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.

Various Artists - The Legendary Ladies of Rock and Roll, Latin Quarter, New York City, 2-19-1987

In the late 1980s, the cable TV network Cinemax arranged a series of about five concerts that brought together many musical legends. Each one was organized around a theme. The theme for this one is obvious in the title: "The Legendary Ladies of Rock and Roll." And that wasn't just hype. For only one concert, a truly impressive collection of famous female singers came together for just this one time: Lesley Gore, Freda Payne, Shirley Alston Reeves, Mary Wells, Ronnie Spector, Brenda Lee, and Martha Reeves. They were joined by Grace Slick and Belinda Carlisle, who didn't do much singing themselves (at least in the edit of the concert we have, that got broadcast on Cinemax), but served as co-hosts.

The only name I didn't recognize at first is Shirley Alston Reeves. That's because she was the lead singer for the Shirelles in the early 1960s, under the name Shirley Owens. By the time of this concert, she'd married for a second time, and changed her name. Also, if you don't know Ronnie Spector, she was the lead singer for the Ronettes, also in the 1960s.

Weirdly for a concert celebrating famous female singers, this begins with two songs sung by men. That's because they were opportunities to give the backing band a chance to warm up with their own spotlight. The band was led by Jimmy Vivino, and prominently featured Clarence Clemons of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band on saxophone. They played on all the songs even though though they only both get credited on the first one. I'm not sure how Chubby Checker (famous for "The Twist" and other early 1960s hits) got involved, but he sang the second track here, a medley of three rock classics.

Apparently, those first two songs didn't make the TV special, but somehow were saved at the same quality for the audio bootleg. Thus, the show really began with the third track, where the two hosts, Grace Slick (of Jefferson Airplane/ Jefferson Starship) and Belinda Carlisle (of the Go-Go's) began introducing the other acts. Then, typically, each singer sang two songs. However, Freda Payne only got to sing one, her biggest hit "Band of Gold," and she did it with Carlisle, who released a cover of it in 1986. For "Soldier Boy" in the middle of the concert, all the other singers came on stage to help with the backing vocals. Then they came out again for the last couple of songs. 

This concert is unreleased in any audio format, as far as I know. However, it was released on video. One can find a copy of that on YouTube as I write this in August 2026, but with only middling quality. Luckily, I found a different source, so the sound quality is excellent. 

01 Shotgun (Jimmy Vivino with Clarence Clemons)
02 Good Golly, Miss Molly - Hound Dog - I Saw Her Standing There (Chubby Checker with Clarence Clemons)
03 talk (Grace Slick & Belinda Carlisle)
04 [Love Is like A] Heat Wave (Martha Reeves)
05 I'm Ready for Love (Martha Reeves)
06 talk (Belinda Carlisle & Lesley Gore)
07 It's My Party (Lesley Gore)
08 You Don't Own Me (Lesley Gore)
09 talk (Grace Slick)
10 My Guy (Mary Wells)
11 talk (Mary Wells)
12 You Beat Me to the Punch (Mary Wells)
13 talk (Belinda Carlisle & Shirley Alston Reeves)
14 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Shirley Alston Reeves)
15 Tonight's the Night (Shirley Alston Reeves)
16 Soldier Boy (Shirley Alston Reeves with Everyone)
17 talk (Belinda Carlisle)
18 Band of Gold (Freda Payne & Belinda Carlisle)
19 talk (Grace Slick)
20 I'm Sorry (Brenda Lee)
21 talk (Brenda Lee)
22 That's All You Gotta Do (Brenda Lee)
23 talk (Belinda Carlisle)
24 I Can Hear Music (Ronnie Spector)
25 talk (Ronnie Spector with Belinda Carlisle & Grace Slick)
26 Be My Baby (Ronnie Spector with Belinda Carlisle & Grace Slick)
27 talk (Grace Slick)
28 Da Doo Ron Ron (Ronnie Spector with Everyone)
29 Dancing in the Street (Martha Reeves with Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VwHeN1Rb

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/lcAOdJky9fTo1Be/file

The cover is a photo showing all the stars of this concert, presumably taken just before or after the show. Here are their names from left to right, by row. Top row: Lesley Gore, Freda Payne, Shirley Alston, Mary Wells, and Ronnie Spector. Middle row: Grace Slick and Belinda Carlisle. Bottom row: Brenda Lee and Martha Reeves.

I'm pleased how I managed to make cover, as I learned a new technique along the way. I found a color version of this, but it was very low-res. I also found a black and white one with much better resolution. I was able to use Photoshop to get the color while keeping the resolution of the black and white version.  

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.

Taj Mahal with John Fogerty, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Jesse Ed Davis - Palomino Club, Los Angeles, CA, 2-19-1987

This is a pretty amazing Taj Mahal concert, because just look at who his special guests were: John Fogerty, Bob Dylan, AND George Harrison! And all three of them stayed on stage for the vast majority of the concert, with Fogerty and Harrison singing several songs each. (Dylan was content just to play guitar and sing backing vocals.) I had known about this concert for a long time, but I'd never had it in my collection due to sound quality issues. But recently I revisited it, because advances in audio editing technology enabled me to make some improvements. Now, it sounds like a soundboard, even though the sound quality still is not ideal.

I found an extensive quote about this concert that George Harrison gave to Q Magazine in 1988, so I'll start with that:

"I'll tell you what happened there. I'd gone to America, and Bob [Dylan] rang me and said, you know, did I want to come out for an evening and see Taj Mahal who was playing at the Palomino? So we went there and had a few of these Mexican beers, and had a few more. And Jesse Ed Davis, who played guitar on 'Watching the River Flow,' is in the audience, and Bob says, 'Hey, why don't we all get up and play - we've had a few beers, right - and you can sing!' So we get up there and I'm in the spotlight and Bob's hanging back in the shadows and I start singing: 'What’s the matter with me? I don't have much to say...' and every time I get near the microphone, Dylan comes running up and just starts singing this rubbish in my ear, trying to throw me off. But it was really funny because when I got pushed on stage at Wembley [in London, with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Dylan] and sang a bit of 'Rainy Day Women' I couldn't remember the words and just made up this stuff. And Bob came up to me afterwards, backstage, and said, 'So you got even with me!' But it was nice to recapture the feeling of what it was like on stage to make sure I could go back into that situation in the future."

Most of that is correct, but a couple of things he said were slightly off. We can tell a lot about what really happened because the video of this entire recording is available on YouTube, though the picture quality is extremely poor. It seems Jesse Ed Davis - a very talented lead guitarist who had worked with many big names since the late 1960s - was already there as part of Taj Mahal's backing band from the start of the recording. Then, after just the first song, Harrison went up on stage. It seems he went up unprompted, and there was absolutely no comment made by Mahal or anyone else about him being there. But if you watch the video, you can see Mahal give him an electric guitar and help him get in position to play by the start of the second song, "Checkin' Up on My Baby."

For a few songs, it was Taj Mahal and four members of his backing band on stage (Jesse Ed Davis, Mark Shark, Bobby Tsukamoto, and Gary Ray), plus Harrison. Then, before the start of "Matchbox," Mahal very strongly encouraged Dylan to also join them on stage, teasing him that he was going to come get him if he didn't. So Dylan went on stage, got a guitar, and started playing it.

Halfway through "Matchbox," Harrison surprised by taking over lead vocals for most of the rest of the song. Then, near the very end of the song, John Fogerty went on stage too. He was plugged in and ready to join in by the start of the next song, "Lucille." Once again though, there's no mention by Mahal or anyone else about him being there.

Up until that point, it had basically been a Taj Mahal concert. And Mahal was the sole lead singer for the next few songs. But Harrison, Dylan, and Fogerty stayed on stage for the entire rest of the concert. And from "Knock on Wood" to the end of the concert, 11 songs in all, Harrison and Fogerty stepped up and basically dominated. They sang lead on all but two of the songs from that point on.

However, if you're a Dylan fan, there's a lot less here for you. He was definitely involved playing guitar. If you watch the video, you can see he even got a couple of the songs started. And he did sing some backing vocals. But he seemed determined not to sing any lead vocals. When Harrison started singing "Watching the River Flow," it happened just as Harrison described in the above quote: Dylan basically shouted nonsense words right into Harrison's ear, playfully trying to get him to screw up! Perhaps Harrison, being a huge Dylan fan, started that song because he knew that Jesse Ed Davis played the guitar solo on Dylan's studio version, recorded in 1971. Davis got to reprise his solo in this performance.

One historic aspect of this concert was that it caused John Fogerty play a Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) song in public for the first time in 15 years. Many years later, he explained how it happened:

"I'd gone there to see Taj Mahal, who I love, and sat down. And at some point, I heard a rumor that George Harrison was there, that he was kind of in this cloak room. So I went in and talked to George for a little bit, and that was really fun. Then I went back and sat down. Then I heard a rumor that Bob Dylan was somewhere in the room. I didn't know until much later that actually George and Bob were really tight, they were great friends, and they had arrived together."

Fogerty watched from the audience as first Harrison and then Dylan joined Mahal on stage. "I'm usually kinda shy, but for some reason I thought, 'Man, I hope they have another guitar! Please call me up there!' I just wanted to get up there. It just looked historic and a lot of fun."

Apparently, Mahal saw Fogerty in the audience and gave him a signal to come up. After a while, the crowd wanted the famous guests to play some of their original songs. As mentioned above, Dylan's "Watching the River Flow" was played, although that seemed to be against Dylan's wishes. Then Harrison sang "Honey Don't." Although it was originally by Carl Perkins, it had been recorded by the Beatles. Plus, Harrison had helped sing "Matchbox," which also had been recorded by the Beatles. So now the pressure was on for Fogerty to do one of his songs. 

Fogerty further explained, "And then the audience started going, 'John, John! C'mon! Play "Proud Mary!" And this was during the time that I had sworn off playing my own songs from the Creedence days because of legal and emotional entanglements. I'm really being kind of, let's say, stubborn about it. But suddenly Bob Dylan turns me and he goes, 'John, if you don't play "Proud Mary," everybody's gonna think it's a Tina Turner song.' And I looked at him, and by God, I played 'Proud Mary.'" 

Clearly, he had fun. After the song finished, you can hear him say, "Eat your heart out, Tina!" 

Fogerty had just done a concert tour in 1986 for the first time since 1972. He wouldn't do another full tour until 1997. But later in 1987, he would take part in "Welcome Home," a benefit concert, and he would play more CCR songs for it. And he would keep playing them from that point on. So this Taj Mahal concert was a turning point for him, breaking his stubbornness about not wanting to give any royalties to his record company for the CCR songs. And while Dylan didn't do much singing on stage, his involvement may have been the key factor that got Fogerty singing his old songs again.

Now, let's get to sound quality. From what I understand, the owner of the Palomino Club saw something special was likely to happen, and began videotaping the concert. (He probably missed some Taj Mahal songs before the first one that shows up here.) So it has been recorded for posterity due to the video tape. That video later got converted to audio, and made into a popular bootleg under the name the "Silver Wilburys." However, that only included about half of the songs here, generally the later ones starring the famous guests. So I found a YouTube video to get the audio for the entire thing.

The sound quality was pretty good, but there was a lot of hiss, and some other issues. I ran all of it through the MVSEP program, using the "Denoise" filter to get rid of most of the hiss. Then I ran it through another filter to get rid of even more hiss. I also made some other adjustments, like boosting the lead vocals relative to the instruments. I think it sounds a lot better now. 

Additionally, there was a lot of dead air between songs. The musicians on stage were winging it, so it took time for them to decide what song to play next, then determine what key to play it in, and things like that. Most of that discussion couldn't be heard at all. Plus, there was a lot of guitar tuning. So I cut out some of that, when it started to really drag between songs. But still, I kept most it, especially whenever any talking on stage could be heard. I also turned down the volume of the guitar noodling between songs, so one could better hear what else was going on.

I made an additional edit on the song "Proud Mary," enough to add "[Edit]" to the song title. Taj Mahal was helping with the singing. On the other songs, this was fine. But this song was Fogerty's moment, singing a CCR song for the first time in 15 years, and Mahal's vocal ad-libs were a distraction for the most part. I read a comment on the YouTube video of this concert that likened his singing on that song to the way Yoko Ono sometimes ruined a John Lennon song. I had to agree. So, using MVSEP again, I cut out just the parts of his vocals that annoyed me. For instance, at one point, Mahal began singing one part of the song when Fogerty sang another part of the song. Needless to say, Fogerty sang the correct part. 

When listening to this, please keep in mind the spirit of this performance. After the first few songs, which Taj Mahal and his band knew well, it's safe to assume that the rest involved everyone winging it. So you have some mistakes that even an average bar band wouldn't make, like how Taj Mahal forgot half the lyrics to "Johnny B. Goode." But that wasn't point. Some legendary musical figures were just having fun on stage (including both Harrison and Fogerty playing some guitar solos). This is pretty much the only and only time in rock music history these people did anything like this. 

This album is an hour and 48 minutes long. 

Here's another photo from the concert. 

01 Leaving Trunk (Taj Mahal)
02 talk (Taj Mahal)
03 Checkin' Up on My Baby (Taj Mahal)
04 She Caught the Katy and Left Me a Mule to Ride (Taj Mahal)
05 Farther on Down the Road [You Will Accompany Me] (Jesse Ed Davis with Taj Mahal)
06 You're Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond (Taj Mahal)
07 talk (Taj Mahal)
08 Matchbox - Gone, Gone, Gone (George Harrison & Taj Mahal)
09 talk (Everyone)
10 Lucille (Taj Mahal)
11 Crosscut Saw (Taj Mahal)
12 talk (Everyone)
13 Bacon Fat (Taj Mahal)
14 talk (Everyone)
15 Knock on Wood (John Fogerty with Taj Mahal)
16 talk (Everyone)
17 In the Midnight Hour (John Fogerty with Taj Mahal)
18 talk (Everyone)
19 Honey Don't (George Harrison)
20 talk (Everyone)
21 Blue Suede Shoes (John Fogerty & George Harrison)
22 talk (Everyone)
23 Watching the River Flow (George Harrison with Bob Dylan)
24 talk (Everyone)
25 Proud Mary [Edit] (John Fogerty with Taj Mahal)
26 talk (John Fogerty)
27 Johnny B. Goode (Taj Mahal)
28 talk (Everyone)
29 Willie and the Hand Jive (Taj Mahal)
30 Peggy Sue (George Harrison with Bob Dylan)
31 talk (Everyone)
32 Dizzy Miss Lizzy (George Harrison)
33 talk (Everyone)
34 Twist and Shout (John Fogerty & Taj Mahal)
35 talk (Taj Mahal)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nStUSnDq 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/GV7bA4Zovc8wkh7/file

I was only about to find two photos of this concert that looked even halfway decent. I posted the best one as the cover, even though it only shows Dylan, Harrison, and a member of the backing band standing between them. I posted the other one up above the song list. It sounds the overall club environment, but you can barely make out who is on stage.

There also are a couple of photos of all the band members together back stage, which must have been taken after the concert, since Fogerty said he wasn't sure the likes of Dylan and Harrison were there when the concert began. The Native American musician John Trudell is in the picture as well. He was probably there to see Jesse Ed Davis, another Native American, who played on Trudell's albums. Unfortunately, Davis had a lot of problems with drug addiction. He died of a drug overdose a year after this concert took place.

Joan Baez - Baez Sings Baez, Volume 5: 1987-1997 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's another Fabio from Rio guest post. This is the fifth and final album of "Baez Sings Baez," naturally featuring Joan Baez. It makes the argument that Baez has been a talented songwriter, by compiling together all the songs she wrote or co-wrote.

Baez's music career has been slowing down as she gets older, which is how things naturally go. Her songwriting has slowed down as well. Most of the songs here are from 1987 to 1992. Only track 12 is from 1997. Since then, Baez has only released three studio albums, and none of them have included any of her own songs.

Fabio wanted to end this with a recent (2025) duet between Baez and Jesse Welles. The odds are good the song was written by Welles. But still, Fabio wanted it to show how Baez is staying alive and lending her voice to political and social causes.

There's a lot more to say. But you'll need to read the notes Fabio wrote for that, which are included in the download zip. Thanks again to Fabio for putting these albums together.

This album is 57 minutes long. 

Oh, one last thing. If you think the cover looks familiar, that's because I used it for the cover of "Volume 4" when I posted that a couple of days ago. But Fabio and I realized that cover image was too far off chronologically. So we found a more appropriate cover for "Volume 4," from 1982, and moved that one to this volume. So you might want to redownload that earlier volume, if you care about covers.

01 Recently (Joan Baez)
02 James and the Gang (Joan Baez)
03 Blues Improv (Joan Baez & Odetta)
04 China (Joan Baez)
05 Warriors of the Sun (Joan Baez)
06 Speaking of Dreams (Joan Baez)
07 Play Me Backwards (Joan Baez)
08 Isaac and Abraham (Joan Baez)
09 I'm with You (Joan Baez)
10 The Dream Song (Joan Baez)
11 Edge of Glory (Joan Baez)
12 Lily (Joan Baez)
13 No Kings (Jesse Welles & Joan Baez)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KXqi9dhf

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/g3JwcWvelfTSjbD/file 

The cover image is from 2000. I don't know the details.

Steve Wynn, R.E.M. & Natalie Merchant - McCabe's Guitar Shop, Santa Monica, CA, 5-24-1987

Here's a very an interesting bootleg concert recording, all of it acoustic. It was billed as a "Texas Records Lawsuit Benefit." I don't know what that was about. If anyone does, I'll put in the explanation here. 

Probably the biggest name at the time was R.E.M. But also, Natalie Merchant, then still with 10,000 Maniacs, had a prominent role. Another key figure was Steven Wynn. Some others were involved. I will get to them a minute.

Perhaps it's a bit of a stretch to call it "R.E.M.," since most of the time it was just lead singer Michael Stipe and lead guitarist Peter Buck. But they were joined for the last three songs by bassist Mike Mills. So the only one missing was drummer Bill Berry. But that makes sense, since this was a drum-free acoustic performance (for the most part). Note that, at the time, it was pretty much unheard of for any members of R.E.M. to perform in acoustic mode. Later, R.E.M. did do some acoustic sessions, but they were rarely as stripped down as this.

If you haven't heard of Steve Wynn, he lead the band the Dream Syndicate from 1981 to 1989, then had a long solo career (and band reunions) after that. Here's his Wikipedia page:

Steve Wynn (musician) - Wikipedia 

Also, this was a concert where everyone involved was clearly having fun and letting it all hang out, performing songs they otherwise would never or rarely have performed in concert. The venue, McCabe's Guitar Shop, has a lot to do with that. I've come across other concerts here that had various guest stars drop in and play some pretty random things, even decades after this. (Robyn Hitchcock, for instance, has played many interesting concerts here, with lots of guests.) It seems the people at the venue must have encouraged this format. The fact that the place is in Los Angeles, where many other musical people live or pass through, and the fact that it's so small, with room for only a hundred or two people, also must factor in. Many concerts here are less like normal concerts and more like a bunch of friends hanging out and playing music.

One downside to us listeners is that because the venue is so small, it's very rare to get bootleg recordings. After all, what are the odds of there being a bootlegger in a concert of two hundred people compared to one in a concert of 20,000 people? And when there are bootlegs, they typically are audience boots, that sometimes don't sound that good. That's why I haven't posted many concerts from this venue, even though they often are really special musically. But this one is a lucky exception, because it generally sounds very good as well. I say "generally" because I took this from three different sources, and some sources sound better than others. But a lot of it is at a soundboard level.

Getting back to who took part, as you can see in the artist name for this album, most of the songs involved Steve Wynn, R.E.M., and Natalie Merchant, solo and in various combinations. But there were others too. For instance, Peter Case played a few songs with Peter Buck of R.E.M. Case had been the main singer songwriter for the Plimsouls for much of the 1980s, but that band had broken up by the time of this concert. He soon settled into a long career in more of a folkie mode instead. 

Jenny Homer is not well known, but she was a member of the band Downy Mildew. In 1987, the year of this concert, they put out their debut album. Here's the Wikipedia entry for that band:

Downy Mildew (band) - Wikipedia

Kendra Smith was a founding member of the Dream Syndicate, the band I mentioned above that was led by Steve Wynn. But she left after just a couple of years to join a new band, Opal. She must have stayed on good terms with Wynn though, considering they sang a duet here. She later became a solo artist. Here's here Wikipedia page:

Kendra Smith - Wikipedia

This is not all of the concert. I've included a text file that lists all the songs known to have been performed. I included most of what I was able to find. If anyone has more, please let me know. But there also was some that I didn't include because the sound quality wasn't as good as the rest. Plus, there actually was an early show and a late show, with similar set lists. I combined them into one show, since I only had pieces here and there. The band Downy Mildew and Opal performed short sets in both shows, but none of that is here.

I can't emphasize how unique and interesting this is, especially if you're an R.E.M. fan or Natalie Merchant fan. Just getting to hear their songs in acoustic mode is special. But also both of those acts did a lot of strange cover songs. Take track 39, prominently featuring Stipe and Merchant. It's a cover of "Leaving on a Jet Plane" while "Sunday Morning" by Margo Guryan was sung at the same time!

Nearly all of this is unreleased. However, "Maps and Legends" and "The One I Love" were released by R.E.M. on the B-side to their single of "It's the End of the World as I Know It (And I Feel Fine)." 

This album is an hour and 52 minutes long.

01 talk (emcee)
02 talk (Steve Wynn)
03 Merritville (Steve Wynn)
04 talk (Steve Wynn)
05 Drinking Problem (Steve Wynn)
06 One More Cup of Coffee [Valley Below] (Steve Wynn with Bob Forres)
07 talk (Steve Wynn)
08 Days of Wine and Roses (Steve Wynn)
09 talk (Steve Wynn)
10 Solitary Man (Steve Wynn & Russ Tolman)
11 Walk, Don't Run - Baby, Please Don't Go (Peter Case & Peter Buck)
12 A Million Miles Away (Peter Case & Peter Buck)
13 talk (Peter Case & Peter Buck)
14 Sad Eyes (Peter Case & Peter Buck)
15 talk (emcee)
16 talk (Natalie Merchant)
17 The Fat Lady of Limbourg (Natalie Merchant)
18 talk (Natalie Merchant)
19 Don't Talk (Natalie Merchant)
20 talk (Natalie Merchant)
21 Hello Stranger (Natalie Merchant, Jenny Homer & Michael Stipe)
22 The Wind, the Wind (Natalie Merchant)
23 talk (Natalie Merchant)
24 Verdi Cries (Natalie Merchant)
25 talk (emcee)
26 The One I Love (Michael Stipe & Peter Buck)
27 talk (Michael Stipe)
28 Welcome to the Occupation (Michael Stipe & Peter Buck)
29 talk (Michael Stipe)
30 Disturbance at the Heron House (Michael Stipe & Peter Buck)
31 talk (Michael Stipe)
32 Finest Worksong (Michael Stipe & Peter Buck)
33 talk (Michael Stipe)
34 Maps and Legends (Michael Stipe & Peter Buck)
35 talk (Michael Stipe)
36 Harpers (Michael Stipe)
37 talk (Michael Stipe)
38 Damaged Goods (Michael Stipe, Peter Buck & Natalie Merchant)
39 Leaving on a Jet Plane - Sunday Morning (Everyone)
40 talk (Steve Wynn)
41 50 in a 25 Zone (Steve Wynn)
42 How Can You Mend a Broken Heart - Killing Time (Steve Wynn)
43 talk (Steve Wynn)
44 See that My Grave Is Kept Clean (Steve Wynn & Peter Buck)
45 Stagefright (Steve Wynn)
46 talk (Steve Wynn)
47 Too Little, Too Late (Steve Wynn & Kendra Smith)
48 More than a Pay Cheque (Natalie Merchant, Jenny Homer & Kendra Smith)
49 Hear the Wind Blow (Kendra Smith & Natalie Merchant)
50 A Campfire Song (Natalie Merchant)
51 The Counting Song [Wheel of Fortune] (Michael Stipe & Natalie Merchant)
52 Stretch My Hand (Michael Stipe & Peter Buck)
53 Spooky (Michael Stipe, Peter Buck & Mike Mills)
54 Fever (Michael Stipe, Peter Buck & Mike Mills)
55 So. Central Rain (Michael Stipe, Peter Buck & Mike Mills)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oK2JXY1J

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/l9qtjCKS16se9Ft/file

The cover photo appears to be promotional material for this exact concert. I changed the white text at the bottom.

Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd - In Session (CHCH-TV Studios, Hamilton, Canada, 1987)

From about 1983 to 1988, there was a very unusual and interesting program on a Canadian TV station, called "In Session." It specialized in putting two or more musicians together in a recording studio and then filming their collaboration. Here's an episode that united three soul musicians: Steve Cropper, William Bell, and Eddie Floyd.

First off, a bit more about this TV show. I've previously posted two other episodes. One paired Glen Campbell with Jimmy Webb, and the other paired Campbell with Leon Russell. I have since found out that a 1983 episode paired Stevie Ray Vaughan with Albert King. I won't be posting that one, because it has been officially released, and that album is well known and easily available:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Session_(Albert_King_and_Stevie_Ray_Vaughan_album)

But I recently dug deeper, and found some other interesting episodes. I plan on posting at least two more after this one. If anyone knows more about this show, or has more episodes, please let me know, because I haven't been able to find out much. (For instance, I couldn't find the exact date of this episode, and I've even seen conflicting information on the year. So if anyone has more accurate info about that, please let me know.)

Anyway, back to this episode. Cropper, Bell, and Floyd were far from strangers, because they collaborated with each other quite a lot back in the 1960s. All of them were part of the Stax Records hit-making machine. Cropper is best known as a session musician lead guitarist as well as a songwriter (I've posted two Covered albums for him), though he also was a key member of the Stax house band, Booker T. and the MG's. Bell and Floyd were both famous for their singing careers. However, both of them were also very capable songwriters. For instance, Bell wrote his hits "You Don't Miss Your Water" and "Private Number," and well as songs for others, such as "Born Under a Bad Sign" for Albert King. Floyd generally wrote all of his hits, including the classic "Knock on Wood." Many of them, including that one, were written with Cropper. But Floyd also wrote songs for others. For instance, he and Cropper wrote a couple of hits for Wilson Pickett, such as "634-5789 (Soulsville U.S.A.)" and "Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won't Do)."

Cropper and Bell also wrote songs together. For instance, they wrote "Share What You Got (But Keep What You Need)," a minor hit for Bell in 1966. Furthermore, Bell and Floyd wrote songs together. For instance, they co-wrote the 1971 song "'Till My Back Ain't Got No Bone," which was recorded by Bell and later covered by Albert King. Additionally, Cropper often played lead guitar on the songs recorded by Bell and Floyd. So there was a lot of collaboration going on between these three, plus others at Stax like Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, and David Porter. 

For this episode, the three of them performed one classic soul hit after another. For most of the songs, at least one of them sang, wrote, or played on the original. They also shared some interesting stories between the songs. If you're a fan of the great Stax records of the 1960s and early 1970s, you really should listen to this.

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is very good. 

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 I Can't Turn You Loose [Instrumental] (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
02 talk (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
03 These Arms of Mine (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
04 I've Been Loving You Too Long (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
05 talk (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
06 [Sittin' On] The Dock of the Bay - Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa [Sad Song] (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
07 talk (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
08 A Tribute to a King (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
09 talk (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
10 Knock on Wood (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
11 talk (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
12 Hip Hug-Her [Instrumental] (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
13 talk (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
14 You Don't Miss Your Water (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
15 talk (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)
16 634-5789 [Soulsville U.S.A.] (Steve Cropper, William Bell & Eddie Floyd)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MSBFW64m

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/gulpelJL5thPLnR/file

The cover image is from this exact TV show episode. From left to right: Steve Cropper, William Bell, and Eddie Floyd. The image is rather low res because it's a screenshot I took from pretty rough video footage. 

Dionne Warwick - Dionne, Burt and Hal: The Definitive Songbook, Volume 7: 1987-2012 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

I'm back from my two week vacation from Peru. It got off to a rough start due to the plane flight there, which I posted about. But everything else since then went great, with no more problems. :) I even had good weather the whole time, despite it being the rainy season there.

Here's the last album in a series that contains all the songs written by Hal David and/or Burt Bacharach and sung by Dionne Warwick. Though note that there's a bonus album of sorts still to come that will be explained later.

As I mentioned in Volume 6, the Bacharach-David songwriting partnership broke up around 1973, and they didn't collaborate for a long time after that. The second half of Volume 6 consisted entirely of songs written by Bacharach and another successful songwriter, Carole Bayer Sager. (In fact, Bacharach and Sager were married for a few years around this time). 

The Bacharach and Sager collaboration continued for a little while. The first songs are from a 1987, and are all co-written by those two. One song, "Love Power," was a hit. After that, there are a bunch of songs from 1989 to 2011, one song per year with many years skipped. "Sunny Weather Lover" from 1993 is a key song here, because it's the first song Bacharach and David wrote together since about 1972. However, that was a rare collaboration. Their songwriting partnership didn't reignite after that. (They also co-wrote two songs for the 2000 movie "Isn't She Great," but Warwick didn't sing them.) Furthermore, both of them were simply getting older and didn't write songs nearly as often as they used to. 

So the rest of the songs were written by Bacharach with others or David with others. For instance, "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)" was a Number One hit in the U.S. for Christopher Cross in 1981, and was written by Bacharach with Sager and two others. Track 101 is an unreleased live version by Warwick recorded in 2005.

The last four songs are from a 2012 album called "Now." It was billed as a celebration of Bacharach and David songs. However, it mostly consisted of rerecordings of old hits. The four new songs, presented here, were written by either Bacharach with others or David with others. For instance, "99 Miles from L.A." was written by David with Albert Hammond, and was a hit for Hammond in 1975. 

Hal David died in 2012, so that ended the chance for any more songs written by both of them. Bacharach died in 2023.

While I was on vacation, a commenter noted that a song, "(Theme From) The Valley of the Dolls" was included on Volume 4 of this series, despite neither Bacharach nor David being involved in writing it. Now that I'm back home, I was able to repost that album with that song removed. That also means that the numbering of all the songs after that has been fixed as well. So you might want to redownload Volumes 4, 5, and 6 if you're a stickler about such things. Also, since I had complaints about the cover art for Volume 1, I've posted an alternate version of the cover at the bottom of my write-up for that album that uses the original black and white photo, in case anyone wants that.

Thanks again to Mike Solof for putting this together.   

This album is one hour long. 

092 Take Good Care of You and Me (Dionne Warwick & Jeffrey Osborne)
093 Love Power (Dionne Warwick & Jeffrey Osborne)
094 In a World Such as This (Dionne Warwick)
095 Heartbreak of Love (Dionne Warwick & June Pointer)
096 On My Own (Dionne Warwick)
097 Sunny Weather Lover (Dionne Warwick)
098 Captives of the Heart (Dionne Warwick)
099 If I Want To (Dionne Warwick)
100 On My Way (Dionne Warwick)
101 Arthur's Theme [Best That You Can Do] (Dionne Warwick)
102 Keep Me in Mind (Dionne Warwick)
103 99 Miles from L.A. (Dionne Warwick)
104 Is There Anybody Out There (Dionne Warwick)
105 It Was Almost like a Song (Dionne Warwick)
106 Love Is Still the Answer (Dionne Warwick)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ieF2gBUW

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/DKTsSUgj9dgKC43/file

The cover photo shows her in concert in an unknown location, in February 1989.

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. 

Kevin Gilbert - Rarities (1985-1996) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's the second out of three "best of" albums guest posted Mike Solof has made for singer-songwriter Kevin Gilbert. The first album, "Originals," focuses on Mike's favorite songs that were on Gilbert's studio albums (including albums for bands he led, such as Toy Matinee). This one digs deeper. 

Considering that Gilbert's music career only lasted about ten years, he created a remarkable amount of music. He only put out a few albums in his lifetime. But since his death in 1996, a couple dozen more albums have come out! Gilbert was one of those musicians, like Prince, who played practically every instrument he could get his hands on, and was always writing and creating. So there was a ton of rare material for Mike to draw on when making this album. (As usual, look to the mp3 tags for all the details on the sources of the songs.)

One interesting highlight of this album is "Leaving Las Vegas." That was a big hit for Sheryl Crow. But Gilbert co-wrote it, as well as co-writing most of the songs on Crow's debut album, "Tuesday Night Music Club." The two of them were romantically linked for a while, and Crow was a member of Gilbert's band for a time.  

Like Mike always does with his guest posts, he's created a PDF file with additional comments and photos and so forth. In this case, the PDF is the same for all three Gilbert "best of" albums he made.  

This album is 59 minutes long. 

01 National Public Radio (Kevin Gilbert)
02 Things She Said [Jazz Version] (Kevin Gilbert)
03 Circling Winds (Kevin Gilbert)
04 Goodbye L.A. (Kevin Gilbert)
05 Suit Fugue [Dance of the A & R Men] [Early Mix] (Kevin Gilbert)
06 God's Been Tapping My Phone (Kevin Gilbert)
07 Queen of Misery (Toy Matinee)
08 KMTT Jingle (Kevin Gilbert)
09 Leaving Las Vegas (Kevin Gilbert)
10 Tea for One [Sax Mix] (Kevin Gilbert)
11 Something Nice for My Dog (Kevin Gilbert)
12 Late for Dinner [Dark Mix] (Kevin Gilbert)
13 Souvenir (Kevin Gilbert)
14 Finally Over You (Kevin Gilbert)
15 All Fall Down [Toto Version] (Kevin Gilbert)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/N98cVBGz

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/pzxlRnsVOmw60ea/file

I don't know the details of where or when the cover image is from. It was selected by Mike. 

Kevin Gilbert - Originals (1984-1996) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's a really interesting album put together by guest poster Mike Solof. Have you ever heard of Kevin Gilbert? If you have, congrats, because he's not as well known as he sound be. Mike is a huge fan of Gilbert's music, so much so that he put together three albums to showcase Gilbert's musical talent. The first album, this one, consists of the original songs Mike considers the best. Then he's made another one of the best rarities, and a third one of the best cover versions. If you want to get started, this is the obvious first album to listen to. Then, if you're interested, check out the other two. (Then, hopefully, more than that.)

For a quick overview, I'll quote the intro paragraph to his Wikipedia entry, which states me "was an American singer, songwriter, musician, composer, and producer. He was best known for his solo progressive rock projects, Toy Matinee, and his contributions to 'Tuesday Night Music Club' (1993), the debut studio album of Sheryl Crow. Kevin Gilbert died from autoerotic asphyxiation. He was found dead at his Los Angeles-area home on May 18, 1996, at the age of 29."

Here's the link to the rest of the Wikipedia page:

Kevin Gilbert (musician) - Wikipedia

I have to admit I wasn't familiar with Gilbert's music before Mike made these albums, although I'd previously heard good things about his career here and there. After hearing the albums Mike made, I have to agree that Gilbert was a very talented musician who deserves to be much better known than he is. He often combined a catchy pop sensibility with the complexity of prog rock. That is a very difficult combination to pull off. It's a real shame he died so young, and the strange manner of his death probably didn't help his musical legacy.

Note that this albums combines songs from Gilbert's solo albums, as well as songs he did with bands he was in: Giraffe, Toy Matinee, and Kaviar. All the lead vocals are by Gilbert. 

Anyway, Mike has written extensive notes about Gilbert, his life, and why he likes his music so much. You can find that in the PDF included with the download zip, as usual for Mike's guest posts. 

This album is an hour and 23 minutes long. 

01 When Strangers Part (Kevin Gilbert)
02 This Warm Night (Giraffe)
03 Air Dance (Giraffe)
04 Tired Old Man Suite (Kevin Gilbert)
05 Last Plane Out (Toy Matinee)
06 Things She Said (Toy Matinee)
07 The Ballad of Jenny Ledge (Toy Matinee)
08 Goodness Gracious (Kevin Gilbert)
09 Shadow Self [Alternate Version] (Kevin Gilbert)
10 Miss Broadway (Kevin Gilbert)
11 Single (Kaviar)
12 The Sultan of Brunei (Kaviar)
13 The Best Laid Plans (Kevin Gilbert)
14 Certifiable No. 1 Smash (Kevin Gilbert)
15 All Fall Down [Alternate Horn Mix] (Kevin Gilbert)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GvEgk98D

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/BNCnBxCFRjJRq5o/file

I don't know the details of the cover image. It was found by Mike.

Various Artists - Covered: Tom Waits, Volume 1: 1973-1994 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

It's high time I post more for the "Covered" series, highlighting great singer-songwriters. This time, we're looking at the songs of Tom Waits. Enough material has been found for four volumes. Here's the first one. As with all albums in this series, the focus is on cover versions, instead of versions done by the songwriter.

First off, I've gotta say I wouldn't be posting this now had it not been for the help of musical friend Fabio from Rio. It was he who suggested making Covered albums for Waits. I would have wanted to tackle him eventually, but that probably would have been well into the future. I have an issue with Waits: I can't stand his voice. As a result, even though it's easy for me to see he's a very talented songwriter, I haven't been that familiar with his songs. But Fabio is a big fan. He sent me literally hundreds of Waits cover versions, with recommendations on the best ones. I went through that and narrowed it down quite a lot. Hopefully this will make a strong collection that can turn the curious on to Waits' music.

Fabio from Rio helped with all aspects of putting this together. He even wrote the write-ups for the four volumes for Waits. So first I'm posting the relevant Wikipedia page:

Tom Waits - Wikipedia 

And now, take it away, Fabio (and a big thanks to him for all his work on this!):

For the general public, Tom Waits is "that guy with the raspy wino voice and the weird songs. Wasn't he one of the convicted fellows in that offbeat Jim Jarmusch movie?" A few music aficionados may also know him as the writer of songs like Springsteen's "Jersey Girl" or Rod Stewart's "Downtown Train", but that is usually where the story ends.

What many are not aware of is that Waits is widely recognized by his peers and by musical experts as an exceptional and influential songwriter. He is praised for his unique voice, vivid storytelling, poetic lyrics, and innovative musical style that blends genres like blues, jazz, vaudeville, and experimental rock. Waits is also known for creating three-dimensional characters and detailed narratives, often exploring life on the fringes. His lyrics are celebrated for their specificity, humor, melancholy, and ability to evoke strong moods, often drawing comparisons to Beat poets and Mark Twain.

Waits is a "songwriters' songwriter," with songs covered by literally hundreds of artists, many of them great composers themselves. He has been subject to many tributes. While searching for tracks for that project, I collected about three dozen different albums fully dedicated to his songs, and around 400 assorted covers, adding up to almost 1,200 tracks and 80-plus hours of music!

I initially selected about 220 different tunes (an almost fully comprehensive "Tom Waits songbook" that would comprise about 15 hours) which Paul wisely helped reduce to around 60 tracks across four volumes. We could have another four or eight volumes with additional top-notch Tom Waits songs - there is enough quality material for that - but I feel this reduced version is just the right size for a first dive into Tom Waits vast catalog. I hope you enjoy it!

Some listeners may find Waits' music difficult to approach due to his peculiar tone (which, contrary to popular belief, was not destroyed by booze and cigarettes, but was conscientiously cultivated as a vocal persona, as he mentioned in some interviews). The fact that some of his more experimental work sounds like monkeys loose in a crystal store doesn't help either. For those, a "Covered" collection focusing on his more melodic output is a great starting point, where one may discover the essence of Waits' music (often through soothing, frequently female, voices).

This first volume includes performances from a long range of years (1973 to 1994), but most of the songs here were composed during Waits' early and middle phases (the seventies and early eighties). His first albums feature piano-led ballads, romantic melancholy, and a relatively smooth, crooning voice. The character is that of a late-night drifter, nostalgic and tender. As his career progressed, Waits' voice grew tougher (both literally and figuratively) and his narratives darker and more cinematic. His late seventies and early eighties albums introduced sardonic humor, social misfits, and a sharper sense of irony, while still rooted in jazz, blues, and cabaret traditions.

Waits started as a folk singer/songwriter in the early seventies, with heavy jazz influences, when his voice was still not so rough. You can hear this in the first selection of this collection, "Rosie," from his 1973 first album. It's the only song in these four volumes that is the composer's own interpretation. He also first caught the ear of the public with an early cover of "Ol' 55" by The Eagles (which we skipped in favor of Sarah McLachlan's 1993 version, which both Paul and myself prefer). Other famous interpreters at the first volume are Johnny Cash and Marianne Faithfull (with songs Tom composed specifically for them), and also 10,000 Maniacs, Elvis Costello, Crystal Gayle and Canned Heat, which showcases the full range of styles and performers reached by Waits' compositions.

---

Thanks again, Fabio. I'll just add that there were only a few cases where Waits wrote hit songs, so we weren't tied down much by that factor. ("Downtown Train" is probably his biggest hit, thanks to the 1989 Rod Stewart version, included here.) And often, his songs didn't get a lot of covers until many years after they were written. So if you don't see some of his songs you really like from this era, wait before you judge. There's a good chance those songs could show up on one of the later volumes.

This album is 54 minutes long. 

01 Rosie (Tom Waits)
02 Foreign Affair (Manhattan Transfer)
03 Jersey Girl (Bruce Springsteen)
04 Is There Any Way Out of This Dream (Crystal Gayle)
05 I Hope that I Don't Fall in Love with You (10,000 Maniacs)
06 Strange Weather (Marianne Faithfull)
07 Downtown Train (Rod Stewart)
08 Gun Street Girl (Canned Heat)
09 San Diego Serenade (Nanci Griffith)
10 Tom Traubert's Blues [Waltzing Matilda] (Rod Stewart)
11 More than Rain (Elvis Costello & Brodsky Quartet)
12 Ol' 55 (Sarah McLachlan)
13 Down There by the Train (Johnny Cash)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Sn7DrCs1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/t3zNaMkqIymk1K6/file

The cover photo was taken in Chicago, Illinois, on May 30, 1986.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This album is an hour and 43 minutes long. 

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

https://pixeldrain.com/u/x1ov1ZCi

alternate: 

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

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

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).

Elkie Brooks - BBC Sessions, Volume 4- In Concert, NEC Arena, Birmingham, Britain, 8-9-1987

Here's the fourth and final BBC album I have for British singer Elkie Brooks. 

Brooks' singing career began back in the early 1960s, but she didn't start having hit songs (in Britain only) until 1977. Once she started though, she had a bunch of them with six Top Twenty hits between 1977 and 1987, and a bunch of lesser hits. Her last hit was "We've Got Tonite" in 1987 (which is performed here). So this concert came at an ideal time to wrap up the end of the hit-making phase of her music career.

All of her big hits were performed here. Plus, she did some nice lesser known covers, like "Ain't Misbehavin'," "Goin' Back," and "Maybe I'm Amazed." She didn't release her first official live album until ten years later, and then two more in the years after that. I prefer this one. 

This is unreleased, and I believe hadn't been widely bootlegged. But it was replayed by the BBC in 2025, so I was able to get an excellent sounding version.

This album is an hour and 20 minutes long. 

01 Fool [If You Think It's Over] (Elkie Brooks)
02 Goin' Back (Elkie Brooks)
03 Nights in White Satin (Elkie Brooks)
04 Hiding Inside Yourself (Elkie Brooks)
05 Only Women Bleed (Elkie Brooks)
06 Pearl's a Singer (Elkie Brooks)
07 What's a Matter Baby [Is It Hurting You] (Elkie Brooks)
08 Ain't Misbehavin' (Elkie Brooks)
09 No Secrets (Elkie Brooks)
10 If You Leave Me Now (Elkie Brooks)
11 Hold the Dream (Elkie Brooks)
12 Lilac Wine (Elkie Brooks)
13 All or Nothing (Elkie Brooks)
14 Don't Cry Out Loud (Elkie Brooks)
15 Gasoline Alley (Elkie Brooks)
16 No More the Fool (Elkie Brooks)
17 We've Got Tonite (Elkie Brooks)
18 Maybe I'm Amazed (Elkie Brooks) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/djNpMwWa

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/umcaxfa4G827Lr1/file 

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

Elkie Brooks - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1977-1987

Here's a third volume (out of four) of British singer Elkie Brooks performing for the BBC. In this case, every song comes from appearances on BBC TV shows.

The first album in this series consisted of BBC studio sessions. It ended in 1977, which was the year Brooks had her first big hits. The second one was a full concert from 1977. In Volume 1, I only had two of her hits, "Pearl's a Singer" and "Lilac Wine." But from 1977 until 1987, she had lots of hits in Britain (while she never had any hits in the U.S.). So I tried to put this collection together to deal with that period. 

Everything here is unreleased. I often had to dig deep to find the material. For instance, I found she did some appearances on the BBC TV show "The Two Ronnies" in 1980, but none of them were on YouTube. So I downloaded all the episodes of that show that year from SoulseekQT and went through them, found the songs she did, and turned them into mp3s. Those are tracks 4, 5, and 6.

As for the other tracks, the first three plus tracks 9 and 13 are from the "Top of the Pops" BBC TV show (not to be confused with the BBC radio show of the same name). I rarely use that as a source for my BBC projects, because the vast majority of performers on it lip-synced when on the show. However, Brooks usually did not. In ease case, I carefully compared those versions with the album versions to make sure. They're from 1977, 1978, 1979, 1982, and 1987 respectively.

Tracks 7 and 8 are from the TV show "Parkinson" in 1982. Tracks 10 and 11 are from a 1983 TV show hosted by singer Leo Sayer. Track 12 is from a TV show called "Wogan" in 1987. Generally speaking, I used the MVSEP program to get rid of crowd noise on the songs where there was crowd noise.

I searched for more BBC TV appearances after 1987, but I couldn't find any good ones until way later, and those were mostly repeats of earlier hits. That makes sense, because she didn't have any significant appearances after that year. Between this volume and "Volume 1" in this series, you'd have a pretty good "greatest hits" collection for her entire career, with only a couple of key songs missing.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Sunshine After the Rain (Elkie Brooks)
02 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Elkie Brooks)
03 The Runaway (Elkie Brooks)
04 Don't Cry Out Loud (Elkie Brooks)
05 Paint Your Pretty Picture (Elkie Brooks)
06 Dance Away (Elkie Brooks)
07 Fool [If You Think It's Over] (Elkie Brooks)
08 Superstar [Groupie] (Elkie Brooks)
09 Nights in White Satin (Elkie Brooks)
10 Gasoline Alley (Elkie Brooks)
11 Giving You Hope (Elkie Brooks)
12 We've Got Tonite (Elkie Brooks)
13 No More the Fool (Elkie Brooks) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/me7Fh3Yn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/V2ubR7qCxIoT7jV/file

The cover photo was taken circa 1980. I don't know more details.

Richard Thompson - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Andy Kershaw Show, Strawberry Sound, Manchester, Britain, 1-7-1987

Here's another album I'm posting sooner rather than later due to the BBC poll. It's another BBC album by Richard Thompson, from 1987.

This one is kind of a strange one, because it's a single performance, but it's not from a concert. Instead, it's from an appearance on the Andy Kershaw Show. It's long enough to make up an album, though a short one. Unfortunately, whatever banter there may have been between songs has been lost. (If you have that, let me know!) And there's no applause, since it was done in a radio station.

The song quality is excellent. That's because it comes from the official album "Live at the BBC." Most of the songs here were included on the previous three BBC volumes, since the time frame isn't that different. (For instance, this took place less than two months after the concert in "Volume 4.") But those were generally done electric, with a full band, while these are all solo acoustic versions.

This album is 37 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On November 8, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I found an earlier volume in this series that I'd missed, so the volume number changed. That meant the title, cover art, and mp3 tags changed too. 

01 Withered and Died (Richard Thompson)
02 When the Spell Is Broken (Richard Thompson)
03 Simple Again (Richard Thompson)
04 Ghosts in the Wind (Richard Thompson)
05 Valerie (Richard Thompson)
06 Turning of the Tide (Richard Thompson)
07 She Twists the Knife Again (Richard Thompson)
08 Two Left Feet (Richard Thompson)
09 Shoot Out the Lights (Richard Thompson)
10 The End of the Rainbow (Richard Thompson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/E3uMV61p

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/5wRLZdHe0jFaLnq/file

The cover photo shows Thompson at the 1987 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 03,1987.