KISS - The Elder - 1981

I've had this project finished for some time but other projects kept insisting they go up first. The project I had planned for this week needs a little more time so finally here is The Elder the heavy version.

In 1981 KISS released their follow up to Unmasked. The first album to feature new drummer Eric Carr and produced by Bob Ezrin, KISS promised to deliver their heaviest album to date. On some levels they succeeded in spite of a couple of soft songs.

Some fans also noticed that some songs seemed to be connected with each other with a loose common thread plot wise leading to some speculation of a hidden concept album below the surface. Still not one of their more popular records, at least the boys were rocking again. It would take the departure of Ace Frehley and the entrance of Vinnie Vincent on the next album to bring the band fully back into the hard rock/heavy metal sound they were known for before the 80s.

Side One
01 The Oath
02 I'm A Legend Tonight
03 Mr Blackwell
04 A World Without Heroes
05 Escape/Partners In Crime

Side Two
01 Nowhere To Run
02 Dark Light
03 Only You
04 Down On Your Knees
05 I

Reality Notes

This is the final album in my KISS series. As much as I would like to be able to fix Dynasty and Unmasked we just don't have the material to do so. We could maybe combine the best of the two but then we'll end up with an album with more Ace songs than Gene and Paul songs and we still have to keep Peter happy. I'll look into it.

The Elder is the most contentious album in the KISS catalog. Recorded at a time when they were trying to change their teen idol ways the band had been promising in the press to record their heaviest album yet. To accomplish this the band hired producer Bob Ezrin. Ezrin had produced their iconic Destroyer album and the hope was that lightning would strike twice. Ezrin had other ideas.

Fresh off of his success with Pink Floyd's The Wall Bob Ezrin somehow managed to talk the band into dropping the metal album and instead record a concept album. While Ace felt they should keep to the original plan Gene and Paul sided with Ezrin. Gene sketched out the story line and recording began at Ace's home studio. When recording moved to a bigger facility Ace stayed home. And poor Eric Carr. His first album with the band and this is what they give him to do.

When the label was finally allowed to hear the finished album they were less than thrilled with the results. Records execs insisted the the track order be changed to put emphasis on the more commercial songs. Unfortunately this confused the story line which confused the fans and most likely contributed to this album being the only album in the KISS catalog not to achieve gold record status. Recent remasters have restored the original track order.

Before Ezrin's involvement and the rise of the concept album idea several songs were written that were intended for the heavy album. These songs were released soon after The Elder appearing on the European only best of compilation Killers. I've used these four songs to flesh out the album after removing anything that didn't rock. While that is not enough songs to truly fix the album completely to my liking it is certainly improved to the point of making the album enjoyable (still not a fan of World Without Heroes but it works better in this context).

Editing was limited to volume matching and a few nips and tucks. I did join Escape from the Island with Partners in Crime to create a single track by means of a hard edit that removes the last power chord from Escape and the first sliding intro note on Partners. I did this for two reasons. One, Escape is an instrumental track but it's an Ace track so I did not want to lose it but it seemed weird on its own. Two, KISS albums were typically ten songs each. By combining the two the track count was reduced by one giving us ten tracks, five songs each side.

This is a transitional album for the band. After Ace's departure they would go on to record Creatures of the Night, hiring Vinnie Vincent and removing the makeup. The return to a heavier sound and the taking off of the iconic makeup gave the band enough momentum to see themselves through the MTV years, the death of Eric Carr and into the new millennium with the reunion of the original lineup and the return of the makeup.

The background of the cover is a screenshot of the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary (Oblivion) from the Elder Scrolls video game. The archive also includes seven more covers for you to choose from. These include the original official cover, one alternate cover from a vinyl release and five more made by me. Take your pick.

Sources
Music from The Elder (1997 remaster)
Killers

John's Children - In The Perfumed Garden - 1967

It looks like Debbie was not as popular as I hoped, that seems to be her fate unfortunately. If you skipped that post you are missing out on a fine performance. Anyway, here is something a little more "hip".

John's Children were active for only two tears. During that short time they had several line up changes, released or nearly released three albums and numerous singles. In The Perfumed Garden could have been their third and final album and the only album to feature future glam pioneer Marc Bolan. Marc was only in the band for a fiery brief four months but during that time the band managed to record several singles and one album's worth of songs and was thrown off a tour for upstaging the headliners The Who who complained they were too loud and violent. Known as much for their outrageous stage performances as they were for their loud and raw musical style they foreshadowed both glam and punk long before either one was realized.

Marc Bolan was installed in the band by manager Simon Napier-Bell as a Pete Townsend type in-house writer and brooding intellectual figure. At the time Marc was a struggling unknown who modeled himself as a Dylan type folkie artist who had released several unsuccessful singles, the first under the name Toby Tyler before settling on the name Marc Bolan but he would not develop his distinctive vocal style until just before joining John's Children.

After leaving the band Marc would go on to form the underground hippie folk duo Tyrannosaurus Rex that would morph into T.Rex where Marc would hit it big everywhere but the United States. After replacing Marc John's Children continued on briefly before breaking up. Ellison and Townson would go on to form Jet and then Radio Stars during the punk/new wave era of the late 70s.

Side One
01 Desdemona (Bolan)
02 Come & Play With Me In The Garden (Ellison/Hewlett)
03 Sally Was an Angel (Bolan)
04 Perfumed Garden Of Gulliver Smith (Bolan)
05 Hippy Gumbo (Bolan)
06 Mustang Ford (Bolan)

Side Two
01 Midsummer Night's Scene (Bolan)
02 Dan The Sniff (The Lilac Hand Of Menthol Dan) (Bolan)
03 Remember Thomas A'Becket (Ellison/Hewlett)
04 Sarah Crazy Child (Bolan)
05 Jagged Time Lapse (Hewlett/McClelland)
06 Hot Rod Mama (Bolan)

Andy Ellison: vocals
Marc Bolan: guitar
John Hewlett: bass guitar
Chris Townson: drums/guitar

Reality Notes

This is the next installment in my debut albums that never happened series. While this would have been John's Children's second or third album (with such a jumbled discography of reissues and compilations it's hard to be sure what's what) it would have been Marc's LP debut. Up to this point Marc had released two solo singles and two singles with the band. There was one solo single that was not released and one John's Children single that made it no further than the acetate stage, coincidentally they were the same song, Hippy Gumbo.

I discovered Marc Bolan and T.Rex in 1977 when I was 14. Here in the states Marc was not as popular as he was overseas. In his home country of England he was the next Beatles causing the equivalent of Beatlemania that was labeled TRexstasy. It took me a year to hear of his passing. He was killed in an auto accident in 1977, the same year we lost Elvis and Bing Crosby.

I was Rex obsessed and purchased everything I could find. Not everything was easy to find. It took until the CD era before I was able to find the Zinc Alloy and Zip Gun albums though I did have the bastardized American release Light of Love. While I had all the Tyrannosaurus Rex albums (Unicorn is still one of the most gorgeously recorded albums in my opinion) Marc's prehistory was mostly unknown to me. It took a trip out of the mid-west to Los Angeles where things were hipper where I came across a pile of CDs in a used music/comic book store that filled a lot of holes in my collection as well as not one but two books on Marc. I finally was able to learn the whole story. Still the only John's Children tracks I owned were the clean version of Desdemona and the half of the vocal version of Sally Was An Angel on the Beginning of Doves LP.

Once the internet happened and I found all of the nice people who share rare bootlegs and unreleased/out of print music I was able to finally fill my John's Children void. There was a lot to download but unfortunately it just confused things even more. Between six collections I had at least two copies of everything and several different versions of many of the songs. All of these songs covered the band's entire time of activity which meant that not everything was Marc related. I wanted to sort all of this out once an for all and see if it was possible to construct an album's worth of material that featured Marc's time with the band.

So, armed with a few meager resources that included the band's own website I loaded everything I had into my sequencer and chopped away. I compared multiple versions of each song choosing those I felt had the energy and best quality. Then I eliminated any song not from Marc's tenure. From the final song pool I ended up with twelve songs that I felt made a cohesive whole. I shuffled, rearranged and edited until I was happy. While not a long album. clocking in at just over 32 minutes, it does finally present what could have been a great album had the band been given a bit more time to mature.

Track by Track

Desdemona - The A side to the band's third single and their first to feature Marc there are two versions of the song. The original which appears here and a cleaned up version. The original version was banned by the BBC due to the lyric "lift up your skirt and fly". A new vocal was recorded replacing the line with "why do you have to lie". For our purposes we will call these the album version and the single version.

Come And Play With Me In The Garden - This song was released as a single. It uses the same backing track as the song Remember Thomas à Beckett with only slightly different lyrics and some additional overdubs. That backing track without vocals circulates as well.

Sally Was An Angel - This song exists in two different mixes. One with vocals and one without. Unfortunately only half of the vocal version circulates and that is tacked on to the end of Marc's solo demo version that is found on the Beginning of Doves LP. What I've done here is to edit the two versions into one by taking the first half of the instrumental mix and edited what we have of the vocal version (after removing the solo demo) onto the end to create one full version.

Perfumed Garden Of Gulliver Smith - This is the first of several songs that exist only as performances from the BBC. While a non-vocal mix of a studio version circulates of this and a few other songs I tried to avoid using them as my goal here was to present as complete as an album as I could.

Hippy Gumbo - An earlier recording of this song by Marc was intended to be his third solo single. That single was never released. John's children rerecorded the song with Marc on lead vocal. Again this was intended to be Marc's third single with the band but it never made it passed the acetate stage. Luckily the band passed out copies to various DJs in advance of it's anticipated release.

Mustang Ford - One of two songs here that Marc would later rerecord for the debut LP by Tyrannosaurus Rex. This John's Children version was later reused after Marc's departure with new lyrics (not by Marc) titled Go Go Girl.

Midsummer Night's Scene - This was intended to be the band's second single with Marc and fourth single overall but never made it passed the pressing of 20-40 or more (no one is quite sure how many) test copies which the band distributed at their shows. The test copies have become prized collector's items with one copy selling for an astounding £3,700.

Dan The Sniff (The Lilac Hand Of Menthol Dan) - One of many songs Marc brought with him into the band. Originally titled The Lilac Hand Of Menthol Dan but rechristened Dan The Sniff by the band. They played it live but never had the chance to record it. After Marc left the group he recorded this version using John's Children as his backing band which is why we can use it here. The song was not released until the 80s and he never returned to the song after forming Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Remember Thomas à Beckett - Released as the B side to the Desdemona single it was slightly rewritten and released as Come and Play with me in the Garden. Neither this song nor Come and Play feature Marc but they were released on singles that featured Marc on the flipside of the disc so we can include them here.

Sara Crazy Child - The B-side of Come And Play With Me In The Garden. Marc would continue to play this song on occasion with Tyrannosaurus Rex but never recorded it for any albums proper. A BBC version by Tyrannosaurus Rex appears on the Across the Airwaves LP and other BBC collections.

Jagged Time Lapse - There are several different versions of this song that appear on many different compilations The final version appeared as the B side for the Go Go Girl single that was released after Marc's departure. Go Go Girl was Marc's Mustang Ford with different lyrics.

Hot Rod Mama - The final song in the set shows how much potential this group had. If Marc had stayed and taken the time to get to know his instrument more they could have been a tight knit group as this BBC recording shows. The original BBC recording has an announcer talking over some of the intro forcing me to rely on some creative editing to restore the intro to its full potential.

The cover uses a band promo pic and a logo found on a promo poster and an attempt at an homage to the pop art of the day that the Mod's seemed so fond of.

Debbie Gibson - Piano and Voice - 1991

As part of my efforts to keep this blog a little different here's something a bit out of left field. Debbie Gibson unplugged. Recorded in Japan a few months after the release of her third album Anything Is Possible this LP features Debbie alone at a piano. While recorded live in front of an audience the crowd is not heard except on the more upbeat numbers where they provide a rhythmic accompaniment by clapping along.

Debbie Gibson was different from the teen hit makers of the time. Not only could she play and sing well she wrote all of her songs and produced or co-produced her albums. Her stage shows at the time were large productions modeled after shows from Madonna and the like. It was only outside the U.S. and particularly in Japan where she was able to do shows like these.

Side One
01 One Hand, One Heart
02 Another Brick Falls
03 Sure
04 Will You Love Me Tomorrow
05 Without You

Side Two
01 Try
02 Foolish Beat
03 Lost In Your Eyes
04 So Close To Forever
05 Billy Joel Medley:
   a. Piano Man;
   b. New York State Of Mind;
   c. This Night;
   d. Only The Good Die Young;
   e. Leave A Tender Moment Alone;
   f. Prelude;
   g. Root Beer Rag
06 Crocodile Rock

Reality Notes

I found this bootleg on the Days of the Broken Arrows blog. If you really want to know what I did here check out the unedited version there. This came from a live solo performance that was broadcast on FM radio at the time. Being a live concert from the radio it included an announcer, an interview segment and stage banter. All of that was removed so all that is left is the music.

When Debbie broke through on the charts in 1987 I was impressed. While the music itself was not my thing she did write all of the songs and coproduced the album. She is also a classically trained pianist. I remember thinking at the time that this was someone to watch as they matured as an artist. Had she been allowed to grow on her own terms I really think she could have been the Cheryl Crow of her time.

At the time of this recording Debbie was spending more time in Japan while her popularity at home was on the decline. I encourage you to download this if only for the opportunity to see Miss Gibson from a different perspective. If anything this performance proves that she was more than a teen age idol and that she could play and sing as good if not better than all of the teen sensations of the time.

The man at The Broken Arrows blog did all the work on this. He split the original bootleg into separate tracks and did all of the work cleaning and mastering to make it listenable. All I did was edit out the crowd and stage banter before and after each song and reshuffled the tracks to make a better listen. I also included his original cover in the archive along with my own self made cover.

I was hoping that there would be enough songs on this so I could drop the cover songs but this is what we have. If someone could point me to another similar bootleg with more songs to fill the album up with, please do.

The Beatles - Rock and Roll (At The Beeb) Volumes 1 & 2 - 1976

In 1976 The Beatles' contracts with EMI and Capitol expired. One of the side effects of this was that the labels were now free to recompile and release new albums. These new albums had the stipulations that the band members had final say in how their music was used. The details were vague but they did specify no remixes although that was not adhered to.

Until the release of the first BBC set followed by the Anthology series the only album of unreleased material we got was the Live at the Hollywood Bowl album. EMI/Capitol did come close to releasing an LP of unreleased studio recording called Sessions but once the band found out about the project the album was dropped. We also got the Star Club tapes but that was released on a different label.

Capitol was the first one to release new product. That album was Rock and Roll Music. A two disc set (later rereleased as two separate discs as Volume one and Volume two) that contained previously released songs with a rock and roll feel. I bought the album and enjoyed it but what if instead of rereleasing old material they dipped into the BBC vaults and gave us all new songs.

Side One
01 I Got A Woman
02 Too Much Monkey Business
03 Keep Your Hands Off My Baby
04 I'm Talking About You
05 Young Blood
06 A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues
07 Some Other Guy

Side Two
01 Sweet Little Sixteen
02 Lonesome Tears In My Eyes
03 Nothin' Shakin'
04 The Hippy Hippy Shake
05 Glad All Over
06 Beautiful Dreamer
07 That's All Right (Mama)

Side Three
01 Soldier Of Love
02 I Just Don't Understand
03 So How Come (No One Loves Me)
04 Carol
05 I Forgot To Remember To Forget
06 Clarabella
07 I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Cry (Over You)

Side Four
01 Lend Me Your Comb
02 I Got To Find My Baby
03 Memphis, Tennessee
04 Ooh! My Soul
05 Sure To Fall (In Love With You)
06 Lucille
07 Don't Ever Change

Reality Notes

I thought I had posted this as part of my Alt-Beatles timeline. Apparently I didn't so I'm posting it here.

The Beatles in the early days were a top notch rock and roll band. Before the madness of Beatlemania the band made numerous appearances on a variety of programs for BBC radio. They even had their own weekly show for a while. During those performances they would dip into their setlists and play songs that they would never record for their albums. Especially once they stopped including cover songs on their LPs. This is an attempt to gather as many of those never recorded songs in one place. I used the original album as a template (yes, it's still a double album! but of course, reissues were released as separate volumes) but adhered to the following criteria:

• No original songs
• No ballads or showtunes
• No cover songs that appeared on a previous album.

My intention here was to present only those songs that have never appeared on a Beatles album before. To have an album of new material in 1976 was every Beatles fan's dream even if it was an album of "moldy oldies". The bulk of these songs come from the first set of BBC recordings released in 1994. The rest are from the second volume with a couple more coming from the unofficial Complete BBC Recordings.

I first heard of the BBC recordings while listening to the radio show The Lost Lennon Tapes. I taped every episode I could and compiled my own personal bootlegs from all of the unreleased tracks that they would play. This included some BBC material but being a Lennon focused show they only played songs that featured a Lennon lead vocal. I also had a small handful of BBC songs on the few vinyl Beatles bootlegs I had.

The cover was made at a time when I was making best-of comps for my 30gb iPod. I wanted to be able to read the text on the small screen so I was using a lot of large block type fonts.

Sources
Live at the BBC
On The Air (BBC Volume Two)
The Complete BBC Recordings (10 CD bootleg)

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

Poncier - Big In Belgium - 1992

After leaving his band Citizen Dick, front man Cliff Poncier recorded his one and only solo album. Titled after a flip comment made during an interview about his band's popularity the album sold modestly. It has been subsequently reissued many times over the years yet still maintains an obscure yet legendary cult status among the Seattle bands of the day.

Moody and introspective lyrics are paired with sparse, mostly acoustic and at times ethereal instrumentation it served as the antithesis to the current grunge rock that was pouring out of Seattle at the time. While many of the LPs released during grunges heyday are sounding dated, Poncier's album still sounds fresh and original.

Side One
01 Times Of Trouble
02 Spoon Man
03 Black Cat
04 Ferry Boat #3
05 Nowhere but You

Side Two
01 Flutter Girl
02 Missing
03 Seasons
04 Call Me A Dog

Reality Notes

I had a completely different project done, wrapped up and ready to post this week when this slapped me in the face and demanded to be built. It fell together so quickly that I decided to post this instead.

Cliff Poncier is a character in the movie Singles. A film by Cameron Crowe about Seattle in the early 90s that explored relationships, work and music, it featured stars Bridget Fonda and Matt Dillon among others. According to Crowe, Dillon's character Cliff was originally intended for Chris Cornell of Soundgarden but a busy schedule prevented Chris's involvement beyond a short non-speaking cameo.

While on the set Cornell "borrowed" a prop cassette tape that was suppose to contain a five song tape that Poncier recorded and was selling while busking on the street. The tape case was created by Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament that included the fake song titles Seasons, Nowhere but You, Spoon Man, Flutter Girl and Missing. As the story goes, Chris went home and wrote and recorded songs for each of the titles then presented the tape back to Cameron.

Cameron was so impressed with the tape that he included the song Seasons on the soundtrack. Two other songs were later re-recorded by Cornell. Spoonman appeared on Soundgarden's Superunknown album and Flutter Girl was sped up a bit and recorded for Cornell's 1999 solo album Euphoria Morning. The full five song demo tape was released as a promotional CD at the time of the films release. In 2017 it was rereleased on cassette and vinyl for Record Store Day.

All five songs plus two more Cornell compositions (Ferry Boat #3 and Score Piece #4) were included on the deluxe version of the soundtrack album. I had heard the story of the tape at the time of the movie's release but never found the rest of the songs until recently. I always thought it would be cool to hear. Even better would be an entire album of similar material but sadly 7 songs does not an album make.

About the same time that the film was in production Cornell recorded and album in tribute to Andrew Wood. Wood was the frontman for Mother Love Bone and Malfunkshun and was a big part of the growing Seattle music scene. Cornell and Wood were roommates at the time when Wood overdosed on Heroin just as his band Mother Love Bone was taking off nationally. Hit hard by the loss of his friend Cornell turned to music and songwriting as therapy to work through his grief. He approached Wood's band mates Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament and formed Temple of the Dog to record the songs along with Mike McCready on lead guitar, and Matt Cameron on drums and guest vocals by Eddie Vedder. (So basically Temple of the Dog was Chris Cornell backed up by Pearl Jam, many of whom also had bit roles in the movie Singles so it all ties together.)

A deluxe version of the Temple of the Dog album included a second CD of demos, outtakes and live tracks. Most of the demos were done in the same or similar style as the Poncier demos. Could we use those to flesh out the album? Why not? The CD contained six demos - Say Hello To Heaven, Reach Down, Call Me A Dog, Times Of Trouble, Angel Of Fire and Black Cat. Add these to the seven songs from the Singles soundtrack and we have a song pool of thirteen songs. More than enough to carve an album out of.

I dropped Say Hello To Heaven and Reach Down because they were too associated in my mind as Temple of the Dog songs. Say Hello To Heaven was also maybe a bit too polished for the project. I also dropped Score Piece #4. It was short and only an instrumental and didn't really add anything to the project. I then dropped Angel Of Fire due to it being a lower quality and not sounding like Chris (why can't I find songwriting credits for this one?).

This leaves us with nine songs. I shuffled them around until I had a track list I liked that could be split evenly on a vinyl LP. Even though this is suppose to be from the CD era, vinyl at this time was still very much alive and most independent releases were released in this format.

The cover is derived from a promo pic of Matt Dillon in character enhanced with a pop-art photo filter in Word. Some WordArt and the promo sticker completes the illusion. Yea, I know the sticker says demos when this is supposed to be an official release but marketing will do what marketing wants to do.

CSN&Y - Long May You Run - 1976

Hot on the heels of their 1974 release Human Highway, CSN&Y managed to regroup and record and release Long May You Run. A much more polished effort than its predecessor we find the band working together nicely. The songwriting credits are divided evenly among the four giving each member equal time, the first and only CSN&Y album to do so. A strong album that received good to fair reviews, it is still counted among their best works.

For a band with such a tumultuous past and turbulent relationships and large egos it's amazing they can work together at all. When they do manage, that's when the magic happens.

Side One
01 Long May You Run
02 Mutiny
03 Black Coral
04 Time After Time
05 Make Love To You
06 Ocean Girl

Side Two
01 Taken At All
02 Guardian Angel
03 Foolish Man
04 JB's Blues
05 Midnight On The Bay
06 Out Of The Darkness

Reality Notes

In 1976 CSN&Y made one more attempt to finish an album together and once again egos got in the way. This is basically a straight mashup of the two albums Whistling Down The Wire and Long May You Run with full band versions used where available. I stuck with those songs I knew they had worked on but dropped Human Highway as that was used on the last album.

We had set an end date for the Human Highway album at December of 1974 - mostly so that we could use Homeward Through The Haze and give David at least one strong song. That leaves us with 1975 through the Miami sessions in 1976 to build our song pool from. I also allowed any song from the Crosby-Nash and Stills & Young Band albums to be in the running. While we don't have mixes of every song they worked on we can use anything from those albums as substitutes. The list of songs we know they worked on is as follows.

January 1975
Western Witches
Guardian Angel

Long May You Run Sessions Miami 1976
Taken At All
Long May You Run
Human Highway
Black Coral
Midnight On The Bay
Ocean Girl
Mutiny
Talk To Me
Dancer

I immediately eliminated Western Witches, Talk To Me and Dancer, each for different reasons and also Human Highway because we used that already. This gives us seven songs to establish a foundation with. The three songs we do have a that include all four are Long May You Run, Black Coral and Taken At All.

The track listing for this comp has gone through several iterations. My first attempt came out as follows.

01 Long May You Run
02 Mutiny
03 Black Coral
04 Foolish Man
05 Taken At All
06 Time After Time
07 Midnight On The Bay
08 JB's Blues
09 Out Of The Darkness
10 Ocean Girl
11 Guardian Angel

I really liked this tracklist and it stayed this way for some time but one day I realized that there were only two songs from Stephen and three each from the other three. Knowing the egos of those involved I assumed that Stephen would insist on one more song of his so I added one of his and removed one each from Graham and David which is more in line with earlier releases.

01 Long May You Run
02 Mutiny
03 Black Coral
04 Time After Time
05 Make Love To You
06 Ocean Girl
07 Taken At All
08 Guardian Angel
09 Midnight On The Bay
10 Out Of The Darkness

This made me happy briefly. The timing was right and the overall feel was concise and flowed nicely but I missed Foolish Man and I felt that I couldn't add that back in and not Graham's song so I came up with what we have here.

Three songs each, egos placated but it now is 24 minutes per side. What's a producer to do? For my post here I will leave it as is. You can configure this anyway you want but personally I am going with my original 11 song tracklist. I'm not really fond of Stephen's Make Love To You and the other song choice of his, 12/8 Blues, was not any better.

I altered the original album cover to reflect the change from Stills & Young to CSN&Y.

Sources
Crosby-Nash - Whistling Down The Wire
Still & Young Band - Long May You Run
CSN - Box Set
The CSNY Anthology (Bootleg, although the songs from here are also available on official sources)