Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Jimmy Webb (1974)

Although 'Sunshower' is considered to be the debut album of Thelma Houston, released in 1969 on Dunhill Records, it could also be classed as a Jimmy Webb album with Thelma Houston as the featured vocalist. It was all written by Webb, apart from a cover of 'Jumpin' Jack Flash', and was also produced and arranged by him, and it charted at number 50 on the Billboard R&B chart. By 1969 Webb had already established himself as one of the best songwriters of the late 60's, with such classic songs as 'By The Time I Get To Phoenix', 'Galveston', 'Wichita Lineman' and 'MacArthur Park' providing massive hits for Glen Campbell and Richard Harris. By 1969 Webb was looking to start a career as a singer/songwriter, but it didn't get off to a very good start when a set of early demo recordings were redubbed and orchestrated by Epic Records without Webb's participation or consent, and released as the 'Jim Webb Sings Jim Webb' album in 1968. None of Webb's hit songs from that period appear on the album, and the sound quality of the recording is distinctly inferior, with Webb later denouncing the release in the strongest terms. He followed this debacle by writing, arranging, and producing Thelma Houston's first album, 'Sunshower', which produced four singles: 'Everybody Gets To Go To The Moon', 'Sunshower', 'If This Was The Last Song' and 'Jumpin' Jack Flash'. The songs were up to his usual high standard, and so it's no surprise that within a year nearly all of them had been covered by other artists, with Frank Sinatra choosing to include his version of 'Didn't We' on his 'My Way' album, released the same year as 'Sunshower'. By 1974 every single Webb song from the album had been added to another artists records, and so here are the best of them, offering an alternate look at Thelma Houston's debut album, without Thelma Houston appearing on it.   

Track listing

01 Sunshower (Affinity 1972)
02 Everybody Gets To Go To The Moon (Judy Singh 1970)
03 To Make It Easier On You (Nancy Wilson 1974)
04 Didn't We (Frank Sinatra 1969)
05 Mixed-Up Girl (Dusty Springfield 1972)
06 Someone Is Standing Outside (The Fortunes 1970)
07 This Is Where I Came In (Richard Harris 1971) 
08 Pocketful Of Keys (Revelation 1970)
09 This Is Your Life (The 5th Dimension 1970)
10 Cheap Lovin' (The Supremes 1972)
11 If This Was The Last Song (Bill Medley 1970)

Protocol - Rules Of Engagement (2006)

Protocol were a British pop group, who were formed in 2005 by John Pritchard on lead vocals, James McMaster on guitar, Steven Oates on bass, David Malik on keyboards/synthesizers, and Dominic Joseph on drums. The five-piece had been honing their craft since meeting four years earlier, and ran their own club night, Vanity, in London. The quickly signed to Polydor records, and released two singles in 2006, 'She Waits For Me' and 'Where's The Pleasure?'. They also toured with New Order, Fisherspooner, The Bravery, and Hard-Fi, and played the Wireless and V Festivals. They recorded their debut album for the label, and promo copies were sent out, but in April 2006 they were dropped from the label and the release of the album was cancelled. Despite this double catastrophe, they continued to tour before splitting up later that year. Joseph went on to DJ and co-produce in Electro Duo Leatherhead, supporting Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers and Pete Tong, but the band's work on their long-playing debut has remained largely unheard, so here is what would have been Protocol's first album. 

Track listing

01 Love Is My Drug
02 She Waits For Me
03 Burning Up
04 Where's The Pleasure
05 Needed
06 Those Things I Do
07 We Both Hurt The Same
08 Don't Make Me Jealous
09 Headaches & Heartbreaks
10 Cover Over You
11 Beautiful Girlfriend
12 Deborah
13 Hot Under The Collar
14 Sorry

Puressence - Think Of The Times (2008)

James Mudriczki, Neil McDonald, Anthony Szuminski and Kevin Matthews met on a bus on their way to watch The Stone Roses play at Spike Island, and after watching The Stone Roses' Gary Mounfield play bass, Matthews bought himself a bass guitar. The rest of the members followed suit and bought the necessary equipment to form a band, although they had little to no musical experience or training, with only McDonald having played the guitar for a number of years, being heavily influenced by Eddie Van Halen. The other members soon caught up, and they decided on the name Puressence, a name which was soon well known around Manchester following paper letters spelling the band's name being plastered around Manchester city centre, on derelict buildings, and on bridges. They quickly signed to 2 Damn Loud Records, who released two singles, the 'Petrol Skin' EP in 1992 and 'Offshore' in 1993, and this brought them to the attention of Rough Trade, who included their 'Scapa Flow'/'Siamese' single in their 7" Singles Club series. Over the next few years they played a series of gigs at Manchester's In The City festival, and their big breakthrough came a couple of years later, when they signed to Island Records in 1995. Their first single for the new label was the U2-inspired 'I Suppose', and their self-titled debut album appeared the following year, drawing favorable comparisons to Radiohead's work on 'The Bends'. Despite this positive reaction, it seemed that the U.K. record-buying public preferred hometown giants Oasis' '(What's the Story) Morning Glory?', and sales were disappointing. With its lighter, pop focused sound, 1998's 'Only Forever' yielded the band's first U.K. top 40 single, with the Who-inspired 'This Feeling', and following that year's acquisition of Island by Universal, the label continued to show faith in Puressence, eventually releasing the ambitious 'Planet Helpless' in October 2002, despite many other similar acts being stripped from their roster. However, 2003 saw the band part company with the label and their manager, as well as with McDonald, who went on to form the Editors-influenced local act Juno Ashes, and a fan of the band, Lowell Killen, was brought in to replace him on guitar. 

The next few years saw only sporadic live appearances from the group, and rumours that they had split were starting to surface when they returned with the 'Pallisades' single on Manchester's Reaction Records in 2006, followed by the 'Don't Forget To Remember' album in September 2007. Recorded at Manchester's Revolution Studios, the album failed to take root on home soil, but helped to spread the word further afield, and the accompanying tour took in their first U.S. dates, and built on the earlier success of 'Planet Helpless' in Greece, where the album placed them back into the Top Ten of the Greek album charts. The retrospective 'Sharpen Up The Knives' arrived in October 2009, prior to the band's biggest ever U.K. headlining gig in front of 3,500 fans at the Manchester Apollo. In October 2010 the band's website announced details of a new album, 'Solid State Recital', which was released on 21 April 2011, but a couple years later, in November 2013, Puressence announced that they had split up. In November 2023, 10 years after their split, the band announced on their Facebook page that their first concert in 11 years will take place in their hometown of Manchester, and they played the Albert Hall last Saturday, 29 June, so now is the perfect time to remember one of the many under-appreciated bands from the early 90's who didn't fit into the Brit-pop obsession of the time, and so didn't achieve the success that they deserved. Over their career they gifted many non-albums songs to their fans on the b-sides of their singles, and so this three disc set collects them all together, along with those rare early singles, for a reminder of what an under-rated band they were.  

Track listing

Disc I: 1992-1995
01 Telekinesis (from the 'Petrol Skin' EP 1992)
02 Suck The Knife (from the 'Petrol Skin' EP 1992)
03 Polystyrene Snow (from the 'Petrol Skin' EP 1992)
04 Petrol Skin (from the 'Petrol Skin' EP 1992)
05 Siamese (Rough Trade Singles Club 7" 1992)
06 Scapa Flow (b-side of 'Siamese')
07 Offshore (single 1993)
08 None Handed (demo) (b-side of 'Offshore')
09 Mist (b-side of 'Offshore')
10 Let It All Go (b-side of 'I Suppose' 1995)
11 Free Fall (b-side of 'I Suppose' 1995)

Disc II: 1995-1998
01 Allstar (b-side of 'Fire' 1995)
02 Gutter Girl (b-side of 'India' 1996)
03 Let Down (b-side of 'India' 1996)
04 A Different Sand (b-side of 'Traffic Jam In Memory Lane' 1996)
05 Sick Of Waiting (b-side of 'Traffic Jam In Memory Lane' 1996)
06 Half The Way You Were (b-side of 'Casting Lazy Shadows' 1996)
07 Fifteen Years (b-side of 'Casting Lazy Shadows' 1996)
08 Think Of The Times (b-side of 'This Feeling' 1998)
09 Walk On By (b-side of 'This Feeling' 1998)
10 Northern Framing Company (b-side of 'This Feeling' 1998)
11 London In The Rain (b-side of 'This Feeling' 1998)
12 Along The Sure (b-side of 'All I Want' 1998)

Disc III: 1998-2008
01 Another Day Another Night (b-side of 'It Doesn't Matter Anymore' 1998)
02 Take A Ride (b-side of 'It Doesn't Matter Anymore' 1998)
03 The Drone (b-side of 'It Doesn't Matter Anymore' 1998)
04 Deathtrap (b-side of 'It Doesn't Matter Anymore' 1998)
05 Moss Side Lonely (b-side of 'Walking Dead' 2002)
06 Only Holy Maybe (b-side of 'Walking Dead' 2002)
07 Emotion (b-side of 'Walking Dead' 2002)
08 Where There's A Will There's No Way (b-side of 'Drop Down To Earth' 2007)
09 Eyes Are Streaming (b-side of 'Drop Down To Earth' 2007)
10 April In July (b-side of 'Drop Down To Earth' 2007)
11 3rd Degree (b-side of 'Drop Down To Earth' 2007)
12 Sold Unseen (b-side of 'Don't Know Any Better' 2008)
13 Bright Eyes (b-side of 'Don't Know Any Better' 2008)
14 You've Already Said Goodbye (b-side of 'Don't Know Any Better' 2008)

Thanks to jman for the suggestion.

Ciara - One Woman Army (2012)

Following the release of the truncated 'Fantasy Ride' album in 2009, Ciara bagged the support spot for Britney Spears's Circus tour, where she performed eight nights at London's prestigious O2 Arena during June 2009. Her performance received rave reviews from critics and fans alike, who noted her dancing skills as being spectacular, and arguably better than Spears'. After a couple of collaborations in 2010, on Nelly's single 'Stepped On My J'z', Enrique Iglesias' 'Takin' Back My Love', and 'How Long' by Ludacris, she released her fourth studio album, 'Basic Instinct', on 14 December 2010. It was executive-produced by the singer, alongside her A&R agent Mark Pitts and writing/production duo Tricky Stewart and The-Dream. and debuted at number forty-four on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, becoming her first album to not peak within the top three. Three singles were released from the record, but neither 'Ride', 'Speechless', nor 'Gimmie Dat' managed to break the Billboard Top 40. In February 2011, following rumours that Ciara had been dropped by Jive Records, she released an official statement to her Facebook page complaining of inadequate promotion and funding from the label, and after asking to be released from her contract, she was removed from the Jive Records website roster in May 2011. 

Two months later she'd reunited with L.A. Reid by signing with his record label Epic Records, and work began on her fifth album. During a press conference with MTV in May 2012, she announced her fifth studio album would be titled 'One Woman Army' and said the lead single, 'Sweat', would be out very soon. The single premiered online on 4 June 2012, but just before it was due to be released via iTunes it was scrapped, for unknown reasons. By August, the official lead single for the album had changed to 'Sorry', which was released in September, and just scraped into the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip Hop Top 40. 'Got Me Good' was released as the second single from the album, but nothing more was heard about it until April 2013, when it was announced that it would no longer be called 'One Woman Army', and that the new title was 'Ciara'. Due to their low performance on the charts, the label decided not to include 'Sweat', 'Sorry', or 'Got Me Good' on the tracklist, and with these changes it became a completely different record to the one announced in 2012. 'Ciara' was released in July 2013, and debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 59,000 copies in the U.S. Many of the songs which were recorded for 'One Man Army' and which were left off 'Ciara' have since surfaced, and so we can add them to those three abandoned singles and come up with a pretty good alternate fifth album for the signer, so here is the scrapped 'One Woman Army' from 2012. 

Track listing 

 
01 One Woman Army Intro
02 Wake Up, Turn Up (feat. Future)
03 Sweat (feat. 2 Chainz)
04 Got Me Good 
05 Sorry
06 Boy Outta Here (feat. Rick Ross)
07 Backseat Love
08 One Night With You
09 Livin' It Up
10 Overdose
11 One Woman Army
12 Sorry (Part 2) (feat. Future)

Kanye West - Good Ass Job (2008)

In 2003, before 'The College Dropout' had even been released, Kanye West announced his intention to release a series of four albums as part of a tetralogy. These albums were to be thematically linked, reflecting West's journey through the stages of higher education and his subsequent experiences in the music industry. The first three albums in this series, 'The College Dropout', 'Late Registration', and 'Graduation', were released to critical acclaim and commercial success, featuring West's signature blend of soulful samples, thought-provoking lyrics, and innovative production techniques. 'Good Ass Job' was intended to serve as the culmination of West's tetralogy, exploring his growth and development following his metaphorical graduation from the music industry. However, just two months after 'Graduation' was released, his mother, Donda West, passed away in November 2007, due to complications following plastic surgery. West was devastated by the loss of his mother, and to make matters worse, in the spring of 2008, he broke up with his former fiancée, Alexis Phifer, leading to a bout of depression, which coupled with his struggle of adapting to new-found fame, caused him to scrap the concept of 'Good Ass Job' entirely. Instead he worked on a completely different sound, and in November 2008 he released '808s & Heartbreak', after which he began working on new material for his then-upcoming fifth studio album. 

He worked on the record throughout most of 2009, but things took a drastic turn on 13 September, when West walked on stage during Taylor Swift's acceptance of her Best Female Video award at the MTV Video Music Awards, took the microphone from her, and stated that Beyoncé had "one of the best videos of all time". As the crowd booed he handed the microphone back to Swift, shrugged, and walked off. The backlash was immediate and all-encompassing, both from the public, as well as several celebrities, including then-U.S. president Barack Obama, who called Kanye a "jackass". West apologized to Swift on his blog, but the damage had been done and he fell into another deep depression due to the overwhelming hate. After the incident, he decided to take a break from making music altogether and ventured into fashion, but before long he had holed himself up in Honolulu, Hawaii to make new music. He invited several artists to his studio, where they were forced to wear black suits, and to obey a list of rules on the wall, nicknamed the "Kanye Commandments", which set the mood for the upcoming album. In July 2010, West announced on Twitter that the album would no longer be called 'Good Ass Job', and instead it would be titled 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'. That spelled the end for the final record of his tetralogy, resulting in yet another one of his legendary unreleased albums. There are a number of track listings around for it, but most of them use the majority of the tracks that I've included on this post, including the Billy Joel-sampling 'Mama's Boyfriend', and they hang together pretty well, so I'm happy that this is as good a version as any for this particular lost album in the West canon. 

Track listing

01 Shoot Up
02 Hard Horn Nightmare
03 Ghetto University
04 Down Town
05 That's My Bitch
06 Throw Money Everywhere 
07 Hell Of A Life
08 Heartbreaker
09 Mama's Boyfriend
10 Eyes Closed
11 It'll Be Alright
12 Never See Me Again

Jessica Andrews - How Much I Love You (2008)

As I mentioned in my first post from Jessica Andrews, she was unlucky enough to have two albums cancelled when her record labels closed before they could be released, and so here is the second of them, which should have come out on Carolwood Records in 2008. I've had to omit the track 'Settle Down' as the sound quality was completely unlistenable, but it's still a nice 43-minute album so it's not really missed.   

Track listing

01 How Much I Love You   
02 Behind  
03 I Would  
04 Afraid Of My Freedom  
05 What The Whiskey Said  
06 The Clown  
07 Love 
08 Slow And Steady Burn 
09 Fall Like The Rain 
10 Now Or Neverland (with Dave Pahanish) 
11 Did I Make You This Way  
12 Good Time

Phixx - Electrophonic Revolution (2004)

Phixx were an English-Irish boy band formed in 2003 from the five runners=up on British TV show 'Popstars: The Rivals', made up of Andrew Kinlochan, Chris Park, Mikey Green, Peter Smith, and Nikk Mager. In February 2003 they signed to Hyperactive Management, who had previously been successful with Liberty X, and in October they released their first single, 'Hold On Me', on the Concept Records label, which charted at number 10 in the UK. March 2004 saw the release of their second single, 'Love Revolution', which was followed in June by a cover of Duran Duran's 'Wild Boys'. During the release week, one version of the single was disqualified from the chart for being a few seconds too long, so the single dropped from the midweek chart position of 9 to number 23, but an appeal was made to the chart regulators and both versions were eventually counted, giving a final position of number 12. Just after the release of 'Wild Boys', Peter Smith announced he was leaving to pursue a solo career, and to give him more time to write music. In autumn 2004, Phixx toured South Africa, where they were already popular, and they released their debut album, 'Electrophonic Revolution', becoming the best-selling album for their South African record company Sheer Music. In December 2004 the band recorded a Christmas song written by Matt Baker for the children's show Blue Peter, and it was made available as a free download from the Blue Peter website in the weeks leading up to Christmas, but it was never released for sale. In January 2005 they released the Judie Tzuke-penned 'Strange Love' as their fourth UK single, but in May Nikk Mager also left the band. They continued to perform around England and Ireland as a three piece, and spent six months in the recording studio, writing and recording new material, but in November 2005, Chris Park announced that the remaining members of Phixx would be breaking up for good in 2006, in order to work on their own solo projects. Because of this their album never received a world-wide release following its success in South Africa, and so the majority of their fans never got to hear it. For anyone with fond memories of Phixx, here is their debut album from 2004, with the addition of three bonus tracks.  

Track listing

01 Hold On Me
02 Love Revolution
03 Wild Boys
04 Strange Love
05 Original Sin
06 Superstar
07 Judgement Day
08 Red Light
09 Relentless
10 Voyeur
11 Temptation
12 Let's Go All The Way
13 City Of Night
14 When I Fall
15 Don't Walk Out
16 Creepin'
17 Synchronised
18 Eyes Wide Open