A little gift from PowerPopTOM

I had a message the other day from PowerPopTOM through Soulseek, who told me that he'd been burning some of the albums from the blog onto CDs, and making covers for them based on the post. He's offered to share these with anyone who had the same idea, and has sent me a batch of them, with 21 albums picked from the blog, and you can get an idea of them from the samples that I've posted below. If you want copies of the front and backs so that you can print them off then there is a Mega link in the comments. If he sends more then I'll add them to the folder and let you know so that you can grab them. 

Grace Jones - In Dub (1986)

In 2011 Grace Jones issued a dub version of her return-to-form 2008 album 'Hurricane', but this was not the first time that she'd gone down the dub route with her music. The 12" version of her 1982 single 'My Jamaican Guy' featured a dub take titled 'J.A. Guys', and a promo sampler of 1998's 'Private Life' included an exclusive dub mix as well, while 'She's Lost Control', which was one of the b-sides of 'Private Life', was also given an extended dub version. The 12" version of 1986's 'Crush' included both an extended remix and a dub take, and while not strictly speaking dub versions, 1985's 'Slave To The Rhythm' was given en extended Hot-Blooded remix, and her 1980 single 'Love Is The Drug' was given an extended re-issue in 1985. As all of these takes clock in at around the eight-minute mark, you only need half a dozen of them to be mixed together to make a great 46-minute album, which is exactly what I've done, and as some of these versions are now quite hard to track down then I think the album stands up as a tribute to the superb musicianship from such luminaries as Robbie Shakespeare and Sly Dunbar on the Compass Point recordings, and the remixing skills of Trevor Horn, Steve Thompson and Alex Sadkin.      

Track listing

01 In Dub (featuring Slave To The Rhythm / J.A. Guys / Private Life / She's Lost Control /

                                                                                                           Love Is The Drug / Crush)

The Charlatans - Taurus Moaner (1991)

The Charlatans were formed in the West Midlands by bassist Martin Blunt, who recruited fellow West Midlanders Rob Collins on keyboards, Jon Brookes on drums, Jon Day (aka Jonathan Baker) on guitar, and singer-guitarist Baz Ketley. Ketley left the band and was replaced by singer Tim Burgess, who had supported the Charlatans with his previous band, the Electric Crayons. Although the Charlatans would later become popularly associated with the Madchester scene, the band's early demos were recorded in 1988 in Birmingham and Dudley, and their signature sound was already established, dominated by Collins's Hammond organ, but underpinned by the driving rhythm section of Blunt's powerful running bass and Brookes's drumming. Their sound fused 1960's soul, R&B and garage rock, and the band saw themselves firmly in the West Midlands tradition of hard-edged soul and R&B that included Birmingham bands such as The Spencer Davis Group and early Dexys Midnight Runners. Their debut single 'Indian Rope' was released on their own Dead Dead Good Records label, proving to be a huge indie hit, and the group soon found themselves signed to a major label in Beggars Banquet offshoot Situation Two, just in time for the release of 'The Only One I Know', which reached the Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart. One more single 'Then' preceded their debut album 'Some Friendly' later that year, and it was around this time that the band were forced to add UK to their name for an American tour, due to the US band of the same name claiming ownership of it. Day left the band after 1991's 'Over Rising' single, to be replaced by Mark Collins, and they brought in producer Flood for the recording of their second album. Right from the start of their career the band have treated their fans well, and have added new compositions to the flips of their singles, and so in the first of a series of posts of non-album tracks, here are all the songs from their singles from 1990 and 1991. 

Track listing

01 Indian Rope (from the 'Indian Rope' 12" single 1990)
02 You Can Talk To Me (from the 'Indian Rope' 12" single 1990)
03 Who Wants To Know (from the 'Indian Rope' 12" single 1990) 
04 Everything Changed (b-side of 'The Only One I Know' 1990)
05 Taurus Moaner (b-side of 'Then' 1990)
06 Opportunity Three (b-side of 'Sproston Green' 1991)
07 Happen To Die (promo only single 1991)
08 Over Rising (single 1991)
09 Way Up There (b-side of 'Over Rising')
10 Me. In Time (single 1991)
11 Occupation H. Monster (b-side of 'Me. In Time')

Soulseek hint, try taurus aiwe

Fefe Dobson - Sunday Love (2005)

Felicia Lily Dobson was born on 28 February 1985, in Scarborough, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, and attended high school at Wexford Collegiate Institute, during which time she took singing lessons at the New Conservatory of Music in Agincourt, Scarborough to improve her singing. She began sending demo tapes – recorded on a home karaoke machine – to many recording companies in North America when she was 11 years old, and two years later she started playing the piano, which then evolved into her starting writing music, and Jive Records attempted to develop her as a popular musician, which she eventually refused, seeing herself more in the rock mould. After that experience, Dobson met Jay Levine and contracted with Nelly Furtado's manager Chris Smith, who arranged showcases with several recording companies. Universal Music Canada president Randy Lennox showed interest in her, and persuaded Island Def Jam CEO Lyor Cohen and his manager of A&R, Jeff Fenster, to fly to Toronto for another showcase, and about 30 seconds into the first punk thrash song 'Stupid Little Love Song' the executives gave her a contract. Dobson's self-titled debut album was released in December 2003 by Island Records, and sold 307,000 copies in the United States, debuting at number one on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums Chart. Four singles were released from the album, and two album tracks were used in the 2004 film 'The Perfect Score'. During much of 2004 she promoted her debut album, performing live on the program 'Total Request Live' and featuring on numerous magazine covers and articles. In July she released a new single, 'Don't Go (Girls and Boys)', which was also featured in a Tommy Hilfiger commercial, and the album was later reissued with that single added. She collaborated with a number of other artists during the recording process, including Holly Knight, Nina Gordon, Matthew Wilder, Cyndi Lauper, Courtney Love, Joan Jett, and Rancid's Tim Armstrong, and sessions commenced for her second album 'Sunday Love' in the summer of 2004. The album's fourteen tracks (thirteen on the eventual album) were recorded over an eight-month period in California, and Island Records set an initial US release date of 20 September 2005, but this was pushed back a number of times before the album was eventually cancelled, and Dobson's contact with Island Records was terminated just days before the album was scheduled for release. Promo copies gained favourable reviews in both Spin and Vibe magazine, but neither of the two single released from the album, 'Don't Let It Go to Your Head' or 'This Is My Life', charted, although 'Be Strong' did feature on the soundtrack for the 2006 film 'It's a Boy Girl Thing'. In April 2005 Dobson was nominated for two Juno Awards, Pop Album of the Year and New Artist of the Year, although missed out on both, but her songs started to be covered by other artists, with 'Don't Let It Go to Your Head' being released as a single by Norwegian girl group Lilyjets, and the music of 'This Is My Life' was used by the Taiwanese girl-group S.H.E in their song 'I Love Trouble', while 'Start All Over' was recorded by Miley Cyrus for her album 'Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus'. 'Sunday Love' is actually a really good indie-rock album and didn't deserve to be cancelled, so it was fitting that it eventually received a digital only release in 2012, but with no physical copies around it's still talked about as Dobson's "lost" album, and so for fans who might have missed it here is your chance to hear what should have been the official follow-up to that Juno-nominated debut. 

Track listing

01 As A Blonde 
02 If I Was A Guy 
03 Don't Let It Go To Your Head 
04 Get You Off
05 This Is My Life 
06 Scar 
07 Miss Vicious 
08 Man Meets Boy 
09 Get Over Me 
10 Hole 
11 The Initiator 
12 Yeah Yeah Yeah 
13 Be Strong 

Scalping - Monolithium (2021)

I first discovered the industrial techno of Scalping when I found a few of their singles on Soundcloud around 2019 (some of them now long gone), and I thought that they were worth keeping an eye on. The band hail from Bristol, and are made up of Isaac Jones on drums, James Rushforth on bass guitar, Nick Berthoud on guitar and Alex Hill on electronics. For the last five years they've been writing, recording and performing music together, trying to answer the question that guides their work "How can a band bridge the gap between live guitar music and live electronic music?" After forming, they played live for two years, almost exclusively in Bristol, before releasing any music, and by sourcing band-centred equipment that pushes boundaries, that music incorporates bass-amplifying techno elements into their repertoire. After releasing some of their music on Soundcloud, they finally issued their debut album 'Void' in April last year, and is was as good as I'd hoped it would be from what I'd already heard. The sound of the album is moody, distorted and rhythmic, but the use of electronic techniques gives the finer details room to breathe. As I still have all the Soundcloud stuff, there's the equivalent of another album's worth of material available for fans to listen to, so here it is, named after the suitably heavy sounding 'Monolithium', and housed in a cover that pretty much sums up what you're about to hear. 

 
Track listing

01 Chamber
02 Satan II
03 Monolithium
04 The Perimeter
05 Cloudburst
06 Empty Cascade
07 Ruptured
08 Deadlock

George Michael - Trojan Souls (1993)

George Michael's second studio album 'Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1' was released in September 1990, with its title being an indication of his desire to be taken more seriously as a songwriter. It reached No. 1 in the UK Albums Chart, and peaked at No. 2 on the US Billboard 200, and spent a total of 88 weeks on the UK Albums Chart, being certified four-times Platinum by the BPI. The album produced five UK singles, and despite Michael refusing to do any promotion for the record, it won Best British Album at the 1991 Brit Awards. Later in 1991 he embarked on the 'Cover To Cover' tour in Japan, England, the US, and Brazil, where he performed at Rock in Rio, but this was not a proper promotion for 'Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1', but rather it featured Michael singing his favourite cover songs, one of which was released as a single that year, with his duet with Elton John on his 'Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me' reaching No. 1 in both the UK and US. An expected follow-up album, 'Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 2', was scrapped due to his lawsuit with Sony, with Michael donating three of the songs to the charity project 'Red Hot + Dance', for the Red Hot Organization which raised money for AIDS awareness. A fourth track 'Crazyman Dance' was released as the b-side of 1992's 'Too Funky', with Michael donating the royalties from 'Too Funky' to the same cause. Following the scrapping of 'Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 2', Michael started a new musical project with childhood friend Andros Georgiou, with 'Trojan Souls' being due to be released on their joint record label Hardback in 1993. Michael reportedly pitched 'Trojan Souls' to Sony and recorded the album between 1991 and 1993, during his legal fight with the label, but he stopped working on music after the death of Anselmo Feleppa, who he called the first love of his life, and who he met at the Rock in Rio concert in 1991. 'Trojan Souls' was to feature songs he would perform himself, as well as songs he wrote and planned to get Elton John, Sade, Seal, Stevie Wonder and Anita Baker to sing, although it is unknown if those artists ever recorded their vocals, apart from Elton John, whose track has leaked online. Fans have long circulated bootlegs of 'Trojan Souls' tracks, most of which are only in instrumental form, as the project was never finished, but there are enough tracks with vocals to gain some idea of what it might have sounded like, and by adding a couple of instrumentals it can be fleshed out to full album length. Prince's guitarist Wendy Melvoin was involved in the project, and 'Sketch For Wendy' was to be her showcase, while 'Pieces' is a mood piece which sits nicely on the album. After 'Trojan Souls' was scrapped, Michael spent the next three years working on new music, which eventually surfaced as the 'Older' album in 1996, but here is the chance to hear what he was working on directly after the massive success of 'Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1', and what, with a bit more work, could have been its follow-up record. 

Track listing

01 This Kind Of Love
02 One Day I'll Know
03 Lonely Nights
04 Sketch For Wendy
05 You Slipped Away From Me
06 Day And Night
07 Waiting For A Heart
08 Pieces
09 So Damn Hard

Bonnie McKee - Love Spell (2008)

Bonnie Leigh McKee was born in Vacaville, California, and raised in Seattle, Washington, studying classical piano and becoming a member of the Seattle Girls Choir Prime Voci at age 12. She recorded two albums with the choir, titled 'Jackson Berkey Meets The Seattle Girls' Choir' and 'Cantate', and with that as a background, McKee's mother gave a demo CD featuring her singing her songs, plus covers of Bette Midler and Fiona Apple, to a friend of hers Jonathan Poneman, who was the co-founder of the Sub Pop label. He was intrigued by her songwriting talents, and according to McKee, this was the moment when she realized she had to be "more than just a singer," but a songwriter, as well. By the age of 15, McKee was writing songs and performing in the Seattle area, and one of her demos reached Colin Filkow, an ex-Priority Records label executive, who recognized that she was a rare talent and signed her to his management company, Platinum Partners Artist Management. Although she was only 17 at the time, he flew her to Los Angeles and welcomed her into his family, inspiring her to sing and write songs and to trust her instincts. Filkow took her demos to dozens of labels, publishers, agents, and entertainment lawyers, and after more than a year, he managed to get her signed to Warner Bros. Records in one of the most lucrative signings ever for a new artist. Her debut album 'Trouble' was recorded across a period of two years by producers Bob Power and Rob Cavallo, and was commercially released in September 2004, but Reprise was unsure on how to sell her, so the label settled on a partnership with internet radio website LAUNCHcast, which would promote the lead single 'Somebody'. This soon became one of the most played tracks on the website, and its popularity with young females led to a strategy where McKee would be a subversive alternative to the teen pop demographic. 

The album received positive reviews in Blender, Nylon, The Los Angeles Times, and Teen People, but was commercially unsuccessful, and she was devastated when the album didn't happen, saying later "I realized there are so many steps from getting a deal to having a hit...and I didn't get there. It was a huge let-down." Despite this she started work on a second studio album, but her life started on a downward-spiral, and she began to abuse crystal meth, an addiction with which she struggled for several years. She was dropped from the label after defacing the CEO's car with lipstick during the middle of the night, and her cancelled second album became the stuff of legend. Following her release from Reprise Records, McKee managed to get a job at Pulse Recordings' publishing arm, Check Your Pulse, through her boyfriend and longtime collaborator, Oliver "Oligee" Goldstein, and while living in poverty, without hot water, a cell phone, or a car, she spent many hours in the recording studio, learning how to use Pro Tools and crafting new songs alongside Elliott Yamin and Leighton Meester. In 2009, she was introduced to music producer Dr. Luke by her manager Josh Abraham, and as Dr. Luke had collaborated with McKee's longtime friend Katy Perry on her second album 'One Of The Boys', he was able to put her name forward when Perry expressed interest in having a co-writer. Together, along with Max Martin and Benny Blanco, they began writing songs, ultimately producing the hits that would appear on Perry's third album 'Teenage Dream', including the three singles from the album, 'California Gurls', 'Teenage Dream', and 'Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)', the last of which was inspired by McKee and Perry's misadventures in their teenaged years. 

Each of the singles topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and they earned McKee several BMI Pop Awards in 2011 and 2012 for her role as a songwriter. She also co-wrote two more chart-toppers for Perry, 'Part Of Me' and 'Roar', and four other songs that hit number one on either the Hot 100 or the UK Singles Chart, being Britney Spears' 'Hold It Against Me', Taio Cruz's 'Dynamite', Rita Ora's 'How We Do (Party)' and Cheryl's 'I Don't Care'. On June 22, 2017, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced that 'Roar' had received an RIAA Diamond certification award for 10 million copies sold. With her new career as a songwriter now firmly established, she didn't feel the need to release her own music, but her fans felt differently, and the forums have been filled with chat for years about the albums that they would love to hear from her. A possible 2014 album for Epic Records is top of the list, but her abandoned second album is often mentioned, and with her backlog of hundreds of unreleased songs she could easily release half a dozen albums full of the sort of songs that were hits for other artists. I've managed to get hold of a huge number of these unreleased recordings, and so am able to piece together some of these sought-after records, and I'm starting with that shelved second album from 2008, now titled 'Love Spell'. 

Track listing

01 Love Spell
02 Thunder Of My Heartbeat
03 Deja Vu
04 Make It Through Another Day
05 Head On
06 Friends
07 Mine
08 Worst In Me
09 Stars In Your Heart
10 To Find You
11 Infatuation
12 Teenage Heart

Swing Out Sister - Filth And Dreams (1999)

Swing Out Sister started as a trio of Andy Connell (keyboards), Martin Jackson (drums) and later Corinne Drewery (vocals). Connell and Jackson, outside of their usual roles as Manchester musicians in A Certain Ratio and Magazine, were producing electro tracks for Morgan Khan's Streetwise label with a degree of underground success, and this activity triggered interest from a few major labels, including Phonogram/Mercury Records. Vocalised songs were asked for, so Connell, who knew Diane Charlemagne through Factory Records, approached her to sing on the Phonogram demos. These demos helped secure Connell and Jackson's major label contract, but Charlemange's band 52nd Street moved from Factory Records to Virgin, and as a result her involvement with Swing Out Sister ended, and Drewery was recruited as a replacement.  Together with their producer, Paul Staveley O'Duffy, they signed with Mercury Records, and released the 'Blue Moon' single, but it failed to chart. In late 1986 they released their second single 'Breakout', and this time it reached number four on the UK Singles Chart. When they released their debut album 'It's Better To Travel' in May 1987, it reached number one on the UK Albums Chart, with the record blending real horns, synths (arranged subtly, to sound like strings), drums, and xylophones, all scored by producer/ arranger Richard Niles. The follow-up single 'Surrender' rose to number seven on the UK charts, while the more serious and jazzy 'Twilight World' was subject to many remixes and was a dance club favourite worldwide. Building on this early success the band released four further albums over the next 10 years, all to critical acclaim and commercial success, and by the time that 'Shapes And Patterns' came out in 1997 the band had become extremely popular in Japan, with the album being released in that country a full year before anywhere else in the world. Their song 'Now You're Not Here' was used as the theme to the Japanese TV programme 'Mahiru No Tsuki', and was ranked at No.1 in the Japanese chart, receiving a Japanese 'Grand Prix' (the equivalent of a Grammy Award) for best international single in 1997. It also marked the beginning of the band's use of Japanese musicians in their studio sessions. 'Filth And Dreams', their sixth album, proved yet again that Swing Out Sister were eager to reinvent themselves, and it was released in Japan in March 1999, and it remains the only album not released in any other country. This album featured stronger jazz leanings than some of their early pop-oriented albums, and is restrained in mood. The track 'Who's Been Sleeping' was promoted as a single and released with several remixes, and some of the songs adapted to the growing popularity of hip-hop in the late 90's, while other used background noises, from telephone conversations to child's play, to enrich the record. As the album could only be obtained from Japan, there could be fans out there who didn't even know it existed, or have been unable to get their hands on a copy, and so for all fans here it is for you to enjoy. 

Track listing

01 Who's Been Sleeping
02 Closer Than The Sun
03 Sugar Free
04 Filth And Dreams
05 Happy When You're High
06 If I Had The Heart
07 When Morning Comes
08 Invisible
09 World Out Of Control
10 Make You Stay

Foeniks - Sentimental Journey (2019)

Foeniks, also known as ELectroBin, is a French electronic music producer who has released a couple of albums on Bandcamp over the last few years. He's been described as not being defined by a genre but by his creativity. His affinity with music began when learning how to play guitar that he patiently taught himself via an insatiable amount of practice and dedication. Blending different styles of music ranging from classical, soul, funk, jazz, trip-hop, metal and others, Foeniks first discovered music production way back in 2001. Throughout the intervening years, fellow producers, sound engineers, and DJs, have accompanied him and helped tremendously in nurturing his sound and making him grow as an artist. Despite the fact that he has never pursued a specific genre of music, he dabbles in trance, techno, electro-rock, drum 'n' bass, breakcore, and cinematic music. He recently posted an album's worth of unreleased music, and it's a fascinating mixture of all the above-mentioned genres, from the idiosyncratic opening cover of 'Sentimental Journey' to the cinematic soundscape of 'Troubles And Melodies' . I'd never heard of him before discovering this album, but I really like it, in particular his inventive use of samples, film dialogue and old jazz records of the 40's, and it's returned to the playlist more than a few times since I found it. 

Track listing

01 Sentimental Journey
02 No Sympathy
03 Deleste (feat. Favo)
04 From Me To You
05 Holiday's Interlude
06 Ils S'en Vont
07 Dark Days
08 Honey
09 We Think Too Much
10 Childish Interlude
11 I Can Dream
12 Troubles And Melodies

The Rolling Stones - Gathered Up Moss Vol. II (2020)

The second volume of Auran's comprehensive collection of The Rolling Stones' non-album singles and b-sides picks with a legendary out-take from 1970 and goes right through to a non-album single from 2020. Mixed in are a number of previously unreleased songs which were added to various compilation albums in 1981, 2002 and 2012, plus a couple of tracks from their 1991 live album which never made it into the studio. As mentioned in the first post, she's omitted tracks from super deluxe editions of albums that have been coming out lately, but that's mostly due to personal preferences, and the fact that this was meant to be a collection of songs which were released at the time, but just not on a studio album. So we now have every non-album song from the band's whole career to enjoy, and once again many thanks to Auran for putting it together.   

Track listing

Gathered Up Moss Vol. II: Disc I 1970-1991
01 Cocksucker Blues (unreleased, from the 1984 German boxset 'The Rest Of The Best')
02 Through the Lonely Nights (b-side of 'It's Only Rock 'n' Roll' 1974)
03 Everything Is Turning To Gold (b-side of 'Shattered' 1978)
04 If I Was A Dancer (Dance Pt. 2) (from 'Sucking In The Seventies' compilation 1981)
05 I Think I'm Going Mad (b-side of 'She Was Hot' 1984)
06 Fancyman Blues (b-side of 'Mixed Emotions' 1989)
07 Cook Cook Blues (b-side of 'Rock And A Hard Place' 1989)
08 Wish I'd Never Met You (b-side of 'Terrifying' 1990)
09 Highwire (from 'Flashpoint' live album 1991)
10 Sex Drive (from 'Flashpoint' live album 1991)

Gathered Up Moss Vol. II: Disc II 1994-2020
01 The Storm (b-side of 'Love Is Strong' 1994)
02 So Young (b-side of 'Love Is Strong' 1994)
03 Jump On Top Of Me (b-side of 'You Got Me Rocking' 1994)
04 I'm Gonna Drive (b-side of 'Out Of Tears' 1994)
05 Anyway You Look At It (b-side of 'Saint Of Me' 1998)
06 Don't Stop (from 'Forty Licks' compilation 2002)
07 Keys To Your Love (from 'Forty Licks' compilation 2002)
08 Stealing My Heart (from 'Forty Licks' compilation 2002)
09 Losing My Touch (from 'Forty Licks' compilation 2002)
10 Hurricane (single 2002)
11 Watching The River Flow (with Ben Waters, from 'Boogie 4 Stu: A Tribute To Ian Stewart' 2011)

12 Doom And Gloom (from 'GRRR!' compilation 2012)
13 One More Shot (from 'GRRR!' compilation 2012)
14 Living In A Ghost Town (single 2020)

And as a bonus for those who want it, 'Vol. 1: Disc III' in now on Soulseek, and has been added to the first post on Mega. 

Mega update

It didn't take me as long as I thought it would to move all the files to Mega, so everything from June 2021 is now on Mega, and the Archive is on Yandex, although I've a horrible feeling that my subscription runs out tomorrow, so if it does then I'll start moving the Archive to Mega after Christmas.

 
pj

Ke$ha - Lost Weekend (2010)

Kesha Rose Sebert was born in Los Angeles, California on 01 March 1987 to Rosemary Patricia "Pebe" Sebert, who is a singer-songwriter who co-wrote the 1978 single 'Old Flames Can't Hold A Candle To You', as featured on Dolly Parton's 1980 album 'Dolly, Dolly, Dolly'. Pebe, a single mother, struggled financially while supporting herself and her two children, sometimes having to look after them onstage while performing. In 1991 Pebe moved the family to Nashville, Tennessee after securing a new publishing deal for her songwriting, and she frequently brought her children along to recording studios and encouraged Kesha to sing when she noticed her vocal talent. Kesha attended Franklin High School and Brentwood High School, playing the trumpet and later the saxophone in the school marching band, and after attaining a near-perfect score on her SATs, she attended Barnard College, dropping out after three months to pursue her music career. In addition to taking songwriting classes, Kesha was also taught how to write songs by her mother, and they would often write together when she returned home from high school. Eventually she began recording demos, which her mother would give to people she knew in the music business. Around this time, Pebe answered an advertisement from the American reality TV series 'The Simple Life', looking for an "eccentric" family to host Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, and the episode featuring the Sebert family aired in 2005. Kesha's demos were gaining interest in the music business, and in 2005, at age 18, she was signed to Kemosabe Records, and later to David Sonenberg's management company, DAS Communications Inc. Working with several writers and producers while at Kemosabe she co-wrote Australian pop group The Veronicas' single 'This Love' with producer Toby Gad, while at the same time earning a living as a waitress, and it was around this time that she added the 'ironic' $ to her name. In 2008 she appeared in the video for her friend Katy Perry's single 'I Kissed A Girl', and also sang background vocals for the song 'Lace And Leather' by Britney Spears. A deal with Warner Bros. Records fell through due to her existing contract with Kemosabe, and after failing to negotiate deals with Lava Records and Atlantic in 2009, she finally signed a multi-album deal with RCA. 

Having spent the previous 6 years working on material for her debut album, she chose the best of the 200 songs that she'd written in the preceding years, and the resulting 'Animal' sold two million copies and was certified Platinum in the United States. The lead single, 'Tik Tok', broke the record in the United States with 610,000 digital downloads sold in a single week, the highest ever by a female artist since digital download tracking began in 2003. Subsequent singles from the album - 'Blah Blah Blah', 'Your Love Is My Drug' and 'Take It Off' - achieved similar commercial success, each reaching the top ten in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Kesha's deliberately unpolished aesthetic and juvenile stage persona quickly made her a deeply polarizing figure, with some of her critics finding her output to be unsophisticated, while others felt that she was manufactured and lacked credibility. In November 2010, 'Animal' was re-released with a companion EP 'Cannibal'. The lead single taken from Cannibal, 'We R Who We R', debuted at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States, and with two number ones and four top ten hits Kesha was named Hot 100 Artist of 2010 by Billboard magazine, with 'Tik Tok' ranked as the best-performing song of the year in the US. With a backlog of 200 songs, it's not surprising that they started to leak onto the internet after the huge success of her first few releases, and so here is just a small selection of the ones that didn't make 'Animal'/'Cannibal'.

Track listing

01 TV To Talk About  
02 Who Do You Love?   
03 This Is Me Breaking Up With You  
04 True Love (feat. Katy Perry) 
05 Booty Call  
06 Butterscotch   
07 Boy Like You (feat. Ashley Tisdale)   
09 Mouth  
09 Red Lipstick   
10 Lovers In the Deep End 
11 Paper Airplane 
12 Bad Dream  
13 Heart Fall Out  
14 Boys Just Suck  
15 Shots On the Hood Of My Car 
16 Lost Weekend 
17 Run Devil Run 

Diamond Head - Play It Loud (1983)

Diamond Head are a well-respected heavy metal band, who were at the forefront of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal movement of the late-70's, and are acknowledged by thrash metal bands such as Megadeth and Metallica as an important early influence, with the latter including the band's 'Helpless' on their classic EP 'The $5.98 E.P. - Garage Days Re-Revisited' in 1987. Diamond Head was formed by Brian Tatler and Duncan Scott while they were both still at school in June 1976, and although they soon found singer Sean Harris, they had to go through three bass players before settling on Collin Kimberley in 1978. The band recorded two self-financed demo tapes on a four-track recorder in 1979, and they sent the demo to Geoff Barton at Sounds magazine, which was perfect timing with the emergence of a new genre coined by Barton as The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. In 1979/80, Diamond Head were managed by budding local managers Dave Morris and Ian Frazier, with Morris putting some money into the band and trying to get them a record deal, and Frazier driving the band around the UK when on tour. The band's demos and live reputation gained enough attention for them to get two support dates with AC/DC, and also one with Iron Maiden at The Lyceum, London. Although several record companies expressed interest in signing the band, none were deemed worthy by Harris's mother Linda Harris, who was by now taking an interest in her son's band, and advising him on important decisions, along with her boyfriend Reg Fellows. Following a difference of opinions about how to manage the band, Morris and Frazier quit their roles, leaving the job solely to Linda Harris and Reg Fellows, and so while other young heavy metal bands were signed to major labels and headlining their own tours, Diamond Head remained independent. Guitarist Brian Tatler thinks that their joint managers had unrealistic expectations about the kind of record deal the band should sign, and so when no deal lived up to this, Fellows decided that the band should record an album quickly and cheaply at a local 24 track studio, where they had recorded their first single 'Shoot Out the Lights', in a deal which gave studio owner Muff Murfin 50 percent of the bands publishing for fifteen years in exchange for use of his studio. 

Tapes were passed around various labels, but when the album, now titled 'Lightning To The Nations', failed to secure a record deal, the band's management decided that they would release 1000 copies of the record on Muff Murfin's independent Happy Face Records label. The album was packaged in a plain white sleeve with no title or track listings, and 250 copies were signed by each band member. The management thought that it should be perceived as a 'demo' album, so no fancy sleeve was required, making it very cheap to produce. The first 1000 copies were pressed and made available at concerts and via mail-order for £3.50, with a mail-order advertisement appearing in Sounds for six weeks, but which the band's management neglected to pay for, and which resulted in them being sued. The original stereo master tapes were lost after they were sent to the German record company Woolfe Records, for them to release a vinyl version of the album with a new sleeve, and they were eventually tracked down by Lars Ulrich and Phonogram Germany for inclusion on the 1990 compilation album 'New Wave Of British Heavy Metal '79 Revisited'. In 1980, Pete Winkelman from Wolverhampton got involved and tried to sign Diamond Head to his new label, Media Records, along the way advising the band to change management,  but this advice was not heeded, and in the end Diamond Head agreed to make just one single for Winkelman, which was a re-recorded version of 'Sweet & Innocent' b/w 'Streets Of Gold', appearing around October 1980. In January 1981, Diamond Head successfully opened for April Wine on their UK tour, and the 'Diamond Lights' EP was quickly recorded to help pay towards the expenses of an ambitious UK tour which was planned for the summer. However, their management tried to save money by bypassing promoters and booking the venues with local agents, and so with little promotion for the tour, it lost money. The only A&R man who was determined to sign the band was Charlie Eyre, who quit his job at A&M and joined MCA in order to sign Diamond Head and Musical Youth. Discussions went on for around six months until the band finally inked a five-album deal on 1 January 1982. 

First on the agenda was to record and release the 'Four Cuts' EP, which contained two early era songs, 'Shoot Out The Lights' and 'Dead Reckoning', alongside new songs 'Call Me' and 'Trick Or Treat'. Their first MCA album 'Borrowed Time', housed in a lavish Rodney Matthews-illustrated gatefold sleeve based on the album's Elric theme, was commercially successful, climbing to No 24 in the UK Albums Chart, and it enabled the band to perform a full-scale UK tour at premier venues such as London's Hammersmith Odeon. Once the two-week UK tour was over, they were told to start writing the next album, and they tried a more experimental sounding follow-up, tentatively titled 'Making Music', and which was later re-named 'Canterbury' in 1983. Using top engineer Mike Shipley at an expensive London studio put immense pressure on the band, and Scott struggled to adapt to this new level of scrutiny and was fired, after completing just six drum tracks in three weeks. Then once all the bass parts had been recorded, Kimberley also quit, leaving just Harris and Tatler to complete the recording, and resulting in Tatler almost having a nervous breakdown. The initial success of the album was stalled as the first 20,000 copies suffered vinyl pressing problems, causing the LP to jump, but it still made number 32 in the UK Albums Chart, although it sold less than their debut, possibly because the sound was so different to 'Borrowed Time', and fan were somewhat confused by it. The band were invited to open that year's Monsters of Rock Festival, and toured Europe as special guests of Black Sabbath, but in early 1984 they were dropped by MCA records, and after an 18-date UK tour which lost money they put the band on hold. Harris and Tatler still continued to write together, and in October/November, they re-convened in a purpose-built studio in Stambermill, West Midlands, to record their next album, but it was never finished, and the band fell apart in early 1985. Diamond Head were one of the better exponents of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, but just didn't seem to have the luck of Judas Priest or Iron Maiden, although 'Borrowed Time' is rightly considered a classic of the genre. This post brings together their singles and EP's which led up to that record, excluding the songs which were later re-recorded for it, and including a handful of demos for their second album. It's a great collection of heavy metal from one of the best bands of the period. 

Track listing

01 Shoot Out The Lights (single 1980)
02 Streets Of Gold (b-side of 'Sweet & Innocent' 1980)
03 Waited Too Long (single 1981)
04 Play It Loud (b-side of 'Waited Too Long')
05 Diamond Lights (from the 'Diamond Lights' EP 1981)
06 We Won't Be Back (from the 'Diamond Lights' EP 1981)
07 I Don't Got (from the 'Diamond Lights' EP 1981)
08 Dead Reckoning (from the 'Four Cuts' EP 1982)
09 Trick Or Treat (from the 'Four Cuts' EP 1982)
10 Can't Take No More (demo 1983)
11 Time's On My Side (demo 1983)
12 Come To Hear You Play (demo 1983)