Fans of the mash-up may wish to direct their browsers to the Go Home Productions website: -
http://www.markvidler-gohomeproductions.co.uk/

DJ supreme Mark Vidler has excelled himself with his new batch of mixes, all of which are available to download for free. Videos have been created for each of the tracks.

Sceptics and purists (that's me, prior to discovering GHP) should check it out before giving it the thumbs-down. Most of these are just too good to believe: -

Beach Boys meets Cadburys

Luther & REM

Stones vs Temptations

Memo to Heppo & Ellen: - pleeeeease do a piece on this guy if you've not done so already. Pretty please?

A very rich source of otherwise impossibly rare downloads to be found here: -

http://hardrock70s.blogspot.com/

Not least, the above soundtrack album. Check out the links to similar sites whilst you're about it. Then, please report all of them to the relevant authorities. As I have done.

Check out this wonderful Lowell George ROIO. Priceless!

http://bigozine2.com/archive/ARrarities06/ARlgwhfs.html

A remarkable Springsteen live recording is available for free download at the rather wonderful Big O Worldwide weblog.

It's up again for a week or so. Follow this link and grab it while you can: - http://bigozine2.com/archive/ARrarities07/ARbsphilly.html

Apparently, Live at the Tower Theatre, Philadelphia, December 31, 1975 was mixed and sequenced for an official (ultimately aborted) live release. Dig!

On the wonderful BigOZine blog, there's some new Dylan mp3s up for grabs this week. Live at War Memorial Auditorium, Oct 31, 1975 is a rare Rolling Thunder set, whilst Jazz at Lincoln Center's 2004 Spring Gala, June 7, 2004 pairs him up with (believe it or not) Wynton Marsalis.

http://bigozine2.com/archive/ARrarities08/ARbdnyc.html

http://bigozine2.com/archive/ARrarities06/ARbdplymouth.html

Go to it, troops!

I have just learned that the excellent Truncheon Thing blog is to close.

Thus, it's your last chance to raid their archives of mouth-watering downloads of, shall we say, recordings of indeterminate origin.

The current layout of the site is not all that user-friendly. But hunt around and you will find slightly unauthorised and rather excellent recordings of Zep, Beach Boys, Squeeze, Dylan, Beatles, Springsteen etc. As Fluff might have said, Not 'alf!

http://thattruncheonthing.blogspot.com/

Have we done the best guitar solos yet? I was thinking of the most appropriate and eloquent solos rather than those that are merely displays of technical excellence.

Here's a few to start you off...

No Regrets - The Walker Brothers
Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) - Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
Whisky In The Jar - Thin Lizzy
Guitar Man - Bread
In The Thick Of It - Brenda Russell
Reelin' In The Years - Steely Dan
Country Home - Neil Young & Crazy Horse
I Heard Her Call My Name - The Velvet Underground

I do so hope that Stairway To Heaven and Freebird do not get too many nominations...

Why so few great solo albums? That is, albums that were made whilst an artist was still a fully paid-up member of a group. Albums that were as good as those made by their groups to which they belonged. Albums with more than just one or two good tracks on.

Think hard. Members of The Rolling Stones, Moody Blues, Roxy Music, Yes, Pink Floyd, The Who and, of course The Beatles all released solo albums during their tenure with their respective bands. None of the records released as solo ventures even began to approach the quality of their respective group’s regular.

Cases in point: -

Paul McCartney’s 1st solo album was a mish-mash of half finished ditties. Maybe I’m Amazed and Every Night were great, the remainder exceptionally poor.

George’s Wonderwall and John/Yoko’s Two Virgins/Unfinished Music etc are universally considered for completists only.

Roger Waters’ The Body and Rick Wright’s Wet Dream are inconsequential at best. David Gilmour’s 1977 self-titled debut and About Face only just managed being pleasant. Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports is actually a very good record, but it’s more of a Carla Bley/Robert Wyatt project. So it doesn't count.

Bryan Ferry’s These Foolish Things was little more than a vanity effort, propped up by a startlingly good title track.

Pete Townsend’s Who Came First was only half good. The excellent Pure & Easy and Let’s See Action drowned in filler such as Time Is Passing and Parvardigar.

The mesmerising title track (yes, really) of Brian May’s Starfleet Project was swamped by the mindless jams that made up the remainder of side 1 & 2. Freddie Mercury’s slightly embarrassing Euro-disco and cod-opera solo work is best forgotten. Roger Taylor’s most acceptable (no kidding) singles Strange Frontier and Man On Fire couldn’t save the album from whence they came.

Lionel Richie. Go ahead, snigger – but The Commodores made heavyweight black music prior to Three Times A Lady. Lionel's first solo album (made whilst he was still in the band) is a gift to Steve Wright's Sunday Love Songs. Ugh.

Talk Is Cheap, She’s The Boss and Monkey Grip would never rival Exile On Main Street or Let It Bleed.

And it goes on.

The following buck the trend, in that they compare well against the (contemporary) output of the artist’s parent band. It’s not a long list…

Phil Collins - Face Value. Ditch that senseless cover of Tomorrow Never Knows and it's a damn near perfect LP. Danger. Unfashionable music taste alert!

Lowell George - Thanks I’ll Eat It Here. Cruelly ignored. Heartache is surely one of the best album closers on vinyl.

Steve Perry - Street Talk. Although rather irrelevant to UK rock sensibility, this album trounces anything that Journey was capable of. Not much of a boast, I know…

Rod Stewart. Anything up to and including Smiler is, for me, proof that some sort of God exists.

That’s, er, it. Considering the number of solo albums that have emerged over the years, there must be more that rise above makeweight.. But I’m buggered if I can think of any. Prove me wrong…?

Ever since Broadband came to my village two years ago, my hard drive has groaned and creaked increasingly under the weight of numerous high-quality downloads of ever-so-slightly less-than-authorised album releases.

Thanks to the World Wide Web, such records are not exactly hard to find and are also usually in A1 studio quality stereo. For instance: -

Bruce Springsteen's Just In Time For Summer. Elsewhere on the Word.co.uk Hepworth & Co. list this album as having one of their favourite live introductions. I found the entire album here - http://thattruncheonthing.blogspot.com/search/label/Bruce%20Springsteen

Browse the blog That Truncheon Thing for some fabulous free downloads of Van Morrison (Rocks His Gypsy Soul), Bob Dylan (Thin Wild Mercury Music) and The Ramones (Live at The Palladium, New York - December 31). Also, they've just posted the marvellous Millennium Edition of The Beach Boys SMiLE. I should add that for this album you'll need Photoshop to view the cover art...

More Recordings of Indeterminate Origin (ahem) are at http://bigozine2.com/ The public spirited individual that runs this site out of Singapore tends to rotate the availability of his not inconsiderable collection, so you need to be quick. Top of the shop this week is The Rolling Stones excellent Static In The Attic (1978-80 studio outtakes). Elsewhere you'll find Joni Mitchell's Seeding Of Summer Lawns, which is the demo versions of Hissing minus the heavyweight jazz players. In short, the songs from that album are presented as a Blue-era folk-tinged workout and as such represent the closing of a chapter in her musical career.

Keep logging in and maybe one day he'll re-post Springsteen's Live At The Tower Philadelphia. This astonishing 1975 recording was apparently mixed and sequenced for official release as the follow-up to Born To Run. Also, look out for Jimi Hendrix Live At The Miami Pop Festival 1968. This forgotten (by all except the most hardened Hendrix Fans) set of performances comprises four tracks only, as he was on stage for less than 25 minutes. Nonetheless, it's up there with the Monterey Pop album for sheer intensity.

The charming fellows at http://easydreamer.blogspot.com/2005/12/week-41-merry-christmas-do-not-u...
have the entire (and thoroughly unavailable) Evening With Wild Man Fischer. I would normally shy away from recommending free downloads of commercially produced music, but the simple truth is that Gail Zappa (for it is she that as producer FZ's widow holds the rights) refuses to allow the reissue of this album. Come on and Merry Go Round, Merry Go Round...

Long gone is the excellent Spoof Dylan Hears A Who. On this terrific record, the words of Dr Seuss are set to Blonde On Blonde/Bringing It All Back Home-style arrangements. Many hardened Bob fans have refused to believe that the finished product is not genuine Zim! The album has disappeared from its original home of http://www.dylanhearsawho.com/ thanks, presumably, to legal action from His Bobness. I'm glad to report that this fine album is still out there in P2P land at http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3669857/Bob_Dylan_Does_Cat_in_the_Hat - where you'll also find an article tracing the history of the record. Note: a BitTorrent client (i.e. from www.bitcomet.com) and some IT wizadry will be required to successfully download from this link

I should add that if you follow my advice and acquire/download any of the above you will go straight to prison and/or hell. Should you ignore my advice, you may require some extra storage capacity for your PC in one form or another. And a good defense lawyer.