Badfinger is best known for its first three albums, all from 1970 and 1971, and the Top 10 singles they spawned: “Come and Get It,” which Paul McCartney wrote and produced, “Day after Day,” which George Harrison produced, and “No Matter What.”  One thing this Beatles-influenced Welsh rock outfit is not known for is an LP called Head First, which it recorded at Apple Studios in 1974.

At the time, its members were dealing with assorted music business disputes and personal problems. (Guitarist and lead singer Pete Ham committed suicide in 1975.) The group’s label shelved the record, whose master tapes were misplaced, and though a collection sourced from a rough mix came out in 2000, it failed to garner much attention.

Now, however, a 50^th-anniversary edition of Head First has been released. It lacks the 11 demos and bonus tracks that the earlier LP included, but it sounds better. That’s because it employs the recently discovered master tapes, which have been newly mixed and mastered by Bob Jackson, the band’s only surviving member. In one case—the brief but likable album-ending instrumental “Savile Row”—the original recording was so rudimentary that, says Jackson, “we decided to experiment with extracting existing audio from the rest of the album with a view to merging it into the…arrangement.”

A press release’s claim that the CD represents “a rediscovery of a pivotal moment in rock history” is hyperbole, and there is at least one clunker here, the clamorous “Turn Around.” Moreover, the set underscores the group’s limitations: while it was capable of catchy melodies that evoke early Beatles material, it never grew to the point where it could produce something on par with, say, “Penny Lane” or “Strawberry Fields Forever.” (Then again, who could?)

That said, Head First delivers more than a few bits of ear candy, and fans will likely find it at least as satisfying as most of the rest of Badfinger’s catalog. Among the standouts on the CD, whose 16-page booklet contains newly written notes by Jackson: “Lay Me Down,” a high-energy number that recalls Wings; “Hey Mr. Manager,” one of two songs on the album that directly reflect the group’s music-business woes; “Back Again,” an acoustic-guitar-based ballad that seems redolent of Rubber Soul–period Beatles; and “Moonshine,” which features slide guitar by Ham that sounds reminiscent of Harrison.

Three Noteworthy Live Albums

Al Stewart, Live at Radio Bremen TV Musikladen Extra, November 7, 1979. Al Stewart’s catalog includes an album called Live at the Roxy, and you can also find concert recordings on expanded editions of several of his old studio LPs. But if you want a taste of what he and his band sounded and looked like on stage at their peak, your best bet is a new two-disc set called Live at Radio Bremen TV Musikladen Extra November 7, 1979.

This collection preserves on both CD and DVD an excellent concert recorded when the Scottish singer, songwriter, and guitarist was riding high thanks to two platinum LPs and four musically and lyrically compelling hit singles: “Year of the Cat” (1976), “On the Border” (1977), “Time Passages” (1978), and “Song on the Radio” (1979). Those numbers are featured, mostly in extended versions. (“Year of the Cat,” which reached No. 8 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, is the longest, clocking in here at nearly 10 minutes.) Also on the program are spirited readings of “Valentina Way” and “The Palace of Versailles,” which first appeared on the Time Passages album, and “Soho (Needless to Say),” a number from 1973’s superlative Past, Present & Future.

Translator, Beyond Today: Live at the Farm, San Francisco 1986. Though the California–based alt-rock band Translator re-formed in 2012 and delivered a new album in 2017, its heyday was the 1980s, when it issued four LPs. All of them were studio recordings, but according to a press release, the group “always wanted to release a live album.” Now it finally has, though the record features a show from 1986.

That concert was the group’s last before what seemed at the time like a permanent breakup, and, as author Bill Kopp writes in the CD’s liner notes, “Translator decided to go out with a bang, scheduling a hometown show to reward their ardent fan base.” Reward them they did, with a consistently exciting 64-minute, 12-track set.

The musical approach reflects the then-popular new wave and punk movements that also produced bands like the Call, the Church, and the Jesus and Mary Chain. However, it also evokes psychedelia and conjures up late 1960s British rockers and West Coast folk-rockers. Featured are most of the band’s best-known songs, among them “Everywhere That I’m Not,” “O Lazarus,” and “Gravity,” plus a caffeinated, set-closing cover of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over, Beethoven.”

Proving they still can kick up a storm, Translator ends the album with two newly recorded studio bonus tracks, the anthemic “These Days to Come” and “With Your Dreams.”

Oregon, Live at Yoshi’s. This album, which first appeared in 2002, is the latest of several recent reissues from the innovative instrumental jazz and world music group Oregon. The band, which formed over 50 years ago when its members split from Paul Winter Consort, recorded this 78-minute set at Yoshi’s, a jazz club in Oakland, California, in August 2001. It features original members Paul McCandless (soprano sax, oboe), Ralph Towner (piano, guitar), and Glen Moore (bass), along with drummer Mark Walker, who officially joined Oregon a couple of years before this performance.

Compositions by Towner—including the terrific title cut from the band’s 1973 sophomore release, Distant Hills—dominate the program. The show concludes with a memorable nine-minute cover of “Witchi-Tai-To,” a Jim Pepper composition that has long been a staple of Oregon’s live shows.