Alan Price with Georgie Fame - BBC Sessions, Volume 8: Alan Price, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Britain, 12-22-1980

Here's another album of Alan Price performing for the BBC. I found four episodes of a short T.V. series he did in 1980, simply called "Alan Price." This is the fourth and last of those. 

This one has a pretty prominent guest role for Georgie Fame, who was in a musical duo with Price in the early 1970s. The three songs they did together here was enough for me to credit this to "Alan Price with Georgie Fame." Linda Taylor also was a part of two duets. She featured in one of the earlier episodes, the one I turned into "Volume 6."

Each of the four episodes from this show had a musical theme. I'll bet you couldn't figure out this one, just from the song titles. Basically, the theme was "great songwriters." More specifically, Price said in his banter, "We're going to devote this program to some of the most significant composers of the last 15 to 20 years." 

That pretty much checks out. Here's the songwriters for each song:

01 Subterranean Homesick Blues - Bob Dylan
03 Get Away - Georgie Fame
05 Saturday Night Fish Fry - Louis Jordan & Ellis Walsh
07 Be My Baby - Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich & Phil Spector
09 Fire and Rain - James Taylor
10 American Pie - Don McLean
12 Reach Out, I'll Be There - Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier & Eddie Holland
14 You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' - Phil Spector, Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil

Georgie Fame and Louis Jordan are a lot better known for covering songs by others, but that's a minor quibble, I suppose. Most of the others have been featured in my "Covered" series, or will be eventually (knock on wood).

The last song, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," isn't actually from the same show as the rest. It's from another BBC T.V. show, "Fundamental Frolics," aired in 1981. But the song choice fits the great songwriters theme perfectly. Even the guest vocalist on that one, Linda Taylor, appeared on this same episode.

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

This album is 32 minutes long. 

01 Subterranean Homesick Blues (Alan Price)
02 talk (Alan Price)
03 Get Away (Alan Price & Georgie Fame)
04 talk (Alan Price)
05 Saturday Night Fish Fry (Alan Price & Georgie Fame)
06 talk (Alan Price)
07 Be My Baby (Alan Price & Linda Taylor)
08 talk (Alan Price)
09 Fire and Rain (Alan Price & Georgie Fame)
10 American Pie (Alan Price)
11 talk (Alan Price)
12 Reach Out, I'll Be There (Alan Price)
13 talk (Alan Price)
14 You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' (Alan Price & Linda Taylor)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HEd73RjJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/4TdLLOA0KiphRqe/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from a video of this exact concert. Since Georgie Fame had a prominent role, I wanted to include him as well. He's the one in the light green jacket.

Klaatu - The Sampler Album (1976-2005) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's another Mike Solof guest post. This one came about because I was conversing with Mike, and the band Klaatu somehow came up. I mentioned that I'd heard of them, but I'd never gotten around to listening to their music. So Mike volunteered to enlighten me by making a sampler album containing what he considers the cream of their crop.

The band has a very unusual history. Probably their biggest claim to fame is that when their debut album came out in 1976, there was a widespread rumor that their album actually was a secret Beatles reunion album. Of course that wasn't true. But I can understand why some people believed the rumor, because the band had a Beatlesque sound. And I consider that a very good thing. If you like that style of music - and who doesn't? - you should give this a listen.

There's a lot more to this band and their history. But I'm not going to tell it here. For one thing, Mike has written extensive liner notes, which are included in the download zip, as is his wont. And you can also read Wikipedia for more:

Klaatu (band) - Wikipedia

I asked Mike why Woman is only a bonus track. Here's his response. "In case you are all wondering (and I know you all are) why I considered 'Woman' a bonus cut and not part of the main set, here's the answer (taken from Wikipedia): 'The trio very briefly reunited in 1988 at George Martin's AIR Studios in London with John Jones to record a single, "Woman," though no one was particularly happy with the results as the song was written by someone outside of the band (Paul Vincent Gunia) for the German television series Tatort. Initially, Long had wanted to merely use the Klaatu name, but could not get the rest of the band's approval without their involvement. The single was released only in West Germany and did not chart, making it an extremely rare item in the Klaatu catalogue; Draper confirmed that the song was considered for a few rarities compilations, but all three band members had agreed to not include the track.'"

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (Klaatu)
02 Anus of Uranus (Klaatu)
03 Sub-Rosa Subway (Klaatu)
04 Doctor Marvello (Klaatu)
05 We're Off You Know (Klaatu)
06 Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III (Klaatu)
07 Around the Universe in Eighty Days (Klaatu)
08 Little Neutrino (Klaatu)
09 A Routine Day (Klaatu)
10 The Love of a Woman (Klaatu)
11 I Can't Help It (Klaatu)
12 True Life Hero (Klaatu)
13 Knee Deep in Love (Klaatu)
14 I Don't Wanna Go Home (Klaatu)
15 California Jam (Klaatu)
16 All Good Things (Klaatu)

Woman (Klaatu)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vcsQKLJM

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/473QSPC1alBVbpl/file

Klaatu was a notoriously elusive band. For the band's first few years, there were no publicly available photos of them at all. They finally relented a bit in the early 1980s, when they briefly went on tour. So I think this promo photo dates from that time. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. Also, the background was just blank white. So I took some artwork of the pyramids from one of their album covers and put that in the background to make things look a little more interesting.

Alan Price - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: Alan Price, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Britain, 12-15-1980

This is the third out of four episodes of a short BBC TV series just called "Alan Price," starring Alan Price.

As I mentioned in the write-ups for the first two episodes of this show, each episode had a special musical theme. The theme for this one was 1950s rock and roll. So none of the songs were written by Price. Also, each episode had special guests helping to sing lead vocals on some songs. This one has two, Bernie Stewart and Linda Taylor.

For the other albums of these episodes, I was able to find a song or two to add in as bonus tracks of sorts, since the episodes were only half an hour long. But I didn't find anything fitting for this one. So it's the shortest of the four. 

This album is 28 minutes long. 

01 Reelin' and Rockin' (Alan Price)
02 talk (Alan Price)
03 Johnny B. Goode (Alan Price)
04 talk (Alan Price)
05 Blueberry Hill (Alan Price & Bernie Stewart)
06 talk (Alan Price)
07 Great Balls of Fire (Alan Price)
08 talk (Alan Price)
09 Devoted to You - All I Have to Do Is Dream (Alan Price & Linda Taylor)
10 talk (Alan Price)
11 Let the Good Times Roll (Alan Price, Linda Taylor & Bernie Stewart)
12 talk (Alan Price)
13 One Night (Alan Price)
14 Not Fade Away (Alan Price)
15 talk (Alan Price)
16 Bony Maronie (Alan Price)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/muMh4CD5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/LciSLOw7PVRGTNx/file 

The cover image is a screenshot I took of a video of this exact concert.

Frank Zappa - 1971-1988 Strictly Commercial Live (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Guest poster Mike Solof has been busily slaving away in the salt mines, coming up with more albums to post at this blog. In particular, he's got a big Beatles project coming that hopefully will knock your socks off. Unfortunately, I've fallen behind getting some things ready to post, but hopefully I'll catch up soon. For this album, he came up with the idea of collecting live versions of all the songs on the Frank Zappa best of collection "Strictly Commercial."

I'll leave most of the explaining to Mike, in his PDF notes included in the download zip. But Zappa was well known for his lead guitar playing, and he's able to stretch some songs out here. For instance, the official album is about an hour and 17 minutes long, whereas this is almost two hours long. A lot of the difference there is with "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow." The official album has the three minute long single version, but this is a 20-minute-long live version of the entire suite. 

As is Mike's style, he's included a gapless single file of the album in the download zip, for those who prefer to hear it that way.

By the way, all the songs here feature Frank Zappa, except for one. His only Top Forty hit in the U.S. was "Valley Girl," in 1982. But that featured his daughter Moon Unit Zappa on lead vocals instead of him, and she was only 14 years old at the time. So it turns out he never performed the song before dying in 1993. But, much later, in 2010, his children Dweezil and Moon Unit performed the song in concert just once. So that's the version included here. But note the sound quality is a bit rough on that compared to everything else. It's one of only two unreleased versions (along with "Sexual Harassment in the Workplace)." All the others were chosen from the many dozens of official live albums.

This album is an hour and 56 minutes long. 

01 Peaches en Regalia (Frank Zappa)
02 Don't Eat the Yellow Snow (Frank Zappa)
03 Dancin' Fool (Frank Zappa)
04 San Ber'dino (Frank Zappa)
05 Let's Make the Water Turn Black (Frank Zappa)
06 Dirty Love (Frank Zappa)
07 My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama (Frank Zappa)
08 Cosmik Debris (Frank Zappa)
09 Trouble Every Day (Frank Zappa)
10 Disco Boy (Frank Zappa)
11 Bobby Brown Goes Down (Frank Zappa)
12 I'm the Slime (Frank Zappa)
13 Joe's Garage (Frank Zappa)
14 Fine Girl (Frank Zappa)
15 Planet of the Baritone Women (Frank Zappa)
16 Sexual Harassment in the Workplace [Instrumental] (Frank Zappa)
17 Tell Me You Love Me (Frank Zappa)
18 Montana (Frank Zappa)
19 Be in My Video (Frank Zappa)
20 Valley Girl (Dweezil Zappa & Moon Unit Zappa)
21 Who Are the Brain Police (Frank Zappa)
22 Muffin Man [Extra Guitar Mix] (Frank Zappa) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/424ohU9v 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/WWM2Cx8sAJ0funq/file

The cover art is by Greg Joens. The original version was in black and white. I colorized it (because I hate black and white covers) with the use of the Kolorize program.

Alan Price - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: Alan Price, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Britain, 12-8-1980

As I mentioned in the write-up to the previous album in this series, I found a short series of four televised concerts Alan Price did for the BBC in 1980. Here's the second out of those four. 

Each of the concerts had an overall theme to the song selections. For this one, the theme was "social commentary." Most of the songs fit that theme, but a few are a stretch. How does "Bridge Over Trouble Water" belong, especially? In any case, this meant that most of the songs were covers. Only one from the show, "Jarrow Song," was an original.

However, there's a bonus song of sorts here, "The Trimdon Grange Explosion," that is also an original. But it's from a different BBC T.V. show, "Fundamental Frolics," aired in 1981. I figured that fits well here, since it also could be considered a social commentary song.

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 32 minutes long. 

01 Power to the People (Alan Price)
02 talk (Alan Price)
03 Blowin' in the Wind (Alan Price)
04 talk (Alan Price)
05 Political Science (Alan Price)
06 talk (Alan Price)
07 Big Yellow Taxi (Alan Price & Linda Taylor)
08 talk (Alan Price)
09 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Alan Price)
10 talk (Alan Price)
11 Sunny Afternoon (Alan Price)
12 Imagine (Alan Price)
13 talk (Alan Price)
14 Jarrow Song (Alan Price)
15 The Trimdon Grange Explosion (Alan Price)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3tdqTEUs 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/zxpvn7o4FOizYmr/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took of a video of this exact concert. 

Alan Price - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Alan Price, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Britain, 12-1-1980

Once upon a time, back in 2022, I started posting BBC albums for Alan Price. I had plans to post two such albums for him, which seemed about right for his level of popularity. Then I found two more, and posted those. And I found two more BBC albums with him and Georgie Fame as a duo, and posted them as well. I thought that was a lot, more than expected. But now, I've found FOUR more BBC volumes for him! Here's the first of those four.

The reason I found four more albums from him all at once is that it turns out he was the star of a four part T.V. series for the BBC in 1980, and good copies have survived until today. Each episode consisted of a half an hour-long concert and nothing else. Furthermore, each of the episodes had specific musical themes. So Price played songs that fit those themes instead of his own songs. I believe that, between the four episodes, he only sang one of his songs. I don't know when the episodes were filmed exactly (I'm using the broadcast dates, since that's all I know), but they were broadcast on consecutive weeks.

This first episode had the theme of "Black music." That's pretty damn broad and vague, but hey, I didn't come up with the themes. In any case, it gave Price an excuse to sing some of his favorite songs from various genres, so that's what he did here. And one feature of these episodes is that each one featured at least one other guest singer. Madeline Bell was the choice this time, singing prominently on two of the songs.

The last song, "The House of the Rising Sun," isn't actually from this concert. But I found a version of Price singing the song on another BBC T.V. show ("Jeremy Taylor"), earlier in 1980. I stuck it on this album, instead of some of the other episodes, because I have other bonus tracks for some of them, and it fits the theme... maybe. I say "maybe" because nobody knows who actually wrote "House of the Rising Sun" or where it came from. The earliest versions go back to the 1920s, but apparently those are based on still earlier versions from the 1800s. So we don't know if it was originally written by a Black person or not. But it fits into the general Black blues tradition, in any case. 

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

This album is 33 minutes long. 

01 Introduction [Instrumental] (Alan Price)
02 Sir Duke (Alan Price)
03 talk (Alan Price)
04 A Stranger's Lament (Alan Price)
05 talk (Alan Price)
06 Beat Out a Rhythm on a Drum (Alan Price & Madeline Bell)
07 talk (Alan Price)
08 Cherry Red (Alan Price)
09 talk (Alan Price)
10 Go Where I Send Thee (Alan Price & Madeline Bell)
11 talk (Alan Price)
12 What'd I Say (Alan Price)
13 Keep a-Knockin' (Alan Price)
14 The House of the Rising Sun (Alan Price)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UfKvgz3Y

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/MzMWzLg9hJuATOT/file

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

Various Artists - Covered: Denny Randell & Sandy Linzer: 1964-1998

Here's another songwriting duo highlighted for my "Covered" series: Denny Randell and Sandy Linzer. I wouldn't be surprised at all if you have never heard of them. I hadn't either, until recently. But while they didn't write any massive hits, they have enough hits for a solid album.

Randell and Linzer were both born in 1941. They were introduced to each other in 1963, and immediately began co-writing songs. The first song here, "Dawn (Go Away)," was written by Linzer with Bob Gaudio, a member of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and an impressive songwriter in his own right. I've already posted a "Covered" album for the Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio songwriting team. 

Randell and Linzer wrote a lot of songs for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, sometimes with Gaudio. I've included three such songs here (and a Franki Valli solo one). But "Working My Way Back to You" was also a hit for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons in 1966. I included the 1979 version by the Spinners instead because that was a much bigger hit. In fact, it was the biggest hit this songwriting team ever had, reaching Number One in Britain and Number Two in the U.S. 

In a similar way, "Can't Get Enough of You Baby" was a small hit for Question Mark and the Mysterians in 1967, but not enough to make the U.S. Top Forty. I included the 1998 version by Smash Mouth instead, since that was a bigger hit, making the Top Forty chart.

Probably another success was the song "I Believe in You and Me." (Linzer wrote it with someone else.) Whitney Houston had a Top Five hit in the U.S. with it in 1996. But, frankly, I find Houston's typically histrionic over-singing hard to take. It turns out the song was first released by the Four Tops in 1982. So I've included that version instead. It wasn't a hit, but the singing is much better.

I've been posting a lot of "Covered" albums featuring songwriters who got started in the early or mid-1960s. Nearly all of them stopped having hits by the end of the 1970s, due to changing musical trends (except for later covers of their earlier songs). But Randell and Linzer were a rarity in that they kept writing more hits through the end of the 1980s. The last original hit here is "Talk It Over" by Grayson Hugh in 1989.

However, their songwriting partnership petered out at the end of the 1970s. The vast majority of the songs up to and including "Native New Yorker" in 1977 were written by both of them. But the songs that come after that were written by one of them or the other, usually with other songwriting partners (except for tracks 12 and 17, which I mentioned above are not the original hit versions). 

Both Randell and Linzer also worked in other aspects of the music business, for instance producing albums, and promoting and developing the musical careers of some acts. Both of them are still alive, and about 85 years old, as I write this in 2026.

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 Dawn [Go Away] (Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)
02 A Lover's Concerto (Toys)
03 Let's Hang On (Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)
04 Attack (Toys)
05 Opus 17 [Don't You Worry 'bout Me] (Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)
06 I'll Be Back Up on My Feet (Monkees)
07 Penny Arcade (Cyrkle)
08 Breakin' Down the Walls of Heartache (Johnny Johnson & the Bandwagon)
09 You Can Do Magic (Limmie & Family Cookin’)
10 Swearin' to God (Frankie Valli)
11 Native New Yorker (Odyssey)
12 Working My Way Back to You - Forgive Me Girl (Spinners)
13 Use It Up and Wear It Out (Odyssey)
14 I Believe in You and Me (Four Tops)
15 Fresh (Kool & the Gang)
16 Talk It Over (Grayson Hugh)
17 Can't Get Enough of You Baby (Smash Mouth)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qTodsFSL

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/KB4ibMU7sghsd7T/file

I guess it's pretty obvious that the cover is two photos put together in Photoshop, but I couldn't find any images of the two of them in the same frame. That's Sandy Linzer on the left, with the suit and tie, in 1977. I don't know the date of the Denny Randell photo on the right, but it's probably from the 1960s. 

Various Artists - Covered: Geoff Stephens: 1964-2002

I recently posted a couple of "Covered" albums dealing with British professional songwriters from the 1960s and 1970s (as I write this in May 2026). As I said elsewhere, there was a circle of a dozen or more who often collaborated with each other, and wrote lots of pop hits. Here's another one from that group, Geoff Stephens.

Many of the other songwriters in this group that I've been discussing came up with the British Invasion, the musical trend that started around 1963. But Stephens was slightly older - he was 29 years old in 1963- and his music career began before that. He served in the military for a couple of years and held a series of odd jobs before getting serious about songwriting. His first song was covered by a musical act in 1961. 

His first hit was "Tell Me When" in 1964, co-written by Les Reed, another songwriter in that group. I've already posted the hit version by the Applejacks in the "Covered" album for Barry Mason and Les Reed. So I went with a different version here. Later that same year, he had an even bigger hit with a song he wrote all by himself, "The Crying Game." The version by Dave Berry went all the way to the Top Five in Britain, although it wasn't a hit. (Boy George eventually had a hit in the U.S. with it in 1992.) It had an unusual melody, showing surprising musical sophistication for a pop hit 1964.

He had an even bigger hit in 1966 with "Winchester Cathedral," performed by the New Vaudeville Band. It actually was recorded by session musicians. The lead vocalist was John Carter, another songwriter I've profiled with a "Covered" album." Stephens had a fondness for vaudeville/ music hall music from the 1920s and earlier, and wrote the song in that vein. It was such a massive success - hitting Number One in the U.S. and some other countries, and selling three million copies worldwide - that it started a mini-vaudeville trend for the next couple of years. Few British artists could resist performing at least one or two songs in that style, for some reason.

Sometimes, Stephens was the sole songwriter, as was the case with "Winchester Cathedral." But more often, he wrote with other members of that unnamed British professional songwriter group. For instance, "There's a Kind of Hush" was written with Les Reed, "Sorry Suzanne" was written with Tony Macaulay, "My Sentimental Friend" was written with John Carter, "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast" was written with Peter Callander, and so on. As you can see, Stephens didn't favor just one songwriting partner. In fact, he had many more, including Roger Greenaway, Barry Mason, Don Black, and Mitch Murray. All of those other people have their own "Covered" albums, or their albums are coming.

Stephens had many more hits through most of the 1970s, until about 1978. In fact, one of his biggest hits was one of his last, since "Silver Lady" by David Soul went to Number One in Britain in 1977. (That one was co-written with Tony Macaulay, by the way.) But musical styles changed drastically in the late 1970s, with the rise of disco, punk, and new wave. So his hits stopped at that time, as was the case with most of the other songwriters in that group he'd been working with since the mid-1960s. 

Starting in the early 1980s, he mostly switched to writing songs for musicals. In doing so, he still collaborated with people from that same group, writing different musicals with Don Black, Les Reed, and Peter Callander. He died in 2020 at the age of 86.

Here's his Wikipedia page:

Geoff Stephens - Wikipedia 

Because Stephens often wrote with other songwriters who have their own "Covered" albums, sometimes I've resorted to using non-hit versions, so the same versions don't appear on two different albums. So, for instance, I have "Sorry Suzanne" here by the Glass Bottle, instead of the hit version by the Hollies. "Smile a Little Smile for Me" is an outliner, because I chose a late cover for the same reason. The hit version was in 1970. Without that one, this album would end in 1980. 

This album is one hour long. 

01 Tell Me When (Jaybirds)
02 The Crying Game (Dave Berry)
03 Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James (Manfred Mann)
04 Winchester Cathedral (New Vaudeville Band)
05 My World Fell Down (Ivy League)
06 There's a Kind of Hush (Herman's Hermits)
07 Boy (Lulu)
08 Sunshine Girl (Herman's Hermits)
09 Lights of Cincinnati (Scott Walker)
10 My Sentimental Friend (Herman's Hermits)
11 Sorry Suzanne (Glass Bottle)
12 Knock, Knock, Who's There (Mary Hopkin)
13 Daughter of Darkness (Tom Jones)
14 Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast (Wayne Newton)
15 You Won't Find Another Fool like Me (New Seekers)
16 Doctor's Orders (Carol Douglas)
17 Silver Lady (David Soul)
18 It's Like We Never Said Goodbye (Crystal Gayle)
19 Like Sister and Brother (Frank Hooker & Positive People)
20 Smile a Little Smile for Me (Chris von Sneidern)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GVD6cdXe

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/6MIhB6jKMNGt8K9/file

I don't know anything about the cover image except that it's "circa 1970." The original was in black and white. I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

The Carpenters - Imaginary Piano Recital, Volume 2: 1976-1983 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's another Fabio from Rio guest post. It's the second and last of two volumes featuring the Carpenters. As I was saying with Volume 1, Fabio and I love Karen Carpenter's voice, and the songs, but we usually don't love the overproduction of most of the Carpenters records. So, for these two volumes, Fabio is presenting the songs stripped down to just vocals and a piano. 

These are all the released studio versions, but edited to remove the other instruments. For the songs with "[Edit]," Fabio did at least some of the editing himself. For the others, he found versions on the Internet where people had already made edits.

There's more to say, but Fabio says that in the liner notes he wrote included in the download zip. Other than that, there's not much more for me to say, except thanks to Fabio for putting these albums together. 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 I Have You [Edit] (Carpenters)
02 There's a Kind of Hush [All Over the World] [Edit] (Carpenters)
03 We've Only Just Begun [Edit] (Carpenters)
04 You [Edit] (Carpenters)
05 All You Get from Love Is a Love Song [Edit] (Carpenters)
06 Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft [Edit] (Carpenters)
07 I Just Fall in Love Again (Carpenters)
08 Honolulu City Lights [Edit] (Carpenters)
09 I Need to Be in Love (Karen Carpenter)
10 Merry Christmas, Darling (Carpenters)
11 Where Do I Go from Here [Edit] (Carpenters)
12 If We Try [Edit] (Karen Carpenter)
13 Make Believe It's Your First Time [Edit] (Carpenters)
14 When It's Gone [Edit] (Carpenters)
15 Two Lives [Edit] (Karen Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Xn8YmPqA 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/amevxgiU6IsLSFf/file

As with Volume 1, Fabio and I wanted a photo of Karen singing and Richard playing piano, and nothing else. That's what we got with this one. This one is from September 1971, probably September 23rd. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. 

Joan Baez - Baez Sings Baez, Volume 4: 1977-1983 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's a guest post by Fabio from Rio. It's another volume in the "Baez Sings Baez" series. This is a collection of all the songs written by Joan Baez. Fabio wanted to make that point that although she has been primarily as someone who sings cover songs, she's written a lot of good songs herself.

The first six songs are from studio albums in 1977 and 1979. But after that, it seems she had trouble getting record companies interested in releasing more of her studio albums. New wave, punk, and disco came along and made her style of folk music seem out of fashion. She wouldn't release another studio album until 1987.

But that leads us to some of the more interesting songs here, because around 1980, she recorded material for an album that never got released, and she was backed by the Grateful Dead for all the songs! So there are five songs here with the Dead (tracks 8 through 12), all of them still unreleased.

There's a lot more to say about this Dead connection and other matters. But I'll leave that to Fabio, who wrote more extensive notes that are included in the download zip. 

This album is an hour long. 

01 Luba the Baroness (Joan Baez)
02 The Altar Boy and the Thief (Joan Baez)
03 Honest Lullaby (Joan Baez)
04 Michael (Joan Baez)
05 For Sasha (Joan Baez)
06 Free at Last (Joan Baez)
07 Cambodia (Joan Baez)
08 Don't Blame My Mother (Joan Baez & the Grateful Dead)
09 Happy Birthday Leonid Brejnev (Joan Baez & the Grateful Dead)
10 Lady Di and I (Joan Baez & the Grateful Dead)
11 Marriot U.S.A. (Joan Baez & the Grateful Dead)
12 Lucifer's Eyes (Joan Baez & the Grateful Dead)
13 Children of the Eighties (Joan Baez)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GjgtvAKU

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/TACY7VBfYSTtFMj/file

The cover photo is from 1982. Fabio found the picture, so I don't know the details. 

Various Artists - Covered: Neil Young, Volume 1: 1967-1989

I'm leaving for a vacation to the Amazonian region of Peru tomorrow. I'll be gone for nearly two weeks. But while I'm gone, I'm going to try to keep posting. I have two big music projects that I have all set up. So pretty much all I need to do is hit "publish" on my cell phone to post each album. We'll see how it works out. Given that I'm going to a pretty remote area, I might be out of Internet contact for days at a time. So cross your fingers. 

Anyway, this is one of the two projects: a "Covered" collection for one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Neil Young. This one was mostly done by musical friend Fabio from Rio. That includes writing really great liner notes. 

--- 

This is certainly one of the most daunting projects I've worked with Paul yet, and certainly the biggest and most demanding "Covered" collections at the "Albums That Should Exist" blog ever, at least at the time of writing these liner notes. 

I assume Neil Young needs no introduction. Everybody (or at least everybody who has not lived in an offline bunker for the last half century) knows that Neil is one of the most important rock artists of the last sixty years. He has been influencing generations of musicians since the 1960s, resulting in literally thousands of covers and tributes, officially and unofficially available on studio albums, tribute records, live performances, and YouTube uploads.

Our aim here was not to include every Neil Young composition (that would easily result in more than 25 volumes), but to present a good representation of his output, including not only the all-time hits but also deep cuts, some officially unreleased songs cherished by long-time fans (the so-called "Rusties"), and at least a few lesser-known but equally strong compositions from more recent years, since Neil has never stopped composing, performing and recording.

We would like this project to become "The Best Neil Young Cover Collection Ever" - not out of personal vanity, but as a tribute to the quality of the songs and artists featured. For that reason, we walked the proverbial extra mile in order to select what we believe are some of the best performances of each song. In some cases, this was quite difficult to determine and remains subject to endless debate, since certain songs have literally hundreds of different versions recorded by dozens of artists. Subjectivity inevitably played a part, since our personal tastes (mine and Paul's) may have resulted in some biased selections. However, we tried whenever possible to focus on performances that are widely recognized as among the best or most representative interpretations of a given song. At the same time, we also looked for unusual readings that might give a different or fresh spin to familiar melodies.

My initial selection comprised about 230 different songs, and I listened to more than a thousand performances (1,072 to be exact) in order to prepare the first short list, which was later shared with Paul. For some songs there were literally dozens of available covers, so our main challenge was deciding which one to include. For others, it was surprisingly difficult to find a strong version. In some cases - particularly with more obscure tunes - we had to resort to unofficial recordings, including some provided by the Rusties community, where both amateur and professional musicians share their interpretations.

Since my initial selection would result in too-long a collection even for die-hard fans standards, Paul made editorial cuts, excluding some songs (which I accepted with stoic dignity), but also requesting the inclusion of some of his personal favorites, which I happily complied. In the end, we settled on a 10-volume collection with about 150 tracks, with very little repetition (only two songs - "Heart of Gold" and "Cortez the Killer" - appear in more than one version, in different volumes). 

--- 

Note that Fabio wrote individual paragraphs about all the songs in this volume. To see that, please look at the Word file added to the download zip file. Thanks again to Fabio for his help putting these albums together.

I also want to add that these albums are ordered by the years the covers were recorded, not the years the songs were first recorded by Neil Young. So if you don't see songs you want included, please wait. There are no less than TEN albums! And for instance, some songs from this time period don't show up until the last one. 

This album is an hour and three minutes long.

01 Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It (Gallery Production)
02 Sugar Mountain (Joni Mitchell)
03 Everybody, I Love You (Happy Day)
04 Round and Round (Bernie Schwartz)
05 Southern Man (Merry Clayton)
06 Birds (Linda Ronstadt)
07 Ohio (Isley Brothers)
08 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Jackie DeShannon)
09 See the Sky about to Rain (Byrds)
10 New Mama (Stephen Stills)
11 Love Is a Rose (Linda Ronstadt)
12 Mr. Soul (Cher)
13 The Loner (Stephen Stills)
14 Lotta Love (Nicolette Larson)
15 Look Out for My Love (Linda Ronstadt)
16 Like a Hurricane (Roxy Music)
17 Are You Ready for the Country (Jason & the Scorchers)
17 Winterlong (Pixies)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oE16d9b7

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Y8RaicNK2j2Donc/file

The cover photo is from 1966 or 1967. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. I also used the Krea AI program to add detail.  

The Carpenters - Full Acappella, Volume 2: 1977-1983 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's the second volume of the Carpenters' "Full Apcappella." Like the first volume, this was mostly put together by musical friend Fabio from Rio, with just a little assistance by me. Again, we get to hear Karen Carpenter's marvelous lead vocals, and sometimes backing vocals, with no instrumental music getting in the way.

This volume deals with the latter half of the Carpenters' musical career. It wasn't as commercially successful as the first half, probably due to Karen Carpenter's self-inflicted declining physical health. Tragically, she died in 1983 at just the age of 32, so this volume ends in that year.

Like Volume 1, Fabio wrote extensive notes talking about the tracks and where they're from. He also explains why some of the songs have edits. That's included in the download zip. 

By the way, note that back in 2018, I posted an album that contained versions of Carpenters that only had vocals, bass, and drums. I called it "Near Acappella," because it was stripped way down, but not fully acappella. Well, Fabio found two more songs for that while he was looking for songs for these two volumes. So I've just updated that album with those two added songs. I also changed the cover image to one I like better. Here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-carpenters-near-acappella-1969-1975.html 

This album is 51 minutes long. Thanks again to Fabio for putting these albums together!

01 All You Get from Love Is a Love Song [Edit] (Carpenters)
02 Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft [Edit] (Carpenters)
03 Knowing When to Leave (Carpenters)
04 Make It Easy on Yourself (Carpenters)
05 Suntory Pop Jingle No. 1 (Carpenters)
06 Suntory Pop Jingle No. 2 (Carpenters)
07 Silent Night (Carpenters)
08 Ave Maria (Carpenters)
09 Where Do I Go from Here [Edit] (Carpenters)
10 Someday (Carpenters)
11 Lovelines [Edit] (Carpenters)
12 The Uninvited Guest (Carpenters)
13 If We Try [Edit] (Karen Carpenter)
14 Make Believe It's Your First Time (Carpenters)
15 When It's Gone [Edit] (Carpenters)
16 Two Lives [Edit] (Karen Carpenter)
17 I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day (Carpenters)
18 Little Altar Boy (Carpenters)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZBC5J2CX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/aV3vEIDjOPMuc7c/file

I don't know where or when the cover photo is from. I just thought it was a nice picture of Karen Carpenter. 

Various Artists - Covered: Billy Steinberg & Tom Kelly: 1980-2019

I don't keep a close eye on music news, but yesterday I happened to hear that songwriter Billy Steinberg died. Specifically, he died on February 16, 2026, at the age of 75. That probably doesn't mean anything to most people, because I don't think he's very well known as far as songwriters go. But it meant something to me, because I had already made a "Covered" album of the songs he and songwriting partner Tom Kelly made. (It's one of several dozen "Covered" albums I've made but haven't gotten around to posting yet.) Due to his death, I decided to post this sooner rather than later.

Steinberg and Kelly wrote a lot of hits from the 1980s to the 2000s that you probably know without ever knowing who wrote them. Even though they were male, somehow they had the most success with females covering their songs. They had five Number One hits in the U.S., all sung by women: "Like a Virgin" by Madonna (1984), "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper (1986), "Eternal Flame" (co-written with Susanna Hoffs and recorded by the Bangles in 1989), "So Emotional" by Whitney Houston (1987), and "Alone" by Heart (1987).

Billy Steinberg was born in Fresno, California, though his family moved to Palm Springs when he was a teenager. After graduating from college, he formed a band called Billy Thermal. However, they didn't have any success, and one album they recorded around 1980 wasn't released until decades later, after he made a name for himself as a songwriter. He had his first songwriting success with "How Do I Make You," which was a hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1980.  

Tom Kelly was born in a small town in Illinois in 1952. He went to a college in that state, but dropped out to pursue a music career. He was a backing musician for Dan Fogelberg in 1976 and 1977. He also did a lot of session work, for instance singing backing vocals on Toto albums. He had his first songwriting success with "Fire and Ice," a minor hit for Pat Benatar in 1981.

Both Steinberg and Kelly independently had songs on Benatar's 1981 album, "Precious Time." They met at a party that year, and soon began writing together. Previously, both of them had written lyrics and music. But they soon fell into a pattern where Steinberg generally wrote the lyrics while Kelly wrote the music. Their really big break as a songwriting team was "Like a Virgin" by Madonna. After that, they were in high demand. What's on this album is just the cream of the crop of the many dozens of songs they wrote for well-known musical acts.

Their partnership continued very fruitfully until the mid-1990s. At that point, Kelly tired of songwriting and dropped out of the music business. He'd already had enough success to live on the royalties he'd made. However, Steinberg kept going with new songwriting partners. From the mid-1990s until the mid-2000s, he mostly wrote with Rick Newels, who already was a successful professional songwriter. From the mid-2000s to about the mid-2010s, he mostly wrote with Josh Alexander.

Steinberg had a lot of songwriting success after he stopped working with Kelly. But I listened to his big hits and, to be honest, didn't like them very much after about 2000. They suffer the same problems as most popular pop music since about 2000: formulaic and forgettable. So I generally didn't include most of those. To be honest, even a lot of their earlier stuff was formulaic and forgettable, but sometimes, in fact many times, they had some real winners.

But in case you're curious, Steinberg's biggest later hits include "I Turn to You" by Melanie C (2000), "Love Doesn't Have to Hurt" by Atomic Kitten (2003), "Too Little Too Late" by JoJo (2006), "Don't Hold Your Breath" by Nicole Scherzinger (2011), and "Give Your Heart a Break" by Demi Lovato (2012). After that, the hits petered out, although some older songs keep getting rerecorded and making the charts again, especially "Alone" and "I Drove All Night." For instance, Alyssa Reid went all the way to Number Two in the British charts with "Alone" in 2012, although it was titled "Alone Again" and had the now practically obligatory rap section.

I'm not a fan of Whitney Houston's version of "So Emotional." But since it was a massive Number One hit, I wanted to include it in some form. I found a radically different cover version by Jon McLaughlin from 2019 that I like much better, so I used that instead. Had it not been for that song, this album would end in 2000.

Here are their Wikipedia pages: 

Billy Steinberg - Wikipedia

Tom Kelly (musician) - Wikipedia  

That album is an hour and ten minutes long. 

01 How Do I Make You (Linda Ronstadt)
02 Fire and Ice (Pat Benatar)
03 Like a Virgin (Madonna)
04 Sex as a Weapon (Pat Benatar)
05 True Colors (Cyndi Lauper)
06 Eternal Flame (Bangles)
07 Alone (Heart)
08 In Your Room (Bangles)
09 I Touch Myself (Divinyls)
10 My Side of the Bed (Susanna Hoffs)
11 I Drove All Night (Roy Orbison)
12 Night in My Veins (Pretenders)
13 Lucky Love [Acoustic Version] (Ace of Base)
14 I'll Stand by You (Pretenders)
15 Falling into You (Celine Dion)
16 California (Belinda Carlisle)
17 One and One (Edyta Gorniak)
18 Everytime It Rains (Ace of Base)
19 The Consequences of Falling (k.d. lang)
20 So Emotional (Jon McLaughlin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/d2ZX8iYV

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/mbkA9S64SvICLiu/file

I don't know the details of the cover photo. But that's Tom Kelly on the left and Billy Steinberg on the right. There are patches of white in Steinberg's hair, which went completely white in later photos of him. 

Various Artists - Covered: Shel Silverstein, Volume 2: 1974-2010

Here's the second and final volume celebrating the songwriting of Shel Silverstein for the "Covered" series.

As with all these Covered albums, the songs are in loose chronological order, usually by year. Silverstein was active writing lots of new songs in the 1970s, and a lot of cover versions resulted. Some of his songs were hits, especially on the country charts. But, typically, his songs were more memorable and interesting than the usual hit material. Not many songwriters could write children's songs, funny songs, and even erotic songs. (Hopefully not all in the same song though!)

Silverstein gradually slowed his songwriting, as people do. He only released one album of new songs after 1985. So a lot of the later songs here were actually originally written earlier, sometimes much earlier. He died of a heart attack in 1999, at the age of 68.

It just occurred to me that I don't think I included a link to his Wikipedia page in the Volume 1 write-up, so here it is:

Shel Silverstein - Wikipedia 

To be honest, I know the well known songs written by Silverstein, but not all the lesser known ones. But he's the type of songwriter who wrote quirky gems. So if any of you know of some excellent songs he wrote that I left out, and especially covers of them, please let me know and I'll consider adding them in. 

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Marie Laveau (Bobby Bare)
02 Queen of the Silver Dollar (Emmylou Harris)
03 Alimony (Bobby Bare)
04 I Got Stoned and I Missed It (Dr. Hook)
05 The Danger of a Stranger (Stella Parton)
06 More like the Movies (Dr. Hook)
07 The Ballad of Lucy Jordan (Marianne Faithfull)
08 Put Another Log on the Fire (Bill & Boyd)
09 Numbers (Bobby Bare)
10 I'm Checkin' Out (Meryl Streep)
11 Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out (Tori Amos)
12 The Twistable, Turnable Man Returns (Andrew Bird)
13 The Winner (Kris Kristofferson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4UcQP73h

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/s6suZxWkJ28dO4P/file

I don't know when or where the cover photo was taken. Clearly though, he's older than in the Volume 1 photo, judging from the grey in his beard. The original photo was a black and white one, showing him in a crouching pose in front of some trees. I stripped out the background. Then I used the Kolorize program to colorize the picture.

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.

Kansas - Best Of / Sampler (1974-1980) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's an album that came into being as a result of the Kansas concert that was posted here a few days ago. After guest poster Mike Solof suggested making an album of a concert from Kansas's 1979 Monolith tour, I agreed, but I mentioned that I was really familiar with the band's music. I only knew their big hits, especially "Dust in the Wind" and "Carry On Wayward Son." He really likes the band and thought that was a shame, so he offered to make a "best of" type album for newbies like me. I agreed again, and suggested that he post that on my blog too.

He went ahead and did that, so here we are. Of course, there are official "best of" albums for the band already. But Mike felt none of those had the ideal selection of songs that he wanted. He focused on just their 1970s heyday, because in the early 1980s they lost key members and became a kind of Christian rock band for a while, before returning to their roots (and getting some key members back) later in the decade. 

If you want to know more, Mike has made a PDF with his explanation, as he usually does. If you think some essential songs were left off, or there are songs that shouldn't have been included, leave a comment. Perhaps Mike will make an updated version.

Unusually for this blog, everything here is released and from the studio albums. But hopefully this is a sampler that will inspire some people to dive deeper into the Kansas catalog. 

This album is an hour and four minutes long. 

Before I get to the usual song list, here's the song list with names of the albums each song is from, and the year that album was released: 

01 Song for America - Song for America (1975)
02 Journey from Mariabronn - Kansas (1974)
03 Down the Road - Kansas (1974)
04 Carry On Wayward Son - Leftoverture (1976)
05 The Wall - Leftoverture (1976)
06 Miracles Out of Nowhere - Leftoverture (1976)
07 Point of Know Return - Point of Know Return (1977)
08 Dust in the Wind - Point of Know Return (1977)
09 How My Soul Cries Out for You - Monolith (1979)
10 A Glimpse of Home - Monolith (1979)
11 People of the South Wind - Monolith (1979)
12 Loner - Audio-Visions (1980)

And here's the usual song list: 

01 Song for America (Kansas)
02 Journey from Mariabronn (Kansas)
03 Down the Road (Kansas)
04 Carry On Wayward Son (Kansas)
05 The Wall (Kansas)
06 Miracles Out of Nowhere (Kansas)
07 Point of Know Return (Kansas)
08 Dust in the Wind (Kansas)
09 How My Soul Cries Out for You (Kansas)
10 A Glimpse of Home (Kansas)
11 People of the South Wind (Kansas)
12 Loner (Kansas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/y1GhCvdC

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/h9B4sSiXYzdWPLl/file

Mike found the photo of the band. I don't know the details of where or when it's from. 

ZZ Top - Toledo Speedway, Toledo, OH, 8-17-1980

It's sad to me that rock and roll is slowly declining in popularity. But at least we still have the old stuff, and ZZ Top could really rock. Here's an excellent concert from 1980.

Recently, I wanted to hear some live ZZ Top from the 1970s, since I'd never heard any of their concerts from early in the career. I quickly realized why there's this gap in my music collection: all the bootlegs from that time period have poor sound quality. The first year with good sound is 1980. There's an official album from that year, plus a couple of stellar soundboard boots. Then, again, many years go by with very few live recordings with worthy sound quality. Strange.

Thankfully, there's this one. It's pretty similar to the "Rockpalast" concert from 1980 that's been released. However, it's about fifteen minutes longer, and there are some different songs. One nice treat is the inclusion of their cover of "Barefootin'," which they never officially released and apparently only performed a few times in 1980.

The source of this recording is a great soundboard. However, there was one problem in that it was almost too good, because very little of the audience noise was captured. Each song ended with an almost eerie silence. But modern technology allows me to fix this. I ran all the songs through MVSEP, separating the crowd noise from everything else. Then I drastically boosted the crowd noise at the beginnings and ends of songs. Now, it sounds like normal crowd reactions.

There were a couple more audio problems, one that I could fix and another that I couldn't. The first minute or so of the first song was missing. I patched in the missing portion from another soundboard recorded at Pine Knob, Michigan, in 1980. The problem that I couldn't fix is that one of the channels was missing for about the first twenty minutes. So the recording is in mono for that portion of the concert. 

This recording first publicly emerged in March 2025. So let's hope more bootlegs of this quality show up, especially from earlier in the band's career. (Apparently the band itself is sitting on many great recordings, but they haven't released any of them yet.)

This album is an hour and 11 minutes long.

01 I Thank You [Edit] (ZZ Top)
02 Waitin' for the Bus (ZZ Top)
03 Jesus just Left Chicago (ZZ Top)
04 talk (ZZ Top)
05 Francine (ZZ Top)
06 I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide (ZZ Top)
07 Manic Mechanic (ZZ Top)
08 Lowdown in the Street (ZZ Top)
09 Heard It on the X (ZZ Top)
10 A Fool for Your Stockings (ZZ Top)
11 Nasty Dogs and Funky Kings (ZZ Top)
12 Barefootin' (ZZ Top)
13 Cheap Sunglasses (ZZ Top)
14 talk (ZZ Top)
15 Arrested for Driving while Blind (ZZ Top)
16 Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers (ZZ Top)
17 La Grange - Sloppy Drunk - Bar-B-Q (ZZ Top)
18 Dust My Broom (ZZ Top)
19 Tush (ZZ Top)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BR3T55dy

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/lT2GKQnAp01aHyC/file

The cover photo is from a concert at the Aragon Ballroom, in Chicago, Illinois, on March 14, 1980.

Kiki Dee - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1967-1981

If you've been following this blog for a while, you maybe be aware that I have an anonymous musical friend who has been sending me "Top of the Pops" BBC radio recordings that usually are not in public circulation at all. He sent me some of those for British singer Kiki Dee. That inspired me to make this album. 

The Top of the Pops recordings mentioned above make up the first three tracks, all from 1967. They also make up tracks 9 and 10, from 1973, and tracks 11, 12, and 13, from 1974. By 1973, that radio show usually just played the recorded versions, and it was getting increasingly rare for them to play unique versions recorded just for the show. But I double checked these 1973 and 1974 and confirmed they all are unique.

By the way, a few of these Top of the Pops songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. That was due to the usual problem of BBC DJ Brian Matthew talking over parts of the song. As usual, I fixed that with the help of the UVR5 program. 

Put together, all those Top of the Pops recordings only make up 27 minutes of music, which would make for a very short album. So I went looking for other BBC performances she did. I found some stray things here and there, mostly from BBC TV shows. Tracks 4, 5 and 6 are from "Scott," a 1968 TV show hosted by singer Scott Walker. Tracks 7 and 8 are from different TV shows in 1971. Tracks 16 and 17 are from a 1980 show, and track 18 is from a 1981 show.

That just leaves two songs. Track 14, "Water," is from a BBC concert she did in 1975. I'm only including the one song though, because I actually found two BBC concerts she did that year, and they're very similar. I'll be posting the other one in full, so the only thing that interested me from this one was that single unique song. I also found a 1977 BBC concert she did, so expect that one to be posted soon as well.

Finally, track 15, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," is the song Dee is best known for. This duet with Elton John was a massive hit in 1976, hitting Number One in the both the U.S. and Britain. I wanted to include a version of it on this album. However, the TV appearances I found just had Dee and John lip-syncing. But I did find a concert version from 1976 that featured both of them, so I included that one. For all the other songs with audience applause, I got rid of the applause using the MVSEP program. But I kept the applause for this one, due to the spoken intro and some other things that wouldn't have sounded right without crowd noise.

If you want to know more about Dee's career, here's her Wikipedia page:

Kiki Dee - Wikipedia 

This album is 59 minutes long. 

01 Excuse Me (Kiki Dee)
02 If I Loved You [Edit] (Kiki Dee)
03 She Was Really Saying Something [Edit] (Kiki Dee)
04 Passing Strangers (Scott Walker & Kiki Dee)
05 Up, Up and Away (Kiki Dee)
06 Games People Play (Kiki Dee)
07 You've Made Me So Very Happy (Kiki Dee)
08 Do You Know the Way to San Jose (Kiki Dee)
09 Amoureuse [Edit] (Kiki Dee)
10 Loving and Free (Kiki Dee)
11 Little Frozen One (Kiki Dee)
12 Hard Luck Story (Kiki Dee)
13 I've Got the Music in Me (Kiki Dee)
14 Water (Kiki Dee)
15 Don't Go Breaking My Heart (Elton John & Kiki Dee)
16 Star (Kiki Dee)
17 Twenty-Four Hours (Kiki Dee)
18 Midnight Flyer (Kiki Dee)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6t6xHnDH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/FyUD0xC3QdCCv3P/file

The cover photo is from 1973. I don't know any other details.

Olivia Newton-John - Hollywood Nights (1980)

Here's a really interesting, entirely unreleased album by Olivia Newton-John. It's an American TV special she did in 1980 called "Hollywood Nights." It features some songs she never recorded on any album, as well as duets with an impressive bunch of guest stars: Cliff Richard, Elton John, Andy Gibb, Gene Kelly, Tina Turner, Peaches (of Peaches and Herb), Toni Tennille (of Captain and Tennille) & Karen Carpenter.

By 1980, Newton-John had become a worldwide superstar, mainly thanks due to her starring role in the 1978 movie "Grease." In 1980, she was due to have her second big starring movie role, in the movie "Xanadu." That movie would get released in August 1980, and it would turn out to be a flop, although the soundtrack by Newton-John and E.L.O. would be a big hit. This hour-long TV special was broadcast in April 1980, and seems to have served as kind of a warm-up for the movie. It featured one song that would be in the movie, "Suddenly," and also featured Newton-John duetting with Gene Kelly, as would happen in the movie, but with a different song. (Kelly, a star from a much earlier era, was 68 years old at the time.) They sang the classic song "Makin' Whoopee," but with totally different lyrics, an update called "Makin' Movies," which was all about the movie business.

But while there were those teasers about the upcoming movie, mostly the special was just a showcase for Newton-John's talent, and especially to sing duets with many musicians she liked. Probably the highlight is a version of Elton John's classic song "Candle in the Wind," mostly sung by Newton-John but with Elton playing piano and singing some towards the end. He also got to promote his new single at the time, "Little Jeannie," the only song here without Newton-John's involvement.

There were some even more unexpected songs. She started the show with a cover of "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger, which is a song she otherwise never performed or recorded. She also did "Heartache Tonight" by the Eagles probably for the only time ever, with Tina Turner, Peaches, Toni Tennille and Karen Carpenter all taking lead vocals at various point as well. And "Oh Boy" by Buddy Holly was another song she otherwise never did, done here with Cliff Richard, Elton John and Andy Gibb also taking turns with the lead vocals.

I cut out about five minutes from the special. That was all non-musical stuff, mostly jokey segments with actors Dick Clark and/or Ted Knight. Trust me, that's not the kind of thing with high replay value. But if you feel you're missing out, you can find the entire video of this special on YouTube. 

The special was a mixture of songs performed in front of an audience and songs done earlier in some studio without any audience. I have no idea when or where each part of it was recorded, only that it was broadcast in April 1980. I found out that tidbit from this nice fan website, which includes lots of screenshots from the special, as well as a link to the YouTube video of the whole thing:

Hollywood Nights Special 

This special is unreleased and it is very likely to stay that way, due to the difficulty of getting the legal rights to all the guest performances. But now, here, at least it's available as an audio album for the first time. 

This album is 42 minutes long 

01 Hollywood Nights (Olivia Newton-John)
02 Deeper than the Night (Olivia Newton-John)
03 Hopelessly Devoted to You (Olivia Newton-John)
04 A Little More Love (Olivia Newton-John)
05 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
06 I Can't Help It (Olivia Newton-John & Andy Gibb)
07 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
08 Oh Boy (Olivia Newton-John, Cliff Richard, Elton John & Andy Gibb)
09 Suddenly (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
10 talk (Olivia Newton-John & Gene Kelly)
11 Makin' Movies [Makin' Whoopee] (Olivia Newton-John & Gene Kelly)
12 Gimme Some Lovin' (Olivia Newton-John)
13 Candle in the Wind (Olivia Newton-John & Elton John)
14 Little Jeannie (Elton John)
15 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
16 Heartache Tonight (Olivia Newton-John, Tina Turner, Peaches, Toni Tennille & Karen Carpenter)
17 I Honestly Love You (Olivia Newton-John)
18 Hollywood Nights [Reprise] [Instrumental] (Olivia Newton-John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7Mv22RSn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/fdqwk48Vi5S9n15/file 

I made the cover art out of two screenshots from this TV special. I took one screenshot for the words at the top, which were apparently neon signs in front of the building. But at the point in time, Newton-John was relatively small in the overall image, standing on the street. So I went to slightly earlier in the same scene, when her head took up most of the screen, and imposed that on top, using Photoshop. 

Various Artists - Covered: Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart: 1959-1987

Next up for my "Covered" series highlighting the careers of great songwriters is the duo of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, usually just known as Boyce and Hart. These guys definitely knew how to write catchy songs. They were sometimes successful performing their own music, including having one big hit, but mostly they wrote songs for others.

Boyce was the first to have songwriting success. In 1959, when he was about 20 years old, he wrote the song "Be My Guest," and wanted rock star Fats Domino to sing it. He waited hours outside of Domino's hotel room, and got him to promise to listen to a demo of the song, which Domino actually did. It was a big hit later that year, selling over a million copies. 

Boyce and Hart first met later in 1959. Hart was the same age and was trying to make it as a singer, without much success. Not much happened for a few years, except for Boyce writing another big hit, "Pretty Little Angel Eyes" by Curtis Lee, in 1961. Gradually, Boyce and Hart started writing songs together. Their first big success as a duo was "Come a Little Bit Closer" by Jay & the Americans, which may or may not have reached Number One in the U.S. in 1964, depending on the chart. 

In late 1965, things really got cooking for Boyce and Hart when they got involved with the very start of the Monkees TV show. In fact, at first the duo practically was the Monkees! For the first season of the TV show, and the band's first album, they produced and recorded nearly all of the songs, using their own backing band, and wrote many of the songs as well. The actual Monkees starring in the show only replaced the guide vocals sung by the duo with their own for the final product. However, after the debut album came out, the band's musical supervisor Don Kirshner fired the duo, after claiming they were secretly using studio time for their own projects. That may well have been true. But they continued to write songs for the Monkees, despite no longer being involved with the production and recording. Every Monkees album released in the 1960s had at least one song by them, except for "Head."

Their success with the Monkees, including writing many of their biggest hits, gave them the prominence to have success as a recording duo. Their biggest hit on their own was "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight," which was released at the end of 1967. It didn't have a big chart peak, only reaching Number Eight in the U.S., but it sold a million copies, which was typical of songs at or near the very top. They also had two more songs make the U.S. Top Forty, "Out and About" and "Alice Long [You're Still My Favorite Girlfriend]." I've included all three of those, as well as one more song they performed together that I like, "We're All Going to the Same Place."

Commercially, the duo peaked in the late 1960s, when they were writing hit after hit for the Monkees, themselves, and other musical acts. But musical trends were changing fast, and their style didn't fit in so well with the 1970s and after. They still did have occasional successes - the last five songs here are from after 1970 - but not so many. And some of those songs I chose at the end were actually written much earlier but not hits until later. "Hurt So Bad," written by Teddy Randazzo, Bobby Weinstein, and Bobby Hart, was a hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials in 1965. But I chose a 1980 version that was a hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1980. Similarly, "Under the Moon of Love," written by Tommy Boyce and Curtis Lee, was a minor hit for Curtis Lee in 1961. But in 1976, the band Showaddywaddy had a Number One hit with it in Britain.

In the mid-1970s, Boyce and Hart joined Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz for a reunion of the Monkees, essentially replacing the two missing original Monkees members. They put out a new album in 1975, but for legal reasons they weren't allowed to call themselves the Monkees, so they went by the name "Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and Hart." But the earlier magic was gone, and their album didn't have much success. I chose not to include any songs from that album. In the 1970s, both Boyce and Hart tried releasing their own solo albums, but to even less success.

Hart is still alive as I write this in 2025. However, Boyce died in 1994. He was suffering from depression, and then had a brain aneurysm, which put him in a lot of pain. So he shot himself with a gun.

Here's a Wikipedia entry about the duo, if you want to know more: 

Boyce and Hart - Wikipedia 

Strangely, Boyce has his own Wikipedia entry, here, but Hart does not:

Tommy Boyce - Wikipedia 

This album is an hour and one minute long. 

01 Be My Guest (Fats Domino)
02 Pretty Little Angel Eyes (Curtis Lee)
03 Come a Little Bit Closer (Jay & the Americans)
04 Peaches 'N' Cream (Ikettes)
05 [Theme From] The Monkees (Monkees)
06 Action, Action, Action (Keith Allison)
07 [I'm Not Your] Stepping Stone (Paul Revere & the Raiders)
08 The Last Train to Clarksville (Monkees)
09 I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight (Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart)
10 She (Del Shannon)
11 Out and About (Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart)
12 Words (Monkees)
13 I Wanna Be Free (Keith Allison)
14 Alice Long [You're Still My Favorite Girlfriend] (Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart)
15 Valleri (Monkees)
16 We're All Going to the Same Place (Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart)
17 Tear Drop City (Monkees)
18 Something's Wrong with Me (Austin Roberts)
19 Keep On Singing (Helen Reddy)
20 Under the Moon of Love (Showaddywaddy)
21 Hurt So Bad (Linda Ronstadt)
22 Dominoes (Robbie Nevil)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/r9M1mugf

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uPhkyQoDk2vNvmE/file

I don't know the details of the cover photo, but based on the clothes, I'd guess it's from around 1967. That's Boyce on the left and Hart on the right (with the red jacket).