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 - 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.

Guns N' Roses - Gn'R - 1986

With the release of Guns N' Roses debut album Appetite for Destruction We saw the decline of Hair Metal and the brief rise of Sleaze Rock and a brief two year period when hard rock was stripped of the glam and returned to its roots. In 1989 that all collapsed with the emergence of Grunge and the Seattle invasion.

Before the release of Appetite, Gn'R released a four song EP made up of two original songs and two covers with crowd noise dubbed in to make it sound like a live recording. Released on a vanity label backed by Geffen Records to maintain interest in the band while they recorded their debut album.

But could they have released a full independent first album?

Side One
01 Shadow Of Your Love
02 Nice Boys
03 Don't Cry
04 New Work Tune
05 Move To The City

Side Two
01 Reckless Life
02 Mama Kin
03 Back Off Bitch
04 Ain't Goin' Down No More
05 The Plague

Reality Notes

Another installment of my alternate debut album series. Gn'R's record label Geffen spent two years polishing the band and songs for Appetite. During this time they recorded a lot of demos. Four of these songs were released on Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide, the EP mentioned above. With the recent release of the Super Deluxe Edition of Appetite we have three discs of outtakes from those two years of development. I had most of these on a cassette bootleg back in the late 80s. While most of those outtakes are alternate versions of album tracks there is a small handful of unused songs alongside those songs used for the EP but without the crowd noise of the faux live EP.

So, are there enough songs to flesh out the EP to album length? Almost. And how does this affect Lies? I'll address that in a moment. I ended up with a ten song LP of mixed quality songs. Fortunately most of those songs are pretty darn good. Unfortunately, two of those, New Work Tune and Ain't Goin' Down No More are instrumentals. Another song, The Plague, is only 47 seconds long and all together the LP clocks in at 33 minutes and 16 seconds. Not exactly a full album which is probably why they released an EP instead of a LP.

Because this is an independent release we have some leeway in quality control. If I took out the instrumentals the album becomes barley 26 minutes long so I had to keep them in. I buried one on each side of the album and removed the gaps between the songs before and after to make them feel a part of them so they don't stand out. I also took a few of the spoken intros from a few songs and attached them to other songs. Overall the flow is pretty good.

The four songs from the EP but without the crowd noise comes from a bootleg. I preferred the sound of the tracks from there, the versions on the deluxe discs sounded a bit too polished. The last song to address is Back Off Bitch. While it sounds like a fun song to play in the clubs, its quality is questionable, obviously an off the cuff throw away type song. But hey, this is an indy release so it works here in a way.

There are two more songs I could have used in place of the instrumentals but they are crappy obvious covers of Heartbreak Hotel and Jumping Jack Flash. As much as I would have liked to remove the instrumentals, I also wanted to avoid an album that is almost half covers. If they were better song choices I might have included them but how many versions of Heartbreak Hotel do we need? I could have also used versions of Knocking on Heaven's Door and Whole Lotta Rosie but I would have had to resort to live versions which I didn't want to do and again, too many covers.

For the cover I utilized the logo found on the EP against a black background. Now what can we do about Lies?

There are a few acoustic tracks we can use to expand side two of Lies to a 30 minute mini LP. there are two versions of November Rain, a 9 minute piano version and a 5 minute acoustic version. I went with the acoustic version. Move to the City comes from 1988 and was most likely in the running to be included on Lies. An acoustic run though of Jumping Jack Flash rounds it all out.

Lies
01 One In A Million
02 November Rain
03 You're Crazy
04 Patience
05 Used To Love Her
06 Jumpin' Jack Flash
07 Move To The City

The last change in future albums is I see no need to include two versions of Don't Cry on Use Your Illusions. We can drop the "Original Lyrics" version. November Rain can stay, this version is different enough for both to exist.

Sources
Appetite For Destruction (Super Deluxe Edition)
Lies
Suicide Demos '86 (Bootleg)

Grateful Dead - Barton Hall May 8, 1977

Ah, Barton Hall '77. A general consensus puts this show at the top of the must hear list of Grateful Dead shows. Not so much for the performance, which is great but no more stellar than your average typical Dead show, but more for the atmosphere and the recordings themselves. There is a warm fuzzy feeling that surrounds this show. Much of that is most likely due to the fine soundboard recordings of Betty Cantor-Jackson.

This show has been officially released on May 5, 2017 as both as a stand alone package and as part of a four show, eleven disc box set. If I could make one complaint about live Dead it is the long gaps between songs and this show is no exception. If you are there in the audience and in the heat of performance this is fine but on playback the gaps just take me out of the show until the band kicks in again.

I'm all for archival preservation but when this show was released it takes up three discs due to those long pauses between songs. What I've done here is to remove those pauses to make a smoother listening experience. For those songs that do not run into each other I have made new transitions to reduce the gaps to no more than a few seconds. Each set should fit on a single 80 minute CD though set one is awfully close. Let me know if it works for you and make sure to burn the disc with no gaps. I did not use the official release for this edit. Instead I used a matrix recording from the Internet Archive.

Set One
01 Minglewood Blues
02 Loser
03 El Paso
04 They Love Each Other
05 Jack Straw
06 Deal
07 Lazy Lightning >
08 Supplication
09 Brown Eyed Women
10 Mama Tried
11 Row Jimmy
12 Dancin' In The Streets

Set Two
01 Take A Step Back
02 Scarlet Begonias >
03 Fire On The Mountain
04 Estimated Prophet
05 Saint Stephen >
06 Not Fade Away >
07 Saint Stephen >
08 Morning Dew
09 Saturday Night(Encore)

For the cover I utilized elements from a tour poster.

Peter Frampton - Comes Alive! (The Studio Versions)

Here's one just for fun. Back when I was putting together "Best Of" comps of bands that I did not want their full discography on my iPods I threw this one together for Peter Frampton. Even though I have most of his catalog those songs that demand repeat listenings are mostly all contained on his live album Frampton Comes Alive!. There are not too many live albums that I can call "go to" listens and this one, while great, was played so much that it has almost worn out its welcome. So I gathered all of the studio versions of each song from Comes Alive! and duplicated the track sequence. As a bonus, I included I'm In You, Peter's hit from his follow up album of the same name.

A new way to listen to a classic album and it will fit on a single CD.

01 Baby (Somethin's Happening)
02 Doobie Wah
03 Show Me the Way
04 It's a Plain Shame
05 All I Want to Be (Is by Your Side)
06 Wind of Change
07 Nassau/Baby, I Love Your Way
08 I Wanna Go to the Sun
09 Penny for Your Thoughts
10 (I'll Give You) Money
11 Shine On
12 Jumpin Jack Flash
13 Lines on My Face
14 Do You Feel Like We Do
15 I'm In You

Reality Notes

As you can see not a lot of imagination went into this. I almost considered not posting a download for this one as all songs are available for purchase. The cover is another of the many iPod small screen friendly covers I was making at the time.

Melancholia Vol. 8 - The K-Tel Generation

Back in the day I had a mixtape series called Melancholia. The basic running premise was that each song had a certain feel to them that took me somewhere else. The first volume was a collection of headphone friendly tracks from my cleanest vinyl. The series continued after the media format changed from records and tapes to CDs and playlists and has now run for 16 volumes.

The first four volumes were compiled from Vinyl. Volume five was made by dubbing from tape to tape. Volume six took me into the CD era and for a while it was a rotating tracklist on a 60 minute tape that I would recompile every few weeks where earlier volumes were all on 90 minute tapes. CDs were easier to work with and blank tape was starting to become harder to find so this worked better at the time. I later finalized volume six once CD burners were more affordable and all older volumes have been reconfigured to fit on CDs.

Later volumes often followed a theme. This CD here is based on volume 08. All of the songs are early to mid 70s AM Top 40 and all of them are songs I either first heard or only knew from various artist albums. Most, if not all, were on K-Tel records. K-Tel was the "That's What I Call Music" of its day. These albums were budget collections of the hits of the day. Somehow they managed to squeeze ten songs on one side of an LP.

Each one of these songs brings a smile to my face and an indescribable sense of nostalgia. While I might have heard them on the radio when I was younger, I discovered them listening to records. Sometimes at a friends house, sometimes they were found on a various artist album I bought for a completely different song. Each one seems to be part of a memory from somewhere.

I'm not going to do track by track notes for this one. None of these songs are rare or obscure in any way. Collected together they do create a unique and satisfying listen. I'll post more Melancholia volumes in the future.

01 Jonathan Edwards - Sunshine
02 Albert Hammond - The Free Electric Band
03 Sammy Johns - Chevy Van
04 Audience - Indian Summer
05 Bill Withers - Lean On Me
06 Dobie Gray - Drift Away
07 Five Man Electrical Band - Signs
08 Lobo - Me and You and a Dog Named Boo
09 Thunderclap Newman - Something in the Air
10 Jim Stafford - Spiders and Snakes
11 Mungo Jerry - In the Summertime
12 Starland Vocal Band - Afternoon Delight
13 Looking Glass - Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)
14 Mel & Tim - Backfield in Motion
15 Vanity Fair - Hitching a Ride
16 Johnny Nash - I Can See Clearly Now
17 The Jaggerz - The Rapper
18 Freeda Payne - Band of Gold
19 R Dean Taylor - Indiana Wants Me
20 Rick Springfield - Speak to the Sky
21 Tommy James - Draggin' The Line
22 Steeler's Wheel - Stuck in the Middle with You
23 Sweet - Little Willie

The cover does its best to emulate those old K-Tel albums

The Small Faces - Afterglow - 1968

In 1968, The Small Faces released their post-summer of love concept album Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake. Critically acclaimed, six weeks at number one in the UK, often described with words such as masterpiece and classic. So why does the album rub me the wrong way? The musicianship is superb. The songwriting is excellent. And Steve Marriot's voice is amazing. So what's my problem?

The album has two big things going against it for me. The first is that it starts with an instrumental. I can deal with instrumentals if they are buried within the LP or a short intro before the singing starts if it's not too long but two and a half minutes is too much for me to wait for the vocals to start. The second thing is side two. I'm not a big fan of concept albums or rock operas but a children's story with narration? Count me out. And then there is what Wikipedia describes as psychedelic cockney knees-up songs, not a fan.

I was ready to throw the album out when I started to wonder if it could be fixed. It just so happens that the band was working on a follow up before they split up. Along with a couple of B sides and the songs slated for the next album we have plenty of songs to make a great album.

Side One
01 Rollin' Over
02 Long Agos And Worlds Apart
03 Autumn stone
04 Wham bam thank you Mam
05 Red balloon
06 Lazy Sunday

Side Two
01 Call it something nice
02 Rene
03 Song Of A Baker
04 Donkey Rides, A Penny, A Glass
05 The universal
06 Afterglow

Reality Notes

I never got into The Small Faces. I was aware of them. I knew Itchycoo Park but not much else. I love Humble Pie. I love The Faces. I just never explored the band that spawned them. So when I started seeing other constructors putting together their versions of 1862, the abandoned follow up to Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake I got curious and downloaded Ogden's to give it a spin. I honestly thought I had a corrupted file and downloaded it again. I was a bit disappointed.

To fix the album I set two basic rules, no instrumentals and no story time. I dropped the title track on side one and discarded all but Rollin' Over from side two and utilized the B sides and leftovers which can be found on the compilation Autumn Stone to fill the album out. The album went through a few different iterations before I was happy with the results.

I did do one "clever" little edit. Autumn Stone has an alternate version of Afterglow which I preferred so I took the intro from the album version and tacked that on to Rollin' Over to open the album and closed the album with the alternate version. I kept Lazy Sunday as the closer of side one.

All-in-all I have been enjoying this construction very much, even the psychedelic cockney knees-up songs. I didn't actually throw out side two. After taking out Rollin' Over, I split The Journey into two parts and created an EP. It's a good story and seems to work much better in the smaller, stand alone format.

Happiness Stan

Side One
01 Happiness Stan
02 The Hungry Intruder
03 The Journey Pt 1

Side Two
01 The Journey Pt 2
02 Mad John
03 Happy Days Toy Town

I'm imagining that the EP was released first as a stopgap while they finished recording the rest of the album. I do feel that this gives the band a much better ending than splitting up in the middle of recording a new album. And there's still some leftover tracks for you kids to gather together if you feel the need.

For the cover of Afterglow I went with the full front portrait with no text. Similar to Abbey Road or Badfinger's Straight Up. For the EP I imagined they licensed an illustration from John Lennon's In His Own Write.