include more of the talking, let me know and I'll add that in.

In terms of Led Zeppelin live, this is about as good as it gets, in my opinion. I prefer this, and their other material from 1971 and earlier, than their official live album "The Song Remains the Same,"  or even "How the West Was Won." I feel Plant's voice was a tad stronger, and the band didn't get quite as carried away with long song lengths. However, there's another concert from later in 1971 that's arguably even better, and twice as long, that I'll be posting later.

This album is an hour and 42 minutes long.

UPDATE: On June 28, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. I found a version mixed by Prof. Stoned that is about eight minutes longer than the official release. It seems the official version made some edits here and there, though the number of songs is the same. In particular, this version includes a lot more of the talking between songs, including an introduction by BBC DJ John Peel.

01 talk (Led Zeppelin)
02 Immigrant Song (Led Zeppelin)
03 Heartbreaker (Led Zeppelin)
04 talk (Led Zeppelin)
05 Since I've Been Loving You (Led Zeppelin)
06 talk (Led Zeppelin)
07 Black Dog (Led Zeppelin)
08 talk (Led Zeppelin)
09 Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)
10 talk (Led Zeppelin)
11 Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
12 talk (Led Zeppelin)
13 Going to California (Led Zeppelin)
14 talk (Led Zeppelin)
15 That's the Way (Led Zeppelin)
16 talk (Led Zeppelin)
17 What Is and What Should Never Be (Led Zeppelin)
18 talk (Led Zeppelin)
19 Whole Lotta Love Medley (Led Zeppelin)
20 Boogie Chillun - Bottle It Up and Go - Fixin' to Die - That's Alright Mama - For What It's Worth (Led Zeppelin)
21 A Mess of Blues (Led Zeppelin)
22 Honey Bee - The Lemon Song [Killing Floor] (Led Zeppelin)
23 Whole Lotta Love [Reprise] (Led Zeppelin)
24 talk (Led Zeppelin)
25 Thank You (Led Zeppelin)
26 Communication Breakdown - Feel So Bad - Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)
27 talk (Led Zeppelin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/duZ4zEqR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ISPgFwPF1HXngqO/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/hFitM

There are no photos that I know of from the show in question. So instead, for the cover art, I've used a photo from Montreux, Switzerland, on August 7, 1971. Unfortunately, like the last cover in this series, drummer John Bonham didn't make it in the frame.

Feist - Morning Becomes Eclectic, KCRW, Santa Monica, CA, 6-21-2005

Feist is a talented singer-songwriter. She's not super popular, but I definitely like her stuff. So here's something from her.

I'm especially fond of solo acoustic versions of songs, a point I just made in my last post, of a Ron Sexsmith album. Feist's material is fairly mellow, but I gather she hasn't played concerts in acoustic format very much. But I found one, from 2005, that has perfect sound quality. It also comes just after her "Let It Die" album, which is probably my favorite by her.

Speaking of Ron Sexsmith, one thing I like about the "Let It Die" album is that it contains a cover of Sexsmith's best song, "Secret Heart." Feist does it even better than he does, in my opinion, and the version of that song here is possibly the best of all.

I left in the between song banter by Feist, since there isn't that much. There's a much longer interview that I left out, because I personally find that sort of thing is good to hear one, but it gets old fast.

Although Feist (full name Leslie Feist) plays solo here, it's obvious that she plays along to some backing tapes for a few of the songs. But that's done in a tasteful way, and in keeping with the acoustic format.

The one downside to this album is that it's rather short, at only 31 minutes. But it's a satisfying listen just the same.

01 talk (Feist)
02 Secret Heart (Feist)
03 talk (Feist)
04 Gatekeeper (Feist)
05 Honey Honey (Feist)
06 talk (Feist)
07 Now at Last (Feist)
08 Mushaboom (Feist)
09 talk (Feist)
10 Let It Die (Feist)
11 talk (Feist)
12 Intuition (Feist)
13 Inside and Out [Love You Inside Out] (Feist)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15289938/Fest_2005_MornngBecomsEclectc_KCRSntaMonicaCA__6-21-2005_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo appears to be some kind of publicity photo. I chose it because it's from 2005.

Ron Sexsmith - Acoustic - Frankfurter Hof, Mainz, Germany, 9-28-2003

In recent weeks, I've shared two albums of singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith performing cover songs by the Kinks. When I posted those, I mentioned I didn't actually know his original material very well, and several people recommended that I check him out more closely.

The problem with that is that even though he's released about a dozen albums since 1995, he's never put out anything remotely resembling a best of collection, so it's hard to get an introduction to him. As you may have noticed from this blog, I have a special fondness for solo acoustic versions of songs. I found a 2003 soundboard bootleg concert of Sexsmith playing in the solo acoustic format, so I decided to check that out. I like it a lot. So I've decided to share it here.

It seems to contain most of his most popular songs. However, it doesn't contain what is probably his most famous song of all, "Secret Heart." I think that sound is outstanding. I'd put it up there as one of the best written singer-songwriter songs of the past few decades! So I was very bummed it wasn't played at the concert. But I found a very good fix. It turns out he did perform that song in solo acoustic format in 2003, the same year as the concert, and I found a high quality version of that. So I've added it at the end (where it probably should have been as the final encore anyway! ;) ).

As usual, I made the talking between songs into their own tracks. But the recording sounded so good that I didn't have to make any other tweaks. However, I chose to make one key edit. For the song "Gold in Them Hills," he started the first verse, forgot the words, then started the song over again. I edited it so it sounds like one seamless performance without that mistakes, because who wants to listen to clumsy mistakes?

One last thing. The only cover he does here, I think, is "Guess Things Happen that Way," by Johnny Cash.

01 Former Glory (Ron Sexsmith)
02 talk (Ron Sexsmith)
03 These Days (Ron Sexsmith)
04 talk (Ron Sexsmith)
05 Honest Mistake (Ron Sexsmith)
06 talk (Ron Sexsmith)
07 You Were There (Ron Sexsmith)
08 talk (Ron Sexsmith)
09 Just My Heart Talkin' (Ron Sexsmith)
10 There's a Rhythm (Ron Sexsmith)
11 talk (Ron Sexsmith)
12 Right About Now (Ron Sexsmith)
13 Disappearing Act (Ron Sexsmith)
14 Gold in Them Hills [Edit] (Ron Sexsmith)
15 Cheap Hotel (Ron Sexsmith)
16 Seem to Recall (Ron Sexsmith)
17 Guess Things Happen That Way (Ron Sexsmith)
18 talk (Ron Sexsmith)
19 Pretty Little Cemetary (Ron Sexsmith)
20 talk (Ron Sexsmith)
21 Average Joe (Ron Sexsmith)
22 Secret Heart (Ron Sexsmith)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15328441/RonSxsmth_2003_AcoustcFrankfrterHofMainzGrmany__9-28-2003_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any photos of the exact concert for the cover art. But I did find a good one that's also from 2003, which comes from a concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

Led Zeppeln - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1970

Please check out my previous post, in which I explained that I've had some trouble making new Zippyshare links, so I'm going to try the Yandex file sharing service for a while and see how that goes. If you have any trouble, please let me know.

As I mentioned previously, I've taken Led Zeppelin's, officially released 3 disc collection "The Complete BBC Sessions," and turned it into five albums. So far, I've only added a few extra songs on volume one. But on this volume, I've basically created the entire thing out of nothing. Furthermore, there are only two BBC performances on it at all, and those remain unreleased.

In my opinion, 1970 was one of Led Zeppelin's greatest years, both because they released "Led Zeppelin III" that year (which ties for my favorite album by them, along with "Led Zeppelin IV"), and also they were firing on all cylinders as a live unit. In particular, people say Robert Plant's voice declined at some point in 1972, but it was still in peak form in 1970. But unfortunately, no live tracks from 1970 have ever been released, and when it comes to bootlegs, there are virtually no soundboard recordings, just a few songs here and there.

So this is my attempt to gather the best of 1970, which an emphasis on songs that haven't appeared on the previous three BBC albums I made, as well as picking only songs at the highest sound quality for what's available from that year. The two actual BBC performances are "White Summer" and "Black Mountain Side," though that was really just guitarist Jimmy Page playing with his acoustic guitar.

Other than that, the vast majority of the songs come from two sources. The first is the Royal Albert Hall concert in London on January 4, 1970. This is probably the best sounding concert from 1970 tht I could find. The only downside is that it was only four days into the new year, and the setlist is pretty similar to 1969 setlists. So I only used the first three songs from that.

The other big source is the LA Forum show on September 4, 1970. This is commonly known as the "Blueberry Hill" concert, since they played that Fats Domino song as an encore, the only time they ever played it. It's one of the most popular bootlegged concerts by the band. Unfortunately, I've found the sound quality to be just okay, since there's no soundboard of it. But at least six different audience members independently bootlegged the show. In the years since, many people have created matrix versions of the show, basically merging multiple sources together to get better sound quality than any one source. I listened to what are considered the few best versions. Each one sounds slightly different. I found the "Graf Zeppelin" version sounded best to my ears, so five of the songs here use that as a source. It's very close to sounding as good as a soundboard.

By the way, one thing that's really interesting about that show is that it kind of includes a performance of "Good Times, Bad Times." This is a big deal, because that was one of their most famous songs, and the only single released from their first album, and yet they stubbornly refused to play it in concert! They only played it about four times, and each time, it was done within a larger medley. Luckily, one of those times was at the "Blueberry Hill" concert. I've extracted it out of a much longer medley. However, it slowly morphed into a cover of "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield, which is interesting, so I've kept that as well.

Unfortunately, the band was even more reluctant to ever play "Ramble On" in concert, even though it's one of their most beloved songs. They only played a few short snippets of it in the 1970s, and I didn't find any of those worthy of inclusion. The one and only time they played both "Good Times, Bad Times" and "Ramble On" as proper songs from start to finish was in their 2007 reunion show, released as the "Celebration Day" album. But by that time, Robert Plant's voice wasn't what it used to be.

Anyway, the other songs I've included here from different sources are "Thank You" and a medley of "The Girl Can't Help It," "I'm Talking about You," and "Twenty Flight Rock." The sound quality for the medley is a bit worse than the rest here, I think. But I figure it's worth inclusion because they're all songs that band otherwise never performed. (Arguably, a few of these covers should have gone on one of my stray tracks albums for the band, but I wasn't aware of them when I made those, and I figure they fit just as well here.)

So, the bottom line is, even though this is kind of cheating in that most of the songs here weren't actually performed for the BBC, I figure this is an important missing link between all the 1969 BBC stuff I've posted already, and the 1971 BBC album I plan on posting next.

01 We're Gonna Groove (Led Zeppelin)
02 Somethin' Else (Led Zeppelin)
03 Bring It on Home (Led Zeppelin)
04 Organ Solo - Thank You (Led Zeppelin)
05 White Summer [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
06 Black Mountain Side [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
07 Good Times, Bad Times - For What It's Worth (Led Zeppelin)
08 Roll 'Em Pete - Some Other Guy - Think It Over (Led Zeppelin) (Led Zeppelin)
09 Bron-Yr-Aur [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
10 Out on the Tiles (Led Zeppelin) (Led Zeppelin)
11 Blueberry Hill (Led Zeppelin)
12 The Girl Can't Help It - I'm Talking about You - Twenty Flight Rock (Led Zeppelin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693860/LEDZPPLN1970a_BBSssonsVolum4_atse.zip.html

The photo for the cover art comes from the famous "Blueberry Hill" concert. In fact, it's basically the one good color photo from that show that's available. I couldn't find any photos from the Royal Albert Hall show, so this one was the logical choice.

Buffalo Springfield - The Teen and Twenty Club, Huntington Beach, CA, 8-11-1967

It's a real shame that no live Buffalo Springfield album has ever been released. I think they're a great band, and it's said they put on a killer live show. Even the bootlegs that exist are very few, and generally suffer from poor sound quality. Almost none of them are worth listening to more than once, in my opinion.

But this bootleg is a very big exception. True, it's an audience recording. There are no good soundboards of the band, except for their 1967 Monterey Pop Festival performance (officially released as part of a box set for that concert), but that's less than 20 minutes long, and Neil Young wasn't there. This is the best bootleg of them by a mile. It turns out that some fan asked the band if they could set up a reel-to-reel recorder right on the stage, and they were granted permission. So, while it's not a soundboard, it's far better than the usual audience bootlegs of that era.

The one disappointment about this recording though is that Neil Young isn't on much of it. He had a habit of quitting the band and rejoining. (His above-mentioned Monterey Pop Festival absence is another example of that.) The August 11, 1967 concert happens to have taken place during one of the many times he'd quit. Young was replaced by guitarist Doug Hastings for this show.

Still, hearing the band without Young has some silver linings. It means more chances for everyone else in the band to shine, especially singer-songwriters Stephen Stills and Richie Furay.  One even gets to hear Stills sing Young's "Mr. Soul," which he never did on record.

I've looked over the set lists of the band, and the vast majority of the time, they played a short set as an opening act. So we're lucky to get an unusually long performance by them. (The recording is an hour and 16 minutes long.) They played two sets, with "Bluebird" the end of the first set.

There's a lot of fun talking between songs. It's clear the band members were having a good time. There also are some interesting song selections. "Nobody's Fool" is a Richie Furay song that was never recorded by the band. It would later appear on Poco's first album. And other than this concert, there are no recordings of the band playing Wilson Pickett's classic soul hit "In the Midnight Hour," with a rare lead vocal by drummer Dewey Martin.

I've edited down some of the dead air between songs. Especially in the second set, there was very little talking between songs, but a fair amount of boring guitar tuning. I got rid of most of that. I didn't remove any instances of them actually talking.

Neil Young rejoined the band very next day, August 12th, and they played another concert at the same venue with him. For some reason, there is a recording of only three songs that appear to come from that second evening, with the same sound quality: "Go and Say Goodbye," Mr. Soul," and "Bluebird." Thus I've added them to the very end. Even though they're all duplicates of songs earlier on this album, I feel it's worth it having both versions, due to the rarity of good live recordings by this band, as well as the presence of Young. We know for sure Young is there on those three songs, because he can be heard talking between songs, and he also sings (especially on "Mr. Soul") and plays lead guitar in his distinctive style.

There were some problems with these three songs as well, in terms of volume. The overall volume tended to rise and fall for no apparent reason, and the volume of the two stereo tracks also changed in relation to each other. I did what I could to fix these problems. It so happens the recording has fairly wide stereo separation, with most of the vocals on just one channel. I also used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the lead vocals relative to the instruments. As a result, the vocals in particular sound clearer than they ever were before.

In conclusion, don't be afraid of the sound quality issue. Yes, the sound is a bit rough. But it's pretty much this or no live Buffalo Springfield recordings at all. Personally, I think it sounds just fine. It's actually better than many soundboards from that era.

01 Pay the Price (Buffalo Springfield)
02 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Nobody's Fool (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
05 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
06 Rock and Roll Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
07 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
08 My Kind of Love (Buffalo Springfield)
09 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
10 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
11 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)
13 Mr. Soul (Buffalo Springfield)
14 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
15 Go and Say Goodbye (Buffalo Springfield)
16 Hung Upside Down (Buffalo Springfield)
17 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
18 In the Midnight Hour (Buffalo Springfield)
19 Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It (Buffalo Springfield)
20 Leave (Buffalo Springfield)
21 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
22 Go and Say Goodbye (Buffalo Springfield)
23 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
24 Mr. Soul (Buffalo Springfield)
25 Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PWsSANgx

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/HQiN0Iq3gI3vJ1B/file

I found some really cool Buffalo Springfield artwork that looks like a concert poster from that time period, but I'm guessing was actually done much later. Regardless, I liked that so much that I used it for the band name and the framing around a central photo. I had to do some tweaking and cropping to get it to fit the square shape.

For that center photo, I found a photo of the band playing at a small club called the Cellar in Arlington Heights, Illinois, in 1967. It's a low res photo, but I think it does a good job of showing what they probably looked like during this concert. I can only imagine the "Salty Cellar" was a similarly small venue.

Larkin Poe - Yet Still More Top O' the Hat - Various Cover Versions (2019-2020)

I'm very psyched to be able to post this album today, for three reasons. One, Larkin Poe are great, and I'm always keen to turn more people on to their music.

Two, I've been slowly collecting their acoustic cover versions that they post on YouTube, waiting for enough to fill another album in the "Tip O' the Hat" series. This is the fourth album, and each one has been about 45 minutes. A couple of months ago, I was ready to go, except I was one song short. Finally, the posted one more a few days ago, and it's an ideal album closer, a mellow instrumental. So I'm glad I waited.

As for the musical content of this album, it's the same great stuff as the others in this series. All-acoustic covers of classic songs, played only the way Larkin Poe can play them. They're mostly famous rock hits, but there's a wide variety, with the occasional obscure blues cover thrown in.

My only disappointment is that I want to post another album in this series, which I want to call "Yet Even Still More Tip O' the Hat" (I'm having fun with the increasingly ridiculous long album titles.) But I'll have to start back at zero and probably wait a year or longer for enough new songs to be posted on YouTube. But until then, you have this album, plus the previous three in the series (and the very similar "Vintage Covers" album), to enjoy.

01 [You Make Me Feel Like] A Natural Woman (Larkin Poe)
02 In the Air Tonight (Larkin Poe)
03 Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Larkin Poe)
04 Don't You Mind People Grinnin' in Your Face (Larkin Poe)
05 Rock and Roll Never Forgets (Larkin Poe)
06 Something in the Way She Moves (Larkin Poe)
07 Jolene (Larkin Poe)
08 Boys of Summer (Larkin Poe)
09 Sleepwalk [Instrumental] (Larkin Poe)
10 With a Little Help from My Friends (Larkin Poe)
11 Runnin' with the Devil (Larkin Poe)
12 Grandma's Hands (Larkin Poe)
13 The Boys Are Back in Town (Larkin Poe)
14 Stuck in the Middle with You (Larkin Poe)
15 Old Riley (Larkin Poe)
16 Pink (Larkin Poe)
17 Apache [Instrumental] (Larkin Poe)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15262096/LarkinP_2019-2020_YetStillMoreTpOtheHat_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo shows Larkin Poe in concert in 2018.

Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: BBC Rock Hour, Playhouse Theatre, London, Britain, 6-27-1969

Here's the third album in my five-album series of Led Zeppelin playing for the BBC. See my post of the first album for a general explanation.

This is the third album of BBC performances recorded in just a few months in 1969. As a result, the song list has a lot of repeats from the songs on the first two albums in this series. But on the plus side, this is a single performance of 51 minutes, done for an hour-long BBC radio  show. Unlike the previous BBC performances, which were played in a studio, this was played in front of a small audience. Yet because it was recorded for the BBC, the sound is as pristine as can be. There are a zillion Zeppelin bootlegs out there, but in my opinion, the vast majority of them have poor sound quality. So any performance of the band recorded this well is a special treat.

All the songs here have been officially released on "The Complete BBC Sessions." But they'd been out of order, including having four of the songs on one disc and the other two on another disc. I've sequenced them all in the order they were played.

01 Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)
02 I Can't Quit You Baby (Led Zeppelin)
03 Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)
04 White Summer - Black Mountain Side [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
05 You Shook Me (Led Zeppelin)
06 How Many More Times - The Hunter - The Lemon Song [Killing Floor] (Led Zeppelin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693852/LEDZPPLN1969e_BBSssonsVolum3RockHurPlyhuseThetre__6-27-1969_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I couldn't find any photos from the concert in question. But I found a nice one from the same month. The photo was taken at the Birmingham Town Hall on June 13, 1969.

Stephen Stills and Manassas - Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 3-22-1972

I spent many a month posting an alternate history of Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young, with 20 or so stray tracks albums in that series. Now that I've finished that, I feel free to post various additional music by them, in all their various solo and group configurations.

Here's one such post. In my opinion, Stephen Stills' two years with his band Manassas in 1972 and 1973 was the peak of his long solo career. It was a great group of musicians, but the main feature, in my opinion, was the collaboration between Stills and Chris Hillman, formerly of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. It was Stills' band, but Hillman occasionally wrote and/or sang some of the songs.

If you listen to just one concert from Manassas, it should be this one. It's a bootleg of a long concert, over two hours, and it's in great soundboard sound quality. Manassas had just released their 1972 double album, simply called "Manassas." It's a great album that for some reason has usually gone underappreciated. Even Stills hardly played most of these songs after Manassas broke up in 1973. Naturally, lots of the songs here are from that, but there also are some from Stills' two earlier solo albums, plus his work with Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young and Buffalo Springfield, as well as a couple of Hillman's songs from the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

There were only a couple of sound issues here. The bootlegger managed to capture the vast majority of the concert, including the talking between songs, but missed a few bits. The encore "Find the Cost of Freedom" was one such miss. It's included, but it comes from a different source, an audience bootleg. The lesser sound quality is obvious, but luckily it's just one short song.

The bootlegger also missed the tail end of "He Was a Friend of Mine," all of "49 Bye-Byes," and the first half of "Song of Love." Since the vast majority of "He Was a Friend of Mine" was included, I just found a good ending point and then added in some applause from the end of a different song to make it sound complete. For "49 Bye-Byes," I found a version from a different show at a similarly high sound quality (recorded at Dania, Florida), matched the song pitch to the next song (since it's kind of a medley), and added it in. For "Song of Love," I found a high sound quality version recorded for the TV show "Beat Club" in Germany. Again, I matched the pitch, then I spliced the two versions together in the middle of the second verse. The additions fit so well that I really don't think you'll notice.

I'm kind of weird in that I've labeled these as "Stephen Stills & Manassas" songs instead of "Manassas" songs. That's because Manassas didn't last long, and I file these in with the rest of the Stills section of my music collection. But whenever Hillman takes a lead vocal, or co-lead vocal, I've added his name to the song info as well. It's also strange that I'm titling this album as being by "Stephen Stills and Manassas," since he was a part of Manassas, but I couldn't think of a better way to do it.

By the way, a big middle chunk of the concert, from about tracks 9 to 25, is in an acoustic format. It's mostly just Stills, but Hillman and/or a couple other band members back him up on some of those songs.

Anyway, this is a great performance with flawless sound, so if you're a fan of Stills' music at all, you should give it a listen.

01 Rock and Roll Woman (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
02 Bound to Fall (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
03 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
04 Hot Burrito No. 2 (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
05 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
06 It Doesn't Matter (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
07 Go Back Home (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
08 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
09 Change Partners (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
10 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
11 Know You Got to Run (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
12 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
13 4 + 20 (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
14 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
15 Blues Man (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
16 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
17 Word Game (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
18 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
19 Do for the Others (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
20 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
21 Move Around (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
22 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
23 Both of Us [Bound to Lose] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
24 Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
25 He Was a Friend of Mine (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
26 Fallen Eagle (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
27 Hide It So Deep (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
28 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
29 Johnny's Garden (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
30 Don't Look at My Shadow (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
31 Sugar Babe (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
32 Four Days Gone (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
33 49 Bye-Byes (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
34 For What It's Worth (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
35 Song of Love [Edit] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
36 Rock and Roll Crazies (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
37 Cuban Bluegrass (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
38 Jet Set [Sigh] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
39 Anyway (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
40 The Treasure (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
41 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
42 Find the Cost of Freedom (Stephen Stills & Manassas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/o2dUrSg2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yzeg5M1JfKBcq9X/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/jGV9u

For the cover art, I'm glad to say I was able to find a photo of the concert in question. I had several color photos to choose from. I picked one that shows Stills and Hillman (Stills is at the bottom), since the band was a collaboration between the two of them.

Heart - Heart Plays Led Zeppelin - Selected Cover Versions (1975-2017)

I'm proud to present this album, because I think it's really good. If you're a fan of Heart and/or Led Zeppelin at all, you should give this a listen. It kind of plays like Led Zeppelin's greatest hits, but with a famous kickass female vocalist.

A few days ago, while looking for some Led Zeppelin material for the BBC series I'm currently posting, I came across an album a fan created called "Heart Plays Led Zeppelin." (Unfortunately, I couldn't find the name of the person who did it.) I liked the idea, but the problem was that pretty much all the songs on it came from average sounding audience bootlegs. I've redone it with totally different sourcing. It's all live performances, but some are from official albums and all the others are from excellent sounding soundboard bootlegs. So the entire album sounds as good as an official release, in my opinion.

The reason this album is possible is because Ann and Nancy Wilson, the sisters who lead the band Heart, absolutely love Led Zeppelin. From the start of their career, they've been called "the female Led Zeppelin," and with good reason. Except for the 1980s, when they went for a slick pop sound, their music has closely followed the Led Zeppelin model, with their band capable of writing and playing everything from mellow acoustic songs to hard rock songs, just like Led Zeppelin does.

So it's no surprise that they've played covers of Led Zeppelin songs in concert. What is surprising is how many different ones they've played, and what songs they've chosen. Generally speaking, they've boldly played Zeppelin's most famous and best songs. Who would dare cover legendary songs like "Stairway to Heaven" and "Kashmir?" Heart, that's who.

Does Heart try to put their own unique spin on these songs? Not really. They pretty much follow the original arrangements. But what's great about these is that Ann Wilson has one of the best female voices in rock (and Nancy Wilson is no slouch either), and she can belt these out in a way that probably even impresses Zeppelin's lead singer Robert Plant. In fact, it turns out that the members of Heart and Led Zeppelin have been friends since the 1970s, as a kind of mutual appreciation society.

I really love how this album came out, because I was able to find virtually every song I was looking for at a really good sound quality. The only one I found at lesser quality is "Four Sticks." I left that off so the sound could stay at a high level throughout.  Heart has also played "Whole Lotta Love" and "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You," but only a few times at most, and I couldn't find any of their versions of those songs at all.

The first five songs come from 1975 and 1976. Heart played some of these songs lots of times, especially "Rock and Roll," which they've done hundreds of times, and still do. But it wasn't until the 2000s when they decided to go bazongas and cover many more Zeppelin tunes. In 2013 and 2014, they toured with Jason Bonham, a drummer who is the son of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. After John died in 1980, Jason has been the drummer for most of the brief Led Zeppelin reunions, and his ability to channel his father's drumming style is uncanny. Five of the songs here feature him on drums. For those two years, they played entire sets of up to an hour with him, doing just Zeppelin tunes.

One other song here, "What Is and What Should Never Be," feature former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.

This ends up being an unusually long album. At 120 minutes I could have easily split it into two albums. But I liked it better as one long album. I generally ordered the songs chronologically, except I made a couple of slight tweaks to have fitting starting and ending songs.

"You Shook Me" comes from the 1977 Heart album "Magazine." It's from a concert in 1975, and was performed as part of a medley with "Mother Earth Blues." However, the "Magazine" album was released without the band's permission, and it was quickly withdrawn. It was rereleased that same year with some band-approved changes, and that's how it's been ever since. "You Shook Me" was only on the early withdrawn version, so it's very rare. I've edited the medley to remove the "Mother Earth Blues" section, which started the song.

My only other comment is that while Heart has played "Immigrant Song" a lot since the 2000s, I found a version of Ann Wilson singing it with Gov't Mule that I like much better. Wilson did a version of it for a 2007 solo album that made the hard rock song more mellow, and Heart generally followed that version. It was an interesting experiment, but I much prefer it in its original hard rock style, which is how Gov't Mule plays it.

Oh, one more thing. Thanks to an excellent comment by Uncle Dan, one day after I first posted this, I've decided to include Heart's 2012 Kennedy Center Honors version of "Stairway to Heaven" as a bonus track of sorts at the end. It's different than the 1976 version also included here in that it features a full orchestra and choir, as well as Jason Bonham on drums. You should check out the video of it on YouTube, which has over 20 million views. It's touching to see the reactions of famous people in the audience, including Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, President Obama, and more.

01 Rock and Roll (Heart)
02 You Shook Me (Heart)
03 Stairway to Heaven (Heart)
04 The Rover (Heart)
05 The Battle of Evermore (Heart)
06 What Is and What Should Never Be (Heart with John Paul Jones)
07 Black Dog (Heart)
08 Misty Mountain Hop (Heart)
09 Going to California (Heart)
10 The Ocean (Heart with Jason Bonham)
11 Kashmir (Heart with Jason Bonham)
12 The Rain Song (Heart with Jason Bonham)
13 The Song Remains the Same (Heart with Jason Bonham)
14 Immigrant Song (Gov't Mule with Ann Wilson)
15 No Quarter (Heart)
16 Stairway to Heaven [Orchestral Version] (Heart with Jason Bonham)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693291/HERT1975-2017_HrtPlysLedZppln_atse.zip.html

For the cover photo, I used a publicity photo of Ann and Nancy Wilson from around 1976. Nancy is the blonde in front.

Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: March-June 1969

A couple of days ago, I posted the first in a series of five albums of Led Zeppelin at the BBC. This is the second. Please read the last post for a more thorough explanation.

The short version is that although most of this material has been officially released, there are some serious flaws that I've fixed here. For this album, I haven't added extra tracks like I have on some others. But I have resequenced the songs so they're in chronological order. Additionally, this album covers three different BBC appearances, and I have the songs in the order they were played.

Thankfully, for this album and all the others in the series, there are no examples of BBC DJs talking over the music. However, a couple of songs here do fade out in a way that doesn't sound natural, for instance on "You Shook Me" and "The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair." I suspect those fade-outs could be how the official release got rid of the DJ talking problem.

There are two instances here of two performances of the same song, for "Communication Breakdown" and "What Is and What Should Never Be." That's not ideal, but I had no way around it, since I'm presenting all the songs in chronological order. At least it's only two versions per song. The first disc of the official compilation has three versions of "Communication Breakdown."

Note that a few of the exact same performances of rare songs here also appear on my series of stray tracks albums for the band. Some songs, like "Sunshine Woman," were only ever recorded once, for the BBC, at least as far as we know.

01 I Can't Quit You Baby (Led Zeppelin)
02 You Shook Me (Led Zeppelin)
03 Sunshine Woman (Led Zeppelin)
04 The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair (Led Zeppelin)
05 Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)
06 Somethin' Else (Led Zeppelin)
07 What Is and What Should Never Be (Led Zeppelin)
08 Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin)
09 Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)
10 Travelling Riverside Blues (Led Zeppelin)
11 What Is and What Should Never Be (Led Zeppelin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693532/LEDZPPLN1969c_BBSssonsVolum2_atse.zip.html

There are no good photos of Led Zeppelin playing in the BBC studios, at least none that I've found. So instead, for the cover art, I've used a photo of the band playing in Boston in late May 1969. It only shows Jimmy Page (with guitar) and Robert Plant, but I like how it shows the crowd. The lettering for the band name at the top, which I'm using for all the albums in this series, comes from a poster advertising a concert in Seattle in May 1969.

Oasis - Setting Sun - Non-Album Tracks (1995-1997)

In 1995, Oasis was on top of the world. Their album "(What's the Story) Morning Glory" was critically acclaimed and sold millions. So there was great anticipation for their next album, "Be Here Now," which came out in 1997.

Unfortunately, it was a big disappointment. Fame, fortune, and lots of drugs had gone to the heads of the Gallagher brothers, who led the group. It was hard to even tell in the songs on it were good or not, because they were all so overproduced, as well as usually being overly long. They also were early advocates of "brickwalling," making the recording so loud that destroyed the subtlety in the music. Both Gallaghers later admitted that they screwed up with that album. The band continued, and had a lot of success in later years, but they never were as big and as acclaimed as they were before that debacle.

As you can tell, I'm not a fan of "Be Here Now." I plan on posting an alternate version here at a later date. But it turns out the band was still putting out songs that weren't ruined by overproduction, because they were only considered for B-sides and the like. Here's a selection of songs mostly from the "Be Here Now" era that don't include any songs from that album. Personally, I like this album better than that one. Noel Gallagher was still writing high quality songs, so much so that their B-sides were better than many band's A-sides.

The one hit here is "Setting Sun." This technically was released as a Chemical Brothers song featuring Noel Gallagher on lead vocals. But while the Chemical Brothers did put their stamp on the song's production, especially by adding the "Tomorrow Never Knows"-styled drumming, it's an Oasis song. In fact, I've included an early version of this song on the "Take Me" stray tracks album under the name "Coming On Strong."

Most of the songs here are from B-sides, though there are a few exceptions. Note that I didn't include all the B-sides from that era, because some of them were infected by the same problems of the "Be Here Now" album. In the case of "My Sister Lover," I edited it to lop the last couple of minutes off. It's a good song, but way overlong, just like too many of the "Be Here Now" songs.

I believe all the songs are originals, except for a cover of "This Guy's in Love with You" by Bacharach and David.

By the way, I have lots of acoustic versions of Oasis songs, especially from the 1990s. I'm not including any of those here because they'll go on all-acoustic albums instead.

01 Fade Away [Warchild Version] (Oasis)
02 How Does It Feel (Oasis)
03 This Guy's in Love with You (Noel Gallagher with Burt Bacharach)
04 Setting Sun (Chemical Brothers with Noel Gallagher)
05 Angel Child [Demo] (Oasis)
06 Going Nowhere (Oasis)
07 Stay Young (Oasis)
08 My Sister Lover [Edit] (Oasis)
09 Flashbax (Oasis)
10 Untitled Instrumental (Oasis)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15908979/Osis_1995-1997_SettngSun_atse.zip.html

For the cover, I used the cover to the "Setting Sun" single. But this is an Oasis album, and that was technically a Chemical Brothers release. So I pasted the Oasis logo over the Chemical Brothers name.

Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: March 1969

I've made a point of compiling albums of BBC performances whenever I can. Now, it's Led Zeppelin's turn.

At first glance, this isn't needed, because an official album of BBC recordings was released in 1997 called "BBC Sessions." But this was flawed in that it failed to include many songs. This was fixed in 2016 by the release of "The Complete BBC Sessions." It had all the songs from the two disc previous version, and added a third disc of the songs that had been missed. That's well and good, but the albums weren't re-sequenced. So you often had the songs from a particular BBC appearance split between discs.

Thus, my first goal here has been to put all the songs in correct chronological order. Not only have I done that, but I also have the songs appear in the order they were played in each session.

But that's not all. I don't have a problem with adding in some performances that didn't actually come from the BBC, especially if they were broadcast on TV or the radio at the time. So I've done a fair amount of that. In so doing, I've taken all the songs from the three disc compilation "The Complete BBC Sessions" and added enough music from other sources to make a five album series. This is the first album.

My albums are generally shorter than those on the official compilation, typically around 45 minutes (except when keeping a single performance together) as opposed to around 70 minutes. One nice benefit to that is I was able to arrange things to minimize the number of repeated songs. For instance, on the first disc of the official compilation, there are no less than three versions of "Communication Breakdown," as well as two versions of some other songs. You won't find that here.

By chance, all the songs here date to March 1969. Led Zeppelin's first album had come out two months earlier, and the band probably did more promotional appearances in March than any other time in their history. The first four songs come from a BBC appearance, and I have another March 1969 BBC appearance on the next album in this series.

The rest of the songs come from three different dates, but they were all recorded in Denmark. The band was in that country in mid-March, and made appearances on TV and radio, as well as playing some concerts. In putting this album series together, I've strived to use only recordings of a very high sound quality. I've also tried hard not to repeat the exact same performances from my series of stray tracks albums (though I had to in some cases when I used BBC versions for those stray track albums). Happily, there are some songs from those Denmark dates that were recorded very well and aren't just repeats of the usual suspects.

I really like the "As Long as I Have You" medley. I've included parts of this medley for my stray tracks albums, but those came from a different version of the song that was recorded at the Fillmore West. I've found a little known version that comes from Denmark and also sounds great.

"I Gotta Move" is an interesting case. The band almost never played this song. But while recording some songs for a Danish radio show, guitarist Jimmy Page broke a guitar string. Apparently the band was being recorded live, so they couldn't just wait for him to fix the string. Instead, while they were fixing it, they played this blues cover without him. Note that it has lots of vocalist Robert Plant singing and playing harmonica, but no guitar whatsoever.

"The Hunter" is another interesting case. Led Zeppelin had a common habit of playing very long versions of certain songs, and then nestling snippets of other songs within them. The "As Long as I Have You" medley here is a good example. This recording of "The Hunter" actually comes from a long version of "How Many More Times." I selected just the portion of that that was "The Hunter," a blues song originally done by Albert King. There were clear starting and ending points, though if you listen to the end, it sounds pretty obvious that the band is just about to break back into "How Many More Times."

By the way, it wasn't labelled as such on the official release, but the version of "I Can't' Quit You Baby" here includes about a minute of the blues song "She's Nineteen Years Old." Since so many blues songs have the same basic chord changes and musical structures, Robert Plant very often liked to bring in lyrics from other blues songs.

Anyway, the bottom line is this series should fix the ordering issue of the official BBC albums, and add in more songs with a similar high sound quality.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 You Shook Me (Led Zeppelin)
02 Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)
03 I Can't Quit You Baby - She's Nineteen Years Old (Led Zeppelin)
04 Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)
05 The Train Kept A-Rollin' (Led Zeppelin)
06 As Long as I Have You - Fresh Garbage - Bag's Groove - I Just Want to Make Love to You - As Long as I Have You (Led Zeppelin)
07 I Gotta Move (Led Zeppelin)
08 The Hunter (Led Zeppelin)
09 Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You (Led Zeppelin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15252798/LdZepp_1969b_BBSessionsVolum1_atse.zip.html

The album cover features the band playing at "TV Eyen" in Copenhagen, Denmark, on March 17, 1969. I selected this photo because the last two songs on the album come from that exact performance.

Sheryl Crow - Tomorrow Never Dies - Non-Album Tracks (1997)

This album starts with "Tomorrow Never Dies," the hit song from the James Bond movie of the same name. But after that song, the vast majority are covers of classics from earlier eras, such as "Don't Cry No Tears," a Neil Young song, the Beatles hit "Ticket to Ride," and "The Last Time" from the Rolling Stones. All three of those are duets with Jakob Dylan from the Wallflowers. Furthermore, there's "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man," a duet of the Aretha Franklin hit with Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows, "Money (That's What I Want)," and "Love Me," made famous by Elvis Presley.

I'm happy to say that all these songs sound great, even though they're all from concert bootlegs. Most come from pristine soundboard recordings. The other songs are studio tracks, so their sound is just as good.

This album is 45 minutes long.

UPDATE: On May 18, 2020, I updated the mp3 download file. I found a song I'd missed, "Brand New Heartache." In addition, I changed the version of "Ticket to Ride." Both the old and new versions are soundboard bootlegs of duet with Jakob Dylan, but for the new version I know the actual date and location it was recorded, whereas I didn't with the old one.

01 Tomorrow Never Dies (Sheryl Crow)
02 Blue Christmas (Sheryl Crow)
03 Don't Cry No Tears (Sheryl Crow & Jakob Dylan)
04 The Last Time (Sheryl Crow & Jakob Dylan)
05 Ticket to Ride (Sheryl Crow & Jakob Dylan)
06 Brand New Heartache (Sheryl Crow & Emmylou Harris) 
07 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Sheryl Crow & Adam Duritz)
08 Pale Blue Eyes (Sheryl Crow & Emmylou Harris)
09 What's Going On (Los Lobos & Sheryl Crow)
10 Money [That's What I Want] (Sheryl Crow)
11 Love Me (Sheryl Crow)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15852412/SherylC_1997_TomorrowNevrDies_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the cover of the "Tomorrow Never Dies" single. But I used Photoshop to remove a big James Bond logo that was behind the text that still remains.

Ron Sexsmith - Ron Sexsmith Sings Ray Davies, Volume 2: 2017-2020

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an album of Ron Sexsmith performing an album of Kinks cover songs. They haven't been officially released, but they have been posted at his YouTube page, along with lots of other cover versions. This is a second volume of exactly the same.

There's not much to say that I didn't say with that earlier post. If you liked that, you should definitely like this. Personally, I prefer this volume, because Sexsmith digs deeper with even more versions of unexpected Kinks songs that go beyond their hits. For instance, where else will you find acoustic versions songs like "Underneath the Neon Sign" or "Killer's Eyes?" Even a lot of big Kinks fans aren't that familiar with such songs. One gets to enjoy all of these songs in a new way by hearing them in the stripped-down acoustic format.

This album is 54 minutes long.

UPDATE: On December 2, 2022, I updated the mp3 download file. I had been hoping to create a third volume. I had eight more songs ready to go. But it's been two years since he last did a Kinks cover, and the songs he posts has mostly switched to originals. So instead I've moved four songs from here to Volume 1, and posted the eight songs here. That's made both albums about ten minutes longer. I also slightly changed the title and cover art because the years involved have changed somewhat.

01 Tired of Waiting for You (Ron Sexsmith)
02 Get Back in Line (Ron Sexsmith)
03 Oklahoma U.S.A. (Ron Sexsmith)
04 Sitting in the Midday Sun (Ron Sexsmith)
05 Have a Cuppa Tea (Ron Sexsmith)
06 Underneath the Neon Sign (Ron Sexsmith)
07 Driving (Ron Sexsmith)
08 Killer's Eyes (Ron Sexsmith)
09 Village Green (Ron Sexsmith)
10 Young and Innocent Days (Ron Sexsmith)
11 David Watts (Ron Sexsmith)
12 Better Things (Ron Sexsmith)
13 Moments (Ron Sexsmith)
14 Property (Ron Sexsmith)
15 Labour of Love (Ron Sexsmith)
16 Harry Rag (Ron Sexsmith)
17 Waterloo Sunset (Ron Sexsmith)
18 The Way Love Used to Be (Ron Sexsmith)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700320/RONSXSMTH2017-2020_RSSingsRyDavisVol2_atse.zip.html

As I mentioned with the first album in this series, I could have used screenshots from Sexsmith's YouTube videos, but they don't show him at his best. So instead, the photo is of him in concert from around 2017.

Various Artists - ARMS Benefit Concert, Reunion Arena, Dallas, TX, 11-28-1983

This looks a heck of a lot like my last post, and for good reason. But there enough differences that it's worth listening to both.

In short, in September 1983, some big-name musicians led a concert to benefit ARMS, a charity helping to find a cure for multiple sclerosis. The main stars were Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page (all lead guitarists for the Yardbirds in the 1960s), plus Steve Winwood. At first, the concert was meant to be a one-night only, in London. But it was such a success that it was decided to continue with a short US tour later that year. I believe nine more concerts were played.

Most of the same musicians appeared for the US shows, including Clapton, Beck, and Page. But Winwood couldn't make it, due to other commitments. So he was replaced by Joe Cocker. Also, Winwood sang the songs with vocals in Page's set. He was replaced by Paul Rodgers, former lead vocalist for Bad Company.

These personnel changes mean many of the songs were different. Most noticeably, one-fourth of the concert are Joe Cocker songs, in which Clapton plays all the lead guitar. He also sings "With a Little Help from My Friends" as one of the encores. I don't know if there's been any other time when Clapton played so many songs with Cocker.

The involvement of Paul Rodgers is even more interesting in terms of musical history. Page had pretty much been at loose ends since Led Zeppelin came to an end in 1981. Similarly, Rodgers had been looking for something new after Bad Company ended in 1982. Their collaboration for these ARMS concerts led to them forming the band The Firm, which was fairly successful, with two albums released in 1984 and 1985. The last song in their set, "Midnight Moonlight," appeared on the first Firm album, but originally started as an unreleased Led Zeppelin song.

Clapton's set, while nice, has almost the exact same setlist as the London show. The only major difference is the addition of "Sad Sad Day." For Beck's set, half of the songs are different. For the concert as a whole, I'd say about half of the songs are different from the London show. It's fairly different from after the Clapton set.

In terms of sound quality, I chose the Dallas show out of the nine US dates because it has the best sound. It sounds professionally recorded. I think it was played on the radio at the time. Unlike the London show, I didn't have any problems finding missing songs from different sources.

01 talk (Eric Clapton)
02 Everybody Oughta Make a Change (Eric Clapton)
03 Lay Down Sally (Eric Clapton)
04 Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton)
05 Rita Mae (Eric Clapton)
06 Sad Sad Day (Eric Clapton)
07 Have You Ever Loved a Woman - Ramblin' on My Mind (Eric Clapton)
08 Cocaine (Eric Clapton)
09 Don't Talk to Me (Joe Cocker with Eric Clapton)
10 Watching the River Flow (Joe Cocker with Eric Clapton)
11 Worried Life Blues (Joe Cocker with Eric Clapton)
12 You Are So Beautiful (Joe Cocker with Eric Clapton)
13 Seven Days (Joe Cocker with Eric Clapton)
14 Feelin' Alright (Joe Cocker with Eric Clapton)
15 talk (Eric Clapton)
16 Star Cycle [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
17 The Pump [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
18 Definitely Maybe [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
19 Blue Wind [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
20 People Get Ready (Andy Fairweather Low with Jeff Beck)
21 Going Down (Andy Fairweather Low with Jeff Beck)
22 talk (Jimmy Page)
23 Prelude [Instrumental] (Jimmy Page)
24 talk (Jimmy Page)
25 Who's to Blame (Paul Rodgers with Jimmy Page)
26 City Sirens (Paul Rodgers with Jimmy Page)
27 talk (Paul Rodgers with Jimmy Page)
28 Boogie Mama (Paul Rodgers with Jimmy Page)
29 talk (Paul Rodgers with Jimmy Page)
30 Midnight Moonlight (Paul Rodgers with Jimmy Page)
31 talk (Jimmy Page)
32 Stairway to Heaven [Instrumental] (Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck & Jimmy Page)
33 Layla (Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck & Jimmy Page)
34 With a Little Help from My Friends (Joe Cocker with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck & Jimmy Page)
35 talk (Ronnie Lane with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck & Jimmy Page)
36 Goodnight Irene (Ronnie Lane with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck & Jimmy Page)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Rxyys7a2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bVfiMx1F2qWJN9u/file

I deliberately made the cover similar to the cover for the London ARMS concert, since I consider the two of them closely related. The photo only shows some of the musicians involved, but it gets most of the big names. From left to right: Kenny Jones, Joe Cocker, Chris Stainton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Ronnie Lane, Eric Clapton, and Bill Wyman.

Various Artists - ARMS Benefit Concert, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 9-20-1983

Do you like "guitar heroes?" Then you should love this. By the early 1980s, Ronnie Lane, former member of the Faces, essentially had to give up his solo career because he had multiple sclerosis, and it was steadily getting worse. In 1983, many of his musical friends got together for a benefit concerts for the charity group ARMS - Action into Research for Multiple Sclerosis. Originally, there was only one concert planned, in London, England, and this is the recording of it. But it was such a success that nine more concerts followed in the US, with a slightly different group of musicians.

So that's the basics. But the main reason these concerts was celebrated is that it's the only time the three former lead guitarists for the Yardbirds - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page - were prominently featured at the same concerts, with each of them playing their own sets. I especially like the one London show, because it also prominently featured Steve Winwood, who also played his own set, singing and playing keyboards while Clapton helped him on lead guitar. He also sang a couple of songs during Page's set. (For the US concerts, due to a scheduling conflict, he was replaced by Joe Cocker.)

Those are four very big names in music. Many other prominent musicians took part in the various supporting bands, including Andy Fairweather Low, James Hooker, Bill Wyman, Chris Stainton, Ray Cooper, Kenny Jones, and Charlie Watts. Ronnie Lane himself made a guest appearance at the end, singing a couple of songs. In addition to playing their own sets, Clapton, Beck, and Page also played a few songs together at the end.

Strangely, this concert seems largely forgotten today. I didn't even find many recordings of it on-line, and none of them were complete. I think that's largely because no album of it (or the following US shows) was ever released, so if you weren't there in person, you missed it. A video recording was eventually released, but it wasn't the full show, and it seems like it hasn't gotten around that much either.

I've attempted to compile the complete London show. The main basis is the audio of the video recording. It's very good sound quality, basically the same as a professionally recorded live album. But, as I said, it wasn't complete, so I tracked down the remaining songs. Here are all the ones I had to get from different sources:

Wonderful Tonight - Eric Clapton
Ramblin' on My Mind - Have You Ever Loved a Woman - Eric Clapton
Rita Mae - Eric Clapton
Hound Dog - Steve Winwood with Eric Clapton
The Best That I Can - Steve Winwood with Eric Clapton
Stairway to Heaven (Instrumental) - Jimmy Page
Wee Wee Baby - Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page & Jeff Beck

(On the other bootlegs that I've found, some of the other song titles were also mislabeled, especially the instrumentals.)

The good news is that most of these sound as good as the songs sourced from the video recording. The only trouble spots are "Hound Dog" and "The Best That I Can." Hound Dog" sounds a bit rougher. "The Best That I Can" sounds rougher than that. Worse, that sound isn't actually from the concert in question. But I've included it here for a couple of reasons. One is that the same group of musicians also performed one more concert, just one night later, also in London, but benefiting a different charity (the Prince's Trust Rock Gala). It's a far less known concert because no really good audio or video recording has emerged from it. The second reason I've included that song is because it's a Steve Winwood original that he apparently has never released in any form. If you don't like the sound quality, or the fact that it's from the next night, just remove it.

I really like this concert. It's really like four concerts in one. One can argue who is the better guitarist, Clapton, Beck, or Page, and which one played the better show. But I personally really like the Winwood set, because he played several cover versions he's never done before or since, and Clapton did all the guitar soloing on a bunch of songs he almost never played. The end of the show when all three famous lead guitarists came together is very nice too, although I wish they'd played more together. (For the US shows, the three guitarists would also play together on the instrumental version of "Stairway to Heaven," but for this show, it's just Page.)

01 talk (Eric Clapton)
02 Everybody's Got to Change (Eric Clapton with Steve Winwood)
03 Lay Down Sally (Eric Clapton with Steve Winwood)
04 Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton with Steve Winwood)
05 Ramblin' on My Mind - Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Eric Clapton with Steve Winwood)
06 Rita Mae (Eric Clapton with Steve Winwood)
07 Cocaine (Eric Clapton with Steve Winwood)
08 Man Smart, Woman Smarter (Andy Fairweather Low with Eric Clapton & Steve Winwood)
09 Hound Dog (Steve Winwood with Eric Clapton)
10 The Best That I Can (Steve Winwood with Eric Clapton)
11 [I'm A] Road Runner (Steve Winwood with Eric Clapton)
12 Slowdown Sunrise (Steve Winwood with Eric Clapton)
13 Take Me to the River (Steve Winwood with Eric Clapton)
14 Gimme Some Lovin' (Steve Winwood with Eric Clapton)
15 talk (Jeff Beck)
16 Star Cycle [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
17 The Pump [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
18 Goodbye Pork Pie Hat [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
19 talk (Jeff Beck)
20 Led Boots [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
21 People Get Ready (Jeff Beck with Andy Fairweather Low)
22 Hi Ho Silver Lining (Jeff Beck)
23 Prelude [Instrumental] (Jimmy Page with James Hooker)
24 Who's to Blame (Jimmy Page with Steve Winwood)
25 City Sirens (Jimmy Page with Steve Winwood)
26 Stairway to Heaven [Instrumental] (Jimmy Page)
27 Tulsa Time (Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page & Jeff Beck)
28 Wee Wee Baby (Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page & Jeff Beck)
29 talk (Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page & Jeff Beck)
30 Layla (Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page & Jeff Beck)
31 talk (Ronnie Lane)
32 Bomber's Moon (Ronnie Lane)
33 talk (Ronnie Lane)
34 Goodnight Irene (Ronnie Lane with Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page & Jeff Beck)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/M4nGr64n

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/2KKlOV1nQNGZvYW/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/fZDA7

For the cover art, I'm glad to say I found a photo from the actual concert. From left to right, that's Andy Fairweather Low, Chris Stainton, Eric Clapton (at the microphone), Jimmy Page, Bill Wyman, and Jeff Beck.

Bruce Springsteen - Cover Songs, Volume 22: 2014-2019

Yeay! It's finally here: the last of the 22 volumes of Bruce Springsteen cover songs. And it comes to an end at a fitting time, right at the end of 2019. Happy new year, and new decade, everyone!

After the last two albums, in which nearly every single song was officially released and thus had excellent sound quality, this returns matters to how they were for most albums prior to that, because seven of the 14 songs here are unreleased.

During 2016, some very big names in music died. I believe the versions of "Rebel Rebel," "Take It Easy," and "Purple Rain" are tributes to David Bowie, Glenn Frey, and Prince, respectively.

Although this album deals with part of all of five years, Springsteen didn't tour much in that time, except in 2017. (He did spend 2018 performing "Springsteen on Broadway," but that didn't yield any cover songs.) Thus, many of the songs here are from unusual concerts, such as surprise appearances as guests for some other artist, or appearances at benefit or tribute concerts.

This takes us all the way to the end of 2019. In fact, the last song here, a duet with John Mellencamp on his 1980s hit "Pink Houses," comes from a mere three weeks ago as I write this. I would like to continue this with a volume 23, but I imagine it'll take another couple of years, or maybe even longer, before there's enough material for that.

01 I Hung My Head (Bruce Springsteen)
02 Born on the Bayou (Bruce Springsteen with Timepiece)
03 Rebel Rebel (Bruce Springsteen)
04 Take It Easy (Bruce Springsteen)
05 Purple Rain (Bruce Springsteen)
06 Lucille (Bruce Springsteen)
07 Don't Hang Up (Bruce Springsteen)
08 Long Tall Sally (Bruce Springsteen)
09 Cuts like a Knife (Bryan Adams & Bruce Springsteen)
10 I Just Want to Make Love to You (Bruce Springsteen & the Tangiers Blues Band)
11 Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu (Bruce Springsteen & the Tangiers Blues Band)
12 Rhinestone Cowboy (Bruce Springsteen)
13 Redemption Day (Sheryl Crow & Bruce Springsteen)
14 Pink Houses (John Mellencamp & Bruce Springsteen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687667/BRUCSPRNGSTN2014-2019_CovrSngsVol22_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I've used a photo of Springsteen at the 2019 concert from which the last song here is taken. I must say, he definitely looks older, but he still looks remarkably young and fit for someone who is 70 years old.

King Crimson - Are - Non-Album Tracks (1969-1970)

I have to admit that I'm not a big King Crimson fan. What I do love is their very first album, 1969's "In the Court of the Crimson King." Unfortunately, the membership of the band has frequently changed over the years, and that version of the band only released that one album before splitting up. So what I've tried to do is create a follow up album that comes close to the top level of that first album.

One could argue that the band's second album, 1970's "In the Wake of Poseidon," had many of the same band members on it, but that's only partially true. "In the Court of the Crimson King" was released in October 1969, and around the end of that year, band members Ian MacDonald, Michael Giles, and Greg Lake left, leaving only guitarist Robert Fripp. (Fripp would be the only constant in the band over its many iterations across the decades.) Lake went on to join Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and MacDonald and Giles released one album together, called "McDonald and Giles," before breaking up their duo.

The key band member in this situation, in my opinion, is Greg Lake. He was the lead vocalist for all the songs on the first album, and thus his distinctive voice was a key part of the band's sound. It seems Fripp realized this, because after Lake left, he was hired back as a session musician to sing most of the songs on "In the Wake of Poseidon." In my opinion, that album tried hard to repeat the formula of the first album, with a similar sound and often a track-by-track match. However, I also feel that it's not nearly as good. The songs were good, but it was essentially Fripp plus a bunch of studio musicians (including Lake) instead of a real band, with the cohesion and fire of the band from the first album.

Thus, what I've tried to do as much as possible is include recordings made while the original band was still in existence. Most of them are actually early versions of songs that appeared on "In the Wake of Poseidon." The good news is that King Crimson is a band that has decided to empty their vault of recordings, releasing dozens upon dozens of live albums, as well as lots of previously unreleased studio recordings. The band news is, when it comes to 1969 and 1970 material, nearly all of it sucks, due to sound quality issues. Just about all of the officially released live recordings from this time, for instance, would be considered poorly recorded audience-sourced bootlegs.

Luckily, there are a few high sound quality recordings here and there. Three of them come from a concert at the Fillmore West in San Francisco in December 1969, when the original band was still together. Another comes from a BBC performance from August 1969. There are three more songs on "In the Wake of Poseidon" that were written later or I couldn't find a good version. So I've resorted to using the versions from that album for two of them. The last one, "Cadence and Cascade," is the one song from that album that wasn't sung by Lake. But luckily Lake did sing a guide vocal at one point, and that version was eventually released as a bonus track. So I've used that version.

The end result is an album that is much like "In the Wake of Poseidon," with most of the same songs, what I believe are better versions. Plus, there are a few changes or additions, such as a nice version of Donovan's "Get Thy Bearings." I've replaced "In the Wake of Poseidon" with this in my music collection.

For a bonus track, I've included an interesting early version of the song "In the Court of the Crimson King" for the album of the same name. It's only downgraded to a bonus track because it repeats a song from that album. It's one of a very small number of songs played on the BBC by the original band with excellent sound.

01 Mars [The Devil's Triangle] [Instrumental] (King Crimson)
02 Get Thy Bearings (King Crimson)
03 [Why Don't You Just] Drop In (King Crimson)
04 A Man, a City [Early Version of Pictures of a City] (King Crimson)
05 In the Wake of Poseidon [Including 'Libra's Theme'] (King Crimson)
06 Cadence and Cascade [Greg Lake Vocal Version] (King Crimson)
07 Cat Food (King Crimson)

In the Court of the Crimson King [Alternate Version] (King Crimson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15847867/KingCrm_1969-1970_Are_atse.zip.html

There's only one reason I've named this album "Are," and that's because of the cover art. I couldn't find any really good color photos of the original band. But I did find a very nice concert poster from that era. It was rectangular, as most posters are, but I simply squished the whole thing vertically and I think it works just as well. In addition to the band's name at the top, it only has one word on it, "ARE" in the middle. Thus, the album title. ;)

Perhaps there was meant to be more at the bottom, so the whole thing would say "King Crimson are..." something, but I found several versions on the same poster on-line, and none of them added anything else. Maybe it was just the arty weirdness of that era to leave the meaning of words rather mysterious. Also arty and weird is how parts of the poster seem to be made out of tin foil or something similarly metallic and shiny.