Jimi Hendrix - Burning Desire (1970)

 

BURNING DESIRE

1. Ezy Ryder (Live)

2. Stop (Live)

3. Earth Blues (Live)

4. Stepping Stone (Live)

5. Bleeding Heart (Live)

6. Burning Desire (Live)

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    While the Fire To Freedom boxset is my final statement on Jimi Hendrix's core catalogue, there are still a few other things of his that I intend to share, such as this live album entitled Burning Desire. Recorded during the same four New Year's 1969/70 concerts as Hendrix's authorised Band Of Gypsys LP (which contains, in all honesty, the cream of the crop of those shows), Burning Desire features six songs rarely played live by Hendrix in what are perhaps their strongest performances captured on tape. Among them are the catchy cover "Stop" (sung by drummer Buddy Miles), the time-change workout "Burning Desire," and live versions of one and two songs apiece from the Strate Ahead and First Rays Of The New Rising Sun albums in the boxset, "Ezy Ryder," "Earth Blues," "Stepping Stone," and "Bleeding Heart." All of the songs are taken from 2019's Songs For Groovy Children box set, and the cover is taken from Live At The Fillmore East (1999).

CD-quality down-low'd linc's here

The Beatles - Hey Jude (1969)

 

HEY JUDE

1. A Beginning

2. Revolution

3. Paperback Writer

4. Rain

5. The Inner Light

6. Across The Universe

7. Hey Bulldog

8. Lady Madonna

9. Hey Jude

10. Old Brown Shoe

11. The Ballad Of John And Yoko

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    The Beatles recorded a large number of songs that didn't make it onto their albums. These songs were collected on the Past Masters compilation in the late '80s, but I find it lacks cohesion when listened to from start to finish, and as such makes for an unsatisfying listen; as a result, I have been dividing those tracks (and select others) into several much more stylistically unified albums. This one is called Hey Jude, and is based on the compilation album of the same name that was released in over 30 countries that are not England in February 1970 and contains many of the same songs. The tracks included in this version, however, were all released on singles in 1966, 1968, and 1969, except for two. The radically different original version of "Across The Universe" was released on a charity album in 1969, and the orchestral introduction titled "A Beginning" was originally recorded for, of all things, their country song "Don't Pass Me By." I laboured over the song flow of this album for several years in order to make it as cohesive as possible despite being recorded over such a relatively wide period. Both mono and stereo mixes of the album are presented here, with mono being recommended because the mixes are stronger; however, the final two songs are stereo on both releases, and the mono "A Beginning" is just a fold-down from the stereo mix. 

George Harrison's Wonderwall Music soundtrack.

    All tracks were recorded in London, England, except for the backing track of "The Inner Light," which I would like to highlight. Besides some singing, none of the Beatles actually play on it; the instrumental take was recorded in Bombay, India, by guitarist George Harrison at the tail end of the sessions for his incredible Wonderwall Music (1968), which, orientalist or not, is in my opinion the best album to come out of the Beatleverse beyond some of Yoko Ono's work. The music here, which I find very beautiful, is played by several excellent Indian musicians: Ashish Khan on sarod, Mahapurush Misra on tabla and pakavaj, S.R. Kenkare on flute, Sharad Ghosh/Hanuman Jadev on shenai, and Rij Ram Desad on the beautiful harmonium. The genesis of the lyrics is also rather unique for the band; here is an excerpt from the Beatles Bible about how they came to be:

    "On 29 September 1967, Harrison and John Lennon had appeared on The Frost Programme to talk about Transcendental Meditation. The programme was a success and they were invited back on 4 October to take part in a further discussion. Among the other guests was Juan Mascaró, a Sanskrit scholar at Cambridge University, who later sent Harrison a copy of his anthology Lamps Of Fire. Mascaró highlighted a passage within it from chapter 47 of the Tao Te Ching [a major, ancient Daoist text], which he suggested could be set to music. The original words were:

Without taking a step outdoors

You know the whole world;

Without taking a peep out the window

You know the colour of the sky.

The more you experience,

The less you know.

The sage wanders without knowing,

Sees without looking,

Accomplishes without acting."

CD-quality down-low'd linc's here

The Rolling Stones - December's Children (And Everybody's) (1965)

 

DECEMBER'S CHILDREN (AND EVERYBODY'S)

1. She Said Yeah

2. Get Off Of My Cloud

3. Heart Of Stone

4. I've Been Loving You Too Long

5. My Girl

6. Gotta Get Away

7. Oh Baby (We Got A Good Thing Goin')

8. Talkin' 'Bout You

9. I'm Free

10. Blue Turns To Grey

11. The Singer Not The Song

12. As Tears Go By

13. I'm Moving On (Live)

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    Welcome to the second installment of Rolling Stones' Brian Jones-era discography cleanup series. The band and their management assembled very different albums for release in the European and North American markets during this time, which has resulted in a confusing mess where different albums have a bunch of the same songs on them. An album called December's Children (And Everybody's) was released in North America and selected other markets in (shocker) December of 1965. About half of the album's songs were newly recorded for the album, while the rest were older recordings cherrypicked seemingly at random for this release. This makes the album rather disjointed, and despite having two big hits on it ("Get Off My Cloud," and "As Tears Go By"), it is not generally considered to be one of their better LPs.

    As part of an attempt to streamline the mess of their discography and simultaneously make a marked improvement to the album, I have replaced the tacked-on older recordings with less old ones from the sessions for their previous album, Out Of Our Heads (1965). I have also resequenced most of the songs, so as to allow for better stylistic cohesion. All tracks are in mono, sourced from the 2002 remasters. For extra clarity, here is a list of their revamped 1960s album discography shown in chronological order, with official releases in bold and Ultimate Albums Blog releases in italics. It will be updated as the series continues.

The Rolling Stones Ultimate (Brian Jones-Era) Discography:

1. TBA

2. The Rolling Stones [UK]

3. Confessin' The Blues

4. TBA

5. Out Of Our Heads [US]

6. December's Children (And Everybody's)

7. Aftermath [UK]

8. Between The Buttons [UK]

9. TBA

10. Their Satanic Majesties Request

CD-quality down-low'd linc's here.

ABBA - The Day Before You Came (1982)

 

THE DAY BEFORE YOU CAME

1. You Owe Me One

2. Elaine

3. Under Attack

4. Should I Laugh Or Cry

5. I Am The City

6. Cassandra

7. The Day Before You Came

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    By 1982, every member of ABBA had filed for divorce from another member of ABBA. The couples had separated, and the hits were gradually drying up as well. The band had begun recording their next album that spring, but to no avail. Only two songs were finished, "You Owe Me One" and "I Am The City," before plans were changed. Instead of putting out a ninth album, they would instead record and promote two new singles, release a compilation album with said singles on it, and then take a break for a while. They recorded three songs that summer ("Under Attack," "Cassandra," and "The Day Before You Came") and used "You Owe Me One" as a B-side. Music videos were produced, but neither single was a big hit. Later on in 1983, Björn (one of the "B"s in ABBA) began looking into finishing up several of the band's unfinished recordings, but his cassettes of the tracks were then stolen from his car that very same day, eventually being bootlegged. This brought plans for a ninth album to a standstill until ABBA reunited in the 2010s for their reunion album, which contained none of these songs.

    Despite the fact that they only recorded those five tracks for it, a 1982 album can nonetheless be assembled if some additional material is brought to the table. I decided to add "Elaine" and "Should I Laugh Or Cry," ABBA's non-album B-sides from 1980 and 1981, respectively; go any further back and you get into disco territory, which sounds markedly different. The resulting album comes in at a solid half hour, which is only slightly shorter than their shortest album, 1976's Arrival. The songs are sourced from the 2010s deluxe editions of Super Trooper (1980) and The Visitors (1981) and have been carefully ordered for song flow. The cover art has been used on several hits compilations over the years.

CD-quality down-low'd linc's here.

The Stooges - III (1971)

 

III

1. I Got A Right (Live)

2. You Don't Want My Name (Live)

3. Fresh Rag (Live)

4. Dead Body (Live)

5. Big Time Bum (Live)

6. Do You Want My Love (Live)

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    By 1971, proto-punk band the Stooges had composed their third album of material. But upon hearing them play it, their record label immediately dropped the group. This album was thus never recorded in the studio and, as a result, only reached the public during the band's four-month 1971 tour, where they played their entire album from start to finish. However, none of the concerts were professionally recorded, meaning that the only documentation of this album (and of the shortlived dual-guitar lineup of the band that performed it) are a few bootleg audience tapes recorded onto cassette, most of which sound pretty horrendous. Released in a semi-official box set some years ago, however, were audience recordings of two gigs played at New York City's Electric Circus in mid-May '71 that actually sound alright, although singer Iggy Pop is very low in the mix, nigh on inaudible at times; this isn't disastrous though, because the central focus of the music is really on the two churning, pummeling guitars, which come through loud and clear. I'll leave you, dear listener, to try and figure out the lyrics for yourself—for me, that's half the fun of the album.

    Anyways, considering that none of these songs made it onto the band's actual third album, I decided to pick the better version of each track they played between the two nights and remove nearly all the audience noise between the songs, so as to create a live album of this essentially unreleased project. I named it III to reflect both its chronological position in the band's catalog and its rough-draft nature, and designed the cover in homage to hardcore punk band Black Flag, who were heavily influenced by the third album that the band did write, record, and release: Raw Power (1973).

CD-quality down-low'd linc's here.