It’s been a few months since I’ve posted any newly discovered versions of George Harrison’s classic TaxMan song.

I recently came across a bit torrent download of a concert from 1/20/02 by Blue Floyd. Instead of their normal set list of Pink Floyd songs, this over three hour long concert was all Beatles music, including TaxMan. The entire download is 1.1 gigabytes. Before listening to the entire show, I was anxious to check out the almost seven minute long TaxMan, which is very good.

As are most bit torrents, the original file is in the lossless FLAC format and is 45 megabytes in size. To make it easier to upload and store on my website, as well as for quicker downloading, I made an MP3 version that is only 6.5 mb. Playing the two versions back to back on my computer, I couldn’t tell the difference.

There are other people who share my “hobby” of collecting different versions of the George Harrison classic “TaxMan” song. It’s been a while since I’ve posted a new version; but I just received this from a reader.

Subject: taxman

Hi Kerry,

Here’s another Beatles “Taxman” cover by the Smashing Pumpkins:

http://www.archive.org/details/tsp2007-11-13.dsm6s

Track #20.

Thanks for the great website. I read it every morning.

I wrote back:

Thanks for the heads-up on that song.

I downloaded it and it’s a good take on the classic song that never goes out of style.

I chopped off the last three minutes of the file, after the TaxMan song ends, and will be uploading it to my blog.

Let me know if you come across any more.

Kerry

Here is the 4.8 mb MP3 file with the Smashing Pumpkins performing TaxMan

As loyal readers know, I’m a fan of collecting as many different versions of George Harrison’s classic TaxMan song as I happen to come across.  Well, I accidentally found a new one, recorded on 5/5/07 at a benefit concert at OSU in Corvallis, Oregon. 

I just happened to be browsing the newest additions to the Live Music Archive and saw this concert called The Dark Side of Abbey Road.  It was a live performance combining the songs from two classic rock albums; the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

After downloading it and starting to play it here in my office, the third track, which is only entitled Encore, had the unmistakable sound of TaxMan; and sure enough, after a lot of teasing, the song was performed in full. 

 The full track is over six minutes long and has some superfluous announcements; so I trimmed it down to just the three minutes with the actual TaxMan song and uploaded my own version to my website.

The entire concert is excellent, so I encourage any Beatles and Pink Floyd fans to download all of it.  You can’t beat the price. It’s free.