The Weepies - Butternut Ridge - 2004

[I've listened to this a few times now since posting and decided to make some changes (something I rarely do). I removed to audience to turn it into a studio album and while I was at it I redid the cover to my liking. If you downloaded the original I recommend re-downloading.]

The Weepies were a husband and wife duo consisting of Deb Talan and Steve Tannen. Their music has been described as "subtly intoxicating folk-pop". Light melodies with an acoustic base and wonderful harmonies. They met as mutual admirers of each others music which led to each contributing to to the other's next solo album both of which featured a version of Deb's song Rocks and Water. They immediately began writing together and self released the first Weepies album Happiness soon after the release of their solo albums. They married in 2007.
 
I discovered The Weepies around the time of their Hideaway album in 2008 while at a Barnes & Noble where I heard it playing in the music department. I fell in love with them right there and purchased the album. I bought their other CDs as I found them. Later I found some live shows posted on the Internet Archives. I downloaded five of the eight posted and gave them all a good listen then filed them away.
 
Yesterday (as I write this) I was organizing my library and came across those live shows and gave them another listen. They were mostly as I remembered them, very good to excellent audience recordings but one show stood out for a couple of reasons. First it was a soundboard of an intimate club show from 2004 between the release of their first and second albums and second they played a bunch of songs from their pre-Weepies solo albums. So I extracted those songs and found I had a nice little album and I decided to share it with you. Enjoy.

Tracklist

01 Rocks and Water
02 How Will He Find Me
03 The World Spins Madly On
04 Sing Me to Sleep
05 Tell Your Story Walking
06 Big Strong Girl
07 Cherry Trees
08 San Francisco
09 Love Come Knocking
10 Don't Pay No Mind
11 Comfort
12 Strange Place Now

Reality Notes

This show is just Deb and Steve, no backing band so the interplay between to two really shines. The recording is nearly perfect so I did not feel the need to do any post production work. The only flaw I found is that the applause after the song Comfort is cut short. I could have patched some from elsewhere but with everything else so perfect I decided I could live with it as is, so I hope you can too. The original full show is still up and can be found here along with the others.

In 2006 The Weepies released their Live Sessions EP. A six song EP of tunes from this same pre-Weepies era. Only three songs are duplicated here. I do not have that album so I don't know if they have other musicians behind them.

I found a cover I liked online and used that as a template to make my own. The original download came with an OK bootlegish cover but someone made a better one that was much nicer and already used the photo I intended to use (this photo was also used as part of the cover for the Live Sessions EP).

Remco Hendriks - Remco's Groove Lab

Two Posts in one month! I'm on a roll. When I published my last post, noting it was YouTube month I remembered Dutch bassist Remco Hendriks and my desire to put together and album's worth of tracks from his YouTube channel. There is a lot there so I focused on one playlist that features a live drummer, his videos are either solo or have a drum backing track, (some live and some canned?). I've mentioned before my preference for songs with vocals over instrumentals but sometimes exceptions must be made and Remco is worthy of that exception. Besides YouTube you can find Remco on iTunes, Spotify and elsewhere (links below) so go show him some love.

Remco describes his channel thusly "On this channel you can find one-take performances recorded on video. No edits, no talk, just good ol' funky music. All bass and all original compositions, hope you'll enjoy!". Watching him play is just as much fun as listening to him, maybe more. As a bassist myself, he and I share some things in common in style and technique but like Micheal Hedges for acoustic guitar, Remco takes things to a whole other level (I still can't slap with conviction). I should be so lucky to be able to do half the things he does. Enjoy.

 

Tracklist

01 Funk with Chords

02 Experimental Fretless Funk Rock 

03 Fingerstyle Funk

04 Fretless Funk

05 Funk Rock Fingerpicking

06 Freaky Funk Rock

07 OC-2 Octaver Dirty Bass

08 Thumb & Fingerstyle Funk Rock

09 Chill Funk

10 Funk Rock in 7/8

11 Shuffle Feel Funk

12 Fretless with Harmonics

13 6/8 Funk Slap

14 Dirty Fretless Rock Bass

15 Dirty Fretless Rock Bass #2

16 Experimental Funk Rock Slap Bass

17 Heavy Groove

18 Fretless Funk Jam

Reality Notes

 

I have been a subscriber of Remco's channel for some time now and I still haven't watched every video there. There are so many! Cutting the playlist down to a CD's worth wasn't easy. I started with the longest tracks and worked my way down from there. I kept them in the order they appear in the playlist.

The cover is a screenshot from one of the videos, cropped and slightly altered with added text and an image from one of his albums. Track titles were derived from the video titles which are more descriptions of style and technique with some redundant wording edited out.

 

Links

YouTube: youtube.com/@RemcosGrooveLab

Facebook; facebook.com/Gr00veLab

Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/4Rej4Q5WWdG3vQHwfNSfwB

Apple Music: music.apple.com/us/artist/remco-hendriks/1240178630

Bandcamp:  remcohendriks.bandcamp.com/

Larkin Poe - Stripped

September on this blog has been YouTube month. I don't have enough projects to fill the month but I do have this. I discovered Larkin Poe through fellow blogger Paul who runs the Albums That Should Exist blog. At the time of this post he has put up 18 separate albums from this duo. The bulk of those are pandemic era home concerts and collections of covers from the bands Tip o' the Hat series (8 volumes so far) all sourced from their YouTube channel (thus making it appropriate for September). 

 

The band is made up of sisters Rebecca (lead guitar) and Megan Lovell (slide guitar) with a small backup band consisting of a bassist and drummer. But I really fell in love with Paul's collections of performances that feature just Rebecca and Megan. Paul calls these acoustic performances but the pedantic in me has issue with that because Megan's slide is always amplified and Rebecca is sometimes playing electric guitar as well but that's a minor quibble, the important thing is the music and both are A class musicians that help renew my faith in the idea that guitar based music is not dead.

I've had Paul's first comp of this band, which he titled "Acoustic 2014-2017", and have had it on my iPod and other mobile devices pretty much since he first posted it but lately that hasn't been enough. I based this compilation on that first album Paul posted, removed the covers and expanded it with songs from other collections Paul posted. He did such a fine job gathering and editing these albums I decided not to reinvent the wheel and use his work and my source, thanks Paul hope you don't mind. The albums I used are listed below. Enjoy.

Tracklist

01 Holy Ghost Fire

02 Back Down South

03 Don't

04 She's a Self Made Man

05 Bleach Blonde Bottle Blues

06 You Can Close Your Eyes

07 Blue Ridge Mountains

08 Look Away

09 Tears of Blue to Gold

10 Blunt

11 Cast 'Em Out

12 Elephant

13 Trouble in Mind

14 Keep Diggin'

15 Stubborn Love

16 Easy Street

17 Take What You Want

18 Come On in My Kitchen

Reality Notes

These girls love to play covers - and they do a fine job of it - but one of the things that the pandemic era of YouTube home concerts gave us is a glut of cover versions by so many artists that frankly I'm a bit burnt out by them so this comp is focused on the band's original material (as it should be, they're fine songwriters as well as musicians). There are still a couple covers, Come On in My Kitchen seems to be a band favorite and is featured on two of their albums making it one of their own and You Can Close Your Eyes is just too good to pass up. Being kind of an obscure song to me helps it to fit in. I tried to make sure that the rest were all originals or at least made appearances on their official albums.

 

There was some overlap in the source albums that duplicated a few songs so I chose the best sounding ones. The cover is a pic I found on a Google search and added the text and border. 

YouTube channel

@LarkinPoe

Sources

Porch Pickin', Episode 3, Nashville, TN, 2-13-2021

Home Concert, Nashville, TN, 11-21-2020

Home Concert, Nashville, TN, 6-13-2020

Home Concert, Nashville, TN, 5-22-2020

Acoustic, 2014-2017

Melancholia Vol 20

Hey there. Been a while. Many reasons for being away, life and health mostly and a hard drive crash that forced me to rebuild the library from several partial and/or out of date backups but life goes on and I'm back with a brand new volume of Melancholia goodness.

 

This is a non-themed edition and like the other non-themed editions before it, it contains some of my favorite songs that come from recent discoveries/purchases and a few long time favorites that have not found a place on past editions. Some of these discoveries come from suggestions from friends or posts from my fellow fantasy album bloggers others just seemed to present themselves out of nowhere.

I've been test driving this for a bit now and I think I'm happy with the results. One of the things I enjoy most about this series is queuing up the whole thing and putting it on shuffle. It's like my own private personalized radio station. Enjoy.

 

Tracklist

 

01 Tedeschi Trucks Band - Midnight in Harlem [Revelator]

02 Robert Plant - Angel Dance [Band Of Joy]

03 Cher - Just Like Jesse James [Heart Of Stone]

04 North Mississippi Allstars - Up and Rolling [Up and Rolling]

05 Railroad Earth - Seven Story Mountain [The Black Bear Sessions]

06 Sade - The Sweetest Taboo [The Best of Sade]

07 Alexi Murdoch - All My Days [Time Without Consequence]

08 Marcus King - Young Mans Dream [El Dorado]

09 Allman Brothers Band - Soulshine [Where It All Begins]

10 Reina del Cid - Giving Up [The Cooling]

11 The Magpie Salute - High Water [High Water I]

12 Roxette - Crash! Boom! Bang! [Hit Collection]

13 Neal Casal - Maybe California [Leaving Traces_ Songs 1994-2004]

14 Bonepony - The Crush [Travelers Companion]

15 Temperance Movement - Pride [Temperance Movement]

16 Warren Haynes - New Years Eve [Ashes & Dust]

Reality Notes

When I was gathering my pool of songs for this collection I did a check to make sure I wasn't duplicating any songs from previous volumes, I discovered I used a song twice on previous volumes. Eric Clapton's Please Be With Me is found on volumes 5 and 11. For now I deleted the instance on volume 11, you can do the same. I may find a replacement eventually but it's not a long song so the comp still feels full. One of the things I enjoy most about this series is queuing up the whole thing and putting it on shuffle. It's like my own private personalized radio station.

The cover features a nice pinup by Alberto Vargas. Along with the music lost with the hard drive crash I had all my personal documents and pictures. Among those documents are all the Word files of album covers I have done over the years including the file with all the Melancholia covers. This means I had to recreate the template but I couldn't find the font I used so I just cropped a previous finished cover to complete this one. Still trying to identify that font.

Marc Bolan - All at Once - 1966

Here's a project I've been slowly working on for a while now. I have a few others waiting for the final polish and write up before posting but those are almost novelty themed various artist collections. This construction finally completes the Marc Bolan collection and covers the years from 1964 to 1967 just before joining John's Children.

The tracks here can be split into two parts, before and after signing with manager Simon Napier-Bell in 1966. Marc's earliest efforts were the products of managers and producers doing their "best" to fulfill Marc's dream of being a star. That dream wouldn't come true for a few years yet going through several name changes while developing his writing and vocal style. The first few songs are covers but from track three on are all originals. None of his early single did much on the charts.

During Marc's time with Napier-Bell they recorded one single and many demos. most of these eventually were released on the album The Beginning of Doves. After Marc's passing Napier-Bell took some of those demos and augmented them with studio musician and released the album Love and Death with some songs not found on the Dove album. I deferred to the Doves album for purity reasons and filled the gaps with the unique songs from Love and Death. The result is a nice album of 38 minutes of early Marc Bolan. Enjoy.

Track List

01 All At Once

02 The Road I'm On (Gloria)

03 Blowin' In The Wind

04 The Wizard

05 Beyond The Risin Sun

06 The Third Degree

07 San Francisco Poet

08 Hippy Gumbo

09 Misfit

10 Jasper C. Debussy

11 You Scare Me To Death

12 I'm Weird

13 Charlie

14 Black And White Incident

15 Observations

16 You Got The Power

17 Jasmine Forty-nine

18 Cat Black

 

Reality Notes

 

Track one was recorded in 1964 but went unreleased until 2008. Tracks two and three were released under the name Toby Tyler. Tracks four through seven were singles released on Decca records as Marc Bolan via the name Marc Bowland in 1965. Tracks eight and nine were produced by Napier-Bell for track records in 1966. The remaining tracks all come from the Doves album with the exception of tracks eleven and twelve which come from the posthumous Love and Death album. Tracks 14-18 also appear on the Love and Death album and given the post production treatment but I went with the stripped down demos instead.

The Doves album also contained some of the earliest Tyrannosaurus Rex recordings. I included these on the Chinese Christmas Music comp posted a while back. There are a few early songs that were recently released that I do not have and are hard to find. If I do come across them I'll add them to this and post and update. This should be the last of the Marc Bolan collection but if I have enough of them I may put together a short comp of his spoken word poetry, maybe.

The Beatles - Get Back TV Special 1969

I've got something very different for you today. I have a few projects simmering on the stove so to speak and will put those up eventually but I've been working on this one for a bit and I feel it is ready to share and get some feedback consider this version one. What makes this different is that it is a video I edited rather than an audio construction. I have been watching fanedits of films for some time now and recently decided to try my hand at the process. I've done some simple editing in the past, mostly limited to joining two or more videos together and maybe some trimming on the beginnings and endings. This was my first foray deeper into some of the more complex parts of the craft.

 

So what do I have for you and how does it relate to this blog? Nothing less than the possible answer to the question "What if the Get Back project resulted in a TV special instead of a film?". The concept of the project changed and evolved from inception to completion. Ideas ranged from comeback concerts and films to TV specials and albums. What we got was a film that showed the band bickering and arguing before coming together to make music and an accompanying LP that featured post-production decisions made by Phil Spector that betrayed the bands original intentions of a live in-the-studio recording.

What I did was take the original Let It Be movie - sourced from a VHS ripped from my own copy -  and removed all the behind the scenes discussions and rehearsals leaving just the music. The source was already in standard 4:3 TV format so all I had to do was trim, remove, rearrange and add some opening titles. I hope you enjoy it.

00:00 Intro
01:15 Get Back
04:24 Don't Let Me Down
07:46 The Long And Winding Road
11:20 For You Blue
14:15 I've Got A Feeling
18:05 Two Of Us
21:35 One After 909
24:39 I Me Mine
26:23 Dig A Pony
30:10 Dig It
32:12 Let It Be
36:13 Get Back (Reprise)

I felt using the VHS source would give it a more authentic "as seen on TV" feel. I kept the original audio, my skills are not yet to the level where I can replace and sync the whole soundtrack. It would be interesting to see if this could be recreated using the Peter Jackson version. 

 

As you can see I passed on Across The Universe. Like I Me Mine the film only shows them rehearsing the song but unlike I Me Mine there was no real take that could be called even decent. 

 

I have a link on the downloads page or you can watch it here. I would be overjoyed if somebody chose to mirror this and upload to YouTube/Vimeo or anywhere else. I tried creating a new YouTube channel just for this but the video was denied due to copyrights. Just say you got it from a friend of a friend. A new and final version three is done and uploaded and the link has been updated. Just a couple transition tweaks and the addition of a time appropriate BBC ID and end credits.

Marcus King - Young Man's Dream

 It's been a while since I posted a non-various artists collection. 

Marcus King is another one of those guitar guys that started out performing at a young age. Like Derek Trucks before him he was a veteran by the time he was Twenty. My brother has been bugging me to listen to this guy for a while now and I would play a video here and there. I was always impressed and could see the attraction but I never took the dive to really give him a chance. This comp is an attempt to rectify that.

YouTube recently recommended the WGBH Live in Studio acoustic session so I gave it a listen. Only a minute in and already I was not disappointed. I like the sound of The Marcus King Band, full on blues based rock, my favorite kind but stripped down to just man and guitar allowed me to get a bigger view of this young man's old soul. So I gathered all the solo performance videos I could and condensed that down to a CD's worth of music for in the car. And now I'm sharing it with you. Enjoy.

 

Tracklist

 

01 Love Song  (Live at JITVHQ in Los Angeles, CA 2020)

02 Man You Didn't Know (Live From The Big House)

03 8am (Live in Studio WGBH)

04 Sorry About Your Love (The Blues Kitchen Presents)

05 Beautiful Stranger (Paste Studio NYC - The Manhattan Center)

06 Where I'm Heading (LaMosiqacom Oneshotsession)

07 Sweet Mariona (Paste Studio NYC - The Manhattan Center)

08 Young Man's Dream (at Easy Eye Sound)

09 Remember (Live in Studio WGBH Acoustic Session)

10 One Day She's Here (Paste Studio NYC - The Manhattan Center)

11 No Pain (Acoustic w/ Dan Auerbach at Easy Eye Sound)

12 Midnight Rider (Live From The Big House)

13 Jealous Man

14 Goodbye Carolina (Live in Studio WGBH)

15 Wildflowers & Wine (Paste Studio NYC - The Manhattan Center)

16 I Won't Be Here

17 Slip Back (in bed - MyMusicRx #Bedstock 2017)

18 Autumn Rains (Live in Studio WGBH)

19 The Well (Paste Studio NYC - The Manhattan Center)

20 Dyin' (Live From The Big House)

Reality Notes

Everything in this comp was ripped from videos found on YouTube. Just do a search for "Marcus King acoustic" and they will pop up. Two of these videos, WGBH and Paste Studios, are multi-song performances the rest are single song videos. I edited out any interviews, applause and bumper music leaving only the music.

The cover is a photo I found on a Google image search which I cropped to a square and added the border using my favorite photo editor/viewer Irfanview. Still looking or a new program to make covers with. I might just end up installing an older version of MS Word that doesn't require a MS account.