Grateful Dead 1971 – 1973

In 1970 the Grateful Dead released two albums – Working Man’s Dead and American Beauty. In late 1973 they released the album Wake of the Flood. In between these LPs they released two live albums and three solo albums. 1972 was an especially busy and productive year in spite of the lack of new band studio albums. The live albums contained songs that became concert staples but were never recorded in the studio. What if instead of the live albums and the solo albums (which were mostly band recordings anyway) they released albums which were a mix of live and studio tracks? The premise would be that they would enhance the live tracks of new songs (the European tour was recorded on 16track) and those songs that needed more attention they would record fully in the studio.

This period is full of new songs that were scattered over those five albums (actually four, Mickey’s album was mostly instrumental and more experimental). I had recently read that there was talk at the time of a follow up to American Beauty to complete a trilogy of sorts that was centered around or named after the song Ramble on Rose. I took it upon myself to compile this album and truly fell in love with the period.

My first attempt turned into a double album. Those familiar with me might know of my disdain for double albums but this one worked. The song choice was purely my own taste. I did very little research beyond finding out which live songs were new and unrecorded. I arranged the songs to fit on four vinyl sides. It worked. It played nice. But it left me with a handful of still great songs leftover. The final tracklist was as follows:

Side A
1 Deal
2 One More Saturday Night
3 Jack Straw
4 Mr. Charlie
5 To Lay Me Down

Side B
1 Greatest Story Ever Told
2 Ramble On Rose
3 Tennessee Jed
4 Black-Throated Wind

Side C
1 Bertha
2 Sugaree
3 Looks like Rain
4 Loser

Side D
1 Cassidy
2 He's Gone
3 Playing In the Band
4 Bird Song

I posted the tracklist in a comment on soniclovenoize’s Albums That Never Were blog and somebody asked where The Wheel was. I had just come across the song They Love Each Other which sort of fit the timeline so I compiled a follow up LP with the following leftover songs.

Side A
1 Brown-Eyed Woman
2 Walk in the Sunshine
3 The stranger (Two Souls in Communion)
4 The Wheel

Side B
5 They Love Each Other
6 Chinatown Shuffle
7 Wharf Rat
8 Mexicali Blues

This is where things started to snowball. I started thinking “what if the double album was two single albums?”. I looked at the tracklists again and rearranged the disc sides of the double album. If they were to be single albums, then some songs would have to be moved.

Jack Straw was the most out of place. If the first LP would have been released late ’71 or early ’72 then we had an anomaly. Before the European tour Bob sang all the verses but by the end of the tour Bob and Jerry were trading verses. The version I used from Europe ’72 had Bob and Jerry trading verses. This meant that the side with Jack Straw (Side A) had to be moved to the second album. I swapped side A with side C which contained Bertha which was from the first live album in late ’71. I made new covers and dumped them onto my mp3 player for testing and everything seemed good.

Then I started researching and, well, then things got crazy. I had to go back to the drawing board and start over. Same song pool but now I looked into the time line of when each song was first performed or recorded. I am still discovering and finalizing things. I will post the results after the next project.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - CSN&Y - 1973

In 1973 CSN&Y released a best of LP, presumably to have something to promote on their upcoming tour. This seemed odd due to the fact that they only had two albums and one non-LP single to choose from. What if instead they dipped into their archives to flesh out the album. They had more than enough unreleased material to utilize. I took from this pool of unreleased songs what I thought was the best material. There is still a lot of songs that are still unused.

Side One
1 Ohio
2 Horses Through A Rainstorm
3 How Have You Been
4 Triad
5 Everybody's Talkin'

Side Two
1 Urge For Going
2 The Lee Shore
3 Sea Of Madness
4 Blackbird
5 Everyday We Live
6 Find the Cost of Freedom

Reality Notes

1973-1974 seems like a good time for the group. They seemed to be enjoying each others company and getting along. They had some writing sessions in May '73 at Neil's Maui beach house. Then in October '73 David, Graham and Neil joined Stephen onstage after a Manassas concert. 1974 saw rehearsals, a summer tour and some recording sessions. All of this was leading up to the recording of a new album that never happened called Human Highway. We will return to that album in the future.

I kept the first and last songs from the original LP. They were released as a single only so this would be the first time these songs were available on an LP. The rest of the songs are all from the periods that produced the first and second LPs. I utilized two sources for the unreleased material. The CSN box set and the bootleg Studio Archives 1969. Editing was limited to removing excess studio chatter, count ins and false starts.

• Ohio - Single
• Horses Through A Rainstorm - CSN Box Set
• How Have You Been - Studio Archives boot
• Triad - Studio Archives boot
• Everybody's Talkin' - Studio Archives boot
• Urge For Going - CSN Box Set
• The Lee Shore - CSN Box Set
• Sea Of Madness - Studio Archives boot
• Blackbird - CSN Box Set
• Everyday We Live - Studio Archives boot
• Find the Cost of Freedom - Single

Hindsight

I still enjoy this comp and I don't think I would change anything. The main push for constructing it was to have a place for Crosby's Lee Shore and Triad, still among my favorite Crosby songs. I still feel this is the way the label should have gone rather than the best of collection officially released.

Is it on my iPod? No. If my 160GB iPod still lived then yes but on my 30GB, with more limited space, I took a different route with CSNY. Listening to CSNY in the digital world has presented some challenges. Sometimes you want to listen to everything and others one of the many different configurations they have recorded under over the years or some combination of the two. What I've done is create my own "box set" for the iPod. Six discs each focused on each individual or group. One for each solo. one for Crosby-Nash and one that covers CSN, CSNY and Stills and Young. Works out nice.

KISS - Radioactive - 1978

I felt the cover needed updating so I made a new one. I did not update the zip file so if you like the new cover you can right click on the image and choose save image as or how ever your browser like to do that sort of thing.

 

In 1978, between the releases of Alive II and the Dynasty albums, KISS released solo albums. What if instead they recorded a band LP. The idea for this is not new and is most likely on the verge of cliche but I thought it was a cool idea to tackle.

I took inspiration from this episode of the Three Sides of the Coin KISS podcast. Their premise was that you are the executive producer for the new album. You get to choose the producer and the songs, which will all come from the demo pool of songs that are on each solo album, and who will sing the lead vocals. Because of this, this is the first time I speculated on how the songs might be different from the actual official versions.

I went back and listened to each album to see what was there. It has been a while since I listened to any of them. When they came out I really only listened to Ace's album. I did have Peter's on 8track back in the day and listened to it often but not much since. I think I heard Gene and Paul's albums two or three times at the most. After a few listens I realized that nothing on Peter's album and only two or three songs from Gene were up to par. This meant that Paul and Ace were going to have to pick up the slack.

As this would have been the studio follow up to Love Gun I used that as a template. I chose songs that I thought had an overall KISS vibe then slowly narrowed them down to the final ten, arranging them for feel and flow.

Side one
1 Rip It Out
2 It's Alright
3 What's On Your Mind
4 Radioactive
5 Tonight You Belong To Me

Side two
1 Move On
2 I'm in Need of Love
3 Love In Chains
4 Tunnel Of Love
5 Speedin' Back to My Baby

Reality Notes

• Rip It Out - Written by Ace but sung by Gene. I prefaced this song with the last 15 seconds of the spooky intro from Gene's album. 
• It's Alright - Paul, used as is. 
• What's On Your Mind - Ace, used as is. 
• Radioactive - Gene - used as is minus the spooky intro. 
• Tonight You Belong To Me - Paul, used as is. 
• Move On - Paul, sung by Peter. 
• I'm in Need of Love - Ace, Sung by Gene. 
• Love In Chains - Paul, I did a slight edit on the first chorus to tighten it up by removing the second and third lines. 
• Tunnel Of Love - Gene, used as is.
• Speedin' Back to My Baby - Ace, Peter sings the response calls at the end.

What we end up with is what I feel is a strong album with four Gene vocals, three Paul vocals, two Ace vocals and one Peter. It was not unusual for the composer of the song to not be the lead singer. Before Love Gun which features the first Ace lead vocal someone else would always sing Ace's songs. Two of Paul's earlier songs were given to someone else to sing, notably God of Thunder by Gene and Hard luck Woman by Peter.

I honestly tried to find a song from Peter's solo album but in the end decided against it. His album contained a mix of covers and originals with the covers being mostly oldies and the originals already rejected on previous albums. I'm sure that if Peter insisted on having a song on the album the band would have reworked one of them into something more KISS like but I had a hard time visualizing any as contenders.

Gene's album is all over the place. There might be another song or two that could have fit but with so many great Ace songs available why try to shoehorn a mediocre song in. KISS during the time of the original lineup was an equal partnership so there was no real reason to fight for a songwriting credit beyond a sense of pride. Everyone received an equal share of the profits.

The second alternate cover was created using artwork by David E. Wilkinson. Check out his site for other KISS  and non-KISS related works.

Hindsight 

So it's been over a year and a half since I posted this and even longer since its construction. How has it held up? Very well indeed. I'm pretty confident in saying that if I did this on today it would turn out very much the same. The only thing I flip-flop on is on the speculation of how many Ace songs are given to Gene to sing. in particular I'm In Need Of Love.

I would have loved to see Ace get three vocals on an album like he did on Unmasked but this is supposed to be the studio followup to Love Gun which featured Ace's vocal debut. Ace has at least one songwriting credit on every album before that with the exception of Rock And Roll Over. While it would seem odd to go from no vocal to one vocal to three in the span of a few albums they were still putting out two albums a year and evolved quickly. In the end it would have been the producer's call and like George and Ringo in The Beatles, Ace and Peter were always looked upon as support for Gene and Paul.

Is it on my iPod? 

Yes. I have all of the studio albums on there up to and including this one. I then have two best of comps, one that covers the rest of the makeup era and another that covers the non-makeup era up through Hot In The Shade. From there I include all full albums that came after, minus live and compilation albums of course.