Bruce Springsteen - Streets of Minneapolis (Live Acoustic Version)

Here's a song that was actually created earlier today, January 30, 2026. I don't think I've ever posted anything this fast at this blog before. Just two days earlier, Bruce Springsteen released a new song called "Streets of Minneapolis," which he had written only a couple of days before that. That released version was performed with a full band. But today, he was in Minneapolis, and he was a guest at a Tom Morello concert held at a small club. While there, he performed two songs, and one of them was "Streets of Minneapolis," done in solo acoustic mode. I thought this version is different enough, and interesting enough, to merit being posted here.

The recording of this song was just done by someone on their cell phone, so there were some sound quality issues. Another reason I'm posting this is because I figured I could make this version more listenable with some audio editing improvements. I used the MVSEP program to reduce the crowd noise during the song. I kept in some roars of the crowd where they were warranted, but I got rid of a lot of ambient noise, as well as random loud screams and woo-hoos. I also used the Adobe vocal enhancer program to add some clarity to Springsteen's comments before the song began.

In case you haven't figured it out from the song title, or from hearing about it already, the song is about the current crisis with I.C.E. misbehaving in Minneapolis. While I'm a political progressive, I usually try to avoid talking about politics on this music blog. But I have to say I'm glad that Springsteen has written a song to express what a majority of people in the U.S. are feeling right now: that I.C.E. is going too far, and they're harassing, hurting, and sometimes even killing people they don't like instead of properly doing their jobs. Democracy is in danger of being replaced by a de facto dictatorship. I hope other musicians follow Springsteen's example and lend their talents to help push back against this power grab.  

Springsteen's performance of this song was newsworthy enough to result in some articles. Here one, from the Daily Beast: 

Bruce Springsteen Kicks Trump ‘In the Teeth’ at Rage-Fueled Show

And here's all of Springsteen's participation in the concert: 

Bruce Springsteen at First Avenue 1/30/26  

After playing his new song, he was joined by a full band, including Tom Morello, and they performed "The Ghost of Tom Joad." Morello played some blistering lead guitar on that one. Then the concert ended with John Lennon's "Power to the People," though really it was just the chorus repeated a few times along with some shouting to get the crowd worked up.

Here's the link to the cleaned-up live acoustic version: 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/yo8eER1S

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/krciqmn65DBSKGU/file

Normally, I post album covers. But this isn't an album. Besides, I'm having problems running Photoshop on my computer in the past few days. So if anyone wants a cover for this, it will have to wait. 

Oh, one final note. The "Brucebase" Bruce Springsteen Wiki has a lot of good links and information relating to this performance, including a bunch of photos. You can find that here:

2026-01-30 First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN - Brucebase Wiki 

Various Artists - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, Waldorf Astoria, New York City, 1-20-1988

Yesterday (January 28, 2026), Bruce Springsteen dropped a new song about the current problems with ICE in Minneapolis, called "Streets of Minneapolis." It's good to see a protest song that addresses current issues, since there haven't been many of those in recent years. (He wrote, recorded, and released it in four days!) Here's a link, if you haven't heard it already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWKSoxG1K7w 

Anyway, I wanted to post something from Springsteen after hearing that inspiring song. However, some recent computer problems I've been having have flared up again, which means I currently can't use Photoshop, which in turn means I can't make new album covers until that's fixed. So I looked around to see if I had some Springsteen-related album ready to go, cover and all. Luckily, I did. (I have soooo many albums I could post tomorrow, if only I had the time to finish them off. Sigh!) This one doesn't have a ton of Springsteen content, but it's a really interesting (thought short) concert. So, in a way, my current computer issues have an upside in that they're getting me to finally post this.

Now, finally, to the music. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame started in the early 1980s. In 1986, they had their first induction ceremony, complete with a short concert featuring some of the inductees and other famous musicians. This has become a yearly tradition. Some concerts have been a lot more memorable than others. In my opinion, the ones from 1988 and 1989 were the most interesting, with the biggest star power. I haven't collected the others (though I very may well do so with some of them in the future), but I've made albums of those two. This is the 1988 one.

1988 was a really big year for the Hall of Fame, because their rule is that artists are only eligible for induction 25 years after their first record (be it a single or album). And when they were making their decisions in 1987 for this ceremony, that meant they were looking at the artists who put out their first records in 1962. It just so happens that was the first year of recordings for the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Beach Boys! Those are three of the biggest and most influential musical acts of all time. The Drifters and the Supremes were inducted that year as well, plus some non-performers, like Berry Gordy.

The induction ceremony had a lot of intrigue and drama in it. The Beatles are arguably the biggest (and best, IMHO!) musical act ever, so they were the main focus here, even overshadowing Dylan and the other very big names. Since John Lennon was assassinated in 1980, he was represented by his wife Yoko Ono, and his sons Julian Lennon and Sean Lennon, and each of them gave short speeches. Ex-Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr were there, and also gave speeches. 

However, the big no-show was Paul McCartney. He was in the middle of a lawsuit still connected to the break-up of the band back in 1970, so he felt he couldn't attend due to that. He put out a statement: "I was keen to go to and pick up my award, but after 20 years the Beatles still have some business differences which I had hoped would have been settled by now. Unfortunately, they haven't been [settled], so I would feel like a complete hypocrite waving and smiling with [Harrison and Starr] at a fake reunion." 

It turns out the lawsuit, which involved the division of profits from record sales, was settled a year later. So that was unfortunate timing as far as this concert goes. But at least that opened the door to the "Anthology" collaboration between the ex-Beatles a few years later.

Normally, when I post albums like this, I skip long speeches and focus on the music. But I'm making an exception here. I didn't include all the induction speeches, but I thought the ones relating to the induction of the Beatles and Dylan were important enough to include. They're all together at the beginning of this album, and they are about 19 minutes long in total. If you don't want to hear them, or just hear them once or twice, there's still about 40 minutes of music after that.

A big element of the drama involved Mike Love, a member of the Beach Boys. Love is one of the most notorious assholes in rock and roll, something I've discussed in other posts. But he really outdid himself this time. He appeared to be drunk, and used his induction speech to insult various famous musicians in the audience. This led to a funny quip from Dylan during his acceptance speech: when he listed people he wanted to thank, he thanked Love for not mentioning him in his speech!

Anyway, there are lots of interesting stories about what happened during this event. But instead of trying to summarize them all here, I'll just point out to an article from Rolling Stone Magazine that does a good job:

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 

I've also posted a text file in the download zip that has the text to that article.

Regarding the music here, everything was professionally recorded, so the sound quality is excellent. However, I found the lead vocals were rather low in most of the songs, so I boosted that up with the help of the MVSEP program. Also, there was a problem in the performance of "Stop in the Name of Love." Mary Wilson of the Supremes was asked to sing the song (since Diana Ross was another prominent no show). But it was clear for this songs, as well as all the other songs, that there hadn't been any practice beforehand, so everyone was just winging it. For the first chorus at the start of the song, Wilson sang the song in one key, while the band (or at least most of it) played in another key. That sounds pretty painful to my ears. So I erased that, and patched in a chorus from later in the song. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title.

Oh, also, during all the talking between songs, where band leader Paul Shaffer was trying to direct things, one or more people on stage kept playing guitar so loudly that it nearly drowned out what anyone was saying. So for most of those tracks, I used MVSEP to lower the volume of the guitar enough to make the talking more audible.  

The songs "I Saw Her Standing There" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" were officially released on the compilation album "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Volume 1: 1986-1991." Everything else here remains unreleased.

By the way, when it comes to the song list below, I only listed the name of the main lead singers. For all the songs, there was one of the most amazing gatherings of musical talent ever seen on one stage together. But it's next to impossible to figure out who was on stage doing what, other than the lead vocals. So that's why I kept the credits in the titles relatively simple. 

However, just as one example, it was Jeff Beck who started playing the "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" riff that led to that song being played, right when it seemed everyone was leaving the stage. Some of the others who were on stage at least part of the time but don't get mentioned in the song titles include: Neil Young, Paul Simon, Johnny Moore, Joe Blunt, Clyde Brown, Tom Fogerty, Les Paul, Arlo Guthrie, Yoko Ono, Ringo Starr, Little Richard, Peter Wolf,  Dave Edmunds, Jeff Lynne, Julian Lennon, Sean Lennon, Little Steven, and Clarence Clemons.  

This album is an hour and six minutes long. 

01 talk (Mick Jagger)
02 talk (Ringo Starr)
03 talk (George Harrison)
04 talk (Yoko Ono)
05 talk (Julian Lennon)
06 talk (Sean Lennon)
07 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
08 talk (Bob Dylan)
09 Twist and Shout (Johnny Moore)
10 All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan with George Harrison)
11 talk (Paul Shaffer)
12 I Saw Her Standing There (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
13 talk (Paul Shaffer)
14 Stand by Me (Ben E. King & Julian Lennon)
15 talk (Paul Shaffer)
16 Stop in the Name of Love [Edit] (Mary Wilson)
17 talk (Paul Shaffer)
18 Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On - Hound Dog - Honey Hush (Elton John)
19 talk (Paul Shaffer)
20 Barbara Ann (Beach Boys)
21 talk (Paul Shaffer & John Fogerty)
22 Born on the Bayou (John Fogerty with Bruce Springsteen)
23 talk (Paul Shaffer & John Fogerty)
24 Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan with Bruce Springsteen)
25 talk (Paul Shaffer)
26 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Mick Jagger with Bruce Springsteen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SpmdHRju

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/yv9ChPKPJqpFcYT/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From right to left: Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Mick Jagger.

Various Artists - Rally for Nuclear Disarmament, Central Park, New York City, 6-12-1982

A few days ago (as I write this in December 2025), I posted five hours of a concert called "Peace Sunday," which was a big benefit concert for the anti-nuclear war movement in 1992, held in Los Angeles. As I was researching that one, I discovered there was another concert for the same cause that took place a week later in New York City. I did a little more digging, and found part of it that got broadcast on radio station WNEW at the time. So I'm presenting that here. 

There's a lot about this concert that I don't know, apparently lost in the mists of time. I do know there was an absolutely enormous protest rally in Central Park on June 12, 1982. News reports say about a million people attended, making it the largest protest rally in the history of the U.S., at least up until that time. Part of that all day event was a concert. Some of it was broadcast on the radio, and that's what I have here. But I can't find any information about how much more there was that is now missing. 

However, I do have some clues. Rita Marley actually performed four songs, which I found on YouTube. But the sound quality, apparently from homemade video footage was poor. I managed to salvage one song to at least represent her, but I had to do a LOT of work on it (using the MVSEP program) to make it at least listenable. Note the sound quality gets better after that, so don't be discouraged because it's the first song. I also know Jackson Browne played the song "For Everyman," which is not here. The radio broadcast cut in part way through the song, and there were technical problems, so only the last minute was salvageable. That was so little that I decided to just cut it out entirely. I also know performed a duet of the song "I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine." One can find a video of that on YouTube, but the quality was so bad that I had no hope of salvaging that one. They also did the song together in the studio for Ronstadt's 1982 album "Get Closer," by the way.

Furthermore, at the end of the concert, there were appearances by Jesse Colin Young, Bonnie Raitt, Carly Simon, and Graham Nash. I suspect one or more of them probably had songs of their own earlier in the concert. I also saw a mention that Holly Near sang something at some point. The problem is, the radio broadcast only showed highlights of some of the big names, and even then it seems they took commercial breaks from time to time, skipping songs. If anyone knows more (for instance if you attended and remember what happened), please let us know.

To make matters more complicated, two days earlier, there was a related concert with a very similar name, the "Concert for Nuclear Disarmament," held at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, just outside New York City. That holds about 15,000 people. I found a review of that concert. There were only three acts: James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, and Jackson Browne. But because there were fewer acts, each of them performed almost full sets. I found one audience bootleg of part of that, but the sound quality was pretty terrible, so I won't be posting it. 

Anyway, having something (in worthy sound quality) is better than having nothing. What we have here is pretty nice, even though many of the performers are the same ones who played in the "Peace Sunday" concert a week earlier in Los Angeles. Linda Ronstadt even played "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)" with the same two well-known backing singers, Rosemary Butler and Nicolette Larson.

It was notable that Bruce Springsteen performed. However, I consulted the "Brucebase" website, which is very thorough, and that confirms that he only performed on two songs, while a guest during Jackson Browne's set. He sang his own song, "Badlands," with Browne on backing vocals, then Browne sang his own "Running on Empty" with Springsteen on backing vocals. 

Another interesting tidbit is that James Taylor and John Hall jointly performed the song "Children's Cry." Taylor mentioned before the song started that they had written it together specifically for this concert. I did a little searching. It seems the only time this song was ever played was at this concert and at the "Concert for Nuclear Disarmament" two days earlier. And it apparently was never officially released in any form.

This concert recording sounded pretty decent, but there were issues. Some time back, musical friend Lil Panda did some audio editing to improve just the Linda Ronstadt songs. So I used his version for those. I also tried some editing of my own. I ran all the songs through MVSEP, and got rid of most of the crowd noise during songs while keeping it at the ends of songs. I then ran all the songs through MVSEP again, and adjusted the balance between the lead vocals and the instruments. For maybe half the songs, the lead vocals were too low.

It anyone has more of this concert (or the related Concert for Nuclear Disarmament), please share it. 

This album is an hour and 33 minutes long. 

01 One Love (Rita Marley)
02 The Pretender (Jackson Browne & Gary U.S. Bonds)
03 talk (Joan Baez)
04 Imagine (Joan Baez)
05 Promised Land (Bruce Springsteen with Jackson Browne)
06 talk (Jackson Browne)
07 Running on Empty (Jackson Browne with Bruce Springsteen)
08 talk (Jackson Browne)
09 Tumbling Dice (Linda Ronstadt)
10 Blue Bayou (Linda Ronstadt)
11 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
12 The Shoop Shoop Song [It's in His Kiss] (Linda Ronstadt with Rosemary Butler & Nicolette Larson)
13 Desperado (Linda Ronstadt)
14 Heat Wave (Linda Ronstadt)
15 Living in the U.S.A. (Linda Ronstadt)
16 That Lonesome Road (James Taylor)
17 You've Got a Friend (James Taylor)
18 talk (James Taylor)
19 Up on the Roof (James Taylor)
20 Stand and Fight (James Taylor)
21 talk (James Taylor & Chaka Khan)
22 It's Growing (James Taylor & Chaka Khan)
23 talk (James Taylor)
24 Children's Cry (James Taylor & John Hall)
25 talk (Joy Ryder & Avis Davis)
26 No More Nukes (Joy Ryder & Avis Davis)
27 talk (John Hall)
28 Plutonium Is Forever (John Hall)
29 talk (John Hall)
30 talk (Jackson Browne & Graham Nash)
31 Power (John Hall, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash & Carly Simon)
32 talk (John Hall)
33 Let's Get Together (Jesse Colin Young & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hjST8tt6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/NVjT1WCkPe1RhvJ/file

The cover photo shows Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. I would bet this was taken during the duet they did, "I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine," which unfortunately is not included here. The original was in black and white. But I used the "Kolorize" program to colorize it.

Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to James Taylor, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2-6-2006

Here's another MusiCares tribute concert. I only have a couple more of these after this one, and I want to post them in the next days. This one honors James Taylor.

This concert followed the usual format for these kinds of things: a bonus of famous musical acts sang covers of his songs, then he accepted an award and gave a speech, and finally he played a couple of his songs. If you look at the song lists, a lot of big names showed up to perform his songs, including Bruce Springsteen. 

Another big name also played one of his songs at the concert: Paul Simon sung "Sweet Baby James." But unfortunately, this is sourced from a DVD, but that song wasn't included, and I couldn't find any version of it anywhere. If anyone has it, please let me know so I can add it in.

I know Simon played that song in this concert, because it's mentioned in this article, which is a good summary of the concert in general:

MusiCares Honors Singer James Taylor - CBS News 

Also, while trying to find a good photo for the cover art, I went through a stash of hundreds of photos from the concert, and noticed that other big names like Neil Young and Brian Wilson attended. But I doubt they performed, or they probably would have been mentioned in that news article I just linked to. 

As mentioned above, this is sourced from an official DVD, so the sound quality is excellent. No version is any audio format has been released. As I sometimes do, I converted the video to audio, then broke it into mp3s.

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long. 

01 talk (Bill Clinton)
02 talk (emcee)
03 talk (Dixie Chicks)
04 Shower the People (Dixie Chicks)
05 talk (emcee)
06 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
07 Rainy Day Man (Bonnie Raitt)
08 talk (emcee)
09 talk (India.Arie)
10 Secret o' Life (India.Arie)
11 talk (emcee)
12 talk (Jackson Browne, David Crosby & Sheryl Crow)
13 Mexico (Jackson Browne, David Crosby & Sheryl Crow)
14 talk (emcee)
15 talk (Sting)
16 You Can Close Your Eyes (Sting)
17 talk (Dr. John & Taj Mahal)
18 Everybody Has the Blues (Dr. John & Taj Mahal)
19 talk (Alison Krauss & Jerry Douglas)
20 Carolina in My Mind (Alison Krauss & Jerry Douglas)
21 talk (emcee)
22 talk (Keith Urban)
23 Country Road (Keith Urban)
24 talk (emcee)
25 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
26 Millworker (Bruce Springsteen)
27 talk (Carole King)
28 You've Got a Friend (Carole King with James Taylor)
29 talk (Neil Portnow)
30 talk (James Taylor)
31 Shed a Little Light (James Taylor)
32 talk (James Taylor)
33 How Sweet It Is [To Be Loved by You] (James Taylor)
34 Fire and Rain (James Taylor)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/T6dgDM1s

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5ezYaz8DOi7Zc9L/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Taylor receiving the award from Neil Portnow, the head of MusiCares at the time. 

Various Artists - 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 10-30-2009

I just posted the first day of the two-day long 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert, in 2009. Here's the second day.

This second day concert followed the same format as the one on the first day. Read my write-up for more details about this two-day concert in general. Suffice to say that for this day, four major musical acts were chosen: Aretha Franklin, Jeff Beck, Metallica, and U2. Each of them hosted one fourth of the concert, and each had special guests join them during their sections. 

I was a bit surprised by the choice of Jeff Beck, since his record sales weren't nearly as big as the others. It turns out that section was supposed to be for Eric Clapton, but he got sick at the last minute and had to back out. So Beck was another "guitar hero" to fill a similar role.

I detailed in my write-up for the first day of this concert how I put a longer concert out of material from a DVD, plus the HBO broadcast, plus an audience bootleg. That's the same case here, except I didn't find an audience boot for all the otherwise missing songs. I did find such a boot for some of the Metallica songs, but that didn't even have the entire Metallica set. But it did get me "You Really Got Me," with Ray Davies of the Kinks as the guest. 

The Wikipedia page for this concert lists all the songs that were performed, in their correct order. Here's that page:

25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts - Wikipedia 

Based on that, it looks like I'm missing five songs. Here are the songs that I couldn't find:

Drown in My Own Tears - Jeff Beck (or possibly Aretha Franklin, I'm not sure)
Cause We've Ended as Lovers - Jeff Beck
Rough Boy - Jeff Beck & Billy Gibbons
One - Metallica
Stone Cold Crazy - Metallica 

That's too bad, but at least the vast majority is here. If anyone has any of the missing songs, please let me know. The first day concert that I posted is a little over four hours long, whereas this one is two and a half hours long. If you add in the missing songs, this probably totals about three hours, not four. So I think the first day one is a little longer, and better. I'll bet some of that was due to Bruce Springsteen, as his section on the first day was extra long.

One interesting note about this concert is that the collaboration of Metallica with Lou Reed - a very unexpected pairing - eventually led to the recordings of the album "Lulu," a joint Metallica and Lou Reed release, in 2011. 

A couple of performers who appeared in the first day concert also appeared in this one. Jeff Beck played a song on the first day, and had his own section here. Sting sang duets on both days. And Bruce Springsteen had his own section on the first day, and sang two songs with U2 here. Jerry Lee Lewis also opened both days with a song.

The sound quality is generally excellent. The quality is actually higher here than on the first day, because I only have one song sourced from an audience boot this time ("You Really Got Me," as mentioned above). I ran into many of the same problems with the first day, such as having to smooth over the transitions between songs by adding extra cheering noises. Read my write-up about the other concert for more details on all that. 

This album is two hours and 33 minutes long.

01 talk (Tom Hanks)
02 Great Balls of Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis)
03 Baby, I Love You (Aretha Franklin)
04 Don't Play That Song [You Lied] (Aretha Franklin)
05 Make Them Hear You (Aretha Franklin)
06 talk (Aretha Franklin)
07 Chain of Fools (Aretha Franklin & Annie Lennox)
08 Theme from New York, New York (Aretha Franklin)
09 Think (Aretha Franklin & Lenny Kravitz)
10 [I Never Loved a Man] The Way I Love You (Aretha Franklin)
11 Respect (Aretha Franklin)
12 People Get Ready (Sting & Jeff Beck)
13 Freeway Jam [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
14 talk (Jeff Beck)
15 Let Me Love You Baby (Buddy Guy & Jeff Beck)
16 Big Block [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
17 Rice Pudding [Instrumental] (Billy Gibbons & Jeff Beck)
18 Foxy Lady (Billy Gibbons & Jeff Beck)
19 A Day in the Life [Instrumental Version] (Jeff Beck)
20 For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica)
21 talk (Metallica)
22 Turn the Page (Metallica)
23 talk (Metallica)
24 Sweet Jane (Lou Reed & Metallica)
25 talk (Metallica)
26 White Light-White Heat (Lou Reed & Metallica)
27 talk (Metallica)
28 Iron Man (Ozzy Osbourne & Metallica)
29 Paranoid (Ozzy Osbourne & Metallica)
30 talk (Metallica)
31 You Really Got Me (Ray Davies & Metallica)
32 All Day and All of the Night (Ray Davies & Metallica)
33 Enter Sandman (Metallica)
34 Vertigo (U2)
35 Magnificent (U2)
36 talk (U2)
37 Because the Night (U2, Bruce Springsteen & Patti Smith)
38 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (U2 & Bruce Springsteen)
39 Mysterious Ways (U2)
40 Where Is the Love - One (U2 & the Black Eyed Peas)
41 talk (U2)
42 Gimme Shelter (U2, Mick Jagger, Fergie & will.i.am)
43 talk (U2)
44 Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of (U2 & Mick Jagger)
45 Beautiful Day (U2)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UZjACSG5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/mtktsXHvZPk8rgE/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right: Bono, The Edge, Fergie, and Mick Jagger.

Various Artists - 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 10-29-2009

Here's a really great concert filled with lots of big stars performing classic songs. It was a two-day concert in New York City, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I'm posting both days of the concert, and this is the first one. I highly recommend this.

This two-day long concert had an unusual and interesting format: eight major artists were chosen: Crosby, Stills and Nash, Paul Simon (with and without Art Garfunkel), Stevie Wonder, and Bruce Springsteen for the first day, and Aretha Franklin, Jeff Beck, Metallica, and U2 for the second day. Each of those major stars were hosts for one fourth of the days they were on. Then they invited other stars to join them, to play a song or two. For instance, the first major artist, Crosby, Stills and Nash, had Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and James Taylor as their guests. The result was that, between the major stars and their guests, most of the major areas of rock and roll going back to the 1950s were represented. 

There were some key gaps though. For instance, although Mick Jagger was a guest on the second day to represent the Rolling Stones, there really wasn't any special representation of the Beatles, the most important musical act of all. (Although there were occasional covers of Beatles songs, at least.) Bob Dylan was also very missed. But then again, you can only do so much in two concerts containing about four hours each. 

I spent a long time putting this together. It was quite tricky. I was able to find all the songs from this, the first night, but only two and a half hours from the second night, even though that one probably lasted about four hours as well. The main source I used was an officially released DVD. But the longest version of that was only about three hours for both concerts combined. Plus, many of those were bonus tracks, which meant they were out of order and often had the starts and ends cut off.

Luckily for me, Wikipedia came through for me particularly well, with a list of all the songs performed in the correct order, including lots of details. You can see that, and more info about the concert, here:

25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts - Wikipedia 

From that, I was able to figure out the songs I was missing, and try to find them. It turns out four hours of highlights were shown on HBO the year the concert happened. That was longer than the DVD, so I found some extra songs there. Then I found an audience bootleg of the entire first day. That's why I was able to include all the songs. However, the sound quality of the songs from the audience bootleg was significantly poorer than the songs from the DVD and the HBO broadcast. But, luckily, I was able to clean things up quite a lot, by putting a lot of effort into audio editing. I ran all the audience boot sourced songs through two processes that I use in cases like this. For one thing, I used the MVSEP audio editing program to raise the volume of the lead vocals in contrast to the instruments. (That is such a common problem for concert bootlegs.) Then I also used MVSEP to wipe out the crowd noise during the songs, while keeping the cheers at the beginnings and ends of songs. In my opinion, that made the quality gap between the different sources a lot smaller, though still noticeable. ("Marrakesh Express" is an example of one of the audience boot sourced songs, and the songs just before and after it are not, if you want to make a comparison.)

However, I still had a lot of work to do. Another problem with the audience boot-sourced song is that the cheering at the ends of songs sounded quite different, with the sound of clapping of individual people near the taper more prominent. I mostly fixed this by copying and pasting cheering from the ends of DVD-sourced songs, and slathering it over the cheering of the audience boot-sourced songs. I also had a lot of transition issues. It was rare to have two songs in a row from the same source. I generally fixed that by patching in more generic cheering. Yet another problem was the banter between songs. The ones from the audience boot-sourced songs sounded really weak. So I did extra editing to pull the actual talking out from the background noise. 

I could go on and on. There were lots of little tweaks. But I'm hoping that the end result is this will sound like one coherent concert from one source, more or less, and you won't notice the "making of the sausage" with all the editing to get it to sound that way. It would be really great if this whole thing gets officially released one day, in top quality. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for that.

One thing that makes this concert special is all the collaborations. There are too many to count. Lots and lots of big names performing songs together, and usually the only time they ever did that for the songs. There were some interesting cover versions as well, as an attempt to have some inclusion of famous musician who died or otherwise didn't attend. Stevie Wonder singing the Michael Jackson song "The Way You Make Me Feel" and Paul Simon with Crosby and Nash singing "Here Comes the Sun" are just two examples of that.

This should particularly delight Bruce Springsteen fans. He dominated this first night, which his section of the concert lasting an hour and a half, easily the longest. And he assisted Jerry Lee Lewis on the first song of the night as well. (Plus, he showed up on the second night as well, as we shall see later.)

This album is four hours and eight minutes long.

01 talk (Tom Hanks)
02 talk (Jerry Lee Lewis)
03 Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On (Jerry Lee Lewis with Bruce Springsteen)
04 Woodstock (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 talk (Graham Nash)
07 Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 talk (David Crosby)
09 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
10 Love Has No Pride (Bonnie Raitt & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 Midnight Rider (Bonnie Raitt & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 talk (Graham Nash)
13 talk (Jackson Browne)
14 The Pretender (Jackson Browne & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
15 talk (James Taylor)
16 Mexico (James Taylor & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
17 Love the One You're With (James Taylor & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 Rock and Roll Woman (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
19 talk (Graham Nash)
20 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills & Nash & Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne & James Taylor)
21 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes (Paul Simon)
22 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon)
23 You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon)
24 talk (Paul Simon)
25 Here Comes the Sun (Paul Simon with Crosby & Nash)
26 talk (Paul Simon)
27 The Wanderer (Dion & Paul Simon)
28 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
29 talk (Paul Simon)
30 Two People in the World (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
31 The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)
32 Mrs. Robinson - Not Fade Away (Simon & Garfunkel)
33 The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel)
34 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
35 Cecilia (Simon & Garfunkel)
36 Blowin' in the Wind (Stevie Wonder)
37 talk (Stevie Wonder)
38 Uptight [Everything's Alright] (Stevie Wonder)
39 I Was Made to Love Her (Stevie Wonder)
40 For Once in My Life (Stevie Wonder)
41 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)
42 Boogie On Reggae Woman (Stevie Wonder)
43 talk (Stevie Wonder)
44 The Tracks of My Tears (Smokey Robinson & Stevie Wonder)
45 talk (Stevie Wonder)
46 Mercy Mercy Me [The Ecology] (Stevie Wonder & John Legend)
47 The Way You Make Me Feel (Stevie Wonder with John Legend)
48 talk (Stevie Wonder)
49 The Thrill Is Gone (B.B. King & Stevie Wonder)
50 Living for the City (Stevie Wonder)
51 Higher Ground - Roxanne - Higher Ground (Sting & Stevie Wonder)
52 Superstition (Stevie Wonder & Jeff Beck)
53 10th Avenue Freeze-Out (Bruce Springsteen)
54 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
55 Hold On, I'm Comin' (Bruce Springsteen & Sam Moore)
56 Soul Man (Bruce Springsteen & Sam Moore)
57 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
58 The Ghost of Tom Joad (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
59 Fortunate Son (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
60 Proud Mary (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
61 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
62 Oh, Pretty Woman (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
63 Jungleland (Bruce Springsteen)
64 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
65 A Fine, Fine Boy (Darlene Love & Bruce Springsteen)
66 Do Run Run Run (Darlene Love & Bruce Springsteen)
67 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
68 London Calling (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
69 Badlands (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
70 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
71 You May Be Right (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
72 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
73 Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
74 New York State of Mind (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
75 Born to Run (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
76 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher (Everybody)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QU2h1WV1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7oTCzzonspG0GVX/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right: John Fogerty, Darlene Love, Bruce Springsteen, and Sam Moore.

Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to Bruce Springsteen, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2-8-2013

A few days ago, I got a request to post the MusiCares tribute concert to Bruce Springsteen. I'm happy to do so, because I've been meaning to post more of these MusiCares concerts soon anyway. So here you are.

MusiCares has been holding annual tribute concerts since 1991. They cleverly have these concerts in Los Angeles, where the Grammy Awards take place, and hold them only a couple of days apart from the Grammies. That way, many musical stars are in town and able to participate. I've only posted one such album so far, the tribute to Brian Wilson in 2005. But I have seven more to post after this. Thus, today I've created a MusiCares Tribute label to help you find them all.

Bruce Springsteen is a very big name in music, and lots of other big names paid tribute to him here, including Elton John, Neil Young, and Sting. This was a particularly long concert as far as these MusiCares tributes go. It's easily the longest of all the ones I've found so far, which is fitting since Springsteen concerts are known for their length. Springsteen himself played five songs at the end, which again is more than usual. 

This comes from a DVD. It hasn't been released on any audio format. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is two hours and 16 minutes long. 

01 talk (Jon Stewart)
02 Adam Raised a Cain (Alabama Shakes)
03 Because the Night (Patti Smith)
04 Atlantic City (Natalie Maines, Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite)
05 American Land (Ken Casey)
06 talk (Jon Stewart)
07 My City of Ruins (Mavis Staples & Zac Brown)
08 talk (Jon Stewart)
09 I'm on Fire (Mumford & Sons)
10 American Skin [41 Shots] (Jackson Browne & Tom Morello)
11 My Hometown (Emmylou Harris)
12 One Step Up (Kenny Chesney)
13 talk (Jon Stewart)
14 Streets of Philadelphia (Elton John & Raphael Saadiq)
15 Hungry Heart (Juanes)
16 Tougher than the Rest (Tim McGraw & Faith Hill)
17 The Ghost of Tom Joad (Tom Morello & Jim James)
18 talk (Jon Stewart)
19 Dancing in the Dark (John Legend)
20 Lonesome Day (Sting)
21 Born in the U.S.A. (Neil Young)
22 talk (Jon Stewart & Bruce Springsteen)
23 We Take Care of Our Own (Bruce Springsteen)
24 Death to My Hometown (Bruce Springsteen)
25 Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen)
26 Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)
27 Glory Days (Bruce Springsteen)
28 talk (Bruce Springsteen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fXM5GV8j

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/B96M5E8MDQxu5O4/file

For the cover, I wanted a photo of Springsteen from this exact concert. But of the photos I saw, he was generally alone or with just one other person nearby, so I went with a group photo from this concert instead. From right to left: Zac Brown, Emmylou Harris, Ben Harper, Jackson Browne and Patti Scialfa. There were some distracting things in the background, so I used Photoshop to remove them.

Various Artists - New York Children’s Health Project Benefit, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 12-13-1987

The first thing I want to make clear is that, while this is a star-studded benefit concert, it is also in large part a Paul Simon concert. Out of the 32 songs here, Simon sang lead on 11 of them, and backing vocals on another three. That's because Simon was the host and the prime mover behind the cause for this benefit.

I did a little research on how this concert came to be, and I think it makes for an interesting story. Apparently, when Simon was working on his studio album "Graceland" in 1985 or 1986, he was taking going to his recording studio in the heart of New York City most every day. Each morning, he would make eye contact with a homeless girl begging on a street corner. But eventually, after months, she didn't show up for a while. He asked around, and found out that she had died. Being homeless, she had no access to health care. Simon decided he wanted to do something to help.

Around this time, homelessness had greatly risen in New York City. Plus, many thousands of families were packed into squalid welfare hotels. Simon connected with Dr. Irwin Ledlener. a pediatrician, who was already working on the problem. 

Ledlener later recalled, "We went on a tour of some of the not-so-hot spots in the city. We went to the welfare hotels, to boarder-baby facilities where they had these infants whose mothers were crack
cocaine addicts, and we went to some of the infant H.I.V. programs. It was a hell of a day, just one thing after another." Simon and Ledlener decided that it was obvious many homeless children weren't getting any health care, so they decided to make that their focus. 

Ledlener told him it would cost about $90,000 for a mobile van to bring health care to where the homeless where. Simon paid for that out of his own pocket, and the van began operating in the fall of 1987. But it soon became clear that just one van wasn't enough. Plus, there were upkeep costs, and the need for a charity group (called the "Children's Health Fund") to keep medical records on the homeless kids no matter how often they moved. So Simon put this concert together. It raised about half a million dollars, which was doubled by a contribution from his record company. 

More vans were bought. The results were impressive, so the program kept expanding. By 2005, the charity had expanded far beyond New York City. They had 20 vans in 14 states. Simon followed up with two more benefit concerts (in 1993 and 2012) to help keep the charity funded. All in all, it seems like one of the best results of a benefit concert that I've heard of, although it's a shame the government wasn't performing this help already.

Anyway, getting to the details of this concert, keep in mind that Simon's most recent project was his wildly successful "Graceland" album, released in 1986. That sold 16 million copies worldwide. So perhaps it's not too surprising that Simon played eight songs from that album, while he still had support from the vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo and other South African musicians that had gone on tour with him to support the album. I checked, and this was essentially the very last concert of Simon's Graceland tour.

Other than that, there were short sets by Lou Reed, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Dion, Laurie Anderson, Bruce Springsteen, Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Nile Rodgers and Chaka Khan. Apparently, Billy Joel wasn't scheduled to take part, but since he dropped in at the last minute, he did an impromptu song. I believe Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five played a song, but it got cut from the bootleg I found. I think you can hear him for about ten seconds at the end of the Nile Rodgers medley, introducing Chaka Khan. Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band backed most of the musical stars who didn't bring their own bands, like Bruce Springsteen. Debbie Harry and Grace Jones were there, but they only introduced Lou Reed and then helped sing backing vocals to "Walk on the Wild Side."

One special moment was that Dion was backed by some major star power on his song "A Teenager in Love." His backing vocalists were Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed! You can see how that looked from the album cover. That's a sign of how much of a musical influence he was on all of them, since he came from an earlier generation.

There were some celebrity appearances as well. Springsteen was introduced by New York baseball stars Ron Darling and Don Mattingly. Whoopi Goldberg introduced Nile Rodgers. She spoke for longer, but I cut out some of it because she was just stalling for time while the band got ready, as she admitted, and it showed. Comedian Bill Cosby gave a speech prior to introducing Ruben Blades. But I cut out all of it except for a few words introducing Blades, since I can't stand to hear him due to his later revealed history of rape. Lorne Michaels, Kevin Nealon and Chevy Chase introduced James Taylor.

As far as I know, everything here remains unreleased. But the bootleg I found has soundboard quality.

This album is three hours and 13 minutes long.

01 The Boy in the Bubble (Paul Simon)
02 Gumboots (Paul Simon)
03 Whispering Bells (Paul Simon)
04 talk (Paul Simon)
05 Crazy Love, Vol. II (Paul Simon)
06 I Know What I Know (Paul Simon)
07 talk (Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band)
08 Treat Her Right (Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band)
09 talk (Paul Shaffer, Debbie Harry & Grace Jones)
10 Tell It to Your Heart (Lou Reed)
11 talk (Lou Reed)
12 New Sensations (Lou Reed)
13 Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed with Debbie Harry & Grace Jones)
14 talk (Lou Reed)
15 The Wanderer (Dion)
16 Runaround Sue (Dion)
17 talk (Dion)
18 A Teenager in Love (Dion with Simon, Springsteen, Joel, Reed, Taylor & Blades)
19 talk (Paul Simon)
20 Yinhle Lentombi (Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
21 Homeless (Paul Simon & Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
22 Graceland (Paul Simon)
23 talk (Paul Simon)
24 You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon)
25 talk (Paul Simon)
26 talk (Paul Simon)
27 Babydoll (Laurie Anderson)
28 Let x = x (Laurie Anderson)
29 talk (Paul Simon, Ron Darling & Don Mattingly)
30 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
31 Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)
32 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
33 Glory Days (Bruce Springsteen with Paul Simon & Billy Joel)
34 Cuentas del Alma (Ruben Blades)
35 talk (Ruben Blades)
36 Muevete (Ruben Blades)
37 talk (Paul Simon, Lorne Michaels, Kevin Nealon & Chevy Chase)
38 Looking for Love on Broadway (James Taylor)
39 Carolina in My Mind (James Taylor)
40 That Lonesome Road (James Taylor)
41 talk (Whoopi Goldberg)
42 talk (Nile Rodgers)
43 We Are Family - Le Freak - Good Times (Nile Rodgers)
44 I Feel for You (Chaka Khan with Nile Rodgers)
45 talk (Paul Simon)
46 New York State of Mind (Billy Joel)
47 Still Crazy After All These Years (Paul Simon)
48 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
49 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes - Drums (Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
50 talk (Everybody)
51 Rock and Roll Music (Bruce Springsteen & Everybody)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jKCnMBjU

alternate

https://bestfile.io/en/uLq5HEnWr1SO0XO/file

The cover photo was taken at this exact concert. It shows the moment Dion was backed by an impressive bunch of stars on the song "A Teenager in Love." From left to right, that's Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, and Dion. Dion had been further over to the left by about ten feet. In fact, I took him from a different photo taken in the same sequence. Then I used Photoshop to move him close to Springsteen.

Bruce Springsteen - VH-1 Storytellers, Two River Theater, Red Bank, NJ, 4-4-2005

Here's a particularly interesting "VH-1 Storytellers" episode. This one features Bruce Springsteen.

Perhaps it's not surprising that Springsteen agreed to do this show, since he's been known to talk quite a lot between songs. But he approached this in a very unusual way. Typically, after playing a song, he then played it again, but starting and stopping, and explaining the meaning of the lyrics line for line. None of the other Storytellers episodes that I came across featured this level of lyrical analysis, that's for sure.

Technically, the "talk" tracks make up nearly an hour of this hour and a half long concert. But that's misleading since a good portion of those "talk" tracks has him playing and singing some as he did that lyrical analysis. There also was a question and answer session.

And speaking of how long this episode is, the reason this is so long is because the concert was later released as a DVD (but not an audio album). So it wasn't edited down to the usual 45 minutes or so of the typical episodes for this show. That also means we didn't have to suffer the usual problem of having only half of the opening song.

The concert was almost entirely just Springsteen, playing either an acoustic guitar or piano. But he was supported on backing vocals on some songs by his wife, Patti Scialfa. He would release the studio album "Devils and Dust" later the same month as this concert. That is a solo acoustic album, so it's fitting he also did this in solo acoustic format. However, only two of the songs performed are from that album: "Devils and Dust" and "Jesus Was an Only Son."

This album is an hour and 36 minutes long.

01 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
02 Devils and Dust (Bruce Springsteen)
03 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
04 Blinded by the Light (Bruce Springsteen)
05 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
06 Brilliant Disguise (Bruce Springsteen)
07 Nebraska (Bruce Springsteen)
08 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
09 Jesus Was an Only Son (Bruce Springsteen)
10 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
11 Waiting on a Sunny Day [False Start] (Bruce Springsteen)
12 Waiting on a Sunny Day (Bruce Springsteen)
13 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
14 The Rising (Bruce Springsteen)
15 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
16 Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen)
17 talk (Bruce Springsteen)

https://www.imagenetz.de/bz32v 

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KL2vfTSe

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/MRYzMpixyVcZ8qr/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Various Artists - An All-Star Tribute to Johnny Cash, Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City, 4-6-1999

I've previously posted "All-Star Tribute" concerts for Paul Simon and Brian Wilson. I discovered they were part of a short-lived annual tradition at the TNT TV network. There are only a couple more, so I plan on posting them too. Here's the next one, an "All-Star Tribute" to country legend Johnny Cash.

In 1999, Cash's health was in serious decline. He wouldn't die until 2003, at the age of 71. But by 1999, he rarely gave public performances. As he mentioned in his stage comments here, he hadn't performed on stage in the past year and a half. After this, he would only make about half a dozen additional musical performances, none of them full concerts. So although he did sing at the very end of this concert, maybe with his health in mind he only sang two songs.

The rest of the concert featured an impressive roster of musical stars singing songs made famous by Cash. It should be noted that the biggest stars, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and U2, weren't actually there but videotaped musical performances that were played at the concert. 

Unfortunately, one person who couldn't sing at this concert was Cash's famous musical daughter Rosanne Cash. This concert happened to take place during a three-year time period in which Rosanne was unable to sing due to a polyp on her vocal chords. She did, however, give a brief speech.

Most of the concert was emceed by actor Jon Voight. However, some of the other banter was by singer-songwriter Larry Gatlin, actor Kevin Bacon, and actor Tim Robbins. There were some additional parts that I cut out. These were narrated video tributes to different stages of Cash's life. I cut those out because they were mainly meant to be seen, not heard.

Like the other "All-Star Tributes" in this series, this concert remains officially unreleased. I found the video of it on YouTube, then converted that to audio. The sound quality is excellent throughout.

This album is an hour and a half long.

01 Jackson - Orange Blossom Special (Sheryl Crow & Willie Nelson)
02 talk (Jon Voight)
03 I Guess Things Happen That Way (Chris Isaak)
04 Get Rhythm Intro (Chris Isaak)
05 Get Rhythm (Chris Isaak)
06 talk (Jon Voight & John Carter Cash)
07 talk (Willie Nelson)
08 I Still Miss Someone (Willie Nelson)
09 talk (Jon Voight)
10 talk (June Carter Cash)
11 Ring of Fire (June Carter Cash)
12 talk (Jon Voight)
13 Train of Love (Bob Dylan)
14 talk (Jon Voight)
15 The Man in Black (Mavericks)
16 talk (Jon Voight)
17 The Ballad of Ira Hayes (Kris Kristofferson)
18 talk (Kris Kristofferson)
19 Sunday Morning Coming Down (Trisha Yearwood with Kris Kristofferson)
20 talk (Larry Gatlin)
21 Ghost Riders in the Sky (Brooks & Dunn)
22 talk (Jon Voight)
23 Tennessee Flat Top Box (Lyle Lovett)
24 talk (Lyle Lovett)
25 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
26 Give My Love to Rose (Bruce Springsteen)
27 talk (Jon Voight)
28 Flesh and Blood (Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
29 talk (Kevin Bacon)
30 Delia's Gone (Wyclef Jean)
31 talk (Jon Voight)
32 talk (Dave Matthews)
33 Long Black Veil (Dave Matthews & Emmylou Harris)
34 talk (Jon Voight)
35 talk (Rosanne Cash)
36 talk (Marty Stuart)
37 Belshazzar (Marty Stuart with the Fairfield Four)
38 talk (Jon Voight & Bono)
39 Don't Take Your Guns to Town (U2)
40 talk (Jon Voight)
41 talk (Tim Robbins)
42 Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash)
43 talk (Johnny Cash)
44 I Walk the Line (Johnny Cash with June Carter Cash)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VysgekNb

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/FO4eXOKBVGBjELk/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/dmd9S

The cover shows John Mellencamp with Johnny Cash at this exact concert. Curiously, Mellencamp didn't appear in any of the songs. Perhaps he had a song or two that got cut out of the TV broadcast, or perhaps he had a non-performing role, I don't know. But I thought it was a good photo to show how Cash was honored.

No Nukes Concerts, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 9-21-1979 to 9-22-1979: Bruce Springsteen

Here's another album in my 1979 No Nukes concerts series, but this one is a little different. As I mentioned in my write-up for the first album in this series (the John Hall one), I noted that the No Nukes concerts seem mostly forgotten today, with the exception of Bruce Springsteen's performances. Some video and audio from his two sets made a splash back then, and in 1979, selections of those sets were officially released on the album "The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts." Furthermore, soundboard quality versions of his entire sets are frequently bootlegged, while virtually nothing else from the No Nukes concerts are.

Springsteen and his E Street Band played two sets in these concerts, one on September 21st and the other on September 22nd. He was a really big star back then, so he was allowed to play for over an hour both times. I considered posting one or both of his two sets, but I decided to go in a different direction. I looked at what got included on the "The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts" album, and realized that it was about half of everything he played. He largely played the same songs both nights, with some exceptions, and the official album didn't have two versions of any one song. 

So I put together an album of all the songs NOT on the official album. After doing that, I realized it made a very nice album, all by itself. He really was on fire with these two shows, so even the "outtakes" were still pretty great. I'm sure that when it came to picking which versions to use for the official album, it was usually a case of flipping a coin, because both versions were excellent.

Thus, this is meant to be a companion to the "The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts" album. Between that and this, you'll have every performance Springsteen and the E Street Band did those two nights. Tracks one through 11 are from the September 21st show, and the rest are from the September 22nd show.

Note that Jackson Browne was regularly playing the classic soul song "Stay" in his concerts, as part of a medley. So when Springsteen played that song, he brought Browne out to help him sing it. Tom Petty actually was on stage for that song too, but it seems all he did was strum his guitar some, so I didn't include his name in the song credits.

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long. By comparison, the official album is an hour and a half long. It has a few songs that were only played once over both shows, like "Detroit Medley," "Quarter to Three," and "Rave On."

01 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
02 Prove It All Night (Bruce Springsteen)
03 Badlands (Bruce Springsteen)
04 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
05 The Promised Land (Bruce Springsteen)
06 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
07 The River (Bruce Springsteen)
08 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
09 Sherry Darling (Bruce Springsteen)
10 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
11 Stay (Bruce Springsteen with Jackson Browne)
12 Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen)
13 Jungleland (Bruce Springsteen)
14 Rosalita [Come Out Tonight] (Bruce Springsteen)
15 Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362825/VA-NONUKS1979MdisnSqurGrdnNwYrkC__9-21___9-22-1979BrceSprngstenatse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UpmMZ3rU

The cover photo is from one of Springsteen's two No Nukes concerts, but I don't know which one.

Concert for Human Rights Now, Estadio River Plate, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 10-15-1988, Part 5 - Bruce Springsteen

This album continues right where the previous one left off. That's because these are different sets from a benefit concert that was five and a half hours long. The first sets featured Youssou N'Dour, Tracy Chapman, Peter Gabriel and Sting. This is Bruce Springsteen's closing set.

I explained the basics about this concert in Part 1, the Youssou N'Dour set. Read that if you want to know more, including a Wikipedia link about the tour. But the gist is that these artists got together for a short world tour to promote the work of the non-profit Amnesty International and its campaigns against human rights abuses.

Unlike some of the other artists in this concert, Springsteen hadn't yet gotten overtly political with his songs, though he would later, for instance with his 1995 album "The Ghost of Tom Joad." But he had done some political benefits before, such as the "No Nukes" concerts in 1979, and a frequent theme in his songs has been the problems of the common man. 

He also was the only one to release music to support this tour at the time. He put out the "Chimes of Freedom" EP in August 1988, which contained four songs recorded during a different tour earlier in the year. But it helped draw attention to the tour, especially the Bob Dylan cover "Chimes of Freedom," which he hadn't recorded before.

One interesting thing about this concert is that there doesn't seem to have been an emcee. Instead, each artist was introduced by the previous one. So the first track here is the introduction by Sting.

The last two songs might not be considered part of Springsteen's set. Since this was the last set of the entire concert, all five of the headlining artists - Springsteen, N'Dour, Chapman, Gabriel, and Sting - joined together on stage to sing two encore songs. But I've included them here since they came right after his set.

In 1987, Springsteen released the album "Tunnel of Love," which was well received. But, oddly, he didn't play any songs from it during this set. Instead, he leaned particularly heavily on his 1984 smash album "Born in the U.S.A." Also, I'd like to note that he made some valiant attempts to speak Spanish for the Argentine audience, but he didn't seem as fluent as some others. I was particularly amused how he introduced Sting as "El Stingo" when Sting joined in singing the song "The River."

As I mentioned in my Part 1 write-up, there has been an official album of this concert, but it's only a double album, so it merely contains highlights from the full show, which is over five and a half hours long. Luckily, a soundboard bootleg of the entire thing exists, and the sound quality here is excellent.

This album is an hour and 25 minutes long. Since I consider it a part of the entire concert, I've had the track number start with 46, so you can put all the parts together in one folder and have them be in the proper order.

46 talk by Sting (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
47 Born in the U.S.A. (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
48 The Promised Land (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
49 Cover Me (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
50 I'm on Fire (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
51 talk (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
52 The River (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band with Sting)
53 Cadillac Ranch (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
54 War (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
55 Monologue (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
56 My Home Town (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
57 Dancing in the Dark (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
58 Glory Days (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
59 Raise Your Hand (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
60 Twist and Shout (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band)
61 Chimes of Freedom (Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman, Youssou N'Dour & Sting)
62 Get Up, Stand Up (Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman, Youssou N'Dour & Sting)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6P24jWZ9

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/SmzsH9hwB7Zyr0I/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert. I could have used a photo of just Springsteen, but I thought it was more interesting to use one of Tracy Chapman, Sting, and Springsteen from one of the encore songs. The graphic in the upper left corner was the logo for this tour. I also used the same font that was featured on the promotional material for the tour.

Bruce Springsteen - Blood Brothers - Non-Album Tracks (1993-1995)

I recently updated all the 22 volumes of Bruce Springsteen's live covers collection that I've made. I changed the mp3 tags to be more iTunes friendly and fixed the volume balance between songs. I also improved the sound quality of some songs by using versions from recently released official live albums (he's putting out a steady stream of those, though only through the Internet). To draw attention to that, I wanted to post something else by Bruce Springsteen. 

However, there isn't much need to post concerts from him, due to all those official Internet releases. And when it comes to studio material, I'm still waiting for a second "Tracks" archival box set, since that has been heavily hinted for a long time now, and I'm sure there's lots of key material there. That said, there's a cluster of very good songs released in 1993 to 1995 that make for an obvious album that should exist. So here it is.

For most of the 1970s and 1980s, Springsteen did all his recording and touring with his band, the E Street Band. But he stopped working with them for about ten years, from the end of 1989 to 1999. One key exception is that he recorded some new tracks with them in 1995 - "Secret Garden," "Blood Brothers," and "This Hard Land," to be added to a best of collection called "Greatest Hits." A couple more songs from that reunion, "High Hopes" and "Without You," were released on the "Blood Brothers" EP a year later. Other songs were released at the time as contributions to other albums: "Streets of Philadelphia," "Gypsy Woman," and "Dead Man Walkin'." "Streets of Philadelphia" in particular was acclaimed and won an Academy Award for best song, as well as four Grammy awards. It also was a big hit, particularly in Europe, where it hit Number One in some countries.

Additionally, there were more songs written that didn't get released at the time. "Brothers Under the Bridge" and "Back in Your Arms" came out later in the "Tracks" box set. "Homestead" and "Waiting on the End of the World" remain unreleased. "It's the Little Things that Count" was done live only at the time, and has since come out on some of those Internet only live albums I previously mentioned.

So that's a lot of material. It would have made sense to put out a studio album instead of scattering some songs here and there. Knowing how prolific he is, there probably are even more than remain in the vault and haven't been bootlegged. He even released a documentary about the E Street Band reunion called "Blood Brothers," which makes it especially strange he didn't release an album at the same time.

I've included three bonus tracks. He did the song "Blood Brothers" in two very different versions. So I included the alternate version just as a bonus track. "Here Comes the Night" is a cover song, first made famous by Van Morrison's 1960s band "Them." Springsteen did it once during a soundcheck in France, but never in an actual concert. He didn't really have it together for the soundtrack, and stopped and started the song a couple of times. I edited it together to make one complete version. The sound quality is fairly good, but it's only a bonus track because the performance is rather rough and tentative. Finally, there's a version of "Murder Incorporated." This song was first released on the 1995 "Greatest Hits" album, but it was actually recorded in 1982. I didn't include it, since it belongs to another era. But he did record it live in 1995, so that's the bonus version here.

This album is 52 minutes long, without the bonus tracks.

01 Blood Brothers (Bruce Springsteen)
02 Streets of Philadelphia (Bruce Springsteen)
03 Secret Garden (Bruce Springsteen)
04 Gypsy Woman (Bruce Springsteen)
05 Homestead (Bruce Springsteen)
06 Missing (Bruce Springsteen)
07 Dead Man Walkin' (Bruce Springsteen)
08 Brothers Under the Bridge (Bruce Springsteen)
09 High Hopes (Bruce Springsteen)
10 Without You (Bruce Springsteen)
11 Waiting on the End of the World (Bruce Springsteen)
12 Back in Your Arms (Bruce Springsteen)
13 It's the Little Things that Count (Bruce Springsteen)

Blood Brothers [Alternate Version] (Bruce Springsteen)
Here Comes the Night [Edit] (Bruce Springsteen)
Murder Incorporated [Live] (Bruce Springsteen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687646/BRUCSPRNGSTN1993-1995_BloodBrothrs_atse.zip.html

The cover is just the cover of the 1996 EP "Blood Brothers,"unchanged.

Melissa Etheridge - Bruce Springsteen Tribute - Home Concert, Los Angeles, CA, 4-24-2020

You know who has been remarkably musically prolific during the coronavirus lockdown? Neil Finn on Crowded House. He's been putting on a mini-concert at home nearly every single day (and I've started posting albums compiled from those). But you know who has been even MORE prolific than him? Melissa Etheridge. She started a day or two earlier, and has been putting on a mini-concert every single day without fail. It really is remarkable. I wish more musicians would follow the leads of Finn and Etheridge and go wild recording and posting whatever they want.

As it so happens, I'm not that big of a Melissa Etheridge fan. I like some of her stuff, but I'm about at the "greatest hits" level. She's had a lot of very good hits, but her albums aren't consistent enough for my tastes. That said, she has an undeniably impressive voice. So when she covers classic songs, she really shines. I'm not going to post all or most of her many 2020 home concerts. That would be way too much. But I will post what I consider are some of the highlights.

One entire home concert has been a highlight, the one she did on April 24, 2020. While most of the rest of her home concerts have focused on her own songs, this one was devoted entirely to Bruce Springsteen songs. It turns out she's a huge Springsteen fan, and his music was a big influence on her career. So this is a recording that both Melissa Etheridge and Bruce Springsteen fans should enjoy.

For her home concerts, Etheridge has spent a large portion of them just talking, sometimes sharing long stories. This concert is no exception. She met Springsteen a bunch of time, and has sung duets with him on stage, so she has some interesting and relevant stories to tell. That said, sometimes she's gone off on less interesting tangents. So I've edited her comments to keep their length down to more reasonable levels. But even after my edits, sometimes she talks for two or three minutes between songs. If that's too long for you, you can just delete those tracks and reduce a 53-minute-long concert into a 37-minute-long one.

For the most part, these songs are just Etheridge on acoustic guitar or piano. But it turns out she can play many instruments and has a skill at looping. That means recording a sample of some music, such as a short snippet of a drum beat, and then repeating (or looping) it to provide the backing track for a song. For a couple of songs here, especially "She's the One" and "Born to Run," she does all the looping herself, live, adding multiple instruments. Building up the tracks is an impressive thing to watch on video, but I don't think it stands up to repeated listenings. So I edited out the couple of minutes it took for her to build up the instrumentation for each of those songs. If you're interested, watch the video of her doing it on YouTube.

Also note that one of the songs here, "Thunder Road," is kind of a ringer in that it's not from this concert at all. She played it a couple of weeks earlier during one of her other home concerts. It's a piano performance, and she did it on a day just for piano-based songs. Since that is a Springsteen song, I took that version, as well as her story that preceded it, and added it in to the concert. I put both of those just before her final comments, to make it seem as if they were part of the same show.

01 Darkness on the Edge of Town (Melissa Etheridge)
02 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
03 The River (Melissa Etheridge)
04 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
05 Pink Cadillac (Melissa Etheridge)
06 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
07 She's the One (Melissa Etheridge)
08 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
09 I'm on Fire Intro (Melissa Etheridge)
10 I'm on Fire (Melissa Etheridge)
11 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
12 Born to Run (Melissa Etheridge)
13 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
14 Thunder Road (Melissa Etheridge)
15 talk (Melissa Etheridge)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/x93ffSpk

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/ABChmA9hQktFvsi/file

The cover art needs a special explanation. I could have simply used a screenshot from her YouTube video of this concert. But at one point she told a story about a duet she sang in concert in 1995 with Springsteen. To illustrate the story, she held up a photo of her and him singing together at the concert. So I took a screenshot of that photo. It's true the photo is rather low-res, but it's a good photo of the two of them that I couldn't find anywhere else on the Internet, and I thought it made for a fitting cover.

I'm writing this paragraph much later, in January 2025. All hail our new AI overlords! I kid, but I just fixed the cover pic using the Krea AI program. I had to run it through the program a few times, but somehow it turned the very blurry and blobby original into something resembling an actual photograph.

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.

Bruce Springsteen - Cover Songs, Volume 21: 2014, Part 2

As I mentioned previously, 2014 was a "bumper crop" year for Bruce Springsteen doing cover songs in concert that he'd never done before. In fact, he played so many songs that it's the only year where I've mad two albums just from that year (plus more songs on the adjacent albums).

Also, 2014 was a "bumper crop" year for the release of his officially released live albums (though download only). Thus, only three of the songs here are unreleased, and at least two of those are from excellent sounding soundboard sources. That makes this one of the best sounding albums in the series.

In terms of song selections, most of them are the usual classic rock and soul hits, generally from the 1960s. But there are some exceptions. He did a few folk songs associated with his 2006 Pete Seeger-themed album. I chose these versions instead of versions around 2006 because these have slightly better sound quality. He also did some unexpected songs, especially "Clampdown" by the Clash and "Don't Change" by INXS.

But perhaps the most intriguing songs are the last two, the U2 hits "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "Where the Streets Have No Name." These aren't the usual duets where one person sings a verse and the other sings the next verse, and so on, and they join in on the chorus. Instead, U2's lead singer Bono was hurt in an accident and couldn't make it for a benefit concert, so he asked Springsteen to fill in for him instead. Thus, Springsteen sang all the lead vocals, the other three members of U2 backed him up, and Bono wasn't even there.

01 Pretty Flamingo (Bruce Springsteen)
02 Clampdown (Bruce Springsteen)
03 Gloria (Bruce Springsteen)
04 O Mary Don't You Weep (Bruce Springsteen)
05 Joe Hill (Bruce Springsteen)
06 Right Place, Wrong Time (Dr. John & Bruce Springsteen)
07 Green River (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
08 How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live (Bruce Springsteen)
09 Jesse James (Bruce Springsteen)
10 Treat Her Right (Bruce Springsteen)
11 Don't Change (Bruce Springsteen)
12 Jump (Bruce Springsteen)
13 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (Bruce Springsteen & U2)
14 Where the Streets Have No Name (Bruce Springsteen & U2)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687668/BRUCSPRNGSTN2014_CovrSngsVol21Part2_atse.zip.html

As part of my effort to make some of these album covers a little unusual, I chose one of Springsteen standing with two members of U2, The Edge and Larry Mullen, Jr. This was taken in the concert performance documented by the last two songs.

Bruce Springsteen - Cover Songs, Volume 20, 2014

All of these Bruce Springsteen cover songs albums are great in terms of musical content. But this one at least is tied for the very best sound quality out of all the albums in the series, so if you're looking for one album to get a sense of what this series is about, this is an ideal one to start with.

The reason the sound quality is so good is because all of the songs have been officially released. As I've mentioned previously, Springsteen has released dozens of concerts in recent years, but they're download-only and fairly obscure. For some reason, he's probably released more from 2014 than any other year, so it's a breeze for me to pick songs with high sound quality.

Now, as for the content, Springsteen does some really unexpected songs here! Typically, he's played loads of classic soul and rock hits, especially from the 1960s. For instance, he's done just about every "frat rock" hit there is, and that's exemplified by his cover of "Louie, Louie" on this album. But for this album, he did a version of "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees, of all things! And just as strange, but in a different way, is his cover of Lorde's huge 2013 hit "Royals." What makes that unique is that he's almost always covered songs from decades past, but that song was only about a year old when he covered it. (I'm glad he did, because I think it's a great song.)

The first half of the songs here are from a tour of Australia and New Zealand, and many of these unexpected song choices are him tipping his hat to those countries. For instance, the Bee Gees grew up in Australia, so he played "Stayin' Alive" there. Similarly, he did "Friday on My Mind" as a tribute to the Australian band the Easybeats, who wrote it. And Lorde is from New Zealand, so he played "Royals" there.

01 Spill the Wine (Bruce Springsteen)
02 [Love Is like A] Heat Wave (Bruce Springsteen)
03 Friday on My Mind (Bruce Springsteen)
04 Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee (Bruce Springsteen)
05 Stayin' Alive (Bruce Springsteen)
06 Royals (Bruce Springsteen)
07 May I (Bruce Springsteen)
08 Burning Love (Bruce Springsteen)
09 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Bruce Springsteen)
10 Mustang Sally (Bruce Springsteen)
11 Louie, Louie (Bruce Springsteen)
12 Brown Eyed Girl (Bruce Springsteen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687639/BRUCSPRNGSTN2014_CovrSngsVol20_atse.zip.html

One reason Springsteen has a legendary reputation as a concert performer is his interaction with the audience. For this album cover, I chose a photo that would exemplify that. The photo is of a random girl who was invited to the stage to dance with him in 2014.

Bruce Springsteen - Cover Songs, Volume 19: 2013-2014

Sorry about the delay in posting this. I thought I'd be able to post each day right through Christmas, but holiday stuff took up too much of my time. As it is, this series is coming to an end soon, since this is volume 19 out of 22.

About half of the songs here date to 2013 and the other date to 2014. That's important, because the 2013 ones are mostly officially unreleased, and have varying (but at least still good) sound quality. Whereas with the 2014 songs, I don't know why, but for some reason Springsteen has officially released way more 2014 concerts than maybe any other year. Plus, the covers he did that year he usually did more than once. As a result, only two out of the six 2013 songs are officially released versions, but all seven of the 2014 ones are.

By the way, 2014 is a bumper crop year for Springsteen's cover songs in general. The next two albums in this series come entirely from 2014, and virtually all of them are officially released, which means excellent sound.

One unusual aspect of this album is that two of those songs are actually sung in Spanish. As if Springsteen isn't talented enough already, apparently he's a fluent Spanish speaker too. (In putting this series together, I had to edit out some lengthy spoken introductions where he spoke Spanish.)

Oh, and by the way, who would ever have thought Springsteen would cover AC-DC's "Highway to Hell?!" But he does that here, and there are lots more interesting surprises to come on the other 2014 albums in this series.

01 Shout (Bruce Springsteen)
02 Manifiesto (Bruce Springsteen)
03 Jailhouse Rock (Bruce Springsteen)
04 Ain't Too Proud to Beg (Bruce Springsteen)
05 Bad Moon Rising (Bruce Springsteen)
06 Sociedade Alternativa (Bruce Springsteen)
07 Free Nelson Mandela (Bruce Springsteen)
08 We Shall Overcome (Bruce Springsteen)
09 This Little Light of Mine (Bruce Springsteen)
10 Sun City (Steven Van Zandt & Bruce Springsteen)
11 Highway to Hell (Bruce Springsteen)
12 High Hopes (Bruce Springsteen)
13 Just like Fire Would (Bruce Springsteen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16373098/BRUCSPR2013-2014CovrSngsVol19_atse.zip.html

I'd mentioned in a previous volume in this series how, in recent years, Springsteen has a tradition of collecting cards from the audience with requested song titles on them. I found a 2013 photo of this tradition in action.

Bruce Springsteen - Cover Songs, Volume 18: 2012

Even though it's Christmas Eve, the daily posting of Bruce Springsteen cover songs albums continues without pause. This album deals with just the year 2012.

This album is much like the others in the series, with the usual emphasis on covers of classic rock and soul hits from the 1960s. This time, only two out of the 12 songs have been officially released. Still, the sound quality is generally excellent.

Probably the worst song in terms of sound quality is "When I Leave Berlin." But I included it because it's such an unusual song for Springsteen to cover. Plus, even the sound quality on that one is acceptable. The song was written by the rare obscure British folk musician Wizz Jones, and first appeared on a 1973 album by him.

01 The Way You Do the Things You Do - 634-5789 [Soulsville, U.S.A.] (Bruce Springsteen)
02 We Gotta Get Out of This Place [Acoustic Version] (Bruce Springsteen)
03 California Sun (Bruce Springsteen)
04 The Weight (Bruce Springsteen)
05 When I Leave Berlin (Bruce Springsteen)
06 I Saw Her Standing There (Paul McCartney & Bruce Springsteen)
07 Dirty Water (Bruce Springsteen)
08 Knock On Wood (Bruce Springsteen)
09 Pay Me My Money Down (Bruce Springsteen)
10 Monster Mash (Bruce Springsteen)
11 Who Says You Can't Go Home (Bon Jovi & Bruce Springsteen)
12 Tumbling Dice (Rolling Stones & Bruce Springsteen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16373102/BRUCSPR2012CovrSngsVol18_atse.zip.html

In 2012, Springsteen had one of several appearances on The Jimmy Fallon Show in which he parodied his "Born in the U.S.A." era self. As a lark, I've used a photo from that appearance as the album cover. Fallon can be partially seen to the side, dressed up like Neil Young.