Pictures of the day...

Frank Zappa 
and The Mothers of Invention - One Size Fits All
~~ 1975 ~~ 

Rab Noakes - Do You See The Lights (Great and Rare Folkrock, Decca UK 1970)

Size: 93.7 MB
Bitrate: 256
mp3
Ripped By: ChrisGoesRock
Artwork Included
Source: 24-Bit Remaster

Hearing Rab Noakes' debut LP, Do You See the Light, is a bit like listening to a late-'60s folk-rock recording for the Elektra or Vanguard label that somehow wasn't released. As many contributions as those labels made in this genre, however, a comparison such as this isn't necessarily high praise. For though Noakes at times echoes various early singer/songwriters -- Blonde on Blonde-era Bob Dylan, Donovan, Phil Ochs, Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, Tim Buckley, James Taylor, Tom Paxton, The Basement Tapes-era Dylan -- he doesn't project a strong identity of his own, and his material is blander than the '60s work of any of the aforementioned figures. 

It's as if the music has been filtered through a lower common denominator of someone with a large collection of U.S. singer/songwriter LPs with a personal narrative flavor, though sung here with a Scottish accent. Sometimes the triggers of specific comparisons are strong: the easygoing country-rock of "Together Forever" (later covered by Lindisfarne) recalls Dylan's "You Ain't Going Nowhere," and "East Neuk Misfortune" suggests early Tim Buckley as well as the idiosyncratically mild but glowing electric guitar tone heard on numerous Elektra folk-rock recordings. It's all competently done on an even emotional keel, but doesn't mark the artist as possessing distinguished talent of his own.

Rab Noakes (born Robert Noakes, 13 May 1947, St Andrews, Fife, Scotland) is a Scottish singer-songwriter.

He has performed with Lindisfarne, who recorded his songs "Turn a Deaf Ear" on their first album, Nicely Out of Tune, and "Together Forever" on their second, Fog on the Tyne. Barbara Dickson also recorded "Turn a Deaf Ear" on her album Do Right Woman, on which Noakes also performed.

Rab Noakes - UK Single 1972 (Non Album Track)

Noakes also sang backing vocals and played guitar on the first solo album by Gerry Rafferty, Can I Have My Money Back, and became an early member of Stealers Wheel, although he left them before they recorded their first album. Like Rafferty, he became an alcohol-dependant but took his last drink in 1982. In May 1972, the British music magazine, NME, reported that Noakes was to appear at the Great Western Express Lincoln Festival on 26 May that year. Other acts to perform in the 'Giants of Tomorrow' marquee included Budgie, Skin Alley, Tea & Sympathy, John Martyn, Warhorse and Gnidrolog. Noakes best-known recording, "Branch", was released as a single in the summer of 1974 from his album Red Pump Special, and attracted considerable airplay on BBC Radio 1, but without making the UK Singles Chart.

The albums Restless (1978), Rab Noakes (1980) and Under the Rain (1984) followed, but it was 1994 until Standing Up appeared. Noakes subsequently toured with the Varaflames, containing Pick Withers, Rod Clements, and the harmonicist Fraser Speirs.

Noakes became the senior producer for music programmes on BBC Radio Scotland.. He left to create the production company, Neon. In November 2007, his album Unlimited Mileage, again with the Varaflames, was released. In 2012 CDs of Standing Up Again made in 2009 and Just in case (made in 2007) were made available those albums only having been available to Download up until then.

Lindisfarne - German Single 1971

A gift for writing hook-laden songs and sensitively interpreting the work of American singer/songwriters has brought Rab Noakes to the forefront of Scottish pop music. His 1970 debut album, Do You See the Lights, included "Together Forever," which became a folk-pop hit for Lindisfarne. His second album, Rab Noakes, produced by early Dylan producer Bob Johnston, released in 1972, featured guest vocalist Gerry Rafferty. Noakes subsequently played guitar and sang background vocals on Rafferty's debut album, Can I Have My Money Back. Although he agreed to form a band, Steeler's Wheel, with Rafferty, he left the band to resume his solo career before the group recorded their Top Ten hit "Stuck in the Middle With You." Noakes has continued to record on his own. 

His third solo effort, Red Pump Special, released in 1973, was recorded in Nashville and produced by Elliot Mazer. His fifth album, Restless, was released on Ringo Starr's label, Ring O'Records, in 1978. Although he released the equally memorable albums Rab Noakes in 1980 and Under the Rain in 1983, he didn't release another album until 1994 when he recorded Standing Up, a scaled-down recording featuring his solo guitar and vocals. Since the album's release, Noakes has toured with a band, the Varaflames, featuring ex-Dire Straits drummer Pick Withers, Lindisfarne guitarist/bassist Rod Clements, and harmonica player Fraser Spiers. In a review of the band's performance at the Eaglesham Roots 'n' Bluegrass Festival in June 1999, the Herald wrote that the set was "a roots festival in itself as (Noakes) collected Sam Cooke, Rufus Thomas, Fred Rose, Dylan, early Motown, and Beck voodoo blues and a handful of his best originals into a homogenous, hugely satisfying, style."

After working as music director for the BBC television series Your Cheatin' Heart, Noakes accepted a position as senior executive producer for BBC Radio Scotland. He left the post to form his own production company, Neon, which he runs with personal and business partner Stephanie Pordage. In January 2000, Noakes appeared on the multi-artist compilation, ^People on the Highway: A Bert Jansch Encomium.

01. Do You See the Lights? 4:54
02. Song for a Pretty Painter 5:20
03. On my Own I Built a Bridge 3:25
04. Without Me, Just with You 3:09
05. Somewhere to Stay 3:34
06. Together Forever 3:15
07. One More, One Less 2:52
08. East Nuek Misfortune 4:11
09. A Question of Travelling 3:46
10. Too Old to Die 3:21
11. A Love Story 3:23
12. Somebody Counts on Me 4:14

1. Link
or
2. Link
.

Frank Zappa & The Mothers - Detroit 1968-04-28 (Bootleg)

Mothers of Invention - Freak Out 1966 advertise

Size: 135 MB
Bitrate: 320
mp3
Found in my BluesMobile
Some Artwork

1966–68: New York period:
The Mothers of Invention played in New York in late 1966 and were offered a contract at the Garrick Theater during Easter 1967. This proved successful and Herb Cohen extended the booking, which eventually lasted half a year. As a result, Zappa and his wife, along with The Mothers of Invention, moved to New York. Their shows became a combination of improvised acts showcasing individual talents of the band as well as tight performances of Zappa's music. Everything was directed by Zappa's famous hand signals. Guest performers and audience participation became a regular part of the Garrick Theater shows. One evening, Zappa managed to entice some U.S. Marines from the audience onto the stage, where they proceeded to dismember a big baby doll, having been told by Zappa to pretend that it was a "gook baby".

Situated in New York, and only interrupted by the band's first European tour, The Mothers of Invention recorded the album widely regarded as the peak of the group's late 1960s work, We're Only in It for the Money (released 1968). It was produced by Zappa, with Wilson credited as executive producer. From then on, Zappa produced all albums released by The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. We're Only in It for the Money featured some of the most creative audio editing and production yet heard in pop music, and the songs ruthlessly satirized the hippie and flower power phenomena. The cover photo parodied that of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The cover art was provided by Cal Schenkel whom Zappa met in New York. This initiated a lifelong collaboration in which Schenkel designed covers for numerous Zappa and Mothers albums.

Reflecting Zappa's eclectic approach to music, the next album, Cruising with Ruben & the Jets (1968), was very different. It represented a collection of doo-wop songs; listeners and critics were not sure whether the album was a satire or a tribute. Zappa has noted that the album was conceived in the way Stravinsky's compositions were in his neo-classical period: "If he could take the forms and clichés of the classical era and pervert them, why not do the same ... to doo-wop in the fifties?" A theme from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is heard during one song.

Frank Zappa
Billboard May 1968

In New York, Zappa increasingly used tape editing as a compositional tool. A prime example is found on the double album Uncle Meat (1969), where the track "King Kong" is edited from various studio and live performances. Zappa had begun regularly recording concerts,[84] and because of his insistence on precise tuning and timing, he was able to augment his studio productions with excerpts from live shows, and vice versa. Later, he combined recordings of different compositions into new pieces, irrespective of the tempo or meter of the sources. He dubbed this process "xenochrony" (strange synchronizations)—reflecting the Greek "xeno" (alien or strange) and "chrono" (time). Zappa also evolved a compositional approach which he called "conceptual continuity," meaning that any project or album was part of a larger project. Everything was connected, and musical themes and lyrics reappeared in different form on later albums. Conceptual continuity clues are found throughout Zappa's entire œuvre.

During the late 1960s, Zappa continued to develop the business sides of his career. He and Herb Cohen formed the Bizarre Records and Straight Records labels, distributed by Warner Bros. Records, as ventures to aid the funding of projects and to increase creative control. Zappa produced the double album Trout Mask Replica for Captain Beefheart, and releases by Alice Cooper, Wild Man Fischer, and The GTOs, as well as Lenny Bruce's last live performance. [Wikipedia]

Frank Zappa & The Mothers
28 April 1968, The Grande Ballroom 
Detroit, MI

01. Green Genes 10:06
02. Hungry Freaks Daddy 3:40
03. America Drinks 2:05
04. King Kong 9:10
05. Impro 4:24
06. Medley (Handsome Cabin Boy - Wedding Dress Song - Dog Breath - Little House) 6:42
07. Status Back Baby 4:25
08. The Orange County Lumber Truck Medley 17:15

1. Link
or
2. Link
.

1966

Neil Young - Old Gringo (Broadcast 1986 + 1989) (Bootleg)

Size: 336 MB
Bitrate: 320
mp3
Found in my Bluesmobile
Some Artwork

Experimental years (1980–1988)
At the start of the decade, distracted by domestic medical concerns relating to his second disabled son, Ben, Young had little time to spend on writing and recording. After providing the incidental music to a 1980 biopic of Hunter S. Thompson entitled Where the Buffalo Roam, Young released Hawks & Doves, a short record pieced together from sessions going back to 1974. 1981's Re-ac-tor, an electric album recorded with Crazy Horse, also included material from the 1970s. Young did not tour in support of either album; in total, he played only one show, a set at the 1980 Bread and Roses Festival in Berkeley, between the end of his 1978 tour with Crazy Horse and the start of his tour with the Trans Band in mid-1982.

Neil Young - Tonight's the Night - 1975

The 1982 album Trans, which incorporated vocoders, synthesizers, and electronic beats, was Young's first for new label Geffen Records (distributed at the time by Warner Bros. Records, whose parent Warner Music Group owns most of Young's solo and band catalog) and represented a distinct stylistic departure. Young later revealed that an inspiration for the album was the theme of technology and communication with his son Ben, who has severe cerebral palsy and cannot speak. An extensive tour preceded the release of the album, and was documented by the video Neil Young in Berlin, which saw release in 1986. MTV played the video for "Sample and Hold" in light rotation. The entire song contained "robot vocals" by Neil and Nils Lofgren of the E-Street Band.

Young's next album, 1983's Everybody's Rockin', included several rockabilly covers and clocked in at less than twenty-five minutes in length. Young was backed by the Shocking Pinks for the supporting U.S. tour. Trans had already drawn the ire of label head David Geffen for its lack of commercial appeal, and with Everybody's Rockin' following only seven months later, Geffen Records sued Young for making music "unrepresentative" of himself. The album was also notable as the first for which Young made commercial music videos – Tim Pope directed the videos for "Wonderin'" and "Cry, Cry, Cry". Also premiered in 1983, though little seen, was the eclectic full-length comedy film Human Highway, co-directed and co-written by Young, and starring Young, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn, Dennis Hopper and members of Devo.

Neil Young - Comes a Time - 1978

The first year without a Neil Young album since the start of Young's musical career with Buffalo Springfield in 1966 was in 1984. Young's lack of productivity was largely due to the ongoing legal battle with Geffen, although he was also frustrated that the label had rejected his 1982 country album Old Ways. It was also the year when Young's third child, his second with wife Pegi, was born: his daughter Amber Jean, a child who was later diagnosed with inherited epilepsy. Young spent most of 1984 and all of 1985 touring for Old Ways with his country band, the International Harvesters. The album was finally released in an altered form midway through 1985. Young also appeared at that year's Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, collaborating with Crosby, Stills and Nash for the quartet's first performance for a paying audience in over ten years.

Young's last two albums for Geffen were more conventional in genre, although they incorporated production techniques like synthesizers and echoing drums that were previously uncommon in Young's music. Young recorded 1986's Landing on Water without Crazy Horse, but reunited with the band for the subsequent year-long tour and final Geffen album, Life, which emerged in 1987. Young's album sales dwindled steadily throughout the eighties; today Life remains his all-time-least successful studio album, with an estimated four hundred thousand sales worldwide.

Switching back to his old label Reprise Records, Young continued to tour relentlessly, assembling a new blues band called The Bluenotes in mid-1987 (a legal dispute with musician Harold Melvin forced the eventual rechristening of the band as Ten Men Working midway through the tour). The addition of a brass section provided a new jazzier sound, and the title track of 1988's This Note's For You became Young's first hit single of the decade. Accompanied by a video that parodied corporate rock, the pretensions of advertising, and Michael Jackson, the song was initially unofficially banned by MTV for mentioning the brand names of some of their sponsors. Young wrote an open letter, "What does the M in MTV stand for: music or money?" Despite this, the video was eventually named best video of the year by the network in 1989. 

Neil Young - On The Beach 1974

By comparison, the major music cable network of Young's home nation, Muchmusic, ran the video immediately.
Young reunited with Crosby, Stills and Nash to record the 1988 album American Dream and play two benefit concerts late in the year, but the group did not embark upon a full tour. The album was only the second-ever studio record for the quartet.

Young's 1989 single "Rockin' in the Free World", which hit No. 2 on the U.S. mainstream-rock charts, and accompanying album, Freedom, rocketed him back into the popular consciousness after a decade of sometimes-difficult genre experiments. The album's lyrics were often overtly political; "Rockin' in the Free World" deals with homelessness, terrorism, and environmental degradation, implicitly criticizing the government policies of President George H.W. Bush.

The use of heavy feedback and distortion on several Freedom tracks was reminiscent of the Rust Never Sleeps album, and foreshadowed the imminent rise of grunge. The rising stars of the genre, including Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, frequently cited Young as a major influence, contributing to his popular revival. A tribute album called The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young was released in 1989, featuring covers by alternative and grunge acts including Sonic Youth, Nick Cave, Soul Asylum, Dinosaur Jr, and the Pixies. [Wikipedia]

Crazy Horse, 1986:
♦ Neil Young - vocals, guitar, keyboards, banjo, harmonica 
♦ Frank Sampedro - guitar, keyboards, vocals 
♦ Billy Talbot - bass, vocals 
♦ Ralph Molina - drums, vocals

Acoustic European tour, 1989:
♦ Neil Young - vocals, guitar, banjo, keyboards, harmonica 
♦ Frank Sampedro - guitar. mandolin, vocals 
♦ Ben Keith - dobro, keyboards, vocals

Neil Young & Crazy Horse "OLD GRINGO"!
Pre-FM WWO Broadcast 1986+1989

Disc 1 (1986 U.S. tour with Crazy Horse, Broadcast in 1987)
01. Mr. Soul
02. Cinnamon Girl
03. When You Dance I Can Really Love
04. Down by the River
05. Drive Back
06. Born to Rock
07. Heart of Gold
08. Sugar Mountain
09. The Needle and the Damage Done
10. After the Gold Rush
11. Sample and Hold
12. Computer Age
13. Violent Side
14. Like a Hurricane
15. My My, Hey Hey

Disc 2 - (1989 European solo tour, broadcast in 1990
01. Hey Hey, My My
02. Keep on Rockin' in the Free World
03. The Old Laughing Lady
04. Razor Love
05. Don't Let It Bring You Down
06. Someday
07. Crime in the City
08. El Dorado
09. Too Far Gone
10. Comes a Time
11. The Needle and the Damage Done
12. No More
13. Ohio
14. Powderfinger

Part 1: Link
Part 2: Link
or
Part 1: Link
Part 2: Link
.

Neil Young And Crazy Horse - US Single 1979

Neil Young - Rust Never Sleeps - 1979

Janis Joplin - San Francisco, Coffee Gallery 1963 (Bootleg)

Size: 42.9 MB
Bitrate: 320
mp3
Found in OuterSpace
Some Artwork

Janis Joplin Early Biography:
Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who first rose to fame in the late 1960s as the lead singer of the psychedelic-acid rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, and later as a solo artist with her own backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band. She was one of the more popular acts at the Monterey Pop Festival and later became one of the major attractions to the Woodstock festival and the Festival Express train tour. Janis Joplin charted five singles, and other popular songs from her four-year solo career include "Down on Me", "Summertime", "Piece of My Heart", "Ball 'n' Chain", "Maybe", "To Love Somebody", "Kozmic Blues", "Work Me, Lord", "Cry Baby", "Mercedes Benz", and her only number one hit, "Me and Bobby McGee". Joplin was well known for her performing abilities, and her fans referred to her stage presence as "electric". At the height of her career, she was known as "The Queen of Psychedelic Soul," and became known as Pearl among her friends. She was also a painter, dancer and music arranger.

Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on January 19, 1943, to Dorothy (née East) Joplin (1913–1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Joplin (1910–1987), an engineer at Texaco. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended the Church of Christ. The Joplins felt that Janis always needed more attention than their other children, with her mother stating, "She was unhappy and unsatisfied without [receiving a lot of attention]. The normal rapport wasn't adequate." As a teenager, she befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by African-American blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Lead Belly, whom Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing in the local choir and expanded her listening to blues singers such as Odetta, Billie Holiday and Big Mama Thornton.

Primarily a painter while still in school, she first began singing blues and folk music with friends. While at Thomas Jefferson High School, she stated that she was mostly shunned. Joplin was quoted as saying, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I didn't hate niggers." As a teen, she became overweight and her skin broke out so badly she was left with deep scars which required dermabrasion. Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig", "freak" or "creep". Among her classmates were G. W. Bailey and Jimmy Johnson. Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer and later the University of Texas at Austin, though she did not complete her studies. The campus newspaper The Daily Texan ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares to Be Different". The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her Autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin."

Cultivating a rebellious manner, Joplin styled herself in part after her female blues heroines and, in part, after the Beat poets. Her first song recorded on tape, at the home of a fellow student in December 1962, was "What Good Can Drinkin' Do".

San Francisco
She left Texas for San Francisco ("just to get away from Texas", she said, "because my head was in a much different place") in January 1963, living in North Beach and later Haight-Ashbury. In 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, further accompanied by Margareta Kaukonen on typewriter (as a percussion instrument). This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble in Mind", "Kansas City Blues", "Hesitation Blues", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy" and "Long Black Train Blues", and was later released as the bootleg album The Typewriter Tape. Around this time, her drug use increased, and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite beverage was Southern Comfort.

In early 1965, Joplin's friends, noticing the physical effects of her amphetamine habit (she was described as "skeletal" and "emaciated"), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur, Texas. In May 1965, Joplin's friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return home.
Back in Texas.

Back in Port Arthur, she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, began wearing relatively modest dresses, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. During her year at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to perform solo, accompanying herself on guitar. One of her performances was reviewed in the Austin American-Statesman. Joplin became engaged to a man who visited her, wearing a blue serge suit, to ask her father for her hand in marriage, but the man terminated plans for the marriage soon afterwards. Just prior to joining Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin recorded seven studio tracks in 1965. Among the songs she recorded was her original composition for her song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995 entitled This is Janis Joplin 1965 by James Gurley.

Janis Joplin 
1963-xx-xx, San Francisco, California Coffee Gallery 
1353 Grant Avenue, North Beach
Recording Information : unknown mono reel-to-reel recorder

01. Leaving' This Morning (K.C. Blues) 
02. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy
03. Careless Love 
04. Bourgeois Blues  
05. Black Mountain Blues
06. Gospel Ship
07. Stealin' 

1. Link
or
2. Link
.