the kindness of strangers

fast car : live acoustic : tracy chapman

click on the title to listen. note: there's a bit of a glitch in this file. if the song doesn't start right away, click pause then play. also, don't pay attention to the timer, which is out of whack. the total listening time is only 6m 31s.

this is an alternative version of the phenomenal song, from a rare benefit album called rainn songs, produced by atlanta's 99x radio station for the rape, abuse & incest national network. i discovered it during the heydays of napster, but the encoding was very bad, and the song skipped a couple of times. i searched high and low for a copy of the album, and neither the station nor e-bay had it. i couldn't even find it in any of the p2p clients i use. so i finally decided to post in ipodlounger that i was looking for a good rip of this song, and in just a few hours i received a reply -- and the song file -- from forum member ihaveanipod. he or she correctly identified it as the best version of this song.

in fact, this version is too good to be kept hidden in an obscure compilation, so i'm sharing it. enjoy.