Special editions of a couple of my favorite recordings have come out recently:  John Barleycorn Must Die by Traffic and Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek & the Dominos.

The Traffic set arrived on Friday and includes two disks: the original album remastered on Disk 1, and a couple of alternate takes, including a rather different arrangement of the title track, plus a bunch of live tracks from the Fillmore East from 1970, which include Ric Grech on bass along with the core trio of Steve Winwood on vocals, guitar, piano and Hammond B-3, Jim Capaldi on drums and vocals, and Chris Wood on flute, sax, and Hammond B-3.

The Dominos package is supposed to ship tomorrow so I should have it in a few days. In addition to the remastered album, there are also tracks from their appearance on the Johnny Cash TV show and a couple of tracks that were recorded for an abortive second Dominoes album.

I have almost fully recovered from being up past my bedtime after the second SNUG gig in fifteen days. Both were at Murf’s Broadway Cocktail Lounge in Redwood City. Both gigs went well. Not much of an audience – a few friends, and a few other folks… a couple of dancers…

Our fill-in drummer, David Bossler from the local band Funktional Soul, did a great job on our vast repertoire with minimal rehearsal. 

One good thing was that for once we seemed to have gotten SiBon’s vocals loud enough, and the recordings I made with the Zoom H4n came out very well.

Recordings of “Use Me,”  the Bill Withers song which is my one lead vocal with SNUG, and my guitar solo on “Chain of Fools” are posted now on my website. Hopefully SiBon will find a song or two worthy of using as demos and will put something up on the SNUG site.