Ray Charles with Aretha Franklin - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 3-30-1973

Here's a particularly good episode of the "Midnight Special" TV show. This one stars soul music legend Ray Charles, with another soul music legend, Aretha Franklin, as his guest.

I've been wanting to post some music from Ray Charles in his 1950s and 1960s prime for a long time now. But there's so much released already, including tons of live stuff, that I didn't think I had anything really noteworthy. But I think this is noteworthy. It's not exactly from his best years, but it's pretty close.

What really blows me away though is that the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, was only a guest on this one show in the show's early years. Later, they seemed to realize they'd missed her, and she hosted the show three times, from 1976 to 1979. But this was her only appearance prior to that. She did just one song on her own, "A Brand New Me," and a duet with Charles, "Two to Tango." I put that duet from this exact performance on one of the Franklin stray tracks album I made.

The portion of the show with just Charles is a bit strange, because it involved a lot of talking, instead of just him singing. Track 3 actually should be about three minutes longer. I loped off a bunch of it because it was a conversation between Charles and comedian Bill Cosby. I cut that out because screw Bill Cosby! (In case you're not aware, he's been convicted of rape, and it turns out he did lots of horrible things to many women.) Also, frankly, it wasn't very funny or interesting. Cosby also apparently performed on the song "Every Saturday Night," but I can't hear him. But on top of that, Charles talked for about three minutes while introducing the duet with Aretha Franklin. And there's even more talking, about seven minutes, between him and comedian Carol Burnett. Most of that involved Burnett telling a story. So yeah, lots of talking.

All the songs here are from the episode hosted by Charles, which was broadcast on March 30, 1973, except for one. That's the last one, "Early in the Morning." That comes from the April 14, 1973 episode. I haven't checked, but it's possible that was an outtake from this hosted episode that was broadcast a bit later.

Charles hosted the show one more time, in 1976. So I look forward to posting that once that episode eventually gets released on YouTube.  

In case you're curious, the only other acts in this episode were the comedy team of Freeman and Murray, plus music by the Earl Scruggs Revue. 

This album is 50 minutes long. 

01 talk (Ray Charles)
02 Eleanor Rigby (Ray Charles)
03 talk (Ray Charles)
04 Every Saturday Night (Ray Charles)
05 talk (Ray Charles)
06 A Brand New Me (Aretha Franklin)
07 Georgia on My Mind (Ray Charles)
08 talk (Ray Charles)
09 Takes Two to Tango (Ray Charles & Aretha Franklin)
10 talk (Ray Charles & Carol Burnett)
11 talk (Ray Charles)
12 Shake (Raelettes with Ray Charles)
13 I Can Make It through the Days (Ray Charles with the Raelettes)
14 What'd I Say (Ray Charles)
15 talk (Ray Charles)
16 What'd I Say [Reprise] (Ray Charles)
17 Early in the Morning (Ray Charles)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZAN535h4

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/5GrGgqIfNDz6H5U/file 

The cover image is a screenshot I took from this exact episode. 

Dan Fogelberg - Best of Live: 1974-1995 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

I just posted a "best of" album guest poster Mike Solof made of his favorite studio tracks by singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg. He wanted to divide his music up into a studio best of and a live best of, so here's the companion live best of.

Mike is a really big fan of Fogelberg's music and is making these to help me, and others like you, better enjoy his music. As he usually does, Mike made a PDF with more information and pictures, which is included in the download zip. I encourage you to give that a look. It's the exact same one as for the studio best of.

For the studio best of, all the songs are officially released, and usually from his studio albums. For this one, most of the songs come from official live albums as well. But four of the songs here come from bootlegs. Specifically, tracks 10, 11, 13, and 16. But they're excellent sounding ones, just as good as the live albums.

By the way, Fogelberg's last concert was for the "PBS Soundstage" concert in 2003. (He died of cancer in 2007 at the age of 56.) I would really like to post that here, but I've only found a few songs from it on YouTube. If anyone has all of it, please let me know. Thanks. 

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long. 

01 Songbird (Dan Fogelberg)
02 The Power of Gold (Dan Fogelberg)
03 Blow Wind Blow (Dan Fogelberg)
04 Hard to Say (Dan Fogelberg)
05 Innocent Age (Dan Fogelberg)
06 Looking for a Lady (Dan Fogelberg)
07 Once upon a Time (Dan Fogelberg)
08 Make Love Stay (Dan Fogelberg)
09 The Chauvinist Song (Dan Fogelberg)
10 Morning Sky (Dan Fogelberg)
11 Someone's Been Telling You Stories (Dan Fogelberg)
12 Part of the Plan (Dan Fogelberg)
13 talk (Dan Fogelberg)
14 Song from Half Mountain (Dan Fogelberg)
15 Souvenir (Dan Fogelberg)
16 To the Morning (Dan Fogelberg)
17 Here Comes the Sun (Dan Fogelberg)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9q7tK9se

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/QZQOzX6EPddIoQh/file

As with the cover to the studio album, Mike picked this one. I don't know exactly where or when it comes from. 

Dan Fogelberg - Best of Studio: 1974-1987 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Recently, I mentioned to my musical friend Mike Solof that I wasn't very familiar with the music of the band Kansas, other than their big hits. He went and made me a "best of" album, which I've posted here. Then I happened to mention I wasn't familiar with the music of Dan Fogelberg either, again other than the big hits. So boom, once again he made me a "best of." I really need to be careful about what I say around Mike, it seems, or my music collection will keep growing too much! ;)

It turns out Mike is a very big fan of Fogelberg's music, just like he is of the music of Kansas. In fact, he likes Fogelberg's stuff so much that he made two albums. He made a studio album and a live one. As you can see from the title, this is the studio one. The live one will follow shortly.  

As is his habit, Mike has included a PDF to explain his thoughts, as well as provide some good pictures. So please check that out for more information. In this case, the PDF is the same for both the studio and live albums. 

This album is an hour and 12 minutes long. 

01 Nexus (Dan Fogelberg)
02 The Power of Gold (Dan Fogelberg with Tim Weisberg)
03 Lonely in Love (Dan Fogelberg)
04 In the Passage (Dan Fogelberg)
05 Better Change (Dan Fogelberg)
06 Beggar's Game (Dan Fogelberg)
07 Sweet Magnolia [And the Traveling Salesman] (Dan Fogelberg)
08 Tell Me to My Face (Dan Fogelberg with Tim Weisberg)
09 Times like These (Dan Fogelberg)
10 The Reach (Dan Fogelberg)
11 Empty Cages (Dan Fogelberg)
12 Tucson, Arizona [Gazette] (Dan Fogelberg)
13 As the Raven Flies [Alternate Version] (Dan Fogelberg)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2MFP7NnJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ZhEqShKlvNQ1RV8/file

The cover image was selected by Mike. I don't know exactly where or when it's from.

David Byrne - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, London, Britain, 1994

Here's a David Byrne solo concert he did for the BBC in 1994. I'm pretty sure this one hasn't been in public circulation at all until now.

This concert is a big mystery to me, because I couldn't find any information about it whatsoever! It's clear that it has to be from 1994, due to the song list, which closely matches other 1994 concerts. He was promoting his 1994 album, simply called "David Byrne," and played some songs from it that he never played before or since.

I got this from musical friend Progsprog. He's sent me quite a few other things that haven't been in public circulation (including some I still have to post), so this fits that pattern. But unfortunately, he knew absolutely nothing about where it comes from. So the location of London is a TOTAL GUESS, based on the fact that probably 90 plus percent of the BBC concerts I post have taken place in London. But that could very easily be wrong. If anyone knows anything about this mystery concert, please let me know and I'll update the information. I'm posting this here in hopes that someone will be able to help.

But the lack of info about the when and where of this concert doesn't take away the fact that the performance is very good. This was early in Byrne's solo career, so he played a good number of Talking Heads songs. 

Oh, and since I had previously posted a 2002 BBC concert by Byrne, I just renamed that to "BBC Sessions, Volume 2." That meant changing the album cover art and so forth. So here's an updated link to that one:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2025/01/david-byrne-bbc-four-sessions-union.html

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 A Long Time Ago (David Byrne)
02 talk (David Byrne)
03 [Nothing But] Flowers (David Byrne)
04 This Must Be the Place [Naive Melody] (David Byrne)
05 Stay Up Late (David Byrne)
06 Strange Ritual (David Byrne)
07 talk (David Byrne)
08 Back in the Box (David Byrne)
09 Once in a Lifetime (David Byrne)
10 Angels (David Byrne)
11 talk (David Byrne)
12 Buck Naked (David Byrne)
13 Psycho Killer (David Byrne)
14 Burning Down the House (David Byrne)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/26sdsr8E

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/2JcV4NSTq2Kv661/file

The cover photo is from a concert in Gent, Belgium, on June 8, 1994. The original was in color, but the color was mostly washed out and just generally orange-ish. So I ran it through the Kolorize colorization program. I think it looks much better as a result.

Caravan - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 11-10-1974

Here's another concert from the "Live at the Record Plant" radio show. This one stars the British prog rock band Caravan, from 1974.

I have to admit I'm not very familiar with Caravan. I do have a good number of BBC things from them I've saved, and I'll get around to posting those someday, knock on wood. But meanwhile, here's a teaser of sorts.

Earlier in 1974, the band released the live album "Caravan and the New Symphonia." And it late 1973, it released their most recent studio album at this time, "For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night." So most of the songs come from those two albums. 

The sound quality of the bootleg I found for this was pretty good. However, the vocals were way down in the mix. So I fixed that using the MVSEP program. It sounds a lot better as a result. I'd say this has excellent sound now.

This album is an hour and one minute long. 

01 Memory Lain, Hugh (Caravan)
02 Headloss (Caravan)
03 For Richard (Caravan)
04 Virgin on the Ridiculous (Caravan)
05 Be All Right (Caravan)
06 Chance of a Lifetime (Caravan)
07 The Love in Your Eye (Caravan)

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

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/AvUnDz1jz2qN7iP/file

I couldn't find a good picture of the entire band. However, I found one of the violin player, Geoffrey Richardson. It's from a concert probably just a few days away at most from this one, since it's also from the San Francisco Bay Area, in the same month of November 1974. Except this concert took place in Berkeley.

Justin Currie, Chris Difford, & Boo Hewerdine - Songwriters' Circle, Bush Hall, London, Britain, 10-8-2010

Here's another episode of the excellent BBC TV show "Songwriters' Circle." I'm trying to post all the ones I have sooner rather than later. This one stars Justin Currie, Chris Difford, and Boo Hewerdine.

This is another episode I'm only posting due a musical friend named Peter. A while back, he sent me a bunch of episodes in high-quality video format. I converted this one to audio format and broke it into mp3s. So thank you, Peter.

Justin Currie is the main singer-songwriter in the band Del Amitri. Their biggest selling singles are "Nothing Ever Happens" and "Roll to Me." They were in existence from 1980 to 2002. So Currie was a solo artist at the time of this concert. But the band got back together in 2013, and they are still together as I write this in 2026. 

Here's his Wikipedia entry:

Justin Currie - Wikipedia 

Chris Difford is one of the two main singer-songwriters in the band Squeeze, along with Glenn Tilbrook. Other band members have come and gone, but those two have been constants. Tilbrook has done the vast majority of the singing, although there are exceptions. For instance, Difford was the lead singer on the song "Cool for Cats," which made it all the way to Number Two in the British singles chart in 1979. Although Difford has remained in Squeeze for over 50 years, and the band is still together as I write this, the band has had some extended breaks. During those times, Difford has had a low-key solo career. By the time of this concert, he had put out three solo albums.

Here's his Wikipedia entry:

Chris Difford - Wikipedia 

Boo Hewerdine (whose first name is actually Mark) was the main singer and songwriter in the band the Bible. That band was most successful in the 1980s. But they reformed a couple of times since. They are still together as I write this. He also has a hand a long solo career, releasing over a dozen studio albums. Furthermore, he's written songs for others. For instance, Eddi Reader had a Top Forty hit in Britain with his song "Patience of Angels" (which he performed here).

Here's his Wikipedia entry:

Boo Hewerdine - Wikipedia 

Other than that, there's not much else to say. This episode followed the same format of others for the show, with each musician taking turns performing songs, then getting together to sing the final song. 

This album is 56 minutes long. 

01 talk (Chris Difford)
02 Take Me, I'm Yours (Chris Difford)
03 talk (Boo Hewerdine)
04 Patience of Angels (Boo Hewerdine)
05 talk (Justin Currie)
06 Nothing Ever Happens (Justin Currie)
07 talk (Chris Difford)
08 Fat as a Fiddle (Chris Difford)
09 talk (Boo Hewerdine)
10 New Year's Eve (Boo Hewerdine)
11 talk (Justin Currie)
12 If I Ever Loved You (Justin Currie)
13 talk (Chris Difford)
14 Passion Killer (Chris Difford)
15 talk (Boo Hewerdine)
16 Sing to Me (Boo Hewerdine)
17 talk (Justin Currie)
18 As Long as You Don't Come Back (Justin Currie)
19 talk (Chris Difford)
20 Up the Junction (Chris Difford)
21 talk (Boo Hewerdine)
22 Muddy Water (Boo Hewerdine)
23 talk (Justin Currie)
24 Always the Last to Know (Justin Currie)
25 talk (Chris Difford)
26 Tempted (Justin Currie, Chris Difford, & Boo Hewerdine)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7FEfJFQj

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Ctp1i7AYOBTXMJx/file

The cover photo is a screenshot I took from this exact concert. From left to right: Chris Difford, Boo Hewerdine, and Justin Currie.

Gene Clark - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 2-19-1975

Here's a FM broadcast concert by Gene Clark, formerly of the Byrds. This is one of very few excellent sounding live recordings of Clark from his 1970s heyday.

This concert has been officially released as "Silverado '75." I had that album for years, and I thought that was all these was. But it turns out that is a single album, and what I'm posting here is enough for a double album. So that's why I'm posting this, because there's more to offer than the what's on the official album.

At first, I thought Ebbets Field was some kind of sports field venue. But it actually was a small club fitting about 200 people that was named after an old baseball stadium in New York City. It was in operation from 1973 to 1977, and during that time, most or all of the concerts there were broadcast live on a local radio station. (In the future, I may make an effort to post more of these Ebbets Field concerts, because there are a lot of good ones, but I have too much on my plate right now.) So that's why we have the full performance, with just as high quality sound as the official album.

Clark actually performed an early show and a late show. I've combined all the unique songs from both, while making sure to include all the banter that he spoke. (He didn't speak much.) In case you're curious, these are the songs that got played twice:

Kansas City Southern
Set You Free This Time
She Darked the Sun
In the Pines
Silver Raven

"Train Leaves Here This Morning" is the first song of the second set, and it's all the second set after that. Although Clark performed with a small band, I felt the differences between the versions was so small that I didn't need both versions of the ones that were played twice. If you feel otherwise, you can easily find bootlegs with all the songs. 

Clark had a long, slow decline, due to hard living and drugs, ending by dying too young at the age of 46, in 1991. But in the mid-1970s, he still sounded great, and was writing excellent songs. Here's a good account of this portion of his career:

Gene Clark – The Byrd And The Best (Part 5 of 6) - PopDiggers 

From that, I learned the song "Daylight Line" was never done in the studio, so the best version of it is from this concert. A couple other songs, like "Long Black Veil" and "In the Pines," were cover versions.

This album is an hour and 22 minutes long.

01 talk (Gene Clark)
02 Long Black Veil (Gene Clark)
03 talk (Gene Clark)
04 Kansas City Southern (Gene Clark)
05 Spanish Guitar (Gene Clark)
06 Home Run King (Gene Clark)
07 Here without You (Gene Clark)
08 No Other (Gene Clark)
09 Daylight Line (Gene Clark)
10 talk (Gene Clark)
11 She Darked the Sun (Gene Clark)
12 Train Leaves Here This Morning (Gene Clark)
13 Life's Greatest Fool (Gene Clark)
14 Silver Raven (Gene Clark)
15 talk (Gene Clark)
16 In the Pines (Gene Clark)
17 The Radio Song (Gene Clark)
18 What Is Meant to Be (Gene Clark)
19 The Virgin (Gene Clark)
20 The True One (Gene Clark)
21 talk (Gene Clark)
22 Set You Free This Time (Gene Clark) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7LLn6aUG

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/LRVlmnnPC2jkE2n/file

The cover image of Clark is from a concert at the Hammersmith Odeon, in London, at some point in 1975. All the photos I've seen of him from 1975 or thereabouts have him with a beard. The original was in black and white. But I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program.

The Small Faces - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1966-1968

Here's the second out of three BBC albums I'm posting for the British band the Small Faces.

As I mentioned in my write-up for Volume 1, I posted two Small Faces BBC albums in 2021. But I am completely overhauling them, thanks to the music blog of Prof. Stoned. That person found a bunch of BBC performances that I had missed. So a big thanks to him.

Volume 1 was nearly exactly the same as what I'd posted previously, with almost all of the songs from the official album "The BBC Sessions." But Volume 2 is the opposite. Most of the performances are ones I'd previously missed, from unreleased sources. Only three songs, tracks 8, 9, and 10, are from the official album I just mentioned. 

Unfortunately, the likely reason most of these weren't included on the official album is because, in most cases, these are just live vocals sung over the studio versions. But there's so little live Small Faces music that has survived that I figure even these versions are worth hearing. There are five such songs, which have "[Live Vocals Only]" in their titles.

Everything here is from BBC sessions (except for the bonus tracks, which I'll get to in a minute). Check out the mp3 tags for more of the details. Three of the songs have "[Edit]" in their titles, due to my wiping the BBC DJ talking over the music, using the MVSEP program. No songs here are repeated twice. But some of the songs are repeats of songs on either Volume 1 or Volume 3.

The bonus tracks are exactly the same as in the version of this album I posted in 2021. So I'll just repost the same paragraph I wrote about them back then: 

The three remaining bonus tracks aren't from the BBC, or any other radio or TV show, for that matter. It's just that I think they're really cool and I don't have a better place to put them in my music collection, so I've stuck them here. All three are alternate versions of Small Faces songs that are done in a solo acoustic style. Two are mixes with everything but the vocals and acoustic guitar removed. The other one, "The Autumn Stone," is an alternate take. That take was just made public a few weeks prior to my posting of this album, as a free CD that came with an issue of Mojo Magazine. It's meant to be a teaser for an expanded version of "The Autumn Stone" album that's in the works. 

This album is 34 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks.

01 Sha-La-La-La-Lee (Small Faces)
02 All or Nothing (Small Faces)
03 Here Comes the Nice [Live Vocals Only] (Small Faces)
04 Itchycoo Park [Live Vocals Only] (Small Faces)
05 Tin Soldier [Live Vocals Only] (Small Faces)
06 Lazy Sunday [Live Vocals Only] (Small Faces)
07 Get Ready [Instrumental Version] (Small Faces)
08 If I Were a Carpenter [Edit] (Small Faces)
09 Lazy Sunday [Edit] (Small Faces)
10 Every Little Bit Hurts [Edit] (Small Faces)
11 The Universal [Live Vocals Only] (Small Faces)

Red Balloon [Stripped Down Mix] (Small Faces)
Show Me the Way [Stripped Down Mix] (Small Faces)
The Autumn Stone [Jenny's Song] [Take 1] (Small Faces)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QTwFyNDK 

alternate:  

https://bestfile.io/en/YgpVr17pjxUnaAK/file

I don't know where or when the cover photo is from. But it almost certainly is from a TV show appearance. I found it interesting that it shows the band's lead singer Steve Marriott playing piano, as I didn't know he did that. And it looks like the band's drummer Kenny Jones is singing, along with bassist Ronnie Lane, which is also interesting.

R.E.M. - UIC Pavilion, Chicago, IL, 11-5-1987

Here's a concert I'm very happy to present. It's a full R.E.M. concert bootleg, with the vast majority of it having excellent soundboard quality. It's something that hasn't been publicly available with this quality until last month (as I write this in January 2026). This is exciting, because quality concert recordings from this time period are few and far between. I'm pretty certain this is the best sounding full concert boot from the band's 1987 tour.

This is another R.E.M. where I have to thank Lil Panda, who alerted me to this, as well as Rob, who runs the dB's Repercussion music blog. According to liner notes by Rob (which I've included in the download zip), Buren Fowler, the band's guitar tech and second guitarist for live performances, got a copy of the soundboard from this concert. He later gave a copy to Patton Biddle (Pat the Wiz), the band's sound tech. Many, many years later, that got passed to Rob, who recently posted it at his music blog.

However, there was one unfortunate aspect: the last six songs were missing. However, I looked around, and to my very pleasant surprise, I found a pretty good audience bootleg of the concert. So I used that source to finish off the last six songs. I then made some edits to those six songs to help bring the sound quality up to the standard of the rest. I ran those songs through the MVSEP program to wipe out the crowd noise during the music in those songs. Then I ran them through MVSEP again to boost the lead vocals, since that was low relative to the instruments. Those songs still don't sound as good as the rest, but it's not a glaring difference. 

Also, there was some sonic damage in a short section of "The One I Love," so I patched that up. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title.

I'm particularly happy to find a good source for those six songs, because one of them was a cover of "Midnight Blue." This was a Top Five hit by Lou Gramm, lead singer of Foreigner, earlier in 1987. One wouldn't have expected R.E.M. to cover a "corporate rock" song like that, but they simply thought it was a good song, and covered it at least 13 times in 1987. I'm pretty sure this is the best sounding version. 

The songs "Superman," "Strange," "Harpers," and "Ghost Rider" also are covers. R.E.M. performed covers of literally hundreds of songs in the 1980s. But unfortunately that went way down in the 1990s and after, when they decided to concentrate more on their original songs. 

This album is an hour and 43 minutes long. 

01 Finest Worksong (R.E.M.)
02 These Days (R.E.M.)
03 Moral Kiosk (R.E.M.)
04 Welcome to the Occupation (R.E.M.)
05 Disturbance at the Heron House (R.E.M.)
06 Exhuming McCarthy (R.E.M.)
07 Orange Crush (R.E.M.)
08 Feeling Gravitys Pull (R.E.M.)
09 The Flowers of Guatemala (R.E.M.)
10 I Believe (R.E.M.)
11 Sitting Still (R.E.M.)
12 Driver 8 (R.E.M.)
13 Superman (R.E.M.)
14 Pretty Persuasion (R.E.M.)
15 Oddfellows Local 151 (R.E.M.)
16 talk (R.E.M.)
17 It's the End of the World as We Know It [And I Feel Fine] (R.E.M.)
18 Begin the Begin (R.E.M.)
19 Strange (R.E.M.)
20 King of Birds (R.E.M.)
21 Pop Song '89 (R.E.M.)
22 Auctioneer [Another Engine] (R.E.M.)
23 Swan Swan H (R.E.M.)
24 talk (R.E.M.)
25 The One I Love [Edit] (R.E.M.)
26 Harpers (R.E.M.)
27 Midnight Blue (R.E.M.)
28 Ghost Riders (R.E.M.)
29 1,000,000 (R.E.M.)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/x1ov1ZCi

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/SKSi5w0EgD5PfVm/file

There were surprisingly few good color photos of the band in concert in 1987, or even around 1987. But I found a photo of a ticket stub from this exact concert, so I decided to use that, as a change of pace. I squished the image horizontally a little bit to get all the text I wanted to fit.

Chris Rea - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 5-2-1986

Here's another BBC album by Chris Rea. This time, it's a concert from 1986.

By 1986, Rea's career was gathering commercial momentum. (In Britain, that is. He never had much success in the U.S.) He still didn't have any big hits yet, but he had more small hits, such as "I Don't Know What It Is but I Love It," "Josephine," and "I Can Hear Your Heartbeat." His biggest recent hit at the time of this concert was "Stainsby Girls," which reached Number 26 in the British singles chart. 

There's not much else to say here. The music here is unreleased, and the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 58 minutes. 

01 Two Roads (Chris Rea)
02 Hello Friend (Chris Rea)
03 Candles (Chris Rea)
04 talk (Chris Rea)
05 Midnight Blue (Chris Rea)
06 One Golden Rule (Chris Rea)
07 Josephine (Chris Rea)
08 Stainsby Girls (Chris Rea)
09 I Can Hear Your Heartbeat (Chris Rea)
10 I Don't Know What It Is but I Love It (Chris Rea)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/63teYBVF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/79irpZnoiReZMiQ/file

The cover photo is from the Montreux Jazz Festival, in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1986. 

Freddie King - WLIR Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, Hempstead, NY, Late 1974

Here's another episode of the "Ultrasonic" radio show. This one features a concert by blues legend Freddie King.

This is the first album I've posted featuring just Freddie King, so I'll say a little bit about him. His Wikipedia entry says he "was an American blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is considered one of the 'Three Kings of the Blues Guitar' (along with Albert King and B. B. King, none of whom were related). Known for his soulful and powerful voice and distinctive guitar playing, King had a major influence on electric blues music and on many later blues guitarists." 

Born in Texas in 1934, he first rose to fame in the blues world in the early 1960s with the instrumental "Hide Away" and the song "Have You Ever Loved a Woman." (Derek and the Dominos did a great version of that second one.) In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he crossed over into popularity with rock audiences. He still just played the blues, but he frequently performed at rock festivals and on TV and radio shows like this one. Fun fact: he got namechecked in "We're an American Band" by Grand Funk Railroad. ("Up all night with Freddie King. I got to tell you, poker's his thing.")

Unfortunately, he worked hard (performing over 300 concerts a year) and partied hard. This led to an early death, in 1976, at the age of 42. It was due to complications from stomach ulcers.  Here's his Wikipedia entry, if you want to know more: 

Freddie King - Wikipedia 

At first, I had a popular bootleg version of this performance. It has some issues, like wobbling of levels during the first song. But luckily, I found a better version. I found out it was included on a rather obscure box set called "Texas Flyer." The bootleg just says it's from some point in 1973. The box set version says "late 1974." I'm going with that, though it's frustrating that even that is vague. 

This album is 51 minutes long. 

01 Big Legged Woman (Freddie King)
02 Woman Across the River (Freddie King)
03 Look Over Yonders Wall (Freddie King)
04 Band Intros - Ain't No Sunshine (Freddie King)
05 Sweet Home Chicago (Freddie King)
06 Boogie Funk [Instrumental] (Freddie King)
07 Little Bluebird (Freddie King)
08 Come On [Let the Good Times Roll] (Freddie King)
09 Going Down (Freddie King)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/F4rw1BEF

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Coyy94FuXnKDeZu/file

The cover image is from the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switerland, in June 1973. 

The Small Faces - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1965-1966

Back in early 2021, I posted two BBC albums for the Small Faces. (Technically, they were just "Small Faces," but I can't help use the "the.") I have deleted those today, because I'm doing a complete overhaul, and turning two albums into three. Here's the first one.

This overhaul wouldn't have happened had it not been for Prof. Stoned and his music blog. I highly recommend you check it out, here:

Prof Stoned: Rare & Deleted 

He shares my interest in BBC recordings from the 1960s and early 1970s. An official BBC album has been released for this band, simply titled "The BBC Sessions." But Prof. Stoned has dug deep and found more and more that that album missed. Eventually, I noticed there was enough for this overhaul. So all the songs I'm adding for the first time are thanks to that blog.

As it so happens, the vast majority of the tracks on this first volume are from the official BBC album. The only exceptions are tracks 4 ("You Really Got a Hold on Me") and 14 ("My Mind's Eye"). Everything here is from BBC studio sessions, though the two unreleased tracks were performed before small audiences. (I've removed the crowd noise on those, using MVSEP.) As usual, you can look at the mp3 tags for each song for more details about where and when the songs were recorded.

If you look at the song list, you'll see several songs with "[Edit]" in their titles. That's due to the usual problem from that era of BBC DJs talking over the music. I always like removing that talking, using the UVR5 or MVSEP programs. But Prof. Stoned feels otherwise, so if you want hear the DJs, check out his Small Faces collection.

Since all but two songs are officially released, the sound quality is excellent. The sound quality is a bit rougher for those, but still acceptable. Also, one song here, "Jump Back," is also on the stray tracks album "Grow Your Own," because the only recording the band did of it is from one of their BBC sessions. 

This album is 37 minutes long.

01 Whatcha Gonna Do about It (Small Faces)
02 Jump Back (Small Faces)
03 Baby Don't You Do It [Don't Do It] (Small Faces)
04 You Really Got a Hold on Me [Edit] (Small Faces)
05 Shake [Edit] (Small Faces)
06 Sha-La-La-La-Lee (Small Faces)
07 You Need Love [You Need Loving] [Edit] (Small Faces)
08 Hey Girl (Small Faces)
09 E Too D [Edit] (Small Faces)
10 One Night Stand [Edit] (Small Faces)
11 You Better Believe It [Edit] (Small Faces)
12 Understanding (Small Faces)
13 All or Nothing (Small Faces)
14 My Mind's Eye (Small Faces)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/aWZsVwNH

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/2ogab1BGpkuo6n4/file

The cover art photo comes from an appearance on the "Two of a Kind" TV show in 1967.

The Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe - Athens Music Festival, Winterville, GA, 9-25-1988

I'm particularly psyched to post this album. Until a few days ago (writing this in early January 2026), I had no idea this existed. I'm still kind of surprised that it exists, because it's very unique. For the entire duration of this (admittedly fairly short) concert, the Indigo Girls (Emily Saliers and Amy Ray) performed with Michael Stipe, the lead singer of R.E.M. I looked it up at a very comprehensive R.E.M. fan site, and this is the one and only time the two musical acts collaborated so extensively like this. Luckily for us, someone recorded it.

At the time of this concert in late 1988, R.E.M. had become big stars, thanks in part to their hit "The One I Love" from the year before. The Indigo Girls, by contrast, were just starting to make it. They released their debut album, "Strange Fire," in 1987. But it came out on a small record label and didn't get much notice at the time. Their next album, "Indigo Girls," would come out in early 1989 and would go double Platinum, meaning sales of over two million copies in the U.S. But that was still in the future.

Stipe and R.E.M. started out playing in small clubs in Athens, Georgia, and they kept ties to the area after becoming famous. The Indigo Girls also were largely based in Athens as their career gathered momentum. For instance, that's where they recorded their "Strange Fire" album. So Stipe became aware of them, and wanted to help them succeed. When their "Indigo Girls" album came out, Stipe had prominent vocals on the song "Kid Fears," and the other members of R.E.M. played on the song "Tried to Be True." This R.E.M. helped break that album.

Furthermore, both Stipe and the Indigo Girls almost never co-wrote songs with outsiders. But the three of them wrote the song "I'll Give You My Skin" together. It came out on a benefit album called "Tame Yourself" in 1991, as well as the Indigo Girls compilation album "Rarities" much later. 

Both "Kid Fears" and "I'll Give You My Skin" were performed at this concert. However, neither of those songs had been released yet, so this connection between Stipe and the Indigo Girls was probably a big surprise to most of the people in the audience.  

Furthermore, most of the other songs performed would have been a surprise to anyone in the audience who had all the R.E.M. and Indigo Girls albums released up until that point. In addition to the songs mentioned above, "Prince of Darkness" was the only other Indigo Girls original, and that one also wouldn't be released until the "Indigo Girls" album came out. Two R.E.M. songs were played as well, but they were obscure. "Hairshirt" came out on the band's "Green" album, but that album wouldn't be released until a couple of months after this concert. So did "Untitled (The Eleventh Untitled Song)." But that was a secret bonus track at the end of the album. It's actually be officially referred to by three different names in different sources, since the title isn't mentioned on the album at all. In addition to "Untitled" and "The Eleventh Untitled Song," it's also been known as "11."

So that means there wasn't a single original song performed here that had been officially released by either act at the time of this concert. But most of the songs, seven out of 11, were covers. Here's a quick list of the original artists for each of those songs:

Ain't No Sunshine - Bill Withers
First We Take Manhattan - Leonard Cohen
Midnight Train to Georgia - Gladys Knight & the Pips
Harpers - Hugo Largo
All Along the Watchtower - Bob Dylan
Dark Globe - Syd Barrett
Summertime - George Gershwin

What I like most about this concert is that it wasn't just a case of "I'll play my song and you play your song," like the Songwriters' Circle albums I've been posting recently. The three musicians (and it was just Stipe, Ray, and Saliers on stage, with acoustic guitars) genuinely collaborated on most of the songs. In early 1989, the Indigo Girls would be the opening act for a high profile R.E.M. tour. On most nights, Stipe would come out and add his vocals to "Kid Fears." But it was just that one song. They never collaborated in public like this before or since, at least as far as I know.

They played in front of a small audience, as you can hear in the recording. (It was a benefit for P.E.T.A. - the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, with a bunch of other local musical acts on the bill.) So we're lucky to get any recording of this at all, and it's only an audience boot. But it happens to be a very good sounding one. It may have come from the audio feed of a video, because one can find a video of this concert on YouTube.

However, the boot had one big problem: a constant level of hiss throughout the entire recording. Luckily for us, though, audio editing technology has come a long way in recent years. I used the "Denoise" option in the MVSEP program for all the songs. It worked like magic, completely wiping away the hiss. So this sounds much better than ever before, in my opinion, basically as good as a soundboard boot. 

Again, I just want to highlight how unique and special this concert was. I looked up Stipe's concert performance history at setlist.fm. Until today, as I write in 2026, he has never performed in concert as long as this without R.E.M. backing him up. That's true even with R.E.M. breaking up in 2011. He rarely performed without R.E.M. at all, and when he did, it was always for special occasions, like tribute concerts, where he sang a few songs at most. It's too bad these three people didn't perform together more often, because it's a really interesting combination.

This album is 53 minutes long. 

01 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
02 Ain't No Sunshine (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
03 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
04 First We Take Manhattan (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
05 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
06 Hairshirt (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
07 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
08 I'll Give You My Skin (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
09 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
10 Midnight Train to Georgia (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
11 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
12 Prince of Darkness (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
13 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
14 Untitled [The Eleventh Untitled Song] (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
15 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
16 Kid Fears (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
17 Harpers (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
18 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
19 All Along the Watchtower (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
20 Dark Globe (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
21 Summertime (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VbdGARLv

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/k7QFujm0Kg5HsSD/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert, taken from a video of it I found on YouTube. I feel bad, because I was only able to include Michael Stipe and Emily Saliers, leaving out Amy Ray. I wanted to include all three. However, there were multiple cameras, and the one focusing on Stipe and Saliers had very different lighting and angle than another camera focusing on Saliers and Ray. Putting them together just didn't look right. 

The Ozark Mountain Daredevils - WLIR Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, Hempstead, NY, 3-19-1974

I've got to admit, I haven't been familiar with the Ozark Mountain Daredevils at all. But I'm trying to find and post all the Ultrasonic radio concerts I can find, and I found this one. So here we go.

Actually, it's not entirely true that I don't know the music from this band. They had one huge hit that I know: "Jackie Blue." It made it all the way to Number One in a couple of U.S. singles charts in 1975 (though only Number Three in the Billboard one). Unfortunately, this concert is from a year prior to that, so that song isn't here.

However, on the plus side, the band was probably at their creative peak around 1974. If you look at their page of crowd-sourced ratings at the rateyourmusic.com website, their first two albums, from 1973 and 1974, get the highest ratings. After that, it was a long slow slide down. And that pretty much matches their commercial fortunes as well. Actually, at the time of this concert, the band's second album hadn't been released yet. So the focus here is mostly on the songs from their self-titled debut album. Here's what Wikipedia says of that album: "The album introduced the band's unique mixture of rock, country, bluegrass and pop to the world and is still the favorite of many of the group's fans."

Here's the Wikipedia entry about the band:

The Ozark Mountain Daredevils - Wikipedia 

The music here is unreleased. There was some hiss, but mostly on the talking parts. After I split those bits into separate tracks, I ran a little noise reduction on them. (My rule is to only use noise reduction on talking, not music.) 

This album is one hour long.

01 talk by emcee (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
02 Roll Away the Stone (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
03 talk (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
04 Chicken Train Stomp (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
05 talk (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
06 Love Makes the Lover (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
07 talk (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
08 Country Girl (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
09 talk (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
10 Commercial Success (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
11 talk (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
12 If You Wanna Get to Heaven (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
13 talk (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
14 You Made It Right (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
15 talk (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
16 Homemade Wine (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
17 Mountain Range (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
18 talk (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
19 The Same Old Feeling (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
20 talk (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
21 Look Away (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
22 talk (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
23 River to the Sun (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
24 talk (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
25 The Roadmaster (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/FUNHc41C

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/srHD4689bNIlaNH/file

I don't know anything about the cover photo except that it's supposed to be from around 1975.

Neil Finn, Ryan Adams, & Janis Ian - Songwriters' Circle, Bush Hall, London, Britain, 10-21-2011

Here's another episode of the "Songwriters' Circle" BBC TV show. Like all other episodes of the show, it featured three talented singer-songwriters as they took turns performing their songs. This episode starred Neil Finn (formerly of the band Crowded House), Ryan Adams, and Janis Ian.

In my experience, many very creative people are assholes, though certainly not all. For instance, John Lennon could sometimes be a total ass, and he's one of my all time favorites. This episode was unusual in that it made a little bit of news due to Ryan Adams acting badly. That's not terribly surprising, coming from him, based on other stories I'd heard about him. For instance, not many musical stars have a section of their Wikipedia page called "Disputes with Fans and Other Artists," plus another section called "Harassment Allegations," but Adams has both.

See what I mean, if you're curious: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Adams 

Here's my understanding of this dispute. In each episode of this show, the three musicians sing their own songs. Sometimes, as a nice bonus, one or both of the others might join in with instrumentation or backing vocals. Then, at the end of the show, at least one song is sung by all three of them. That's exactly what happened in this episode. However, Adams apparently got annoyed whenever Finn and/or Ian tried to join in with his songs, so they quickly got the message and stopped doing that. 

Then, at the end, the plan was for all three of them to sing two Finn songs together, "Weather with You" and "Fall at Your Feet." One of those two songs would be chosen to be included in the broadcast. The performance of "Weather with You" went okay, with all three of them taking part. But when it came time to perform "Fall at Your Feet," Adams got out his cell phone and started bidding on some items on eBay, while still on stage in front of an audience! This annoyed Finn so much that he loudly asked Adams what he was doing and why wasn't he joining in with the song, as they had practiced before the show started. Adams blew him off, then packed up his guitar and left before the song was even over. Ultimately, "Fall at Your Feet" wasn't included in the show, due to this trouble.

I found an article from the Age, a major newspaper in Australia, that went into surprising depth about the controversy. It includes a lot of bickering comments from the days after the concert, mostly between Ian and Adams. Finn generally stayed silent, except for one sarcastic comment: "Well, 'Songwriters' Circle' on BBC will be interesting, watch out for lovely backing vocals on 'Fall at Your Feet' from Ryan." (That's a reference to how those expected backing vocals never happened.)

The back and forth between Adams and Ian is much more extensive and nasty. I'll just quote one section from Ian:

"Ryan Adams, meanwhile, is an extremely talented songwriter - beautiful, wonderful stuff - whose first words to us were that he didn't know why he was there. We heard numerous times that he writes 4-5 songs a day, that they just pour out of him, that he's 'the most unprepared person on earth' and likes it that way, and that he sells out any theater he plays in the UK 'in 30 seconds flat.' All of which was a little weird, from my perspective. I expect a certain amount of narcissism in performers. That's a necessity, part of our stock in trade. I don't expect complete and total self-absorption to the detriment of what was supposed to be three singer-songwriters enjoying each other in a collaborative environment. I do that a lot in Nashville, as you all know, and I've never in my life seen it go south like this did."

It's this sort of thing that has made me not interested to explore Adams' musical output, even though I've heard he's a talented songwriter. (The accounts of him sexually harassing women are especially upsetting.) If you want to make up your own mind, here's the link to the quite lengthy article:

Ryan Adams and Neil Finn fall out during TV taping 

Anyway, regardless of what may or may not have happened with this controversy, the episode is quite nice simply as a listening experience. If there was any unpleasantness, it was cleverly edited out, and it seemed as if they were all getting along fine. (Of course, as I mentioned above, the song with the main problem discussed above was completely removed, so that helped a lot.) The three of them even kind of spontaneously created a song together, which I've chosen to call "Center of an Oreo." (I find it strange that none of the bickering in the Age article mentions that.) And the music was very good, including the songs by Adams.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long. 

01 talk (Neil Finn)
02 Distant Sun (Neil Finn)
03 talk (Janis Ian)
04 At Seventeen (Janis Ian)
05 talk (Ryan Adams)
06 Carolina Rain (Ryan Adams)
07 talk (Neil Finn)
08 Don't Dream It's Over (Neil Finn)
09 talk (Janis Ian)
10 Society's Child (Janis Ian)
11 Oh My Sweet Carolina (Ryan Adams)
12 talk (Neil Finn)
13 Golden Child (Neil Finn)
14 talk (Janis Ian)
15 Bright Lights and Promises (Janis Ian)
16 Invisible Riverside (Ryan Adams)
17 talk (Ryan Adams)
18 Center of an Oreo (Neil Finn, Janis Ian & Ryan Adams)
19 talk (Neil Finn)
20 She Will Have Her Way (Neil Finn)
21 From Me to You (Janis Ian)
22 Come Pick Me Up (Ryan Adams)
23 talk (Neil Finn)
24 Weather with You (Neil Finn, Janis Ian & Ryan Adams)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RvQFJVSq

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/IfuuPmzYB9db6ky/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from this exact concert. From right to left: Neil Finn, Janis Ian, and Ryan Adams.

Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe - Costello Sings Lowe - Nick Sings Elvis, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, 10-1-2010

Here's a really fun concert with Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe taking turns performing songs. But there's a surprise twist that I've never seen in any other concert: instead of singing their own songs, they sang the other guy's songs! Meaning Costello exclusively sung songs written by Lowe, and Lowe exclusively sung songs written by Costello. 

I've known about this concert for a long time, but I avoided it due to merely okay sound quality. It comes from an audience boot instead of a soundboard or FM radio broadcast. But it was an unusually good audience boot. Furthermore, with the improvements in audio editing technology in recent years, I was able to make some changes to improve the sound quality. The main thing I did was I ran all the songs through the MVSEP program and got rid of the crowd noise during the songs while keeping the crowd noise at the starts and ends of songs. Now, in my opinion, this sounds just as good as most soundboard boots.

This unique format was only possible because Costello and Lowe have been friends and musical associates for a long, long time. Lowe found suggest first, in the early 1970s, as part of the band Brinsley Schwarz. That band was a big influence on Costello as he was starting out. One can see this in this concert, with Costello singing "Don't Lose Your Grip on Love," a relatively obscure Brinsley Schwarz song from 1972. A key early hit for Costello, "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," was another Brinsley Schwarz song written by Lowe. Then, when Costello started releasing his own albums, he chose Lowe to be the producer. In fact, Costello's first five albums, from 1977 to 1981, were all produced by Lowe, as well as "Blood and Chocolate" in 1986.

I found a good quote from a Lowe interview, about his early connection to Costello: 

"When I was in Brinsley Schwarz, he used to come and see us all the time. He was always there, looking very intense. Even when he was with other people, he always seemed to he standing apart from them. The first time I actually spoke to him was in a pub in Liverpool. He was at the bar, and I thought, 'Well.., there he is again. I'd better buy him a drink.' Because I was famous then, you see. I was in the Brinsleys, man. We were pub rock legends, earning 175 pounds a night. We were big time. And I went over and he just glared at me. Damned unsettling. You know the way he is. Anyway, after that, whenever I saw him, we'd have a drink. I just thought he was a very intense fan. Then he moved to London and we lost touch. And then we started Stiff [Records] and one day I saw him at the local tube station." That renewed contact led to Costello getting his first record contract in 1977. 

Since those early days, their paths have crossed many times. For instance, they're frequently toured together, with Lowe usually being the opening act due to Costello being the more famous name. In fact, according to an Elvis Costello wiki I found, they toured together in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 1986,  1987, 1989, 1991, 2000, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2022, and 2023! Lowe has also recorded the Costello songs "Indoor Fireworks" and "Poisoned Rose" on his albums. 

But this concert, which was a special charity benefit event, has been the one and only time they sang each other's songs like this. They actually did two shows that evening, and this is the early show. Apparently no recording has emerged of the late show.

Note that a couple of songs were mainly sung by members of the backing band. One such band member, keyboardist Bob Andrews, was actually a member of Brinsley Schwarz way back in the day.

This album is an hour and 25 minutes long. 

01 talk (Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
02 Here Comes the Weekend (Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
03 When I Write the Book (Elvis Costello)
04 Home Is Anywhere You Hang Your Head (Nick Lowe)
05 talk (Elvis Costello)
06 Don't Lose Your Grip on Love (Elvis Costello)
07 Mystery Dance (Nick Lowe)
08 talk (Elvis Costello)
09 I Trained Her to Love Me (Elvis Costello)
10 talk (Elvis Costello)
11 Poisoned Rose (Nick Lowe)
12 I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass (Bob Andrews)
13 Oliver's Army (Nick Lowe)
14 I'm a Mess (Elvis Costello)
15 talk (Nick Lowe)
16 Alison (Nick Lowe)
17 talk (Elvis Costello)
18 Harry Hippie - Cruel to Be Kind (Elvis Costello)
19 Accidents Will Happen [Instrumental] (Derek Huston with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
20 talk (Austin de Lone with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
21 Lover Don't Go (Austin de Lone with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
22 Indoor Fireworks (Nick Lowe)
23 What's Shakin' on the Hill (Elvis Costello)
24 Gonna Love My Baby Now (Nick Lowe)
25 talk (Bill Kirchen with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
26 Monkey to Man (Bill Kirchen with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
27 Heart of the City (Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
28 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding (Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
29 talk (Elvis Costello)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/V7anEjmY

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/eTTF9VoRCKhqk1K/file

I'm happy to say the cover photo comes from this exact concert. It wasn't labeled as such, but I found another one from the concert that was blurry and not very good, and it showed them wearing the exact same clothes, same guitars, same hat, etc... For all the text, I copied and pasted from a poster for this concert. That includes the yellow text referring to them as "cracking good eggs."

R.E.M. - Oak Mountain Amphitheatre, Pelham, AL, 9-5-1986

Here's another great concert by R.E.M. Like the other one I posted a few days ago, this one only became publicly available in December 2025. The sound quality is excellent.

This concert first became available through Rob, who runs the dB's Repercussion music blog, at:

dbs-repercussion.blogspot.com 

It's an excellent blog, I recommend you check it out. I've included Rob's original notes to the recording. That explains how it was recorded and got into his hands. The bottom line is this is a soundboard. 

The only snag is that six songs are missing. Those include the first four songs: "These Days," "Begin the Begin," "1,000,000," and "The One I Love." Also missing are "Just a Touch" and "Femme Fatale" from the middle of the concert. (Specifically, they came after "Little America.")

This was the very first concert of the band's 1986 tour, which supported their recently released album "Lifes Rich Pageant," which had been released two months earlier. As a result, many of the songs were performed in public for the first time: "These Days," "Begin the Begin," "The One I Love," "Cuyahoga," "The Flowers of Guatemala," "I Believe," "Superman," "Strange," and "Lightnin' Hopkins." (Too bad that the first three of those aren't included here.) It's interesting that two of those songs, "The One I Love" and "Lightnin' Hopkins," wouldn't be released until the band's next album, "Document," in 1987.

Rob has this to say about this recording: "It is the finest-sounding 1986 live recording [from the band] now in circulation, and the first concert-length soundboard recording to emerge so far." 

This album is an hour and 22 minutes long.

01 Cuyahoga (R.E.M.)
02 talk (R.E.M.)
03 Fall on Me (R.E.M.)
04 Shaking Through (R.E.M.)
05 The Flowers of Guatemala (R.E.M.)
06 Driver 8 (R.E.M.)
07 talk (R.E.M.)
08 I Believe (R.E.M.)
09 talk (R.E.M.)
10 Swan Swan H (R.E.M.)
11 talk (R.E.M.)
12 Can't Get There from Here (R.E.M.)
13 7 Chinese Bros (R.E.M.)
14 talk (R.E.M.)
15 Superman (R.E.M.)
16 talk (R.E.M.)
17 Pretty Persuasion (R.E.M.)
18 Little America (R.E.M.)
19 Feeling Gravitys Pull (R.E.M.)
20 Strange (R.E.M.)
21 So. Central Rain [I'm Sorry] (R.E.M.)
22 Auctioneer [Another Engine] (R.E.M.)
23 Lightnin' Hopkins (R.E.M.)
24 Old Man Kensey (R.E.M.)
25 Life and How to Live It (R.E.M.)
26 talk (R.E.M.)
27 Time Was (R.E.M.)
28 Second Guessing (R.E.M.)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/h3FSNBaC

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/XI9TOlV8nbNdMRZ/file

The cover of the band's lead singer Michael Stipe is from a concert at the Northern Illinois University Arena in DeKalb, Illinois, on October 26, 1986.

Leon Russell with the Gap Band - The Midnight Special, The Church Studio, Tulsa, OK, 8-2-1974

Here's another episode of the excellent "Midnight Special" TV show. This one stars Leon Russell, with the Gap Band.

This is an unusual episode in a few different ways. The vast majority of the episodes were filmed in the same location, in the Los Angeles area, and featured one host plus a handful of guests. But this one was entirely filmed in Russell's personal recording studio, called the Church Studio (because it was inside a former church), in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It also had just one other musical act, the Gap Band. Furthermore, the Gap Band didn't just play a couple of their own songs, as usual. Instead, Russell and the Gap Band played together on every song. But Russell sang most of the songs, while the Gap Band only sang lead on two, while they also dominated one instrumental. Furthermore, there was no audience whatsoever, no doubt due to the unusual location.

I believe the reason for all of these unusual aspects is because the Midnight Special production crew went to this part of the country in order to film an episode that took place at a special Willie Nelson's Fourth of July concert that year. Russell was one of the stars of that, so the show people probably figured they could record another episode with Russell while they were in the area. The concert episode aired the week right after this one, and was also hosted by Russell. I'll get to posting that one eventually. I only know the broadcast date for this episode. But I'll bet the actual recording date was close to the date of the concert.

The Gap Band got to be pretty famous, due to a series of hits in the late 1970s and through most of the 1980s. But at the time of this concert in 1974, they were complete unknowns. They were formed in Tulsa in 1967, with lead singer Charlie Wilson and his two brothers as the core. However, they didn't have success until 1974, when they were the backing band for Russell's studio album that year, "Stop All That Jazz." He signed them to his record label, Shelter Records, and let them record their debut album in his studio, the same exact studio where this performance took place. However, the resulting album, "Magicians Holiday," didn't get any traction at all. It didn't make the U.S. album chart, and none of the singles from it made any singles chart either. It would be three more years before they released another album, and that one would come out on another label. So it seems their association with Russell only lasted around 1974.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

01 talk (Leon Russell)
02 Delta Lady (Leon Russell with the Gap Band)
03 talk (Wolfman Jack)
04 Alcatraz - Going Back (Leon Russell with the Gap Band)
05 talk (Leon Russell)
06 Smashed (Leon Russell with the Gap Band)
07 talk (Leon Russell)
08 Streakers Ball (Leon Russell with the Gap Band)
09 talk (Leon Russell)
10 Magicians Holiday (Gap Band with Leon Russell)
11 Queen of the Roller Derby - Roll Away the Stone (Leon Russell with the Gap Band)
12 Tommy's Groove [Instrumental] (Gap Band with Leon Russell)
13 Ain't That Peculiar (Leon Russell & the Gap Band)
14 Tight Rope (Leon Russell with the Gap Band)
15 You Can Always Count on Me (Gap Band with Leon Russell)
16 talk (Wolfman Jack)
17 Delta Lady [Reprise] (Leon Russell with the Gap Band)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zT3NjrXR

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/E6llSkNMUJhfmvK/file

This cover image is a screenshot I took of a YouTube video of this exact concert. I couldn't find an image with more members of the Gap Band, especially lead singer Charlie Wilson, since they were spread out all over the studio. But at least I got Russell (at the bottom with long light hair) with the bassist and some backing vocalists.

Chris Rea - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, London, Britain, 4-12-1983

Chris Rea died last week as I write this at the end of December 2025. I've never been much aware of his music, so I'm fast tracking the posting of a bunch of BBC albums from him to make up for lost time. Here's the second one, which is a 1983 concert. In case you're curious, I have at least six more that I've found so far.

The first song, "Guitar Street," is from a different source. That was performed by him on the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show in 1982. I didn't have anywhere else to put it, and it helps flesh out a rather short album. Luckily, it was performed in front of a cheering audience, so it fits in well with the live concert that follows.

The rest of this album is from a 1983 concert, as I mentioned above. I don't know much about it. For instance, I don't know the exact venue. If anyone knows, please let me know so I can fix that.

Rea had a hit with his very first major label single, "Fool (If You Think It's Over)," released in 1978. But after that, he had quite a few years with only middling success. This concert took place during that time. His biggest hit since his first one was probably "I Can Hear Your Heartbeat." But that only made it to Number 60 in the British singles chart. He would start to have more success a couple of years later. We'll see that in the next album in this series.

This album is 36 minutes long. If you don't include the first track, from another source, it's 31 minutes.

01 Guitar Street (Chris Rea)
02 Nothing's Happening by the Sea (Chris Rea)
03 Don't Look Back (Chris Rea)
04 talk (Chris Rea)
05 Midnight Blue (Chris Rea)
06 Let It Loose (Chris Rea)
07 talk (Chris Rea)
08 Love's Strange Ways (Chris Rea)
09 I Can Hear Your Heartbeat (Chris Rea)
10 From Love to Love (Chris Rea)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fv2s2dks

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/i5cL62Y4YVAYmFq/file

The cover image is from a concert in Auftritt, Germany, at some point in 1983. 

Bob Dylan - SEC Armadillo, Glasgow, Britain, 11-17-2025

Early this month, as I write this in December 2025, I posted a Bob Dylan concert that took place in August 2025. I was happy to post that, because the sound quality was exceptional for having taken place only a few months earlier. Now, here's another one with equally great sound quality, and a set list that's almost entirely different!

For many, many years, there were next to no Dylan new concert bootlegs with soundboard-level sound quality. The only exceptions since 2000 or so (and I've posted most of them at my blog already) are due to IEM technology. "IEM" stands for "in-ear monitor." Basically, instead of everything going through wires, these days many concerts broadcast the music wirelessly so the band members can hear what the others are playing. And every now and then, people manage to pick up that signal and record it, even though it has a very, very limited broadcast frequency. I'm pretty sure that's what happened here, although it's just generically described as a soundboard by the people who made the original liner notes.

Actually, the people who recorded this also recorded the concert the day before, held in the same Glasgow venue. I decided to post only one, since the set lists were basically identical. (Dylan pretty much played the same songs for the entire short European tour this was a part of. But, as I mentioned above, it's a drastically different set from what he was playing earlier in the year.) So I read some reviews. Both shows were rated highly. Generally, most people think Dylan has been "on" during this tour, singing well and clearly, and generally being engaged. But I read slightly better things about the November 17th concert, so I decided to process that one.

And it turns out it needed a lot of processing. The main problem is that there was virtually NO audience noise whatsoever. Furthermore, the people who turned it into a bootleg cut out everything but the music, probably since they figured it would sound strange to hear dead silence between songs. But the downside is that made it sound like one long song. I think having clear breaks between songs really helps.

So I wanted to fix things, but there was no audience noise to work with at all. I decided on a drastic approach I've never used before. I downloaded an audience bootleg of a Dylan concert from Dublin, which took place a few days after this one. Then, using the MVSEP program, I split the crowd noise from the music for all those songs. Then I took the crowd noise from the beginnings and ends of each of the songs and pasted them into the same songs in this concert. It helped greatly that the set lists were almost exactly the same, with one extra song played in Dublin. Thus, what you're getting here is the real audience reaction to each song, song by song. It's just that the reaction is from a different concert that took place a few days later.

Anyway, I don't know how confusing that sounds. But the bottom line is that the appropriate sounding audience noise has been added, when there had been no audience noise at all. So I think that makes this a big improvement from the version I took it from. I've left in the original notes, so you can see who to thank, and what they did.

I made some other changes as well. The main one is that, occasionally, I noticed some brief dropouts, lasting a second or less. That's not long, but it's long enough for my ear to notice something was off. Every time I heard one of those dropouts, I tracked down the exact spot and did some audio editing to fill in the silence. Since they were very short dropouts, I usually fixed it just by stretching the music on either side a little bit to fill in the gap. That happened in a bunch of songs. I've included "[Edit]" in the titles of two songs where I found two or three such gaps. But there were some others where I found one, and fixed those as well. 

Oh, by the way, track 17, where the other band members are introduced, comes entirely from the Dublin show. Dylan makes those introductions in every concert. But it seems the people who made this bootleg cut everything but the songs so thoroughly that they cut that too. Since that comes from a middling sounding boot, I ran that track through the Adobe Enhance Speech program to make his banter more intelligible. 

If you want to know more about the concert, here's a good review of it:

Bob Dylan Live In Glasgow Review: Rough, rowdy, and ever-changing 

This album is an hour and 48 minutes long. 

01 I'll Be Your Baby Tonight (Bob Dylan)
02 It Ain't Me, Babe [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
03 I Contain Multitudes (Bob Dylan)
04 False Prophet (Bob Dylan)
05 When I Paint My Masterpiece (Bob Dylan)
06 Black Rider (Bob Dylan)
07 My Own Version of You (Bob Dylan)
08 To Be Alone with You (Bob Dylan)
09 Crossing the Rubicon (Bob Dylan)
10 Desolation Row (Bob Dylan)
11 Key West [Philosopher Pirate] (Bob Dylan)
12 Watching the River Flow (Bob Dylan)
13 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan)
14 I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
15 Mother of Muses (Bob Dylan)
16 Goodbye Jimmy Reed (Bob Dylan)
17 talk (Bob Dylan)
18 Every Grain of Sand (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nnA8vaZG

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/OdEnGzeqscl9PFJ/file

I don't know where or when the cover image is from. I just know it's from 2025. I could have found a better photo probably, but I thought this was fitting with his face partially obscured, since he's taken to practically hiding on stage. Apparently, if you go see him in concert in recent years, you're lucky to get to see even this much of his face.

Steve Earle, Diana Jones, & Tom Morello - Bush Hall, London, Britain, 3-11-2012

Here's another episode of the excellent BBC TV show "Songwriters' Circle." Like other episodes, it features three singer-songwriters who take turns performing their songs on guitar or piano. This one consists of Steve Earle, Diana Jones, and Tom Morello.

Before I say anything more, I want to thank a musical friend named Peter. I had hit a wall finding many episodes of this series, but he sent me a bunch. As I write this, I think only three are still missing.

For this show, in my opinion, Steve Earle and Tom Morello are quite famous, while Diana Jones is relatively unknown. Earle has had a long and successful career in rock, folk, and country since the mid-1980s. While he hasn't had many hits, he's gained lots of respect as a songwriter, with many big names covering his songs. He's also won three Grammy Awards. Here's his Wikipedia link if you want to know more:

Steve Earle - Wikipedia 

Diana Jones released her first album in 1997. But, as he Wikipedia bio points out, "Jones's career gained wider critical acclaim in 2006 with the release of her album, 'My Remembrance of You.' The album made a number of critics end-of-the-year 'best of' lists." Her music has mixed country and folk. Here's the rest of her Wikipedia entry:

Diana Jones (singer-songwriter) - Wikipedia 

Finally, there's Tom Morello. He first came to fame as the lead guitarist for the band Rage Against the Machine. He's also been a member of the rock bands Audioslave and Prophets of Rage. However, he's done very different music in a parallel solo career, often under the name the Nightwatchman, consisting of acoustic folk music. That also is more of an outlet for his socialist, political views. The music he performed in this concert is in his solo style, and miles away from his rocking Rage Against the Machine style. Here's his Wikipedia entry:

Tom Morello - Wikipedia 

The Songwriter's Circle show didn't last long. There were a few episodes in 1999. Then it seemed the show was cancelled, but it came back for more episodes in 2010 and 2011. There were just three final episodes in 2012, and this was one of them. 

I got this from Peter as one big, high-quality video file. I converted it to audio, then broke it into mp3s. The music is unreleased and the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 talk (Steve Earle)
02 Guitar Town (Steve Earle)
03 If I Had a Gun (Diana Jones)
04 talk (Tom Morello)
05 Black Spartacus Heart Attack Machine (Tom Morello)
06 talk (Steve Earle)
07 The Rain Came Down (Steve Earle)
08 talk (Diana Jones)
09 Pony (Diana Jones)
10 talk (Tom Morello)
11 No One Left (Tom Morello)
12 talk (Steve Earle)
13 Mountain (Steve Earle)
14 talk (Steve Earle & Diana Jones)
15 Henry Russell's Last Words (Diana Jones)
16 talk (Tom Morello)
17 The Garden of Gethsemane (Tom Morello)
18 talk (Steve Earle)
19 The Devil's Right Hand (Steve Earle)
20 talk (Diana Jones)
21 Poverty (Diana Jones)
22 talk (Tom Morello)
23 One Man Revolution (Tom Morello)
24 talk (Tom Morello, Steve Earle & Diana Jones)
25 This Land Is Your Land (Tom Morello, Steve Earle & Diana Jones)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VXxT9Nzu

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/zL4vJV8JznMzioe/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from a video of this exact concert. From right to left: Steve Earle, Diana Jones, and Tom Morello.

Chris Rea - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 6-7-1980

We've lost another one. While I was on Christmas vacation, I heard that Chris Rea died. He died on December 22, 2025, at the age of 74. That came after many years of serious health issues. He almost died of a stomach ulcer in 1994, and had pancreatic cancer in 2001, a stroke in 2016, and much more. But he doggedly kept making music, with his last studio album coming in 2019. So I've decided to post some music from him.

To be honest, I'm shockingly ignorant about Rea, given how much I know of other music done by similar musicians. I guess that's mainly because I'm American. Rea only had one hit in the U.S., "Fool (If You Think It's Over)" in 1978. By contrast, he was a big star in Britain and the rest of Europe. For instance, looking at his discography, I count 47 Top 100 hit singles he had in Britain, with 13 of those reaching the Top Forty. He sold over 30 million records worldwide. 

And until now, I've been oblivious to nearly all of that. I literally only know him for "Fool (If You Think It's Over)." So I'm fast tracking some BBC albums by him, which will help me learn his music. It also happens that he only released one official live album ("The Road to Hell and Back," released in 2006), so posting some BBC concerts will help flesh out his live career. 

Rea found success right away. He was in a few bands for a few years as he developed his skills. But his first single release on a major record label was "Fool (If You Think It's Over)," which would become one of his best known songs. Weirdly though, it seems he didn't actually like the song very much, since it wasn't done in a style he preferred. He later said, "It's the only track I never played guitar on, which tells you something about the spirit of it. On top of that, it was just a huge hit. So there was nothing I could do. It was like: 'This is not me!'" Perhaps because of that, I haven't seen it on any of the BBC concerts he performed, and I found a handful of those. But I wanted to have at least one version of it on one album, so I found a good, live, non-BBC version, and I've included that at the end of this album as a kind of quasi-bonus track. It's from a concert in Newcastle, Britain, in December 1978.

Although "Fool" was a hit in the U.S., it only did okay in Britain. He kept plugging away, releasing new albums in 1979 and 1980. He didn't have any more hit songs or albums during that time, but he made enough of a name for himself to finally get a short BBC concert in 1980. The first seven tracks here come from that. 

Note that I've found different versions of this BBC concert floating around the Internet. Most of them are poorly labelled as only being from 1980, or August 1980. I was able to dig a little deeper and found a version with a specific date. This one also has an introduction by BBC DJ Bob Killby from the actual concert, whereas other versions had an introduction by BBC DJ Brian Matthew that was added later. That version also has the same songs, but the last song was cut short by about two minutes. So this is the superior version. 

Tracks 8 and 9 are from a 1978 episode of the BBC TV show "Old Grey Whistle Test." I didn't have any better place to put those, so I've stuck them here are more quasi-bonus tracks. They were done in the studio without any crowd noise, while all the rest of the songs have crowd noise.

This album is 43 minutes long. The main BBC show makes up 32 minutes of that.

01 talk by Bob Killby (Chris Rea)
02 Letter from Amsterdam (Chris Rea)
03 [Doing] The Things Lovers Should Do (Chris Rea)
04 Good News (Chris Rea)
05 Dancing Girls (Chris Rea)
06 Every Time I See Your Smile (Chris Rea)
07 Sweet Kiss (Chris Rea)
08 Whatever Happened to Benny Santini (Chris Rea)
09 Fires of Spring (Chris Rea)
10 Fool [If You Think It's Over] (Chris Rea)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fHyTWK4G

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/488Wtxi14iLWUeC/file

The cover photo is from a concert in Fernsehen, Germany, at some point in 1978.

R.E.M. - B&L Warehouse, Athens, GA, 4-24-1981

Here's a really interesting, great sounding concert recording by a very early version of R.E.M. This was so early in their career that they hadn't even released their first single yet. ("Radio Free Europe" would come out as a single in July.) This concert was available as a middling sounding audience boot for a long time. But apparently it was only a few weeks ago when a high-quality soundboard version emerged. That probably makes this the best sounding concert recording from this very early era for the band.

This was sent to me by musical associate Lil Panda. He got it from Rob, who is the person who runs the dB's Repercussion music blog. It's an excellent blog, and one I've mentioned before, but here's the link if you're not aware of it:

https://dbs-repercussion.blogspot.com/

Anyway, Rob wrote some notes about this concert, which I've included in the download zip file. In those notes, he mentions this: "T. Patton Biddle (aka Pat the Wiz) of Athens, GA, is the source for this recording. He was the sound tech for many of R.E.M.'s shows in and around Athens in the early 1980s. This comes from a first-generation analog copy of the master reel, recorded by Pat as he ran sound for R.E.M.'s opening set." So thanks to Lil Panda, Rob, and Pat the Wiz!

This contains all the songs the band performed. (It was a short set, since they were the opening act for XTC.) Unfortunately though, the taper didn't start taping until about a minute into the first song, "Radio Free Europe," and he ran out of tape after about a minute and a half of the last song, "Gardening at Night." So I found different early live versions of those two songs (from a concert in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1982), and used those to fill in the missing portions. I had to make some changes to get them to fit. It was especially noticeable that this version of "Radio Free Europe" was much faster than the 1982 one. Anyway, that's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

When I first saw the song list to this concert, I was confused, because I didn't recognize about half of the songs. It turns out the band played some pretty obscure songs, all originals. Four of the songs here remain officially unreleased: "Body Count," "Dangerous Times," "Hey Hey Nadine," and "That Beat." Three more are rarities from the "Dead Letter Office" compilation album: "All the Right Friends," "Burning Down," and "Windout." Another, "Gardening at Night," is from the band's early EP "Chronic Town." That just leaves four songs from the "Murmur" album, which would be released in 1983, and the "Reckoning" album, which would be released in 1984.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Radio Free Europe [Edit] (R.E.M.)
02 Burning Down (R.E.M.)
03 Dangerous Times (R.E.M.)
04 All the Right Friends (R.E.M.)
05 Shaking Through (R.E.M.)
06 Body Count (R.E.M.)
07 talk (R.E.M.)
08 Pretty Persuasion (R.E.M.)
09 [Don't Go Back To] Rockville (R.E.M.)
10 Hey Hey Nadine (R.E.M.)
11 talk (R.E.M.)
12 That Beat (R.E.M.)
13 Sitting Still (R.E.M.)
14 talk (R.E.M.)
15 9-9 (R.E.M.)
16 Windout (R.E.M.)
17 Gardening at Night [Edit] (R.E.M.)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EvPkci2i

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/xOZB57vKBuvuc2r/file

The cover image is from an advertisement for this exact concert. When I came across it, I saw that it was close to square (I widened it a bit), so I thought it would make a good cover. The only change is that the concert actually featured XTC and R.E.M., with XTC the headlining act. So I erased XTC and made R.E.M. larger to fill in the difference.