Lindsey Buckingham - Tusk

Thanks to AEC for giving me a little nudge on this one. A while back I took apart Fleetwood Mac's Tusk and created a McVie/Nicks album. So here we have its companion, Lindsey Buckingham's Tusk.

Lindsey was in a frantic state of mind by the time Tusk was finished. Cracking from the pressure of following Rumors, one of the best selling records of all time, and fueled by heavy use of cocaine he was determined to deliver something different in order to compete with the younger New Wave bands of the time.

Side One
01 Not That Funny
02 Save Me A Place
03 What Makes You Think You're The One
04 That's All For Everyone #1
05 The Ledge
06 That's Enough For Me

Side Two
01 Tusk
02 Walk A Thin Line
03 I Know I'm Not Wrong
04 That's All For Everyone #2
05 Out On The Road
06 Kiss And Run

Bonus Track
Tusk (USC Version)

Reality Notes

When I first took Tusk apart to make the McVie/Nicks album I did try to collect Lindsey's songs into an album. At the time I only had a single disc of outtakes and at best I  was only able to come up with about 30 minutes of material. I've recently found more material in the form of the five disc deluxe version of Tusk. With the additional tracks I was not only able to expand the album to a more acceptable length but also swap some tracks with alternate versions with less Christine and Stevie to make it feel more like a solo album.

What Makes You Think You're The One, The Ledge, Walk A Thin Line, That's All For Everyone #2 are the original album versions. That's All For Everyone #1 is an earlier version with different lyrics. Out On The Road evolved into That's Enough For Me. This version is very different from the finished song keeping the chord structure but little else.

Kiss And Run is a proper outtake that sounds like an impromptu studio run through of a song that was never taken further. It was written by Jorge Calderon, the percussionist from the Buckingham/Nicks band and features McVie and Nicks a bit more prominently than I would like but it works. Its informality adds to the charm.

Tusk is an early take that does not have the USC marching band so I included a version that is only the USC band. as a bonus track

For the cover I rotated the image and inverted the colors on the original cover and did a few other modifications.

Guns N' Roses - Perfect Crime - 1992

While the last two albums showed growth in both production and songwriting, Perfect Crime is a return to form of sorts.While production flourishes are still present the songs themselves are all full on hard rock/heavy metal. No ballads here. This is the album many hard core fans were waiting for.

Recorded almost simultaneously with the previous album The Garden it was held back to be released at the mid point in the upcoming mega tour. Whether or not they appear on every song is uncertain but this is the last album to feature all of the original members.

Side One
01 Locomotive
02 Perfect Crime
03 Right Next Door To Hell
04 Shotgun Blues
05 You Could Be Mine

Side Two
01 Garden Of Eden
02 Pretty Tied Up
03 Double Talkin' Jive
04 Coma
05 My World

Reality Notes

The third and final installment in my breakdown and reconstruction of the Use Your Illusions CDs. As I mentioned in the last post, I could not find any reliable documentation that would have helped me group the post '90 tracks chronologically so I made the decision to divide them by style. After the acoustic Lies and the ballads found on the last two albums it's a bit refreshing to hear the guys just full out rocking.

I wanted to keep the cover heavy and straight forward to match the contents. Nothing too fancy.

So, what have I learned from this? Even with the smaller doses there is still a lot here that I would probably still skip. I did find some songs that I passed on before that I find I do like. If I had to cull a single disc from the two it would probably look something like this (in no particular order):

Civil War
Don't Damn Me
Dust N' Bones
Yesterdays
November Rain
The Garden
You Ain't The First
Bad Apples
Locomotive
Bad Obsession
Knockin' On Heaven's Door
Garden Of Eden
Perfect Crime
Double Talkin' Jive
Shotgun Blues
You Could Be Mine

Of course if I did this next week it would most likely come out different. We had some discussion about what to do about Chinese Democracy. My opinion was that I have a hard time accepting it as a GN'R album, but I am ok viewing it as an Axl Rose solo album. It is a good album though not always my style. To complete that idea, I threw together a few covers to replace and rebrand the album. I settled on the one here. I used a picture that was floating around as a fake cover for the album before it was released. I make no mention of GN'R or Axl beyond his initials in the logo which gives the impression that Chinese Democracy could be the name of the band.

Thanks for listening and now on to other things.

Guns N' Roses - The Garden - 1991

Part two of our Use Your Illusions breakdown.

The success of Use Your Illusions and the brief tour that followed gave the band enough momentum to push them through the recording of the next album. So much momentum that after wrapping up one album they recorded another quickly before hitting the road again. Unfortunately that momentum was not enough to fix some of the problems the band was having and by the time the sessions were done so were Adler and Stradlin.

Adler and Stradlin were replaced by Sorum and Clarke and with the addition of Dizzy Reed a massive tour was launched. The plan was to tour in support of this album and halfway through the tour release the next album (already in the can) to give the tour an added boost.

Side One
The Garden
Dead Horse
14 Years
So Fine
Breakdown

Side Two
Get In The Ring
You Ain't The First
Live And Let Die
Bad Apples
Estranged

Reality Notes

For the remainder of tracks from Use Your Illusions I & II I divided them into two groups. Because the documentation I found does not indicate a chronology of when each song was written and they were all recorded at roughly the same time, I split them according to style. This album contains the more accessible and mature songs as a follow up to UYI and the next album is a proper "back to basics" heavy follow up to Appetite.

The cover features an illustration I found on an old clip art CD (remember those?).

Guns N' Roses - Use Your Illusion - 1990

In 1991 Guns N' Roses released two CDs simultaneously titled Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II. Both CDs were full at over 70 minutes each. Essentially two double albums or a triple album spread across two discs, either way it's a lot of music to digest at one time. Too much for me.

By the end of 1989 they had more than enough material in the works for an album. So, what if they released all of that music in more digestible chunks over a three year period instead of all at once? I've divided the tracks into three albums. I'll be posting them one at a time (as they should have) over the next few weeks starting with this one.

The one big suspension of belief that we must accept to make this work is that the band managed to set aside enough of their dysfunction to record and release this album before the close of 1989. All of the songs were written but some of the members were still struggling with the substance abuse that plagued their early years and recording proper for UYI did not start until 1990.

Side One
Civil War
Bad Obsession
Don't Cry (Alt. Lyrics)
Knockin' On Heaven's Door

Side Two
Don't Damn Me
Dust N' Bones
Yesterdays
November Rain

Reality Notes

Anyone who has read through this blog will be aware of my feelings towards double albums (live albums excluded). They are either concept albums that got out of hand or a strong case for the artist not being able to edit oneself. I've taken apart a few of those here on this blog and will most likely take apart a few more but there are some cases where a double album is justified. Sometimes an band or artist has so much material that they have to get it all out before they can move on (think All Things Must Pass). These albums usually have a higher percentage of great songs and less filler which makes them harder to break apart. You're never going to please everyone.

For these double albums my only complaint can be that there is too much music to digest in one sitting. Doubly so for Use Your Illusions as we have two double albums to go through. I really cannot see cutting any songs to turn this into one single album. Anything I come up with will end up being a personal favorites, best of album. Your mileage will vary. So, inspired by my conversation with Fredrick Beondo in the comment section for the GN'R indy debut I decided to dive in and see what I could come up with without sacrificing anything.

I started by dividing the tracks into two groups using January 1990 as the separating line. Anything that was written or in the works or thought to be from before that time is fair game for inclusion on the first of the three resulting albums. I used this timeline to determine my song pool. I dropped Don't Cry (Original Lyrics) and Back Off Bitch because they were used in earlier incarnations on the indy debut. I'll discuss how I divided up the remainder when I post the next album.

I ended up with a great eight song, 45 minute album for a proper follow up to Appetite/Lies. I wanted to keep this one within vinyl album length to be the last GN'R album to have a vinyl release. The remainder will be CD/cassette only. I will say that in this configuration I have grown to appreciate many of the songs that I tended to skip on the official releases.

For the cover I used elements from the Use Your Illusion covers with some modifications.

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.]]

Christine Mcvie/Stevie Nicks - 1979

This week in our Half Off Double Album series we are going to tear apart a contentiously beloved album, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk. Tusk as an album contains a lot of great songs, arguably mostly from Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie but also a few from Lindsey Buckingham. The production of the album was pushed forward by heavy drug use and a maniacal Lindsey who was insistent that this album sounded nothing like their previous album Rumors.

It was early on when the decision was made to make a double album. Whether that was a good or bad decision is a matter of opinion. But what if among all the stress and turmoil surrounding the Rumors album and tour they decided to take a step back and do other projects? So here we have McVie/Nicks.

Side One
01 Angel
02 Never Forget
03 Brown Eyes
04 Beautiful Child
05 Sisters Of The Moon

Side Two
01 Over & Over
02 Storms
03 Honey Hi
04 Farmer's Daughter
05 Sara
06 Never Make Me Cry

Reality Notes

It had been a while since the last time I had listened to the album, so I took some time to reacquaint myself with the material. I came to the conclusion that this album cannot be trimmed down to a single disc Fleetwood Mac album without losing some great songs. The way I see it, this could go one of three ways.

1. Everyone records solo albums
2. Lindsey and Stevie revive Buckingham-Nicks and Christine records a solo album
3. Lindsey records a solo album and Stevie and Christine do an album together

I suppose technically Lindsey and Christine could have teamed up and Stevie could do a solo album but for some reason I didn't find that as interesting to warrant exploring. We don't have enough songs to really explore option one although with one outtake and some alternate versions I might be able to pad enough to make a Lindsey solo album. Still hacking away on that.

There were also many other Stevie songs demoed, some of which showed up on later solo and Fleetwood Mac albums. Beauty And The Beast was recorded for The Wild Heart. Smile At You was released on Say You Will. Secret Love appears on In Your Dreams and The Dealer shows up on 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault. If someone wants to put that together go ahead. Unfortunately the production varies from album to album so I'm not sure how well the songs will blend together.

Going with option three I had more than enough songs to work with. We have six Christine songs, five Stevie songs and one Beach Boys cover outtake (Farmer's Daughter). I dropped Think about me by Christine, there was just too much Lindsey on it. Lindsey, being the producer, has his hands in everything and can be heard on many tracks vocally (on a Fleetwood Mac album that's fine if not expected). And of course, Lindsey, Mick and John are all there to lend a hand.

I'm kind of treating this as being similar to Bob Weir's Ace solo album that features the Grateful Dead as the backing band. Here we have Christine and Stevie being backed up by the rest of Fleetwood Mac. Peter Green even shows up playing guitar on Brown Eyes.

I actually started with option two. I'm a big fan of the first Buckingham/Nicks album so to make a follow up seemed to be a good idea. The results were good and after a few listens I warmed up to some of Lindsey's songs but the production on the first album was more like the last two Fleetwood Mac albums and this one didn't always feel very Buckingham/Nicks like.

It was when I was constructing option two that I realized that it was Lindsey's songs I liked least. Lindsey was determined at the time to make Fleetwood Mac relevant in a post punk/new wave era. While he may have succeeded on some level there, the results don't always feel like a Fleetwood Mac song when taken out of context, especially Lindsey's songs.

Because we have more Lindsey songs than Stevie or Christine I'm still shuffling things around and I may switch a few songs out but at the moment this is where this album stands.

01 Tusk
02 Angel
03 Sisters Of The Moon
04 Walk A Thin Line
05 Storms
06 Sara
07 Save Me A Place
08 Not That Funny
09 Beautiful Child
10 The Ledge
11 That's Enough For Me

If I manage to achieve something I can be happy with I will post that sometime in the future.

I modified the original cover to reflect the change to a McVie/Nicks album. Because the title track was a Lindsey song we can no longer call the album Tusk. I am hoping to use it for the Lindsey solo album or the Buckingham/Nicks album, whichever gets done first.

The Who - Qudrophenia (single disc) - 1973

In the latest installment of my half off double album series we are going to take apart a Who classic. While everyone else is concerning themselves with reconstructing Rock Is Dead - Long Live Rock, a concept album envisioned by Pete Townshend as a musical history of The Who told through song, I want to address the album that it became. Namely the double album rock opera Quadrophenia. A concept album that concerns itself with the conflicts in mid 60s London between two rival cliques, Mods and Rockers.

While I admire Mr. Townshend's ability to not only dream up these things but also, bring them to life, sometimes I think the man thinks too much. I want songs, not operas. So, in the spirit of the Lifehouse to Who's Next transition I was wondering if the same idea could be applied to Quadrophenia. Could there be a great single disc album hidden within?

Side One
01 The Real Me
02 Cut My Hair
03 5:15
04 Sea And Sand
05 Drowned

Side Two
01 The Punk And The Godfather
02 I'm One
03 The Dirty Jobs
04 Is It In My Head?
05 Love Reign O'Er Me

Reality Notes

To be completely honest here, before I started this project I had never listened To the album straight through. I knew the classic songs more from best of collections and I expected a lot more filler material than there was. I have yet to see the movie and I have never listened to the soundtrack version.

This probably better qualifies me to take this project on. I am not attached to any underlying narrative that may be hidden within each song. I needed to be plot agnostic and choose songs that could stand on their own and dispose of songs that were obviously there to further the storyline.

I started with the four songs I was familair with (The Real Me, 5:15, Drowned and Love Reign O'Er Me) then fleshed out the tracklist from there. I dropped any instrumental over/underture interludes. I was drawn to Sea And Sand, I'm One and Is It In My Head? and included those bringing my track count up to seven. From what was left I eliminated Doctor Jimmy for being too long and a few more for being too entrenched in the plot line. This left me with Cut My Hair, The Punk And The Godfather and The Dirty Jobs to fill out the album.

I shuffled those around for flow and timing Keeping The Real Me and Love Reign O'er Me in their respective opening and closing spots. I trimmed or removed as much of the audio clip transitions between songs as I could. The musical structure of Cut My Hair and the intro to 5:15 are the same so I used the TV announcer/teapot at the end of Cut My Hair to transition into 5:15. Worked out beautifully.

I resisted the urge to include Join Together and Relay or any other unused song from the abandoned Rock is Dead project. Like my single disc The Wall project I wanted to make a concise Quadrophenia, not an alternate Rock is Dead. Are the results worth it? I've played the album through many times now without feeling the urge to skip any song. While still not as great as Who's Next or even Who By Numbers it can now rest comfortably along side those albums and it no longer feels like a chore to get through.

I kept the original cover. Its a great cover. I didn't change the name of the album, Why change the cover?

U2 - Rattle and Hum - 1988

A while back when I first started this new blog I had an idea to post some of my favorite fantasy albums from other constructors. This came out of the fact that I didn't have a lot of albums of my own to share and feared running out. The idea was that I would give links to the original posts with a short review about what I liked about it. If the constructor did not provide a download of the project I would do it myself and post it for them. This album was to be the first in that series.

While browsing through AlbumFixer's blog I came across his deconstruction/reconstruction of Rattle and Hum. It had several things going for it but the two main points were it was U2 and it was a double album reduced down to a single album (do I need to mention...). I agreed with every point he made and every justification for his song choices. I put it together and gave it a test run and was pleased with the flow and feel of the album. Then...

I was glancing through the list of songs AlbumFixer would have included as bonus tracks and noticed Hallelujah Here She Comes and thought why was this left off? AlbumFixer's plan was to only include those songs that appeared on the album itself. Hallelujah only appeared as the B side to the Desire single. But he did include Jesus Christ which was a cover song that was not on the album but later appeared on the Woody Guthrie tribute Folkways: A Vision Shared.

Jesus Christ was recorded during the Sun Studios sessions along with many of the other songs on the album but as far as I know it was always destined for the tribute album. If AlbumFixer could include this song why not Hallelujah? We had the room so I slipped it in and the project was no longer a review and started to take on a life of its own.

Side One
01 Desire
02 Angel Of Harlem
03 When Love Comes To Town
04 Love Rescue Me
05 Hallelujah (Here She Comes)

Side Two
01 Hawkmoon 269
02 Van Diemen's Land
03 God Part II
04 Jesus Christ
05 All I Want Is You

Reality Notes

Rattle and Hum is where I lost U2. At the time of its release I was still enjoying The Joshua Tree from the year before. I guess I was more confused by Rattle and Hum than anything else. Was it a soundtrack? A live album? A new studio album? It just seemed to be all over the place and that got in my way from enjoying the many great new songs on the album. It took me a year or two before I purchased the album and even then I did not play it enough to really get to know it.

When I decided to take ownership of this construction and added Hallelujah I also added A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel which was the B side to the second single from the album. I eventually dropped the song because it pushed the album length to more than 48 minutes. And while it is a good song it was not one I found myself humming when the album was not on. Keep it for the B sides.

I kept Jesus Christ because it fit well with the other songs. There is a general religious/spiritual feel to the album in both subject matter and the use of gospel choirs and other musical themes from gospel music. I probably could have just swapped Jesus Christ for A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel but Jesus Christ just seemed to fit better.

I removed Heartland and The Star Spangled Banner. Heartland was recorded during The Joshua Tree sessions. AlbumFixer included it on his double album version of that album And I followed suit and included it on Hold Onto Love. The Star Spangled Banner is Jimi Hendrix from Woodstock so it doesn't belong here anyway.

Once I had the album constructed I took a look at the leftovers. Six live songs remained. Four originals from the last two albums and two cover songs. I took those songs and put together a live mini album in the style of Under A Blood Red Sky with a little surprise at the end.

01 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
02 All Along The Watchtower
03 Pride (In The Name Of Love)
04 Silver And Gold
05 Helter Skelter
06 Bullet The Blue Sky

I renamed the studio album Rattle and named the live EP Hum. I modified the cover for Rattle and Hum and created a similar cover for Hum by modifying the cover for the All I Want Is You single. Both albums are included in the download.

Sources
Rattle and Hum
The Best of 1980-1990
Folkways: A Vision Shared

U2 - Hold Onto Love - 1987

The Joshua Tree was U2's fifth album and was released in March of 1987. A few months later in spite of the album still sitting at the top of the charts the band released Hold Onto Love as a part two of sorts. The songs were recorded at the same time as those on The Joshua Tree but were finished after its release. While a double album was considered at one time the idea was dropped in favor of two separate albums released close together under the umbrella title of Desert Songs Volume One and Two. While the title Desert Songs never appeared on the packaging it was mentioned during interviews and press releases and the similar artwork tied it all together. It was felt that the second batch of songs had a different feel than the first and was closer in feel to The Unforgettable Fire.

Side One
01 Luminous Times
02 Sweetest Thing
03 Deep In The Heart
04 Beautiful Ghost
05 Heartland

Side Two
01 Spanish Eyes
02 Wave Of Sorrow (Birdland)
03 Walk To The Water
04 Race Against Time
05 Silver And Gold

Reality Notes

The inspiration for this construction came from AlbumFixer who posted an expanded version of The Joshua Tree that becomes a double album. Not being a fan of double albums (have I mention that before?) I wondered if the extra tracks would make a decent single album. I think it worked. Many, if not most, of the songs here are just as good as any of the songs on The Joshua Tree. All of these songs originated and were worked on during the Joshua Tree sessions. They were finished after the release of that album without the presence of any producers with the intention of using them as B sides for the upcoming singles. Heartland was later released on Rattle and Hum but originated during these sessions.

I Was U2 mad at the time The Joshua Tree was released. I had every album, EP and 12" single I could find. The day I purchased the album I had heard it in it's entirety on the radio. They were playing it in the store when I bought it and I played it almost constantly when I got it home. This was U2 at the peak of their game. After this album I kind of lost interest. Rattle and Hum was good but I never really took the time to immerse myself in it like The Unforgettable Fire or The Joshua Tree.

At the time of release I purchased as many of the 12" vinyl singles that contained these songs that I could find. I marveled at the quantity of quality leftover songs and wondered why they didn't gather them for another album or EP instead of wasting them on B sides. I wouldn't doubt that at one time I used them as filler with the album when I put it on cassette for listening on the go. All of these songs were collected together along with a few more songs from the sessions and released on a companion CD for the anniversary deluxe edition of The Joshua Tree.

For the cover I did my best to emulate The Joshua Tree cover to tie them together. I used a picture from the same cover photo sessions.

Pink Floyd - The Wall - 1979

In late 1979 Pink Floyd released their most successful album since Dark Side of the Moon. Spanning two vinyl discs The Wall told the story of Pink, a celebrity recluse driven mad by fame and circumstance. The project was driven mostly by Roger Waters with production aided by Bob Ezrin. The album, in spite of its success, proved to be the beginning of the end of the band.

What if the record label, after hearing the finished album, demanded that the album be cut down to a single disc? Could it be done? I thought so and here are my results. For those that insist that this is unnecessary and/or believe the album should be expanded to three discs let's just say that with the release of the film they put out a two or three disc soundtrack version using new and rerecorded material to flesh out the story. If someone wants to do that album, go ahead. I don't think I could.

Side A
01 In The Flesh? 3:18
02 The Thin Ice 2:33
03 The Happiest Days Of Our Lives 1:33
04 Another Brick In The Wall 4:18
05 Mother 5:27
06 Goodbye Blue Sky 5:22
07 Young Lust 4:17

Side B
01 Hey You 4:49
02 Is There Anybody Out There? 2:17
03 Comfortably Numb 6:18
04 The Show Must Go On 1:36
05 In The Flesh 4:14
06 Run Like Hell 4:24
07 Stop Outside The Wall 2:13

Reality Notes

Do I need to repeat myself on how much I dislike double albums? There are only a few I enjoy from front to back. Either they are some self indulgent concept album that got out of control or a prime example of not being able to edit oneself, sometimes both. The Wall is one of these, at least for me. It didn't help that the album was released around the time I became completely disenchanted with and resistant to anything that was on the radio. If it was popular I wanted nothing to do with it. It took quite a while before I grew out of that phase.

That said, The wall does contain a few of my favorite Floyd songs with Comfortably Numb being among my all time favorites by any artist. This comp is a purely selfish attempt to rescue these songs but keep them in a context that is as close to the intent of the artists as I could manage and still maintain interest.

To accomplish this goal I loaded the entire album into my sequencer and slowly whittled away. In some cases I deleted whole tracks, in others I trimmed and combined to create new ones. I paid very close attention to transitions and in some cases rearranged or created completely new transitions using the material at hand. I did not introduce any outside material although I did go through the preproduction demos before dropping the idea. My intention was not to make an alternative Wall but a more concise one.

I'm not going to go into details of where I edited. There are too many to mention and when I started this project I did not think it would be shared and did not keep notes. Just download it and see if you can spot the edits. At just over 50 minutes, 25 minutes per side, it pushes vinyl constraints to their limits but I don't think I can trim it down anymore. It will fit comfortably on a CD, Just make sure you burn it with no gaps between tracks.

I did not create the cover this time. I found this one on a google search so I do not remember who made it. If the original creator wishes that it be removed I will gladly take it down and make one of my own but I do like this one a lot. So thanks to whoever it was that created it.

Source
The Wall [Experience Edition]