Dylan & The Dead (Jerry Garcia's original mix)

Sources used:

Bootleg Series Vol 8: No Direction Home (2005)

Bootleg Series Vol 12: The Cutting Edge (2015 Collector’s Edition)

Side Tracks (2013)

Flac --> wav --> mixing & editing in SONAR Pro & Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

The Turtles – Shell Shock

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

September 2018 Upgrade

Side A:

1. Goodbye Surprise

2. Like It or Not

3. There You Sit Lonely

4. We Ain’t Gonna Party No More

5. Lady-O

Side B:

6. Gas Money

7. Can I Go On

8. You Want To Be A Woman

9. If We Only Had The Time

10. Who Would Ever Think That I Would Mary Margaret?

11. Teardrops

This is a reconstruction of what was intended to be The Turtles final album Shell Shock. Produced by Jerry Yester for a 1970 release, the band envisioned Shell Shock as their masterpiece and career coda but it remained unfinished due to extreme meddling from their record label. White Whale Records went back on their word to fund the album and entrapped frontmen Flo and Eddie to bend to their corporate wishes. After dissolving the band, White Whale trickled out the Shell Shock material, in various forms of completeness, on various compilation releases until the label themselves dissolved as well. This reconstruction attempts to cull all the material originally recorded and meant to be a part of the Shell Shock project into a finished, cohesive album, utilizing the best possible masters of each track.

Upgrades to this September 2018 edition are:

Upgraded sources from All The Singles and the Turtle Soup remaster

An extreme example of the commercial world destroying the artistic: quite simply, The Turtles are martyrs. Locked into a record contract so rigid that frontmen Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman were not even allowed to use their actual names after the break-up of The Turtles, much of their career in the 60s were spent fighting the industry that restrained them. Miraculously, many of their successes were an embodiment of this—most notably their hit song “Elenore”, a sarcastic response to their label’s request to write an assembly-line pop hit in the fashion of their signature hit “Happy Together”. That friction climaxed in 1970 as the band began winding down after years of biting the hands that barely fed them as well as the commercial let-down of their previous album, the Ray Davies-produced Turtle Soup.

In an attempt for a final bravado, the quintet assembled at Sunset Sound studios in January 1970 and began recording their usual mix of originals and outside-written tracks. Produced by Jerry Yester, the band again sought to record another intelligent and musically diverse album as Turtle Soup, this time a bit more commercial. At least seven songs are known to have been recorded during these Yester sessions including: original compositions “Can I Go On”, “If We Only Had The Time”, “There You Sit Lonely”, “We Ain’t Gonna Party No More”; guitarist Al Nichol’s “You Want To Be A Woman”; and the Bonner/Gordon leftovers “Goodbye Surprise” & “Like It Or Not”. The Turtles also recorded a pair of ridiculous songs as: an authentic cover of Jan & Arnie’s “Gas Money” and a cover of the band's live staple, Lee Andrews & The Hearts’ “Teardrops”. It was released as a very rare, promo-only single in February 1970, credited to The Dedications.

But midway through the Yester sessions, White Whale desired The Turtles to have a hit single after being dismayed by the lackluster sales of Turtle Soup. They suggested that Kaylan and Volman fly to Memphis and record vocal overdubs on a pre-recorded backing track for the ridiculously corny song “Who Would Ever Thought That I Would Marry Margaret?”, penned by professional songwriters Ralph Dino and John Sembello. Kaylan and Volman refused, claiming this transgression would reduce their rock band into transparent pop idols. In retaliation for their refusal to turn their band into a pair of fake pop singers, White Whale chained the doors to their studio at Sunset Sound and even posted guards outside the door, not allowing The Turtles to even retrieve their own gear, let alone finish the album!

In a desperate attempt to save the Shell Shock recordings and the hope to somehow finish the album, Kaylan and Volman agreed to record “Margaret”, although they refused to add anything other than their necessary lead and backing vocals. This ‘unfinished’ mix was released to dismal critical and commercial attention—just as the pair had predicted—and the single was a flop. Despite Kaylan and Volman’s participation, White Whale still refused to let The Turtles finish Shell Shock and both parties sued each other: White Whale sued The Turtles for a breach of contract and The Turtles sued White Whale for a missing $2,500,000 that was owed to them. The band soon called it quits amidst litigation. In one final plea to salvage the band’s reputation, White Whale allowed Kaylan, Volman and Nichol to record vocals for a final Turtles single, the beautiful “Lady-O”. Written and performed acoustically by Judee Sill, it was a gentle goodbye to the band.

Shell Shock remained in the vaults and as Kaylan and Volman regrouped as Flo and Eddie and were absorbed into Frank Zappa’s reformed Mothers of Invention, White Whale continued to exploit The Turtles name, the label’s only charting act. After re-releasing some of their mid-60s singles, White Whale released the more completed Shell Shock material on the compilation More Golden Hits in 1970. After the the collapse of the reformed Mothers of Invention, Flo & Eddie recorded their first solo album The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie in 1972, which contained new recordings of "Goodbye Surprise" and "There You Sit Lonely", as well as other tracks that would have been originally meant for Shell Shock, had they been recorded. Eventually, time would prove our protagonists as victors, as White Whale went bankrupt and their assets auctioned off in 1974. Who was it that bought The Turtles back-catalog? Two gentlemen by the name of Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan!

As “Happy Together” proved to be a timeless classic, the legacy of The Turtles seemed profitable enough for re-releases, this time controlled by the actual founders of The Turtles. Notable from this first reissue campaign on Rhino Records was an official reconstruction of Shell Shockreleased in 1987, attempting to match what the band might have released in 1970 had the album been finished! Unfortunately, Flo and Eddie’s own official Shell Shock reconstruction is long out-of-print and is not even mentioned in the band’s own online discography. Luckily for us, all of the songs trickled out as bonus tracks on The Turtles reissues on the Repertoire and Sundazed labels in the 90s. The most recently, all the material, remastered from the original mastertapes, appeared on the anthology All The Singles and as bonus tracks on Turtle Soup. Even though the band’s own take on Shell Shock is long forgotten, we have no trouble replicating it… or rather, making our own take on it, an album that never was!

My reconstruction of Shell Shock begins similarly to The Turtles' own out-of-print reconstruction from 1987, with the bombastic rocker “Goodbye Surprise”, taken from the Turtle Soup remaster. Following is “Like it Or Not” and “There You Sit Lonely”, also taken from the Turtle Soup remaster. The twin-singles “We Ain’t Gonna Party No More” and “Lady-O” conclude Side A, both in their original stereo single mixes, taken from All The Singles. Unlike the band’s official reconstruction, I am excluding “Cat In The Window”, it being an outtake from 1967 and not from the 1970 Yester and related singles sessions.

Side B deviates a bit from the band’s own reconstruction, as my version opens with the ruckus of “Gas Money”, taken from All The Singles. Following is “Can I Go On”, taken from the Turtle Soup remaster. Another deviation from the official Shell Shock is my exclusion of “Dance This Dance”, another track misappropriated to Shell Shock by Rhino, it being from the Turtle Soup demo sessions a year prior. Instead is “You Want To Be a Woman” and “If We Only Had The Time”, both from the Turtle Soupremaster. While many feel that the atrocious “Who Would Ever Think That I Would Marry Margaret?” was never truly intended to be on the album, I propose it probably would have been White Whale's condition for the album's release and it is included here as a historical curiosity at the very least, in it’s true stereo mix from All The Singles. My reconstruction ends with “Teardrops”, also taken from All The Singles.

320kps mp3s
Lossless FLAC

Sources used:

All The Singles (Manifesto, 2016)

Turtle Soup (Manifesto, 2016 remaster)

flac --> wav --> editing in Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

* md5 files, track notes and artwork included

The Beach Boys – SMiLE

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

December 2018 UPGRADE

Disc 1 – SMiLE ’67 Reconstruction

Side A:

1. Our Prayer - Heroes and Villains

2. Vege-Tables

3. Do You Like Worms?

4. Child is Father of The Man

5. The Old Master Painter

6. Cabin Essence

Side B:

7. Good Vibrations

8. Wonderful

9. I’m In Great Shape

10. Wind Chimes

11. The Elements

12. Surf’s Up

BONUS MATERIAL:

Disc 2 – The Beach Boys Present SMiLE + Vintage Brian Wilson Mixes

1. Our Prayer - Gee

2. Heroes and Villains

3. Do You Like Worms?

4. Barnyard

5. The Old Master Painter

6. Cabin Essence

7. Wonderful

8. Look

9. Child is Father of The Man

10. Surf’s Up

11. I’m In Great Shape

12. Vege-Tables

13. Holidays

14. Wind Chimes

15. Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow

16. I Love To Say Dada

17. Good Vibrations

18. Our Prayer (December 1966 Comp Reel)

19. Wonderful (December 1966 Comp Reel)

20. Cabin Essence (December 1966 Comp Reel)

21. Child is Father of The Man (December 1966 Comp Reel)

22. Do You Like Worms? (December 1966 Comp Reel)

23. Vege-Tables (1967 Track Assembly)

Disc 3 – Behind The SMiLE

1. Good Vibrations (March 1966 Reconstruction)

2. Good Vibrations (May 1966 Reconstruction)

3. Good Vibrations (June 1966 Reconstruction)

4. Wind Chimes (Early Version Reconstruction)

5. Wind Chimes (Backing Track Reconstruction)

6. Wonderful (Chronological Reconstruction)

7. Cabin Essence (Backing Track Reconstruction)

8. Child is Father of The Man (Early Version Reconstruction)

9. Child is Father of The Man (Stereo Backing Track Reconstruction)

10. Do You Like Worms? (Backing Track Reconstruction)

11. Surf’s Up (1966 Mix Reconstruction)

12. Heroes and Villains (November 1966 Reconstruction)

13. Heroes and Villains (January 1967 Reconstruction)

14. Heroes and Villains (February 1967 Reconstruction/'Part II")

15. Heroes and Villains (March 1967 Reconstruction)

16. I Love To Say Dada (Chronological Reconstruction)

17. The Elements (Excerpts from Psychedelic Sounds)

Merry Christmas and happy Holidays! This is an UPGRADE to my reconstruction of The Beach Boys SMiLE album. For this special occasion, I offer a special three-disc set... Disc 1 contains the standard, upgraded mono and stereo versions of my SMiLE ’67 Mix, which attempts to recreate what the SMiLE album would have sounded like in 1967. Disc 2 contains an all-stereo, all-Beach Boys version of SMiLE, structured in three movements just as 2004’s Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE; as a bonus, it also contains several vintage Brian Wilson mixes—mostly a reconstruction and remaster of Brian Wilson’s December 1966 Comp Reel, his first attempt to compile a series of SMiLE era mixes. Disc 3 contains an hour of custom-made bonus material and reconstructions meant to showcase the making of the album—Behind The SMiLE.

The upgrades in this December 2018 edition of SMiLE ’67 are:

- Remade “Child is Father of The Man” which follows the structure of Brian Wilson’s vintage three-minute 1966 test edit (both mono and stereo).

- Remixed “Cabin Essence” (stereo).

- Remade “The Old Master Painter” using the correct take 11 as the core of the song (stereo).

- Remade “The Elements” to be a completely self-contained track, separate from “Wind Chimes”, “Vege-Tables”, etc (both mono and stereo).

- All tracks banded as twelve separate, uncrossfaded songs, as per Van Dyke Parks.

- SMiLE 2004reconstruction is updated with aforementioned sources and included on Disc 2

- Creation and inclusion of Disc 3, Behind The SMiLE, as well as remastered Brian Wilson vintage mixes on Disc 2

* See included essay ‘Behind The SMiLE’ for specific song, recording and argument information.

Much has been written about the unreleased album SMiLE; even more so in recent history due to The SMiLE Sessions boxset. The first disc of that set was purported to be an accurate reconstruction of what SMiLE would have been. But is it so? Most likely not: the tracklist is based upon the sequence found on Brian Wilson’s 2004 solo album Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE, in which the great artist finally “finished SMiLE”. Well surely, that was how SMiLE was supposed to sound? Again, most likely not: that sequence was devised by The Brian Wilson Band musical director Darian Sahanaja for the purpose of the previous year’s SMiLE Tour, as an interesting live performance that showcased all of the known and popular SMiLE tracks. Furthermore, his vision of SMiLE seemed to be greatly influenced by sequences found on known bootlegs in the 1990s as well as fan fiction on their own SMiLE mixes. As a matter of fact, Brian Wilson himself has admitted that what we think of as the “finished SMiLE” is not what it would have sounded like in 1967; Wilson himself didn’t even know what it would have sounded like, even in 1967! By spring 1967, the album itself was abandoned and he focused on two songs for a single release (“Heroes and Villains” and “Vege-Tables”) and the structure of those two songs changed from day to day!

How could we possibly assemble something that Brian Wilson himself couldn’t? Fans and SMiLE aficionados have been spending the last 40 years making their own SMiLE mixes, so it’s not an unreachable dream. After over fifteen years of research, I believe I have found a method to make an extremely educated guess to what the album contained and how it was structured. First and foremost, I offer that SMiLE would have been a singular, two-sided album of twelve banded pop-songs, just as Pet Sounds was; not three conceptual suites or movements; it would not have been a three-movement suite as it exists today. As much as we won’t want to imagine it, SMiLE is just an album. Anything more might be succumbing to mythos.

But of all the many pieces recorded for SMiLE, what would be included? Our first clue is found in a handwritten tracklist addressed to Capitol Records, which was used to manufacture LP mock-up artwork for the album. The tracks included, in this order: “Do You Like Worms?”, “Wind Chimes”, “Heroes and Villains”, “Surf’s Up”, “Good Vibrations”, “Cabin Essence”, “Wonderful”, “I’m In Great Shape”, “Child Is Father Of The Man”, “The Elements”, “Vege-Tables” and “The Old Master Painter”. Any listener who can make a playlist will know this is a terrible track sequence for an album; there is no flow or cohesion and the two sides do not time-out correctly! My theory is that this was not the specific intended track order of the album, but instead a shortlist of the songs that would be on the final album; note that the more completed songs are listed first and the most ‘under construction’ songs listed last. Thus certain SMiLE staples not included on the list such as “Look”, “He Gives Speeches” or “Holidays” would be excluded from the final running order of an authentic 1967 SMiLE. The one exception is “Our Prayer”, used as an (uncredited) opening track outside of the twelve, which was Brian Wilson’s intention at the time.

The next step is to “finish” each of the twelve songs as close to how Brian Wilson envisioned the songs in 1966-1967. Some already exist as finished mixes (“Wonderful”, the ‘Cantina Version’ of “Heroes and Villains”), while we have vintage test edits for others to base a reconstruction off of (“Do You Like Worms?”, “Wind Chimes”, “Child is Father of The Man”). We will have to make educated guesses for the remainders based on primary sources and session information (“I’m In Great Shape”, “The Elements”). Also note, no anachronistic digital “fly-ins” were used to complete songs; in my view, leaving some songs unfinished seemed more authentic than using sound elements recorded in 2004. Finally, we will organize these twelve songs into two sides of an LP, unbanded (unconnected or unsegued) with each side beginning with a ‘hit’ and each side closing with an ‘epic’.

Side A of my SMiLE ’67 begins with “Our Prayer”, just as instructed by Brian Wilson on session tapes. My mono mix uses the version from The SMiLE Sessions and stereo from Made in California. It segues directly into the ‘hit’ of side A, “Heroes and Villains”. Here we use what is called ‘The Cantina Version’, the mix of the song prepared by Brian on February 10th, 1967—what I believe is the version of the song truly intended for SMiLE; both mono and stereo versions taken from The SMiLE Sessions. Next is also what follows on the Smiley Smile album: “Vege-Tables”. My construction removes the third verse as I thought it was lyrically redundant and disrupted the gradual ‘winding-down’ flow of the song. The mono mix is edited from The Smile Sessions and stereo mix edited from Made in California. My own unique construction of “Do You Like Worms?” follows, based on Brian Wilson’s test mixes from December 1966. Note that in my stereo mix—created from syncing the isolated vocals to the assembled backing tracks—the tack piano of the ‘Bicycle Rider’ theme pre-chorus travels stereophonically from right to left, reminiscent of the pilgrims and pioneers moving across America during the Western Expansion—who The Bicycle Rider presents! All sources edited from The SMiLE Sessions.

Next is a reconstruction of “Child is Father of The Man” based on the structure of Brian Wilson’s three-minute 1966 test edit, which featured a standard verse/chorus/verse/chorus structure. All sources edited from The SMiLE Sessions. Following is “The Old Master Painter”. Although the song was known to conclude with the ‘Barnshine’ Fade from “Heroes and Villains”, here we utilize the rerecorded bird whistle Fade from March 1967 since the original Fade is already in use on “Heroes and Villains”. Mono mix is edited from The SMiLE Sessions, stereo mix is a splice between that and the stereo master take from Unsurpassed Masters Vol 16. Side B concludes with the epic song that cannot be topped: “Cabin Essence”. While the mono mix is taken from The SMiLE Sessions, my stereo mix features the isolated lead vocals from 20/20 and backing vocals from The SMiLE Sessions,synced up to the stereo backing tracks from The SMiLE Sessions. The result is a fuller stereophonic mix with the instruments panned left and right and vocals centered, rather than vice versa as per the common 20/20 version.

Side B opens with the ‘hit’ of this half of the album, as it did on Smiley Smile: “Good Vibrations”, both mono and stereo mixes from the 2012 remaster of Smiley Smile. Next is “Wonderful”, mono mix sourced from The Smile Sessions. The stereo mix features the master from the 1993 Good Vibrations box set synced up with the isolated backing vocals from The Smile Sessions. “I’m In Great Shape” is one of the many unsolved mysteries of SMiLE, and probably always will be. Here we presume it to be the four-part ‘Barnyard Suite’ Brian alluded to in the 1970s, using “I’m In Great Shape” and “Barnyard” as its base; it is completed with “I Wanna Be Around” and “Friday Night”, both labeled as ‘Great Shape’ on their tape box and who also feature a slightly farm-like theme.

Next is “Wind Chimes”, edited from the mono on The Smile Sessions and stereo edited from Made In California, but restructured to match Brian Wilson’s 1966 test edits. Following is “The Elements”, a hotly-debated subject of SMiLE Lore. Here we will create a self-contained piece that covers all four Elements without overlapping with previous songs (“Wind Chimes”, “Vege-Tables”, etc). Fire is represented by the ‘Firetruck’ Intro to “Heroes and Villains”, crossfaded into “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” and concluding with the fire sound effects from the session; Earth is represented by the percussive “I Love to Say Dada – part 1” that brings peddles and rolling rocks to mind and concludes with vegetable chants from Psychedelic Sounds; Air is represented by “Second Day”, with its flute conjuring up images of the breeze and concluding with wheezing chants from Psychedelic Sounds; Water is represented by “I Love To Say Dada – Part 2”, it’s treated piano reminiscent of running water and concluding with underwater chanting from Psychedelic Sounds. Finally, SMiLE concludes with the song Vosse stated was to end the album: “Surf’s Up”, mono and stereo taken from The SMiLE Sessions.

If you find this reconstruct a bit hard to swallow, I don’t blame you; fifty years of SMiLEmythology has very much overshadowed the facts; hype has become reality. So on Disc 2, I have also included an updated version of my all-stereo reconstruction of SMiLE based on 2004’s Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. If you feel that was how SMiLE should be, well, here it is! Following are a set of bonus tracks, my own remaster of Brian’s original December 1966 Comp Reel, his first assemblage of SMiLE era mixes. Also included is my remaster of Brian’s test edit of “Vege-Tables”; not originally a part of the reel but is included for historical relevancy.

But the real fun can be found on Disc 3, Behind The SMiLE. Meant as a ‘making-of’ audio documentary, it is an assemblage of stereo backing tracks, alternate versions and possible variations. Included are what I call ‘chronological reconstructions’, in which the many modulations of a specific song are organized in the order of when they were recorded. In effect the listener can understand Brian Wilson’s ideas for a given song in real time. Behind The SMiLE is also meant to be listened along with the included Behind The SMiLE essay, which includes recording notes for each song.

320kps Mp3s

Lossless FLAC (Disc 1, Disc 2, Disc 3)

Sources used:

1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow (2017 CD)

Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys (1993 CD box set)

Good Vibrations (2006 40th Anniversary CD EP)

Made in California (2013 CD box set)

Smiley Smile (2012 CD remaster)

The SMiLE Sessions (2011 CD box set)

The SMiLE Sessions (2011 LP, son-of-albion vinyl rip)

Unsurpassed Masters Vol 16 (1999 CD)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro & Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

John Lennon – Oldies But Mouldies

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

Side A:

1. Here We Go Again

2. You Can’t Catch Me

3. To Know Her Is To Love Her

4. Be My Baby

Side B:

5. Bony Moronie

6. My Baby Left Me

7. Angel Baby

8. Sweet Little Sixteen

9. Just Because

This is a reconstruction of the unreleased 1973 John Lennon/Phil Spector collaboration album Oldies But Mouldies, recorded in the midst of Lennon’s infamous “Lost Weekend”. Put on hold when Phil Spector mysteriously disappeared with the mastertapes, the album was later recovered, mostly rerecorded and released as the Rock ‘n’ Roll album in 1975. This reconstruction attempts to not only present a more listenable product, but to present what the album would have sounded like before it became Rock ‘n’ Roll.

After being literally inseparable for five years, Yoko Ono sensed John Lennon’s wondering eye and questioned if he was able to remain loyal to her. Her solution was to kick him out, allowing him to “sow his wild oats” and get “it” out of his system. Accompanied by his assistant May Pang (who was essentially authorized by Yoko to be Lennon’s mistress), Lennon departed to Los Angeles in September 1973, looking for a good time... and more. What was supposed to be a two-week stay became fourteen months of chaos and debauchery—both in the clubs and the recording studio.

The seeds of the Oldies But Mouldies album—which was also provisionally titled Back To Mono—were apparently two events: Lennon meeting his heroes Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino, and a lawsuit by music publisher Morris Levy. Lennon had nicked a line from Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me” for The Beatles classic “Come Together” and an out-of-court settlement stipulated that Lennon was to cover three songs from Levy’s Big Seven publishing catalog, earning royalties for Levy in lieu of any further litigation and the embarrassing co-writing credit to the Lennon/McCartney song. Drunkenly giving in, Lennon decided to make a party of it and record an entire album of 1950s rockers and ballads that had influenced him as a teenager. To top it off, he invited legendary producer Phil Spector to oversee the project, promising him complete creative control and even allowing Spector to choose the songs!

Sessions began in mid-October at A&M Studios with Spector creating his recognizable “Wall of Sound”, using an absurdly large group of the top session musicians in LA. But the combination of Lennon’s destructive, drunken antics, Spector’s insane eccentricities and the revolving door of studio musicians, celebrities and hanger-ons, more lunacy was recorded than actual music. Spector famously arrived with bodyguards, armed with a handgun, dressed alternatingly as a surgeon, karate master or a priest. One night Spector even fired his gun in the studio, causing Lennon to dare to scream back at Spector, in fear of losing his hearing. Other nights Lennon would go into violent, drunken fits, many believing in anguish over his separation from Yoko. And of course, the backdrop to the proceedings was always a studio ridiculously full of musicians and a control room full of celebrities along for the ride—and the open bar.

Throughout October and a final session in late November at A&M, eight songs were recorded: Larry Williams’ “Bony Moronie”; The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”; Rosie & The Originals’ “Angel Baby”; Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen”; Lloyd Price’s “Just Because”; Martha & The Vendellas’ “A Love Like Yours”; The Chordettes’ “Born To Be With You”; and The Teddy Bears’ “To Know Her Is To Love Her”. Additional sessions at The Record Plant Los Angeles in December produced three more tracks: Arthur Crudup’s “My Baby Left Me”; the song that started this whole mess—“You Can’t Catch Me”; and John Lennon’s only original composition during this period, “Here We Go Again”, co-credited to Phil Spector. With the backing tracks to eleven songs more or less in the can, the album came to a crashing halt when Phil Spector mysteriously disappeared after telling Lennon the studio had burned down. With rumors that Spector had suffered a serious car injury and might not even be in the country anymore, Lennon resolved to finish the album himself… Until he found that Spector had stolen all of the master tapes! Oldies But Mouldies was officially on hold until further notice.

As 1974 rolled in, Lennon went on to work on different projects during his “Lost Weekend”. Firstly, producing an album with his old friend Harry Nilsson that spring, Pussy Cats. Secondly, Lennon began preproduction on his follow-up to Mind Games, demoing newer compositions. Suddenly (and appropriately in the midst of the Watergate scandal), Lennon received a mysterious phone call from Spector, claiming that he “had the James Dean tape.” For a sum of $90,000 Lennon was able to secure the masters to nine out of the eleven songs recorded; Spector chose to hold on to the masters of “A Love Like Yours” for Cher & Nilsson and “Born To Be With You” for Dion.

After reviewing the Back To Mono/Oldies But Moldies/James Dean Tapes that summer, Lennon concluded that the recordings accurately reflected the actual sessions—they were a catastrophic, drunken mess. Spector’s "Wall of Sound" was overblown and Lennon’s scratch vocals were over the edge. Setting the tapes aside, Lennon instead focused on his new batch of songs, using much of the same session musicians as on Oldies But Mouldies. This album, called Walls and Bridges, seemed to be a return to form for Lennon after a series of forgettable albums, songs that largely concerned his longing for Yoko. With the fate of Oldies But Mouldies in question, Lennon used it’s intended cover art for Walls and Bridges instead: a drawing he had made in 1952, when he was 11 years old.

Since Lennon felt that the Oldies But Mouldies tapes were basically unusable, he chose to appease Levy’s original lawsuit by including a short, impromptu cover of the Levy-owned “Ya Ya” to conclude Walls and Bridges. Levy was not amused—nor satisfied. Having to return to finish the Oldies But Mouldies project, Lennon and his backing band relocated to Levy’s own Sunnyview recording studio in order to sober up and focus on the project. With Levy approving of the rehearsed material from his songbook, Lennon and his band entered The Record Plant New York in October 1974—one year from the start of the project—to record the additional songs intended to round out the salvageable material from the Spector sessions. Nine songs were completed: Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lula”; Ben E King’s “Stand By Me”; a medley of Little Richard’s “Rip It Up”/”Ready Teddy”; Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame”; Bobby Freeman’s “Do You Wanna Dance”; Little Richard’s “Slippin and Slidin”; Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue”; a medley of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me” and Little Richard’s “Send Me Some Lovin”; and a proper version of Lee Dorsey’s “Ya Ya”.

Now titled Rock ‘n Roll, Lennon used the leaner and sober 1974 New York sessions as the basis of the album. Additional work was needed to some of the LA sessions: “Sweet Little Sixteen”, “Bony Moronie” and “Just Because” received new vocals; an edit was made in “You Can’t Catch Me” to reprise the first verse, extending the song’s length; likewise “Angel Baby” was edited to lengthen the track, although it did not make the final cut for the album; conversely, the intro to “Be My Baby” was cut short and an entire verse removed to shorten the song by over a minute, although it too did not make the album.

Finally, a reunification between Lennon and Ono, orchestrated by none other than Elton John, put an end to “The Lost Weekend”. Choosing to focus on promotion for Walls and Bridges, Lennon provided a rough mix of the assembled Rock ‘n’ Roll album to Levy in good faith, promising a release later in 1975. Not satisfied to wait a year, Levy proposed to release the album in advance through his own mail-order service, Adam VIII, believing that would circumvent EMI’s ownership of the master recordings. Initially approving of the idea, Lennon gave his consent and Levy issued his own cut of the album—Roots: John Lennon Sings The Great Rock & Roll Hits, using his tape of rough mixes. Of course EMI did not approve, and with Lennon quickly switching sides, slight alterations were made to the master and Rock ‘n’ Roll was rush-released in February. Levy was later sued for breach of contract. Lennon and EMI ultimately prevailed but not after 1,270 copies of Roots made their way into the market, making it one of the most valuable Lennon collector’s items. A curious effect of these competing albums was that they each had different edits of the same songs. But did either represent the original Spector-helmed Oldies But Mouldies album?

This is a tricky reconstruction, because the existent rough mixes of the Phil Spector sessions simply do not sound very good; to that extent, both Roots and Rock ‘n’ Roll are neither great sounding albums in the first place! Relying on purely the rough mixes found on Roots or The Lost Lennon Tapes bootlegs reveals a tiring listen, based on Spector’s overblown production and Lennon’s drunken rambling; the original rough mix of “Just Because” is really all you need to hear to understand this point! Thus, we will choose to generally utilize the more sensible and sonically palatable remixes found on the 2004 reissue of Rock ‘n’ Roll, commissioned by Yoko Ono. While the mix itself is not historically accurate—using the new vocals Lennon cut in 1974—the result is a much more enjoyable listen!

Side A begins with Lennon’s sole composition, the lush but lackluster “Here We Go Again” taken from Gimme Some Truth. Following is the culprit “You Can’t Catch Me’, taken from the 2004 remix of Rock ‘n’ Roll but re-edited to match the original rough mix of the song, effectively removing the extra verse. Next is “To Know Her Is To Love Her”, taken from the 2004 Rock ‘n’ Roll, although it is apparently in its original mix. The side closes with what exemplifies the album’s madness and excess: “Be My Baby”, using the most refined mix of the full nearly-six minute version, taken from Phil Lip’s Delux Rock n Roll bootleg.

Side B begins with the ruckus of “Bony Moronie” taken from the 2004 remix of Rock n Roll, a highlight of the album featuring a Lennon vocal teetering off the edge. Following is “My Baby Left Me”, the remix also taken from the 2004 Rock ‘n’ Roll. “Angel Baby” from the 2004 Rock ‘n’ Rollfollows, again re-edited to match the original rough mix, effectively removing the extra bridge. The remixed “Sweet Little Sixteen” follows, and the album concludes with the rambling weak-link “Just Because”, using the 2004 remix just because, to put it simply, the original rough mix from 1973 is unlistenable due to Lennon’s drunk ramblings.

320 kps mp3s
Lossless FLAC

Lossles FLAC

Sources used:

Gimme Some Truth (2001 CD)

Rock 'n' Roll (2004 CD Remix/Remaster)

Rock 'n' Roll Delux (2018 fanmade bootleg, Phil Lip)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro & Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

The Beatles – A Doll’s House

(soniclovenoize “White Album” single-LP reconstruction)

Side A:

1. Revolution 19

2. Honey Pie

3. Not Guilty

4. Don’t Pass Me By

5. Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?

Side B:

6. Helter Skelter

7. Wild Honey Pie

8. What’s The New Mary Jane

9. Can You Take Me Back

10. Goodnight

After being probably the most highly requested reconstruction on my blog, I finally did the impossible and reconstructed the ultimate single-disc version of The Beatles’ 1968 self-titled release, aka The White Album. Not only does this reconstruction whittle down the massive, bloated, filler-filled 30-song collection to its core essentials, it also represents the very best material The Beatles recorded during this period.

After spending several months under the tutelage of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in early 1968, The Beatles emerged from Rishikesh, India with nearly 40 new compositions. Uninterested in filtering only the best material to be featured on their follow-up proper to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles choose to record almost all of the material they had written, collecting it all onto the band’s first double album set. Furthermore, although the songs had all predominantly been written on acoustic guitars in the Indian wilderness, each song’s arrangement was pushed as far as possible into drastically different genres—from electric blues to ska, from sound collage to western balladry, from ragtime to proto-metal.

The resulting self-titled album—dubbed The White Albumdue to its entirely white cover—has been a controversial release. With 30 songs of varying quality, the track order is a mess and each song incongruent with the one another. Many feel the album could be drastically improved by pairing it down to one disc. Not only could one reduce the album to the best songs, but one could also sonically unify the album to sound more cohesive. But could it be done? I believe my reconstruction solves all of these problems and is the quintessential single-disc White Album, what The Beatles probably should have originally released in 1968.

Side A opens with the flagship song of the album, “Revolution 1”. Here, using both the standard stereo mix from the 2009 White Album Remaster and the Take 18 from the White Album Deluxe box, I was able to sync the full ten-minute track with its sister piece “Revolution 9”, also taken from the White Album Deluxe; thus presented is the closest to John Lennon’s true artistic intent for the song, what I call “Revolution 19”. Finally, one can understand the relationship between “Revolution 1” and “Revolution 9” and how the two fit together, and it rightfully sets the tone for this cutting-edge Beatles album. Following is one of Paul McCartney’s most complex and riveting pieces, “Honey Pie”, taken from the 2009 Remaster. The very best of George Harrison’s material from this era follows: “Not Guilty”, taken from the White Album Deluxe. It features additional EQ and stereo panning to make the vocals stand out and match the rest of the album, and faded out as George had intended as per it's rough 1968 mono mix. Next is frankly one of the best songs of the album, the fantastic “Don’t Pass Me By”, complete with its restored orchestral introduction taken from Anthology 3. Side B closes with Paul McCartney’s tortured romantic plea, a philosophical query that comments on the Greco-Roman concepts of lust, while simultaneously juxtaposing it with the post-modern notions of psychological abandonment due to a lack of peripheral perception. Of course I can only refer to the masterpiece “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?, taken from the 2009 Remaster of the White Album.

Side B opens with one of The Beatles most sophisticated compositions, the slower, early twelve-minute version of “Helter Skelter” taken from the White Album Deluxe, a recording that essentially invented Krautrock. Here it is reedited for logical cohesion. The album takes a turn for the serious and decidingly dramatic, with “Wild Honey Pie” from the 2009 Remaster. Next is one of John Lennon’s very best compositions of his later Beatles-period, the full length, original 1968 mix of “What’s The New Mary Jane”, taken from the White Out bootleg. With a short excerpt of “Can You Take Me Back” from the White Album Deluxe to break the tension, A Doll’s House concludes the only way it possibly could: with Ringo’s “Goodnight”.

The resulting album becomes one of The Beatles most forward-thinking albums. A Doll’s House pushes boundaries, invented numerous musical genres and is generally ahead of its time… while still remaining an enthralling yet challenging listen. A revolution indeed!

Sources used:

Anthology 3 (1996 CD)

The Beatles (2009 Remaster)

The Beatles (2018 Deluxe Edition)

White Out (2015 bootleg, Ass Blaster Records)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro & Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

Paul McCartney & Wings – Red Rose Speedway

(double-album reconstruction by soniclovenoize)

June 2019 UPGRADE

Side A:

1. Big Barn Bed

2. My Love

3. When The Night

4. Seaside Woman

5. Get On The Right Thing

Side B:

6. Best Friend (live)

7. Tragedy

8. I Would Only Smile

9. One More Kiss

10. Single Pigeon

11. Little Lamb Dragonfly

Side C:

1. I Lie Around

2. Hi Hi Hi

3. Loup (1st Indian on The Moon)

4. 1882 (live)

5. The Mess (live)

Side D:

6. Night Out

7. Mama’s Little Girl

8. Country Dreamer

9. Hold Me Tight/Lazy Dynamite/Hands of Love/Power Cut

This is an upgrade to my reconstruction of a double-album version of Paul McCartney & Wings’ 1973 album, Red Rose Speedway. Originally conceived as a musically versatile 2LP with contributions from other members of Wings outside of McCartney, the album was trimmed down to a more commercial single-disc configuration, which was eventually released to mixed acclaim. Although an official release of McCartney’s final 2LP configuration appeared in 2018, the tracklist was incongruent and had a rather lackluster flow; this reconstruction uses those original 1973 mixes, but configured with my own tracklist from 2013 that presents the material in a more pleasing track order.

Upgrades to this June 2019 edition are:

All sources taken from the Red Rose Speedway 2018 box set, using all original 1973 mixes.
“Big Barn Bed” and “My Love” are properly crossfaded, as originally intended.
Addition of “Hi Hi Hi” to Side C tracklist.
Original, unique edit of the a capella outro to “Get On The Right Thing” onto the album versio
Original, unique shorter edit of “Loup” which is segued into and thus serves as an into to “1882”.

After a pair of solo albums--the second of which spawned some heavy hits--Paul McCartney was determined to form a new musical group he could front with his wife Linda and rediscover the excitement of his early Beatles days. By 1971, he had recruited former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine and session drummer Denny Seiwell, the later who had already performed on McCartney’s RAM from the previous year. Wings was born, and their debut album Wild Life was hastily written and recorded that summer. A disappointing and lightweight release, McCartney admitted it was the sound of a band in its infancy, as the band had not had the time to evolve and, frankly, improve beyond musical acquaintances just jamming. The only way to do that was to play live…

Early 1972 saw the addition Joe Cocker guitarist Henry McCullough to the lineup and the band embarked on a university tour of the UK in February. Boldly, the quintet entered Olympic Studios with the legendary Glyn Johns in March to record the new batch of road-tested songs, which also included material penned by other members of Wings besides McCArtney: “Big Barn Bed”, “When The Night”, “The Mess”, “Single Pigeon”, the Thomas Wayne & The DeLons cover “Tragedy”, “Mama’s Little Girl”, the spacey instrumental “Loup (1st Indian On The Moon)”, Linda’s “Seaside Woman”, Denny Laine’s “I Would Only Smile”, “Thank You Darling” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. Although an album’s worth of material was recorded, the quality was only marginally better than the previous year’s Wild Life, and much of the studio time was wasted with Wings still trying to find their musical grounding. Fed up with what he perceived as just messing about rather than serious work, Glyn Johns quit the project at the end of the month. Only the session’s final recording, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, was released as a single in May, to a perplexed audience. Is this a rock band or a children’s song? It was barely anything in between.

Following the aborted Olympic Sessions, Wings embarked on another European through July and August, appropriately dubbed Wings Over Europe. While continuing to perform the new material tracked during the Olympic Sessions, Wings added even newer compositions to their repertoire, such as “1882”, “Best Friend”, “Soily”, Laine’s “Say You Don’t Mind” and McCullough’s “Henry’s Blues”. After the conclusion of the tour, the group recorded the reggae-influenced track “C Moon” in September for a future single release.

Doubling down to not only make a proper album but to produce it themselves, Wings recruited engineers Alan Parsons and John Leckie to record a second batch of new Wings material, this time in the luxurious Abbey Road Studios. The Wings Over America tour had whipped the band into shape, as the late-September/early-October Abbey Road sessions produced material more refined and colorful than either Wild Life or the Olympic Sessions: the rave-up “Night Out”, country ballads “One More Kiss” and “Country Dreamer”, four songs that were later conjoined into a medley “Hold Me Tight/Lazy Dynamite/Hands of Love/Power Cut” and the rocker “Hi Hi Hi”, which was selected to pair with “C Moon” as a stand-alone single release in December. Additionally, Wings went into McCartney’s vault to finish off three half-finished tracks from the Fall 1970 RAM Sessions: “Get On The Right Thing”, “Little Lamb Dragonfly” and “I Lie Around”. Suddenly, the group had the basis of an album with promise.

The end of October saw the band track another new song, this time with Paul’s old producer George Martin: “Live and Let Die”, intended for the subsequent James Bond film. Much to Alan Parson’s disappointment, that song was never destined for this ongoing album project, now titled Red Rose Speedway. But looking over the quantity of material recorded with Glyn Johns in March, Parsons in September and the refurbished RAM outtakes, it became obvious that this second Wings album could be a double-LP! Returning to the studio in November for follow-up sessions, a subpar “1882” was tracked along with a lackluster instrumental called “Jazz Street”. It was decided that mutitracked tapes of “1882” and “The Mess” from the August tour were better than their studio counterparts and received overdubs; likewise, a live “Best Friend” was also used, with added overdubs. January 1973 saw the band track the final addition to the album, the ballad “My Live”, recorded live in the studio with an orchestra. All of the pieces were now in place.

Assembling the vast amount of material into a cohesive double album was not an easy task. Several test masters have been discovered throughout the years, showing McCartney's difficulty in arranging the material cohesively. An acetate assembled December 13th, 1972 had the following configuration:

Side A – Big Barn Bed / When The Night / Single Pigeon / Tragedy / Mama’s Little Girl / Loup / I Would Only Smile

Side B – Country Dreamer / Night Out / One More Kiss / Jazz Street

Side C – I Lie Around / Little Lamb Dragonfly / Get On The Right Thing / 1882 / The Mess

Side D – My Love / Best Friend / Seaside Woman / Medley

That tracklist was shifted around a bit, and the final double-album configuration, dated January 30th, 1973, looked like:

Side A – Night Out / Get On The Right Thing / Country Dreamer / Big Barn Bed / My Love

Side B – Single Pigeon / When The Night / Seaside Woman / I Lie Around / The Mess

Side C – Best Friend / Loup / Medley

Side D – Mama’s Little Girl / I Would Only Smile / One More Kiss / Tragedy / Little Lamb Dragonfly

After a week of test listening, it was decided that a more concise (and thus more marketable) album was needed, and the material was paired down considerably. A single-disc master was prepared on February 22nd, 1973, which included:

Side A – Big Barn Bed / My Love / Get On The Right Thing / Country Dreamer / Medley

Side B – Single Pigeon / One More Kiss / Night Out / Seaside Woman / Mama’s Little Girl / Tragedy / Little Lamb Dragonfly

After more tinkering, the final single-disc master was prepared March 26th, 1973:

Side A – Big Barn Bed / My Love / Get On The Right Thing / One More Kiss / Little Lamb Dragonfly

Side B – Single Pigeon / When The Night / Loup / Medley

Red Rose Speedway was released in April and although the critics were skeptical of the album’s lightweight whimsy, “My Love” became a number one single anyways. Likewise, many fans claimed the album had potential but was missing something, although they couldn’t quite put their finger on it. In hindsight, the nine tracks released only told half the story of Red Rose Speedway; the album is best heard in the session’s entirety, as its value is best understood as the sum of its parts. While neither the released Red Rose Speedway nor the album's worth of outtakes are exceptional, when combined, it becomes an exceptional body of work. While not a blockbuster, it shows a band with the audacity to defy critics with a double album no one really asked for; that, a massive underdog, is it's strength. But how can we assemble this mess of three different sessions—four, counting the live tracks—into a sensible double LP?

Analysis of the running order of both the December 13th and January 30th 2LP acetates show a clumsy construction, although they both contain a number of isolated ideas that we can adopt into our more cohesive Red Rose Speedway. Firstly, we assign the notable rockers to begin each side of the double LP: “Big Barn Bed”, “Best Friend”, “I Lie Around” and “Night Out”. Secondly, we assign the two mid-tempo rockers to end Sides A and C (”Get On The Right Thing” and “The Mess”) and the two epics to close Sides B and D (“Little Lamb Dragonfly” and The Medley). Next, we disperse the songs led by the other members of Wings onto different sides of the album: Linda’s “Seaside Woman”, Laine’s “I Would Only Smile” and his vocal on “I Lie Around”. Likewise, the two (mostly) instrumental tracks “Night Out” and “Loup” should be placed on separate sides as well. Then we simply fill in the blanks, using some song pairs from both acetates that flow pleasantly, assembling four 20-minute LP sides.

My Side A begins with what seems to be the keystone track of Red Rose Speedway, the country-funk rocker “Big Barn Bed”. It is crossfaded (correctly, as opposed to the current remasters) into the hit single of the album “My Love”. “When The Night” follows, flowing into “Seaside Woman”. Closing the side is “Get On The Right Thing”, which features my own edit of the a capella ending from the rough mix, crossfaded from the standard album version, creating an interesting end to Side A. Side B begins with “Best Friend”, followed by a grouping of the folkier tracks: “Tragedy”, “I Would Only Smile” hard edited into “One Last Kiss”, “Single Pigeon” and probably the best song of the set, “Little Lamb Dragonfly”.

Side C begins with the joyous “I Lie Around”, the only way to logically open the second disc, in my opinion. One complaint Red Rose Speedway had earned is the lack of McCartney’s rock fare and its emphasis of lightweight pop and ballad. To offset this, I’ve included “Hi Hi Hi” to give the second disc some punch; although not originally intended for Red Rose Speedway, it really does give it the mid-album jolt it needs. To counter-balance this, I’ve edited nearly half of “Loup” down to merely a segue track into the fantastic live “1882”. That song is crossfaded into “The Mess” to make a continuous live performance to close out the side, patching McCartney’s "The Mess" dialog from the 1996 remaster of Red Rose Speedway, which was mysteriously absent from the 2018 remaster. Side D opens with “Night Out”, a fun, albeit pointless track. Followed by the serene “Mama’s Little Girl” and jaunty “Country Dreamer”, the album closes with the only logical possibility: The Medley.

Lossless FLAC (disc 1, disc 2)

Sources used:
Paul McCartney & Wings – Red Rose Speedway (1996 Steve Hoffman remaster)
Paul McCartney & Wings – Red Rose Speedway (2018 Delux Edition)

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*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

The United States of America – Gifts and Creatures

(soniclovenoize “Second Album” reimagining)

Side A:

1. Kalyani

2. You Can’t Ever Come Down

3. Tailor Man

4. Nightmare Train

5. Osamu’s Birthday

6. Do You Follow Me

Side B:

7. No Love

8. The Sing-Along Song

9. Perry Pier

10. Invisible Man

11. The Sub-Sylvian Litanies

12. The Elephant At The Door

13. The Sing-Along Song (Reprise)

Happy Fourth of July! This is a reimaging of a possible second album from psychedelic-pop visionaries The United States of America. Using a combination of solo recordings from band-leaders Joseph Byrd and Dorothy Moskowitz, as well as a few outtakes from the debut United States of America album, we will attempt to make what a theoretical sophomore 1969 album by the band would have sounded like. All tracks have been volume adjusted from the best sources and crossfaded into two continuous LP sides of music.

To put it simply, there was never a band like The United States of America, nor there ever will be again. Formed by young ethnomusicologist and Fluxus art movement centerpiece Joseph Byrd and his former-partner Dorothy Moskowitz in 1967, the pair were somehow equally influenced by John Cage and The Beatles. After composing a set of material with Byrd on keyboards and Moskowitz on vocals, the duo recruited the rest of the band from musicians whom they knew and performed with in the Los Angeles art, experimental and scholarly music scene: Gordon Marron was recruited to play an electrified violin through a ring modulator; African-drum student Craig Woodson was recruited to play a drumkit amplified by a number of contact mics; modern classical bassist Rand Forbes played fretless bass, often through a fuzz pedal. The quintet was also joined by Marron’s friend Ed Bogas, who supplied additional keyboards. Young art students who essentially wanted to create a rock band—despite being totally unfamiliar with the medium—were also highly tapped into revolutionary 1960s politics and the counter-culture, and sought to subvert the establishment by ironically dubbing the band The United States of America.

After recording a demo in September 1967, success was found fairly quickly as The United States of America were signed to Columbia before they even performed their first show! After touring with Richie Havens and The Troggs, the group began recording their self-titled debut that December with Moby Grape producer David Rubinson. Cracks already began to form in the unit, as Rubinson allegedly attempted to elevate Moskowitz to being the star of the show; likewise, creative differences between Byrd and the union of Bogas, Marron and Rubinson put a strain on the recording sessions. Regardless, the sextet and it's producer created an album unparalleled in its fusion of rock music, experimental electronics, counter culture social commentary and genre hopping from pop to Dixieland to sound collage. Released in March 1968, the band followed its release with another tour with The Troggs and The Velvet Underground.

Despite being on the cusp of fame, the band quickly disintegrated. Unfortunate circumstances shadowed the tour, including audience hecklers, a random attack on Byrd by unhip locals and a literal backstage fistfight between Marron and Byrd. Columbia records had a difficulty in marketing the musical (and literal) revolutionaries and the band wondered if they were “selling out to the man”. Internal band dynamics began to reach a breaking point as each tried to vie power of the band from its originator, Byrd. After an additional recording session in May 1968 for a follow-up single “You Can Never Come Down”, the band called it quits that summer, with Byrd walking away from the creature he created (or fired from the band, as he claimed!). Not surprisingly, additional demo sessions with Moskowitz and a backing band of session musicians were recorded in late July still under the name of The United States of America, indicating Columbia’s desire to continue the moniker with Dorothy as the centerpiece. These recording of two Moskowitz originals “Tailor Man” and “Perry Pier”, as well as a third penned by Kenneth Edwards of Linda Ronstadt’s band Stone Ponies, “Do You Follow Me”, were decidedly more commercial-sounding, featured a standard rock instrumentation rather than the guitar-less and cutting edge sound of The United States of America. Regardless, nothing came of these recordings, which were shelved after the band’s break-up.

Meanwhile, the outcast Byrd struggled to find direction. Salvation came when Columbia Records, recognizing him as a genius despite the failure to market and keep his band alive, offered him the chance to make a second album, this time a solo effort in which he (allegedly) had total creative control. Like Moskowitz just recently prior, Byrd gathered several session musicians—dubbed The Field Hippies—and recorded a song cycle of hastily-written material under the working title Gifts and Creatures, using a new version of the unused United States of America single “You Can Never Come Down” as a centerpiece. Although the sessions were difficult and Byrd had to utilize a series of female vocalists in obvious mimicry of his departed muse Moskowitz, the resulting album The American Metaphysical Circus was somewhat of a sequel to the sole Unites States of America album. Again mixing experimental rock and pop with Dixieland and gospel, the album began with a suite of songs designed to replicate an LSD trip, followed by a suite of sharp-tonged songs dedicated to President Lyndon B Johnson and concluding with another suite parodying the decaying older generation and their early retirement farms. Released in 1969, the album miraculously became a cult hit and remained in the Columbia Masterworks catalog for over 20 years, despite being too rock for the classical crowd and too arty for the pop crowd. Both The United States of America and The American Metaphysical Circus became cult classics of the psychedelic 60s, remaining hidden gems of the era, waiting patiently to be discovered by music aficionados over the next 50 years.

Even through the album title’s implication and the obvious continuity of band-leader Byrd, The American Metaphysical Circus wasn’t quite the sequel that these second-generation United States of America fans hoped for. While having some musical similarities, The Field Hippies seemed to go on tangents that circled Byrd’s own fascination with traditional American music and his study in ethnomusicology. And of course, the obvious lack of Dorothy Moskowitz strong yet cool voice, replaced by ragtag facsimiles Christie Thompson, Susan de Lange and Victoria Bond who simply could not hit the mark. Is there somehow a way to reconstruct the album to make it more a proper encore to The United States of America?

For my reimagining, we will use the core of The American Metaphysical Circus, but patch in the original United States of America recording of “You Can Never Come Down”, the three Moskowitz-lead United States of America recordings from 1968 and two outtakes from the self-titled 1967 sessions in order to make it a more appropriate follow-up that will almost solely feature lead vocals by either Dorothy or Joseph. Sources are simply the 1996 One Way Records remaster of The American Metaphysical Circus and the 2004 Sundazed remaster of The United States of America, the later featuring a number of the required bonus tracks for this reimagining. We will call the album Gifts and Creatures, the original, intended title of The American Metaphysical Circus, with cover art featuring imagery from The United States of America’s live shows in 1968.

Side A begins with The Field Hippy’s “Kalyani”, but is hard edited into the USofA’s “You Can Never Come Down”, ideally establishing the intent of this reimagining. Crossfading back into the outro of The Field Hippy’s version of the same song, we go directly into Moskowitz’s “Tailor Man”, followed by The Field Hippy’s “Nightmare Train”. Next is The United States of America “Osamu’s Birthday”, an outtake from their debut album, with Moskowitz’s “Do You Follow Me” closing the side.

Side B begins with another outtake from the first USofA debut, “No Love”, going directly into The Field Hippie’s “The Sing-Along Song”. Moskowitz’s “Perry Pier” follows and then edited into The Field Hippy’s “Invisible Man”. Now, we could not have a United State of America album without a sound collage, right? If I may be so bold, what follows is my own creation from previously heard sound elements, ideally creating a reappropriation of several themes on the album into a new context, in which we will call “The Sub-Sylvian Litanies”. We will use the most USofA-sounding selection from The Field Hippies as the epic track to conclude the album; hopefully there is a suspension of disbelief as we feature a lead vocal by Susan de Lange instead of our beloved Dorothy.

What is the result of Gifts and Creatures? While defiantly an interesting experiment of what could have been, two things become quite obvious. Firstly, both Dorothy and Joseph seemed to depart from the experimental rock of their debut album, with Moskowitz leaning towards the female soft-rock singer-songwriter territory and Byrd towards ethnomusicological pursuits. Strangely enough, those two sounds seems to match fairly well and make a cohesive album, despite it not really sounding like a true USofA album. Which leads us to the second point: the truth is, the trinity of Marron’s modulated violin, Forbes’ fuzzy bass and Woodson’s electrified drums seemed to be the USofA’s secret weapon, and what stylistically set the band apart from their contemporaries. Aside from the two songs that feature them, they are sorely missed from this reimagining of a sophomore album.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy the album (that admittedly simply originated as a little experiment of my own), and make your Fourth of July an American metaphysical circus!

Sources used:

Joe Byrd & The Field Hippies - The American Metaphysical Circus (1996 One Way Records CD Remaster)
The Unites States of America - The United States of America (2004 Sundazed CD Remaster)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR, Audacity & Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

The Beatles – The 1970s Beatles Albums
(a soniclovenoize reimagining)
October 2019 UPGRADE

Disc 1 – Instant Karma! (1970)

Side A:
1. Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)
2. All Things Must Pass
3. Every Night
4. I Found Out
5. Beware of Darkness
6. Working Class Hero
7. Momma Miss America

Side B:
8. It Don’t Come Easy
9. Isolation
10. Junk
11. My Sweet Lord
12. Maybe I’m Amazed
13. Love
14. Hear Me Lord

Disc 2 – Imagine Clouds Dripping (1971)

Side A:
1. Power To The People
2. What is Life
3. Dear Boy
4. Bangla Desh
5. Jealous Guy
6. The Back Seat of My Car

Side B:
7. Imagine
8. Another Day
9. Back off Bugaloo
10. Oh My Love
11. Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
12. Isn’t It A Pity

Disc 3 – Living In The Material World (1972)

Side A:
1. Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)
2. Hi, Hi, Hi
3. John Sinclair
4. I’m The Greatest
5. Who Can See It
6. Woman Is The Nigger Of The World

Side B:
7. Live and Let Die
8. New York City
9. Living In The Material World
10. Single Pigeon
11. Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
12. My Love

Disc 4 – Band On The Run (1973)

Side A:
1. Mind Games
2. Jet
3. One Day At A Time
4. Mrs. Vanderbilt
5. Photograph
6. Be Here Now

Side B:
7. Band On The Run
8. I Know (I Know)
9. Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long
10. Out Of The Blue
11. The Day The World Gets Round
12. Let Me Roll It

Disc 5 – Good Night Vienna (1974)

Side A:
1. Venus and Mars/Rock Show
2. Whatever Gets You Thru The Night
3. Love In Song
4. So Sad
5. Steel and Glass

Side B:
6. Junior’s Farm
7. (It’s All Down To) Good Night Vienna
8. Dark Horse
9. #9 Dream
10. You Gave Me The Answer
11. Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down and Out)
12. Venus and Mars (Reprise)

BONUS Disc 6 – Skywriting By Word Of Mouth (1980)

Side A:
1. (Just like) Starting Over
2. Take It Away
3. Dream Away
4. Ballroom Dancing
5. Watching The Wheels
6. Wanderlust

Side B:
7. Tug of War
8. Nobody Told Me
9. All Those Years Ago
10. The Pound is Sinking
11. I’m Losing You
12. You Can’t Fight Lightning
13. Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)

Well hello there. This is a long requested re-upload/upgrade, and I’ll finally make good on my promise to do it: The 1970s Beatles albums. A series of reimaginings that ask “What if The Beatles didn’t break up in 1970?”, my collection, included here as one singular set, includes five proper 1970s Beatles albums: 1970’s Instant Karma, 1971’s Imagine Clouds Dripping, 1972’s Living In The Material World, 1973’s Band On The Run and 1974’s Good Night Vienna. I am also offering my long-lost 1980 Beatles reunion album Skywriting By Word of Mouth as a sixth bonus disc of this set.

Pretty much all sources have been upgraded, specifically from John’s Signature Box (which contains all original mixes), George’s Apple Years box set and Paul’s Archive Series releases. Some slight tracklist alterations were made to fix errors or misjudgments I made seven years ago. More importantly, all crossfades were recreated and, in my opinion, improved over the originals.

Lossless FLAC

Source used:
George Harrison – The Dark Horse Years 1976-1992 (2004)
George Harrison – The Apple Years 1968-75 (2014)
John Lennon – Sometime in New York City (2005 remix)
John Lennon – Signature Box (2010)
John Lennon – Imagine (2018 box set)
Paul McCartney – Band On The Run (2010 remaster)
Paul McCartney – McCartney (2011 remaster)
Paul McCartney – RAM (2012 remaster)
Paul McCartney – Venus and Mars (2014 remaster)
Paul McCartney – Tug of War (2015 remix)
Paul McCartney – Red Rose Speedway (2018 remaster)
Ringo Starr – Stop and Smell The Roses (1994 remaster)
Ringo Starr – Photographs: The Best of Ringo Starr (2007)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

The Grateful Dead – Lazy River Road

(soniclovenoize “Final Album” reconstruction)

Disc 1:
1. Liberty [Atlanta 3/30/94]

2. If The Shoe Fits [Boston 10/2/94 and New York 10/19/94]

3. Corrina [New York 10/14/94]

4. Lazy River Road [New York 10/14/94]

5. Samba In The Rain[New York 10/14/94]
6. Childhood's End [Boston 10/3/94]

Disc 2:
1. Easy Answers [Philadelphia 3/19/95]

2. So Many Roads [Boston 10/1/94]
3. Wave To The Wind [Auburn Hills 6/9/93]

4. Eternity [Mountain View 9/17/94]

5. Days Between [Los Angeles 12/19/94]

6. Way To Go Home [New York 10/19/94]

Happy Halloween! In honor of this most frightening night, I offer you probably one of the most gruesome Dead albums! This is a reconstruction of what could have been The Grateful Dead’s “final” studio album, which would have been released in 1995 if Jerry Garcia had not passed away. This collection, which I call Lazy River Road, collects the most pristine soundboard tapes of the best performances of the songs that would have been featured on their final studio album. All songs have been EQd and volume adjusted to function as a cohesive whole, a final live double album.

After the release of 1989’s Built To Last and the document of their 1990 tour Without a Net, The Grateful Dead entered in the final era of the band, a time saturated in health problems and the accumulation of a lifetime of drug addiction. Longtime keyboard player Brent Mydland died of an accidental drug overdose in July 1990 and was replaced by former The Tubes and Todd Rundgren keyboard Vince Welnick that September. Furthermore, Jerry Garcia’s declining health and sudden relapse into heroin worried the band, who attempted an intervention in 1991. Promising to shape up, the band planned more tours in 1992, as well as woodshedding new material for an eventual studio follow-up to Built To Last.

All of the key members contributed songs for the new project, most of them co-written with long-time lyricist Robert Hunter. Jerry Garcia offered the folky “Lazy River Road”, the mid-tempo ballad of “So Many Roads”, the jaunty pop of “Liberty” (which had already appeared on Hunter's 1989 solo album Liberty) and the expansive ballad “Days Between”. Bobby Weir offered the funky “Corrina”, the new wavey “Easy Answers” and jazzy “Eternity” cowritten by Willie Dixon. Phil Lesh offered the downbeat “If The Shoe Fits” and ballads “Childhood’s End” and “Wave To The Wind”. Vince Welnick offered the exotic “Samba in the Rain” and the bluesy “Way To Go Home”. Most of the songs had a theme of traveling home, and much of Hunter’s lyrics seem to reference previous milestones of the band, as if this group of songs were wrapping up a 30-year career. Whether intentionally or not, that is exactly what happened.

In February 1993, the band recorded in-studio rehearsals of the new material, some of which would eventually find its way onto the 1999 live anthology box set So Many Roads. After performing the batch of twelve songs regularly over 1993 and 1994, the band entered the West Marin recording studio The Site for about twelve days in November 1994. Placed atop a huge hill in the secluded country, the studio seemed to be the perfect place to escape the wearies of the road and narcotics of the street and to concentrate on recording the new album. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Although the band recorded backing tracks for all twelve songs, bandleader Garcia was too strung out on heroin to participate in any meaningful way. Also, due to The Dead’s insistence of tracking as a live band, they did not seem to nail many solid takes, being left with recordings inferior to the previous year’s rehearsals!

After taking a break to hit the road again, The Dead returned to The Site for about ten days in May 1995 to try to finish the album. As before, the burned-out Garcia barely contributed, leaving only a few scratch guitar tracks and nearly none of his vocals. Surely the drugs talking, Jerry procrastinated and postponed his contributions, which the band allowed. Unfortunately, Garcia would die three months later of a heart attack. Later that year, Weir would revisit The Site recordings only to find them completely unusable.

Although the album died with Garcia, a number of the songs went on to be resurrected in various forms. Bob Weir recorded “Easy Answers” on the Bob Wasserman 1994 album Trios. Welnick recorded “Samba in the Rain” for his Missing Man Formation album in 1998. Weir recorded “Corrina” in 2000 for his Evening Moods album. But after performing most of the twelve songs nearly 100 times over three years, The Grateful Dead themselves had left an abundance of recordings, many in soundboard form via taper Charlie Miller. Many fans were able to reconstruct their own “final” Grateful Dead album, often shared among fans; some of these include a compilation called Earthquake Country and another called Days Between (The Final Album That Never Was). But what does the official Dead camp have to say? Since this was a divisive era for the band, posthumous releases have barely covered these twelve compositions, although there are a few exceptions: two live performances from 1993 appeared on Road Trips Volume 2 Number 4; six of the rehearsal and live recordings appeared on the official So Many Roads box set; and another eight appeared on the 30 Trips Around The Sun. Finally, the 2019 release of Ready or Not covers this era, although fans don’t feel it contains definitive versions (as well as a simply hideous album cover). It also lacks all three of Lesh's songs, at his request, for feeling incomplete and unrefined. Is there a way to reconstruct what the final Dead album could have been?

I will be the first to admit: I am not a hug Deadhead. But this was a blog-follower request and seemed to be an intriguing challenge. Surely, this was a rough time for The Grateful Dead, with a sloppy or unintelligible Garcia and a cringey Welnick. Because of this, it is very difficult to find a singular, definitive version of these songs--the "perfect, flawless performance". Regardless, I plowed through dozens of performances of all twelve songs, searching for a singular, best version of each one, using Deadhead-voted favorites on headyversions.com as a guide. Since I was not a diehard Deadhead, I admittedly might have missed some nuance in my selection. But on the otherhand, my detachment from the culture and the band's historical expectations allowed me to judge these recording in a more non-bias way--something extremely useful for this set of songs, often dismissed by Deadheads simply out of hand!

Each track was narrowed down to about three or four contenders for “definitive version”, using recordings that had the clearest sound in their Miller soundboard form, further mastering them all to be a cohesive whole. After a painstaking final selection, all songs were crossfaded into two discs to make it seem like one continuous performance on a double compact disc. Track order was constructed so a particular band member would not have two of their own songs in a row. In the end I particularly focused on the October 1994 shows as, in theory, these versions would have sounded the closest to what the studio versions could have sounded like since The Dead would enter The Site the following month.

Disc 1 of Lazy River Road opens with what I felt was the strongest (and most pop-friendly) track, “Liberty”, taken from Atlanta 3/30/94 (voted the best on headyversions). Next is Lesh’s mediocre-yet-palpable blues rocker “If The Shoe Fits”, which is an edit of the verses from Boston 10/2/94 and the choruses from New York 10/19/94 to make a definitive version. Next is one of the highlights of the album, the New York 10/14/94 “Corrina” that morphs into a fantastic jam, reminiscent of classic Grateful Dead (also voted the second best “Corrina” on headyversions). Another highlight is “Lazy River Road”, taken from the same show, followed by the embarrassing "Samba in the Rain", again from 10/14/94, including for posterity. Disc 1 closes with the whimsy of "Childhood's End" from Boston 10/3/94.

Disc 2 opens with one of the later, new-wavey versions of “Easy Answers” from Philadelphia 3/19/95, which I preferred. Garcia’s “So Many Roads” from Boston 10/1/94 is next, voted second-best on headyversions and, in my opinion, is far superior to the “final show” performance on 7/9/95. Next is the rather boring "Wave to the Wind", this being the least terrible version of the later 1993 performances, from Auburn Hills 6/9/93. The droning “Eternity” emerges late in the game, from Mountain View 9/17/94. Next is the highest point of the band in this era, Garcia & Hunter’s final masterpiece “Days Between”. This was a tough call, but I eventually used the second-highest voted on headyversions, from Los Angeles 12/19/94. The album concludes appropriately with Welnick’s “Way To Go Home” as more of an afterthought, taken from New York 10/19/94.

In about one month, Ready or Not will be released, containing the Dead Camp's final take on this era. Interestingly, aside from "Corrina", I am using all different versions, ones I feel are superior. Furthermore, I am including Lesh's three songs, which, really aren't all that terrible. Since I personally feel my compilation far surpasses Ready or Not, I offer this as an alternative to an era that never got it's fair shake... even now.

320kps mp3s
Lossless FLAC

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

Pink Floyd – Soundtrack To The Film ‘Zabriskie Point‘

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

March 2020 UPGRADE

Side A:

1. Heart Beat, Pig Meat

2. Country Song

3. The Violent Sequence

4. Fingal’s Cave

5. Crumbling Land

6. Love Scene

Side B:

7. Alan’s Blues

8. Oenone

9. Rain In The Country

10. Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up

Long time/no post! Here is a long-threatened update to one of my favorite reconstructions, the unreleased 1970 Pink Floyd soundtrack to the film Zabriskie Point. A specific cycle of music written for the film and allegedly intended as the band's own release, the film’s director Michelangelo Antonioni scrapped most of Pink Floyd’s work in favor of a collection of songs also featuring Grateful Dead, Kaleidoscope and The Youngbloods. With only three of the band’s intended songs making the cut, the rest trickled out over the years on bootlegs, remaster bonus discs and box sets. This reconstruction attempts to collect the final takes of the primary compositions for the film and presents it in a cohesive, all-Pink Floyd collection, akin to More and Obscured By Clouds. Many tracks feature my own unique edits and have all been volume adjusted for coherency.

Upgrades to this March 2020 edition are:

“Rain in the Country” upgraded source from The Early Years
New edit of “Fingal’s Cave” from upgraded source, The Early Years
New edits of “Oenone” and “Alan’s Blues”
Addition of “The Violent Sequence” and “Love Scene”

1969 was a hit and miss year for Pink Floyd. Obviously searching for a signature sound beyond Syd Barrett’s psychedelic pop, the band spent the year touring and composing conceptual sound experiments, including the live presentation The Man and The Journey (which was also reconstructed on this blog). Some of this music appeared on the soundtrack to the film More, a collection of pieces Pink Floyd recorded specifically for the Barbet Schroeder film, released in August. A few other Man and The Journey tracks appeared on the band’s own release Ummagumma in November, a double LP that featured solo studio recordings from each individual member of Pink Floyd and a live disc which featured fantastic recordings from that spring, including a dynamic version of their 1968 b-side, “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”.

It was that specific b-side which spurred on Pink Floyd’s creation of their next studio soundtrack project, recorded the very month of Ummagumma’s release. Director Michelangelo Antonioni was so moved by “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”, he requested not only for Pink Floyd to record a new version of it for his upcoming film Zabriskie Point, but to score it’s entirety! The band gathered into International Recording Studio in Roma in November 1969 to compose and record music specifically for the film, with more work in December at Abbey Road. In the end, Pink Floyd recorded original music for seven different scenes throughout those two months:

The opening credits featured an experimental piece called “Heart Beat, Pig Meat”, which was sometimes performed within The Man and The Journey as "Doing It!" throughout 1969. Driven by a heartbeat-like loop of a microphone tap, Richard Wright’s meandering organ and dialog sound samples from the film and elsewhere, the song opened the officially released soundtrack.

Pink Floyd recorded several variations of a song called “Country Song”, meant for the scene in which protagonist Daria is driving and looking at a map. While it was one of the only two songs of the cycle with actual lyrics, they also recorded several shorter, instrumental versions, including “Auto Scene 2”, “Auto Scene 3” and “Looking At Map”. Despite being a solid song that could have been a highlight on Atom Heart Mother, "Country Song" didn't make the cut and Antonioni instead used “Brother Mary” by Kaleidoscope for the scene.

Wright composed a beautiful piano piece for the riot scene, which the band called “The Violent Sequence”. Antonioni again decided not to use it, but the band rewrote it into the magnificent “Us and Them” on Darkside of The Moon.

For the scene in which the airplane takes off and flies, Pink Floyd composed several heavy rock pieces, including “Take Off 1” and “Take Off 2”. A third variation of “Take Off” was dubbed “Fingal’s Cave” by the band, and was considered the master for their own soundtrack album, had it been released. Antonioni did not use any of these, and instead used an edit of Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” from Live/Dead.

A second ‘driving on the highway’ scene featured variations of a rollicking folkish song called “Crumbling Land”, the second to contain actual lyrics and was eventually featured in both the film and official soundtrack. A shorter version called “On The Highway” was also recorded.

The love scene between Daria and Mark proved to be more difficult to provide, as Pink Floyd recorded several vastly different pieces of music for the love scene. The band initially tracked a spacey, psychedelic piece featuring Wright’s farfisa organ and David Gilmour’s delayed guitar effects with overdubbed vibraphone, not dissimilar to More’s “Quicksilver”. After recording three different versions of this arrangement—with the third featuring overdubbed erotic sound effects and called “Oenone”, intended as the master for Pink Floyd’s own soundtrack album—Antonioni suggested a different musical approach. “Love Scene 4” featured a majestic Wright piano solo, with an overdubbed vibraphone. This too was rejected, and Pink Floyd simplified it to “Love Scene 5”, a double-tracked vibraphone piece, which was also dismissed. A complete rethink produced “Love Scene 6”, a slow blues jam, renamed “Alan’s Blues” and meant for the band’s own soundtrack album. That two was rejected, and Pink Floyd attempted one last arrangement for Antonioni’s love scene: a long, space-folk instrumental (reminiscent of “The Narrow Way, Part 1” and “Baby Blue Shuffle in D Major”) called “Love Scene 7”, which was also called “Rain In The Country” for the band’s own intended soundtrack album. All five of these variations of the love scene were rejected and Antonioni used a multitracked solo guitar piece by Jerry Garcia instead.

Pink Floyd’s final contribution was used in both the film and official soundtrack: “Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up”, the remake of “Careful With That Axe Eugene” featured in the explosion scene. The band also recorded an alternate take called “Explosion” in a major key.

Ultimately, only “Heart Beat, Pig Meat”, “Crumbling Land” and “Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up” was used and featured on the soundtrack. Pink Floyd allegedly compiled their own eight-song, 40-minute master of their original music for a possible release, but it never emerged. The film’s musical advisor Don Hall played several selections from that master on the radio in late 1969; a recording of that broadcast was used to make the legendary Omayyad bootleg, which gave Pink Floyd collectors a sample of some of the Zabriskie Point music left on the cutting room floor. “Country Song”, “Love Scene 4”, “Alan’s Blues” and “Rain in the Country” all appeared on the bonus disc of the 1997 remaster of the Zabriskie Point soundtrack, with an additional 70 minutes of studio outtakes from the sessions appearing on the bootleg A Journey Through Time and Space, possibly dubbed on the sly from the mastertapes during the Zabriskie Point remastering process. Finally, 47 minutes of Zabriskie Point recordings were featured on The Early Years: Devi/ation box set in 2016.

My reconstruction of the Soundtrack to the Film ‘Zabriskie Point’ collects the master takes of each song meant for each of the seven scenes, additionally using three variants of the love scene, presented in film order. My intent is to present this reconstruction as a sister album to Pink Floyd’s More, so some tracks have been edited for the sake of release-appropriateness. Each side is approximately 20 minutes and this reconstruction should be able to slip into Pink Floyd’s official cannon with no musical overlap.

Side A begins with “Heart Beat, Pig Meat” and “Country Song”, both taken from the 1997 Zabriskie Point remaster. This is followed by “The Violent Sequence” from The Early Years; note this is the shorter version recorded during the actual Zabriskie Point sessions, as opposed to the longer Richard Wright demo recorded just before Dark Side of The Moon. Next is my own unique edit of “Fingal’s Cave”, in which “Take Off 1” is hard edited onto the end of “Aeroplane” to make a more complete listening experience, both from The Early Years. Next is “Crumbling Land”, taken from Zabriskie Point but pitchshifted to be in the correct key. Side A closes with what I am calling “Love Scene”, which is my own unique edit of the piano/vibes mix of “Love Scene 4” from A Journey Through Space and Time, cutting the over-six minute track down to a manageable three minutes!

Side A begins with my own edit of “Alan’s Blues” from the 1997 remaster of Zabriskie Point; here I have edited out Gilmour’s first (and embarrassingly clumsy) guitar solo, cutting an entire minute out of its run-time. Following is “Oenone”, the master take of Pink Floyd’s spacey version of the love scene. Although their final master is as heard on the Omayyad bootleg, I am instead using the “Full Mix” as found on A Journey Through Time and Spacebootleg, as it has superior sound-quality and added sound elements. I have faded the song out 3:45, excluding the band’s ridiculous erotic noises, as I felt it disrupted the feel and flow of the album as a whole. Closing the album out is “Rain in the Country” and “Come in Number 51, Your Time is Up”, both from the Zabriskie Point remaster.

While certainly not the greatest Pink Floyd album—and one can understand why it was never released—the Soundtrack To The Film 'Zabriskie Point' seems to stay close to my heart and holds a lot of air time on my music player. The album showcases a series of snapshots of Pink Floyd genre-hopping, including individual songs that each play upon their diverse range of strengths and influences: experimental found-sound collage; heavy psychedelic rock; electric blues; atmospheric psychedelia; acoustic folk. There is a bit of everything thrown in the mix, yet the album works as a whole, more so than their previous and equally-diverse soundtrack album for the film More. Although largely instrumental, the two song-based gems “Country Song” and “Crumbling Land” are stand-out tracks that could rank as high as any of the Pink Floyd singles from the 1960s. Soundtrack To The Film 'Zabriskie Point' has something for everyone and shows their essential continuity in between Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother.

320 kp3 mp3s

Sources used:
Zabriskie Point Soundtrack (1997 TCM Records remaster)
A Journey Through Time and Space (2000 Scorpio Records bootleg)
The Early Years 1970: Devi/ation (2017 Pink Floyd Records)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

Radiohead – Kid Amnesiac

(soniclovenoize Kid A/Amnesiac single-album reimagining)

1. Optimistic

2. Morning Bell

3. How to Disappear Completely

4. The National Anthem

5. In Limbo

6. Dollars and Cents

7. Kid A

8. Knives Out

9. You and Whose Army?

10. Everything In Its Right Place

11. Pyramid Song

In light of recent events with the coronavirus, it seems I have a lot of spare time as I dwindle in my self-imposed quarantine; I assume you all need something new to listen to during yours. So during this crisis, I will try to upload a new album reconstruction or reimagining every week until it’s safe to go outside again. We will get through this together and hopefully these album reconstructions and reimagings will be just another little thing to help during our social distancing to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Starting with the perfect soundtrack to social distancing… is Radiohead! This is a reimagining of Radiohead’s 2000 album Kid A and 2001 album Amnesiac as a singular album. Recorded during the same recording sessions between 1999-2000 and resulting in a double-album’s worth of original material, the band chose to instead release two separate albums from the sessions instead of releasing a singular or double-album release. Since then, many fans have wondered how a singular album, using “the best” from both Kid A and Amnesiac, would sound and many fans have constructed their own playlists. For my own reconstruction, we will use the specific eleven songs Radiohead debuted in concert during their Summer 2000 tour after the completion of the sessions, but before Kid A was released. In theory, this could represent Radiohead’s intent of a singular album sourced from the entirety of the sessions. Furthermore, the songs will be sequenced in a similar fashion to the order of which the songs were actually performed during that tour, with my own unique edits and crossfades used to make the sequence flow.

After their majestic 1995 album The Bends and awe-inspiring 1997 album OK Computer, Radiohead was literally the biggest rock band in the world. Unwittingly hailed has the modern successor to Pink Floyd in their fusion of art-rock, pop, mastery of atmosphere, creative instrumentation and their ability to connect to the audience, Radiohead’s every move was compulsively under watch by the music media and obsessive fans hungry for any second of new Radiohead music. No strangers to road-testing new material, the band began composing new songs for OK Computer’s follow-up, arranging them during soundchecks for the OK Computer tour in the summer of 1997. Songs such as “Life in a Glasshouse”, “How To Disappear Completely”, “Follow Me Around” and “Nude” were woodshedded during the OK Computer tour throughout 1997 and 1998, and were captured on film for Grant Gee’s documentary on Radiohead’s world tour, Meeting People Is Easy.

Upon the conclusion of the OK Computer Tour in April 1998, Radiohead took a much needed rest, while front man Thom Yorke attempted to write new songs for the album’s follow-up. This was not an easy task, as Yorke faced two challenges... Firstly, Yorke had grown tired of the band’s sonic signature, feeling that Radiohead had become Alt Rock trend-setters after the sudden emergence of a number of “copy-cat” bands that sounded very similar to Radiohead. The only way to keep themselves ahead of the curve and to challenge themselves artistically was an intentional and radical departure from Radiohead’s established sound. Unfortunately, Yorke’s second challenge was a bad case of writer’s block, leaving Yorke with only unfinished song sketches by the time the band reconvened in January 1999, instead focusing on rhythm, influenced by the artists of Warp Records

Formal rehearsals and recordings begin at Studio Guillaume Tell in Paris with producer Nigel Godrich, with EMI Records allowing Radiohead complete artistic freedom and no deadline to finish the album. While it was fortunate the rest of the band shared Yorke’s desire to drastically change their musical direction, this also allowed for an extended period of musical soul-searching, for better or for worse. Although the song “In Limbo” was completed at this time, the majority of the sessions proved unproductive and the band relocated to Copenhagen’s Medley Studios in March 1999. Influenced by Krautrock legends Can, Radiohead experimented with hypnotic jam sessions which were later edited into a song structure, resulting in the basis of the song “Dollars and Cents”. Otherwise, the sessions were again deemed unproductive, with the entire band second-guessing their working methods of playing live, together in a room, as a standard rock band.

Once again relocating in April to a mansion fitted with recording gear in Gloucester called Batsford House, the band chipped away at several small musical breakthroughs. In order to reinvent themselves as a musical entity, each member had to reevaluate their roles in the band as not necessarily playing their chosen instruments specifically, but contributing sounds or ideas to York’s experiments. This was exemplified in “Everything In Its Right Place”, which simply revolved around the chords played on a Prophet-5 synthesizer and Yorke’s vocal being digitally “scrubbed” by Godrich. Additionally, the band made progress adding sound elements to an unfinished backing track, originally recorded in November 1997 during a b-side session: “The National Anthem”, based on a bass riff Yorke wrote when he was 16!

After picking up some much needed momentum, Radiohead relocated once again in July to their own Oxford recording studio Canned Applause, which would remain their home base for the remainder of the recording sessions, sporadically detailed by guitarist Ed O’Brien’s daily journal posted to Radiohead’s website. Sessions dragged on throughout the remainder of 1999 with a number of ideas attempted and abandoned, rearranged and discarded. After successfully tracking several more ‘live band’ songs such as “Optimistic”, “You and Whose Army?” and “Pyramid Song”, Radiohead once again hit a creative wall with Yorke’s desire to move beyond the sound of a rock band. By January 2000, Goodrich made a bold suggestion: all five members of the band abandon their acoustic instruments for all digital instruments, synths and programs, forcing Radiohead to completely rethink arrangements. This reinvigorated the band, allowing them to create new, experimental compositions such as “Kid A” and “Idioteque”. Sessions carried on into the spring, with “Knives Out” being completed in March after a year of work! The album was finally finished in April 2000 with over 20 completed song, enough material for a double album.

To road-test the new material, Radiohead played a brief summer tour in June and July, performing eleven of the new songs: “Optimistic”, “Morning Bell”, “Dollars and Cents”, “The National Anthem”, “In Limbo”, “Everything In Its Right Place”, “Knives Out”, “How To Disappear Completely”, “Pyramid Song”, “Kid A”, and “You and Whose Army?”. Yorke additionally performed “I Might be Wrong” and “Fog” acoustically during encores, although only once each. Predictably, Radiohead fans clamored to hear the mysterious new material, and bootlegs of their live recordings were traded on file sharing networks.

Finally, Radiohead’s culmination of the 18-month long sessions was released in October: Kid A, a singular, concise album of ten songs, that only occasionally featured the Radiohead fans had grown to love. Although “Optimistic” and “How To Disappear Completely” seemed to be ‘classic Radiohead’, other songs seemed far-removed from their intelligent anthem rock. The album often seemed cold and distant, sometimes clinical. And the album lacked some of the fans’ favorites that had already been debuted live several months before: “Dollars and Cents”, “You and Whose Army?”, “Knives Out” and “Pyramid Song.” Regardless, Kid A was a successful artistic statement, perfect in its execution as a singular, cohesive album. Although some-old school Radiohead fans were turned off by it, many more were turned on, accepting the band’s radical departure and willing to go along with Radiohead’s ride. Kid A became one of the more influential and groundbreaking modern ‘rock’ albums, signaling the start of popular music in the twenty first century.

But what about the remainder of the music Radiohead recorded throughout the Kid A sessions, which did not seem to fit within its artistic vision? As Radiohead began touring to promote Kid A, they indeed continued to perform those ‘lost Kid A songs’, much to fans’ delight, with “Knives Out” and “Pyramid Song” specifically being fan favorites. After suggesting a series of EPs to release the material, Radiohead instead assembled a second album for a June 2001 release, entitled Amnesiac. It included not only the four aforementioned fan-favorite ‘lost Kid A songs’, but an additional seven that spanned from the highly experimental “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” to the jazzy paranoia of “Life in a Glasshouse”, a song fans have been crying for since originally witnessed in the Meeting People is Easy documentary. Despite this, Radiohead insisted that Amnesiac was not a Kid A outtakes album, but a separate album in its own right. While not as much as a critical success as Kid A, it was as much a cherished album among Radiohead fans, with many often debating which album was better. There were also a set of fans who wondered “What if the sessions amounted to one album with the best of Kid A and Amnesiac, rather than two separate albums?”

The answer to this question varied wildly from one fan to another depending on their tastes, as clearly Radiohead have never given any official word what an album of that caliber would have sounded like. For this reimagining, we will simply assume Radiohead did give an official word of what songs would have made the cut for a singular album from these sessions: those eleven songs initially performed after the sessions concluded but before Kid A was sequenced and released. Additionally, we will attempt to sequence our album similarly to the general order in which the songs were performed. Although that varied from show to show, we can observe general trends in set order and attempt to replicate it. We are also excluding “I Might Be Wrong” and “Fog” as they seemed to be one-off performances.

Focusing solely on the Kid A-era songs, Radiohead always opened with “Optimistic”, followed by “Morning Bell”; here I created a new segue between the two songs. Earlier in the tour, they would then follow with “How To Disappear Completely”, although it was moved to the end of the set later in the tour; here we will retain its initial position. Next they always followed with “The National Anthem”, often itself followed by “In Limbo.” This five-song sequence was most often played in the first half of the tour (with occasional minor variations), and becomes our Side A to this album reimagining.

Most often, “Dollars and Cents” was the mid-point song that followed “In Limbo”, so we will use that to begin our theoretical Side B. From here on, there is no real pattern to follow, as every date had a different song to follow “Dollars and Cents”. For the sake of flow and album continuity, I am choosing “Kid A”, “Knives Out” and “You and Whose Army” to follow in that order, as well as for a reason that will be explained later. Nearing the end, Radiohead almost always closed their main set with “Everything In Its Right Place” and often performed “Pyramid Song” in their encore; my album reimagining concludes the same way.

The resulting album is less experimental than either Kid A or Amnesiac and seems to be a solid middle ground for the Radiohead fans craving an artistic reinvention and the fans who wanted more of the moody anthems of OK Computer. It's beginning with "Optimistic" encourages the faithful listener, rather than challenging them with "Everything In Its Right Place" and "Kid A" immediately! Also, this track sequence seems to follow a specific narrative—especially Side B—although I’ll allow you to interpret it however you wish. My Kid Amnesiac is best experienced as its own entity, and I urge you to listen without the knowledge of Kid A nor Amnesiac; imagine you are first hearing it after only listening to The Bends and OK Computer for context. And with that, everything is in its right place.

Sources used:

Amnesiac (original 2001 master)

Kid A (original 2000 master)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

The Who – Who’s Lily

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

March 2020 Upgrade

Side A:

1. Armenia City in The Sky

2. Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand

3. Pictures of Lily

4. In The Hall of The Mountain King

5. Our Love Was

6. I Can See For Miles

Side B:

7. I Can’t Reach You

8. Girl’s Eyes

9. Early Morning Cold Taxi

10. Relax

11. Sodding About

12. Rael

Continuing my set of “Social Distancing” bonus uploads—once a week until we’re out of quarantine—is a long-requested upgrade to The Who’s unreleased 1967 album Who’s Lily. Standing as the working title of their follow-up to A Quick One—or Jigsaw Puzzle in my continuity—the album was revised from a loose collection of songs into a conceptual framework that mimicked a pirate radio broadcast and released as their seminal album The Who Sell Out. This reconstruction attempts to reproduce what the original incarnation of the album could have sounded like, before the Sell Out concept. Some new edits were created and several tracks crossfaded for continuity. The album is again presented all in mono—as all early The Who should!—and uses the best possible masters for each track.

Upgrades to this March 2020 edition are:

Dropped “Silas Stingy”, “Glittering Girl” and “Tattoo” for historical accuracy.
Added “Girl’s Eyes”, “Early Morning Taxi” and “Sodding About” for historical accuracy.
New mono fold of “In The Hall of the Mountain King”, including the into.
New edit of Sell Out mix of “Our Love Was”, with a clean intro and outro from the alternate mono mix.
New edit of “Rael” parts 1 and 2

As London entered 1967 and became a lot more swingin', The Who found themselves in a rapidly changing music scene. Contemporaries Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience were laying the ground for a more wild sound and The Who’s mod image was beginning to seem outdated. To keep up with their competition, The Who returned to IBC studios in early April to cut a handful of songs for a new single: “Glittering Girl”, “Doctor Doctor” and “Pictures of Lily”, the later being an exquisite specimen of power pop, concerning masturbation. The song was just what The Who needed and shot up the charts, establishing The Who as a force that once again could be reckoned with in this upcoming year of musical change. In keeping up with these tides, the band planned to follow the single with a purely instrumental EP and even recorded a duo of songs for it—the bass-driven “Sodding About” and a crazed rendition of Edvard Greig’s “In The Hall of the Mountain King” from Peer Gynt. Although the duo of songs seemed to anticipate and embrace the forthcoming psychedelia craze, the results were less than satisfactory and the instrumentals were set aside, the EP concept scrapped. The Who would have to go back to what they did best: writing great pop songs and performing them with gusto.

In May the band returned to the studio to cut a slew of new songs for their forthcoming third album, built around the previous month’s success of “Pictures of Lily”, making the album’s provisional title Who’s Lily. Much had been learned from splitting the songwriting duties on A Quick One, and all Who members once again contributed original material: Daltrey offered “Early Morning Cold Taxi”; Moon offered “Girl’s Eyes”; Entwhistle offered “Someone’s Coming”; Pete offered what he thought was his magnum opus, “I Can See For Miles”; and finally “Armenia City in the Sky”, a song written by Pete’s driver Speedy Keen (of Thunderclap Newman) which fully captured the current psychedelic era. With half an album started, The Who turned their eyes across the Atlantic for a handful of shows in New York and a spot in the famous Montery Pop Festival, co-headlining with The Who’s chief British competition: The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Briefly returning home to De Lane Lea Studios in July, The Who cut the basics for two more Who’s Lily tracks, “I Can’t Reach You” and “Relax”. They immediately left for a three-month tour of North America with Herman’s Hermits and additional work on Who’s Lily would have to be done on the road, across the ocean.

The Who's seafaring seemed to be an influence on the new album, as Townshend unearthed a rock opera he had been composing since the beginning of the year, concerning a soldier from the fictional country of Rael who travels across the sea to battle the invading Chinese. In an attempt to finish Who’s Lily for its proposed summer release, Townshend whittled his rock opera down from 30 minutes into a 10 minute opus; it was further whittled down as much as possible for consideration as a single! “Rael” was recorded at Mirasound Studios in New York with Bob Dylan’s keyboardist Al Kooper, but it’s 6-minute run time excluded it from a single release and "Rael" was tossed into the batch of other album-contenders. Two more songs were recorded at Mirasound with further August recording at Columbia Studios in Nashville for the single that “Rael” could not occupy: a balled called “Our Love Was” and another power-pop song about masturbation, “Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand”, the later released as a single in the US. After more work was done at Columbia Studios to complete the unfinished tracks recorded throughout the year, as well as a September session at Goldstar in LA to complete “I Can See For Miles”, a total of ten album contenders were to be paired with “Pictures of Lily” (and possibly it’s b-side “Doctor Doctor” or session outtake “Glittering Girl”). This was most certainly the Who’s Lily album, but was it the best album The Who could muster in this changing musical climate? Was it a good idea to build an album around a straight-ahead power-pop song midst the increasingly colorful Summer of Love? The Who gave pause to Who’s Lily and they would have to come up with the album’s selling point.

Throughout 1967, The Who recorded various commercial jingles, including adverts for Coke in April and Great Shakes in May. Perhaps the success of these adverts inspired The Who to use it as a framework for a redesigned Who’s Lily. Upon returning home in October, The Who hit the studio and cut a number of ridiculous faux commercial jingles: “Medac”, “Top Gear”, “Heinz Baked Beans” and “Odorono”. These jingles would be interspersed throughout the proper Who songs on their upcoming album, designed to replicate a pirate radio broadcast. This sudden burst of inspiration fueled the band to pump out several more proper Who songs to trump the weaker material recorded earlier in the year: Entwhistle’s creepy character-study “Silas Stingy”; Townshend’s paced classic “Tattoo” and the atmospheric acoustic ballad “Sunrise”; updated versions of “Glittering Girl” (now with a stronger rhythm and Roger’s vocal), “Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand” (now acoustically laid-back) and “Rael” (now more typically power-pop but lacking the psychedelic majesty of the New York version). Choosing the original “Rael” over the new version (although the final minute was edited off due to time limitations of the LP), several more jingles were cut—"Jaguar", “Premiere Drums”, “Rotosound String”, “John Mason Cars”, “Bag O’ Nails”, “Charles Atlas” and “Track Records”—and Sell Out was completed. Released in December, it was a critical and commercial success, being one of the most obvious and intentional rock concept albums, one which pushed into the borders of pop-art. But is there a way we can hear the original commercial-free version?

For this reconstruction of Who’s Lily we will stick to the batch of songs prepared up until the end of the American tour, as that seems to be the point where Who’s Lily became Sell Out. We will also exclusively keep the album in mono for two reasons: 1) a stereo “Pictures of Lily” does not exist and 2) early The Who simply sounds better in mono! All the songs recorded between April and August 1967 are fair game, although we will drop the two weaker Entwhistle tracks “Doctor, Doctor” and “Someone’s Coming”, already featured as b-sides anyways. We will also exclude “Glittering Girl”, since the more refined version was not recorded until October (which could be saved for Who’s For Tennis, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves…). Leaving only ten real contenders for the album, we will use both of the instrumentals from April, as they give the album a slightly different and more heavy, psychedelic atmosphere, making Who’s Lilymore contemporaneous for 1967.

Side A of my reconstruction begins with “Armenia City in The Sky”, taken from the 2014 HD Tracks remaster of Sell Out, the most pristine source of its original mono mix. Following is the original US single mono mix of “Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand”, a bonus track from the aforementioned HDTracks remaster. The pseudo-title-track follows, “Pictures of Lily” taken from its currently best source, The Who Hits 50. In a nod to the band’s brief initial concept of an instrumental EP, I have included a mono fold of “In The Hall of the Mountain King” from the 2009 Sell Out Deluxe; although admittedly this track probably would not have been featured on Who’s Lily, it serves as an interesting diversion and fits the psychedelic theme of the album. Following is “Our Love Was” from the 2014 HDTracks remaster, but using the clean intro and outro from the alternate mono mix found. Closing Side B is the song that is essential to be heard in mono: “I Can See For Miles” from the 2014 HDTracks remaster.

Side B starts appropriately with the 2014 mono remaster of “I Can’t Reach You”, followed by John Entwhistle’s featured lead-vocal on Who’s Lily, Moon’s “Girl’s Eyes”, taken from the 2009 remaster of Sell Out and collapsed to mono. Likewise, the power-pop bliss of “Early Morning Cold Taxi” follows, taken from the 1995 remaster of Sell Out and, again, collapsed to mono. The droning psyche-rock of “Relax” follows, also taken from the 2014 mono remaster, followed by the second heavy psyche instrumental “Sodding About” which creates a musical continuity to the album, taken from the 2009 Sell Out remaster and collapsed to mono. The album concludes with the cleaner-sounding early mono mix of “Rael” that includes an otherwise extracted verse, with its actual part 2 tagged onto the end, as the song was meant to be heard in its full six-and-a-half minute glory, both found on the 2009 Sell Out remaster. Who's Lily's final touch is the psychedelic cover art by Mark Heggen, taken from the poster included with the original copies of Sell Out--truly a picture of Lily!

Sources used:

Sell Out (1995 Polydor remaster)

Sell Out(2009 Polydor Deluxe Edition)

Sell Out(2014 HDTracks mono remaster)

The Who Hits 50! (2014 Geffin Records)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

* md5 files, track notes and artwork included

Small Faces – 1862

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

Side A:

1. Hello The Universal

2. Donkey Rides, A Penny, A Glass

3. Wide Eyed Girl On The Wall

4. The Autumn Stone

5. Evolution

6. The War of The Worlds

Side B:

7. Red Balloon

8. What You Will

9. Collibosher

10. Growing Closer

11. Wrist Job

12. Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am

Continuing our weekly Social Distancing bonus reconstructions, this a long-requested one. This is a reconstruction of the unfinished final Small Faces album, 1862. Recorded throughout 1968, Small Faces broke up before finishing the album. Several of the tracks would instead eventually appear on their posthumous 1969 collection The Autumn Stone. This reconstruction attempts to present 1862 as a completed album, using the best quality stereo mixes of the material.

After their smash hits of “Itchycoo Park” and “Tin Soldier”, the release of Small Faces third album Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake ushered the band into the emerging art-rock scene, being a psychedelic concept album with unique, circular packaging. Its single “Lazy Sunday” charted to number two in 1968, making them one of the top bands in the UK. Although the band felt they had already achieved their masterpiece, they returned to Trident studios with Glyn Johns to work on a follow-up album the day before Ogden’s release in May. The theoretical fourth album was titled 1862, named after the metal plaque on the hundred-year-old chapel owned by Marriott, where the band rehearsed. Top priority was a cover of Tim Hardin’s “Red Balloon”, a bittersweet folk ballad about heroin addiction. Also tracked were two instrumentals, ambiguously named “Fred” and “Jack”, which the band never went back to finish.

Several weeks later in June, the Small Faces went in to Olympic Studios to record a stopgap single between Ogden’s and 1862: the folk ballad “Hello The Universal” and the poppy rocker “Donkey Rides, A Penny, A Glass”. An elaborate third song was recorded, “Wide Eyed Girl on the Wall”, but was apparently never completed, lacking vocals; like “Fred” and “Jack”, Small Faces never returned to complete the track. The two finished songs were released as a single at the end of the month, but failed to mimic their previous success, despite being better compositions with more refined arrangement and production. Furthermore, due to a pressing typo, “Hello The Universal” was misscredited simply as “The Universal”.

Touring to support Odgen’s also proved difficult, as the material was just too complex to perform live. Frontman Steve Marriott pitched the idea of adding a fifth member as a second guitarist, freeing himself to focus on singing—the prime candidate was Marriott’s friend Peter Frampton. The rest of the band detested the idea, and they soldered on as a quartet. Returning to Olympic in September, two more contrasting songs were tracked: the hard rocker of “Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am” and the pastoral folk ballad “The Autumn Stone.” The band did not take so kindly to the former, with bassist Ronnie Lane storming out of the sessions and keyboardist Ian McLagan refusing to play on it. Regardless, the heavy riff rock of “Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am” signaled the direction Marriott wanted to move in, and he brought in Nicky Hopkins to complete McLagan’s parts!

In December, Glyn Johns invited the Small Faces to act as a backing band for French singer Johnny Hallyday and to record an album. Being in a state of confusion, uncertainty and debt to their label, the band accepted but somehow found Peter Frampton joining their ranks from the recommendation of either Marriott or Johns. In the course of the sessions, a few Marriott originals were worked up for Hallyday: a cover of an older Small Faces song “That Man” and two newer compositions, “Bang!” and “What You Will”. The perceptions of the resultant album Riviere Ouvre Ton were contrasting; while McLagan and drummer Kenney Jones thought the sessions were awful, Marriott relished the opportunity to work with Frampton and took this as a sign to restart anew. Marriott officially quit Small Faces, storming off stage on their New Years Eve performance.

With perfect timing, Immediate Records released a new mix of “Afterglow”, backed with “Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am” (again misprinted as “Wham Bam Thank You Man”) in March 1969. Marriott immediately formed a new group with Frampton called Humble Pie, with a decidingly heavier sound, as heard in “Wham Bam”. Their debut single “Natural Born Bugie” featured a new recording of “Fred”, the instrumental from the May Trident sessions, now including a vocal and retitled “Wrist Job”. Humble Pie’s debut album As Safe as Yesterday Is was released in August, which featured new recordings of “Bang” and “What You Will”, as well as folk jam “Growing Closer”, written as a collaboration between Frampton and McLagan, who had briefly rehearsed with Humble Pie before declining a position in the band. Simultaneously, McLagan, Lane and Jones regrouped with new frontman Rod Stewart and future Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood as just simply the Faces. By the end of the year, the quintet began recording their debut album, First Step, which had a very rootsy atmosphere. While largely Stewart and Wood compositions, the 1970 album did feature an older Ronnie Lane original, “Stone”, which initially appeared as a collaboration with Pete Townshend as “Evolution” the previous year.

Putting Faces and Humble Pie aside, Immediate also attempted a final cash grab for the Small Faces: a posthumous compilation album originally titled In Memorium, which contained some of the material recorded for 1862: “Red Balloon”, “Wide Eyed Girl on the Wall” and “The Autumn Stone.” In Memorium also included a pair of songs long-attributed to 1862, but which were actually Ogden’s outtakes: “Call It Something Nice”, recorded at the very first Ogden’s session in April 1967, and “Collibosher”, recorded at the very last Odgen’s session in April 1968! The Small Faces showed dismay for the morbid title, and Immediate withdrew and renamed the album The Autumn Stone, reissued as a double LP. This edition added “The Universal” and “Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am”, now harboring most of the finished 1862 recordings. Throughout the years, the twin instrumentals “Fred” and “Jack” made their way from the vaults to discount-bin anthology CDs, both mysteriously retitled to “The Pig Trotters” and “The War of The Worlds” without any band authorization. This was the final say of 1862, its scraps littering The Autumn Stone and as various CD reissue bonus tracks and as a living mystery in the minds of Small Faces fans.

Interestingly, some clues to 1862 were found in a blog post by Mick Taylor in 2008 regarding the backstory of the song “Red Balloon”; the blog post had some contribution from Toby Marriott, Steve’s son. In the post, Toby mentions he had once read his father’s 1968 songbook, which stated the possible tracklist for 1862: “The Autumn Stone”, “Red Balloon”, “Collibosher”, “Buttermilk Boy”, “Wrist Job”, “Piccaninny”, “Wide Eyed Girl On The Wall”, “Donkey Rides, A Penny, A Glass” and a song only referenced as “Blues Jam.” What is strange about this tracklist is its inclusion of the December 1966 outtake “Piccaninny”, severely out-of-date amongst the 1968 sessions, as well as “Buttermilk Boy”, recorded for As Safe as Yesterday Is. Toby also mentions he no longer had the songbook, so he had to have been listing them from memory. Can his recollection be trusted? We will use this as a simple guidepost to reconstruct 1862 and try to logically fill in the gaps.

For my reconstruction, we will take all these facts into account, but primarily intending to make an 1862 that sound musically cohesive. We will also exclusively use Small Faces mixes found on the Here Come The Nice box set, being all stereo remixes that sound simply exquisite, as opposed to the crud on The Autumn Stone. We will also rely on the several instrumental tracks, but we will appropriately fade them out to make them of a concise length and spread them throughout the album. I have chosen to exclude both “Piccaninny” and “Call It Something Nice”, as they both pre-dated the recording sessions for 1862 and do not sonically sound identical enough to the rest of the material (although I will use “Collibosher”, as it was at least tracked in 1968). Additionally, we will use some tracks from As Safe As Yesterday Is and First Step, since a few of their tracks dated from the 1862 era and, fortunately for us, sound sonically similar to the finished 1862 tracks anyways.

Side A begins with the single that highlighted this era, “Hello The Universal” and “Donkey Rides, A Penny, A Glass,” both great introductions to the album. Next, “Wide Eyed Girl On The Wall”, the stereo mix which has a new fade-out to match the mono mix, followed by “The Autumn Stone.” Next I chose Face’s “Evolution” as not only does it feature most of the Small Faces, it could have very well been Ronnie Lane’s contribution to the original 1862 album since the song dated from around that time. Side A dramatically closes with “The War of The Worlds”, faded out to make it an appropriate length.

Side B begins with “Red Balloon”, another keystone song in 1862. This is followed by the Humble Pie version of “What You Will” since the song was worked on by Small Faces during the Hallyday sessions, not to mention the song distinctly sounds like an 1862 song! Although “Collibosher” dates from the final Ogden’s sessions, it does sound remarkably like an 1862 song, so I am including it here, again fading it out early to be concise. Next, I’ve chosen “Growing Closer” from As Safe As Yesterday Is, as it could have been Ian McLagan’s contribution to the album, not to mention the acoustic and flute seemed to fit perfectly in the album! Following is “Wrist Job”, using the Small Face’s instrumental instead of the Humble Pie lyrical version. The album closes with a punch—“Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am”, in true stereo!

Sources used:

Small Faces – Here Come The Nice (2014 Immediate Records box set)

Faces – First Step (2015 Rhino remaster)

Humble Pie – As Safe As Yesterday Is (2008 Repertoire Records remaster)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

* md5 files, track notes and artwork included

The Who – Who’s For Tennis?

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

May 2020 UPGRADE

Side A:

1. Glow Girl

2. Fortune Teller

3. Tattoo

4. Silas Stingy

5. Dogs

6. Call Me Lightning

7. Melancholia

Side B:

8. Faith in Something Bigger

9. Glittering Girl

10. Little Billy

11. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

12. Sunrise

13. Magic Bus

Upgrades to this April 2020 are:

Updated source for “Glow Girl”, “Fortune Teller” and “Melancholia”.
Dropped “Girl’s Eyes”, “Early Morning Cold Taxi” and “Shakin All over” from the album.
Added “Tattoo”, “Silas Stingy”, “Glittering Girl” and “Sunrise” so the album will fit in Who’s Lily’s continuity.
Widened stereo field of “Call Me Lightning”.
New stereo mix of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”
New edit of “Magic Bus”, a hybrid of the long and short versions

Next in a series of social-distant-reconstructions is my upgrade of the proposed and promptly withdrawn 1968 album Who’s For Tennis? by The Who. Originally intend as a proper studio album (or live album, as some maintain) that would have been released in-between The Who Sell Out and Tommy, the idea for the album was scrapped and the recorded material instead came out as either single releases or remained in the vaults. This reconstruction draws from numerous sources to create a completely stereo, cohesive album, utilizing the best mastering available and is volume-adjusted for aural continuity. Also, a completely new and unique stereo mix of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was created, unavailable elsewhere and exclusive to this reconstruction. This revised version is meant to follow Who’s Lily, so there is no overlap between the two albums.

Riding as high as they possibly could from 1967’s The Who Sell Out, a concept album recorded to emulate British pirate radio stations, The Who embarked on tours of Australia and the United States throughout 1968, biding their time until their next concept album. During this time, Pete Townshend began composing what he believed could be his magnum opus, a rock opera that spanned an entire album-length (rather than a single-song ‘pocket-opera’ such as “A Quick One While He’s Away”) about a deaf, dumb and blind kid (who sure played a mean pinball). Such a lofty project required time to compose and demo properly, and the album was set to be recorded that fall. But in an attempt to keep up with their British rock contemporaries such as The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and The Kinks who could release an entire album of material every year, the question was proposed: what album would The Who release in 1968 to fill the stopgap until Townshend’s rock opera, which at best would be released in early 1969?

Thus The Who’s manager and producer Kit Lambert proposed an album entitled Who’s For Tennis? to be released that July of 1968, meant to capitalize on the upcoming Wimbledon Championships. The album would have included all new recordings as well as any number of the relevant outtakes from the previous year’s Sell Out sessions, which had produced a wealth of non-LP material. In January and February of 1968, The Who recorded Townshend’s “Faith in Something Bigger”, “Glow Girl” and “Little Billy”, the later written for the American Cancer Society for an anti-smoking campaign. Also recorded during these initial sessions was a very old Who song originally dating from 1964 called “Call Me Lightning”, and bassist John Entwhistle’s own “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, yet another ‘scary’ children’s song. After embarking on their spring tour of the US directly after the February recording sessions, The Who returned to the studio in May and June and recorded seven more tracks: Townshend originals “Dogs”, “Melancholia”, “Magic Bus”, “Joys” and “Facts of Life” as well as live staples of old blues covers “Fortune Teller” and “Shakin’ All Over”.

With twelve new studio recordings in the can, the absurd idea of Who’s For Tennis? was eventually withdrawn as the summer drew upon The Who. Instead of an entire album, just three of the tracks trickled out as single-releases: the US single “Call Me Lightning” b/w “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and it’s UK counterpart “Dogs” b/w “Call Me Lightning”. Neither single charted particularly well, becoming long-forgotten Who singles. There was also some discussion of a live album of The Who’s performance at The Fillmore East to be released in Who’s For Tennis?’s place (some sources claim the Who’s For Tennis? concept was this live album rather than a studio album of the 1968 recordings) but the performances were a bit too sloppy and were set aside. The final decision was to instead release the single “Magic Bus” as well as two cash-grab compilations: The Magic Bus: The Who On Tour in the US, and Direct Hits in the UK. The decision paid off, as “Magic Bus” became a long-time fan favorite and live staple for The Who for years to come. This was enough to bide the band’s time until Townshend could see, feel, touch and heal his rock opera into fruition, even as much as pillaging the outro of the now-canned “Glow Girl” into Tommy’s “Overture/It’s A Boy”.

The remaining tracks were left unheard for years, with each slowly trickling out on anthology collections: first on Odds and Sods in 1974; then on Rarities volumes 1 & 2 in 1983; and finally the Maximum R&B boxset in 1994. Aside from the tracks that remain in the vault to this day (“Shakin’ All Over”, “Joys” and “Facts of Life”), Who fans have just enough material to reconstruct what this theoretical 1968 stopgap album would have been. Various fans’ track sequences tend to utilize the same 12-or-so tracks recorded during this period but the actual track sequences fluctuate wildly, as there never was a finalized tracklist. The only concrete information we have (beyond a title) is that it would have been a ‘preachy’ album (a reference to the inclusion of “Little Billy” and “Faith in Something Bigger”) and the album would have opened with “Glow Girl”. Keep in mind that allegedly Sell Out outtakes and non-LP tracks would have been used as filler on Who’s For Tennis?, which could have included any of the following songs: “Pictures of Lily”, “Doctor, Doctor”, “Glittering Girl”, “Hall of the Mountain King”, “Sodding About”, “Early Morning Cold Taxi”, “Girl’s Eyes”, “Summertime Blues” and “Someone’s Coming”. What would have actually been on Who’s For Tennis? While there is no possible answer, we can certainly know what is on this reconstruction!

For the purposes of this (updated) reconstruction, we will obviously use the eight studio recordings from 1968 that are available. But to fill out the album, we will use the four songs recorded in October 1967 (“Glittering Girl”, “Tattoo”, “Silas Stingy” and “Sunrise”) as those would have been recorded a month after the theoretical Who’s Lily album. We will include them here, so that both reconstructions could fit in the same continuity.

Side A begins with the only clue Pete Townshend has left us: the album starts with “Glow Girl”, which would have also been a single, here sourced from the best-sounding version 2015 SHM remaster of Odds and Sodds. Following is “Fortune Teller” taken from the 2011 SHM remaster of Who’s Missing. Much like their live shows, “Tattoo” follows, from the 2014 remaster of The Who Sell Out, as well as “Silas Stingy”. Mellowing down a bit, the unique stereo mix of “Dogs” taken from the Maximum R&B set is next, followed by mod-rocker “Call Me Lightning”, using the true stereo mix again found on Maximum R&B, but with the stereo spectrum widened slightly. Side A closes with the epic rocker “Melancholia”, the superior mix taken from the 2011 remaster of Who’s Missing.

Side B opens with Townshend’s admittedly preachy “Faith in Something Bigger” from Odds and Sods, followed by the remake version of “Glittering Girl” from October 1967, from Sell Out. Next is a song that seemed a bit ahead of its time in terms to social acceptance to the health hazards of smoking: “Little Billy”, using the superior master from Odds and Sods. Next is a completely new stereo mix of the otherwise mono “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, created when syncing up the two different mono mixes, both taken from the 2011 SHM remaster of Who’s Missing. Some phasing happens during the third verse, which I left in because of its appropriate timeliness. Next is Townshend’s essentially-solo recording “Sunrise”, again from Sell Out. Closing the album is my own unique edit of “Magic Bus”, using the body of the common stereo mix from Then and Now, but with the extended middle section taken from the mono mix on The Who Hits 50.

With cover art brilliantly reimagined by Jon Hunt (thanks Jon!) as the icing on the cake, we have twelve songs evenly spread over two sides, in tandem with their previous three albums. And what of the quality of this audio tennis match? The most points scored here is for the drastic change from mod-pop into full-blown rock icons. Here we hear the band beefing up their sound and more importantly Roger Daltrey shifting from the slight, short-haired teen-pop singer of “I’m A Boy” and “Substitute” into the wailing, bare-chested, long-haired rock star of Tommy, Who’s Next and Quadrophenia. Listening to the album, we now see how The Who went from Sell Out to Tommy. But taking the album into a whole, we can understand why Who’s For Tennis? was left out: while there are some great songs here, the album as a whole is pretty weak, scatterbrained and honestly a bit corny. Regardless, this reconstruction offers a missing piece of The Who’s history, an excellent addition to their album discography as it, at the very least, collects a number of non-LP songs that would be quite an annoyance to gather piecemeal. Let the match begin!

LosslessFLAC

Sources used:

30 Years of Maximum R&B (1994 original CD master)

Odds and Sodds (2015 SHM CD remaster)

Sell Out(2014 HDTracks stereo remaster)

Then and Now(2004 original CD master)

The Who Hits 50! (2014 Geffin Records)

Who’s Missing (2011 SHM CD remaster)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

Nirvana – Donkeyshow

(soniclovenoize Verse Chorus Verse reconstruction)

Side A:

1. Drain You

2. Aneurysm

3. Breed

4. Serve The Servants

5. Smells Like Teen Spirit

6. Spank Thru

7. Sliver

8. Dive

9. Lithium

Side B:

10. Rape Me

11. School

12. Sappy

13. Negative Creep

14. Heart-Shaped Box

15. Blew

16. Scentless Apprentice

17. Territorial Pissings

Hello there. Hope you are staying safe! Although quarantine restrictions are slowly being lifted, alas there won’t be any live music anytime soon. So in remembrance of the magic that was a band making music right in front of you--just for you, the energy and passion, the direct connection between artist and audience--I am going to upload a trilogy of famous live albums that never were. First is a reconstruction of the unreleased 1994 live Nirvana album Donkeyshow. Originally the first disc of the double-live album Verse Chorus Verse, slated for a November 1994 release, the album was canceled and instead the second disc was released as its own album: MTV’s Unplugged. Donkeyshow was later meant to be released on its own, but was instead reimagined as 1996’s From The Muddy Banks of The Wishkah. This reconstruction attempts to present what Donkeyshow was supposed to sound like, mostly using the performances originally slated for inclusion on the album. Only the best sources were used, EQd and volume adjusted for album cohesion.

By 1994, Nirvana was the biggest rock band in the world. Upon the suicide of frontman Kurt Cobain in April, that status was cemented, although this ensured no new recordings from the band. With only a small discography of three studio albums and one rarities compilation, Nirvana had made a tremendous impact on music and culture with a limited time and body of music. How can a record label continue the legends of rock greats? Well, with a live album, of course!

By the summer of 1994, the Nirvana camp decided to prepare tapes for a double album of live material that covered their entire history, in hopes to upstage the rampant bootleggers and satisfy the hunger for new music from Nirvana’s grieving fans. Titled Verse Chorus Verse--which was at one point an early title of In Utero--the first disc would contain a compilation of recordings from their standard electric show, ideally recreating an actual Nirvana concert. The second disc was to feature the entirety of the band’s recent performance on MTV Unplugged. In effect, Verse Chorus Verse was meant to demonstrate the versatility of the band and present their ‘light’ and ‘dark’ sides. The double album was scheduled for a street date on Halloween and an official release on November 1st, 1994.

Although a rough assemblage of Disc One was compiled with promo tapes manufactured in-house at DGC Records and artwork proofed, Chris Novoselic and Dave Grohl did not have the heart to continue the project, their wounds being too raw from the loss of their friend and bandmate. Ultimately, Verse Chorus Verse was scrapped and the band instead chose to just simply release the second disc as MTV Unplugged. It was a wise move; the album was considered a reverent eulogy for Cobain and a brilliant swan song for the band, winning a Grammy and hailed as one of the greatest live albums of all time. Simultaneously released was the VHS Live! Tonight! Sold Out!, a finalized version of a concept Cobain originally conceived: a documentary of the band’s rise to fame intermingled with live clips. The video sufficed as the only souvenir of an official "electric" Nirvana show.

The remaining members of Nirvana never gave up on the concept of an "electric" live album and made plans to release Verse Chorus Verse’s forgotten first disc as a standalone release called Donkeyshow (taken from Cobain’s often-said homophone of danke schoen). But hindsight gave Grohl and Novoselic an opportunity to rethink the compilation itself, and Donkeyshow never saw the light of day. Eventually Donkeyshow’s tracklist was slightly altered—using different live performances and completely remixing the others—and it was reborn as 1996’s From The Muddy Banks of The Wishkah. The album debuted at number one on the charts and was the last word from Nirvana in the decade they reigned.

Despite Wishkah’s success, the contents of the original Donkeyshow remained a great Nirvana mystery for some time, with fans wondering what it had originally sounded like when initially conceived. Over a decade later, scans of the DGC in-house promo tape emerged, revealing the songlist although without performance dates. Even though very few were privy to the audio, it was verified that only a handful of versions from Donkeyshow actually made it to Wishkah! But with no leaked audio from the tape, the mystery only deepened as Nirvana obsessives wondered what actual performances were on the album.

It wasn’t until December 2019 that Robert Fisher, Nirvana’s longtime art director, posted his long-lost test proofs for the actual artwork for Verse Chorus Verse and Donkeyshow on his Instagram. Revealing for the first time ever not only what Verse Chorus Verse would have actually looked like—which was a bit of an amalgam of the MTV Unplugged and Live! Tonight! Sold Out! artwork in a collaged gatefold packaging—but the liner notes that specifically stated which shows each of the songs originated from! Surprisingly, many of the recordings stemmed from some of Nirvana’s most heavily bootlegged live shows: Pat O’Brien Pavilion, Del Mar, CA 12/28/91, distributed as a Westwood One promo CD; Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA 10/31/91, Nirvana’s legendary Halloween show which was one of their most popular bootlegs; Pier 48, Seattle, WA 12/13/93, recorded for and televised as MTV’s Live & Loud. Five of the cuts were the same performances as heard on Wishkah (although in a different mix) and another five were sourced from otherwise completely unheard, uncirculated shows. Two of the later--"Serve The Servants" from 1/7/94 and "Sappy" from 11/22/89--surfaced as low quality mp3s.

Since complete rips of the full 60-minute Donkeyshow do not circulate, we will use Fisher’s liner notes to reconstruct a facsimile Donkeyshow from the best quality versions of the Paramount, O’Brien Pavilion and Pier 48 shows. The mixes from the five Wishkah-overlapping recordings will not be used, as they are a bit muddy and Cobain’s guitar was mixed to mono; we will try to use the original Andy Wallace mixes from the early 90s, at least in the case for the Paramount and Pat O'Brien Pavilion shows. Additionally, we will substitute different soundboard recordings for the five songs not available, using similar, same-era recordings. We will also attempt to match the side lengths as stated on the promo cassette for accuracy and master this reconstruction at a similar volume as the original 1994 master of MTV Unplugged, as this would theoretically be paired with Donkeyshow, had it been released. Finally, to make this Donkeyshow reconstruction a bit more authentic to an actual Nirvana concert, all mistakes were left as-is and we will include the crucial element of any Nirvana concert (that Wishkah unfortunately overlooked): Novoselic’s drunken stage banter!

My reconstruction begins with a trio of songs taken from JWB’s excellent remaster of the O’Brien Pavilion bootleg, “Drain You”, “Aneurysm” and “Breed”. Note that two channels of Cobain’s guitar is panned stereophonically, as opposed to the channels summed to mono and panned slightly right as on Wishkah. On the actual Verse Chorus Verse/Donkeyshow, “Serve The Servants” from was taken from the Seattle Center Colosseum 1/7/94; since that show is not available to us, I substituted the version from Pier 48, just 23 days earlier, taken from the fourt disc of the In Utero 20th Anniversary Super Deluxe box set. Next is “Smells Like Teen Spirit” again from Del Mar. On the original Donkeyshow, “Spank Thru” was taken from The Astoria 12/3/89; since we do not have that show available to us, I used the version from Fahrenheit, MJC Espace Icare 12/1/89, two days earlier. “Sliver” from Del Mar again, then “Dive”, substituted with 12/1/89. “Lithium” from Del Mar, yet again. They sure liked this show, didn’t they?

Side B—as heard on the promo tape versions—begins with the slower, early “Rape Me” from the Paramount Halloween show, taken from JWB's remaster of the bootlegged original Andy Wallace mix. Next, “School” from the San Diego Sports Arena 12/29/93 is not available, so we substitute the classic Palaghiaccio 2/22/94 version, from just under two months later. Likewise, the following “Sappy” from Geneva 11/29/89 is not available, so we will substitute it for the classic Vienna 11/22/89, one week earlier. The ripping “Negative Creep” from Halloween at the Paramount is next, followed by the trilogy of “Heart Shaped-Box”, “Blew” and “Scentless Apprentice” from Live & Loud12/13/93. The album closes with “Territorial Pissings” from, of course, Del Mar.

Sources used:

In Utero (20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Box Set, 2013)

Live at Le Fahrenheit, Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture (Pierre Leroy transfer)

Live at Palaghiaccio, Rome (JWB Remaster)

Live at Paramount Theatre, Seattle (JWB Remaster)

Live at Pat O’Brien Paladium, Del Mar (JWB Remaster)

Live at U4, Vienna (JWB Remaster)

Paul McCartney & Wings – One Hand Clapping

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

Side A:

1. One Hand Clapping

2. Jet

3. Let Me Roll It

4. Junior’s Farm

5. My Love

Side B:

6. Little Woman Love/C Moon

7. Maybe I’m Amazed

8. Band On The Run

9. Wild Life

10. Hi Hi Hi

Side C:

1. Live and Let Die

2. Soily

3. Go Now

4. Blue Moon of Kentucky

5. Bluebird

Side D:

6. Suicide

7. Let’s Love

8. Sitting At The Piano/All Of You

9. I’ll Give You A Ring

10. Baby Face

11. Blackbird

12. Country Dreamer

13. Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five

My how time flies! Why is the pandemic not over yet!? Sorry for the delay, but it’s finally here-- the second of a trilogy of famous live albums that never were, in memory of the live music we can’t quite yet experience again. This is a reconstruction of the proposed 1974 live in-the-Abbey Road studio album One Hand Clapping by Paul McCartney & Wings. Originally meant as the studio rehearsals for a 1974 Wings Over Australia tour that never happened, the proceedings were filmed for a possible film release, akin to The Beatles’ Get Back project eight years earlier. Despite the high quality of live studio performances—especially of the then-unreleased “Soily”--McCartney shelved the entire project, as was the fate of a number of other self-financed Wings film projects throughout the 70s and 80s. This reconstruction attempts to replicate what a double-LP release in 1974 could have been like, using the best possible sources, including official releases and painstakingly-remastered bootleg recordings. All tracks have been sequenced in the actual recording order, spread across four sides of a vinyl record.

The arrival of Band on The Run signaled a few changes in Paul McCartney & Wings. Firstly, it was McCartney’s first post-Beatles “masterpiece album”, finally equaling the quality of a typical Beatles album. Miraculously, the album was a product of the trio of Paul, Linda McCartney and Denny Laine, as drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Henry McCullough quit the band just before the start of the album’s recording sessions. This eventually led to the second major change for Wings: a new line-up. A month before Band On The Run’s December 1973 release, Wings broke in their new guitarist Jimmy McCulloch by recording some of Linda’s songs as Suzy and The Red Stripes, as well as a session for Paul’s brother Michael, as McGear, in February 1974.

Wings finally recruited drummer Geoff Britton and headed to Nashville in July to rehearse for a planned tour of Australia. While they were there, Wings also recorded the single “Junior’s Farm” (one of this author’s favorite Wings songs) as well as a handful of country-tinged tracks under the name The Country Hams. Rehearsals for the theoretical tour continued across the ocean in late August at McCartney’s old stomp: Abbey Road studios! But McCartney thought a little more of these activities than just simply rehearsals, as he employed boy-genius engineer Geoff Emerick to record the session, as well as David Litchfield to film and direct the sessions for a possible documentary film release.

The first day of rehearsals on August 26th produced full-band versions of “Jet”, “Let Me Roll It”, “Junior’s Farm”, “My Love”, “Little Woman Love”/”C Moon”, “Maybe I’m Amazed” and a short instrumental jam which would become the theme song for the project: “One Hand Clapping”. The second day of recording produced takes of “Band On The Run”, “Wild Life”, “Hi Hi Hi”, “Live and Let Die”, “Soily”, “Go Now”, “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and “Bluebird.” Day three of recording saw Paul performing a number of songs alone at the piano, which has posthumously been dubbed “The Cabaret Sequence.” Paul went though supposedly impromptu performances of “Suicide”, “Let’s Love”, “All of You,” “I’ll Give You a Ring” and a ‘proper’ take of “Baby Face.”

Day four saw the entire band returning to the studio to add overdubs to the live tracks recorded on the 26^th and the 27^th: “My Love”, “Live and Let Die”, “Band On The Run” “Bluebird” and “Jet”. August 30^th, the fifth and final day of recording, was a unique staging meant as an interlude segment in the One Hand Clapping film: a solo acoustic performance by Paul in the backyard of Abbey Road studios! Although Paul again drifted through several impromptu takes of a number of classic 1950s rock songs, he did record fairly complete takes of Beatles classic “Blackbird”, the then-unreleased Wings b-side “Country Dreamer” and the as-yet unreleased “Blackpool.” Afterwards, Paul retreated back into Studio Two to track a tight solo piano version of “Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-Five”, which mysteriously morphs into the Band On The Run studio version in the actual unreleased One Hand Clapping film, as well as all known audio recordings.

And that was essentially the last anyone heard of One Hand Clapping, aside from archival releases and bootlegs of varying quality. While the film was completed later in 1975, it was never released; Paul had a tendency to finance vanity projects himself, comfortable with leaving them in the vault, such as the animated Bruce McMouse Showwhich did not see release until 46 years later! This line-up of Wings eventually returned to Abbey Road in November to start work on their next album, Venus and Mars, recording a handful of songs: “Rock Show”, “Love In Song”, “Letting Go” and “Medicine Jar.” Needing a change of scenery, Wings relocated to New Orleans in early 1975, where Britton exited the Wings due to personal disagreements with the bands’ guitarists. Joe English was hired as a session drummer to finish the album and was later asked to join Wings when the album was completed. Venus and Mars was released in May to critical and commercial success.

But what of the missing live-in-studio One Hand Clapping? Only “Baby Face” received overdubs during the Venus and Mars sessions—a New Orleans jazz band—presumably for possible b-side inclusion. While the film made it’s rounds on the bootleg circuit and eventually as a bonus on the 2010 Band On The Run box set, various tracks have trickled out on archival releases over the years, as well as it’s presumed entirety on various bootlegs. For this reconstruction, we will cull all of these sources and piece together as much as we are able to—including the live between-song banter, which is essential to the spirit of these recordings. All sources from bootlegs have been painstakingly remastered to match the fidelity of the pristine officially-released tracks, and all of the songs are presented mostly in the order of witch they were recorded, as per Chip Madinger and Mark Easter’s excellent Eight Arms To Hold You: The Solo Beatles Compendium. We will also use only the two most complete songs from Paul’s “Backyard Session”, as the goal here is to present a facsimile commercial double LP that could have been released in late 1974 in lieu of a Band On The Run tour.

Side A begins with the theme of the film and the title track, “One Hand Clapping”, taken from Yellow Cat’s fantastic One Hand Clapping bootleg, the best quality boot of the band-sessions. Following is “Jet” and “Let Me Roll It” from the 2010 Band On The Run box set, with the studio banter restored from the bootlegs. “Junior’s Farm” and “My Love” follow, both taken from the Yellow Cat bootleg. Side B fades in with the medley of “Little Woman Love” and “C Moon” from the Yellow Cat bootleg, followed by “Maybe I’m Amazed” from the 2011 box set for McCartney. Next is “Band On The Run”, again taken from the 2010 Band On The Run box, followed by a fraction of “Wild Life” and a roaring “Hi Hi Hi”, both from the Yellow Cat bootleg, to close out the first disc.

Disc two begins with “Live and Let Die”, taken from The In-Lawssoundtrack. Next is the fantastic studio take of “Soily” that was never released, as well as Denny Laine’s “Go Now” and Paul’s go-to cover, “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, all taken from the Yellow Cat bootleg. We end the side with the final full-band recording of One Hand Clapping, “Bluebird” from the 2010 Band On The Run box. I chose to condense all of the Cabaret Sequence and Backyard Sessions together on Side D, starting with only the Cabaret material shown in the film. Using the bootleg MoMac’s Hidden Tracks Vol 7 as the source for the core, I patched in the proper demo of “Let’s Love” from 2014 Venus and Mars box set, which was presumably recorded during the One Hand Clapping sessions. Ending the sequence is “Baby Face”, again from the 2014 Venus and Marsbox, featuring overdubs anachronistically recorded 1975 for this presumed 1974 release. Since nothing from The Backyard Sessions actually made the cut into the One Hand Clapping documentary, I will simply include the two most complete takes of “Blackbird” and “Country Dreamer”, with dialog edited to give the illusion that and random passerby had requested the songs. The album closes with “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” taken from the 2010 Band on the Run box; instead of segueing into the album version of the “Band On The Run” coda fade, I have used the early live version for continuity.

Special thanks to Mark Heggen for making the awesome cover artwork-- something that One Hand Clapping never had in any iteration!

Sources used:

Band On The Run (2010 Deluxe Edition)

The In-Laws (soundtrack, 2003)

One Hand Clapping (bootleg, Yellow Cat Records, 1994)

McCartney(2011 Deluxe Edition)

MoMac’s Hidden Tracks Vol 7 (bootleg, 2002)

Venus and Mars (2014 Deluxe Edition)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

* md5 files, track notes and artwork included

Bob Dylan – Renaldo and Clara Soundtrack

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

Side A:

1. When I Paint My Masterpiece

2. Isis

3. A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall

4. It Ain’t Me Babe

5. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry

6. Romance in Durango

Side B:

7. One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)

8. Sara

9. Never Let Me Go

10. Tangled Up In Blue

11. Just Like a Woman

12. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door

Happy Year’s Eve-- only 12 hours to go, depending on your time zone! Let’s end this garbage year with the third of a trilogy of famous live albums that never were, in remembrance of the recently deceased concept of live music. This is a reconstruction of the theoretical soundtrack to the unreleased 1978 Bob Dylan film Renaldo & Clara, which contained vignettes and live footage recorded on the first leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. Sourced primarily from the Rolling Thunder Revue boxset, this reconstruction presents how a single-disc soundtrack to the film could have been presented, featuring solely the live performances of Dylan and his band. All songs have been volume adjusted for cohesiveness, presented in film order and structured as two continuous sides of a musical performance.

Following his 1970’s renaissance—jumpstarted by the critically acclaimed Blood on the Tracks album—Dylan longed for one of the things he never had: a stable backing band. Hanging out in 1975 at New York nightclub/coffeehouse/music venue The Other End, Dylan took note of Patti Smith’s backing band and desired to form one of his own for Blood On The Tracks’ follow-up. Working with playwright Jacques Levy (another patron of The Other End), Dylan had crafted an album’s worth of new material worthy to follow Blood on The Tracks, albeit less personal and decidedly more cinematic. Recruiting bassist Rob Stoner & drummer Howard Wyeth from The Other End and violinist Scarlet Rivera literally on a street corner, Dylan had the core of his band in place. With the addition of budding songstress Emmylou Harris on backing vocals and a series of session musicians to round out the ensemble, recording sessions for the Desire album commenced in July 1975. At first chaotic with too many musicians chiming into Dylan’s newer—and longer—songs, Stoner suggested stripping the band to the aforementioned core; by the end of the month, they had the majority of the album in the can.

But some Dylanologists suggest Desire was a means to an end, with the goal being touring again with a band of his own. That fall, the core of Dylan, Stoner, Wyeth and Rivera were enhanced by guitarists Mick Ronson, T Bone Burnett and Steven Soles, multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield and percussionist Luther Rix. Another The Other End recruit, Ronee Blakley, came aboard to fill Emmylou Harris’s position, who was not able to tour due to her own career and session work. After returning to the studio to record a less libelous version of “Hurricane," the ragtag group hit the road with a pair of Halloween shows at the War Memorial Auditorium in Plymouth, MA. But this was no ordinary rock concert; joining was a star-studded musical cast to create an old-time music revue, including Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, Bob Neuwirth, Ramblin Jack Elliott and Joni Mitchell, each getting a slice of the spotlight before Dylan's headline. Even Allen Ginsburg tagged along to open the show with some poetry!

Another guest that tagged along was filmmaker Howard Alk. He was no stranger to filming Dylan on the road, having also been the cameraman behind Don’t Look Back and Eat The Document. This time there was (in theory) an actual script co-written by Dylan and director Sam Shepard, although live footage of the tour would eventually be juxtaposed in the film. But by “script”, we mean more of a conceptual outline, as Dylan and Shepard would more encourage the actors—band members entourage of the Rolling Thunder Revue—to improvise scenes while on tour.

What exactly were these scenes? Many of the tour members themselves did not know, but simply went along with Dylan because, well, he was Dylan! The ringleader himself was cast as the protagonist Renaldo and his soon-to-be ex-wife Sara Dylan, the sad eyed lady of the Lowlands herself, as Clara. Completing a love triangle was The Woman in White, played by Dylan’s former flame Joan Baez. It is generally assumed that the trio and the surrounding characters were somehow acting out the stories of the songs, or at least the underlying emotions of the songs. Additionally, the songs themselves seemed to create a vague narrative for the trio’s love triangle, based on the song order as presented in the final film. Throughout, Dylan wore whiteface makeup, and sometimes a mask; he insisted the meaning of it was in the lyrics of the songs.

If none of this makes any sense, there was at least one amazing constant: the live performances themselves. Dylan daringly stocked his set with Desire tracks, months before the album was even released. The performances were energetic, intense and intimate, ranging from the proto-punk “Isis” to the gentle “Oh Sister.” Likewise, Dylan and his backing band—dubbed Guam—also presented updated versions of Dylan staples such as “It Ain’t Me Babe” and “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” that made his The Band-backed Before The Flood seem like yacht rock. Furthermore, Dylan was mostly free from guitar duties due to the triple guitar attack of Ronson, Burnett and Soles. Urged on by Patti Smith, Dylan used his new-found bodily freedom to act out the lyrics, flailing his arms and motioning his hands as extensions of his lyrical prowess.

After a Fall and Winter of essentially one of the most powerful stage shows Dylan had presented, this first leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue ended at Madison Square Garden on December 8th, and the band earned a rest. Reconvening in April 1976 for a second leg of the tour, Guam had a slight face lift after the exit of Blakley and Rix, replaced by Donna Weiss and Gary Burke, respectively. Likewise, the setlist received a significant face lift as well, drawing more on amped-up and Desire-ified versions of Dylan’s back catalog. While well-intended, this second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue was dynamic and it was obvious the concept—and band itself—was losing steam. The tour concluded in May, building to a live performance filmed and recorded for an NBC television special and released that September as the ragged live album Hard Rain, both of which were not well-received.

Doing as he would after his 1966 tour, Dylan retired to his home studio to personally edit the footage shot while on tour to try and make a film out of it himself. What Dylan came up with was Renaldo & Clara, a surreal four-hour film: part live concert, part documentary, part improvised drama... understood only by Dylan himself. With a limited release in January 1978, Renaldo & Clara received unanimous negative praise, resulting in the limited release to end after only two weeks. Later that year, Dylan offered a more concise two-hour edit of the film, exorcising much of the ambiguous dramatic vignettes and focusing on the stellar live performances. This did not save the film, as this edit, too, was critically panned and never saw an official release beyond a few broadcasts and theater showings. It seemed that Renaldo & Clara suffered a same fate as 1967’s Eat The Document: an amazing document of Dylan’s live accomplishments, confusingly edited as an experimental film, critically panned and stuffed in the vault, surviving only on bootleg reels and VHS tapes.

But that wasn’t quite the end of Renaldo & Clara; released in 2002 as The Bootleg Series Volume 5: Bob Dylan Live, The Rolling Thunder Revue, a number of the performances featured in Renaldo & Claraeventually saw the light of day. A much more enthralling document of the tour and righting the wrong of Hard Rain, fans ‘desired’ more footage from the first leg of the tour. In 2019, famed director Martin Scorsese reedited the original footage from 1975 into a completely new documentary, Rolling Thunder: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese. Finally, fans were able to see remastered and crystal-clear performances from the legendary first leg of The Rolling Thunder Revue, thanks to Scorsese’s curation. But, in true Dylan form, not all in the documentary was what it appeared to be, as several interviewees and narrative events raised numerous eyebrows. To coincide with the film, Dylan released a 14-disc box set containing all six of the professionally-recorded shows on the 1975 tour, two discs of rehearsals and an additional disc of live rarities from the era. But what about the actual presumptive soundtrack to Renaldo & Clara? Can it be salvaged?

Using mostly the mixes found on the Rolling Thunder box set, we are able to easily create a Renaldo & Clara soundtrack. Since the contents of the actual film are an overwhelming mess and honestly a taxing listen, we will limit this soundtrack album to a single-disc of only the featured Dylan performances—essentially, the only reason anyone would want to watch Renaldo & Clara in the first place! We will also sequence the performances in the order in which they were featured in the film and crossfade the performances to create two continuous performances in each side of the record. The resulting album is essentially the very best of the best of Dylan’s live tours, what I believe would have been actually released in 1978 had the film not been canned. When paired with the rougher document of the 1976 leg of the tour, Hard Rain, you have a pretty great document of this era, as there is no song-overlap between the two albums.

Side A opens with the very first performance from the very first concert of the tour: “When I Paint My Masterpiece” from 10/25/75, taken from the bootleg Plymouth Rock, but EQd to match the sound of the version in Wolfgang’s Vault (presumably sourced from the superior master tape). Next is the fantastic “Isis” from 12/4/75; although featured on Masterpieces and recently on Side Tracks, I chose the new mix found on the Rolling Thunder box for coherency purposes. The electric stomp of “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” also from 12/4/75 and the exquisite “It Ain’t Me Babe” from 11/20/75 follows, with the 11/21/75 “It Takes a Lot To Laugh” afterwards. The side concludes with “Romance in Durango” from 12/4/75; note that although we are using the mix from the Rolling Thunder box, I have edited out the second-to-last verse in which Dylan made a vocal flub, as it was heard in the actual film and originally released on Masterpieces. Side B starts with “One More Cup of Coffee”, “Sara” and “Never Let Me Go”, all from 12/4/75. Dylan’s superbly intimate “Tangled Up in Blue” from 11/21/75 is next, with the album ending with a pair of tracks from 11/20/75, “Just Like a Woman” and “Knockin on Heaven’s Door.”

Sources used:

Plymouth Rock (bootleg, 1997 Colosseum Records)

The Rolling Thunder Review: The 1975 Recordings (2019 Columbia Records)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
* md5 files, track notes and artwork included

Prince and The Revolution – Dream Factory
(soniclovenoize reconstruction)
January 2021 UPGRADE

Discs 1 & 2 – Dream Factory
Side A:
1. Visions
2. Dream Factory
3. Train
4. The Ballad of Dorothy Parker
5. It

Side B:
6. Strange Relationship
7. Slow Love
8. Starfish and Coffee
9. Colors
10. I Could Never take The Place of Your Man

Side C:
1. Sign O’ The Times
2. Crystal Ball
3. A Place In Heaven

Side D:
4. Last Heart
5. Witness 4 The Prosecution
6. Movie Star
7. The Cross
8. All My Dreams

Disc 3 – Camille
Side A:
1. Rebirth of The Flesh
2. Housequake
3. Strange Relationship
4. Feel U Up

Side B:
5. Shockadelica
6. Goodlove
7. If I Was Your Girlfriend
8. Rockhard in a Funky Place

Disc 4 – Dream Factory (April Configuration)
Side A:
1. Visions
2. Dream Factory
3. Wonderful Day
4. The Ballad of Dorothy Parker
5. Big Tall Wall
6. And That Says What?

Side B:
7. Strange Relationship
8. Teacher, Teacher
9. Starfish and Coffee
10. A Place In Heaven
11. Sexual Suicide

Let’s start 2021 out right, with an upgrade to Prince and The Revolution’s unreleased final album, Dream Factory, which eventually evolved into Sign O’ The Times. Originally conceived as a double album with a significant amount of creative input from the band (at least compared to previous Prince releases), the album was scrapped after Prince broke up The Revolution in 1986. Prince then turned his attention to a solo concept album Camille, which was also scrapped and combined with the Dream Factory material to create the unreleased triple album Crystal Ball. Warner Bros Records then asked Prince to whittle the 3LP down, and the result was the double album Sign o' The Times, which many consider to be Prince’s masterpiece. This reconstruction attempts to present what Prince originally intended the Dream Factory album to sound like, volume-adjusted and using the best possible masters, mostly sourced from the recent Sign O’ The Times Deluxe Box, a significant soundquality upgrade from bootlegs. I am also including two bonus discs: a reconstruction of Prince’s unreleased album Camille and a reconstruction of the early, single-disc master of Dream Factory.

Prince was truly the reigning star of the 1980s. Armed with both worldwide smash hits, musical chops and the artistic credibility to back it up, Prince also had the vision and determination to prove himself a modern music legend… But let's not forget he also had the band to back it up. Even though Prince was a great songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist who had the ability to mastermind his own works and retain both commercial and critical success, his output throughout the 1980s grew to allow more collaboration from his backing band he formed in 1979. The lineup of The Revolution seemed to be in flux at times, but after the transcendent success of Purple Rain in 1984 and their subsequent albums Around The World in a Day and Parade, the classic core of the band coalesced as guitarist Wendy Melvoin, keyboardist Lisa Coleman, keyboardist Matt Fink, bassist Brown Mark and drummer Bobby Z. In working on the follow-up to Parade before it was even released, Prince invited members of The Revolution—although mostly Melvoin and Coleman—to contribute backing vocals, songwriting, instrumentation and even lead vocals to the material. Reworking older songs as a starting point—the 1982 recordings of “Teacher, Teacher”, “Strange Relationship” and “I Could Never Take The Place of Your Man”—as well as the project's title track in December 1985, most of the work occurred in Prince’s newly built home studio on Galpin Boulevard. By late April 1986, Prince had created a rough cut of an album called Dream Factory that elevated both Wendy and Lisa as major players (although they later claimed they didn’t receive the credit they thought they deserved!). At this point in time, Dream Factory was a single-disc album that included: “Visions”, “Dream Factory”, “It’s a Wonderful Day”, “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker”, “Big Tall Wall”, “And That Says What?” “Strange Relationship”, “Teacher, Teacher”, “Starfish and Coffee”, “A Place in Heaven” and “Sexual Suicide”. [A reconstruction of this early configuration is presented as Disc 4]

Work on the album continued throughout the summer with Prince often tracking all the instruments himself, although he also continued to work with Windy and Lisa in the studio. A mountain of tracks began to collect and by June a double album had emerged. Although songs such as “Big Tall Wall” and “And That Says What?” fell to the wayside, great and interesting new tracks such as “It”, “In A Large Room With No Light”, “Crystal Ball”, “Power Fantastic”, “Last Heart”, “Witness 4 The Prosecution”, “Movie Star” and “All My Dreams” were added to the running order as well as linking tracks “Colors” and “Nevaeh Ni Ecalp A”, the later based around “A Place In Heaven” played backwards and meant to introduce the title track. Now a double-album, this sequence of Dream Factory went through further refinement over the month when more work was done to the songs. By July, Prince had dropped “Teacher, Teacher”, “In a Large Room With No Light”, “Sexual Suicide” and “Power Fantastic” and replaced them with newly completed tracks “Train”, “Slow Love”, “I Could Never Take The Place of Your Man”, “Sign o' The Times” and “The Cross”. A master was prepared on July 18th and Prince concentrated on the Hit n Run Tour, which would signal the closing of the Dream Factory.

For the summer’s Parade/Hit n Run Tour, The Revolution was expanded to include former members of The Time as well as The Family—jokingly dubbed The Counter-Revolution. This would include a full horn section, Melvoin’s twin sister Susannah (who was romantically involved with Prince) and a set of former-bodyguards-turned-dancers. This created a strain in the relationship between Prince and his band members, who were questioning Prince’s artistic direction—why did the band nearly double in size? Why are on-stage dancers getting more attention than the musicians proper? Wendy was especially annoyed at the addition of her sister as an official member of the band and most of the core members of The Revolution attempted to quit, only for Prince to convince Wendy, Lisa and Mark to stay until at least the remainder of the tour in October.

As fate would have it, the growing animosity between Prince and his Revolution was at least reciprocated. At the end of the tour, Prince called in Wendy and Lisa to Paisley Park and fired them; Bobby Z was replaced by Sheila E; allegedly out of loyalty to the rest of his band members, Mark quit. With The Revolution over, the collaborative Dream Factory was shelved and Prince went back to his roots—being the sole maestro. Prince promptly began work on a concept album called Camille, in which a vocally-manipulated Prince would perform as the character Camille. Intending to fool the public, the album was never to be credited directly as Prince and the cover art was to be blank! A master to Camille was prepared in October but that album too was scrapped and Prince rethought his strategy. [a reconstruction of the proposed Camille album is presented as Disc 3]

In a bold move, Prince combined the best of both the scrapped Dream Factory and Camille albums into one triple-album entitled Crystal Ball (not to be confused with the 1998 rarities boxset of the same name). With The Revolution no longer existing, Prince generally mixed-out Wendy and Lisa’s contributions from the Dream Factory tracks destined for Crystal Ball: “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker”, “It”, “Starfish and Coffee”, “Slow Love”, “Crystal Ball”, “I Could Never Take The Place of Your Man”, "The Cross" and “Sign O' The Times”.

In a final turn of events that makes the Dream Factory mythos even more complex, this 3-LP Crystal Ball album was ultimately rejected by Warner Brothers Records, and in December Prince was tasked to pair the album down to at least a more marketable double album. After adding a more commercial single “U Got The Look”, the result was retitled Sign O’ the Times and released as a Prince solo album in 1987. Although not quite hitting the commercial peak that Purple Rain had three years earlier, Sign O’ The Times was universally critically acclaimed and recent revaluations fairly state it as his masterpiece. But to be fair, the album was the culmination of three other scrapped albums—Dream Factory, Camille and Crystal Ball—so it’s glory should come as no surprise. But to truly see how Sign o’ the Times was manufactured, we must first see what it’s like in the Dream Factory.

While there were three different masters of Dream Factory prepared throughout the summer of 1986, the main discs of my reconstruction will focus on its final iteration, using those specific mixes and track sequence. I will primarily be using the exquisite masters found on the Sign O’ The Times Deluxe Edition, often editing the lengths of some tracks to match what was actually featured on Dream Factory. If the mix of the song is generally very different (as the case for “Crystal Ball” and “I Could Never Take The Place of Your Man”), then I’ve used the original mixes from the Work It bootleg, EQd to match the officially released final mixes. Nearly all tracks are either hard-edited into eachother or crossfaded, making four continuous sides of music, as Prince intended. Additionally, I have reconstructed the original, unreleased Camille album as a bonus, as well as the April single-disc configuration of Dream Factory, for historical purposes. I chose not to include reconstructions of the June 2LP configuration of Dream Factory nor the unreleased Crystal Ball 3LP, due to excessive overlap between all of the masters.

Side A begins with “Visions” taken from the Sign O’ The Times Deluxe Edition, but with the opening piano note taken from Wendy & Lisa’s Eroica, as it was exorcised from the SOTT Deluxe. Next is “Nevaeh Ni Ecalp A”, taken from the Work It bootleg but EQd to match the mix on the SOTT Delux, hard edited into “Dream Factory” taken from the 1998 compilation Chrystal Ball, but faded out to match the version from Dream Factory. Next follows “Train”, “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” and “It”, all taken from the SOTT Deluxe. Side B begins with the original Wendy & Lisa mix of “Strange Relationship” from the SOTT Deluxe, but faded out to match the version from Dream Factory. Next is “Slow Love”, “Starfish and Coffee” and “Colors” from the SOTT Deluxe, concluding with the original, unreleased mix of “I Could Never Take The Place of Your Man” from Work it, featuring an extra solo section that was otherwise edited out.

Side C begins with “Sign O’ The Times”, edited to match the length of the version on Dream Factory, hard edited into the original Dream Factory mix of “Crystal Ball”, taken from the Work It bootleg. The side concludes Lisa’s vocal version of “A Place in Heaven”, from the SOTT Deluxe. “Last Heart” opens Side D, taken from Crystal Ball but with some slight reverb tail added to the ending horn passage, followed by “Witness 4 The Prosecution” from the SOTT Deluxe. “Movie Star” is next, vying for the slightly-shorter mix from “Crystal Ball” rather than the commonly bootleged original mix for the sake of soundquality; while the intro has been edited, it is unfortunately missing four bars of bridge that Prince had cut out for the Crystal Ball compilation and we’ll have to live with those missing few seconds. The album concludes with the double-punch of “The Cross” and “All My Dreams” from the SOTT Deluxe. The final touch is Susannah Melvion’s actual sketch of the Dream Factory’s cover art, commissioned by Prince himself; here we see Susannah opening a door into the Dream Factory: Prince’s imagination.

For a purely historical interest, I have included reconstructions of Camille and the single-disc April configuration of Dream Factory as Discs 3 and 4. Camille begins with “Rebirth of the Flesh” from SOTT Deluxe, but I have re-edited it to match the version originally appearing on Camille. “Housequake” and the final SOTT mix of “Strange Relationship” follow, with the side ending with “Feel U Up,” the rare 6-minute version found only on the Partyman single. “Shockadelica” from SOTT begins Side B, with “Goodlove” from the Bright Lights Big City soundtrack and “If I Was Your Girlfriend” from SOTT but with it’s intro edited out. Concluding is “Rockhard in a Funky Place” from The Black Album.

The April Dream Factory features the same edits as the July 2-disc reconstruct on discs 1 & 2, except: “Wonderful Day” is the Lisa & Wendy-heavy 12” mix taken from the SOTT Deluxe, but edited to match the version that would have been on Dream Factory; “Big Tall Wall” and “And That Says What?” are taken from the SOTT Deluxe and hard edited together; “Teacher, Teacher”, also from the SOTT Deluxe; and “Sexual Suicide” from Crystal Ball.