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.