Al Stewart - Dark Side (1991)

To complete this short series of Al Stewart rarities we have an actual fan-produced album that was put together in 2004, and even though it is composed completely of songs recorded between 1989 and 1991, only one of them has so far appeared on my mopping-up collections. 'Dark Side' and 'Fantasy' are lost demos which were intended for a follow-up to 'Last Days Of The Century', but the Enigma label went bust before it could be completed, while 'Call Of The Wild', 'Waking Years', 'Kirabati', ' I Swam', 'Told You So', 'Long Way Home' and 'Rest In Peace' were all recorded at Peter White's 4 Track Garage Studio in 1990 or 1991, so they could well have been on the cards to be added to 'Dark Side' and 'Fantasy' for a new album. 'Sailing Into The Future' was written by Stewart, Peter Wood and Jim Cregan, and recorded in 1989, while 'Four Of A Kind' was a Peter White tune that Stewart re-worked and recorded the same year. The original disc also included the unreleased 'The World According To Garp', but as we know that this was a '24 Carrots' leftover from 1980, and it's also been included on a previous post, I've removed it so that all these songs were recorded between 1989 and 1991, and could therefore have been intended for that second Enigma album. That concludes this series of Al Stewart posts, which I hope goes some way to introducing him to a listnership that might have written him off as an old hippie folk-singer, when he is actually much, much more than that. 

Track listing

01 Dark Side
02 Sailing Into The Future
03 Call Of The Wild
04 Waking Years
05 Kirabati
06 Fantasy
07 I Swam
08 Told You So
09 Long Way Home
10 Four Of A Kind
11 Rest In Peace

Al Stewart - Helen And Cassandra (1998)

In 1992 Al Stewart followed up his 'Last Days Of The Century' album with his second live release, the acoustic 'Rhymes In Rooms', which featured only Stewart and Peter White, and the same year he self-released a companion album titled 'Live In Rooms', which again featured Peter White, and included an extra CD of live music to 'Rhymes...'. 1993 saw the release of 'Famous Last Words', which was dedicated to the memory of the late Peter Wood, who co-wrote 'Year Of The Cat', and who had died in 1993. After parting ways with Peter White, his longtime collaborator of almost 20 years, Stewart joined up with former Wings guitarist Laurence Juber to record the concept album 'Between The Wars', which was released in 1995, and which covered major historical and cultural events from 1918 to 1939, such as the Treaty of Versailles, Prohibition, the Spanish Civil War, and the Great Depression. In 2000 another concept album appeared, and this time 'Down In The Cellar' was themed around wine, following Stewart's love affair with wine that started in the 70's, when he'd admitted that he had more money than he knew how to spend, and so started investing in fine wines. In 2005 he released 'A Beach Full of Shells', which was another of his 'history' albums, set in places varying from First World War England to the 1950's rock 'n' roll scene that influenced him. This third collection of rarities covers the years from 1977 to 1998, and includes a demo of the 'Last Days Of The Century' instrumental 'Ghostly Horses Of The Plain' but this time including lyrics, a live version of Elvis Costello's 'London's Brilliant Parade/Caroline, Goodbye', his take on the Greek myth of Helen and Cassandra, a live recording of 'John Barleycorn' with Jim Capaldi, and another of his 'history' songs, with 'The Coldest Winter In Memory', referencing the fall of Charles XII of Sweden and the loss of the East Anglian city of Dunwich to the North Sea.  

Track listing

01 Life In A Bottle (previously unreleased 1977)

02 The Hollywood Sign On St. Stephen's Day (previously unreleased 1977)

03 Helen And Cassandra (previously unreleased 1988)
04 Ghostly Horses Of The Plain (with vocal) (previously unreleased 1988)      
05 London's Brilliant Parade / Caroline, Goodbye (previously unreleased live recording 1992)
06 The Coldest Winter In Memory (previously unreleased 1993) 
07 Blow Your Mansion Down (previously unreleased 1993)
08 In The Dark (previously unreleased 1993)
09 Mixed Blessings (previously unreleased 1993)
10 The Bear Farmers Of Birnam (previously unreleased live recording 1995)
11 Curtains (previously unreleased 1997)

12 John Barleycorn (previously unreleased live recording with Jim Capaldi 1998)

Thanks again to Private Beach for the suggestion of more volumes of Stewart rarities.

Al Stewart - Merry Monks (1988)

After the release of 'Modern Times' in 1975, Al Stewart's contract with CBS Records expired, and he signed to RCA Records for the world outside North America, and with Arista in the US. His first album for the new label, 'Year Of The Cat', turned out to be his breakthrough record, and the change in style paved the way for his future releases, with Stewart commenting when he'd finished recording that he thought "If this isn't a hit, then I can't make a hit. We finally got the formula exactly right." He followed 'Year Of The Cat' with 'Time Passages' in 1978, and both albums reached the top ten in the US, with 'Year Of The Cat' peaking at No. 5 and 'Time Passages' at No. 10, and with both albums producing a number of hit singles in the US. In 1980 he released '24 Carrots', and the following year saw his first live album 'Live/Indian Summer', with both featuring backing by Peter White's band Shot In The Dark. Despite '24 Carrots' producing a No. 24 US single with 'Midnight Rocks', it actually sold less well than its two immediate predecessors, so Stewart was dropped by Arista, and his popularity declined. Despite his lower profile and waning commercial success, he continued to tour the world, record albums, and maintained a loyal fanbase, and his next album was the highly political 'Russians And Americans' in 1984, followed after a four-year gap by the upbeat pop-oriented 'Last Days Of The Century' on the small DRO/Enigma labels in 1988. As with his previous recording sessions, extra tracks were left off the finished albums and later turned up on expanded re-issues, although some were still kept hidden, eventually appearing on the 1996 fan-made bootleg 'Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time'. For this second volume of Stewart rarities I've collected the unreleased songs from 1976 to 1988, including an unused demo of the title song for the 1982 Robin Williams film 'The World According To Garp', and two 1988 co-writes with Tori Amos in 'Ten Cents' and 'Dreaming'.   

Track listing

01 Belsize Blues (previously unreleased 1976)
02 The Ringing of Bells (previously unreleased 1980) 
03 Tonton Macoute (previously unreleased 1980)  
04 The World According To Garp (previously unreleased 1982) 
05 Candy Came Back (previously unreleased 1984) 
06 In Red Square (previously unreleased 1984)
07 How Does It Happen (previously unreleased 1984) 
08 Merry Monks (previously unreleased 1988) 
09 Ten Cents (previously unreleased 1988) 
10 Dreaming (previously unreleased 1988) 

Thanks to Private Beach for the suggestion of more volumes of Stewart rarities.

Richard Thompson - ...and on guitar (1971)

Most of the posts in this series cover an artists contributions as guest guitarist over a period of five to ten years, but Richard Thompson was so prolific in his guest slots that this album covers just 1969 to 1971, and this was while he was still a member of Fairport Convention, and also a part of Ashley Hutchins' Morris On project, and The Bunch, who were a group of English folk-rock musicians (including Sandy Denny, Linda Peters and members of Fairport Convention) who recorded a selection of classic rock and roll tunes. He has said that when he left Fairport Convention in 1971 he did a lot of session work as a way of avoiding any serious ideas about a career, but by 1972 he'd released his first solo album 'Henry The Human Fly', and that was the start of a very long and extremely well-respected solo career, which still carries on today.
His first guest spot was to provide guitar on Al Stewart's 'Love Chronicles' album, most notably the lovely solo at the end of 'Life And Life Only', and he also played on Nick Drake's 'Five Leaves Left' and 'Bryter Later' albums, from which I've picked the classic 'Time Has Told Me'. Marc Ellington is a Scottish folksinger and multi-instrumentalist who has guested with Fairport Convention, starting with providing some vocal support on the 'Unhalfbricking' album in 1969, and he also worked with Matthews Southern Comfort on their self-titled album in 1969, and when Ellington recorded his debut album that same year, he asked Thompson to help out guitar, and The Matthews Southern Comfort link carries on with Thompson's contribution to that self-titled album, for which he wrote and played on 'A Commercial Proposition'. By 1970 Gary Farr had left Gary Farr And The T-Bones to embark on a solo career, and Thompson was invited to play guitar on a few tracks from his second album 'Strange Fruit'. The following year he was on hand to assist John Martyn with his 'Bless The Weather' album, and in what was a very busy year for him, his guitar could also be heard on albums by Sandy Denny, Mike Heron, Iain Matthews, Stefan Grossman, Shirley Collins, and the undeservedly overlooked Shelagh McDonald. The one linking factor for most of these artists is that they operate in the genre of British folk music, which is undoubtedly Thompson's great love, and the fact that so many of our respected folk musicians wanted him on their records just shows the high regard in which he was, and still is, held by his peers. 

Track listing

01 Life And Life Only (from 'Love Chronicles' by Al Stewart 1969)
02 Time Has Told Me (from 'Five Leaves Left' by Nick Drake 1969)  
03 Four In The Morning (from 'Marc Ellington' by Marc Ellington 1969)
04 A Commercial Proposition (from 'Matthews Southern Comfort' by Matthews Southern 
                                                                                                                           Comfort 1970)
05 Old Man Moses (from 'Strange Fruit' by Gary Farr 1970) 
06 Sugar Lump (from 'Bless The Weather' by John Martyn 1971)
07 The Sea Captain (from 'The North Star Grassman And The Ravens' by Sandy Denny 1971)
08 Flowers Of The Forest (from 'Smiling Men With Bad Reputations' by Mike Heron 1971)
09 Odyssey (from 'Stargazer' by Shelagh McDonald 1971)
10 Desert Inn (from 'If You Saw Through My Eyes' by Iain Matthews 1971)
11 Blues Jump The Rabbit (from 'Those Pleasant Days' by Stefan Grossman 1971)
12 Poor Murdered Woman (from 'No Roses' by Shirley Collins 1971)

Al Stewart - Elvaston Place (1975)

Although born in Glasgow, Al Stewart grew up in the town of Wimborne, Dorset, after moving from Scotland with his mother. Having bought his first guitar from future Police guitarist Andy Summers, he traded in his electric guitar for an acoustic when he was offered a weekly slot at Bunjies Coffee House in London in 1965, and from there he went on to compere at the Les Cousins folk club on Greek Street, where he played alongside Cat Stevens, Bert Jansch, Van Morrison, Roy Harper, Ralph McTell and Paul Simon, with whom he shared a flat in Stepney. His first record was the single 'The Elf' (backed with a version of The Yardbirds' 'Turn into Earth'), which was released in 1966 on Decca Records, and included guitar work from Jimmy Page. He then signed to Columbia Records (CBS in the UK), and released his debut album 'Bedsitter Images' in 1967, followed in 1969 by 'Love Chronicles', which was notable for the 18-minute title track, and which was voted 'Folk Album of the Year' by the UK music magazine Melody Maker. His third album 'Zero She Flies', followed in 1970 and included a number of shorter songs which ranged from acoustic ballads and instrumentals to songs that featured electric lead guitar. 
On the back of his growing success, Stewart released 'Orange' in 1972, written after a tumultuous breakup with his girlfriend and muse, Mandi, and was very much a transitional album, combining songs in Stewart's confessional style with more intimations of the historical themes that he would increasingly adopt. 1973's 'Past, Present and Future' was his first album to receive a proper release in the United States, via Janus Records, and it included the historical song 'Nostradamus', a nine-minute track which was too long for mainstream radio airplay, but which became a hit on many US college/university radio stations, which were more flexible about running times. Although this airplay helped the album to reach No. 133 on the Billboard album chart in the US, 1975's 'Modern Times' contained songs which were lighter on the historical references and more of a return to the theme of short stories set to music, but it did spawn his first hit single with 'Carol'. The success of both album and single helped increase his popularity on both sides of the Atlantic, and this paved the way for his breakthrough album in 1976, 'Year Of The Cat'. Over the course of his first six albums he often recorded more songs than could fit on the record, and some of these have since turned up on expanded re-issues, so here they all are collected onto one album, which also includes that rare 1966 single (and don't worry, it's nothing like Bowie's 'Laughing Gnome'!).

Track listing

01 The Elf (single 1966)
02 Turn Into Earth (b-side of 'The Elf')
03 Go Your Way (previously unreleased 1967)
04 My Contemporaries (previously unreleased 1967)
05 Jackdaw (previously unreleased 1969)
06 She Follows Her Own Rules (previously unreleased 1969)
07 Fantasy (previously unreleased 1969)
08 Stormy Night (previously unreleased 1970)
09 Lyke-Wake Dirge (previously unreleased 1970)
10 Elvaston Place (b-side of 'The News From Spain' 1970)
11 It Doesn't Matter Anymore (previously unreleased 1972)
12 Swallow Wind (previously unreleased 1975)
13 A Sense Of Deja Vu (previously unreleased 1975)
14 Willie The King (previously unreleased 1975)