Melanie - Creative Workshop

Sunset and Other Beginnings is one of my favorite Melanie albums. Not so much for the songs themselves which are typical average Melanie but more because of the production style. Something about the overall feel of the album seems to draw me in. So when I came across a bootleg that collected 31 tracks of outtakes and alternate mixes I was thrilled.

I spent some time with the collection and as always I started to wonder if there was enough unique material to construct a new album. There was and here are my results. A nice, twelve song LP just as nice as the album the sessions officially produced.

Side One
01 Secret Of The Darkness
02 Deep Down Under My Bed
03 Dream Lover
04 Another You
05 Raindance
06 When The Saints Go Marching In

Side Two
07 Darling Be Home Soon
08 White Man Sings The Blues
09 Ain't Nobody's Business
10 Another Side
11 Little Maggie
12 Any Day Now

Reality Notes

Melanie was never the type to sit on her laurels. She was always trying new things and chasing new sounds as she still does today. She had many successes in the first part of her career up to the early 80s. She was the first women solo act to have three singles on the top 100 at the same time. She played all of the major festivals at the time including Woodstock and Monterey. In fact many cities banned her because of her association as a festival act. In spite of all this Melanie never made it past the lower end of the top tier of performers.

By the time of Sunset and Other Beginnings, Melanie's career had plateaued. She was still selling but the industry was changing. Singer/songwriters were on the way out to make room for disco and punk/new wave with MTV just around the corner. Melanie would soon begin a slow dance to maintain relevancy in a changing environment, changing her image and sound to try and fit in with the new guard.

So how does this collection of outtakes measure up to the album they came from? Pretty darn good if you ask me. It must have been difficult to choose which tracks to use and which ones to set aside. I can see this being released as a quick follow up to Sunset. It feels complete and just as charming.

Two songs, Secret Of The Darkness and Raindance, were re-recorded and appear on the next album Photograph. While Secret Of The Darkness is just as good on that album (maybe better), I much prefer Raindance here. The simplicity of the guitar/voice demo lets the soul of the song come through. That album was later re-released as a double album with plenty of worthy songs that can take the place of these.

The name of the album is derived from the name of the bootleg - Creative Workshop Sessions - which is in turn named after the studio where the songs were recorded - Creative Workshop.

The cover picture was featured on the cover of the Madrugada album but was small and set in the corner and twisted into a perspective view. I have always loved the picture and found an unedited version and used it here.

Melanie - The Kind of Night - 1993

As an amateur recording engineer and record producer I have a short list of big names that I would love to work with. Among the top three are Chuck Berry (sadly no longer with us) Crosby Stills Nash and Young (sadly no longer speaking to each other...again) and Melanie.

I wanted to bring Chuck out of recording retirement. For CSNY I wanted one album of new material done with minimal instrumentation to showcase the harmonies. For Melanie I wanted a simple low key recording that shows off her quiet voice as much as her powerhouse vocals.

While I can't do much about the first two, Melanie did record an album that was produced in a way that I would have done. Unfortunately, that album is as much of a mess as her later discography is. It is a mix of new songs, covers and remakes of old songs. Fortunately, there are 29 songs from the sessions. Plenty to pick and choose from to make one great album.

[If Melanie wanted to release a special vinyl issue for record store day this construction would get my top vote.]

Side One
01 The Natural Man
02 Freedom Knows My Name
03 If I Needed You
04 Taking A Bath
05 Count The Days You're Gone
06 Life Will Not Go Away

Side Two
01 Live Coal
02  Arrow (Cheryle Wheele)
03 Ballerina
04 Tonight's The Kind Of Night
05 Friends and Company

Reality Notes

Melanie is at the top of my guilty pleasure list (though I don't feel too guilty). My biggest issues with Melanie has always been on the production side. More often than not her albums are heavy with strings and other MOR nonsense. I like things simple and clean. Which is why I tend to gravitate to her live albums which are usually just her and maybe one or two other instrumentalists.

My other issue with Melanie comes from her later years. Simply put, Melanie's later discography is a mess. It started with the double album Ballroom Streets which had a few new songs and a lot of remakes. In later years she got into the habit of rerecording her early songs. While I have no real qualms about this practice, many artists revisit old material from time to time, in Melanie's case she often sacrificed space on albums that could have benefited from one or two new songs in order to include the remakes. As a result, we have enough alternate versions of songs to fill at least two albums.

Which brings us to Silver Anniversary. Recorded in the early 90s and released only in Germany and the Netherlands in double CD packages, each with slightly different tracklists. To confuse matters further, six songs were tacked on to the US version of the European only release Silence is King renamed Freedom Knows My Name after one of the songs from Silver Anniversary.

So what good can be found here? The new songs are all great songs. The remakes are good and some even rival the originals. The covers are imaginative even if they don't all live up to expectations. But most of all is the production. Primarily acoustic with sparse instrumentation, no strings or orchestras and almost no drums and some great background vocals. Just great songs. Of the 29 songs, ten originals and four covers make their first appearance on this album. Some of these were rerecorded for later albums but these are the original versions according to timeline. I wanted to include only those songs that make their first appearance on this album.

Because we have ten originals that time out to just over 36 minutes I only needed to include one of the new covers. Melanie's covers have always been hit and miss. Sometimes she manages to truly make the song her own, other times it just feels awkward. I could take two or three of the remaining new covers and pair them with three of the best remakes and have a fine EP but at the moment, I'm fine with this.

I did some light editing, cutting out excessive studio chatter and song title announcements. I left some lighthearted moments in but not enough to get in the way of the flow and overall enjoyment.

One song, Tonight's The Kind Of Night, which I named the album after, is actually a Christmas song that she later rerecorded for a full Christmas album. I could have dropped it and still have had a full album but this version is better than the remake and it's not an all out Christmas carol and only mentions Christmas during the chorus. It's more of a mood piece than a seasonal piece so I kept it in.

For the cover I used the picture from the Freedom Knows My Name album. Now about that discography, I think I may need to go and make some charts.

[Edit: I was just poking around Melanie's discography and noticed that Friends and Company previously appeared on Ballroom Streets and before that on Photograph so technically should not appear here. My view is that even though what we do here is revisionist in nature I feel once I have posted a project that is the final and definitive version. Also, given the timeline, this would not be the first Melanie album to have a remake on it. Plus, this is the better version. And I'm lazy. The purist can just delete that song from the folder. Thanks for listening. [Really? Same goes for If I Needed You. I need a break.]]