I first joined Youtube in May of 2006 and have since watched thousands of videos, favorite-ed about 150 of them, and seen everything from a robot playing John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” to The Goofy Movie re-imagined in the style of David Lynch. Even with all these things in mind, I have no problem saying that my Youtube experience reached it’s climax when I stumbled into links for downloading two Nick Drake Bootlegs on the website.

One of them is titled Second Grace, which to me sounds like home recordings of the artist before visiting the studio. Since Drake probably couldn’t afford to spend a lot of time in a “real” studio, it makes sense that he had so many takes of the same songs before recording it professionally. The album presents many tunes from Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter in a stripped-down, minimalist arrangement reminiscent of Pink Moon which allows for Drake’s supersonic finger picking to shine through the mix. I liked this because I have always thought the horns and strings suppressed Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter from being in the same league as Pink Moon. A highlight on this album is a track titled “Early Morning Dialog”, 3:15 of spoken word from Drake in the wee hours of the morning. It’s quite a novelty to hear Nick Drake - who was never captured on video in his adult life, let alone on television- do something that almost resembles an interview.

The other is a home recording called Tanworth-In-Arden 1967/1968, which I prefer over Second Grace. Unless the title of the album is misleading, this was recorded before Nick Drake ever stepped foot in a studio and during his brief stint at Cambridge University. On this album he plays cover songs of blues songs by artists like Blind Boy Fuller (I don’t recognize most of the songs) and contains a cover of the Bob Dylan classic “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”. Although not the prototypical Blues musician, Nick Drake does deliver sadness in his voice as well as anybody else and he compliments the songs very well.

But these two albums are not without their faults. Second Grace has several repeats of the same songs and both albums have poor quality sound. Good listens they are, but not necessarily on the same level of necessity as Drake’s 3 studio albums. And worst of all, the links are no more.

The original provider has stated :

Since out of over 100 people I generously shared these bootleg albums with not one has posted a thankyou, yet instead I get idiots saying things like “If this was unreleased how have you got it!”, I have removed all mediafire links.

I guess some people will go out of their way to punish ungrateful people. I’m planning on putting them up myself soon, but not today because I’m busy.