By the latter half of the 70s, Neil Young had put his ditch days behind him, had Zuma'd up and down the California coast with Crazy Horse, and seemed pretty damn content with recording a string of laid back, though pretty inoffensive country rock LPs. Young's short run with The Ducks in the late summer of 1977 was all at once strange anomaly, a high water mark and a signpost marking a change of course. Comprised of Young, Moby Grape vocalist Bob Mosely, "Hey Hey, My My" co-author Jeff Blackburn and sometime session man Johnny Craviotto, The Ducks were quite possibly the most popular townie bar band of all time, as Young's contractual obligations with Crazy Horse specified he could only tour with them, forcing The Ducks to play all of their 22 gigs within the Santa Cruz city limits. Loaded with songwriters, the band's setlists were comprised of original material, a few tunes from each member's back catalog and a handful of covers. The shows were tight, Young seemed to enjoy his supporting role, and, in the beginning, the crowds were enthusiastic if a little awed at their strange fortune. After a few weeks the hordes of out of towners hoping to hear some classic Neil Young tunes grew exponentially, and with its secret out, Young left the group less than two months after its first gig. And though a mobile recording rig was often spotted outside the club for most of the shows, this unofficial, surprisingly clear fan recording is the only aural evidence in circulation.
With the mountains of praise heaped upon the fab four, is it actually possible for one of their greatest innovations to go largely unnoticed? Amazingly, yes. Linking off-the-cuff performances with studio dialog, in-jokes and count-ins to emulate the effect of the album being produced in one live-in-studio setting, the Beatles' Get Back album was intended to strip the band of studio sheen it had accumulated over the past few years, and return it to its bare-bones, Cavern Club glory. But alas, the Beatles split, the Get Back concept gathered dust and Phil Spector poured over the remaining studio tapes to produce Let It Be - an odd and oddly fitting epitaph. Thanks to the passing of time and the ingenuity of the vast Beatles bootleg empire, these original Glyn Johns Get Back mixes have slowly been unearthed to illustrate how great the band's swan song could have truly been. For years I've been privy to the most widely bootlegged of the bunch, Johns' infamous 3rd mix (included on The Beatles As Nature Intended, which was posted ages ago here at the Heat Warps), however the recently discovered 4th and "final" mix trumps them all. The edits are tighter, the mix is more refined, and the flow and feel are honed to perfection here to create a document that mirrors the tone of the accompanying Let It Be film, as well as an album that breaks the myth and pulls the curtain nearly as effectively as the last hurrah of Abbey Road.
As time has worked to dull the pain of witnessing a band so desperately nipping at the heels of Sgt. Pepper, it has also allowed for a long overdue re-examination of the Rolling Stones' most misunderstood album. Aside from containing founding member Brian Jones' last worthwhile contributions as a Stone, Their Satanic Majesties Request also marked the last, and arguably the most significant shift for a band that would morph into the world's greatest over the course of its next three albums.
In celebration of the upcoming release of Everything that Happens Will Happen Today, and David Byrne's subsequent and sure to be mind-blowing supporting tour, now's the ideal time to revisit some live Talking Heads at the peak of their powers. Fans of The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads will recognize a lot of the material here, as that double disc set included a number of tracks from this remarkable FM broadcast. Still, it's amazing to hear the spectacle as it unfolded on this particular night. The lineup featured here is nearly identical to the one from the Stop Making Sense concert film, but thanks in large part to the wild lead guitar of Adrian Belew, this incarnation is slithery, less muscular and far more psychedelic than the one that would appear on screen a few years later. My favorites from this show are the selections from the then-recently released Remain In Light, but the reinterpretations of the band's earlier material are all pretty incredible as well. If there's been a better band in the past 30 years, it's certainly not on my radar.
Originally planned as an official double LP comprised of one disc of hits and another of unreleased material, the Hot Hits and Cold Cuts package died on a number of occasions at the starting gate before eventually being scrapped altogether. Decades since it was initially dreamed up, the Cold Cuts portion of that project has become one of the most highly regarded and frequently traded McCartney bootlegs in existence - and for good reason. Rather than another chronologically ordered heap of poorly mixed outtakes and also-rans, Cold Cuts escapes the trappings of typical leftovers collections through thoughtful track selection and sequencing that was overseen by McCartney himself. The fact that this 12-track LP was mined from one of the most envied vaults in the history of rock music doesn't hurt either. Most of the songs here have shown up on other bootlegs throughout the years, but on Cold Cuts these misfits are presented in a way that makes them work as an album that stacks up with any in the McCartney canon. It's presented here at 192K, but it's a bootleg at the end of the day, so keep that in mind as you wrap your ears around these rare gems.
Recorded at the peak of Lou Reed's songwriting powers and the band's apex as a well oiled touring machine, The Quine Tapes are undeniably the best official record of the Velvet Underground in all its ear bending splendor. There are live documents of higher sound quality, namely the double LP set 1969: The Velvet Underground Live, but for what The Quine Tapes lack in quality (and in reality, they're not all that bad) they more than make up for in capturing the spirit of a group that was light years beyond its time. Famed for his guitar work throughout the mid 70s/80s, Robert Quine befriended the Velvets somewhere in the midst of the 1969 tour and with the band's permission, began recording all of the shows he'd attend on a personal tape recorder. The best of the best were transferred to reel-to-reel tapes and those that survived comprise this officially released collection. Mirroring the band's set on the 69 tour, each disc climaxes with a monster-sized version of Sister Ray (24, 38 and 28 minutes respectively), while the amount of material pulled from each of the band's four albums is represented in almost equal measure - including plenty of Loaded material roughly a year before it was released, and a bevy of tunes that would never appear on the band's LPs. The consistent quality across these discs proves that even on shows that were recorded up to six months apart as they are here, the Velvet Underground was a live band without equal. Words like transcendent, frothy, superbly melodic, orgasmic, et al come to mind, but they're really of no use in describing what we have here. Just click, wait and reward yourself with a good listen. It hardly gets better than this.
The Beach Boys' road to reinvention throughout the late 60s and early 70s was marked by a familiar hurdle - the rejected album - and one of the band's most well known among these was 1970's Landlocked. In many ways, this LP would be reincarnated as the magnificent Sunflower, however a number of these tunes would continue to be recycled (along with several cuts from their aborted Smile LP) and make their way onto the band's albums throughout the 70s. And while hearing these songs in their original context is fascinating, even more interesting is how much it reveals about the Beach Boys' inability to effectively sequence their own albums, and how correct Reprise was in sending the band back to the drawing board. To the Beach Boys’ credit, it's very likely that its track list was never quite finalized, but unlike the melancholy air of Surf's Up and Holland or the playful nature of Sunflower, Landlocked seems so bloated with great tunes that it doesn't know what to do with itself, and in turn, it does very little in terms of conveying an distinct emotion, feeling or overarching theme. “Til I Die” for instance, serves as a key player in the triad of epics that close Surf’s Up, but here it’s like a sitting duck between a couple of songs that wouldn’t be out of place on any of the band’s pre-Pet Sounds LPs. That said, Landlocked is a fantastic collection of tunes that led towards modern music's most successful reinvention; albeit one that illustrates why it took a few tries to leap over the threshold. The version here is in great fidelity and includes a number of outtakes and alternates from this period.
The six year span of Pink Floyd's career between Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Dark Side of the Moon is a meandering, often treacherous stretch of road. That's not to say that it didn't show some signs of promise, and here and there, occasional glimpses at the brilliance that was on the horizon. Commissioned to record ambient sections of soundtrack music for Michaelangelo Antonioni's film Zabriskie Point, the band took full advantage of their studio allowance to not only record a wealth of material that would signal a shift toward pastoral folk of Meddle and Obscured By Clouds, but to demo rough sketches of tunes that would turn up on Dark Side of the Moon a couple of years later. With the effects of their acid-drenched Syd Barrett period still lingering, it's not surprising that a few brief slices of self-indulgence pop up here and there, but overall The Complete Zabriskie Point Sessions is an exciting listen, if not a completely captivating one from end to end. Had the fat been trimmed and a few overdubs thrown on for good measure, these sessions would have resulted in their first great album of the post-Barrett Floyd. On it’s own terms, it’s still an essential document in tracing the evolution of one of psychedelic rock’s all-time greats.
As the release the first volume of Neil Young's long-awaited Archives project draws near, speculation over its contents has reached a fever pitch. Will it include the unreleased Homegrown album? Will it include the rarely screened biopic Journey Through the Past? Will I even be able to afford this massive box set? One thing is certain...this 8-CD, 2-DVD set will be well worth the wait. Fans and bootleggers have poured and salivated over the vast amounts of unreleased material in the Neil Young vaults, while hissy, muddied fidelity collections of outtakes and acetates have exchanged hands for decades. Having tired of listening to a 4th generation copies of worn out vinyl boots, fan and collector Braden Strickler took the initiative to compile and painstakingly remaster the cream of the unreleased crop and circulate them as an incredible 5 volume set. The results are truly remarkable, and serve as a fine appetizer for the official set scheduled for release in the fall. (Ed Note 3/24/09: Ha!)Volume 1: 1967-1974
01. Mr. Soul (non-LP-version)
02. Down To The Wire (Buffalo Springfield outtake)
03. If I Could Have Her Tonight (original mix)
04. I've Been Waiting For You (original mix)
05. Here We Are In The Years (original mix)
06. What Did You Do To My Life (original mix - incomplete)
07. Mr. Soul (CSNY: woodstock rehearsal 1969)
08. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (alternate version)
09. Cinnamon Girl (edit version/different vocal)
10. Down By The River (edit - Australian greatest hits album)
11. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (KQED TV rehearsal 19-Feb-70)
12. Everybody's Alone (KQED TV rehearsal 19-Feb-70)
13. Dance Dance Dance (KQED TV rehearsal 19-Feb-70)
14. On The Way Home (KQED TV rehearsal 19-Feb-70)
15. Wonderin' (KQED TV rehearsal 19-Feb-70)
16. Sugar Mountain (KQED TV rehearsal 19-Feb-70)
17. Birds (non-LP-version)
18. I Believe In You (alternative studio track 1970)
19. Out On The Weekend (rehearsal)
20. War Song (single with Graham Nash)
21. Last Trip To Tulsa (live 18-Feb-73, single b-side)
22. Bad Fog Of Loneliness (Tonight's the Night acetate)
23. Traces (Tonight's the Night acetate)
24. Human Highway (CSNY outtake)
25. Pushed It Over The End (live 27-Aug-74, CSNY 12" Italian single)
26. Walk On (DJ mono mix)
This scattershot collection has been compiled on numerous occasions and in many forms, most notably on the bootleg sets Unknown Sessions 1973-1976: Volume 1 and Unknown Sessions 1974-1976: Volume 2. As the title implies, the collection featured here includes the various studio jams in their un-editied forms that would appear on Davis' mid-70s LPs, as well as successful funk studio workouts the band would add to their live repertoire up until Miles "retirement" in '76. And while there are plenty of fine moments in this collection, including a couple of truly wicked takes on "Agharta Prelude Pt. 2," the overarching feel is that of a weary, unfocused and uninspired Miles Davis. When he attempts to solo here - over a band that is painfully beyond his control in comparison to the taught precision of his Jack DeJohnette-led ensembles at the turn of the decade - his horn is heavily processed and his tone is often aching and thin, but thankfully, and most interestingly, he resorts to playing the organ throughout the majority of this material. A six-disc Columbia box titled Beyond the Corner is rumored to be in the works, and will almost certainly pull from these sessions.
Recorded the same year they released their magnificent Third LP, this live set from the Royal Albert Hall captured the Soft Machine plunging even further into the depths of heavy organ-based psychedelia ... and well past their fusion contemporaries with which they'd been inexplicably linked. Previously issued as Live at the Proms 1970, this 40 minute set includes three of the four tracks from Third, deftly executed and sonically expanded thanks to a barrage of modulation, delay and the warm echo of the gigantic hall; pushing Mike Ratledge's organ into an otherworldly domain and beyond anything the band accomplished in a studio. Massive, mind-blowing sounds.
Thanks to a treble-heavy mix that pulls the combo organ and Costello's slashing rhythm guitar to the front (you've been warned), along with a barrage of the some of the finest tunes of his career and the bullet train intensity of the Attractions, this recording of a 1979 show in Bethlehem, PA is a prime document of a band and its leader at the peak of their power, and frighteningly early in their career. The tracklisting says it all:
Aside from being among the most powerful statements in the history of recorded music, Miles Davis' 1969 Bitches Brew LP also stands as a testament to the incredible editing work of the album's producer, Teo Macero. Throughout three studio sessions on August 19-21, 1969, Miles led ensembles of up to 13 musicians through numerous song sketches, bizarre atonal experiments and dense polyrhythmic vamps that forced them to listen closely to one another and allow the music to take on a life of its own. In some of the quieter moments you can actually hear Miles giving instructions by snapping his fingers to set the tempo, telling individuals where to solo, or, in his distinctive whisper, saying, "Keep it tight"; indicating that all the while he and Macero maintained a clear picture of how they would fuse these sections into cohesive compositions. Considering this method of recording, the resulting LP is nothing short of astonishing.
Following the release of their (now) legendary Faust IV LP and the subsequent tour, but shortly before being dropped from their Virgin label, krautrock pioneers Faust took it upon themselves to record their fifth album and run up an ongodly studio bill. Once Virgin got wind of the proceedings, the band had to quite literally escape from their studio and were subsequently arrested when they attempted to sneak back in to retrieve their tapes. Despite having been released from their Virgin contract, a promotional cassette of these sessions began to mysteriously circulate, and either because the result of those high-dollar sessions was so incredible or the fact that the tape was so difficult to come by, those who had heard it claimed it to be the finest work of the band's career. Now that the tape has become readily available some 30 years on, I lean towards the former. Filled with abstract, mechanized grooves, cut and paste collages and wildly imaginative guitar freakouts, the result is quite unlike anything happening in its day, and had it been released, would join Can's Tago Mago or Neu! 75 in the pantheon of krautrock's elite. 
The 1972 sessions that produced the Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot LPs marked a new era in the recording career of Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band. With the Captain appearing to have loosened the structural death grip he imposed on his musicians since the Trout Mask Replica LP, the tracks that make up the Brown Star Sessions illustrate the band exploring some new turf by stretching out the tunes and taking their polyrhythmic mayhem to new heights. The results are similar in feel to the officially released Mirror Man Sessions, but more relaxed and varied in style and instrumentation. A number of the tracks here are either instrumental or wildly different versions than those that would appear on Spotlight Kid, Clear Spot and subsequent LPs. Check out the rubbery "Boogler Risin'", which later became "I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby" and the slower than molasses take on "Clear Spot." The fidelity here is better in some points than others (some sound like studio masters, others contain a little tape hiss) but this is easy to overlook when the music is as potent as this stuff. Enjoy a good freak out.
Officially titled "Unsurpassed Masters Vol.18 (1967):The Alternate "Smiley Smile" Album", this collection anything but an "alternate album". Even the cover to this poorly titled bootleg (a shot of the band taking a playful romp in the surf) doesn't even fit, so I've decided to ditch both of them. In reality, what we have here is a fascinating look into the Beach Boys' recording process as they tried to rise from the ashes of their aborted Smile LP. Rather than the usual bootleg mix of alternate takes in muddied fidelity, you hear the songs literally being built before your ears, track by track, instrument by instrument, voice by voice. If you're not familiar with the Smiley Smile LP, fear not, this collection is akin to an instruction manual that breaks down the working methods of one of the greatest bands of all time. Those who already have every sloppy, silly psychedelic inch of Smiley Smile imprinted on their brains, will find a whole new way of loving it. Either way, get yourself a nice set of headphones and enjoy!
Though I've always preferred New Morning or Desire over the much treasured Blood On The Tracks when it comes to Dylan's mid-70s output, these original New York sessions would have made one hell of an LP if the man hadn't second guessed himself and re-recorded all but a couple of the tracks back home in Minnesota. Famously and meticulously constructing this album for months, the back story as to why Dylan recorded the album, nearly released it and finally chose to re-record everything is so long and storied that I'll leave it up to the real Dylanologists to give you the full story. It's up to you however, to hear for yourself how it would have sounded in the first place. Enjoy.