Covered: Neil Young: Alternates, Volume 1: 1966-2001 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)!! | Albums That Should Exist

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

This struck me as hilarious after downloading the Ten Covers of Neil Young volumes that Paul [ATSE] made available to us and herewith Fabio joins in! More to come! Paul says: 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)

Little Feat - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 7-19-1973, Early Show | ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST [ATSE]

 Little Feat - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 7-19-1973, Early Show

Remembering the drubbing I got last time from disparaging Lowell and his guitar playing etc and my not being that much of a fan here’s one for the Little Featers! Paul says: Next up from the Ebbets Fields radio broadcasts is Little Feat. They did an early show and a late show, so naturally I'm starting with the early show.

I've already posted a couple of Little Feat albums, so I won't say much more about them here. But note that this was from relatively early in the band's history, before they became very famous. Near the start of 1973, they released their third album, "Dixie Chicken." It was their first album to go Gold in the U.S., which means sales of half a million. But I'm guessing most of those sales didn't happen until later, when the band's growing popularity caused some people to discover their earlier albums, because the album didn't make the charts at all.

Interestingly, you can hear by the emcee speaking at the end of this recording that the band was actually the opening act for Zephyr. (They probably were much less well know nationwide, but they were based in Denver and played there a lot, so they were local favorites.) Also, it seems only the late show sets of both Little Feat and Zephyr were actually broadcast on the radio. But somehow this recording survived too, probably due to Little Feat's later fame. 

In fact, I'd say these early and late shows by Little Feat are some of the most popular of all the Ebbets Fields recordings. There are very few concert recordings of this sound quality from this early in the band's career. But the recordings, going under names like "American Cutie" and "Late Night Truck Stop," are grey market releases. That means they exploit a loophole in European copyright law allowing for their legal sale in Europe, but the musical act doesn't get any of the profits. 

This album is 54 minutes long. 

01 Hamburger Midnight 
02 Got No Shadow 
03 talk
04 On Your Way Down 
05 talk
06 Walkin' All Night 
07 talk 
08 Two Trains 
09 talk 
10 Willin'
11 talk 
12 Cold, Cold, Cold
13 Dixie Chicken 
14 Tripe Face Boogie 
15 talk
16 Fat Man in the Bathtub
17 talk 

(all tracks Little Feat) 

Have at it you groovy people!

The Incredible String Band - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1970-1971 | Albums That Should Exist

The Incredible String Band - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1970-1971

Paul says: I'm still not into the Incredible String Band, but here's another BBC album from them, due to their high results in the BBC poll I did a while back. This is a third volume of BBC studio sessions.

There's an official album of BBC performances by this band, but it skips a lot of music. This album is a case in point. The first four songs are from that album, "Across the Airwaves," but everything else remains unreleased. Also, those first four songs are from two different BBC sessions in 1970, while tracks 5 to 8 are from one 1971 BBC session, and tracks 9 until the end are from another 1971 BBC session. 

In the time period here, the band was still a foursome, with Mike Heron, Robin Williamson, Licorice McKechnie, and Rose Simpson. But that would change around the end of 1971. During this time, the band released no less than four studio albums: "I Looked Up" and "U" in 1970, and "Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending" and "Liquid Acrobat as Regards the Air" in 1971. 

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 Everything's Fine Right Now 
02 Raga Puti 
03 Ring Dance
04 Long, Long Road 
05 You Get Brighter 
06 Jigs [The Bird that Lives on Rain - Yellow Flames of Whin - Jenny in the Mosshouse - Drunk]
07 How We Danced the Lord of Weir 
08 The Actor
09 The Circle Is Unbroken
10 Sailor and the Dancer 
11 Tree 
12 Living in the Shadows

As I was one of the people who begged Paul at ATSE to find us more BBC Incredible String Band here is this . . . . largely good quality despite various sources and incarnations

John Prine (featuring guest Billy Lee Riley) - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, U.S.A 1980 | Albums That Should Exist

 Now we’re talking . . . and most welcome given his tragic loss five years ago, worth re-visiting if you don’t have this

John Prine with Billy Lee Riley - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 1-6-1980

Paul says: Here's another "PBS Soundstage" episode. This time, it's a John Prine concert from 1980. 

He was joined on two songs by Billy Lee Riley. Riley had a few hits in the 1950s, especially the song "Red Hot" in 1957. After that, he stayed in the music business for a while, working mostly as a producer. However, by the 1970s, he got a job in the construction industry instead. But in the late 1970s he made a minor comeback, and this appearance was a part of it. He died in 2009 of cancer after some more minor comebacks.

Bob Dylan was a big fan. Here's what he said about him in 2015:

"He was a true original. He did it all: He played, he sang, he wrote. He would have been a bigger star but Jerry Lee [Lewis] came along. And you know what happens when someone like that comes along. You just don't stand a chance. So Billy became what is known in the industry — a condescending term — as a one-hit wonder. But sometimes, just sometimes, once in a while, a one-hit wonder can make a more powerful impact than a recording star who's got 20 or 30 hits behind him. And Billy's hit song was called "Red Hot," and it was red hot. It could blast you out of your skull and make you feel happy about it. Change your life."

I don't have much to say about John Prine in comparison, because I figure a lot more people interested in this album will know about Prine than they will about Riley. A few months prior to this concert, Prine released his sixth studio album, "Pink Cadillac." It was different from his previous albums. Instead of his usual singer-songwriter style, he focused more on 1950s rock and roll, with about half of the album being covers of songs from that era, and the originals on the album being influenced by that style. We can see some of that in this concert, for instance his cover of the 1950s classic "Ubangi Stomp." And his involvement with Riley on two songs fits perfectly into that.

The recording of this unreleased concert is pretty good. However, I had some trouble with the cheering at the ends of songs ending abruptly. Probably, that was when the TV show quickly cut to commercial breaks. So I did a little editing to add a reasonable amount of cheering after every song. The last song, "How Lucky," had no cheering at all. It probably wasn't actually recorded in the same concert as the rest. But I added some cheering at the end of that one too to help it fit in.

This album is 49 minutes long.

All songs by John Prine except where noted 

01 talk 
02 Automobile 
03 Spanish Pipedream 
04 Fish and Whistle
05 talk 
06 Angel from Montgomery
07 The Accident [Things Could Be Worse] 
08 Ubangi Stomp 
09 talk
10 Hello in There 
11 Paradise
12 talk 
13 No Name Girl (John Prine & Billy Lee Riley)
14 talk (John Prine & Billy Lee Riley)
15 Red Hot (John Prine & Billy Lee Riley)
16 Bruised Orange [Chain of Sorrow] 
17 Saigon 
18 How Lucky 

DYLAN OF THE DAY | Bob Dylan - Toad's Place, New Haven, CT, USA, 1990 | ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST

 

Bob Dylan - Toad's Place, New Haven, CT, 1-12-1990

Paul he say: I'm excited to present this Bob Dylan concert, especially since it sounds better than ever before. Some say this is the greatest concert Dylan ever did, or at least the most interesting. It can't be denied it's the longest, by a good margin. The concert was over four hours long! For the first time in many years, Dylan performed in a club (Toad's Place), with a crowd of only 750 people. He basically did a live rehearsal to get warmed up before going on a world tour, trying out lots of rarities.

However, I never even had this in my music collection until a couple of days ago, due to poor sound quality. All that has emerged from the concert is an unreleased audience bootleg. But things changed in mid-March 2025 when Captain Acid posted an upgrade to it. He did phase and level correction, and new equalization. I listened to the result, and I was impressed. 

Then I decided to do what I could to improve that version still more. I'm willing to make more drastic edits than most people. When it comes to audience bootlegs, my one big trick is to use the MVSEP audio editing program to remove the crowd noise. The taper had to be standing in the middle of a packed audience that was very excited to see Dylan do such a special show in a small venue. That meant there was a constant ambient noise of people talking and hollering through the songs. I basically got rid of all that, while keeping the crowd noise at the ends of songs and between songs. This technique more or less can make an audience boot sound like a soundboard instead. 

After that, I ran all the songs through the UVR5 audio editing program, to adjust the balance between the vocals and everything else. I boosted Dylan's vocals a little bit overall. But I also made extra little boosts here and there when some of his singing was harder to hear. This also allowed me to get rid of more crowd noise that had been missed by the MVSEP program. For instance, at the start of "Everything Is Broken," someone standing near the taper could be heard saying over the music, "get down to her level... can't see anything." I got rid of that entirely, and other little bits like that. 

I could have put "[Edit]" in the titles to many songs, due to the extra editing work I did. But I only put that in the titles of the two songs I did the most work on, "Across the Borderline" and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry." The latter was the biggest pain in the butt, because some excited fan kept shouting "Woo!" noises through the song. I had to get rid of each of those individually. There's only a couple that remain, when the "Woo" noises overlapped with Dylan's vocals. I also got rid of some dead air between songs, but there wasn't much of that.

I wouldn't say this sounds as good as an excellent soundboard now, but there certainly some soundboards that sound worse than this. It's still rather rough, but I think that's part of its charm, capturing a small club atmosphere, where you can hear individual people clapping and cheering.  

Here's some more information on the concert and how it came to be. In late 1989, Dylan's career was revitalized with the release of the studio album "Oh Mercy," his best album in many years. However, his concerts didn't seem inspired... until this one. Rolling Stone Magazine wrote an entire article about this concert, entitled "Bringing It All Back Home: Dylan Thrills With Exhaustive Show." It read: "The January 12th show was a striking contrast to Dylan's recent lackluster, perfunctory performances, at which he has appeared so indifferent that the audience has been lucky if he acknowledged its presence, much less invested any of himself in his songs. But at Toad's, he rose to the challenge of his first scheduled club date in countless years with a brilliant marathon show."

Here's a link if you want to read the entire article. I highly recommend giving it a read:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bringing-it-all-back-home-dylan-thrills-with-exhaustive-show-71301/

Before Dylan, other musical acts had started using Toad's Place for secret open rehearsals. The most famous of these was the Rolling Stones, who gave a legendary performance there just five months prior to this concert. (I've thought about posting that concert too, but the audience bootleg for that one sounds much worse than this one.) Probably, Dylan heard about the Stones doing that, and decided he wanted to give that a try as well. He demanded 100 percent of the ticket sale profits, which the club happily gave him. No doubt, they more than made up for that with alcohol sales during the extremely long concert. Plus, the credibility it gave the venue was priceless. Since then, many other musical acts have done similar open rehearsal type shows there.

Dylan was backed by G.E. Smith on lead guitar (who was in the Saturday Night Live band), Tony Garnier on bass, and Christopher Parker on drums. The band came onstage shortly before 9 P.M., and played for an hour, then left the stage. Brian Phelps, the owner of the club, was later interviewed about the concert. Here's what he said happened next: 

"Dylan asked me if he could play another set. And we said sure, go ahead! You know, and they asked again, and played a third. Can I play another? You know what? Yeah! Go ahead! There's no problem!  He wasn't sure what he was going to play, it was like a practice session, because he was going on this theater tour. I think most of the theaters were 5,000 seats on up, and our show was like a practice session... Well for him anyways, but for the people that were there, they were just loving it, and they really couldn't believe it."

Dylan's fourth and final set began around 1:00 A.M. Phelps had to shut the bar down at that time due to state law. But instead of stopping the show, staffers just collected all of the drinks from the crowd so the show could go on. Dylan finally finished at 2:20 A.M.! He threw his harmonica into the adoring crowd, and walked off after 4 hours, 20 minutes. 

He ended up performing 50 songs in total. But what's really interesting in that he generally avoided playing most of his best known, most frequently played songs in favor of rarities. Many of the songs had never been performed by him before. All of these were done in concert for the first time: "Trouble No More," "I've Been All Around This World," "Political World," "Where Teardrops Fall," "What Was It You Wanted," "Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie," "Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)," "Wiggle Wiggle," "Key to the Highway," and "Dancing in the Dark." And yes, you read that right, that last song mentioned was "Dancing in the Dark," as in the huge 1984 hit by Bruce Springsteen. It was the one and only time Dylan played it in concert. If you listen carefully to the recording, it's clear Dylan didn't remember most of the words to it, but he was having a fun time winging it anyway. 

In addition to all those debuts, there were lots of rarities played. For instance, he did the Traveling Wilburys song "Congratulations," apparently after someone in the audience shouted for it. That was only one of three times he ever performed that. A bunch of the debuts I mentioned were covers: "Trouble No More," "I've Been All Around This World," "Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie," "Key to the Highway," and "Dancing in the Dark." But he played many other covers too: "Walk a Mile in My Shoes," "Everybody's Movin'," "Across the Borderline," "Paid the Price," "Help Me Make It Through the Night," "Lonesome Whistle," "Confidential," "So Long, Good Luck and Goodbye," "Peggy-O," "When Did You Leave Heaven," "In the Pines," and "Precious Memories." That's a lot of covers, 18 in all.

Unfortunately, because this concert was a kind of open rehearsal, Dylan repeated some songs to make sure the band played them to his satisfaction. "I've Been All Around This World" and "Where Teardrops Fall" were played twice. That wasn't so bad, but "Political World" was played three times. I decided I didn't want to hear all those repeats every time I listen to this. But some other people might, so I'm including the extra versions, but only as bonus tracks. I kept the last versions in the main song list, assuming they improved as they played the songs more.

This really was a remarkable concert for Dylan. It seems to have been the only one he ever did like this, where he let it all hang out and played whatever the hell he wanted for as long as he wanted. He even warmed up enough to chat some with the audience and take requests, which he basically never did. It's not just the longest Dylan concert by a mile, it's also one of a handful of the longest concerts by any famous rock musician, period. He even beat the longest Bruce Springsteen concert ever by a few minutes, and Springsteen is famous for his long concerts.

Here's one more anecdote from Brian Phelps, the owner of Toad's Place:

"[Many years later,] I actually gave the whole rundown to his son Jakob, from the Wallflowers, who have played Toad's a number of times, and I told him about his father's show. He started peppering me with questions about it, and he really enjoyed the whole story about how it happened, and the length of the show, and everything that went on that night. He was a great great guy too. Jacob enjoyed the history of the club, and the history of playing in the same place where his father played his longest show in."

This concert is three hours and forty minutes long, without the bonus songs. Including those, it's four hours and two minutes long. The actual concert was still longer than that, due to some short breaks between sets."

 01 Walk a Mile in My Shoes 
02 One More Cup of Coffee [Valley Below] 
03 Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35 
04 Trouble No More 
05 Tears of Rage 
06 I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
07 It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry [Edit] 
08 Everybody's Movin'
09 Watching the River Flow 
10 What Was It You Wanted 
11 Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie
12 talk
13 Lenny Bruce 
14 I Believe in You 
15 talk 
16 Man of Peace 
17 Across the Borderline [Edit] 
18 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat 
19 All Along the Watchtower 
20 talk
21 Tight Connection to My Heart [Has Anybody Seen My Love] 
22 What Good Am I 
23 Wiggle Wiggle 
24 Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again 
25 Paid the Price
26 Help Me Make It through the Night 
27 Man in the Long Black Coat 
28 Congratulations 
29 Dancing in the Dark 
30 Lonesome Whistle Blues 
31 Confidential 
32 In the Garden 
33 Everything Is Broken 
34 talk 
35 So Long, Good Luck and Goodbye 
36 Where Teardrops Fall 
37 talk 
38 Political World 
39 Pretty Peggy-O 
40 I'll Remember You 
41 Key to the Highway 
42 talk 
43 Joey 
44 Lay Lady Lay 
45 I Don't Believe You [She Acts like We Never Have Met] 
46 When Did You Leave Heaven
47 Maggie's Farm 
48 I've Been All Around This World 
49 In the Pines
50 Highway 61 Revisited 
51 Precious Memories 
52 Like a Rolling Stone 

I've Been All Around This World [First Version] 
Political World [First Version] 
Political World [Second Version] 
Where Teardrops Fall [First Version] 

Paul offers two sources for this pixeldrain and bestfile (it’s long story) and personally I have never had any difficulties with Pixeldrain and in fact prefer it to many others but hey, I don’t post things here . . . . so you pays yer money and you takes your. . . oh wait!

Annie Lennox - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: BBC One Sessions, St. Luke's, London UK, 2009 | Albums That Should Exist

 So I was AFK yesterday as we had a day celebrating a family birthday so I posted a couple of tracks to keep you going so here we are back to posting links to the select items from out there in the blogosphere! Here we go with our Annie! The BEST voice in Music of the 20th/21st Century IMHO!

Annie Lennox - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: BBC One Sessions, St. Luke's, London, Britain, 3-7-2009

Paul says : A while back, I was looking for a good BBC concert from the Eurythmics. At the time, I didn't find one, but I found one from that band's lead singer, Annie Lennox, so I posted that. I since have discovered a lot more stuff. I've found three Eurythimcs BBC concerts. I've also found another from Lennox solo, so I'm posting that first.

The unique feature of this concert is that Lennox is backed by an orchestra. 

Lennox had a very successful solo career after the Eurythmics broke up around the end of the 1980s. Around the time of this concert, she released a greatest hits album called "The Annie Lennox Collection." It featured two new songs, and one of them, "Shining Light," was performed here. Other than that, she stuck to playing her most famous songs from the Eurythmics as well as her solo career to that point.

Oh, by the way, as you'd expect by now, I've renamed that earlier Lennox BBC concert mentioned above, adding "Volume 1" to the title. If you want the updated version, here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/12/annie-lennox-bbc-in-concert-riverside.html 

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 Little Bird 
02 Walking on Broken Glass 
03 No More 'I Love You's'
04 There Must Be an Angel [Playing with My Heart] 
05 Here Comes the Rain Again
06 Cold
07 talk 
08 A Thousand Beautiful Things 
09 Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves
10 Ghosts in My Machine 
11 When Tomorrow Comes
12 Shining Light
13 Why 
14 Sweet Dreams [Are Made of This] 

 

Here Comes The Rain Again - BBC Radio One St Luke's

Maria McKee - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, University of Manchester Students' Union, Manchester UK 1991

Maria McKee - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, University of Manchester Students' Union, Manchester, Britain, 3-23-1991

Paul says : Generally speaking, I'm focusing only on posting BBC albums from musical acts where I've already posted at least some BBC albums from them already. But I'm making an exception here since I just put this together and it feels like a very long time since I've posted any music from the great Maria McKee. Besides, I have posted a BBC album by her 1980s band Lone Justice.

A live album has been released called "Live at the BBC." It is made up of selections from two BBC concerts she did, one in 1991 and the other in 1993. I thought that was all there was available, but I recently found a pretty good audience bootleg of the 1991 concert. So I used all the recordings from the official album that I could, since those have better sound quality. Then I filled in the missing songs from the audience boot. (In case you're curious, the songs from the live album are tracks 1, 2, 3, 9, 12, 13, and 17. Together, they make up about 30 minutes of this album.)

To improve the audience boot-sourced songs, I ran them through the MVSEP audio editing program, and removed all of the crowd noise, except for a little at the starts of songs and the usual cheering at the ends of songs. So basically I got rid of all the ambient noise during songs. That helped some, but still, the songs from the official live album sound better. Also, I think the person who taped this had the unfortunate habit of turning the recording off as soon as each song ended. I'm guessing this from the way the cheering sometimes got suddenly cut off, as well as the lack of any banter between songs, except for once near the end. So that's not ideal, but at least we got this much.

My favorite era of McKee's music was early in her solo career, when she was more steeped in roots music, like soul and country. So this is prime McKee for me. 

This album is an hour and 14 minutes long. 

01 I've Forgotten What It Was in You [That Put the Need in Me] (Maria McKee)
02 Am I the Only One [Who's Ever Felt This Way] (Maria McKee)
03 Shelter (Maria McKee)
04 A Real Life Story (Maria McKee)
05 Panic Beach (Maria McKee)
06 Wheels (Maria McKee)
07 Hold Me (Maria McKee)
08 This Property Is Condemned (Maria McKee)
09 Show Me Heaven (Maria McKee)
10 Breathe (Maria McKee)
11 Break It Up (Maria McKee)
12 I Found Love (Maria McKee)
13 A Good Heart (Maria McKee)
14 This World Is Not My Home (Maria McKee)
15 Sweet Sweet Baby [I'm Falling] (Maria McKee)
16 Ways to Be Wicked (Maria McKee)
17 Drinkin' in My Sunday Dress (Maria McKee)
18 Nobody's Child (Maria McKee)
19 talk (Maria McKee)
20 I've Got a Feeling (Maria McKee)

Van Morrison Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm UK 1987 | Albums That Should Exist

Van Morrison - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-21-1987

Paul says : Here's another Van Morrison BBC album. This time, it's a full concert at the annual Glastonbury Festival.

I believe Morrison has performed at Glastonbury more than any other major music act. He's performed there eleven times so far: in 1982, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1997, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2016, and 2021! But weirdly, out of all of those times, it seems the only time his performance was broadcast on the BBC was this 1987 concert. That's especially strange because at least since 1997, the BBC has been broadcasting virtually the entire festival. He must have had some special exception against broadcasting his sets. I couldn't even find worthy audience bootlegs from his other Glastonbury concerts.

But at least we have this one. Serious Van Morrison fans have put this in the top ten of all of his concert recordings, according to a poll I saw. Personally, I'm not a big fan of his 1980s music, where he moved to more of a mellow New Age style with occasionally overt Christian themes. But at least a concert like this is more lively, mixing his best 80s songs with classics from earlier decades.

The bootleg recording of this concert is excellent. There was only one minor problem in that the applause after a few of the songs obviously got cut off early. So I patched in more applause in those cases, and made sure the transition to the next song sounded good, without any drastic drops in volume. 

This album is an hour and 32 minutes long. 

01 Moondance [Instrumental] (Van Morrison)
02 Celtic Swing [Instrumental] (Van Morrison)
03 Northern Muse [Solid Ground] (Van Morrison)
04 Vanlose Stairway (Van Morrison)
05 It's All in the Game (Van Morrison)
06 Help Me (Van Morrison)
07 Foreign Window (Van Morrison)
08 Dweller on the Threshold (Van Morrison)
09 Cleaning Windows (Van Morrison)
10 A Sense of Wonder (Van Morrison)
11 And the Healing Has Begun (Van Morrison)
12 Celtic Ray (Van Morrison)
13 One Irish Rover (Van Morrison)
14 In the Garden (Van Morrison)
15 Summertime in England (Van Morrison)
16 Full Force Gale (Van Morrison)
17 Bright Side of the Road (Van Morrison)
18 Rave On, John Donne - Did Ye Get Healed (Van Morrison)

Elvis Costello - BBC Sessions: In Concert, Hope and Anchor, London, UK 1980 |Albums That Should Exist

 Elvis Costello - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Hope and Anchor, London, Britain, 5-14-1980

Paul says : Here's a 1980 BBC concert by Elvis Costello with his backing band at the time, the Attractions.

Costello has had a long and great music career. But he probably was at the peak of his popularity around the time of this concert. His fourth album, "Get Happy!!" had been released earlier in 1980. Those four sold well, and still are his highest rated albums according to the crowd-sourced rateyourmusic.com. So this consists of nothing but solid songs.

This album is unreleased. The sound quality is pretty good, but maybe a tad lower than the usual BBC standards. 

Some of the songs here are covers: "Help Me," "I Stand Accused," "One More Heartache," "Little Sister," and "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding." A few songs are missing, all towards the start of the show: "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down" (another cover), "The Beat," "He'll Have to Go" (yet another cover), and "(I Don't Want to Go To) Chelsea."

This album is 56 minutes long. 

01 talk 
02 Temptation 
03 Help Me
04 I Stand Accused 
05 One More Heartache
06 Secondary Modern 
07 talk
08 Little Sister 
09 talk 
10 High Fidelity 
11 Lipstick Vogue 
12 Waiting for the End of the World 
13 talk 
14 Don't Look Back
15 Girls Talk 
16 Watching the Detectives 
17 You Belong to Me
18 talk
19 Oliver's Army 
20 Mystery Dance 
21 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding 
22 Pump It Up 

Joan Baez - BBC Sessions - In Concert - Dominion Theatre London UK 1993 | Albums That Should Exist

 

Joan Baez - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Dominion Theatre, London, Britain, 5-22-1993

Paul says : When I posted a "BBC Sessions, Volume 2" album by Joan Baez a few weeks ago, I noted that I probably was missing some other BBC concerts she did. That's still true, but at least I found this one since then. It took place in 1993. 

When I've thought about Baez, I've generally considered her a folk singer in her 1960s and 1970s heyday. But after listening to this, plus another BBC concert I've found from the 1990s, I'm more impressed with her later material. She didn't start out a songwriter, but she eventually grew into being a pretty good one. For instance, her big 1975 hit "Diamonds and Rust" was written by her. And she had good taste in cover versions. So although I wasn't familiar with most of these songs, I thought they were pretty good.

This remains officially unreleased. The sound quality is solid, although this was sourced from relatively low quality mp3s. I edited them a bit, but I couldn't improve things much.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word 
02 talk 
03 Isaac and Abraham
04 talk 
05 Amsterdam 
06 talk 
07 Play Me Backwards 
08 talk 
09 Strange Rivers 
10 talk
11 Welcome Me
12 There but for Fortune 
13 talk
14 Edge of Glory 
15 Diamonds and Rust
16 talk 
17 I'm with You 
18 talk 
19 Forever Young 

Bob Dylan - Philips Arena, Atlanta, Georgia, USA 2002 | ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST

 Bob Dylan - Philips Arena, Atlanta, GA, 2-9-2002

Paul says : "When it comes to posting music by Bob Dylan, I have been working my way chronologically through his career. As I write this in January 2025, I've only made it to the late 1970s, so I have a long way to go. But I'm posting this concert from 2002 way out of chronological order because I only recently discovered it, and I think it's fantastic.

From the late 1980s onward, Dylan has toured a remarkable degree, and he's still going today as I write this. But since the late 1990s, there have been almost no soundboard bootlegs, no FM radio concert broadcasts, and no official live albums that weren't archival from previous decades. So, if you've wanted to hear his concerts from at least 2000 onwards, you've had to cope with audience bootlegs that sometimes sound good, but never great.

However, this concert is a staggering exception. It's one of only two soundboard bootlegs from him after 2000 that I know of. The sound quality and performance is so good that there's even a Rolling Stone Magazine article about it, written in 2021. The title of the article is "Hear a Pristine Recording of a Stunning 2002 Bob Dylan Concert," and it's basically a plea to listen to this show.

Here's some excerpts from that article:

[This bootleg] was reportedly sourced to an Assisted Listening Device connected straight to the soundboard, which explains why the sound quality is absolutely perfect. Simply put, it sounds just about as good as any official live album. The show also captured Dylan during a peak era of the Never Ending Tour. This was just five months after "Love and Theft" hit stores, and the new songs infused the show with incredible energy and purpose. Charlie Sexton and Larry Campbell are two of the best guitarists he’s ever played with, and he gave them a lot of freedom to stretch out and even harmonize with him on the vocals.

The song selection is excellent, mixing the Love and Theft tunes with hits like "All Along the Watchtower" and "Like a Rolling Stone," deeper cuts like "Drifter’s Escape" and "My Back Pages," and traditional folk covers like "Searching for a Soldier’s Grave" and set opener "I Am the Man, Thomas." And while his vocals are no match for the heights he reached back in 1966, 1975, or 1980, they’re crisp, clear, and haunting.  

Hear a Pristine Recording of a Stunning 2002 Bob Dylan Concert

I agree with all that. But there was one big problem with the recording, which I have now fixed. Namely, the recording caught what happened on stage perfectly, but at the cost of virtually no audience noise whatsoever. When each song ended, you basically just heard silence, which is weird for a concert. Thankfully, now there are many ways to edit audio files. First, I split each song into crowd noise and everything else using the MVSEP program. The crowd noise part was basically a flat line when I looked at it in Audacity. For some songs, I literally would have to zoom in to see anything there at all. But I tried increasing the volume of the cheering after each song, by ten or twenty times or more. For normal recordings, this wouldn't work, because one would get an overwhelming amount of hiss. But this recording was so pristine that it actually worked really well. After I joined the crowd noise back with the music, the result has the crowd cheering a normal level after every song. And it's exactly what was really there, just buried, as opposed to many times where I've had to paste in cheering from the ends of other songs and things like that.

So even if you have a recording of this concert already, I highly suggest you get this one. And if you're a fan of Dylan's live performances at all, this is a "must have," for all the reasons mentioned in the Rolling Stone article."

This album is two hours and 20 minutes long. 

01 I Am the Man, Thomas 
02 My Back Pages 
03 It's Alright Ma [I'm Only Bleeding] 
04 Searching for a Soldier's Grave 
05 Lonesome Day Blues 
06 Lay Lady Lay
07 Floater 
08 High Water [For Charley Patton] 
09 It Ain't Me, Babe 
10 Masters of War 
11 Tangled Up in Blue
12 Summer Days
13 Sugar Baby
14 Drifter's Escape 
15 Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35 
16 Things Have Changed
17 Like a Rolling Stone 
18 Forever Young 
19 Honest with Me 
20 Blowin' in the Wind 
21 All Along the Watchtower

Now the  perspicacious amongst you will have noted I said I would stop posting Dylan boots after having collected kind of everything and he releases (sic) all his boots day by day and that last soundboard challenge to my ears meant a very heavy bass and drum and vocal mixed way down that I kinda gave up. There ARE (of course) exceptions and this challenge from Paul at ATSE was too good not to accept and has thrown the gauntlet down and see what we make of it!

P.S. its GREAT!

Alternate sources as ever from Paul including the always excellent Pixeldrain

ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST : David Bowie - BBC Sessions, Volume 11

David Bowie - BBC Sessions, Volume 11: 1999-2000

Paul says : I love David Bowie's music from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. I think his songwriting wasn't as strong after that. However, he still was an excellent performer. I have a bunch of his BBC albums still to post from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Generally speaking, most of the songs he did in these sessions are from earlier in his career anyway, so you should like these albums even if you're not such a big fan of his new material from those years.

This album is a case in point. It's a collection of BBC studio sessions for the most part, with just three songs that were relatively new at the time ("Survive," "Something in the Air," and "Repetition"). The first seven tracks are from an October 1999 session before a very small audience. Tracks 8 and 9 are from an appearance on the BBC TV show "Later... with Jools Holland." 

Finally, the last four tracks are from the 2000 Glastonbury Festival, which was broadcast on the BBC. Normally, I would have posted the entire Glastonbury performance, but that has been officially released as the live album "Glastonbury 2000." Also, I have other very similar performances of most of the songs from that, since the next album in this series is a full BBC concert that took place just two days after Glastonbury. So I only included four songs that he didn't play in that concert.

I used the MVSEP audio editing program to remove the crowd noise from the first seven tracks plus the last four, so everything here would sound like it was recorded in a studio. There wasn't much clapping with the first seven anyway, since it sounds like the audience was quite small. Everything here is unreleased except for the four Glastonbury tracks.

This album is 50 minutes long. 

01 Survive (David Bowie)
02 Drive-In Saturday (David Bowie)
03 Something in the Air (David Bowie)
04 Can't Help Thinking about Me (David Bowie)
05 talk (David Bowie)
06 Repetition (David Bowie)
07 China Girl (David Bowie)
08 Ashes to Ashes (David Bowie)
09 Cracked Actor (David Bowie)
10 Changes (David Bowie)
11 Station to Station (David Bowie)
12 talk (David Bowie)
13 Golden Years (David Bowie) 

ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST : Roxy Music BBC Sessions 72-73

Roxy Music - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1972-1973

Here's a third album of Roxy Music performing for the BBC. This is an album of studio sessions.

The first two songs are from a July 1972 studio session. The first song, "Virginia Plain," made it onto a super deluxe edition of the band's debut album, "Roxy Music." But the second song, "If There Is Something," remains unreleased. It's quite a long song, about 12 and a half minutes long.

All the remaining songs are unreleased. "For Your Pleasure" is from the BBC TV show "Full House." The next three are from a March 1973 studio session. The final song, "In Every Dream Home a Heartache," was performed on the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show.

Unfortunately, it seems Roxy Music stopped doing BBC studio sessions or TV appearances after this. However, they still did some BBC concerts much later, which I plan on posting here.

This album is 36 minutes long. 

This album is 36 minutes long. 

01 Virginia Plain 
02 If There Is Something 
03 For Your Pleasure
04 Editions of You 
05 Do the Strand 
06 Pyjamarama 
07 In Every Dream Home a Heartache 

By this time Brian Eno had left to go on to bigger and better things and Ferry was slotted into his fifties wobbly voiced crooner schtick that not everyone was taken with. The excellent musicians particularly Manzanera and Mackay were to do solo work but never appreciated to join forces so strongly ever after this. Shame but hey, watcha gonna do! 

Roxy Music - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London 72 | Albums That Should Exist

Roxy Music - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 8-3-1972

Paul says :Here's the second album of Roxy Music performing for the BBC. This time, it's a concert.

This concert, recorded for BBC radio, took place a couple of months after the release of the band's first album, "Roxy Music." It also took place just after the release of the band's first hit single, "Virginia Plain," which was not included on the album. The songs are mostly from the first album, plus the single. However, they also played a song introduced as "The Bogus Man, Part 2." In fact, the song was an early version of "Grey Lagoons," which would appear on the band's 1973 album "For Your Pleasure."

Most of the songs here were officially released as part of the "super deluxe edition" of the "Roxy Music" album. However, the song "The Bogus Man, Part 2" was not included, probably because it was significantly different from the final version. Furthermore, none of the BBC DJ chatter between songs were included. But I wanted to include that, because it was actually part of the concert, with the DJ talking on stage as it happened. In this case, the DJ was Bob Harris, known for his quiet voice. Luckily, I was able to find a bootleg version with the extra song and all the banter.

The last song here, "Ladytron," was not part of the concert. Instead, it was from an appearance on the BBC TV show "The Old Grey Whistle Test" in June 1972. I've included it here because there was another version of that song in Volume 1 and the song wasn't performed in the concert here.

This album is 41 minutes long. 

01 The Bob [Medley]
02 talk 
03 The Bogus Man, Part 2 [Early Version of Grey Lagoons] 
04 talk
05 Sea Breezes 
06 talk 
07 Virginia Plain
08 talk 
09 Chance Meeting 
10 talk 
11 Re-Make-Re-Model
12 Ladytron

John Peel introduces Roxy Music 1972

Ronnie Lane - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, London, Britain, 4-23-1974 | Albums That Should Exist

Ronnie Lane - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, London, Britain, 23 April 1974

Paul says: About six months ago, I posted the first volume of Ronnie Lane performing for the BBC. I kinda lost track of this series for a bit, but I'm back with Volume 2. The first volume was all studio sessions, whereas this is all live material, most of it coming from one concert. Two more volumes are planned.

The first twelve tracks all come from one concert, which took place in London on April 23, 1974. It's from "BBC In Concert," which is probably the early 1970s TV show of that name that I've posted a bunch of albums from. These tracks all were released as part of the album "You Never Can Tell."

But there are a few tracks after that. "What Went Down (That Night with You)," is unreleased, and comes from the British TV show "Rock On with Kid Jensen" in late 1974. 

The remaining tracks, 14 through 19, all come from the same concert, which took place in Victoria Palace in London on March 16, 1975. However, different tracks come from different albums: "Just a Moment," "How Come," and "Kuschty Rye: The Singles." I'm guessing somewhere in the record company vaults a full concert recording exists, but only bits and pieces are being released from time to time.

By the way, note that for track 10, "I Believe in You," Lane basically let another musical act, Gallagher and Lyle, take over for one song. At the time, they were mainly known as a songwriting duo, but they would have some hits of their own in 1976. 

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 Last Orders Please 
02 talk 
03 Done This One Before 
04 talk
05 Flags and Banners
06 Tell Everyone
07 talk 
08 How Come 
09 talk 
10 I Believe in You 
11 Debris 
12 Ooh La La 
13 What Went Down [That Night with You] )
14 talk
15 From the Late to the Early - How Come
16 Sweet Virginia 
17 talk
18 You're So Rude
19 Stone [Evolution]

 

Ooh La La - Ronnie Lane’s  Slim Chance 1974

Roll On Babe - Ronnie Lane 1974