John Carpenter - John Carpenter Presents: Trailers of the Mind... It's All in Your Head! (1974-1994) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's another guest post by Mike Solof. He really outdid himself this time, with this collection of John Carpenter's movie music. 

Mike is a big fan of the movies of John Carpenter, who is especially renowned in the horror genre. But it turns out Carpenter composed the music for nearly all of his movies, and Mike is a fan of that music as well. His original plan was to collect his favorite songs from most of Carpenter's movies, and post that. However, some of the songs had spoken dialogue from the movies over them, and others did not. I thought that was an imbalance, and asked him if he could add in some more dialogue. Mike took that suggestion and ran with it. He labored many, many hours carefully adding dialogue, until all the songs here are a mix of music and that dialogue. In so doing, he created something new: songs from the movies with dialogue that helps set an ominous mood and reminds you of key movie scenes. He spent a long time getting the timing of the words and music to be to his satisfaction.

In case you're not familiar with Carpenter's name, you'd probably recognize many of his movies, such as "Halloween," "The Thing," "The Fog," Escape from New York," "Christine," "They Live," and many more. Personally, I'm not into the horror movie genre. But even I found this an interesting listen.  

If you want to know more, as usual, please read the PDF that Mike wrote and added to the download zip. 

01 The Fog [Prologue - The Curtain Rises] (John Carpenter)
02 Dark Star - Hello Bomb [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
03 Assault on Precinct 13 - This Is a Goddamn Seige [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
04 Assault on Precinct 13 - Hey, This Is Regular Vanilla [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
05 Halloween - The Evil Has Gone [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
06 Halloween - Halloween Theme [Death Has Come to Your Little Town] [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
07 The Fog - There's Something in the Fog [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
08 The Fog - We're Honoring Murderers [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
09 Escape from New York - I Heard You Were Dead [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
10 Halloween 2 - You Don't Know What Death Is [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
11 Halloween 3 - The Hills Ran Red with Blood [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
12 The Thing - Weird and Pissed Off [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
13 Christine - Show Me [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
14 Prince of Darkness - This Is Not a Dream [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
15 They Live - I've Got One that Can See [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
16 In the Mouth of Madness - The Curtain Closes [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Z6EV9Jbp

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/6HM3OKjRehmqVD2/file

The cover art is a graphic made by someone named Tyler Champion. The original was in just two tones. I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. Then I added the text at the top and bottom.

Blondie - Paradise Ballroom, Boston, MA, 11-4-1978

Here's an excellent concert by Blondie. I've posted a couple of Blondie concerts, but I've been wanting to post another from earlier in their career. (The earliest one I've posted is from late 1979.) 

This is arguably when they were at their peak. Their most acclaimed album is "Parallel Lines," released in September 1978. So this was part of the tour to promote that album. "Parallel Lines" has been widely acclaimed as one of the best albums of all time. For instance, Rolling Stone has put it in their list of the top 500 albums of all time, at No. 146 in their most recent list (as of 2020). NME magazine has gone even higher, putting it at 45 on their list of the top 500 albums of all time.

I believe this comes from an FM radio broadcast, so the sound quality is excellent. One problem though was that the lead vocals were too low in the mix. So I fixed that with the use of the MVSEP audio editing program.

This concert is unreleased.  

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (Blondie)
02 In the Sun (Blondie)
03 talk (Blondie)
04 X Offender (Blondie)
05 Hanging on the Telephone (Blondie)
06 Detroit 442 (Blondie)
07 talk (Blondie)
08 Fan Mail (Blondie)
09 Picture this (Blondie)
10 11-59 (Blondie)
11 talk (Blondie)
12 Pretty Baby (Blondie)
13 [I'm Always Touched by Your] Presence Dear (Blondie)
14 Sunday Girl (Blondie)
15 Denis (Blondie)
16 I'm on E (Blondie)
17 talk (Blondie)
18 Will Anything Happen (Blondie)
19 Fade Away and Radiate (Blondie)
20 One Way or Another (Blondie)
21 Youth Nabbed as Sniper (Blondie)
22 Heart of Glass (Blondie)
23 Bang a Gong [Get It On] (Blondie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Mt5DT2Zj

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ar8JfnqyIlfQqxy/file 

The cover image of Debbie Harry is from this exact venue, in this year. Unfortunately, the date is wrong, as it's from a concert there in May. But still, I wanted to choose it due to it at least being the right venue, despite the fact you can't see anything distinctive in the background. 

Covered: Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff, Volume 4: 1977-1992

Here is the fourth, and last, of "Covered" albums from the great songwriting duo of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, better known as "Gamble and Huff." 

Since about 1967 to 1977, these two had a seriously impressive run of hit singles, not only as songwriters (all the songs on the previous three volumes, and many more I didn't include), but also as producers and record company owners. But in the late 1970s, the hits started to trail off. Mind you, they still did have some big hits. For instance "Use to Be My Girl" and "Close the Door" both were Number One hits on the U.S. R&B chart in 1978. Many songwriters would have been overjoyed to have as much success as they during this time period. But compared to how they'd done earlier, it was a dramatic drop off.

The Wikipedia entry about the duo has this to say: " By the late 1970s, the popularity of the Philadelphia soul sound began to decline. Disco had suffered a backlash, R&B was going back toward the ballad, and rock had returned to the American charts." I don't know if that fully explains it, though. Gamble and Huff helped establish the disco sound, and disco ruled the charts all the way until 1980. Further, they were great with R&B ballads, so that trend shouldn't have been a problem either. 

I wonder if, instead, after so many dozens of hit songs, they simply started to run out of ideas and/or inspiration. I've noticed that for many professional songwriters I've profiled with "Covered" albums, having ten years of hit-making success is a pretty long time, and not many have managed to stay on top longer than that. Also, I found an article with a quote from music author John Jackson, who said, "There was a point where Kenny [Gamble] had some personal problems and was out of the studio for about a year." I don't know what that involved exactly, but it just goes to show that it's really hard to go full blast in the music business year after year after year.

Then, after about 1980, the hit singles they wrote became even rarer. Yet it's important to keep in mind that's in a relative sense, compared to most of the 1970s when it seemed like they were writing an endless stream of hits. As examples of late successes of new songs, "If Only You Knew" hit Number One on the U.S. R&B chart in 1983, and "Lovin' You" did the same in 1987. 

Still, their Wikipedia entry says this: "In 1982, Philadelphia International's biggest star, former Blue Notes singer Teddy Pendergrass, became paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident, and the future of the label came to be in doubt. That year, Philadelphia broke its ties with CBS and made a new deal with EMI. Although the hits had by now dried up, Gamble and Huff continued to write and produce for the label's artists."

What's nice to see is that I've noticed the golden era of many songwriting teams ended when the songwriting partnerships broke up, Gamble and Huff never had a falling out. I found an article from 2014 that says their business partnership never faltered, and they remain close friends with each other over fifty years after first meeting. They were still writing songs that made the charts into the early 1990s. After that, they had many more hits, sometimes massive hits, but those were new versions of songs originally written in the 1960s and 70s. In putting together these volumes, I almost always was able to use the original hit versions.

Also, here's an article from 2021 that shows they were still working together then. It contains many good quotes from the two of them, as well as musical collaborators like Patti LaBelle, John Oates (of Hall and Oates), and Thom Bell. I recommend you read it if you're interested in their career, especially since their Wikipedia isn't that great (as I write this in July 2026).

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2021/04/10/the-sound-of-philadelphia-history/

I wish I would have come across that article before writing the write-ups to the three previous volumes. Amongst other things, it revealed the exact nature of how they wrote songs together. Here's a quote from Huff: "I knew I could play piano. And I could write a song. And I could produce a record. But Gamble - Gamble could just spit out words spontaneously. He was a poet. I would throw in a word every now and then. But really, I was focused solely on the music, and Gamble was the lyric writer, the storyteller."

As I write this in 2026, both Gamble and Huff are still alive. Both of them are over 80 years old. 

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 I Don't Love You Anymore (Teddy Pendergrass)
02 Goin' Places (Jackson 5 [Jacksons])
03 Now that We've Found Love (Third World)
04 Use ta Be My Girl (O'Jays)
05 Close the Door (Teddy Pendergrass)
06 You Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else (Jones Girls)
07 Together (Tierra)
08 You're My Latest, My Greatest Inspiration (Teddy Pendergrass)
09 If Only You Knew (Patti LaBelle)
10 Living All Alone (Phyllis Hyman)
11 Lovin' You (O'Jays)
12 Don't Let It Go to Your Head (Brand New Heavies)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bCpFTjqH 

alternate:

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

I moved the two people closer using Photoshop. That's Huff on the left and Gamble on the right.

Jimmy Buffett - Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes Live (1978-2008) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here is another guest post by Mike Solof. I am putting words into his mouth, but I think what happened is that he Felt he really enjoyed the 1977 album "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes," by Jimmy Buffett. But after hearing it many many times, he wanted to hear it in a different way. So he collected live versions of all songs on the album and put them in the same order as the original. 

He managed to find live versions of all of the songs, with all of them in excellent sound quality. Most of them come from a year or two after the album was released, though a couple are from significantly later. None of the songs are extended, so don't expect drastically different versions. In fact, this album is a minute or two shorter than the studio version.

This was Buffett's breakthrough album that turned him into a big star, helped greatly by the conclusion of the hit song "Margaritaville." If you like the album a lot, you should enjoy this one.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes (Jimmy Buffett)
02 Wonder Why We Ever Go Home (Jimmy Buffett)
03 Banana Republics (Jimmy Buffett)
04 Tampico Tundra (Jimmy Buffett)
05 Lovely Cruise (Jimmy Buffett)
06 Margaritaville (Jimmy Buffett)
07 In the Shelter (Jimmy Buffett)
08 Miss You So Badly (Jimmy Buffett)
09 Biloxi (Jimmy Buffett)
10 Landfall (Jimmy Buffett)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9UBFHbeV 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/z8ghyGoVXlXDmgg/file

The cover image is from a concert at the Omni Coliseum in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 4, 1976.

The Carpenters - Singles Uncovered, Volume 3: 1976-1981 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here is the third and last volume of "Singles Uncovered," a Carpenters collection curated by guest poster Mike Solof.

In my write up for Volume Two, I gave my thoughts on why Mike chose to include some songs, but not other songs. For this write up, I thought I would go straight to the horse's mouth – I asked him to explain his selection. Here's what he had to say:

"Hi everybody, I hope you’re liking the series so far. As Paul explained in the last post, I started with the theory of doing all the singles, but then hated some of the singles (lol) so I didn’t include them. As for the non-singles that I might of included… Did I do that??? If so, sorry, but they were probably songs that I knew and loved, so consider them singles adjacent and think of them as bonus songs without Paul’s perplexing method of not numbering the bonus songs (lol). Looking forward to your feedback… See you next project which is a fun Jimmy Buffett one, and which also might be posted soon."

This album is one hour and two minutes long.

01 Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (Carpenters)
02 Can't Smile without You (Carpenters)
03 Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (Carpenters)
04 Two Sides (Carpenters)
05 I Just Fall in Love again (Carpenters)
06 The Christmas Song [Merry Christmas to You] (Carpenters)
07 I'll Be Home for Christmas (Carpenters)
08 Little Altar Boy (Carpenters)
09 Leave Yesterday Behind (Carpenters)
10 If I Had You (Carpenters)
11 Touch Me When We're Dancing (Carpenters)
12 Because We Are in Love (Carpenters)
13 Want You Back in My Life Again (Carpenters)
14 Those Good Old Dreams (Carpenters)
15 Your Baby Doesn't Love You Anymore (Carpenters)
16 The Rainbow Connection (Carpenters)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PdtgCZu1 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/NH0bCyNdcDfuLLs/file

The cover image was chosen by Mike. I don't know the details. But they look pretty young. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

Covered: Brian Wilson, Volume 1: 1963-1978 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

June 11th marks the first anniversary of the passing of musical genius Brian Wilson (1942–2025), who would have turned 84 on June 20th had he still been with us. This seems like the perfect moment to post "Covered" albums devoted to this extraordinary songwriter. Since Brian is, of course, closely associated with the Beach Boys, the "Covered: Brian Wilson" collection also serves as an indirect tribute to the legendary vocal group, highlighting the enormous influence they have had on generations of musicians since the 1960s.

This collection is another collaboration with Fabio from Rio. He is a devoted Beach Boys fan and, in fact, his first guest post here was a tribute to Brian Wilson, written and published just days after Brian’s death one year ago. You can find it here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2025/06/various-artists-songs-in-key-of-brian.html

It is therefore no surprise that he embraced this project wholeheartedly and came up with hundreds of potential covers, which were eventually trimmed down to exactly 100 tracks spread across five volumes. These 100 recordings represent 98 different compositions, since we made minor exceptions to my usual policy of avoiding duplicate songs by including two versions each of "God Only Knows" and "Good Vibrations", which will appear in later volumes.

Most of the songs here were not hits in their cover versions or at least were not big hits. But there is one important exception: “Surf City” was a Number One hit in the US in 1963 for Jan and Dean. The song was written by Wilson and Jan Berry of Jan and Dean fame. However, even though a lot of these were not the big hits, they were intended to be, it shows that Wilson’s songs were being widely covered practically from the very beginning of his career with The Beach Boys in 1962.

Note that during The time period of this album, 1963 to 1978, Wilson wrote or cowrote dozens of hit songs for the Beach Boys. Fabio and I were careful to never use the Beach Boys versions or solo Brian Wilson versions, but only covers by other musical acts. It just so happens that many of the best covers of those hits from this time come later. So if you don’t see some of your favorite songs, just wait to see what we come up with for the later volumes.

Out of these 23 tracks here, only 12 were recorded by the Beach Boys around the time of their first release. The remaining 11 tracks were originally recorded by other artists, demonstrating that Brian's talent was not limited to his own group.

These are the non-Beach Boys tracks: 

01 Drag City (Jan & Dean)

02 He's a Doll (Honeys)

03 Surf City (Jan & Dean)

04 The One You Can't Have (Honeys)

06 The New Girl in School (Jan & Dean)

08 Guess I'm Dumb (Glen Campbell)

13 Time to Get Alone (Redwood)

17 Good Time (American Spring)

19 Sweet Mountain (American Spring)

20 Had to Phone Ya (American Spring)

23 Almost Summer (Celebration)

A few of those songs - tracks 13, 17, and 20 - were later done by the Beach Boys. And Celebration was a side project for Beach Boys singer Mike Love.

Particularly noteworthy are the Honeys / American Spring (a.k.a. Spring), which together are represented here by five songs. The Honeys were a pop group formed by sisters Marilyn Rovell (later Marilyn Wilson), Diane Rovell, and Barbara Rovell (the latter eventually replaced by their cousin, Ginger Blake). In many ways, they were a female counterpart to the Beach Boys. They were discovered by Gary Usher at a talent show in 1961. Usher eventually introduced them to Brian, who renamed the group and began dating Marilyn. The couple married in December 1964.

The Honeys dissolved in 1970 when Ginger left the group to pursue a solo career. Marilyn and Diane then formed Spring, and later added "American" to the band's name after encountering trademark issues with a British group of the same name that threatened legal action. American Spring released a single album in 1972, produced by Brian Wilson, and recorded several additional tracks in 1977–1978 for a second album that was never released. Some of these recordings would later appear on compilations and anthologies. "Had to Phone Ya," recorded before the Beach Boys' own version, is one such example. 

This album is one hour long.

01 Drag City (Jan & Dean)
02 He's a Doll (Honeys)
03 Surf City (Jan & Dean)
04 The One You Can't Have (Honeys)
05 You're So Good to Me (Fireballs)
06 The New Girl in School (Jan & Dean)
07 Don't Worry Baby (Ivy League)
08 Guess I'm Dumb (Glen Campbell)
09 Here Today (Bobby Vee)
10 I'm Waiting for the Day (Peanut)
11 Don't Talk [Put Your Head on My Shoulder] (Carmen McRae)
12 The Little Girl I Once Knew (Bystanders)
13 Time to Get Alone (Redwood)
14 Aren't You Glad (Peggy March)
15 Darlin' (Paper Dolls)
16 Friends (Chicks)
17 Good Time (American Spring)
18 Vegetables (Jan & Dean)
19 Sweet Mountain (American Spring)
20 Had to Phone Ya (American Spring)
21 Sail On Sailor (KGB)
22 Breakaway (Wildfire)
23 Almost Summer (Celebration)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ypFoz44W

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/DdA0Xae8n72zlKI/file

The cover image is from 1964.

Covered: Neil Young: Alternates, Volume 1: 1966-2001 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Back in March 2026, I posted no less than ten volumes of the "Covered" series for Neil Young. Surely, you'd think, that's enough. Ten volumes is more than any of the other dozens of artists in the "Covered" series. But no, there's more! In making those ten albums, guest posted Fabio from Rio did most of the hard work, collecting hundreds of different cover versions, and presenting them to me in an organized fashion. But I did most of the selecting of which songs made the final cut. This, by contrast, represents Fabio's choices for the best of the rest. I had a little say, but just a song or two here and there where I suggested a different version or something like that. 

Fabio found enough for four volumes of "Covered" alternates. Here's the first one. Across these four volumes, about half the songs are different versions of songs that were included on the previously posted ten Neil Young "Covered" volumes. But the other half are songs that didn't feature on those volumes at all.

Fabio has written some liner notes, which are included in the download zip. But since these volumes are more like an addendum to those earlier ten volumes, he wrote just one essay for all four volumes, without song-by-song explanations.

For some musical acts in the "Covered" series, they had a lot of hits, and the choices of which covers to pick is pretty straight forward - the hit versions. But with Neil Young, it was much more subjective, since there have been tons of covers, but very few hits. So one person's trash is another person's treasure. You may well like some of these better. 

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 Flying on the Ground Is Wrong (Guess Who)
02 Down to the Wire (Yellow Hand)
03 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Carpenters)
04 Down by the River (Buddy Miles)
05 Til the Morning Comes (Francoise Hardy)
06 I Believe in You (Linda Ronstadt)
07 Hold Back the Tears (Jessi Colter)
08 Revolution Blues (Band of Blacky Ranchette)
09 Already One (Aaron Springfield)
10 Human Highway (Jim Witter & Cassandra Vasik)
11 Borrowed Tune (Marc Jordan)
12 Pushed It Over the End (Rich Hand)
13 Big Time (Black Crowes)
14 The Old Laughing Lady (Stereophonics)
15 Motion Pictures (Mercury Rev)
16 Mellow My Mind (Hederos & Hellberg)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kra1ih4k

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yfTyPoRmZ7KvcBd/file

The cover image is from 1969 or 1970. It was taken from a black and white photo of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

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.

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.

Various Artists - Covered: Dennis Lambert & Brian Potter: 1965-1985

A week or two ago (as I write this in mid-May 2026), a commenter named Rich had the excellent suggestion that I should make a "Covered" album for the songwriting team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. So thank you, Rich. They fit the format of the "Covered" series perfectly, because they had no careers as performers, but they wrote a lot of hits for others.

Lambert and Potter are a rare case of a successful trans-Atlantic songwriting partnership. Lambert was born in 1947 and raised in New York City. Potter was born in 1939 and raised in the Essex countryside of England. Lambert joined a record company in 1965, working in A&R, production, and songwriting. I'm not sure what Potter did at first (with him being almost ten years older than Lambert), but in 1965 he already had a big songwriting success, helping to write "What'cha Gonna Do about It," the first British hit for the Small Faces. Meanwhile, Lambert had a decent success in 1965 as well, co-writing "Do the Freddie," a hit for Freddie and the Dreamers.

Lambert and Potter met when Lambert was in London in 1969. The two of them decided to write songs together. They both moved to Los Angeles and began working with a record company there. One of their first songs they wrote together was "One Tin Solder." It made the Top Forty in the U.S. for the band the Original Caste. Then it would get higher on the charts in 1971 for the band Coven. Their first really big success together though was "Don't Pull Your Love," which was a Top Five U.S. hit in 1971 for Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds.

From that point on, they had many more hits all through the 1970s. I've only included the ones I like best here. There were others that were Top Forty hits. Their songwriting continued until about 1980. I don't know much about Potter's career, but it seemed he stopped writing songs around that time, because I don't find any more songwriting credits for him after 1980. 

However, Lambert kept going well into the 1980s, writing with others. He didn't have that many hits, but he had a couple of really big ones. He co-wrote "Nightshift" with a member of the Commodores, and the Commodores had a Top Five hit with it in both the U.S. and Britain in 1985. 

He also helped write "We Built This City." That song was originally written by Martin Page and Bernie Taupin (the latter being the main co-writer for Elton John). But their version was lacking something. So Lambert and a producer named Peter Wolf drastically changed it. (That's a different Peter Wolf than the one in the J. Geils Band, by the way.) The result was a smash, going all the way to Number One in the U.S. for Starship in 1985. Personally, I don't think it's a bad song, but it's hated by a lot of people, making several worst songs of all time lists by critics.

Since then, Lambert and Potter presumably both eventually retired. But both of them are still alive as I write this in 2026. 

Here's the Wikipedia page for Lambert:

Dennis Lambert - Wikipedia

And here's the one for Potter:

Brian Potter (musician) - Wikipedia  

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 What'cha Gonna Do about It (Small Faces)
02 Do the Freddie (Freddie & the Dreamers)
03 Delighted to See You (Honeybus)
04 One Tin Soldier (Original Caste)
05 Don't Pull Your Love (Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds)
06 Keeper of the Castle (Four Tops)
07 The Runway (Grass Roots)
08 Ain’t No Woman [Like the One I’ve Got] (Four Tops)
09 Love Music (Sergio Mendes)
10 Are You Man Enough (Four Tops)
11 Country Boy [You Got Your Feet in L.A.] (Glen Campbell)
12 One Chain [Don’t Make No Prison] (Four Tops)
13 It Only Takes a Minute (Tavares)
14 Open Invitation (Santana)
15 Don't Look Any Further (Dennis Edwards & Siedah Garrett)
16 We Built This City (Starship)
17 Nightshift (Commodores)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rrnJPb9s

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/oLZomJN7xtUUHiG/file

The cover image was the cover photo for an issue of Songwriter Magazine in 1977. That's Dennis Lambert on the left and Brian Potter (with the blue shirt) on the right.

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. 

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. 

Various Artists - Covered: Randy Newman, Volume 2: 1973-1999

Here's the second out of three "Covered" albums for singer-songwriter Randy Newman.

As I mentioned in "Volume 1," in the early 1970s, Newman was considered a cult albums, very critically acclaimed, but with not much commercial success for his own career. Even the many covers of his songs were rarely hits, though there were exceptions, especially "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)," which was a Number One hit in the U.S. for Three Dog Night in 1970.

But things changed drastically for him in 1977, with the song "Short People." To pretty much everyone's surprise, his version was an massive novelty hit. It made it all the way to Number Two in the U.S., kept out of the top spot only by the all-time classic "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees. It was wildly misunderstood, to say the least. A great many of his songs are sarcastic. For instance, his great song "Political Science" sarcastically advocates for blowing up the world with nuclear weapons. Many people who heard "Short People" didn't realize it was a sarcastic attack on prejudice by pointing out how silly it would be to hate short people for no reason, including ignoring the lyrics of the bridge, which explicitly run counter to the rest of the song. 

But in any case, the song made him a household name, even though his overall sales still didn't increase much. His only two really big hits on the singles charts remain "Short People" and "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)." Since Newman's version of "Short People" is so well known, it's the only song in this series I've included that's performed by him.

I also want to give a special mention to "Sail Away." I think it's an incredible song. But it also shows how unique his songwriting is, and how easy it can be for people to misunderstand his songs if they don't pay attention. It's basically an advertisement for a slave trader prior to the Civil War, attempting to coax Black Africans to come to the U.S. for a better life, when in fact the trader is tricking them into slavery. Yet somehow this sarcastic premise becomes a powerful song about the evils of slavery. It's been widely covered, including by the likes of Bobby Darin, Etta James, Linda Ronstadt, Ray Charles, Gladys Knight, Joe Cocker, and Kirsty MacColl. It was hard for me to pick just one cover, but I thought the version by Etta James is extra powerful.

From the start of Newman's songwriting career, he'd had a sideline writing instrumental music for T.V. shows, which then led to movie soundtrack work. That began way back in 1962, as I mentioned in the previous volume. His first movie soundtrack was in 1971. He did a few more movies here and there over the next couple decades. But his career took a turn in 1995, when he did the soundtrack for the hit movie "Toy Story." One song he did for that, "You've Got a Friend in Me," wasn't a hit per se, barely reaching the singles chart. But it became widely known, and widely beloved by children, and it's gone on to sell over three million copies! Surely that makes it one of the best selling non-hits ever. 

For that song, I've included a duet version between Newman and Lyle Lovett, since it's an interesting one that's also much less well known than the version just featuring Newman.

This album is 50 minutes long. 

01 Have You Seen My Baby [Hold On] (Ringo Starr)
02 Sail Away (Etta James)
03 Last Night I Had a Dream (Fanny)
04 Let's Burn Down the Cornfield (Etta James)
05 Naked Man (Grass Roots)
06 Lucinda (Joe Cocker)
07 Short People (Randy Newman)
08 Baltimore (Nina Simone)
09 Mr. President (Marshall Tucker Band)
10 You Can Leave Your Hat On (Joe Cocker)
11 Louisiana 1927 (Aaron Neville)
12 Political Science (Everything but the Girl)
13 You've Got a Friend in Me (Randy Newman & Lyle Lovett)
14 Feels like Home (Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt & Dolly Parton)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ca2NdTcU

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/FVOVaSGXA9nLNpi/file

The cover image is from 1978.

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: 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.

Warren Zevon - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 7-27-1978

Here's another concert from the excellent "Live at the Record Plant" radio show. This one stars singer-songwriter Warren Zevon. It's from 1978, one of the last concerts available from the show. 

Zevon's music career began in the mid-1960s. He had some success as a songwriter. For instance, he co-wrote "Outside Chance," which was a hit for the Turtles in 1966. But his own music career didn't get very far. He released a solo album in 1970, but it was ignored at the time. So his solo career only really got rolling in 1976, with his major label debut, the cleverly-titled "Warren Zevon." He followed that in 1978 with the album "Excitable Boy." Most of his "classic" songs come from these two albums. And "Excitable Boy" contained his sole big hit, "Werewolves of London." So 1978 is a good time for a live album.

The sound quality is excellent. The one issue I had was with the talking between the songs. The vocals of his banter was quite low. That was easily fixed, by boosting the volume of those tracks. But there also was a lot of reverb and hiss on his voice, making it hard to hear what he was saying. So I ran those tracks through Adobe's on-line vocal enhancer program. That cleared things up quite nicely.

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 talk (Warren Zevon)
02 Johnny Strikes Up the Band (Warren Zevon)
03 Tenderness on the Block (Warren Zevon)
04 talk (Warren Zevon)
05 Mohammed's Radio (Warren Zevon)
06 talk (Warren Zevon)
07 Excitable Boy (Warren Zevon)
08 Werewolves of London (Warren Zevon)
09 Accidentally like a Martyr (Warren Zevon)
10 talk (Warren Zevon)
11 Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner (Warren Zevon)
12 Poor, Poor Pitiful Me (Warren Zevon)
13 talk (Warren Zevon)
14 Lawyers, Guns and Money (Warren Zevon)
15 I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (Warren Zevon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RY38FKSa

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/7PzJzfGwob9xr8Y/file

The cover image is from a concert at the Riviera Theater, in Chicago, Illinois, on May 13, 1978. The original was in color, but the colors were bad, with everything way oversaturated with red. Rather than try to tweak it, I colorized it from scratch, using the Kolorize program.

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

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

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

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

This album is an hour and 12 minutes long. 

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

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

alternate:

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

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

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.

Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge with Billy Swan - Sounds like Friday, BBC Television Studios, London, Britain, 9-29-1978

Here's a BBC concert starring both Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge, with one song sung by Billy Swan. It recently showed up at a bootleg sharing site in excellent quality, so I grabbed it and I'm posting it straight away.

I had never heard of "Sounds like Friday" prior to this, but it turns out it was a BBC TV show that only lasted for ten episodes in 1978 and 1979. Starting in 2017, the BBC had another TV show with the very similar title "Sounds like Friday Night," but it seems there's no connection. 

It made great sense to have Kirstofferson and Coolidge on the same show, because they were married to each other for most of the 1970s. They met in 1970, right when both of them were becoming stars, and got married in 1973. They had a child together, and recorded some duet albums. But they divorced in 1980. 

This concert came at or near the peak of Coolidge's popularity. She had three big hits in 1977 and 1978: "The Way You Do the Things You Do," "We're All Alone," and "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," and she performed all three of them here. Kristofferson didn't really have big hits on his own (with one or two partial exceptions), but had a more steadily successful career as a songwriter. (Check out the two "Covered" albums I've made for his songs.)

Billy Swan had one massive hit, "I Can Help." It went all the way to Number One on the U.S. singles chart in 1974. But what I didn't realize until doing this write-up is that he was more than just a "one-hit wonder." He wrote a bunch of country hits for others (as well as writing his own big hit), and had a series of minor country hits as well. He was a member of Kristofferson's band for many years, as well as a friend, which explains his presence here.

Although this is billed as a Kristofferson and Coolidge album, the first half mostly consists of Kristofferson (and Swan for his one song), and the second half mostly consists of Coolidge. The two of them finally came together to sing duets on the last two songs. Both of those songs were written by Kristofferson, by the way, as well as the other songs sung by him, while Coolidge's songs were cover versions.

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

This album is 44 minutes long. 

01 The Pilgrim, Chapter 33 (Kris Kristofferson)
02 Risky Bizness (Kris Kristofferson)
03 I Can Help (Billy Swan)
04 The Bigger the Fool [The Harder the Fall] (Kris Kristofferson)
05 Spooky Lady's Revenge (Kris Kristofferson)
06 Words (Rita Coolidge)
07 The Way You Do the Things You Do (Rita Coolidge)
08 We're All Alone (Rita Coolidge)
09 talk (Rita Coolidge)
10 For the Good Times (Rita Coolidge with Barbara Carroll)
11 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher (Rita Coolidge)
12 Help Me Make It through the Night (Rita Coolidge & Kris Kristofferson)
13 Me and Bobby McGee (Rita Coolidge & Kris Kristofferson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1xJSrcnB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/R8vqK04rTqK4fVZ/file

The cover imagine shows Rita Coolidge and Kris Kristofferson at a concert in New York City at some point in 1978.