The Rolling Stones - Some More Girls (1978)

A few years ago a 5CD bootleg started to circulate which consisted of over 70 out-takes from the 'Some Girls' recording sessions of 1977 and 1978. As is usual on collections like this, the quality of the songs varied considerably, with some being almost finished takes and others being little more than repeated guitar riffs and improvised vocals, and it also included many alternate takes of the songs that eventually ended up on the 'Some Girls' album. The sound quality also varied between well-produced final takes and very basically-recorded demos, and after listening to the whole thing a couple of times I managed to find ten reasonably complete, otherwise unreleased, songs that I felt were worth hearing. Where the sound was a bit thin I've boosted the bass to try to match the better-produced recordings, and I've also done a bit of post-production on the beginnings and endings of the some of the tracks, fixing fade-ins which sounded odd, and smoothing out the endings where the recording ended suddenly. Hopefully that's all resulted in an album that doesn't just sound like a load of off-cuts, but holds together as a credible companion to the 'Some Girls' release. Many fans regard that record as a real return to form for the band, and consider it to be their best album since 'Exile On Main Street', so logically you'd expect the out-takes to be of a similar quality, and they are.  

UPDATE - After I first posted this album, there were a few comments on it which mentioned the similar bonus tracks on the 2011 Deluxe re-issue of 'Some Girls', and when I put this album together from the bootleg CD the original plan was to use the raw alternate versions of the songs and try to clean them up sufficiently to make a reasonable companion to the original release, which was why I also kept the titles given to them by the bootleggers. However, despite my best efforts, I have to admit that the versions on the 'Some Girls' bonus disc are definitely the best quality takes of the songs (for instance, Jagger doesn't sound drunk on the opening line of 'You Win Again'!), so in order to make this an even better listening experience I've upgraded it so that where a song from this album was on the bonus disc I've replaced it with that version, and I've also sourced what I think is a better take of 'Everlasting Is My Love' to upgrade that as well. I haven't used all of the bonus disc tracks, as I didn't feel that a couple of them quite fitted in, and 'We Had It All' was actually recorded two years later, in 1979. Both 'So Young' and 'No Spare Parts' were released as singles following the 2011 re-issue, so I've left them off as well, although I have included the full six-minute version of 'No Spare Parts' from the bootleg CD as that is a significantly different recording. So what we now have is a much more complete collection of the 'Some Girls' out-takes, all in the best quality available. 

Track listing

01 Claudine

02 I Love You Too Much

03 You Win Again

04 Do You Think I Really Care

05 Don't Be A Stranger

06 Everlasting Is My Love

07 Hang Fire

08 The Way She Held Me Tight

09 When You're Gone

10 No Spare Parts

11 Keep Up Blues

12 Fiji Jim