The Green Pajamas - The Perfect Chill (2021)

The Green Pajamas have been one of my favourite bands since I first discovered them in the mid-1980's, and since then I've bought every single, EP and album that they've released in their 40 year career. They are still going strong today, issuing their most recent long-player 'This Floating World Is A Dream' just last year, and I've been wanting to post something from them for years, to introduce them to people who have never heard of them, and also to offer some rare and hard to find music to the fans. But in fact they have looked after their fans extremely well over the years, as every so often they would gather up all the freebies given away to magazines and tribute albums, as well as rare one-off singles and b-sides, and anything else they felt worthy of hearing, and release them on a mopping-up compilation album, so if you own 'Indian Winter', 'Narcotic Kisses', 'Through Glass Colored Roses', 'Hidden Minutes', or 'Edge Of The Night' then you probably own nearly every track that they've ever recorded. However, leader Jeff Kelly has recently raided his archives and dug out some of his old cassette recordings, radio shows, live outings, demos and alternate takes and remixes, and issued them in a three volume bootleg series, two of which were rarities collections, and the third comprising various live recordings. By cherry-picking the best recordings from the two studio sets, at last I have something to post from them. 
The Green Pajamas were founded in Seattle in 1984 by Joe Ross and Jeff Kelly, who had begun composing his first songs at the age of 11, and forming a group called the Electric Garbage Cans. His parents bought him a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and he spent his teenage years compiling literally hundreds of cassettes of original material. After graduating from college, Kelly briefly joined a new wave band dubbed the Larch, but when he met Ross at a party the two formed the Green Pajamas, informed by their mutual love of the Beatles, and inspired by the Los Angeles "paisley underground" community. The group debuted in 1984 with the cassette 'Summer Of Lust' on the Green Monkey label, and issued a flurry of tapes before recording their proper full-length debut, 'Book Of Hours', in 1987. After 1990's 'Ghosts Of Love', the Green Pajamas went on hiatus, during which time Kelly issued the solo LP 'Coffee In Nepal' in 1991, but in 1997 the band resurfaced with the single 'Doctor Dragonfly' as well as 'Indian Winter', a collection of singles and compilation tracks. 'All Clues Lead To Meagan's Bed' followed in 1999 and 'Seven Fathoms Down And Falling' arrived in 2000, being a couple of their very best records, and the following year they released the 'In A Glass Darkly' EP, which was inspired by J.S. Le Fanu's writing, as well as the full-length 'This Is Where We Disappear', another simply superb record. 

A mishmash of discarded singles and outtakes, 'Narcotic Kisses', was released in 2002 along with a full-length album, 'Northern Gothic', and they celebrated their 20th anniversary in 2004 with a 14-track retrospective disc, 'Through Glass Colored Roses', and a live in-studio album, 'Ten White Stones', which featured some great Neil Young-style guitar playing. Another full-length studio effort, the unabashedly psychedelic '21st Century Séance', was released the following year, and in 2006, the band released yet another compilation disc, 'Night Races Into Anna', followed by a companion piece to 'Northern Gothic', 2007's 'Box Of Secrets: Northern Gothic Season Two', while the all-new conceptual piece 'Poison In The Russian Room' dropped in 2009, and it's still one of my favourite albums from the band. For their next project, they penned a set of songs about drinking and heartache with a slight rootsy feel, released in 2011 as 'Green Pajamas Country!', but they were back in dark but more musically familiar territory with 2012's 'Death By Misadventure', while nautical themes dominated 2012's 'To the End Of The Sea', and the off-cuts collection 'Supernatural Afternoon', which brought together rare single sides and unreleased material, followed in 2017. 

A third instalment in the Northern Gothic series, 'Phantom Lake: Northern Gothic 3', appeared in 2018, followed by 2021's 'Sunlight Might Weigh Even More', and then 2022's 'Forever For A Little While', which was re-issued as a vinyl release the next year as 'This Floating World Is A Dream'. The recent bootlegs start right at the beginning of the group, with a live recording from 1984, but I wanted to post just the songs that I'd never heard before, so I've picked out the demos and out-takes, and added in a number of contributions to tribute albums and magazine freebies that have never appeared on their own compilations, and so this collection should complete the most die-hard fan's discography of the group, so that they now own every song that they've ever recorded. The only track which has appeared before on CD is 'Missing Miss MacColl', which was Kelly's humble and sincere tribute to the singer Kirsty MacColl, who had recently died in an accident. When he recorded it for inclusion on the 'More Tell-Tale Signs Of Earworm' compilation album he had a cold, and had to keep his voice low in the mix, and so on this first mix the lyrics are much easier to hear. If you already know the band then you'll love this mopping-up collection, and if this is the first thing you hear from them then I hope that it will encourage you to investigate their huge back catalogue, and to discover the best kept secret that is The Green Pajamas.  

Track listing

01 You're Losing Me (Out-take 1988)

02 Such A Lovely Daughter (from Unhinged magazine flexi-disc 1990)

03 Dr. Dacey (Demo 1987)

04 Love Song (Demo 1990)

05 Woman, Woman (Demo 1996)

06 Cathy (Demo 1997)

07 Agent 99 (Out-take 1997)

08 The Perfect Chill (Demo 1999)

09 A Rose For Emily (from 'Wake Up Your Windows, Let's Do The Zombies' 7" 2000)

10 She Took A Long Cold Look (from 'Asyd Vinyl (A Tribute To Syd Barrett)' 2000)

11 Missing Miss MacColl (re-recording of track from 'More Tell-Tale Signs Of Earworm' 2001)

12 Got To Get You Into My Life (from the Mojo magazine CD 'Revolver Reloaded' 2006)

13 La Folie (out-take 2006)

14 A Long Way From Home (from the Mojo CD 'The Modern Genius Of Ray Davies' 2006)

15 XXXI (from 'Chamber Music: James Joyce (1907)' tribute album 2008)

16 Ring Around The Sun Medley (Out-take 2012)

17 William (Demo 2021)

18 Copper Eyed Girl (2021 remix of contribution to 'A Spoonful Of Sugarbush' 2017)

19 Such A Lovely Daughter (Reprise) 

The cover is a painting by Jeff Kelly's wife Susanne Kelly, who has provided the artwork for a number of the band's albums. 

Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Syd Barrett (2022)

In the second half of 1967 and through to early 1968, while still part of Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett's behaviour became increasingly erratic and unpredictable, with reports of him on stage with the group during this period strumming on one chord through an entire concert or not playing at all. Following an increasingly difficult US tour with him in 1967, and with David Gilmour drafted in to help out with live dates, the rest of the band decided that they couldn't work with Barrett any more, and on 6 April 1968 they officially announced that he was no longer a member of Pink Floyd. After Barrett left Pink Floyd, Peter Jenner and Andrew King, from the band's management, followed suit, feeling that as Barrett was the creative centre of the band, they would rather represent him than Pink Floyd. In May Jenner led Barrett into EMI Studios to record some solo material, but this was only partially successful, with most tracks having no vocals. Recording resumed in June and July, with better progress being made this time, but shortly after the July dates, Barrett abruptly stopped recording, breaking up with girlfriend Lindsay Corner, and then going off on a drive around Britain in his Mini, at the end of which he ended up in psychiatric care in Cambridge. 

By the start of 1969, a somewhat recovered Barrett decided to return to his musical career and revisit the Jenner-produced recordings, and so in April 1969 he began working on newer material, while reworking the 1968 recordings. After some months of work on the songs, Barrett told his flatmate that he was going off "for an afternoon drive", but instead followed Pink Floyd out to Ibiza, and during the trip, he asked David Gilmour for his help on the album, and so at the end of May, Malcolm Jones abandoned his production responsibilities and Gilmour and Waters took over. Although they were in the process of completing Pink Floyd's 'Ummagumma' album, they took time out and helped Barrett finish his album, managing to record a number of his songs during a June session, and then coming back to complete the project after taking a temporary break to mix 'Ummagumma' and undertake a tour of the Netherlands. After several months of intermittent recording, the album was finally deemed complete, and once the final recording sessions for the album had been completed, Gilmour and Waters mixed not just the tracks they had produced, but also the previously recorded songs with Malcolm Jones, in a matter of two days. 

'Octopus' was released as a single in November 1969, and 'The Madcap Laughs' followed on 2 January 1970, with both records appearing on the Harvest Records label. The album was fairly well-reviewed by music critics, and has since become something of a classic of the psychedelic music genre, and so the songs are ripe for interpretation by other bands with the same midset. Marc And The Mambas deliver a great take on 'Terrapin', and Slowdive's version of 'Golden Hair' is pretty much exactly as you would expect it to sound. REM have covered 'Dark Globe', and The Shamen and The Mock Turtles have both provided superb takes of a couple of songs from the record for official tribute albums to Barrett, while two of my personal favourite bands finally appear together, with The Green Pajamas and The Cleaners From Venus both giving it their best. I'll have to admit that this is one of the most idiosyncratic collections in this series, but every artist on here shows an obvious love for the source material, and so in the end it makes for an intriguing and enjoyable listen. 

Track listing

01 Terrapin (Marc And The Mambas 1982) 
02 No Good Trying (The Mock Turtles 1987)
03 Love You (The Besnard Lakes 2010)
04 No Man's Land (Race Horses 2010)
05 Dark Globe (REM 1989)  
06 Here I Go (The Balters 2022)
07 Octopus (Carnival Art 1990)
08 Golden Hair (Slowdive 1991)
09 Long Gone (The Shamen 1987)
10 She Took A Long Cold Look (The Green Pajamas 2000)
11 Feel (Marinus Pee 2015)
12 If It's In You (Jennifer Gentle 2010)
13 Late Night (The Cleaners From Venus 1985)