• 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

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band – 

It Comes To You In a Plain Brown Wrapper

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

MAY 2021 UPGRADE

Disc 1 – Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
Side A:
1. Safe as Milk
2. Big Black Baby Shoes
3. Moody Liz
4. Trust Us

Side B:
5. On Tomorrow
6. Dirty Blue Gene
7. Beatle Bones n’ Smokin’ Stones
8. Gimme Dat Harp Boy
9. Kandy Korn


Disc 2 – The Twenty-Fifth Century Quakers
Side A:
1. Mirror Man
2. 25th Century Quakers

Side B:
3. Korn Ring Finger
4. Tarotplane


Happy May Day! To celebrate, here’s a long-overdue upgrade to one of my favorite albums that never were. This is a reconstruction of the unreleased 1968 double-album It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. Originally scrapped with half of the material re-recorded and infamously “psychedelicized” for the album Strictly Personal with the other half released as 1972’s Mirror Man, this reconstruction attempts to cull all the originally intended material for the double album that was supposed to be their sophomore release, more successfully bridging the gap between 1967’s Safe As Milk and 1969’s Trout Mask Replica. This upgraded version attempts to follow drummer John “Drumbo” French’s recollections of what Captain Beefheart actually intended with the album, organizing the composed material on Disc One and the improvised material on Disc Two. I have created unique edits of the improvised material in order to fit on a theoretical vinyl record, and have edited the composed songs in Disc One as per French’s notes on how they should have ended. Additionally, I have synced the isolated vocal from the Strictly Personal version of “On Tomorrow” with the instrumental Plain Brown Wrapper version, creating a 'finished' recording.

After a prominent rise of notoriety upon the release of Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band’s psychedelic-blues debut Safe As Milk in 1967, the group stood at a crossroads of how to proceed: continue being a cutting edge cult act or expanding their horizons? After a disastrous warm-up performance for their scheduled 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, it seemed that breakthrough success would elude the riotous bunch. To make matters worse, Don Van Vliet’s band had been damaged by lineup changes due to members who had had enough of The Captain’s drug hallucinations, erratic behavior and alleged emotional abuse. Prodigal guitarist Ry Cooder vacated to be replaced briefly by Gerry McGee, who was in turn replaced by Jeff Cotton.

Despite the troubled waters, Vliet reunited with a Magic Band that consisted of Cotton, Alex St. Clair Snouffer, Jerry Handley and John French in the November of 1967 to record their follow-up to Safe As Milk at TTG Studios in Los Angels. The band had spent months writing and rehearsing new material, which they tackled in the studio: “Safe as Milk”, “Trust Us”, “On Tomorrow”, “Beatle Bones n’ Smokin’ Stones”, “Gimme Dat Harp Boy”, “Kandy Korn”, “Big Black Baby Shoes”, “Flower Pot”, “Dirty Blue Gene” and “Moody Liz”. The new material was more intricate and abstract as compared to the Blues-based Safe as Milk, yet often retaining a melodic sensibility for the possibility of mainstream airplay; “Trust Us” was specifically earmarked for the lead single for the new record.

But expectations were even higher than this impressive collection of songs, as Vliet intended their sophomore album to be a conceptual double-record: The first disc would contain the aforementioned “composed” works, and be credited to Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band; a second disc of improvisational jams would constitute the second disc, credited to their alter-egos the Twenty-Fifth Century Quakers, who were essentially “opening” for Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band. The album was to be called It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper, in reference to an ambiguous parcel containing either narcotics, drug paraphernalia or possibly pornography. The cover art was to feature exactly that as well, a plain brown wrapper marked ‘strictly personal’, with both records addressed from one band to the other. There was even a photo shoot with the band dressed as Quakers!

Producer Robert Krasnow ran tape as the Captain and His Magic Band soldered through a number of live improvisations-- “Taroplane”, “25th Century Quaker”, “Mirror Man” and “Korn Ring Finger” – which Drumbo French thought were disorganized due to Vliet being unable to conduct the unprepared band properly, as he was contained in a vocal booth. After tracking more than a double album’s worth of material in total, the sessions were paused for a European tour, leaving only six of the ten composed songs with vocals. The band never returned to the TTG Session recordings, forever leaving these tracks unfinished. No reason was ever given for the session’s halt, but it has been suggested that their label Buddha Records had pulled the plug out of disinterest. Interestingly enough, due to Buddha Records misfiling of the band’s contract, Captain Beefheart and company were free to sign to a different label by the Spring of 1968. The very next day, Krasnow and the band entered Sunset Sound Studios to rerecord a single-LP version of the album on Krasnow’s own Blue Thump label.

Recorded in April and May of 1968, Don & his crew recut the more ”commercial” tracks from the November 1967 sessions at a much more abbreviated length: “Safe as Milk”, “Trust Us”, “Mirror Man” (cut from the original 15 minutes down to 5!), “On Tomorrow”, “Beatle Bones ‘n; Smokin’ Stones, “Gimme Dat Harp Boy” and “Kandy Korn”, as well as a new improvisation called "Ah Feel Like Ahcid." In a move that angered Beefheart fans for ages, Krasnow allegedly took the liberty himself to overdub numerous faux-psychedelic effects onto the newly-recorded album, even completely burying the mixes under unlistenable phasing. The resulting released album—Strictly Personal—was a commercial disaster and The Captain disowned the album, claiming the effects were added without his permission. Some speculate that was untrue and Vliet had given his approval only to later turn on the album after its failure. Either way, this folly of questionable truth is just simply a part of the Captain Beefheart mythos-- as was everything else!

After the critical success of the seminal experimental and Frank Zappa-produced rock album Trout Mask Replica (not to mention its respectable follow-up Lick My Decals Off Baby), Buddha Records wished to capitalize on Captain Beefheart’s renewed cult status and artistic credibility. Going back to the original November 1967 Plain Brown Wrapper tapes, they compiled a single-disc of material, primarily focusing on the extended live improvisations. 1971’s Mirror Man included “Tarotplane”, “Kandy Korn”, “25th Century Quaker” and “Mirror Man” and showed the world (or at least the few who were listening) what Strictly Personal was supposed to sound like, to some extent. But wasn't without its own short comings: not only was it merely half of the original Plain Brown Wrapper album, but it featured anachronistic cover art, improper musician credits and Buddha falsely claimed the album was recorded in one night in 1965!

Beyond the Mirror Man LP, the TTG Sessions remained unheard, although “Big Black Baby Shoes” was rerecorded as “Ice Rose” for 1978’s Shiny Beast and “Dirty Blue Gene” was rerecorded for Doc At The Radar Station in 1980. Years passed before fans were able to piece together the actual Plain Brown Wrapper album, beginning with questionably-legal British import I May Be Hungry But I Ain’t Weird in 1992. Suffering from the same fate as other early Captain Beefheart CD reissues of poor mastering and use of inferior mastertapes, it wasn’t until 1999 when Buddha Records released The Mirror Man Sessions, essentially a properly-mastered Mirror Man with five outtakes from the Plain Brown Wrapper sessions included as bonus tracks; seven more TTG outtakes were included as bonus tracks on the 1999 remaster of Safe As Milk. Finally, Sundazed Records collected all the non-Mirror Man outtakes and one more additional track in their own vinyl-only 2008 reconstruction of It Comes To You in a Plain Brown Wrapper (which made no attempt to literally reconstruct the lost album).

While all the pieces are now available to recreate It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper, we still have the task to wrap it all up as one. While my previous reconstruction featured a mix of the composed and improvised selections evenly spread across the four theoretical LP sides, here we will follow what drummer John French has said he believed the album would have been structured, according to conversations he’d had with The Captain himself! This will include making my own unique edits of the four improvisational pieces (“Mirror Man”, “25th Century Quaker”, “Korn Ring Finger” and “Tarotplane”) so that they will fit on a 40-minute vinyl record. The remaining songs will be sequenced as French suggested (beginning with “Safe as Milk" and ending with “Kandy Korn”), using the songs’ officially-released versions as a template of when the tracks should end (as most of the TTG Sessions simply did not have proper endings), as well as French’s own comments about when songs should have ended. Finally, Side B will be structured to emulate the Side B of Strictly Personal, just for fun!

For the Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band disc, side A begins with Take 5 of “Safe as Milk”, a bonus track found on the 1999 Safe as Milk reissue, faded out just before the 4-minute mark; French had said he believed Vliet wanted to begin the album with “Safe as Milk”, to make a sort of continuity from the previous album. Following is “Big Black Baby Shoes” from the 1999 Safe as Milk reissue, edited to match the Shiny Beast rerecording. Next is “Moody Liz” from The Mirror Man Sessions, with the side closing with Take 9 of “Trust Us” from the Safe as Milk reissue, but faded out after the drum crescendo, as suggested by French. Side B attempts to replicate a non-psychedelicized Strictly Personal, as it opens with “On Tomorrow” but with the isolated vocals from the Strictly Personal recording synced to the TTG version from the Safe as Milk remaster. Next is “Dirty Blue Gene” again from the Safe as Milk reissue, followed by “Beatle Bones ‘n’ Smokin’ Stones”, “Gimme Dat Harp Boy” and “Kandy Korn”, all taken from The Mirror Man Sessions.

For the Twenty-Fifth Century Quaker disc, Side C begins with “Mirror Man” from The Mirror Man Sessions, edited down from 15:46 to an even 13:00. This is followed by “25th Century Quaker” also from The Mirror Man Sessions, edited down from 9:50 to 7:36. Side D opens with the hypnotic “Korn Ring Finger”, presented in it’s full 6:47 length as heard on the Safe as Milk remaster. The album closes with the epic “Tarotplane” from The Mirror Man Sessions, edited down from 19:08 to a reasonable 14:04.

 
Sources used:
The Mirror Man Sessions (1999 Buddha Records CD remaster)
Safe as Milk (1999 Buddha Records CD remaster)
Strictly Personal (1994 Liberty Records CD remaster)

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The Beatles – Instant Karma!
(a soniclovenoize reimagining)
August 2021 UPGRADE

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

Alright, you asked for it, you got it!  This is an UPGRADE of the first in a series of album re-imaginings that proposes “What if The Beatles didn’t break up?”  This first volume—Instant Karma!—would have theoretically been released late 1970, and was intentionally raw and stripped down.  This upgrade notably uses the brand new All Things Must Pass 50th Anniversary remix as the source for George’s tracks, as well as the 50th Anniversary remixes of Plastic Ono Band for Lennon’s.  In doing so, John’s songs sound slightly more polished and George’s songs sound slightly less polished, somehow meeting Paul in the middle.  I have also thrown in a couple more surprises as well...   Maybe you can find them?  

To restate once again, the “rules” of these 70s Beatles albums are:
1)  One album is represented per year, culled from tracks each Beatle recorded that year; the only exception is All Things Must Pass is split over 1970 & 1971, and Living In The Material World is split over 1972 & 1973.   
2)  Generally speaking, to include five Lennon songs, five McCartney songs, three Harrison songs and one Ringo song; there might be some deviance to this rule depending on availability per year.
3)  The chosen songs must be Beatle-esque in nature; we will attempt to avoid the idiosyncratic musical tangents each Beatle pursued in the 70s and vie for the solo songs that would have been most likely recorded by The Beatles (i.e. not vetoed by the rest of the band).
4)  The songs must flow together and make a unified album that shares a specific tone. 

Note that a suspension of disbelief is required to fully enjoy these 70s Beatles albums, and I encourage listeners to imagine what each Beatles would have contributed to each other’s songs, had they actually made these albums together.  

My original album notes from 2012:

This reconstruction—or reimagining, as I’m calling it—asks the question that I think we’ve all asked at one point or another: What if The Beatles didn't break up?  This theoretical album attempts to cull the best of The Beatles solo material from 1970 alone to create what could have been the band’s follow-up to Abbey Road (or depending on how you look at it, Let It Be).  The songs were carefully chosen to create a unified and cohesive album that would best carry on ‘The Beatles torch’ while still retaining each of the members’ diverging interests.  The best and least brickwalled/clipping remasters were chosen for source material, volume levels adjusted for song-to-song balance and all songs are tightly book-ended to make a continuous two sides of music.  

The result—an album I call Instant Karma!—is a somber, introspective album, full of contradicting stripped-down John & Paul songs juxtaposed with the massively-produced George & Ringo songs.  Sonically, it lies somewhere between The White Album in its stark contrasts and Abbey Road with its epic majesty.  All of the songs are from different perspectives, yet hint at the same thing: a desire for understanding the essences of basic human nature and the quest for the soul itself.  If I may dare, the songs seem to create a particular narrative: the members of the band themselves engaging in their own dialog with themselves, repairing the bond between them that had slipped over the previous 4 years.

So sit back and imagine, if you will, an alternate timeline…  That sometime in 1970: The Beatles fired Allen Klein and somehow came upon an agreement of how to run Apple Records, allowing the band members to separate the music from the business, the chief destruction of the band being averted; with the success of “Here Comes The Sun” and “Something” and an amazing back-catalog of unused and new songs, George successfully campaigns for an equal share of his own songs to be featured alongside the Lennon/McCartney originals (with the compromise that Linda and Yoko are allowed in the Beatles' inner circle if need be); pleased with Phil Spector’s work remixing Let It Be, The Beatles opt to have him produce the bulk of their recordings throughout the 1970s (despite McCartney’s reluctance); John agrees but wants to elaborate on the stripped-down and live-band-sounding arrangements, as revisited in the Get Back sessions from the previous year, but at least for his own compositions written from his Primal Scream therapy sessions; Ringo was, as always, just happy to be there.


Instant Karma! is released to critical and commercial success in late 1970, re-establishing The Beatles as a dominant musical force in the 1970s.  Three hit singles were released from this album in 1970 and early 1971: “Instant Karma!” b/w the non-album B-side “That Would Be Something”, “Maybe I’m Amazed” b/w the non-album B-side “Apple Scruffs” and “My Sweet Lord” b/w the non-album B-side “Well Well Well”.  The success of Instant Karma! gave a new confidence to the band that was so close to breaking up, especially with a new producer, a stronger leading-role for their lead guitarist as a songwriter and the band's uncertainty of relevance in a new decade.  Regrouping in the summer of 1971 with a new set of songs and a new sense of unity, The Beatles attempt to record their second album of the 1970s.  Can you... imagine?

Sources used:
All Things Must Pass (2021 50th Anniversary remaster)
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (2021 50th Anniversary remaster)
McCartney (2011 remaster)
Photographs – The Best of Ringo Starr (2007)


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The Beatles – Imagine Clouds Dripping

(a soniclovenoize re-imagining)

October 2021 UPGRADE

Side A:

1.  Back Off Boogaloo

2.  What is Life?

3.  Dear Boy

4.  Bangladesh

5.  Jealous Guy

6.  The Back Seat of My Car

Side B:

7.  Imagine

8.  Another Day

9.  Gimme Some Truth

10.  Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey

11.  Oh My Love

12.  Isn’t It A Pity

Happy Halloween!  Here it is, my friends, an album that never was that is unrelated to Halloween!  This is an UPGRADE to the second re-imagined album in a series that posits“What if The Beatles never broke up?”  This collection would have theoretically been released near the end of 1971, and uses Lennon’s Imagine and McCartney’s RAM as it’s basis.  Additional tracks are pulled from Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and his “Bangladesh” single, and of course Ringo’s single “Back Off Boogaloo” as it was recorded in Fall 1971.  Notably, this upgrade uses the new All Things Must Pass remix, which sonically fits much closer to the other tracks.  The tracklist has been slightly revised as well, dropping “Power To The People” for “Gimme Some Truth”, which is admittedly more Beatles-esque and was actually familiar to The Beatles in 1969.  I have also replaced the Version II of “Isn’t It a Pity” with the more Beatle-esque Version I, edited to fit on the album. 

To restate once again, the “rules” of these 70s Beatles albums are:
1)  One album is represented per year, culled from tracks each Beatle recorded that year; the only exception is All Things Must Pass is split over 1970 & 1971, and Living In The Material World is split over 1972 & 1973.   
2)  Generally speaking, to include five Lennon songs, five McCartney songs, three Harrison songs and one Ringo song; there might be some deviance to this rule depending on availability per year.
3)  The chosen songs must be Beatle-esque in nature; we will attempt to avoid the idiosyncratic musical tangents each Beatle pursued in the 70s and vie for the solo songs that would have been most likely recorded by The Beatles (i.e. not vetoed by the rest of the band).
4)  The songs must flow together and make a unified album that shares a specific tone. 

Note that a suspension of disbelief is required to fully enjoy these 70s Beatles albums, and I encourage listeners to imagine what each Beatles would have contributed to each other’s songs, had they actually made these albums together.  

My original album notes from 2012, slightly revised:

This is the second in a series of albums that asks the question we’ve all asked at some time or another:  What if The Beatles never broke up?  This theoretical album attempts to cull the best of The Beatles solo material from 1971 (with some holdovers from All Things Must Pass) to create what could have been the band’s 1971 follow-up to my previous re-imagined Beatles album, Instant Karma!  This album is called Imagine Clouds Dripping, a surreal Yoko Ono quote that John had felt was particularly inspirational and sets the tone for a rather colorful album. 

The songs were chosen not only for quality but for what could continue to carry ‘the Beatles torch’.  While the solo members continued to stylistically diverge, there were always songs that could be described, in my opinion, as “Beatlesque” and we have the luxury of choosing those above the other more idiosyncratic numbers.  The best and least brickwalled/clipping remasters were chosen for source material, volume levels adjusted for song-to-song balance and all songs are tightly book-ended to make a continuous two sides of music.  Also, a completely unique edit of “Dear Boy” and “Bangladesh” is created when the two are hard-edited together, making them a medley. 

Musically, Imagine Clouds Drippingabandons the bare-bones arrangements on the previous re-imagining for the lush Phil Spector arrangements George had requested for his songs.  “What Is Life” and “Isn’t It A Pity” are all used on this album because they fit better with the RAM/Imagine contributions than with the Plastic Ono Band/McCartney contributions on the previous album.  Additionally, “Back Off Boogaloo” will be used as this album’s Ringo song, as it was recorded in September 1971, fitting in with RAM & Imagine’s timeline.  

So sit back, relax and imagine the following:  After the success of their first album of the 1970s, Instant Karma!, The Beatles regroup and focus diligently on a new album with some of their strongest songs since Abbey Road, often with grandiose arrangements from returning producer Phil Spector; Half-way through recording the album, George learns of the tragedy befallen in Bangla Desh and quickly writes a song in tribute that The Beatles record and release as a single; George organizes the Concert For Bangla Desh, at which The Beatles headline, marking their first live performance in two years; The positive experience of this concert gives The Beatles—particularly George and John—the courage to begin a limited-engagement European Tour in late 1971 in support of Imagine Clouds Dripping; The tour also features old friends Billy Preston on keyboards and Klaus Voormann who played bass when Paul was needed to play guitar or piano. 

The critics hail Imagine Clouds Dripping as one of the highest points of The Beatles career, comparing it to a second Sgt. Pepper.  There are a number of hit singles released throughout 1971, including “Imagine” with the non-LP B-side “Monkberry Moon Delight”, “Another Day” with the non-LP B-side “Crippled Inside” and “Jealous Guy” with the non-LP B-side “I Dig Love”.  And as aforementioned, “Bangla Desh” was released as a single to promote their concert, with the b-side “Smile Away.”  The success of The Beatles late 1971 European tour spurred them to plan an American tour in 1972, and a need for new material in the material world… 

Sources:

George Harrison - All Things Must Pass (2021 50th Anniversary remaster)

John Lennon - Imagine (The Ultimate Collection, 2018 remaster) 

Paul McCartney – RAM (2012 remaster)

Ringo Starr – Photographs: The Best of Ringo Starr (2007)

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 We finally have something you never asked for!  

Because I am a broke ass musician/sound engineer/music nerd/blogger effected by the pandemic, I am now selling BAND SHIRTS for the various album covers that never were that I have done over the years.  Although initially a silly idea, who wouldn't want a Beatles "Band On The Run" shirt?  And they're only $25 which is kinda the going rate for band shirts, is it not?

Get 'em here:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/AlbumsThatNeverWere

I currently only have a handful of options to test the waters.  If this is a thing you like, I can add more designs, and possibly do requests of previous and future album reconstructions.  

Thanks and apologies for being a sellout!  

The Beatles - Between The Lines

(a soniclovenoize reimagining)

Side A:
1.  Let ‘Em In
2.  Crackerbox Palace
3.  Silly Love Songs
4.  Cookin’ In The Kitchen of Love
5.  Warm and Beautiful

Side B:
6.  See Yourself
7.  San Ferry Anne
8.  Beautiful Girl/Dear One
9.  Beware My Love
10. Tennessee

Hey folks.  Sorry about my absence…  A mix of being busy at work, a break-up, depression, etc etc etc.  I’ll try to “get back up on the horse” and drop some soniclovenoize reconstructions and reimaginings, starting with one that I think will be fairly unexpected and possibly exciting
for some (and loathed by others!).  I know long ago I said I would never do this, but during the pandemic (I had assembled this in November 2020, actually) I buckled down and made some Albums That Never Were I never expected to!  And you know what?  I actually really liked this one!  

If you couldn’t figure it out by the tracklist, this is an album “re-imagining” that postulates “What if The Beatles never broke up?” and is a part of my previous series of similar albums, including Instant Karma!, Imagine Clouds Dripping, Living In The Material World, Band On The Run, Goodnight Vienna and Skywriting By Word of Mouth.  This theoretical album– called Between The Lines (the tentative title of Lennon’s follow-up to Rock and Roll that was scrapped after being domesticated in 1975)-- encompasses The Beatles solo material spanning 1975 and 1976, and would have been theoretically released in fall 1976.  

As with my previous Beatles 70s Albums, I will adhere to three rules, although there are some slight modifications for these albums that follow Lennon’s real-life domestication and retirement:
1)  One album is represented per year, culled from tracks each Beatle recorded that year; this rule is revised so that one album spans two years instead of one.  Not only will this accommodate a lack of new material from some of the Beatles during this time, it will also force the outcome to be of better quality.  
2)  Generally speaking, to include five Lennon songs, five McCartney songs, three Harrison songs and one Ringo song; this rule is revised to presume that Lennon largely retired from The Beatles, occasionally contributing as a studio musician but leaving most of the heavy lifting for
Paul and George.   
3)  The chosen songs must be Beatle-esque in nature; we will attempt to avoid the idiosyncratic musical tangents each Beatle pursued in the 70s and vie for the solo songs that would have been most likely recorded by The Beatles (i.e. not vetoed by the rest of the band).
4)  The songs must flow together and make a unified album that shares a specific tone.

Between The Lines collects the highlights from Paul’s Wings at the Speed of Sound, George’s Thirty-Three and a Third, Ringo’s Rotogravure and, well, the six solo Lennon demos that date from his early Dakota era, approximately simultaneous to the aforementioned albums.  Both sides of the  re-imagining are edited to be two continuous sides of music.  The cover is taken from a Miro painting that somehow evokes the feel of this curious little album.  

Side A begins with my own unique edit of “Let ‘Em In”, which replicates the very rare original radio edit, only released as a promo disc; this is significant because that is the version I grew up listening to on the radio, and it is otherwise lost to time–and the unnecessarily long and repetitive album version.  This is followed by George’s classic “Crackerbox Palace”, which seems to somehow fit seamlessly before “Silly Love Songs”; like “Let ‘Em In”, this is my own unique ‘single edit’ since the song is likewise unnecessarily long.  Next is Ringo’s token song, written by John, “Cookin’ In The Kitchen of Love”, with the side closing with Paul’s ballad “Warm and Beautiful.”   Side B begins with George’s “See Yourself”, followed by Paul’s “San Ferry Anne”.  Next is a massive Paul-esque medley of George’s “Beautiful Girl” and Paul’s “Beware My Love”, using a brief bit of George’s “Dear One” to bridge the songs.  I couldn’t not have a John song, so concluding is the voice of our old friend: my own custom edit of “Tennessee”; although a Lennon home demo would sound drastically different from Paul & George ‘s studio output at this time, I believe this song works here as a closing piano solo.  

So sit back and imagine, if you will, an alternate timeline…
Although The Beatles went on an indefinite hiatus following the short 1974 tour for their hit album Goodnight Vienna, all four remained friendly, although not musically active with each other.  Paul took the opportunity to perform a solo tour (featuring wife Linda and his old friend Denny Lane as accompaniment) playing stripped down selections of his Beatles favorites from the last fifteen years.  George released a solo album Extra Texture, which had a lukewarm response despite featuring a moderate hit “You” (a duet with Ronnie Spector of The Ronnettes).  Ringo continued acting, building his filmography to include the role as The Pope in Listztomania, the voice of God in Monty Python and The Holy Grail and Uncle Ernie in the film adaptation of The Who’s Tommy.  John chose to stay home with his wife Yoko Ono and newborn Sean.  But the release of The Beatles’ Live at Madison Square Garden in late 1975 renewed some interest in the group continuing as a studio band, much like their late-60s era.  

Gradually, three of the four Beatles found themselves in each other's periphery and began plotting a new album, to be begun in early 1976.  John was only able to casually commit to the album, as he was no longer interested in living the rock star life.  While making only scant appearances on rhythm guitar and some backing vocals (although he distinctly took the lead for Ringo’s contribution to the album), a question emerged in the fans’ collective mind: is it really a Beatles album without John?  Regardless, a Paul-and-George -driven quartet released Between The Lines in October 1976, promoted only with a handful of live television  performances.  Most notable was their performance of “Let ‘Em In” on Saturday Night Live, in which Chevy Chase guested on a marching-band snare, prompting John Lennon to lead the entire show’s cast in a march outside and around Rockefeller Plaza.  

The moderate success of the double A-side single of “Silly Love Songs” and “Crackerbox Palace” encouraged the group to plan a follow-up in this short-lived and strange era of the band, and broad talks were made to reconvene in a year or so to see what the trio (and hopefully quartet) could muster…  

 

Sources used:
Paul McCartney & Wings - Wings at The Speed of Sound (2014 Remaster)
George Harrison - The Dark Horse Years 1976-1992
John Lennon - Between The Lines (2006 bootleg)
Ringo Starr - Ringo's Rotogravure (2009 Rhino Remaster)


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The Beach Boys - SMiLE

(stereo “Hitsville Mix” by soniclovenoize)

Side A:

1.  Our Prayer

2.  Do You Like Worms

3.  Wind Chimes

4.  Heroes and Villains Part I

5.  Heroes and Villains Part II

6.  Surf’s Up

7.  Good Vibrations

Side B:

8.  Cabin Essence 

9.  Wonderful

10.  I’m In Great Shape

11. Child is Father of The Man

12.  The Elements

13.  Vege-Tables

14.  The Old Master Painter

Need something to be thankful about this Thanksgiving?  How about a new SMiLE?

I have gotten many requests for an update to my SMiLE mix lately… and while I don’t necessarily see any pressing need to upgrade my previous SMiLE reconstructions (as yes, I do stand by my ‘67 reconstruction!), I thought it would be a fun challenge to make a completely different SMiLE mix!  I call this the “Hitsville Mix” (named after a Brian Wilson ad lib while recording “Heroes and Villains”) and it is unassociated with my previous mixes.  It is a completely different mix and ideally, a different SMiLE listening experience, intending to be more unpredictable and bizarre, much like the actual Smiley Smile album.  Here, I am using ALL NEW stereo mixes I’ve made over the last few months, except “Good Vibrations”, which is the brand new 2022 official stereo extraction mix, which sounds the best it ever has! 

What is the theme/concept of the Hitsville Mix of SMiLE?  I gave myself a few guidelines:

1)  Unlike my previous “1967” mix, I am not beholden to strict “historical accuracy” or the theoretical artistic intent of Brian Wilson.  This is the mix that I wanted to make, rather than the mix I presumed Brian Wilson wanted to make.  

2)  ALL STEREO.  This requires, as aforementioned, new stereo mixes to be made for all songs, except “Our Prayer” and “Good Vibrations”, whose official stereo mixes are just fine. 

3)  As a challenge, I chose to limit myself to using the handwritten “Capitol Trackllist” as submitted to Capitol Records in January 1967 and subsequently printed on the reverse cover slicks.  The majority of SMiLErs discard this track sequence for various reasons and create their own track sequence–often based upon either Dominic Priore’s suggested tracklist in Look! Listen! Vibrate Smile! or Darian Sahanaja’s tracklist on Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE.  Here, we will try to make sense out of the long-derided track order.  

The end result of my Hitsville Mix is exactly how I hoped: it is a little more bonkers and less logical than my previous reconstructions, and keeps the vibe of Smiley Smile, albeit more hi-fi.  Songs are allowed to be fragments and don’t necessarily go anywhere; the listener is thrown curve-balls and the trajectory of the album is fairly unexpected; Side B is specifically bizarre but ends with a wow! 

Side A begins like any other mix–with “Our Prayer”, the stereo mix from Made in California as an unlisted introduction to the album.  This is hard edited into a new stereo mix of “Do You Like Worms”, which uses the tracking sessions from The Smile Sessions as a base, with isolated vocals from the Smile Vocal Montage, Unsurpassed Masters 17 and the (lousy) 2022 stereo mix from Sounds of Summer.  Following is “Wind Chimes”, here ignoring the stereo Made in California mix and instead presented as a similar structure as Brian’s 1966 test edit, using a pitch-corrected backing track taken from The Smile Sessions, with vocals taken from The Smile Vocal Montage and Unsurpassed Masters 16.  

The project’s flagship song “Heroes and Villains” follows, which is a completely stereo version of the classic “Cantina Mix”, including the Verse and Three-Score-Five sections!  But instead, after Whistling Bridge there is a cut to Bridge To Indians and Prelude To Fade to create an ending (since I am using the proper Fade to end the actual album).  Next is my attempt to create the theoretical “Part II” of “Heroes and Villains”, that would have been found on its 7” single (or combined to the legendary six-minute “Heroes and Villains”, if you are so inclined).  Using the Gee and Part 2 iterations as a base combined with excerpts from the Brian Wilson led psychedelic sounds, mock interviews and experimental raps, we are able to create a faux Vaudeville variety act!  What I am intending is that the listener can imagine The Beach Boys as a psychedelic barbershop quartet who are literally framing a series of comedy sketches, all onstage and concluding with a laughing audience!

One gripe SMiLErs have with the Capitol Tracklist is the placement of “Surf’s Up” in the middle of Side A; while strange, we will embrace it and own it, as a song about a maestro artist on-stage literally follows an on-stage performance!  Here is a brand new stereo mix I’ve created using the tracking sessions from The Smile Sessions as a base, combined with the isolated vocals from the Feel Flows boxset.  Here, I’ve chosen to use Carl’s lead vocal instead of Brian’s, which seemed more appropriate with the song’s placement on the album.  Following is the fantastic 2022 stereo extraction mix of “Good Vibrations” from Sounds of Summer. 

Side B begins with a new, improved stereo mix of “Cabin Essence”, using the backing tracks from The Smile Sessions, combined with the extracted vocal from 20/20 and The Smile Vocal Montage.  Next is a brand new stereo mix of “Wonderful”, with a more defined soundstage, sourced from the Good Vibrations box set and The Smile Vocal Montage.  Using the Insert as a segue, we can modulate up to “I’m In Great Shape”, which combines the backing track from The Smile Sessions and the vocal from the Humble Harve demo, hard edited onto a stereo “I Wanna Be Around”; this follows the BWPS structure, which was how I always envisioned the song being constructed.  

Next is a new stereo mix of “Child is Father of the Man”, using a structure that best fits this album’s track sequence, rather than any version that Brian Wilson specifically designed.  Next is an edit I am fairly proud of–a completely new version of “The Elements”, again made to fit this album sequence, rather than any historical accuracy.  It begins with the Earth section, represented by a brand new stereo mix of “Barnyard”; then it is overlapped with the Wind section, represented by the alternate Whispering Winds from Sunshine Tomorrow; Fire is next represented by “Mrs O’Leary’s Cow”, proper, without any Chimes or Heroes and Villains Intros which is otherwise common; concluding is the Water section, represented by the alternate Water Chant from Sunshine Tomorrow.  

The concept of this new mix of “Vege-Tables” is to make an all-stereo version of a specific edit of “Vege-Tables” I made 20 years ago, which mainly constituted Brian’s mono mixdowns from Unsurpassed Masters 17 and Mark Linett’s mix on the Good Vibrations boxset.  Thus, using the stereo mix from Made in California, tracking sessions from The Smile Sessions and vocals from The Smile Vocal Montage and Unsurpassed Masters 17, we are able to have both the extended reverb at the end of the first two verses, as well as the unique crossfade between the Do A Lot chorus and the Fade, now in true stereo!  The Hitsville Mix of SMiLE ends with a big send-off: “The Old Master Painter”, featuring a brand new (and more accurate!) stereo sync.  Note that the Barnshine Fade is used here to end the track as originally intended before it was gutted for the Cantina mix of “Heroes and Villains”, giving this SMiLE and joyous finale.  

Sources used:

Feel Flows (2021 CD box set)

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

Made in California (2013 CD box set)

The SMiLE Sessions (2011 CD box set)

Sounds of Summer (2022 deluxe edition)

Sunshine Tomorrow (2017 CD)

Unsurpassed Masters Vol 16 (1999 bootleg CD)

Unsurpassed Masters Vol 17 (2000 bootleg CD)

featuring David Crosby

(reimagining by soniclovenoize)

Side A:

1.  Old John Robertson

2.  Triad

3.  Dolphin’s Smile

4.  Change is Now

5.  Draft Morning

6.  Universal Mind Decoder

Side B:

7.  Lady Friend

8.  Don’t Make Waves

9.  Tribal Gathering

10.  Goin’ Back

11.  Space Odyssey 

In honor of the passing of the great David Crosby, I offer this album reimagining: an alternate version of The Byrds’ classic psychedelic rock masterpiece The Notorious Byrd Brothers, which presumes David Crosby had not left the band, and is featured as an equal to Roger McGuinn.  To do this, we will restructure the album to feature recordings made during the early sessions of the album, which actually featured Crosby.  

By 1967, the tumultuous relationship between The Byrds frontman Roger McGuinn and guitarist David Crosby had escalated to the boiling point.  From an early career of jangly Dylan covers, to their groundbreaking embrace of psychedelic and raga rock, The Byrds were always attempting to push new ground.  Unfortunately, there was disagreement about which ground to break.  

Coming into his own manhood of a songwriter, Crosby was fighting for his songs to be heard through McGuinn’s, and especially took a heavy hand in their first single of the year, his own “Lady Friend”, recorded in April.  In contrast, McGuinn & bassist Chris Hillman’s “Old John Robertson”, the b-side recorded the following month, showed the pair’s desire for a more Country-influenced sound that would emerge the following year.  Despite “Lady Friend”’s grandiose quality, the single was a relative flop as compared to their previous hits, with Crosby taking a hit to the ego and the band soldering on with a song already scratched from the theoretical running order of an album in the works.  Sessions resumed briefly in July with Crosby’s serene “Draft Morning”, but after sessions of percussive tension, drummer Michael Clarke was dismissed from the band.

Regrouping in August with session drummers Jim Gordon and Hal Blaine alternatingly replacing Clarke, the group recorded Crosby’s hippy anthem “Tribal Gathering”, as well as McGuinn & Hillman’s poppy “Dolphin’s Smile”.  But more inter-band stryfe reared its head when the group was offered “Triad”, a song about a throuple from the free-loving lady’s man Crosby.  Although recorded by the group, McGuinn took offense to the song’s subject matter and ultimately rejected it, leaving the song to later be recorded by Jefferson Airplane the following year.  After recording the McGuinn/Hillman’s “Change is Now”, the final straw was drawn as McGuinn insisted on recording the Goffin/King ballad “Goin’ Home” in September.  Crosby felt the song was meaningless filler, especially when compared to the majestic psychedelic rock the band had been recording the year thus far, as well as questioning why a band with three songwriters would bother recording a cover.  Crosby was finally cut from the band, and McGuinn became the defacto leader of the band.  

Regrouping in October with previously exiled backing vocalist Gene Clark, the fragmented band recorded “Goin’ Back”, as well as the experimental “Space Odyssey” influenced by Science Fiction writer Aurther C Clarke.  This was short lived, as Clark was once again asked to leave the band, and sessions continued in October with guitarist Clarence White, the newly remade Byrds recording “Bound To Fall”, “Moog Raga”, “Get To You”, “Flight 713”, “Natural Harmony”, “Wasn't Born To Follow” and “Artificial Energy”.  

Released in January 1968, The Notorious Byrd Brothers was released to critical acclaim and over time, became the band’s crowning achievement.   As for David Crosby, he had no time for feelings of resentment.  Soon after, Crosby started jamming with friend Stephens Stills of Buffalo Springfield and Graham Nash of The Hollies, and the trio formed the legendary supergroup Cosby, Stills & Nash.  But could The Notorious Byrd Brothers have been, well, less notorious and more harmonious?  

If we are going to create a Notorious Byrd Brothers album that would theoretically contain an active (and even leading) David Crosby, then we’ll need to almost exclusively use the material recorded before Crosby's exit.  There is not a lot of material–just enough to make an album–but luckily Byrds albums were historically short: eleven songs, running about 30 minutes.  All sources are taken from the 2011 remaster of The Notorious Byrd Brothers, as well as using some of the bonus tracks on the 2011 remaster of Young Than Yesterday.  All songs will be crossfaded together into two continuous sides of music.  

Side A begins with the most upbeat and staggering song of the bunch, “Old John Robertson”, using the very psychedelic mix found on the Notorious Byrd Brothers album, rather than it’s original single mix.  Next we restore “Triad” to its rightful place, here with some gentle volume adjustments in the verses; we are putting the song front and center, as Crosby is getting the attention he deserves.  This is then crossfaded in “Dolphin’s Smile” and “Change is Now”.  The side closes with “Draft Morning”-- which features one of my favorite 1960s artists, The Firesign Theatre!--followed by the outtake instrumental improvisation “Universal Mind Decoder”.  

Side B begins with Crosby’s glorious “Lady Friend” which melds into the admittedly low-hanging fruit “Don’t Make Waves”, included here as it was recorded during the “Lady Friend” sessions.  The jaunty “Tribal Gathering” follows, tallying five songs lead by David Crosby!  Closing the album an outtake version of “Goin’ Home” which does feature David Crosby on guitar, recorded before his departure, followed by a song recorded just after departure, “Space Odyssey”, as it was needed to fill out the album; a piece of “Moog Raga” is used as an outro to the album.  

The most impressive aspect of this reconstruction is the cover art, which was in reality the genesis of this reconstruction in the first place!  Replacing the horse with Crosby, it’s like he never left!  

Sources used:

The Notorious Byrd Brothers (2011 Remaster)

Younger Than Yesterday (2011 Remaster)

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

*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

 The Flaming Lips – 7 Skies H3

(100-Minute Edit by soniclovenoize)
April 2023 Upgrade

Side A:
1. I Can’t Shut Off My Head
2. Meepy Morp (Calliope Trance with Major and Minor Celestial Sections)
3. Radiation Wind
4. Battling Voices From Beyond
5. Electronic Toy Factory
6. In A Dream

Side B:
7. Metamorphosis

Side C:
8. Requiem
9. An Outpouring of Immaculate Light From The Heavens Consumes Your Body

Side D:
10. Meepy Morp (Reprise)
11. Riot In My Brain!!
12. 7 Skies H3 (Main Theme)
13. Can’t Let It Go

This is an upgrade of my own unique edit of The Flaming Lips’ epic 24-hour song, “7 Skies H3”, edited to the length of a 100-minute double-album.  Each of the song’s fourteen movements were extracted from the 24-hour piece to represent a “song” on the “album”; each song was then edited down to an appropriate length for that particular song in the context of a double-album.  In effect, some tracks act as mere transitions to others, while some tracks remained epic in scope (in the context of a double-album anyways).  While similar to the band’s own official 50-minute edit released on limited edition vinyl for Record Store Day in 2014, my 100-minute edit is twice that length and much more inclusive; not only allowing specific songs a more epic breath that they deserved but including music that was completely removed from the RSD release altogether.  All track segues are intact and this album can play as a continuous 100-minute piece--although one could separate tracks into four separate 25-minute sides of a vinyl record: tracks 1-6, track 7, tracks 8 & 9, and tracks 10-13.  

By the 2010s, The Flaming Lips have reached a mid-life crisis.  They had already made their cherished acid-punk indie releases in the 1980s; they already had their breakthrough noise-pop hit in 1993 with “She Don’t Use Jelly”; they already made their self-serving experimental four-disc 1997 album, Zaireeka; they had already made their critically acclaimed symphonic-pop masterpiece The Soft Bulletin in 1999; they had already managed the trick of gaining mainstream success while still retaining their core audience with Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots in 2002; they had already made a complete musical about-face into dark, hypnotic Krautrock for Embryonic in 2009.  If they refuse to break-up, what does a band who has already done everything do next?  The answer: whatever the fuck they want.

This of course meant a series of bizarre EP releases throughout 2011 which included: a song meant to be played on 12 different cell phones simultaneously; recordings released on flash drives encased in marijuana-flavored gummy skulls; and a six-hour song released inside a strobe light toy.  While one could perceive this as pure gimmick, this observer saw it as a result of the combined boredom with the typical rock-band archetype and the realization of ultimate artistic freedom, something earned after 30 years of making music.  But it was that six-hour song, “I Found A Star On The Ground”, that set a new bar for the band searching for something interesting to fill their time in 2011: how does one top a six-hour song?  With a 24-hour song, of course!

“7 Skies H3” tells the story of a protagonist whose love commits suicide, and the listener embarks on a psychedelic journey through his grief process as well as a musical representation of her afterlife.  The song—becoming an insane challenge for Flaming Lips fans to even listen to it in its entirety—was released to a limited edition of 13 copies on Halloween 2011, encased in an actual human skull.  It was also broadcast as a live webstream, which continually (and to this day) plays the song indefinitely.  While detractors found even more gimmick to condemn, there was one thing they could not argue: “7 Skies H3”contained some of the best music The Flaming Lips ever produced.

Unfortunately, much of that great music was lost to its own daunting massiveness.  Does one really have the time, energy and will-power to sift through a literal day of music to appreciate the highlights?  Some fans did... notably StrangePets who made both a 90-minute and 213-minute cut of "7 Skies H3" (which urged me to do the same!).  The Flaming Lips probably took notice, and issued their own condensed 50-minute version as an exclusive Record Store Day release in 2014.  Their "distillation" RSD cut showcased some of the most interesting music they'd made in their 30 year career as a standalone album, rather than a 24-hour endeavor.  Unfortunately not all of the magical moments from the full endeavor made the cut, notably the atmospheric interlude of "Radiation Wind", the quaint chaos of "Electronic Toy Factory", the ending jam of "Requiem" and it's following "The Other Side", and the driving ecstatic jam of “An Outpouring of Immaculate Light From the Heavens Consumes Your Body” and it's singular rainstorm breakdown.  And criminally, the centerpiece of 7 Skies H3--the seven-hour emotionally-catastrophic sound-experiment "Metamorphosis"--was reduced to a trite five minutes and lacked any of the nuances that made it one of The Flaming Lips' masterworks.  Is it possible to make a concise 7 Skies H3 as a typical album that could not only be enjoyed in one sitting, but also retain the aforementioned epic attributes?  I have found a run-time that precisely doubles the RSD release is the perfect length, assembled as a double LP--discs timing 50 minutes each--while still edited for continuous play just as the original 24-hour song.

Side A:
1.  “I Can’t Shut Off My Head” [8:01]
My 100-minute edit of 7 Skies H3 begins with one of the four lyric-based compositions that explains the concept of the album itself.  While the original full-length version of “I Can’t Shut Off My Head” contained eight verses and ran 25:39, the Record Store Day edit cut it down to three verses and running at 8:23 (as well as adding superfluous echo onto Wayne’s vocals).  My edit is structured similarly as the RSD edit, as I chose to include what I felt were the three best verses as well as an instrumental introduction.  Additionally, each verse was edited down from seven to five lines, omitting the two weakest lines of lyric for each verse.  The instrumental passages were then edited to match the length of each verse.  Because of this, my edit is a bit more concise than the official RSD edit, clocking in at 8:01. The upgraded version is a new edit, using verses 1, 3 and 6, rather than my original edit with verses 1, 2 & 4.  

2.  “Meepy Morp (Calliope Trance with Major and Minor Celestial Sections)” [3:14]
Following is what fans called “Calliope Trance with Major and Minor Celestial Sections” but was officially titled “Meepy Morp” on the RSD record.  Originally an hour in length, I have reduced it down to just over three minutes to keep the album moving, featuring three different sections of the piece to give a feeling of variation as the instrumental progresses.  The same edit was used in this upgrade.  

3.  “Radiation Wind” [1:58]
An officially unnamed track “Radiation Wind”, originally running 37 minutes and not appearing on the RSD version at all, is reduced to a two-minute interlude before the battle begins.  This upgraded edit is slightly shorter, clocking in at 1:58 from my original edit’s 2:36.   

4.  “Battling Voices From Beyond” [4:10]
The epic “Battling Voices From Beyond” was a grueling two hours and 37 minutes on the original 24-hour "7 Skies H3".   While it was edited down to 3:05 on the RSD vinyl, my edit is a paced 4:10, which showcases several of the interesting sounds that dance around the pounding main vocal riff.  This upgraded version particularly focuses on the synth “vocal solos” found near the end of the piece.  

5.  “Electronic Toy Factory” [3:58]
Another track that was completely omitted from the 50-minute RSD edit, the 10-minute and unnamed “Electronic Toy Factory” (featuring the experimental duo Pitchwafuzz), is edited down to a reasonable 3:58, acting as simply a linking track between two main selections.   This updated edit is more representative of the original piece, since the runtime is almost doubled from my original edit length of 2:27.  

6.  “In A Dream” [3:39]
The original version of the second of four lyrical songs ran an hour and 4 minutes, which was edited down to a feasible 4:51 on the RSD release and included additional vocal overdubs to smooth of the mix.  Here I present an even more concise edit spanning 3:39, as opposed to my older hypnotic 6:28 mix.  

Side B:
7.  “Metamorphosis” [25:00]
The massive centerpiece of 7 Skies H3 is “Metamorphosis”, which originally ran seven hours in length!  It was reduced to an anticlimactic five minutes on the RSD edit, fading out at the end of side A.  With a theoretical double-album format, we can allow “Metamorphosis” to retain its true epic proportions.  My edit spans a reasonable 25:00 and features my favorite elements of the original seven-hour piece.  It is meant to span the entire second side of the first disc of our theoretical 7 Skies H3 double album.  

Side C:
8.  “Requiem” [5:15]
The second disc begins with the third of four lyric-based compositions on the album, which is also coincidentally the mid-point of the 24-hour "7 Skies H3".  Originally spanning 23:20—essentially a 3-minute song with a 20-minute jam—the RSD release unfortunately exorcised the ending 20 minutes completely.  Here I have restored the ending jam and showcasing the range of weird overdubs The Flaming Lips sprinkled throughout.  This upgraded edit runs 7:22, as opposed to my older edit of 5:14.  

9.  “An Outpouring of Immaculate Light From the Heavens Consumes Your Body” [17:38]
The series of musical movements which follow are mostly absent from the RSD edit, what Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne describes as “the other side of this long journey through death”, and seems to musically depict the significant other's journey in the afterlife. It starts with the unnamed but aptly fan-titled “The Other Side”; originally clocking in at over an hour, an edit of the serene piece eventually found a way onto 2013's The Terror as the outro to "You Lust".  Because of this, I have excluded “The Other Side” from my edit of 7 Skies H3 in the name of redundancy. Next is the unnamed yet fan-titled “An Outpouring of Immaculate Light From the Heavens Consumes Your Body” (but described by Wayne as a “Bb chord with varying accompaniment”, which would also suffice as a title, I suppose), originally spanning three and a half hours and also completely missing from the RSD release.  In reality, the movement is a loop of the same 26-minute no-wave jam in Bb with different sets of embellishments upon each repeat (with one even being played backwards!).   Although my original edit presented its complete 26-minute incarnation, this upgrade whittles it down to a respectable 17:38, which also includes one of the greatest moments of the original 24-hour edit: a between-rotation breakdown of a rainstorm, ticking stopwatch and chiming keyboards.  

Side D:
10. “Meepy Morp (Reprise)” [2:25]
“Meepy Morp (Reprise)”—also known as the fan-titled “Movement of Celestial Bodies”—was originally two hours and 15 minutes in length, although it is simply a loop of the same eleven-minute piece.  On the RSD edit, “Meepy Morp” is paired down to a short, two-minute interlude.  My upgraded edit runs 2:25, slightly shorter than my previous edit of 2:42.  

11.  “Riot In My Brain!!!” [3:31]
The destructive noise jam “Riot In My Brain!!!” originally totals an exhausting hour and a half, but was trimmed down to a digestible 4:28 on the RSD release; I have made a similar edit. This upgraded edit runs 3:31, more concise than my previous edit of 4:32.  

12.  “7 Skies H3 (Main Theme)” [10:34]
The gorgeous main theme to 7 Skies H3 (fan-titled “Forever Floating”) drifts on for two hours and 12 minutes and includes three movements; the RSD release condenses it down to 6:26.  While my original edit had that same runtime, I choose to expand it considerably to 10:34!  

13.  “Can’t Let It Go” [8:30]
The closing song—the fourth lyric-based composition—originally ran eight minutes in length, with the RSD release not bothering to edit it at all.  While my original edit trimmed the song down to 6:08, my upgraded version does what the RSD release did: present the full, 8:30.  


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

*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

Jefferson Airplane - Another Missile is Flying

(soniclovenoize “1970 album” reconstruction)

Side A:

1.  Have You Seen The Saucers?

2.  Up or Down

3.  Sunrise 

4.  Starship

Side B:

5.  Bludgeon of a Bluecoat

6.  Emergency

7.  Mexico

8.  Pretty As You Feel

9.  Mau Mau (Amerikon)

To celebrate America’s birthday, here is an album reconstruction from the quintessential American psychedelic band, Jefferson Airplane.  This is a reconstruction of Jefferson Airplane’s relatively un-made album, intended to be released in 1970.  Due to the contrasting trajectories of the individual band members– with Grace Slick and Paul Katner focusing on their solo album Blows Against The Empire, Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen focusing on their side project Hot Tuna, and Marty Balin simply disengaging from the band entirely– an all-original, studio 1970 Jefferson Airplane album instead materialized as a label-created greatest collection.  The band would eventually regroup and complete the album as Bark in 1971, without founding member Marty Balin and much of the band’s creative core.  

By 1969, the Jefferson Airplane had become the mainstream face of groundbreaking American psychedelic rock.  Armed with a trio of lead singer/songwriters in Marty Balin, Paul Katner and Grace Slick (who uniquely weaved in and out of harmony, unison and their own solo vocalization, creating a distinct “communal” vocal sound) and the virtuosic improvisations of bassist Jack Casady and lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, the band’s Volunteers album became the year’s banner of the counterculture.  But after headlining Woodstock, the Airplane began a slow descent with the loss of their long-time drummer Spencer Dryden.  His replacement was the much younger and more energetic Joey Covington, who had already been playing in Casady & Kaukonen’s electric (and sometimes acoustic) blues side project Hot Tuna.  His more dynamic style gave Jefferson Airplane a much needed lift and the band slowly began to debut new material throughout the tour to support Volunteers that Fall:  Marty Balin’s soul-rockers “Up and Down”, “Drifting” and “Dresses Too Short”; Grace Slick’s comment on the emerging War On Drugs, “Mexico”; and Paul Kanter’s proto-grunge political anthem “Mau Mau (Amerikon)”.  

The band went into the studio in February 1970 to record “Mexico” as a single, along with another of Kantner’s newer compositions, “Have You Seen The Saucers”, a song that heralded his love of science fiction themes in his songs.  Also recorded for consideration was “Up and Down”, as well as another new Balin composition, “Emergency”, and demos for Slick’s “Frozen Nose” & Kaukonen’s “Been So Long”.  

The single received a very lukewarm release in May, damaging the group’s confidence and coinciding with an era of wandering and disinterest from the various members of the band.  Casady, Kaukonen and Covington ventured out as Hot Tuna, leaving Slick and Kantner– now officially a couple and pregnant with their first child– alone to record demos for the next studio Jefferson Airplane album.  Balin, in contrast, had grown particularly impatient with the split of the two camps in the band, and chose to spend his time bumming around on the beach.  

As it became more and more apparent that a 1970 Jefferson Airplane album wasn’t happening, Slick & Katner repurposed their demos into the duo’s first solo album, Blows Against The Empire, released under the banner Paul Kantner/Jefferson Starship (no relation to the later, actual Jefferson Starship).  Featuring a slew of Bay Area musician friends such as Jerry Garcia, Graham Nash and David Crosby, the album featured a new version of “Mau Mau (Amerikon)”, as well as a number of songs that continued Kantner’s sci-fi obsession, specifically concerning a group of hippies hijacking a starship to leave Earth for a new, utopian planet.  

Although their songs were earmarked for Blows Against The Empire, Grace & Paul continued playing sporadic gigs with Jefferson Airplane if all six members were available.  Debuted later in 1970 were two compositions from drummer Covington, “Whatever The Old Man Does (Is Always Right)” and “Bludgeon of a Bluecoat”, and curiously an improbably cohesive jam of Slick & Kantner’s “Starship”.  Apparently returning to the studio that Fall, the band worked on Covington-led tracks that featured some heavy-hitter guests: “Bludgeon of a Bluecoat” featured Little Richard and his “Pretty As You Feel” was extracted from a 30-minute jam with Carlos Santana!

Although the release of Blows Against The Empire was eminent, Paul and Grace conducted an October interview that claimed the next Jefferson Airplane album was well on its way, and specifically name dropped the songs in consideration: Covington’s “Bludgeon of a Bluecoat” and “Pretty As You Feel”; Balin’s “Emergency” and “Up or Down”; Kantner’s “To Dianna” and “Today We Are All One”; Slick’s “Crazy Miranda” and “Flying Fishman”; and two unnamed Kaukonen tracks written by his brother, Peter Kaukonen.  Kanter also curiously stated their intent to include live versions of both “Mexico” and “Have You Seen The Saucers” on the next album as well.  Despite the positive assessment of the band’s progress, RCA instead released The Worse of Jefferson Airplane, a greatest hits compilation that November.  

More turbulence occurred with even more personnel changes: the addition of electric fiddle player Papa John Creach (who had been rediscovered by Covington and subsequently played with Hot Tuna), and the loss of Marty Balin, who had finally had enough of the band politics, lack of focus and drug use.  Although by April 1971 Balin was gone and the Airplane had no pilot, the group buckled down to finish the album begun the previous year.  After dropping all of Balin’s songs and replacing them with newer compositions such as the great “Feel So Good”, “When The Earth Moves Again” and “Third Week In The Chelsea” (as well as a depressing slew of unmemorable ones), the resultant album Bark was released in September.  Although it charted 11 on the Billboard album charts (thanks to the hit “Pretty As You Feel”), it marked the creative decline of the band, who would only last for an additional lackluster studio album (1972’s Long John Silver) before crashing– and it’s rebirth into Jefferson Starship in 1974.  But is it possible to imagine what a Marty Balin-led 1970 Jefferson Airplane could have been?  

For this reconstruction, we will assume that Jefferson Airplane somehow did not splinter apart throughout 1970, which would then designate any songs from Blows Against The Empire as fair game for inclusion (although we will generally focus on the songs featuring other Airplane members).  Additionally, since much of the material intended for their 1970 album remained unrecorded (or, at least, unavailable to us), then we will also draw upon some high-quality live recordings– specifically the pair of shows from 9/14/70 and 9/15/70, which serene rips of the actual master reels are available in bootleg circles.  For this reconstruction, we will only use recordings that date from the February 1970 single sessions, up until the end of the year, solely when Marty Balin was still in the band; thus although Kantner specifically mentioned the songs as in consideration in 1970, “Crazy” Mary”, “To Dianna” and “Flying Fishman” are disqualified, as they were recorded after this time period.  

Side A begins with what I think of as the gateway song of this era, “Have You Seen The Saucers.”  Although Kantner specifically noted a live version would have been featured on their actual 1970 album, we will use the original studio version here to account for an unfortunate lack of group studio recordings of this era; this version is the rare alternate mix from the Early Flight compilation, which rocks way harder to my ears.  Following is “Up or Down”, also a studio recording found on Early Flight.  This crossfades into “Sunrise” from Blows Against The Empire, used here as it features both Grace and Jack Casady on fuzz bass.  This itself crossfades into the lengthy live take of “Starship” from the 9/14/70 bootleg, with specific instrumental flubs edited out and using Izotope Ozone to adjust the levels of the various instruments to match the rest of the reconstruction.  

Side B begins with Covington’s “Bludgeon of a Bluecoat” and Balin’s “Emergency”, both also taken from the 9/14/70 tape, rebalanced in Ozone.  Again, we use the studio take of “Mexico” from Early Flight, followed by “Pretty As You Feel” from The Essential Jefferson Airplane, again rebalanced with Ozone to construct a mix that doesn’t sound like the band was recorded in a different room; note that while it was claimed “Pretty as You Feel” was tracked in 1971, the fact that the recording was referenced in two separate interviews from October 1970 suggested that the song was actually recorded before Balin left the group, and is fortunately fair game for this reconstruction!  The album closes with Kantner’s “Mau Mau (Amerikon)”, included as it also features Joey Covington on drums and backing vocals (as well as the fact that Jefferson Airplane actually performed an early version in 1969).  

The resulting album–which I call Another Missile is Flying–is an excellent upgrade from the oft-dismal Bark, continues the trajectory of Volunteers, and incorporates the best parts of Blows Against The Empire.  Although we only hear the trio of Marty, Paul and Grace singing on “Have You Seen The Saucers” (which is one of my favorite songs of all time, by the way), the mix of Marty’s songs is still a welcome consolation.  The true heroes and the glue that makes the album cohesive is Covington’s manic drums and Casady’s fat, virtuosic bass, each on all but one track.  With that, come and join us on the other side of the sun…

Sources used:

Jefferson Airplane - Early Flight (1997 CD Remaster)

Jefferson Airplane - The Essential Jefferson Airplane (2005 digital download )

Jefferson Airplane - 9/14/70 (2013 remaster by BRUNO from the master reels)

Paul Kantner/Jefferson Starship - Blows Against The Empire (2005 Legacy Remaster)

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The Doors - Rock is Dead

Bob Dylan - New York Skyline

(New Morning double-album re-imagining)

Side A:

1. The Man in Me

2. Winterlude

3. Mary Anne

4. One More Weekend

5. Mr. Bojangles

Side B:

6. Tomorrow is a Long Time

7. Three Angels

8. The Ballad of Ira Hayes

9. If Dogs Run Free

Side C:

1. New Morning

2. Lily of The West

3. Alligator Man

4. I Went To See The Gypsy

5. Sign On The Window

Side D:

6. Time Passes Slowly

7. Father of Night

8. If Not For You

9. Long Black Veil

10. Spanish is The Living Tongue 

Happy Thanksgiving!  This re-imagining was voted by my top-tier Patreons to be the November 2023 release on Albums That Never Were, so here it is!  I call this New York Skyline, which is a double-album re-imagining of Bob Dylan’s 1970 classic album New Morning.  The first disc is a reconstruction of Al Kooper’s original cut of the New Morning album, as he envisioned it near the conclusion of the sessions; the second disc was constructed by myself, comprising the best of the rest of the material not featured on Al Kooper’s cut, assembled as the second half of a theoretical double album which compliments the first half.  

As the curtain closed on the 1960s, one of its founding fathers, Bob Dylan, attempted to close the curtain on his own legacy.  After reinventing his songwriting during his legendary Basement Tapes “sessions” throughout 1967, Dylan returned with a more concise and direct approach, abandoning the “thin, wild, mercury sound” for influences derived from The Great American Songbook.  This was immediately seen in 1968’s John Wesley Harding, which replaced his epic, surreal poetics for more concise Americana with a stately, sparse instrumentation.  1969’s Nashville Skyline took the progression even farther, embracing commercial Country and Western music, recorded in said city and featuring a new “Dylan voice” that seemed to be reminiscent of the classic crooners of a bygone era, if not Kermit The Frog.  

But the real trip began with the release of Self Portrait in June, 1970.  A double album that contained a seemingly random mix of more Nashville standards, classic Americana traditionals embellished by studio musicians, confusingly scant originals like “Wigwam” or “All The Tired Horses” and live recordings with The Band from their 1969 Isle of Wight performance.  Divisive to this day, with Rolling Stone’s Greil Marcus famously prefacing his review of the album with “What is this shit?”, Dylan seemed to be intentionally dismantling the legend he had built for himself throughout the 1960s, either out of frustration, boredom, or even his own amusement.  While this is a fair assessment, it also misses a key nuance: New Morning.

In the spring of 1970, Dylan was drafted to compose the music for a new Archibold MacLeish play called Scratch, based upon Stephen Vincent Benet’s short story The Devil and Daniel Webster.  Although Dylan eventually bowed out of the production due to creative differences with the producers, he had salvaged three new key compositions that created the momentum for a new album: “New Morning”, “Father of Night” and “Time Passes Slowly”.  

Dylan returned to the studio a month before the release of the intentionally divisive Self Portrait,  demoing material for an album to harbor the Scratch leftovers.  Armed with Nashville veterans Russ Kunkle on drums, Charlie Daniels on bass, Al Kooper on keyboards, and an old-pal guitarist named George Harrison, Dylan breezed through a few of his new compositions, including  “Sign On The Window”, “Time Passes Slowly”, “I Went To See The Gypsy”, and a song he had co-written with Harrison, “If Not For You.”  The session also included a jam of a number of 50s Rock n Roll standards and Bob Dylan classics, to varying degrees of success.  

A literal week before the release of Self Portrait, Dylan began the sessions proper, assembling a backing band with Kooper, Daniels and Krunkle, and the addition of Dave Bromberg on guitar and a set of female backing vocalists.  A tad looser than the previous year’s Nashville Skyline sessions, the vibe was distinct from Dylan’s previous work and continued the laid back, yet nuanced instrumentation from the final Self Portrait sessions.  Featured heavily are a trio of female backing vocalists, a sound that would re-emerge later in Dylan’s career.  Dylan’s voice had a more natural and less forced inflection, sounding both road-weary yet optimistic–a surviving pop-philosopher of the turbulent decade that had just concluded.  Although he was still in his “Nashville-era”, these recordings seemed to be decidedly “New York”.  Although intending to record his new originals, he put just as much work into even more Country covers and American standards.  Knowing this, these sessions–which would form the basis of his 1970 album New Morning–were more a direct continuation of Self Portrait, rather than a reevaluation.  

The first day of the week’s recording yielded the traditional songs “Mary Anne” and “Sarah Jane”, Jimmy Newman’s “Alligator Man” and Peter la Farge’s “The Ballad of Ira Hayes”.  The second day of recording yielded Dylan’s own “If Not For You” and “Time Passes Slowly”, a cover of Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles” and the traditional “Spanish is the Living Tongue”, a song Dylan seemed to have a vast affinity for.   Day three saw the recording of Dylan’s own “One More Weekend”, as well as the traditionals “Jamaica Goodbye” and “Lily of The West”, the classic Elvis Presely ballad “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” and Lefty Frizell’s “Long Black Veil.”  Day four of recording saw Dylan’s own “Three Angels”, “Tomorrow is a Long Time” and “New Morning”, as well as Ledbelly’s “Bring Me A Little Water, Sylvie” and Joni Mitchel’s “Big Yellow Taxi.”  The fifth and final marathon recording session yielded a number of masters: Dylan originals “If Dogs Run Free”, “I Went To See The Gypsy”, “Sign On The Window”, “Winterlude”, “The Man In Me” and “Father Of Night”, as well as Elvis Presley’s “I Forgot To Remember To Forget” and a new, sparser version of “Lily of The West.”  

With approximately 25 finished songs recorded over five days, New Morning Was basically a wrap three days before Self Portrait was even released.  At this time, Dylan’s current musical compatriot Al Kooper assembled a rough acetate of how he envisioned the album, which included: “The Man In Me”, “Winterlude”, “Mary Anne”, “One More Weekend”, “Mr Bojangles”, “Tomorrow is a Long Time”, “Three Angels”, “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” and “If Dogs Run Free.”  

After experiencing (or relishing?) the blow-back from Self Portrait, it was decided that New Morning still needed more work and producer Bob Johnson oversaw a pair of sweetening sessions in July which saw horn overdubs on “New Morning”, string overdubs on “Sign On The Window” and Bluegrass instrumentation to “If Not For You.”  One final recording session in August with a hastily-assembled band of Dylan, Kooper, Harvey Brooks and Buzzy Feiten yielded new versions of “If Not For You” and “Time Passes Slowly”, as well as a newly-written original concerning Dylan’s honorary Princeton doctorate “Day of The Locusts.”  Refining the tracklist to include only the twelve Dylan originals, New Morning was released in October, and fans were assured that Dylan hadn’t “lost it”--even if New Morning wasn’t anything near the intimacy of John Wesley Harding or the power of Blonde On Blonde.  Seven of the covers from the New Morning sessions appeared in the slightly-unauthorized 1973 album Dylan (which was also marketed as A Fool Such As I), and the remandiner stayed in the vault until Dylan’s recent Bootleg Series and COpyright Extension collections.  Has the sun set on this new morning, or is it time for a reappraisal?  

This re-imagination attempts to offer a reassessment of this “lesser” Dylan album that holds a very specific place in my heart; although not his best work of the period, the sound was unique and its vibe is very comfy–not to mention harnessing my favorite “Dylan voice” which he would not precisely repeat.  I offer this revised, double album New Morning to counter the narrative that the album was meant to silence the critics that hated Self Portrait, and suggest it as a literal continuation, for better or for worse.  The first disc is a reconstruction of Al Kooper’s master of the album, with a second disc assembled from the remaining sessions, to complement Kooper’s master.  We are also presuming the album was completely finished in July, and thus the August 1970 session was not needed.  

Reconstructing Al Kooper’s master, Side A opens with Jeffery Lebowski’s theme, “The Man In Me”, followed by “Winterlude”, both from New Morning.  This is followed by “Mary Anne” taken from Dylan (A Fool Such As I), EQd to match the rest of this reconstruction.  Next is “One More Weekend”, again from New Morning, and the side concluding with “Mr Bojangles”, again re-EQd from Dylan.  Side B opens with “Tomorrow Is A Long Time”, sourced from a 2007 leak of the pre-mastered reels, the best source for the song.  This is followed by “Three Angels” from New Morning and “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” re-EQd from Dylan.  Disc one ends with the far superior version of “If Dogs Run Free”, taken from The Bootleg Series Volume 10, which suggests angelic longing rather than crappy scatty jazz-pop.  Bob, what were you even thinking?  

With a ton of material leftover from Kooper’s cut, my goal was to make a second disc that matches and compliments his selections (much like my reconstruction of Hendrix’s First Rays of The New Rising Sun); it is not intended to be a complete retrospective of these sessions.  Side C opens with the brass overdubbed version of “New Morning” from The Bootleg Series Volume 10, followed by the more atmospheric, alternate take of “Lily of The West” from The 50th Anniversary Collection.  Although one could consider it a blemish, here in the tracklist “Alligator Man” becomes a good-time uplift, also taken from The 50th Anniversary Collection.  My personal favorite take 1 of “Went To See The Gypsy” from the June 5th session follows, also from The 50th Anniversary Collection.  Closing the side is the orchestral version of “Sign on The Window” from The Bootleg Series Volume 10.

Side D opens with one of the best recordings of these sessions, which was so surprisingly ignored by Dylan: the hard rock version of “Time Passes Slowly” from The Bootleg Series Volume 10.  Here a deep-cut rather than an album closer, “Father of Night” from New Morning is next.  Mid-side we have “If Not For You”, but I am using what take I felt fit the best in this context: take 2 from the June 2nd session, taken from the 50th Anniversary Collection.  “Long Black Veil”, also from the 50th Anniversary collection, follows, and the album closes with a serene end of “Spanish is The Living Tongue”, also taken from the 2007 premaster leak.  

Sources used:

The 50th Anniversary Collection: 1970 (2020 CD release)

A Few Files From a Data DVD Disc (bootleg, 2007)

The Bootleg Series Volume 10 (2013 CD release)

Dylan (A Fool Such As I) (2013 CD Remaster)

New Morning (2009 CD remaster)

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(soniclovenoize reimagining)

1. Free As a Bird

2. The World Tonight

3. Any Road

4. Calico Skies

5. Now and Then

6. Rising Sun

7. Real Love

8. Little Willow

9. Rocking Chair in Hawaii

10.  Beautiful Night

11.  Grow Old With Me

12.  Brainwashed

Happy New Year's Eve!  To welcome in 2024, here is a reimagining that has been in the back of my mind for sometime, and the release of “Now and Then” spurred me to complete it.  This is a reimagining of a late-1990s Beatles album that presumes that The Threetles not only completed all four of the proposed Lennon demos given to them by Yoko Ono, but continued to make an entire album of Threetles material.  One could consider this the final entry (chronologically speaking) into my “What If The Beatles Didn’t Break Up?” series of album reimaginations.  This reimaging is notable because it features my own mix of “Now and Then”, which attempts to present the song in a mid-90s-sounding fashion, sounding closer to “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love”.  I have also remastered the Brainwashed tracks to sound closer to the rest of the album, specifically lowering the volume of George’s lead vocal with Ozone 10.  

As with my previous Beatles “What If?” albums, we will follow four key rules:

1. All material presented must be more or less concurrently-recorded and represent a specific timeframe.  This rule is easily sufficed, as both Paul and George were in the midst of recording Flaming Pie and Brainwashed, respectively, as they were working on completing the Lennon songs given to them by Yoko. The only exception given is the drum track and lead guitar of “Now and Then”, which was recorded in 2022.  

2. Balance of all Beatles songwriting contributions.  Here, we will use the four Lennon songs, with four Flaming Pie songs and four Brainwashed songs.  Note that Ringo's theoretical contribution is included in Paul’s “Beautiful Night”.

3. All songs must be Beatle-esque in nature, and less reliant on the idiosyncratic stylings of the individual Beatles’ solo career.  

4. The songs must flow together as a cohesive whole.  Note that, this being a theoretical late-90s release, this album would have been primarily a compact-disc release, we are not beholden to two 20-minute sides.  With that said, the album is still organized into two halves–this is just how I hear albums!

How this album relates to the actual Beatles Anthology, is up to the listener.  It might make the most sense to consider this album and the Anthology projects as separate (but related) entities; perhaps The Threetles used the momentum of the Anthology project to make one final Beatles album, released in 1998?  Also of note is the unifying influence here: Jeff Lynn.  Clearly he was the driving force of the Lennon demos and George’s album, but he was also producing much of Flaming Pie.  It’s also super convenient that the drums on both Flaming Pie and Brainwashed sound explicitly Ringo-esque!  And as with all of these Beatles reimaginings, suspension of disbelief is required for maximum enjoyment.  

Calico Skies opens with the centrifugal force of the project itself– “Free As a Bird”, taken from Anthology 1.  This sets the stage for the tone of the album and is followed by one of Paul’s strongest offerings in this period, “The World Tonight” from the otherwise overhyped Flaming Pie.  George then ups the ante with “Any Road”, using Ozone 10 to make the vocals less upfront, or at least mixed to a similar level as John and Paul songs; George’s opening banter is moved elsewhere in the album.  Paul’s fantastic “Calico Skies” follows but is more of a linking track to John’s “Now and Then”.  

Here I have used the extracted stems courtesy of Rock Band Stems, to make a new mix of “Now and Then” that sounds closer to the mid-90s mixes of “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love.”  This includes capturing the drum room sound from the aforementioned using Camaleon2, and mixing George’s guitars and Paul’s bass to be more upfront.  Also, we have mostly stripped away Giles Martin’s orchestration (although it does return briefly near the end of the song) and have completely removed Paul’s modern backing vocals and (misguided) attempt at “completing” the song with new lyrics.  Left with no chorus, I have removed the last few bars of the chorus entirely, and restructured John’s vocal to sing “Now and then I want you to turn to me…” (cryptically Lennon-esque, imo!).  Thus this section of the song simply becomes a middle-eight, for an otherwise chorus-less Lennon song (which is totally fine for an album-cut like this).  Additionally, I have mixed Paul’s slide guitar solo upward and added a spinning Leslie effect to it, in order to make it more Beatle-esque.  Finally, it is mastered to be as equally loud as “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”, and ideally sounds of the era.  

George’s “Rising Sun”--one of the highlights from Brainwashed, imo, follows to close the first half of Calico Skies.  “Real Love” from Anthology 2 hits the reset button, followed by Paul’s exemplary “Little Willow” from Flaming Pie.  It is gently crossfaded into George’s “Rocking Chair in Hawaii”; although technically better George songs were on Brainwashed, this one really serves the vibe of Side B the most precisely.   Paul’s “Beautiful Night” follows, which we are here considering a collaboration with Ringo, sufficing as his contribution to the album (anything from Vertical Man would have ruined Calico Skies, sorry/not-sorry!).  This is followed by “Grow Old With Me” from The John Lennon Anthology, featuring George Martin’s orchestral arrangements and overdubs–the closest to a “Beatles” version we have (ignoring the terrible Ringo Starr cover).  Closing the album is one of George’s best songs, “Brainwashed”; although this really starts to bend my Rule #3, I will give an exception, being what it is–the grandest of finales.  Perhaps George got the last laugh over Paul in the end?  

Sources used:

The Beatles - Anthology 1 (1995)

The Beatles - Anthology 2 (1996)

The Beatles - Now and Then (2023 stem extraction by Rock Band Stems)

George Harrison - Brainwashed (2002)

John Lennon - John Lennon Anthology (1998)

Paul McCartney - Flaming Pie (1996)

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Pink Floyd - Vantage Point

(soniclovenoize reimagining)

January 2024 UPGRADE

Side A:

1.  Ibiza Bar

2.  No Man’s Land

3.  Long Gone

4.  Octopus

5.  Crying Song

6.  Rhamadan 

Side B:

7.  The Nile Song

8.  No Good Trying

9.  Love You

10.  Swan Lee

11.  Embryo

10. Late Night

Here is a long-overdue upgrade to one of my favorite series of album “re-imaginings”, which postulates: “What if Syd Barrett hadn’t been fired from Pink Floyd?”  Vantage Point is the second in a trilogy of Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd albums (joined with 1968’s The Shapes Of Questions To Heaven and 1970’s Themes From an Imaginary Western), that would have theoretically been released in early-ish 1969.  Vantage Point is a combination of the band-oriented The Madcap Laughs-era tracks, and various other 1960-era Pink Floyd tracks that seemed to compliment and gel the entire album together.  This upgrade is noteworthy, as I’ve used Ozone Izotope to rebalance the instrumental mix of some of the Madcap Laughs tracks to match the rest of the album.  I have also created my own, unique eight-minute edit of the rare Barrett track “Rhamadan”, to act as the album’s centerpiece “epic” improvisational soundscape track.  Admittedly, I should have probably renamed the album, as “Cymbaline” is no longer featured here; I am keeping the name regardless for the sake of clarity and continuity.  

After Syd Barrett’s unanimous dismissal from Pink Floyd in February 1968, manager Peter Jenner followed the exit, believing Barrett as the creative genius of the band.  Promptly starting sessions for his first solo album in May and June using Soft Machine as his backing band, Syd and Jenner tracked a handful of songs that expounded on his signature pop-psychedelia: “Silas Lang”, “Late Night”, “Clowns and Jugglers”, and a musical accompaniment of a James Joyce poem, “Golden Hair.”  There were also several aimless and monotonal improvisations, such as “Lanky” and “Rhamadan.”  Despite its promise, the tapes seemed more like demos and fragments, and the project was shelved, leaving Barrett in self-imposed seclusion after a brief stint of psychological care, and Jenner’s notion of Barrett as a solo star dashed.  

Meanwhile, Pink Floyd were busy searching for their own muse.  After completing their sophomore album A Saucerful of Secrets in June and a series of scant psyche-pop singles that failed to chart, the quartet shifted gears to their experimental and improvisational prowess, notably with the extended jams of b-side “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”.  While the band began demo sessions for their third album in November with “Embryo”, their trajectory changed; impressed by the cinematic scope of this new incarnation of the band, director Barbet Schroeder drafted The Floyd to compose the soundtrack to his new film, More.  Grouping at Pye Studios for two weeks in January and February 1969, the band wrote and recorded a number of new songs, including “Cirrus Minor”, “The Nile Song”, “The Crying Song”, “Green is The Colour”, “Cymbaline” and “Ibiza Bar”, as well as a number of instrumental pieces in varying genres, meant as incidental music for the film.  

Barrett’s luck improved by March 1969, having received the greenlight for a solo album under EMI’s new progressive rock umbrella Harvest Records.  This time produced by Harvest head Malcolm Jones, the duo reviewed the tapes from the previous year’s Jenner sessions, to see what was salvageable.  Throughout March and April, overdubs were added to the tapes, and a handful of new songs were recorded, ideally to round out an album: “Love You”, “Opel”, “It’s No Good Trying”, “Terrapin”, “No Man’s Land” and “Here I Go.”  Despite the barrage of work, the sessions became grueling as Barrett’s erratic recording nuances and inability to articulate what he actually wanted, led him to seek guidance from his old friend and literal replacement in Pink Floyd: David Gilmour.  

Gilmour & Co. themselves were in the midst of a series of performances of their conceptual piece The Man and The Journey, which included “Cymbaline” and “Green is The Colour” from More, as well as newer pieces “Grantchester Meadows”, “The Narrow Way”, and a number of instrumental interstitial pieces.  The later two songs were also destined for their third studio album proper, Ummagumma, which was being crafted as solo recordings from each individual member of the band.  Inbwteen mixing of Ummagumma, Roger Waters and David Gilmour rejoined their former band-mate to save his solo album and shape something listenable out of the mountainous jumble of recordings from both Jenner and Jones.

In June 1969, The trio recorded brand new versions of “Golden Hair” and “Clowns and Jugglers”--now retitled “Octopus”-- as well as new compositions “Dark Globe”, “Long Gone”, “She Took a Long, Cold Look”, “Feel” and “If It’s In You.”  Final mixing of the album occurred in August, with “Octopus” released as the lead single in November, a week after Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma.  The Madcap Laughs was finally released in January 1970, nearly two years after the sessions had begun!  Both albums became cult favorites, with Barrett continuing with a slightly less schizophrenic second solo album Barrett, and Pink Floyd continuing, well, into eventual superstardom.  

But could this have all played out differently?  This reimaging continues the “Pink Floyd featuring Syd Barrett” timeline began in The Shape of Questions To Heaven, and uses the earlier (and decidedly weirder) Jenner sessions as the base of a theoretical Pink Floyd album led by Syd Barrett; ironically, those sessions sounded more like a plausible Ummagumma-era Pink Floyd than the later sessions that actually featured David Gilmour!  To bookend the album and gel it together, we are going to utilize Pink Floyd’s earlier 1969 session material–notably “Embryo” and some of the More songs–which seems to fit in with the Jenner sessions.  Note we are going to exclude the More and Ummagumma tracks destined for The Man and The Journey, so that it and Vantage Point can coexist in the same timeline; perhaps they could be considered separate discs of a double album, or an intentional compromise of separate “Barret Songs Album” vs “Band Concept Album”?  

Side A begins with Waters’ “Ibiza Bar” from More, an outlier in the Pink Floyd canon because of it’s awesome heaviness, but here sets up the dark psychedelic album that Pink Floyd never made.  This is followed by my own demaster of “No Man’s Land” from The Madcap Laughs, and “Long Gone” from, again, Madcap Laughs.  Next is my demaster of “Clowns and Jugglers” from Opel, using the more weird Soft Machine version, which seems to fit better with the album.  Breaking the tension is “Crying Song” from More, which works well as a deep-album cut.  The side concludes with my own eight-minute edit of “Rhamadan”, sourced from a lossless stream via TIDAL; I included several of my favorite sections in this edit, and becomes a fairly interesting listen when assembled in this fashion.  

Side B unintentionally (I swear!) follows the pattern of opening with Waters’ heavy psyche “The Nile Song” from More, and then a dual of Barrett’s “No Good Trying” and “Love You” from The Madcap Laughs.  Following is my demaster of the wonderfully bizarre “Swan Lee” from Opel, which is followed by the band studio demo of “Embryo”, a long lost gem from The Early Years.  The album closes with my own demaster of “Late Night” from The Madcap Laughs, as if we were waking from this psychedelic nightmare.  

Sources used:

Pink Floyd – Soundtrack to the Film ‘More’ (2011 remaster)

Pink Floyd – The Early Years (2016 box set)  

Syd Barrett – The Madcap Laughs (2006 remaster)

Syd Barrett – Rhamadan 2010 Mix (rip of lossless TIDAL stream)

Syd Barrett – Opal (1994 Harvest remaster)

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Nazz - Fungo Bat

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

Side A:

1.  Forget All About It

2.  Only One Winner

3.  Magic Me

4.  Gonna Cry Today

5.  Meridian Leeward

6.  Under The Ice

Side B:

7.  Some People

8.  Rain Rider

9.  Resolution

10.  Old Time Love-Making

11.  Featherbedding Lover

12.  Take The Hand

13.  How Can You Call That Beautiful

Side C:

1.  Loosen Up

2.  Sing You A Song/Good Lovin’ Woman/Sing You A Song (Reprise)

3.  It’s Not That Easy

4.  Plenty of Lovin’

5.  Letters Don’t Count

6.  Kiddie Boy

7.  Christopher Columbus

Side D:

8.  Hang On Paul

9.  Not Wrong Long

10.  You Are My Window

11.  A Beautiful Song

A leap-year post seems appropriate for this album that never was!  This is a reconstruction of the unreleased 1969 Nazz double-album Fungo Bat.  Recorded amidst the actual disintegration of the band, the album was paired down to the single-album release of Nazz Nazz, with the remaining material seeing the light of day as the posthumous Nazz III in 1971.  This reconstruction those two albums and attempts to present what a finished Fungo Bat would have sounded like, using Todd Rundgren’s personal acetates as a blueprint.  I’ve also personally remastered the tracks to not only function as a cohesive whole, but to be a more listenable album with a more balanced high-end and more articulated low end, what I perceived as sonic limitations of the original album.  

Philadelphia hometown kids making good, teenaged garage-rockers Nazz miraculously scored a record deal with Colgems and some high-profile gigs opening for such luminaries The Doors and The Bee Gees.  Although stifled by performance venues for being underage, the quartet was also marketed as a heavier alternative for teeny-boppers and scored their first hits in 1968 with “Open My Eyes” and “Hello It’s Me”, penned by their prodigal guitarist: one Mr. Todd Rundgren.  Being simultaneously influenced by the electric Blues of the British Invasion, yet also distinctly (and curtly) American, Nazz seemed to have a fast and high trajectory behind their self-titled debut, effortlessly courting Garage Rock and shades of Psychedelia and creating the template for Power Pop.  But some things were just simply not meant to last, as the cracks in the band began to show upon the sessions for the sophomore album.  

Taking cue from the newly-released Beatles The White Album, Rundgren planned Nazz’s follow-up also as a double-album of newly composed songs.  Additionally, much of the material was ballad-heavy, influenced by his current obsession with keyboardist Laura Nyro– much to the chagrin of the rest of the band, who just wanted to rock!  While on tour in Europe in January 1969, Nazz booked studio time at Trident Studios to start tracking the album.  With one song in, the British Musicians Union immediately shut the four 19-year old Americans down and ejected them from the studio.  

Returning to their home base of ID Sound Studios in Hollywood with The Electric Prunes’ James Lowe behind the board, the quarter restarted sessions for the double album, with the intention of self-producing the album entirely.  Political divisions between the band members further hampered progress– a Rundgren resolved to refine his vision of the sprawling double album by secretly replacing singer/keyboardist Stewkey’s organ parts with session musicians, and a Stewkey who outright refused to sing on Rundgren’s pop ballads that, to him, sounded more like solo efforts.  

Stewkey and drummer Thom Mooney pleaded with their label to intervene with the as-yet unnamed double album (although the inside-joke “Fungo Bat” had been used to designate recordings meant for the album, it was not actually meant as the album title proper, contrary to general belief!).  Colgems Records put the hammer down on Rundgren and made the executive decision to trim the double album down to a single LP length, claiming it too pretentious for such a new band to release such a mountain of material as their second-ever release.  Rundgren acquiesced and the “Fungo Bat” material was reduced to a single LP of the most band-oriented songs and released as Nazz Nazz in April 1969… but not before the outright resignation of bassist Carson Van Osten, who had tired of the band drama.  

After a handful of replacement bassists and several gigs to support Nazz Nazz, Rundgren, too, tired of the drama–or probably what he considered artistic compromises in his burgeoning solo career–and quit the band as well.  Stewky and Mooney continued until 1970 as a trio and with fill-in musicians, only to officially call it quits shortly thereafter.  But record labels being record labels, Colgems wouldn’t let it rest and went searching for the remaining, partially unfinished leftovers from Nazz Nazz.  Still in possession by Mooney, he reunited with Stewkey and Lowe to finish the material, which was ill-advised by the pair yet ultimately released as Nazz III in May 1971, leaving a most puzzling epitaph to a short-lived band.  But is it possible to take a second swing at Fungo Bat, to hear the album Todd Rundgren originally wanted to release?

Luckily, a set of extremely rare production acetates have survived over the years, which blueprinted  Rundgren’s vision of how the 24 songs were to be constructed.  Those rough-ish mono acetates were only recently released in December 2022, demonstrating that the Rundgren-helmed Nazz had actually intended to create a fairly impressive double album that covers a majority of the pop landscape in 1969, and even veers into Progressive Rock territory!  For this reconstruction, we will use the aforementioned acetates as merely a guidepost, and combine the final Nazz Nazz and Nazz III albums into a more-or-less finished Nazz Nazz double-LP as Rundgred envisioned; this includes Stewkey’s 1970-overdubbed vocal versions rather than Rundgren’s original guide vocals, as they sound more complete and, well, finished.  Although the record has also been recently corrected that the material was never intended to be named “Fungo Bat”, we will use this title regardless in the name of historical continuity of music nerdity.  

It is also of note, that I have extensively re-EQed this album, as I thought this was a really great double-album ruined by very curious ear-piercing equalization choices.  In trying to make a more listenable master, I have significantly calmed down the high end– specicily 3dB cuts at 1kHz, 2kHz and 5kHz, with some songs even receiving an additional cut at 3kHz.  Conversely, there was a severe lack of low end on this album, so I have added some bottom to it as well.  It is conceivable that I have eliminated some of this album’s charm; to them, I say you are free to listen to the originals at any time.  

Side A opens with the fantastic “Forget About It All” from Nazz Nazz, which hard-edits into the Stewky-vocal version of “Only One Winner” from Nazz III, as demonstrated on Rundgren’s acetates.  This is again hard-edited into “Magic Me” from Nazz III, also as mapped out on Rundgren’s acetates.  This is followed by the killer trio of “Gonna Cry Today”, “Meridian Leeward” and “Under The Ice” from Nazz Nazz.  Side B opens with Nazz III’s “Some People”, followed by Nazz Nazz’s “Rain Rider”.  This is followed by the superior Stewkey-vocal version of “Resolution” and “Old Time Love-Making” from Nazz III, “Featherbedding Lover” from Nazz Nazz, and the record concluding with the Stewkey-sung versions of “Take The Hand” and “How Can You Call That Beautiful”.

Side C goes a bit down the rabbit hole, opening with the banter of “Loosen Up” and the chatter of “Sing You A Song”; note that although Rundgren’s acetates contain the entire four minutes of the “Good Lovin’ Woman” interlude, but I am only using the 40 seconds of it as heard in the bonus track from The Fungo Bat Sessions– and we are all better off for that!  This is followed by the Stewkey-sung versions of “It’s Not That Easy” and “Plenty of Lovin” from Nazz III.  Next is “Letters Don’t Count” and “Kiddie Boy” from Nazz Nazz and the highlight of the album, “Christopher Columbus” from Nazz III.   Side D opens with the manic psyche-pop of “Hang On Paul” and “Not Wrong Long” from Nazz Nazz, followed by “You Are My Window” from Nazz II and “A Beautiful Song” from Nazz Nazz, crossfaded as originally intended to become one 17-minute epic album closer.  

Sources used:

Nazz - Nazz Nazz including Nazz III - The Fungo Bat Sessions (2006 Sanctuary Records) 

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The Beach Boys - SMiLE

(soniclovenoize Stereo 1967 / BWPS Mix)

MARCH 2024 UPGRADE

Disc 1 – 1967 Stereo Mix

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

Disc 2 – BWPS Stereo Mix

Movement 1:

1.  Our Prayer / Gee

2.  Heroes and Villains

3.  Roll Plymouth Rock

4.  Barnyard

5.  The Old Master Painter / You Were My Sunshine

6.  Cabin Essence

Movement 2:

7.  Wonderful

8.  Song For Children

9.  Child is Father of The Man

10.  Surf’s Up

Movement 3:

11.  I’m in Great Shape / I Wanna Be Around / Workshop

12.  Vege-Tables

13.  On a Holiday

14.  Wind Chimes

15.  Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow

16.  In Blue Hawaii

17.  Good Vibrations

Happy Easter!  And what did the Easter Bunny bring you?  How about an upgrade to my stereo SMiLE mixes!  While my personal SMiLE interest was re-piqued in 2022 with my divisive Hitsville Mix, the common response was “Um, great… but what about an upgrade to your 1967 Mix, or your BWPS Mix?  I liked those…”  Well, I guess you were right, as the novelty wore off and I eventually circled back to my personal favorite– my original 1967 Mix… with some very minor changes influenced by the Hitsville Mix.  

As always, the premise of my 1967 Mix is “What would SMiLE have actually sounded like in 1967?”  Over the course of the last 50 years or so, many historical revisions and inaccurate assumptions have sort of twisted what I believe the original intent of the album actually was; this is absolutely fine, as it has been observed that SMiLE unintentionally became the world’s first listener-interactive album, in that it is up to you to finish it, using various mixes and sources.  Even the eventual Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE (BWPS) is more of Darian Sahanaja’s mix with the benefit of Brian Wilson actually fronting it!  But being the intentionalist I am, we will try to go to the source: what would this monster of an album sound like in its original incarnation?  

Well, the fact is that we will never know; SMiLE was never completed, and its author simply could not decide how it should be put together at the time of its creation.  We can, however, look at the probability of what it would have sounded like, based upon testimony of principal participants, Brian Wilson’s own rough mixes and studio documentation.  I have previously and exhaustively covered these specifics, so I am only going to very quickly gloss over them here.  But generally speaking:

1. This “authentic” SMiLE will exist “simply” as a standard twelve-song album.  The twelve individual songs (excluding “Our Prayer”, functioning as the album’s introduction) are not crossfaded or presented as a medley.  However, we are generally losing the two-second leader time between tracks, much as how Sgt Pepper was presented.  

2. The twelves specific songs are as listed on the January 1967 letter to Capitol Records from the band's own hand, although not necessarily in that specific order (see label for correct playing order).  The song order itself creates two 20-minute sides each,   sandwiched by the hit singles beginning the sides and the epic songs closing the sides.  There is no overarching concept, as originally suggested by Dominic Priore in the 1980s.  

3. The construction of those twelve songs is generally dictated by Brain Wilson’s own blueprint, as heard in his own 1966/1967 rough mix assemblages.  If a rough mix assemblage does not exist for a song, we will construct it in a similar fashion as the others to create a cohesive whole, or postulate what it would sound like based upon information available.  

One new revision from my previous 1967 Mix is my intentional exclusion of post-1967-recorded material.  With a cue taken by my previous Hitsville Mix, we will use recordings dating from just after the conclusion of the SMiLE sessions (“Whispering Winds”, “Water chant”, etc) in order to present a more complete SMiLE.  We will NOT, however, use any audio dating past the 1971 Surf’s Up sessions, especially NOT anything “flown” in from 2004 Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE.  Also, we will NOT be using AI-created Brian Wilson-emulated vocals to complete unsung verses; while I appreciate the technology and am not specifically against it, I chose to leave these recordings as complete as they were by 1971, for better or for worse.  This exercise is meant to see how complete a SMiLE could be using only vintage Beach Boys recordings.  

One final note: If this was released in 1967, yes, it would have been in mono only.  But I have always thought SMiLE was especially adaptable in the stereo format, as one is able to more easily appreciate its sonic treasures.  So since it is now possible to make a completely stereo SMiLE, well, we will!  

Side A begins with the stereo mix of “Our Prayer” found on Made In California, as an unlisted opening to the album.  This is followed by my complete stereo mix of the February 1967 “Heroes and Villains” (aka The Cantina Version), as blueprinted by the man himself, before he lost the SMiLE plot.  This is followed by “Vege-Tables”, which is the same mix as from my Hitsville Mix–a completely stereo version of Mark Linnet’s 1993 mix.  Next is “Do You Like Worms”, similar to my previous Hitsville Mix but with the Bicycle Rider theme panned from right to left, representing Western Expansionism.  A slightly improved mix of “Child is Father of The Man” is next, which follows Brian’s three-minute rough mix structure.  My Histville stereo mix of “The Old Master Painter” follows, but using the remade “Heroes and Villains” Fade, as the Barnshine Fade was already used in “Heroes and Villains” proper.  The side closes with my Hitsville stereo mix of “Cabin Essence”, but with a longer fade-out.  

Side B starts with “Good Vibrations”, using the fantastic 2022 stereo mix from Sounds of Summer as a base, but with the slightly longer fade.  Next is a new and improved stereo mix of “Wonderful”, with the lead vocal and bass centered, harpsichord panned left and backing vocals panned right!  Following is a new stereo mix of “I’m In Great Shape” with a better sync of the vocal and backing track, and my Hitsville stereo mix of “Wind Chimes” which follows Brian’s 1966 rough assemblages.  

“The Elements” has always been the most divisive track on SMiLE, but here I used the same construction as featured on my HItsville Mix, which ended up being the closest to what I imagined a vintage “The Elements” to actually sound like: each element is represented by one simple, repeated musical motif–here “Barnyard”, “Whispering Winds”, “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” and “Water Chant”--not already heard on the album.  Although I regret that the four segments do not follow their natural order, this is the most logical order in a musical and dynamic sense.  Note that this is a new stereo mix of “Barnyard” which features centered vocals and bass, backing vocals panned to the right and the rest of the backing track panned left.  Concluding is a new stereo mix of “Surf’s Up” featuring the lead vocal by Brian.  

While I personally do not enjoy the BWPS construction of this material, I recognize that many do, and feel it is THE version of SMiLE.  That is completely fine, so I am including an all-stereo reconstruction of the BWPS sequence as the second disc of this set.  I put great care into trying, to the best of my capabilities and materials at hand, to replicate that specific sequence as heard on Brian Wilson’s solo 2004 album–measure to measure!  All tracks are crossfaded and hard edited into each other, making three continuous Movements, as per BWPS.  Note that there were several interstitial orchestral pieces arranged by Darian Sahanaja that simply do not exist as a Beach Boys equivalent, and in those cases I had to substitute different or similar vintage recording.  Also, like the 1967 Mix, I am not using any modern fly-ins or AI-sung completions.  

Sources used:

Feel Flows (2021 CD box set)

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

Made in California (2013 CD box set)

The SMiLE Sessions (2011 CD box set)

Smiley Smile (2012 CD remix/remaster)

Sounds of Summer (2022 deluxe edition)

Sunshine Tomorrow (2017 CD)

Unsurpassed Masters Vol 16 (1999 bootleg CD)

Unsurpassed Masters Vol 17 (2000 bootleg CD)

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(Early Version reconstruction by soniclovenoize)

1.  Do You Realize???

2.  Are You A Hypnotist?

3.  Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots pt 1

4.  Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots pt 2

5.  Funeral In My Head

6.  Up Above The Daily Hum

7.  Fight Test 

8.  One More Robot

9.  Sympathy 3000-21

10.  Ego Tripping At The Gates of Hell

11.  In The Morning of The Magicians

12.  It’s Summertime

13.  All We Have is Now

14.  Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon (Utopia Planitia)

This is a very special Album That Never Was– unlike most of my reconstructions, there is little to no information available on it, and admittedly, much of this reconstruction is based on my own personal memory of it.  Often, it seems I was the only one who actually remembers the brief existence of this, a sole historian to tout its significance!  So in a belated honor of the 20th anniversary of The Flaming Lips’ mainstream breakthrough album Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, this is a reconstruction of the pre-mastered, fourteen-track “early version” of the album that was leaked several months before its release, which featured a completely different tracklist, among other subtle mixing differences.  

By the early 2000s, The Flaming Lips had already done it all: a decade as a thriving weirdo indie band; one-hit-wonders with 1994’s “She Don’t Use Jelly”; experimental boundary-pushers with 1997’s four-disc album Zaireeka (meant to be played simultaneously!) and 1998’s Boombox Experiments (which employed fifty audience member-helmed boomboxes as a chaotic symphony literally conducted by the band members themselves); and finally the genius arteurs of 1999’s The Soft Bulletin, the album dubbed “The Pet Sounds of The 90s”.  Treading uncertain ground, the trio went from ‘nothing left to lose’, to being the face of cutting edge music in the 21st Century.  What next?

It was evident that the band themselves were not quite sure how to follow-up the masterpiece of The Soft Bulletin, as seen by their decision to showcase entirely new material in their 1999 BBC sessions in April and June.  Including the ominous Can-influenced “The Switch That Turned Off The Universe”, the acoustic ballad “We Can’t Predict The Future”, and two tunes that seemed cut from the Soft Bulletin cloth, “Up Above The Daily Hum” and the meandering instrumental “It Remained Unrealisable”, the songs only hinted at a path forward, and certainly did not have a unified sound or concept.  Unsure of the quality of the new material, the band shifted gears and started separate “side quests” which would inform their upcoming tenth studio album, creating the sound that would finally break the band through to the mainstream– Yoshimi Battle The Pink Robots.  

The Lips’ first stop to battling the pink robots was their old home of Oklahoma City– or at least the backwoods of it.  Director and long-time friend of the band Bradley Beasly tasked the band to craft the soundtrack to his upcoming documentary Okie Noodling, a short film about a unique style of handfishing in rural Oklahoma.  Returning to their homemade studio and practice space, the band crafted several folk-influenced tracks that sounded less like the triumphant and majestic pop of The Soft Bulletin, and more like a cartoonish Zeppelin III.  While the material was never meant for a widespread release (only a promo single was released, featuring the only vocal-based recording of the batch, “The Southern Oklahoma Cosmic Trigger Contest”), the laidback acoustics felt refreshing to the band after the multilayered complexities of the studio-created The Soft Bulletin.  

Next, Flaming Lips figurehead Wayne Coyne decided he wanted to make a movie– and it was going to be about the first Chrstmas on Mars!  Never a stranger to self-made media, including directing their own music videos and on-stage video content, Coyne sought to write and direct the band’s own foray into film using household objects and junkyard acquisitions to create the interior of a space station orbiting Mars.  With the clout of their own absurdity and sheer DIY optimism–as well as friends in high-ish places such as actor Elijah Wood and former Blues Clues host Steve Burns–The Flaming Lips slowly started to assemble their own indie B movie flick.  Naturally, one of the first steps in the film's creation was the soundtrack itself, and unlike the very human-sounding Okie Noodling soundtrack, the Christmas on Mars soundtrack became very electronic and lonely.  

Although the film itself wouldn’t be completed and released until 2008, these early electronic-driven sound experiments set a new series of sonic explorations in motion: the intentional merging of the contrasting sounds of the acoustic Okie Noodling soundtrack and the electronic Christmas on Mars soundtrack.  By spring 2001, The band convened at long-time producer Dave Fridmann’s Tarbox Studios to record the album proper, tracking “It’s Summertime”, “Are You a Hypnotist”, “Utopia Planitia” and “Sytris Major”, all featuring a very distinct sound from the DIY symphonic pop majesty of The Soft Bulletin, that incorporated the aesthetics of both Okie Noodling and Christmas on Mars soundtracks.  

Additional studio bouts throughout the summer of 2001 yielded even more material such as “All We Have is Now”, “Do You Realize?”, “Ego Tripping at The Gates of Hell”, “Funeral in My Head”, “In The Mourning of The Magicians”, a new, more polished version of “Up Above The Daily Hum” and a cryptically titled “The Pink Robots”.  It was this final track that seemed to tie everything together, coupled with more material recorded later that year: “Fight Test” and “One More Robot”; although not initially intended as a concept album, the series of songs could be loosely connected into a storyline that would unify and define the album.  

Released in July 2002 to instant critical acclaim but a slow burn to commercial success, it wasn’t the singles “Do You Realize” or “Fight Test” that secured a well-earned mainstream popularity.  Instead, the band toured relentlessly with less of a live rock show, but more of a surreal multimedia extravaganza, which seemed to translate particularly well to the burgeoning “jam band” festival crowd.  Also, a fabricated feud with notoriously eccentric alt-folk rocker Beck couldn’t hurt!  

Although Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots became a long-shot 2000s classic, the album was very nearly a very different album.  Although a number of fans have debated if The Flaming Lips had intended the album to be a loose concept album or not, the original sequence of the album that had leaked several months before it’s street date showed a much more esoteric album, with the “conceptual” songs peppered throughout rather than setting the album’s stage in the top-half, revealing Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots as more of another collection of late-era Flaming Lips songs that contemplated love and death, sentience and madness, than a story about a Japanese warrior battling pink robots!  

Strangely enough, this alternate fourteen-track version of Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots has been completely lost to time.  Originally leaking on Napster and other file-sharing programs in the spring of 2002, this listener promptly burned it to a CD-R and spent his final spring in college playing out this clearly unmastered cut from his favorite band, a secret only I knew.  It was much to my surprise when the album was properly released a few months later, hearing a number of subtle mixing differences, the literal lack of two complete tracks (one of them my favorite of the album!) and the album opening with “Fight Test” instead of the obvious “Do You Realize”.  Even more surprising, I have found very few Flaming Lips fans who even remember this leak, let alone the specifics of it.  In this sense, this Album That Never Was is very different from the rest, which usually tries to rely on confirmable data and primary sources; here, you’ll just have to take my word for it!  

In reconstructing this original version of Yoshimi, we will generally use the final album mixes, since they are the most refined; my memory states that it was not the final mixes I originally heard in the Spring of 2002, although those specific mix differences I no longer are able to recall.  Here I am crossfading the songs as I recall hearing them.  We will also be using some selections from the stealthly-released One More Robot promo CD, which was former-drummer Kliph Scurlock’s compilation of alternate and early mixes of the Yoshimi album (which partly replicates this early version I have reconstructed!).  It is of note that an idisyncracity of the original leaked pre-master was that 1) the synth intro to “One More Robot” was presented as its own, short track and 2) the ending of “One More Robot” (the “Sympathy 3000-21” segment) was cut-off abruptly.  I have always thought this was a double-mastering error, and here I present my own “fix”, what I believe was originally intended: “One More Robot” and its outro “Sympathy 3000-21” are simply presented as their own separate tracks. 

The album begins with “Do You Realize”, truly one of the greatest pop songs of the 2000s, here as a slightly different mastering found on the One More Robot CD.  This is then followed by “Are You a Hypnotist” from the original album master, which was actually the second track of the album before being unfairly pushed forward to the last third of the proper release; this is a much better place for it!  Following are both parts of “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots” from the original album, that directly crossfades into the audience introduction to “Funeral In My Head” (taken from the One More Robot promo CD), one of the songs dropped from the album entirely and released as a b-side to the “Do You Realize” single.  This is followed by “Up Above The Daily Hum”, another song dropped from the album and relinquished to b-side territory, taken from the Do You Realize CD single.  

“Fight Test” begins the second half of the album (rather than the first on the proper release), segueing into “One More Robot”, both taken from the original album.  As aforementioned, “Sympathy 3000-21” is made into its own track, although we are using the full version, rather than the leak which cuts out early.  Next is “Ego Tripping at The Gates of Hell”, mostly occupying the middle-album as the final version of the album, here an alternate master taken from One More Robot.  Following is the epic “In The Mourning of The Magicians”, here placed much later in the album (before moved up to take the space vacated by “Funeral In My Head”); since the original version had the cold synth intro without the audience noise from “Yoshimi Part 2”, here we use the version from One More Robot with a clean intro!  This is followed by the extended version of “It’s Summertime”, also taken from One More Robot.  Closing out both iterations of the album are “All We Have is Now” and “Approaching Pavis Mons by Balloon”, both taken from the original Yoshimi master.  

How does this version compare with what was finally released?  First off, this version of the album is LONG.  Up until that point, most Flaming Lips albums spanned 12 songs over 45 minutes or so; this is a fourteen track album spanning nearly an hour!  Although I rued the decision to cut the album down to a more standard length, I understood why it was done, and even agreed about the songs cut.  Also, the sequence of the first half of the album creates a more meandering yet epic feel to the album; it’s final release seems more direct, and makes more sense if it was to be considered a concept record (which I never believed it was in the first place!).  Either way, here is a new and interesting way to listen to Yoshimi, unheard for twenty years!  

Sources used:

• Do You Realize (2002 CD single)
• Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (original 2002 CD master)
• One More Robot (2012 promo CD)

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Bob Dylan - Songs For Dwarf Music

(soniclovenoize stereo Basement Tapes reconstruction)

JUNE 2024 UPGRADE

Side A:

1.  Million Dollar Bash

2.  Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread

3.  Please Mrs. Henry

4.  Crash on The Levee

5.  Lo and Behold!

6.  Tiny Montgomery

7.  This Wheels On Fire

Side B:

8.  You Ain't Going Nowhere

9.  I Shall Be Released

10.  Too Much of Nothing

11.  Tears of Rage

12.  Quinn The Eskimo

13.  Open The Door, Homer

14.  Nothing Was Delivered

This upgrade is an explicitly stereo reconstruction of the 14-song acetate compiled in January 1968 of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes recordings for his music publishing company, Dwarf Music.  Intended for distribution to recording industry insiders in order to shop the songs around for other artists to cover, it was this acetate that was used to create the very first bootleg album, Great White Wonder.  Many believe this specific collection is the closest official word to a vintage, proper Dylan album compiled from the 1967 Basement Tapes recordings.  While the pristine mono master of Garth Hudson’s original fourteen-song acetate was released as a vinyl-only RSD exclusive in 2015, this reconstruction attempts to make an exclusively stereo version of Hudson’s master.  Sourced from the bootlegged two-track masters leaked on several bootlegs and mixed with modern techniques, we are able to make a centralized stereo mix with Dylan’s vocal centered, the bass panned to the right and the keyboards and backing vocals panned left.  

Infamously concluding his electric, amphetamine-fueled 1966 World Tour with a “debilitating” motorcycle accident, Bob Dylan was left to retire from the public eye and become the family-man he allegedly always wanted to be.  But his old desire to make music eventually crept in, which amounted to Dylan placing phone calls systematically to the members of The Hawks, his backing band for his previous tour.  Being on retainer, Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel—whom themselves were thinking about regrouping and renaming their own outfit into The Band—arrived to Dylan’s Woodstock home in the summer of 1967 and began simply jamming to old country, gospel and traditional standards while the world around them snacked on psychedelic pop.  Hudson recorded the highlights of the proceedings for posterity to two-track tape and the quintet quickly amassed a pile of reels, unsure exactly what to do with them.  The Basement Tapes were born.

But without a new Dylan album or tour on the horizon, manager Albert Grossman needed new product.  Thus the gears eventually shifted and the daily basement jams evolved into demo sessions for new Dylan compositions, intended to be sold to other artists.  Even though Dylan tailor-wrote each serious original for a specific artist, his originals were very different during this period, informed by the structure of the folk standards the quintet had jammed on during the previous months.  Dylan’s lyrics were paired down from the verbose poetics of Blonde on Blonde to be concise, with every singular line being important and justified; many songs became structurally and even thematically similar to sea shanties and drinking songs.  But the most notable characteristics are the full band arrangements, which often included: Dylan’s 12-string acoustic guitar and idiosyncratic voice; Rick Danko’s electric bass keeping the rhythm in Levon Helm's absence, reminiscent of Sun Records' drumless recordings; Richard Manuel’s piano keeping the backbone with Dylan’s acoustic; only Robbie Robertson’s tasteful electric lead guitar and Garth Hudson’s celestial electric organ remained from the previous year’s 'wild mercury sound’.  Remarkably, some of Bob Dylan’s most cherished songs spawned from these sessions and the Basement Tapes set the standard for Dylan’s concise songwriting method and style for his following albums, from John Wesley Harding up to Planet Waves. 

The first collection of demos was compiled by Hudson (who was acting as impromptu producer) in October 1967, a set of ten songs from Reels 8 & 9, sequenced in the order they were recorded (although “Tiny Montgomery” from Reel 4 was stuck in-between): Million Dollar Bash / Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread / Please Mrs. Henry / Crash on the Levee / Lo and Behold! / Tiny Montgomery / This Wheel’s On Fire / You Ain’t Going Nowhere / I Shall Be Released / Too Much of Nothing.  It was this original tape that secured the initial covers of the Basement Tapes material, including Flatt & Scruggs take on “Crash on the Levee”, Brian Auger & The Trinity’s take on “This Wheel’s On Fire”, The Byrds take on “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” and Peter, Paul & Mary’s take on “Too Much of Nothing.”

With The Byrds and Peter, Paul & Mary charting with Dylan originals, Albert Grossman asked for more songs.  A second, five-song tape was compiled in January 1968 with the best songs from Reels 10 & 13 that included: Tears of Rage / Quinn The Eskimo / Open The Door, Homer / Nothing Was Delivered / Get Your Rocks Off.  Eventually the final song was dropped, and the remaining four songs were tagged onto the end of the previous 10-song reel, creating the final 14-song acetate that lead to Manfred Mann’s take on “Quinn The Eskimo” charting as well as The Byrds take on “Nothing Was Delivered”.  It was this 14-song configuration that made the most rounds in the inner circles, arriving not only in the hands of both music industry professionals and curious musicians, but in the hands of Jann Wenner who famously published an article about the great unreleased Bob Dylan album in Rolling Stone.   It also arrived in the hands of Ken and Dub who pressed their own  vinyl run of the material (coupled with recordings from 1961) and sold their wares under-the-counter to drooling Dylan fans starving for the originals of his currently-charting originals otherwise were unavailable to the general public.  Eventually dubbed The Great White Wonder, this was the first bootleg record. 

The mythology of The Basement Tapes grew throughout the 60s and 70s, largely due to the notoriety of those specific Dylan songs he never released, Wenner’s Rolling Stone article and the emergence of bootleg recordings.  Meeting the demands for an official document of the Basement Tapes recordings, Robbie Robertson with Levon Helm (who did not appear in the Basement Tapes sessions until the 14-song acetate was completed) compiled and then overdubbed a double album of the recordings in 1975.  While a great listen, the inherent faults of the album (anachronistic overdubs, poor sound quality of some source material, inclusions of unrelated Band material, exclusion of “I Shall Be Released” and “Quinn the Eskimo”) did not quench many Dylan fans’ thirst for the vintage Basement Tapes recordings.  Since then, a number of bootlegs including A Tree With Roots and The Genuine Basement Tapes offered a more vintage anthology of the available material.  Both sets were finally trumped by the official 6-CD box set The Bootleg Series vol 11: The Basement Tapes Complete, remastered (mostly) from the master reels, presented as a rather limited stereophonic mix with the vocal track panned at two-o-clock and the remaining track panned at eighto-clock.  The epic box set was everything a Basement Tapes aficionado would desire, but it lacked one thing: a remastered reproduction of that original fourteen-song acetate for Dwarf Music, the recording that started it all, what many Dylan fans believe is the true missing Dylan album from 1967. 

While I originally made a mono reconstruction of Hudson’s 14-song master for my blog in March of 2015–a facsimile based upon John Peel’s own copy as reference–I was soon trumped by the man himself, who released Hudson’s original mono master in all it’s analog glory, as an exclusive vinyl-only release for Record Store Day a month later!  For the last nine years, that released version had been my go-to cut of the material; but I wondered, although it was clearly meant to be in mono, was it possible to make a more modern stereo mix of this exact historical compilation?  It was a cumbersome task, as all of the tapes were tracked live to two-track tape, with Dylan’s acoustic and vocal in one track and all of the remaining instruments in the other track!  That end result, if mixed to stereo directly, is a difficult listen akin to the awkward mixes of early Beatles albums in which the vocals are trapped in one channel and instruments in the other.  

Regardless, I set out to make a more blanched stereo mix utilizing some more modern mixing techniques.  First and foremost, we will take the “utility” track that contains everything but the vocals, and split the bass frequencies into its own track.  Panning that to the right and the remaining frequencies to the left, we are able to make a stereo soundstage which could allow the vocals to be centered; but more importantly, in separating the bass frequencies and rebalancing the track, we are able to reveal and appreciate some of the intricacies that were otherwise overshadowed by Danko’s bass.  Particularly, Manuel’s piano now jumps out and Hudson’s magical organ becomes a near duet with Dylan’s vocal–not unlike his “Electric Trilogy” of albums!  An effect of the way I have created this soundstage is that the recordings are no longer bass-driven, as Danko’s bass is now balanced appropriately with either Manuel’s piano or Hudson’s organ.  This becomes a new way to listen to this album.  

Additionally, we are able to not only center Dylan’s vocal, but here we use a reverb plugin that uses an AI algorithm to sample and emulate specific room interiors, to replicate the unique reverb featured on Dylan’s vocals throughout the session (most likely the spring reverb on their PA).  Thus we are able to create a stereo spread of this reverb, giving these mixes more space and atmosphere, as well as more treble information to be coupled with the bass for the right channel.  

What songs should be included?  Luckily there is a lot of documentation that clarifies which takes were used and in what order, and we will follow that template (for better or for worse).  Side A of my reconstruction begins with take 2 of “Million Dollar Bash”, followed by take 2 of “Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread”, “Please Mrs. Henry”, take 2 of “Crash on the Levee”, take 2 of “Lo and Behold!”, “Tiny Montgomery” and “This Wheel’s On Fire”.  Side B begins with take 2 of “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” followed by take 2 of “I Shall Be Released”.  Take 1 of “Too Much of Nothing” was used on the acetate (as opposed to take 2 featured and overdubbed on the 1975 Basement Tapes album) and Peter, Paul and Mary’s cover version logically reflects that arrangement.  Likewise, take 1 of “Tears of Rage” (as opposed to take 3 on the 1975 Basement Tapes album) and take 1 of “Quinn The Eskimo” (as opposed to the superior take 2 on Biograph and The Essential Bob Dylan) were both featured on the original acetate.  This reconstruction concludes with takes 1 of “Open The Door, Homer” and (regrettably) take 1 of “Nothing Was Delivered”.  While I don’t totally agree on these take selections (notably for “Nothing Was Delivered” and “Quinn The Eskimo”) we will concede to present an accurate artifact. 

Sources used:

A Tree With Roots

The Genuine Basement Tapes

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Pink Floyd – The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes

(soniclovenoize “The Man & The Journey” studio reconstruction)

October 2024 Upgrade

Side A:

1.  Daybreak, Pt 1

2.  Work

3.  Afternoon

4.  Doing It!

5.  Sleeping

6.  Nightmare

7.  Daybreak, Pt 2

Side B:

8.  The Beginning

9.  Beset By Creatures of the Deep

10.  The Narrow Way

11.  The Pink Jungle

12.  The Labyrinths of Auximenes

13.  Behold The Temple of Light

14.  The End of The Beginning

After long last, this is an upgrade to a studio reconstruction of the never-recorded experimental performance piece of “The Man and The Journey”, often titled The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes.  This reconstruction attempts to present a version of the performance that would have taken the place of the More soundtrack and Ummagumma album, only utilizing studio recordings and condensing the performance down to two sides of a vinyl album.  This upgrade changes two aspects I thought were missing from my previous versions of this reconstruction: 1) each side is more concise, spanning 20-minutes each, and 2) I have utilized and manipulated vintage-era sound effects from the EMI library to replicate the Azimuth Coordinator from the original The Man and The Journey performances, what I feel is essential for the full listening experience of these theoretical recordings.  I have also used some slightly different song choices to replicate the final fourth of the album.  And finally, this reconstruction is meant to co-exist and complement my previous 1969 Pink Floyd re-imagination, Vantage Point.  

Musical soul-searching was the predominant mindset in 1969 for Pink Floyd.  The previous year had seen the band attempt to mimic their former bandleader’s singles-oriented approach to psyche-pop with their second release A Saucerful of Secrets as well as the single releases “It Would Be So Nice” and “Point Me At the Sky”.  While both singles failed to make any significant chart impact, it was actually the latter’s instrumental b-side “Careful With That Axe Eugene” that garnished some underground FM-radio play, prompting the band to make it a live staple.  Following the cues of their audience’s reaction to the one-off track, Pink Floyd switched gears and focused on what the remaining four members could do the best without Syd Barrett: sprawling, experimental psychedelic jams. 

The perfect opportunity to test these waters came in February 1969, recording the soundtrack for the film More at Pyre Studios in London.  For several months, the band tracked a few songs and a number of musical themes for director Barbet Schroeder that ranged from Pink Floyd’s typical space rock to pastoral ballads, from exotic influences to even proto-metal hard rock.  The soundtrack album was released in June and while not a critical nor commercial success, several of the album’s highlights were added to their current set, including “Green is The Colour” and “Cymbaline”.  But More was not all; by then Pink Floyd had also been working on their own proper follow-up to A Saucerful of Secrets. 

That Spring, each member of Pink Floyd entered Abbey Road studios alone to record solo material, intended to be collected together as the next Pink Floyd album.  Although Nick Mason and Richard Wright’s material was largely instrumental and experimental, Roger Water’s and David Gilmour’s material each featured a song that had already been performed live with the full band, “Grantchester Meadows” and “The Narrow Way”.  Paired with exquisite live recordings from The Mothers Club on April 27th and the Manchester College of Commerce on May 2nd, Ummagumma was released in October and cemented Pink Floyd’s status as a cult band, prepared to push rock’s envelope, even without hit singles.

While both More and Ummagumma tell a story of Pink Floyd’s progress in 1969, it is not the complete story.  With new and original material spread across two separate albums essentially recorded simultaneously, as well as another two albums-worth of material in their back pocket, the band pondered how to present the material in a cohesive live setting beyond the typical rock band performance.  Choosing to cull the highlights from both projects as well as their favorite instrumental jams from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets (as well as the b-side that was the catalyst for it all), Pink Floyd designed a series of performances from April to June, sometimes entitled The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes but usually titled “The Man and The Journey”. 

“The Man & The Journey” was arranged as two 40-minute movements, and utilized the newly-built Azimuth Coordinator, a primitive incarnation of a surround sound system which played pre-recorded samples meant to fit into the performances itself.  The first set—called “The Man”—seemed to follow the events of a typical person throughout his mundane, British, post-Industrial life.  The set included the members of Pink Floyd actually building a table on-stage (to represent ‘Work’) and being served tea (to represent ‘Teatime’).  The concept, as explained by Gilmour, was inspired by graffiti near Paddington Station, which said “Get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, [repeated]... How much longer can you keep this up?  How much longer before you crack?”

The concept of the second set is less clearly defined and seemed to be largely instrumental and improvisational.  Called “The Journey”, sketches from the performances’ playbill—and even the songs themselves—seem to suggest the piece follows a pilgrim’s quest.  A member of Pink Floyd’s crew even appeared in a sea creature’s costume, moving through the audience and appearing on-stage near the end of the set.  Is there some greater meaning or metaphor beyond this?  Is this the Man’s own spiritual journey through existence?  Knowing Pink Floyd’s conceptual pretensions, that very well might be the case. But Pink Floyd has never given any hints of what the journey nor its prize was, the task apparently left to the imaginations of the listeners.  My own interpretation is that “The Journey” is the evolution of agricultural mankind into industrial mankind, the quest for knowledge and technology; while there isn’t an actual Greek name Auximines, it could be stemmed from the Latin auxiliāris (to help) and the first pharaoh of Egypt, Menes (whose name translates to “he who endures”), literally a metaphor for the king (of humanity) who is assisted by gadgets (our technology) as he endures (history). 

After two seasons of performances of “The Man & The Journey” which concluded with a final performance in Amsterdam on September 17th professionally recorded by VPRO Radio, Pink Floyd retired the conceptual pieces in time for Ummagumma’s release in October.  Unfortunately, the music assembled as “The Man & The Journey” was never formally recorded in the studio, suggesting that it was simply a way for the band to present the disparaging More and Ummagumma material in a live setting, rather than “The Man & The Journey” being the true genesis of either albums.  But is there a way to construct a studio version of “The Man & The Journey”, to condense and create some sort of conceptual order to Pink Floyd’s 1969 output? 

For my newest iteration of “The Man & The Journey” will have several guidelines:  

1) We will only use 1969-era studio recordings of Pink Floyd.  This will exclude both live material and anything after 1969.  The problem that arises from this rule is that some of these pieces (“Work” and “Behold The Temple of Light”, for example) were never properly recorded by Pink Floyd.  The solution to this is… 

2) We will substitute some unavailable tracks for other similar ones, assuming they are still from this same era.  Likewise we will try to avoid using previously-released tracks (“Pow R Toc H” or any section of “A Saucerful of Secrets”, for example) so that this album reconstruction can fit into any continuity you desire.  Note that this iteration once again uses slightly different songs to replicate the final fourth of the album.  

3) Although my previous iterations had 24-minute side lengths, I have trimmed the sides down to a more concise 20-minutes each.  This keeps the album moving and becomes a much tighter listen, something I enjoyed much more over my previous versions, which sort of dragged.  

4) After a lot of soul-searching, I have decided that the Azimuth Coordinator is an essential part of this album.  Here I have used a lossless rip of some of the actual EMI sound effects library.  This would have been the same recordings actually used by the band to create the relevant sound effects originally heard in 1969, although often heavily manipulated.  

Side A–The Man–begins with my own personal “short” edit of “Grantchester Meadows” as “Daybreak”.  This edit significantly cuts the intro, solo and outro, making the song just over four minutes in length.  This is followed by a train whistle from the EMI sound effects library slowed down to sound like a factory steam whistle–what I am fairly sure Pink Floyd actually did for their performances–then goes to “Work” (since this musical piece was never recorded by Pink Floyd, we will use a similar-sounding track, “Sysyphus Part III” from Ummagumma).  In this iteration, I chose to use a fragment of “The Narrow Way I” (aka “Baby Blue Shuffle in D Major”) to represent “Tea Time”, and acting as an outro to the song.  “Afternoon” follows (“Biding My Time” from Relics), as well as the track “Doing It!” meant to represent sexual intercourse (often a Nick Mason drum solo, Pink Floyd often used either “Up the Khyber”, “Syncopated Pandemonium” or “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party (Entertainment)” for this; here I use the later from Ummagumma).  Next the Man falls asleep (using a new short edit of “Quicksilver” from More) and slips into a “Nightmare” (as represented by “Cymbaline” also from More).  The side concludes with the Man waking from his dream to the next day’s “Daybreak” (a short edit of "Grantchester Meadows") and the sound effect of an alarm clock from the EMI effects library.  

Sources Used:

Relics (1996 remaster)

Soundtrack to the Film ‘More’ (2011 remaster)

Ummagumma (2011 remaster)

EMI Productions - Sound Effects (1970)

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

*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

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