The Orchids - Love Hit Me (1965)

While the female singers and girl groups on the British recording scene of the 1960's were typically in their late teens or early twenties, The Orchids were 14 year-old schoolgirls when they made their first record. Georgina Oliver, Pamela Jarman and Valerie Jones were in the same class at Stoke Park Grammar School For Girls in Coventry, where they used to get together in break times to sing the hits of the day together, and they often went dancing together on Saturday afternoons at the Locarno Ballroom in the central precinct, and later at the Orchid Ballroom in Primrose Hill Street. One day, having gone alone for once, Pam horrified the others by announcing she had entered them all into a talent contest at the Orchid, and they won the competition, singing Motown and Spector songs, and they shared the prize money of one pound sterling. Larry Page, then manager of the Orchid Ballroom, gave them the name The Orchids after the name of his ballroom, and this former pop singer would go on to achieve greater fame later, most notably as manager of the Kinks. Contracted to Decca and assigned in the studio to producer Shel Talmy, their first appearance on vinyl was as backing vocalists for 'School Is In' by Johnny B. Great and the Goodmen, with their own debut quickly following, and 'Gonna Make Him Mine' was an exuberant and upbeat offering with a sound that was a blend of UK beat and US girl group, with the Shel Talmy original 'Stay At Home' on the flip. The trio's schoolgirl status was relentlessly exploited, and their first publicity pics required them to wear school uniforms, much to their mortification. 

The follow-up single 'Love Hit Me' went for the full Spector treatment, leading to a "Britain's answer to the Crystals" tag, and they appeared on 'Ready Steady Go!' to promote its release, as well as making an appearance on the children's show 'Five O'clock Club'. Mike D'Abo's first group A Band Of Angels (coincidentally, see last week's post) was also on the bill and there was a running gag between them and The Orchids that they couldn't stand each other, with D'Abo loudly complaining to hostess Muriel Young, "They're nothing but a bunch of schoolgirls!" as the girls brushed past him to the mikes. Their next single was a cover of Ray Davies' 'I've Got That Feeling', with 'Larry' on the b-side, and this wasn't a tribute to Larry Page but a cover of an American song written by the 'Bobby's Girl' duo of Hoffman and Klein. One last single was recorded, but 'Oo-Chang-A-Lang' was only issued in the US, and it had to be under the name of The Blue Orchids to avoid confusion with sundry other Orchids in the USA. As well as their TV appearances, the group appeared in the 1964 pop movie 'Just For You', singing 'Mr. Scrooge', and they also appeared in a comic-strip story in an issue of Judy, the popular girls' weekly. In 1965 they were finally allowed a change of image and the group was relaunched as The Exceptions, releasing just one single with 'What More Do You Want' on the A-side, and a Georgina Oliver original on the flip with 'Soldier Boy'. The girls have mentioned that they recorded a number of other songs, including some with Bert Berns, but none have ever come to light, and so the total output from the group was just these four singles, but they are remembered due to a combination of factors: their image, their sound, their association with Talmy, Page, Berns, and Oldham , and their standing as a rare example of a true British teenage girl group. An article on the girls in this month's Record Collector ended with a plea for a retrospective album, and so here it is, although obviously it's a short one at just 23 minutes, but it's full of great 60's pop and soul. 

Track listing

01 Gonna Make Him Mine (single 1963)
02 Stay At Home (b-side of 'Gonna Make Him Mine')
03 Love Hit Me (single 1963)
04 Don't Make Me Mad (b-side of 'Love Hit Me')
05 Mr. Scrooge (from the soundtrack of the film 'Just For You' 1964)
06 I've Got That Feeling (single 1964)
07 Larry (b-side of 'I've Got That Feeling')
08 Oo-Chang-A-Lang (single 1964)
09 What More Do You Want (single as The Exceptions 1965)
10 Soldier Boy (b-side of 'What More Do You Want')

Jimi Hendrix - Mosaic (1970)

Just when I thought that I had every Hendrix out-take out there on the many, many bootlegs that I have, a couple of new multi-CD sets turn up, which include stuff that I hadn't heard before. The 'Black Gold' 5CD set includes a number of out-takes and alternate versions of tracks recorded around 1970, with quite a few of them being different takes of 'Electric Ladyland' songs, but it also features a jam with Stevie Wonder on 'I Was Made To Love Her', a new song to me called 'Honey Bed', and two takes of a title that I didn't recognise called 'Pride Of Man'. The other box set was the 6CD 'Astro Man' collection, which consists of 3 CDs of studio recordings and three live discs, with the studio discs including alternate takes and mixes of songs as old as 'Purple Haze' and '51st Anniversary', and quite a few from the 'Cry Of Love' period. This set also included some tracks with titles new to me, such as 'Highway Of Broken Dreams', 'La Pouppee Qui Fait Non', 'World Traveller', and 'Too Bad', the last two with organist Larry Young. It could be that these were just already released tracks with new titles, and that actually proved to be the case with 'Pride Of Man', as you can see from the notes that accompanied the 'Black Gold' set, and as they had some interesting insights, I'm repeating them here. 'I Was Made To Love Her' was recorded on 06 October 1967 at the Playhouse Theatre, London, with Stevie Wonder playing the drums and Noel Redding on bass. There are no vocals, but faintly you can hear someone, possibly Wonder, singing verses from 'Ain't Too Proud To Beg', which I split off to make a new track, and Hendrix lays down some nice licks on both of them. 'South Saturn Delta' is just Hendrix solo on guitar, with no other accompaniment, unfettered by the horns and everything else you hear on the 'Lifelines' albums, and utilising some very effective stereo separation. 'Midnight, Valleys Of Neptune Arising' was recorded on 03 April 1969 with Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox, and a couple of the takes sound just like the 'Pride Of Man' out-takes, and so that is why I didn't recognise that title, as it turns out that it's just one segment of the afore-mentioned 'Neptune...'. 'Sending My Love To Linda' comes from 21 April 1969, and is an instrumental take of the song which has appeared on other bootlegs with vocals. It's unlike the version on 'Lifelines', which besides having vocals, has a much more restrained guitar sound, with this version sounding much heavier at times, and I extracted the best version from the three takes on the CD. 'Blues Suede Shoes' was taped on 23 January 1970, and is a great studio version of the live track from 'In The West' album, while 'Honey Bed' hails from 10 September 1969, or possibly 23 December 1969, depending on who you believe, and I've taken the best parts from the five incomplete takes to make one good version of the song. Not much information about 'The Things I Used To Do', other than it was recorded some time in 1969, and is an edited version of the fourth vocal take of an unreleased track. So from these two multi-CD box sets I've managed to extract nine songs which I didn't already have, and with some judicious editing here and there it gives me a 51-minute album, which was perfect. I've wanted to use the mosaic of Hendrix's face that was created with guitar picks for some time, and I thought that this was the ideal album for it, and as this is a random collection of different recordings, I've also titled it 'Mosaic', as that seemed to fit. 

    
Track listing

01 The Things I Used To Do
02 Honey Bed
03 Blue Suede Shoes
04 Midnight, Valleys Of Neptune Arising
05 World Traveller
06 South Saturn Delta
07 Too Bad
08 Ain't Too Proud To Beg
09 Sending My Love To Linda

Bill Bailey - Parodies Lost (2021) UPDATE

Just playing this again and I noticed that the split between 'Leg Of Time' and 'Duelling Sitars' was in the wrong place, so have now fixed that. If you play the album in one go you wouldn't even notice, but if you prefer the tracks split correctly then just download those two again and replace the ones in your folder.

Bernie Marsden - ...and on guitar (2003)

Bernard John Marsden was born on 7 May 1951 in Buckingham, England, and was inspired to play the guitar as a teenager by such authentic blues players as Howling Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson. He later picked up on such 60's white blues players as Peter Green, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck, and after playing with local Buckingham based groups, he formed Skinny Cat at the age of 17. After playing with them for a while, he got his first professional gig with UFO in 1972, but he left after recording some demos with Dave Edmunds at Rockfield Studios, as the rest of the group wanted German guitarist Michael Schenker in the band, who had actually been recommended by Marsden to the other members of UFO. He then joined Juicy Lucy, but once again was ejected before he could record an album with them, following which he played with Glenn Cornick's Wild Turkey in 1973, before he joined drummer Cozy Powell's band Cozy Powell's Hammer, playing on the band's hit single 'Na Na Na' in 1974. Babe Ruth were next in 1975, and he finally managed to record an album with one of his bands, playing on two releases for Capitol Records with 'Stealin' Home' in 1975, and 'Kid's Stuff' in 1976. During his time with Babe Ruth, Cozy Powell recommended him to Jon Lord who was forming a post Deep Purple outfit with Ian Paice and Tony Ashton called Paice Ashton Lord, and Marsden joined the band, along with bassist Paul Martinez, in time to record their 'Malice In Wonderland' album in 1976. While with Paice Ashton Lord he worked alongside saxophonist Howie Casey, who recommended him to Paul McCartney as a replacement for Henry McCulloch in Wings, but the offer never materialised, as after Paice Ashton Lord folded following the release of their sole album, Marsden formed a new band with former Deep Purple vocalist David Coverdale and guitarist Micky Moody. They started as David Coverdale's Whitesnake, which then became Whitesnake, and Marsden played on their debut EP, their first five studio albums and a live record between 1978 and 1980, co-writing many of the songs with Coverdale, and sometimes Moody. Following his departure from Whitesnake, he formed a short-lived band called Bernie Marsden's SOS, and then not long afterwards he put together Alaska, with Robert Hawthorne on vocals and Richard Bailey on keyboards, releasing two melodic rock albums, 'Heart Of The Storm' in 1984 and 'The Pack' in 1985, before splitting up. In 1986 he formed MGM with former Whitesnake members Neil Murray and his replacement guitarist in Whitesnake Mel Galley, with the band also briefly including former Toto vocalist Bobby Kimball, and while recordings were made they remain unreleased. In 1988 he wrote the song 'South Africa', which was recorded by Ian Gillan and released as a single, and in 1989 he reunited with Whitesnake guitarist Moody to form The Moody Marsden band, recording the acoustic live album 'Live In Hell' in Norway, and an electric live album in England titled 'Never Turn Our Back On The Blues', before releasing their one studio album 'Real Faith' in 1994. Marsden released two solo albums during his time in Whitesnake, and has continued to record and release albums right up to date, with his 'Kings' album coming out a few months ago, and with this post you can hear how he filled his spare time by appearing on a wide variety of albums from other artists throughout his early years.  

Track listing

01 Reality In Arrears (from 'You & Me' by Chick Churchill 1973)
02 Suzanne (from 'Journey's End' by Matthew Fisher 1973)
03 Oh My (Rockfield Studios demo for UFO 1973)
04 Na Na Na (single by Cozy Powell's Hammer 1974)
05 Some Kind Of Beautiful (from 'Jumble Queen' by Bridget St John 1974)
06 The City (from 'Why' by K2 1980)
07 Chance On A Feeling (from 'Before I Forget' by Jon Lord 1982)
08 Head The Ball (from 'Guitar Speak II' 1988)
09 South Africa (single by Gillan 1988)
10 In A Perfect World (from 'Forcefield IV: Let the Wild Run Free' by Forcefield 1991)
11 Check Me Out (from the soundtrack of the TV series 'Frankie' 1995)
12 A Woman Like That (from the soundtrack of the film 'Still Crazy' 1998)
13 Als God Geen Vrouw Is Mam (from 'Pop Model' by Mama's Jasje 2000)
14 On Common Ground (from 'I Eat Them For Breakfast' by Micky Moody 2002)
15 Lady Starlight (from 'Freak Out!' by Chris Catena 2003)

Bill Bailey - Parodies Lost (2021)

I've mentioned before on the blog that, as well as being passionate about music, I also love comedy, and have posted the odd thing here and there from Peter Cook & Dudley Moore, Ricky Gervais, and Monty Python. One of my favourite stand-ups of the last 15 years has been Bill Bailey, and not only because he's a great comic, but also because he's a brilliant musician, able to play a multitude of instruments, and to knock off a pin-sharp musical parody at the drop of a hat. I decided to collect some of my favourite pieces from his various DVD's and to segue them together into a 35-minute 'live concert', and so that's what we have here. The songs vary from unnervingly accurate take-offs of particular artists like Tom Waits, Kraftwerk, and Portishead, to usurping whole genres, such as country music (and the evils thereof), emo, prog rock, and Adele-style confessionals. He then rounds it all off with such flights of fancy as a dub reggae version of the 'Downton Abbey' theme, an instrumental based on a mobile ringtone, the BBC News theme as an acid-house rave tune, and the wisdom of George W Bush set to a drum 'n' bass backing. If you like these, and you certainly should, then the videos for most of them are on Youtube, along with excerpts from his stand-up routines, so do check them out after you've enjoyed this 'live concert' from the always inventive Bill Bailey.   

Track listing

01 Insect Nation
02 I'm Going to Kill You So I Can Ignore You In Heaven (The Evils Of Country Music)
03 Theme from Downton Abbey (Dub Reggae Version)
04 BBC News Rave
05 Leg Of Time
06 Duelling Sitars
07 Zippedee Do Dah by Portishead
08 Oblivion (The Emo Song)
09 Ring Tone Symphony
10 Old MacDonald by Tom Waits
11 Das Hokey Cokey by Kraftwerk
12 You Left Me, But I'm Not Gonna Go On About It (Song for Adele)
13 Drum 'n' Bush
14 Love Song

Fiona Apple - Extraordinary (2003)

After completing a concert tour in support of her second album 'When the Pawn...' in 2000, Fiona Apple relocated to Los Angeles, but didn't start writing new songs for a couple of years, even considering retiring from the music business as she felt she had nothing more to say with her music. In spring 2002 Apple and Jon Brion, her longtime friend and producer, met for their weekly lunch meeting, during which Brion begged her to make another album, as he needed a distraction from the film that he was then working on, and she agreed to do it. Brion went to Apple's label, Epic Records, with strict stipulations, including having no deadline, which the label eventually agreed to, and a tentative November 2002 release date was then set. Apple started studio work on the album the following June at Ocean Way Recording, where she played five songs to Brion that she'd written for the album, including 'A New Version of Me'. By late 2002 Apple, Brion, engineer Tom Biller and percussionist Matt Chamberlain were at work in a wing of the Paramour Mansion, and with the album half complete in April 2003, Brion, Apple and Biller moved to Cello Studios, and a new release date of July 22 was announced. Brion and Apple then traveled to England to record strings and orchestration for the songs at Abbey Road Studios, and by May 2003 Brion considered the album to be completed. The release was pushed back to September 30, but the need for some finishing touches to the recordings meant that it was delayed again, this time to February 2004. Little by little, small details about the songs were revealed through newspaper and magazine articles, and the titles of 'Oh Well', 'Better', and 'Red Red Red' were mentioned, while the slow-paced track 'Extraordinary' was referred to as "a Tin Pan Alley-esque blend of Tom Waits and Vaudeville". In late June 2004 the song 'Extraordinary', now titled 'Extraordinary Machine' and promoted to the title track of the album, was leaked onto the internet, and soon after a rough mix of 'Better Version Of Me' also appeared, with both songs eliciting praise from the music press for their "tantalizing, brazenly eccentric art pop" feel. After months with no official news, Brion revealed in an article in the October 2004 issue of Entertainment Weekly that the label had shelved the album as they didn't hear any obvious singles, and despite Epic Records stating that the album was to be released in February 2005, Apple decided to re-record some of the songs to appease the label, who wanted another album in the vein of her 1996 debut 'Tidal'. Her fans organized a week-long mail campaign to flood Sony with support for the release of the album, with Epic's president Steve Barnett responding with the mealy-mouthed statement "It's our understanding that Fiona is still in the midst of recording her next album, and we at Epic Records join music lovers everywhere in eagerly anticipating her next release", when they'd had an album that she was happy with for over a year. 

In February 2005 radio DJ Andrew Harms at 107.7 The End in Seattle began playing previously unheard tracks from a bootleg copy of the album, which garnered a positive response from listeners, and before long CD-quality versions of all the tracks were released through the BitTorrent website TorrentBox. They received a positive review from The New York Times, who described the album as "an oddball gem", and Ed Bumgardner concurred, saying that it was "a work of daring and sophistication". After nearly 50,000 downloads, the RIAA contacted webmasters of sites hosting the files and asked for them to be taken down, and the files vanished from the TorrentBox website. After months of silence, Epic finally released a statement regarding the album's future in August 2005, saying that it was to be officially released on October 4, 2005, extensively overhauled by co-producers Mike Elizondo and Brian Kehew, who had reworked each song track by track, building from Apple's piano and vocals, adding live drums with the help of Abe Laboriel Jr. and Questlove, then inserting some instrumental flourishes, and once the song frameworks had been completed, Apple returned to the studio and recorded the final performances. Of the eleven tracks previously leaked, 'Extraordinary Machine' and 'Waltz' remained unchanged, but nine were completely rearranged, with one new song, 'Parting Gift', also added to the track listing. The official version of 'Extraordinary Machine' was ranked number one in the end of year top albums lists of Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times and Slant magazine, although Stylus magazine described it as "a rudderless piece of work" and "a bitterly disappointing listen", while Spin magazine stated "it's kinda been done". Despite that criticism, as of June 2012 the album had sold a million copies, and with such an intriguing back story, it's not surprising that the original recordings have recently resurfaced, and so fans can now hear the Brion versions and compare them to the more well-known takes of the songs to see which they prefer. The cover of the official release featured a photo of a Lily Of The Nile which was taken by Apple herself in her garden, and so as a homage to that sleeve I've used the same flower for the cover of this album, and it's named after the original name of that record's title track.  

Track listing 

01 Not About Love
02 Red, Red, Red
03 Get Him Back
04 Better Version Of Me
05 Oh Well
06 O' Sailor
07 Used To Love Him
08 Window
09 Waltz (Better Than Fine)
10 Extraordinary Machine
11 Please, Please, Please

A Band Of Angels - Cheat And Lie (1970)

A Band Of Angels were a mid-1960's pop group, featuring Mike d'Abo (vocals, various instruments), John Edward Baker (lead guitar), John Christian Gaydon (vocals, rhythm guitar), Andrew Charles Petre (drums), and David Robert Wilkinson (bass guitar). The members all met while at Harrow School, and the band even had their own comic strip in a UK pop music weekly Fab 208. They were signed to United Artists in the early 60's and released two singles in 1964, which were later combined into a four-track EP later that year. In 1965 they signed to Piccadilly Records and released the singles 'Leave It To Me' in 1965 and 'Invitation' in 1966, before splitting up. d'Abo later reflected on what had gone wrong for them, saying that they never really gelled as a group, and their image was already old-fashioned when they started. In July 1966, after leaving A Band of Angels, d’Abo joined Manfred Mann as a replacement for vocalist Paul Jones, who was leaving to start a solo career. His first big hit with Manfred Mann was 'Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James', which was nearly recorded with 'Mr Jones' in the title before it occurred to the group that it might be seen as an implied criticism of the recently-departed Paul Jones. While he was with the band they had many other hit singles, including 'Ha Ha Said The Clown', 'My Name Is Jack' and the Dylan-penned number one 'Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)', before the group disbanded in 1969. In December 1968, d'Abo played the lead in the stage show Gulliver Travels (not 'Gulliver's Travels', for copyright reasons?) at the Mermaid Theatre in London, and he also featured on the 1969 'soundtrack' album on the Immediate subsidiary label Instant, which must be one of the strangest records ever released. It's basically a sound collage, with snippets of songs from The Small Faces and The Lovin' Spoonful interspersed with weird sound effects, but it did feature the d'Abo original 'See The Little People', which was also released as a single (and you can get an idea of what the album sounded like from its b-side). In 1970 he released his first real solo single 'Miss Me In The Morning', and followed that with his debut solo release 'd'Abo', which included the now classic song 'Handbags And Gladrags'. Although this started out as a retrospective of the work of A Band Of Angels, you can't really separate them from the career of Mike d'Abo as he had a hand in writing a lot of their songs, and so enjoy this trawl through the back catalogue of an undeservedly under-rated UK singer/songwriter. 

   
Track listing

01 Me (single 1964)
02 Not True As Yet (b-side of 'Me')
03 She'll Never Be You (single 1964)
04 Gonna Make A Woman Of You (b-side of 'She'll Never Ne You')
05 Hide 'n' Seek (from the film 'Just For You' 1964)
06 Leave It To Me (single 1965)
07 Too Late My Love (b-side of 'Leave It To Me')
08 Invitation (single 1966)
09 Cheat And Lie (b-side of 'Invitation')
10 See The Little People (single 1969)
11 An Anthology Of Gulliver's Travels (Part Two) (b-side of 'See The Little People')

12 In The Beginning (previously unreleased 1969)
13 Miss Me In The Morning (single 1970)
14 Cinderella Arabella (b-side of 'Miss Me In The Morning')
15 Because Of You (previously unreleased 1970)

Bruce Springsteen - Across The River (1979)

It's fairly well-documented that the recording of 'The River' was an arduous and protracted affair, and what was once was envisaged as a single album, soon became (in classic Springsteen recording style) a vast collection of songs, enough to fill 5 albums, and the selection of which tracks to use proved to be one of the most important parts of realizing Springsteen's vision. Engineer Neil Dorfman has confirmed that around 50 songs were recorded for the album, and so far we've heard about 35 of them on 'The River', the 'Tracks' collection and various b-sides, but there are also a group of songs that we know from the Telegraph Hill rehearsal sessions that push the figure towards 50. These sessions were designed to hone each song before the band entered the studio and as we know from official releases the majority of these songs were professionally recorded. We'll probably have to wait for another 'Tracks' collection to see if these rehearsals every officially see the light of day, but for now they're collected here to tide us over. The songs on this album are stunning, and burn with the intensity that Springsteen and The E Street Band were producing over this period. We're all familiar with studio masterpieces such as 'Roulette' and 'Take 'Em As They Come' and it's this intensity that can be felt throughout these songs. All of these tracks can be found on 'The Lost Masters', with the songs played again and again with false starts and endings throughout and interspersed with inter-band conversations, and while 'The Lost Masters' were of interest to the obsessive fan, they didn't really stand up to repeat listening. By picking the best recordings of each song and cutting out the false starts and endings, this collection aims to elevate these eleven tracks from the Telegraph Hill rehearsal sessions to become a true companion piece to 'The River'. Although it's likely that these songs were professionally recorded, the vocals are very low in the mix on some of the tracks, and to be honest some of them sound like wordless guide vocals, although that doesn't detract in the slightest from the power of the performances.  

Track listing

01 Out On The Run
02 The Man Who Got Away
03 Under The Gun
04 Chevrolet Deluxe
05 Night Fire
06 In The City Tonight
07 Slow Fade
08 Break My Heart
09 Find It Where You Can
10 Chain Lightning
11 I Don't Wanna Be

Feedback?

Looks like the feedback has dried up again, with the last actual comment on the blog, other than people who can't get Soulseek to work, and thanks from e6gman and jman (thanks for making the effort) was on 19th September. I really though that I'd get some feedback on the recent Beck 'Song Reader' post, as I spent a lot of time picking just the right bands to make it flow well, and I think it turned out brilliantly, so I thought that some Beck fans might let me know what they thought, but not a single comment in six weeks. And for the first time so far a Springsteen post has been up for over a week with nothing said about it, and I know that you love your Springsteen. I'm not fishing for thanks, but I really want to know what people think of what I post here. Do you enjoy the albums, are there any b-sides compilations that you'd like to hear from a particular artist, is there an unreleased album that I don't know about, and suggestions for the '...and on guitar' series are always welcome. There were over 150 downloads last Sunday with not a single comment left, so just let me know what you think of the posts so that I know that what I'm doing is worthwhile.     

Adrian Belew - ...and on guitar (1993)

Robert Steven (Adrian) Belew was born on 23 December 1949 in Covington, Kentucky, and in his early teens he played drums with the Ludlow High School marching band, and later with the high-school covers band The Denems. Inspired by Jimi Hendrix, he took up guitar when he was bedridden for several months with mononucleosis, and at age 17 he was further inspired by a club performance of blues-rock musician Lonnie Mack, who became a lifelong personal friend. He wasn't inclined to study music formally, but taught himself by listening to records, and rapidly became a high-school guitar hero. While maturing as a player and mastering various playing styles, he became increasingly preoccupied with ways to avoid sounding like everybody else, and eventually found his own sound and style by learning how to make his guitar mimic sound effects such as car horns, animal noises, or industrial sounds and then applying those sounds to relatively standard songs. In the mid-1970's, having formally changed his first name to his preferred choice of Adrian, Belew moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a full-time career as a professional musician, and by 1977 he was playing with the regionally-popular cover band Sweetheart. While playing at a Sweetheart gig at Fanny's Bar in Nashville, he was discovered by Frank Zappa, who had been tipped off regarding the band's talents by his chauffeur. Zappa approached Belew and discussed auditioning him for an upcoming tour, although Belew did not receive an official invitation to audition for nearly a year. During this time Sweetheart split up, and so once the formal invitation came, he flew out to Los Angeles and found himself auditioning alongside more formally trained musicians, and following a more intimate second audition Zappa was impressed enough to hire Belew on a handshake deal for a year. 

He toured with the Zappa band and appeared on Zappa's 1979 album 'Sheik Yerbouti', most notably performing a Bob Dylan impersonation on the song 'Flakes', and he also appeared in Zappa's 1979 concert film 'Baby Snakes'. Although he was mostly credited as rhythm guitarist, he also played lead, melody, or noise lines, as well as singing lead on two songs. After seeing Belew at a Zappa concert in Cologne, Brian Eno recommended that David Bowie offer to hire him once the Zappa tour was finished. Belew accepted the offer, and he played on Bowie's Isolar II Tour in 1978, as well as contributing to his next studio album, 'Lodger'. In 1980 Belew formed a new band, GaGa, for which he served as the singer, guitarist, drummer, and primary songwriter, and on one of his frequent visits to New York City, he became friends with the up-and-coming band Talking Heads, who invited him to join them onstage for performances of their signature song 'Psycho Killer', where he impressed them with his wild and unorthodox guitar soloing. It was also around this time that he met Robert Fripp at a Steve Reich concert, and in July of that year GaGa was invited to open several New York-area concerts for Fripp's band the League Of Gentlemen. Following his working with Brian Eno on Bowie's 'Lodger' album, he was invited to add guitar solos to several tracks on Eno's next production job, Talking Heads' 'Remain In Light' album, and his involvement with them extended to playing on the band's spin-off projects, such as Tom Tom Club, and David Byrne's and Jerry Harrison's solo albums. Unfortunately, Belew's experience with Tom Tom Club was less harmonious than his previous work with Talking Heads, and their recording engineer, Steven Stanley, was vocal about his dislike of distorted guitar, and erased the majority of Belew's solos during the mixing sessions. By now Belew's rising profile had gained him a solo record contract with Island Records, and in the down time at the Tom Tom Club sessions, members of GaGa joined him at Compass Point and backed him on a set of parallel recordings which would result in Belew's first solo album, 1982's 'Lone Rhino'. The album provided a home for various GaGa songs and blended various elements of Belew's work over the past decade, including snappy and noisy Zappa/Byrne-influenced songs, dabblings in world music, opportunities for animal/mechanical sounds on guitar, and sonic experiments reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix. 

In 1981 Belew was invited to join Robert Fripp's new band Discipline, with Bill Bruford and Tony Levin, and during initial touring the members discussed the possibility of renaming themselves King Crimson. This had not been the original intention for the band, but all members generally agreed that this would be both appropriate and useful, and so his time with King Crimson began in 1981 and he stayed with them until 2009, one of the longest tenures in the band by anyone other than founder Robert Fripp. As part of the agreement to his joining, he insisted that he would be allowed time to continue and develop his new solo career, to which Fripp agreed. The renamed band released the well-received 'Discipline' album in 1981, followed by the equally fine 'Beat' in 1982, and 'Three Of A Perfect Pair' in 1984. Following King Crimson's breakup and hiatus in 1984, Belew formed the pop band The Bears with fellow guitarist and singer Rob Fetters, drummer Chris Arduser, and bass guitarist Bob Nyswonger, releasing two albums on I.R.S. Records subsidiary Primitive Man Recording Company, with 1987's 'The Bears' and 1988's 'Rise And Shine'. After three years of constant recording, promotion, and touring, the band broke up in 1989 following the collapse of PMRC, although Belew has continued to tour and record, either solo or with new bands that he had formed. He was at his most busy as a session player during the 80's, and during this period he contributed to Ryuichi Sakamoto's 'Left-handed Dream', Joan Armatrading's 'The Key', Peter Wolf's 'Lights Out' and Jean Michel Jarre's 'Zoolook', as well as playing on Cyndi Lauper's 'True Colors' and Paul Simon's 'Graceland'. This collection of his session work includes songs from all those albums, plus many more tracks, and on every one you can hear his inimitable guitar tones, adding something a little bit special to the songs. 

Track listing

Disc One

01 Red Money (from 'Lodger' by David Bowie 1979)
02 Jones Crusher (from 'Sheik Yerbouti' by Frank Zappa 1979)
03 The Great Curve (from 'Remain In Light' by Talking Heads 1980)
04 Eggs In A Briar Patch (from 'The Catherine Wheel' by David Byrne 1981)
05 Things Fall Apart (from 'The Red And The Black' by Jerry Harrison 1981)  
06 The Twilight Clone (from 'Magic Windows' by Herbie Hancock 1981)  
07 L'Elphant (from 'Tom Tom Club' by Tom Tom Club 1981)
08 Relache (from 'Left-Handed Dream' by Ryuichi Sakamoto 1981) 

Disc Two

01 Sweet Little Woman (from 'Sheffield Steel' by Joe Cocker 1982)
02 (I Love It When You) Call Me Names (from 'The Key' by Joan Armatrading 1983)
03 Blah Blah Cafe (from 'Zoolook' by Jean Michel Jarre 1984)
04 Billy Bigtime (from 'Lights Out' by Peter Wolf 1984)
05 Sharkey's Day (from 'Mister Heartbreak' by Laurie Anderson 1984)
06 What's Going On (from 'True Colors' by Cyndi Lauper 1986)
07 Boy In The Bubble (from 'Graceland' by Paul Simon 1986)
08 God Shuffled His Feet (from 'God Shuffled His Feet' by Crash Test Dummies 1993)

Skrillex - Voltage (2012)

In 2011 Skrillex was recording tracks for his new album, when the laptop containing most of the recordings was stolen from his hotel room, leaving a whole album's worth of music lost. None of the tracks have ever surfaced online, so it's likely that the thieves just wiped the hard drive to sell the laptop on, not realising that they probably had something in their hands worth much more than they eventually got for it. Some tracks that were to be featured on the album were later released on other projects, such as the 'Bangarang EP', which came out in 2012, and featured some songs that Skrillex still had in his possession, such as 'Right In', 'Kyoto' & 'Summit', which were alternative names & mixes of the original recordings of 'Right Here', 'Dimbow' & 'Breathe'. 'Make it Bum Dem' was released as a single in 2012 and 'Try It Out' had three alternative mixes with Alvin Risk in 2013. A few other reworked tracks have leaked over the years, including 'Amplifire', 'True Gangsters' and the proposed title track 'Voltage', and although there is no official track listing, as Skrillex never got as far as putting one together, by taking all the tracks that we know were probably on the stolen laptop we can approximate what the album might have sounded like, and here it is, along with the title track to the 'Bangarang' EP as a bonus, as that was linked to the release of three of these lost tracks in 2012, and it makes the album a concise 34 minutes. I know Skrillex can polarise opinion, with some music fans hating his work, but I quite like some of it, so I think this is worth posting. 

Track listing

01 Voltage  
02 True Gangsters  
03 Dimbow  
04 Turmoil   
05 Breathe (ft. Krewella)  
06 Amplifire  
07 Right Here  
08 Try It Out (Original Mix)  
09 Make It Bum Dem (ft. Damian Marley)

10 Bangarang  

Nirvana - In Utero (Steve Albini Mix) (1993)

In 2003, the UK division of Universal Records released a limited edition, vinyl only reissue of Nirvana's 1993 album 'In Utero', to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the release of the album. These vinyl copies were pressed in Germany, and when they hit the stores people who were familiar with the original release were surprised to hear a distinct difference in the overall sound of the album, most noticeable on 'Heart Shaped Box' and 'All Apologies', the two big singles from the album. It has been widely known for some time that Steve Albini was the first choice as producer for the album, but when he submitted his mix to the record company, they had serious issues with it, complaining that the vocals were too low in the mix, there was too much 'effect' on the drums, and some of the guitar parts were either too loud or were overly distorted. While most of the observations are quite accurate, those same qualities were (and still are) what Albini is known and loved for, and Kurt Cobain himself had specifically requested that Albini record 'In Utero', based on his production on 'Surfer Rosa' by the Pixies, which was one of Cobain's all-time favorite records, and the complaints regarding the sound were in fact what Cobain wanted so much in the first place. While the band was initially quite insistent on the album being released as recorded by Albini, they eventually came to agree with the criticism and decided to remix some of the songs, and possibly add some guitar overdubs where needed. When Albini was informed about all of this, he was not happy, as he is well known for his strong-willed nature and highly opinionated approach to recording an album, and the mechanics of the recording/entertainment industry in general. At first he refused to allow his mix of the album to be changed in any way, as before the recording sessions had started he had made an agreement with the band to ensure that his final mix would not be altered or remixed, although unfortunately for him, this agreement was not in writing. He later agreed to let the two proposed singles from the album, 'Heart Shaped Box' and 'All Apologies', be remixed by someone else, but made it clear that he didn't think anybody could improve on his versions. Geffen hired Scott Litt to remix both tracks and to add a few overdubs to 'Heart Shaped Box', after which the whole album was sent to a mastering studio which, Albini claims, screwed up the sound even more by narrowing the stereo separation, boosting the mids, and generally softening the sharp-edged overall sound. The album, containing the Scott Litt remixes, was officially released on September 21, 1993 and debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200. Ten years later, it seems that Universal UK made a significant mistake when pulling the 1/2" master tapes for their 2003 vinyl reissue, and they accidentally used Albini's original, unmastered mix instead of the final masters, and this album is ripped directly from one of these 2003 vinyl copies, making it a huge improvement on some poor quality bootlegs that are circulating online at the moment, some of which appear to have been recorded at the wrong speed, and we can now hear what Cobain originally wanted the album to sound like.  

Track listing

01 Serve The Servants
02 Scentless Apprentice
03 Heart-Shaped Box
04 Rape Me
05 Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle
06 Dumb
07 Very Ape
08 Milk It
09 Pennyroyal Tea
10 Radio Friendly Unit Shifter
11 tourette's
12 All Apologies

Here's Johnny - Merry Hell (1986)

As mentioned in the previous post on Liverpool bands of the early 80's, Here's Johnny did actually record an album, but as so often happens, the record company didn't have enough faith in the band to issue and promote it, instead putting their money behind Fairground Attraction, which, it has to be admitted, did work. However, Here's Johnny's album would have appealed to an entirely different market and I can see no reason why it wouldn't have been a success. No doubt it would have been played on the John Peel show, as he would always champion anything from his hometown, and I would certainly have bought it, but we'll never know as it was cancelled soon after recording, never to be heard until now. The album was obtained by dominik500 from band members Colin McKay and David Knowles themselves (who incidentally are working together again, writing and making music with John Wilkinson in a band called The Swan Chorus), and they even gave permission for it to be shared. All four of their singles were to be included, although two of the tracks from their Peel session would remain exclusive to that recording session. The album was planned to be released in mid 1986, and came so close that it was even given a catalog number (PL 71016), but at the last minute the release was cancelled. I've added the b-sides to some of their singles as bonus tracks at the end, so enjoy this effort by yet another band who fell foul of the vagaries of the record industry, and had all their hard work come to nothing. 

Track listing

01 Hellzapoppin'
02 Absense Of Malice
03 Torture Garden
04 Your Room
05 Love You To Death
06 Idlewild
07 Open Minded
08 Reckless
09 How Do You Sleep
10 I Fall Apart
11 Belief
12 All You Ever Talk About
13 Turn On The Charm