Dave Gilmour - ..and on guitar Vol. 2 (2004) **UPDATE**

The plan was to finish the '...and on guitar' series on a high with a double disc offering from Dave Gilmour, which follows on very nicely from the first volume. There was one track that I couldn't fit on there as it was too long, and so Supertramp's 'Brother Where You Bound' opens this volume, and is then followed by Gilmour's absolutely stunning contribution to Berlin's 'Pink And Velvet', which I'd never heard before, but must count as one of the very best pieces of work that he's ever done. Add in his contributions to pop songs by Sam Brown, Pete Cetera, Paul McCartney, Elton John and Ringo Starr, as well as more progressive tracks from Phil Manzanera, Rabbit, and Robert Wyatt, and you have a superb collection to round off the series. But as it turns out it's not the end, as a passing suggestion from Maybe The Devil, Maybe The Lord has encouraged me to put together one more collection, and this could well be how it will be in future. Any suggestions will be welcomed for possible additions, but to keep in the spirit of the series it would ideally be a guitarist who has released two or three albums on his own, or with a band, and who has also played guest guitar on other artist's albums. Session guitarists who have never released an album of their own would be outside the scope of what I was aiming for, so let's see if I've missed any that I really should have included.   

A comment by AEC has prompted me to update this post, as they suggested that I could have included Rod Stewart's remake of his 'In A Broken Dream' with Dave Gilmour and John Paul Jones. Although it wasn't actually released until 2009, as part of 'The Rod Stewart Sessions', the recording date of 1992 would slot quite nicely into the second disc on this set, and to be honest it does deserve to be there, as it contains some spellbinding guitar-work from Gilmour. If you've already got this one then just download the last four tracks again to replace in the folder, and the tags will then all be updated.    

Track listing

Disc One

01 Brother Where You Bound (from 'Brother Where You Bound' by Supertramp 1985)
02 Bound To Be (from 'The Dream Academy' by The Dream Academy' 1985)
03 Pink And Velvet (from 'Count Three And Pray' by Berlin 1986)
04 Persona (from 'Persona' by Liona Boyd 1986)
05 Immaculate Eyes (from 'She' by Dalbello 1987)
06 This Feeling (from 'Stop!' by Sam Brown 1988)
07 Conquest (from 'Dream Jungle' by Rabbit 1988)

Disc Two
01 You Never Listen To Me (from 'One More Story' by Peter Cetera 1988)
02 Run Straight Down (from 'Transverse City' by Warren Zevon 1989)
03 We Got Married (from 'Flowers in the Dirt' by Paul McCartney 1989)
04 Como El Agua (from 'Roé' by Roé 1990)
05 Waiting For The Sunshine (from 'Growing Up In Public' by Jimmy Nail 1992)
06 Understanding Women (from 'The One' by Elton John 1992)

07 In A Broken Dream (from 'The Rod Stewart Sessions 1971-1998', recorded 1992)
08 I Think Therefore I Rock 'n' Roll (from 'Ringo Rama' by Ringo Starr 2003)
09 Forest (from 'Cuckooland' by Robert Wyatt 2003)
10 Sacred Days (from '6PM' by Phil Manzanera 2004)

For MAC users

Press command+shift+period (to show hidden files) and a grayed out folder '...and on guitar" will appear and the mp3s will be inside. Either drag those to another folder OR rename the folder without any periods at the beginning. Press command+shift+period to once again hide the hidden files.

Supertramp - Free As A Bird (1987)

(......and in an alternate universe.....) Following the massive success of their last album 'Sleeping With The Enemy', which gained praise from both critics and fans alike as their best work in years, Supertramp had the unenviable task of recording a follow-up that didn't disappoint. Roger Hodgson had written some songs which were fairly similar to the ones that he'd contributed to the previous album, but Rick Davies wanted to have a more modern sound on the album by using drum machines and computers, and so they had to compromise and split the recording between Hodgson's more organic sound and Davies' modern direction. Despite this mixture of styles the resultant album worked surprisingly well, although it was to be the last for a while, as the band broke up shortly after it's release in 1987.  

Track listing

01 Puppet Dance
02 You Can Never Tell With Friends
03 Desert Love
04 Thing For You
05 Hai Hai
06 It Doesn't Matter
07 Free As A Bird
08 You Make Me Love You
09 An Awful Thing To Waste

Supertramp - Sleeping With The Enemy (1985)

Following the massive success of 1978's 'Breakfast In America', which propelled Supertramp into the big time after many, many years of hard slog, the band had the unenviable task of coming up with an album as good as, or preferably better than, their breakthrough record. The hit singles extracted from it - 'The Logical Song', 'Take The Long Way Home', 'Goodbye Stranger', and the title track - set the bar very high, and so to give Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies time to come up with suitable material, the record company released the live album 'Paris' in 1980. Before the two writers even began work on the next record, Hodgson moved his family from Los Angeles to northern California, and began work on a solo album, which put something of a strain on the working relationship of the two men, but they managed to complete the next album, and '...Famous Last Words...' was released in 1982. The difficulties which were  evident during the recording of that record finally caused Hodgson to leave the band, as he wanted to spend more time with his family and work on his solo album, and Davies was left in charge of the group. Three years later 'Brother Where You Bound' was released, containing songs which moved away from the commercial pop success of their late 70's records, and included a sixteen minute exposition on the Cold War, with guitar solos from David Gilmour. Hodgson's solo album had come out the previous year, and to my ears was the better of the two sets, sounding more like Supertramp than the actual Supertramp record. But what if the band hadn't split, and the two writers had brought their best songs to the table for the follow-up to '...Famous Last Words...', with Hogdson's classic Supertramp sound being a counterpoint to Davies' new direction. It's quite possible that the resultant album could have sounded something like this, and even though a lot of these songs are quite long, we are now well into the CD era, so a sixty minute album is not that unusual. 

Track listing

01 Had A Dream (Sleeping With The Enemy)
02 Cannonball
03 Give Me Love, Give Me Life
04 Lovers In The Wind
05 No Inbetween
06 Better Days
07 Only Because Of You
08 Brother Where You Bound


Thanks to Stenn for the idea.