...Dylan's Blind Willie McTell, better than anything on Infidels.

One of my favourite bands is The Jam; plenty of fantastic tracks floating around that weren't on albums, enough to make a great album of their own pretty much.

Morrissey

Album Viva Hate

Great Track Left Off Album I've Changed My Plea To Guilty again a great song memorably performed on Jonathan Ross see below

Left off the album that included the horrendous Bengali In Platforms

"Shiny Happy People" by REM?

I love that song. Why does everyone hate it? Was it just overplayed? Or was it just too simple and immediate without enough mumbling to be taken seriously? One of the highlights of their remarkable career in my opinion.

I went to see the wonderful Thea Gilmore at the Luminaire last night, and this reminds me that one of my favourite 'albums' of hers is the one I burned by collecting together all the b-sides and cover versions from magazine cds which haven't made official albums.
Lightning, Hooligansville, It All Gets Buried in the End, etc., etc. Not neccessarily better than her album tracks (though the budget, pared-down acoustic settings often give more space to her glorious voice, which can only be a good thing) but far too good to be so obscure and hard to find.

All Your Jeans Were Too Tight appeared on the excellent No Alternative compilation, put out by the Red Hot Organisation, which raises funds and awareness in the battle against AIDS and HIV. Although many of songs on the CD were exclusives, the quality bar was so high that some did eventually make it onto albums by the bands who had donated them.

It’s a shame that Mark Eitzel’s tragic-comic elegy for a dead friend isn’t more readily available, as the song contains some of his most affecting and personal lyrics. “Trying to make you feel better is like trying to trick St. Peter,” he observes, as he moves back and forth between past and present, before concluding:

“All you and I had to throw away
was a cowardly pile of sheets
and a heartbeat that couldn’t carry you
to want something better.”

The song ends in grief-fuelled, self recrimination with Eitzel sorting through his friend's personal effects, pondering the relative merits of owning a Barbara Streisand album (understandable) and the Soundtrack from Diva (not so sure) and ruefully admitting “I’m sorry I said anything about the tattoo.”

Rock'n'Roll Friend by the Go-Betweens would have been a great addition to 16 Lovers Lane... it was the b-side to Was There Anything I Could Do, but in my book it would have been better if those songs swapped places... though I guess this would have broken the "5 songs each" rule.

Doing a bit of research on Wikipedia, I see that the song ended up on Robert Forster's Warm Nights album, so maybe it doesn't count.

I don't think I was alone in my love for this song - having been surprised to hear them do it live when the band reformed, as well as by the enthusiastic recognition from the audience when the band started it.

shoulda have been on 'Darkness At The Edge Of Town' but if it meant we got 'Racing In the Street' instead then its a fair swap. Stupid that it was left off the 'Tracks' box set thou and then added to a later 1 CD comp.

Left Off the original version of Skylarking in favour of Mermaid Smiled, subsequently Skylarking repressed with Dear God replacing Mermaid Smile after Dear God became a big college hit.

left off 'In Through The Out Door'. A taught, zero fat rocker, it eventually surfaced on 'Coda'. But in their defence, it sounds so different from the songs that did make the album that I struggle to imagine how it could have been included.

I always thought that Never Stop (Discotheque) would have been a fine addition to the Bunnymen's underwhelming Porcupine. It could replace any of the tracks after The Cutter and The Back of Love.