Big Star - Sister Lovers (1975)

Big Star released their second album, Radio City, in February 1974, through Ardent Records. It was the band's first album after the departure of founding member and songwriter Chris Bell, who by then was already struggling with depression and excessive drug use, and saw vocalist and guitarist Alex Chilton take control of the group for good. As with their debut LP, the album sold very little, due to distribution issues within Ardent and a lack of promotion, which when combined with the glowing reviews the album received, meant there was considerable demand for the record, but no one could find it in stores. To make matters worse, shortly before the release of the album in early 1974, bassist Andy Hummel left the group to focus on his academic career and lead a more normal life. He was then replaced by John Lightman for the album's tour, but the band ended up breaking up shortly thereafter. Drummer Jody Stephens and Chilton stuck together, being the only two remaining members of Big Star, and together they entered Ardent Studios in September 1974, with producer Jim Dickinson and an assortment of Memphis session musicians, their girlfriends, and friends, to work on a new Big Star album.

These new sessions marked a departure for the band, with their brand of very melodic power pop being replaced by more stark and experimental material, with only brief flashes of the Big Star of old. With that in mind, it makes sense that there's some debate as to if this was supposed to be a Big Star album at all, with the name "Sister Lovers" being thrown around at that time, and with the masters being credited simply to Alex Chilton. In February 1975, producer Jim Dickinson and engineer John Fry put together an acetate, which they hoped would bring attention from labels to the band, and get them signed to a deal. However, that was not the case, with no record labels taking an interest in this "weirder" version of the band, and the project ended up being shelved. With that, no track sequence was ever assembled, an album title wasn't decided, and even the band name was in dispute. When, in 1978, PVC Records bought the original tapes and assembled the Third album, they came up with their own tracklisting, and the closest we've ever come to a proper release of this material was in 1992 when Jim Dickinson sequenced Rykodisc's Third/Sister Lovers album, which still isn't quite what the group intended.

With all that in mind, we can ask ourselves: what if the Sister Lovers album had been released as it had been intended, in 1975? And since a final tracklisting for it was never created, we will have to speculate considerably on how the album would work. We will only include songs that come from these Fall '74 sessions, obviously, and try to include all songs that are included in two or more sequences, or songs that were considered important conceptually for the album by Chilton or Dickinson. I will also try not to include any covers, seen as the band had plenty of great original material already, and none of the covers really add much to the record in its current incarnation. So, all covers will be replaced by originals with the same style or feel to them. Being the earliest version of the album available, and in my opinion, the one that flows best, we will use the February 1975 acetate as our starting point, and move things around as needed. That means we'll have a fourteen track album, which we will call Sister Lovers, seen as Stephens and Chilton were dating twins at the time of the recording of the album. Not to stretch this out any further than we have, here's what our reconstruction of Sister Lovers looks like:

Thank You Friends (Complete Third)

Downs (Complete Third)

Big Black Car (Complete Third)

Stroke it Noel (Complete Third)

Holocaust (Complete Third)

Jesus Christ (Complete Third)

Blue Moon (Complete Third)

-

Kizza Me (Complete Third)

Sometimes (Complete Third)

O Dana (Complete Third)

Nightime (Complete Third)

You Can't Have Me (Complete Third)

Like St. Joan (Complete Third)

Take Care (Complete Third)

Bonus track:

Dream Lover (Complete Third)

Alex Chilton in a Memphis restaurant, early 1975.

Our sequence already starts with a major change: we have "Thank You Friends" and "Stroke it Noel" switch places, with the former as the opener and the latter as the fourth track. The reason for that is that one of the few things Dickinson and Chilton had agreed on, was that "Thank You Friends" would open the album, and "Take Care" would be the album closer. Seen as there's hardly any information about the album other than that, we must obey said order. Both songs had a similar uplifting vibe, with string arrangements and poppy feel, so the switch doesn't harm the album's flow too much. Another change is made when "Big Black Car", which is in virtually every other sequence of the album except this one, replaces their cover of the Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale". Their cover of VU's classic is great, with Alex's girlfriend Lesa singing backup, as she had on many other album tracks, before being mixed out after the two had some kind of lover's quarrel. Seen as though they had broken up by 1975, I doubt he'd include a song on the album that featured her so prominently as this, which is why I replaced it with the similarly downbeat and soothing "Big Black Car", then again keeping this sequence's flow.

Side two mostly obeys the Argent Test Pressing, with "For You" being retitled "Sometimes", the song's original working title, and the name it was listed as on the test pressing. Similarly, "Kanga Roo" is retitled "Like St. Joan", which is how the song was called during the sessions, and the title I like best out of the two. The only major change to be made here is the exclusion of their cover of Dave Williams' "Whole Lotta Shaking Going On", which in addition to being a cover, is one of the weakest tracks on the whole sessions. In order to replace it and still keep the album's flow intact, we need to add in another slightly chaotic, fast-paced rocker. And luckily for us, "You Can't Have Me" is exactly that, being used in virtually every tracklist other than this one, being one of the highlights of the recording sessions, in my opinion. As a bonus track, we have the final Chilton-penned song from the sessions, "Dream Lover". Despite being a favorite of both Lesa Aldridge and Jim Dickinson, Alex didn't think very highly of the song, meaning it won't be used on the album itself. It would make for a good b-side, though, and other than "Femme Fatale", is better than any of the cover versions they did back then.

Clocking in at 40 minutes with evenly timed sides, Sister Lovers is much less melodic and fast-paced than either #1 Record and Radio City, but with its more emotional nature and beautiful songs, makes for a great contrast to those two. The dark as compared to the light, if you will. For the album cover, I used a photo taken by William Eggleston, who both took the cover picture of Radio City and played piano on Sister Lovers, of Lesa and Holliday Aldridge, the very sister lovers the album title refers to! All of that considered, there's no way this picture wasn't at the very least considered as the LP's cover. The lead single off the album would obviously be "Thank You Friends", one of the few tracks with any hit single potential on the album. Had it been released back then, I don't doubt it would've at least cracked the Top 40. And had the band found a proper label, I have no doubt this album could've sold very well, considering the critical praise it would no doubt receive. All in all, we're very lucky that these tracks were released at all, not to mention becoming cult classics and the inspiration to great bands, such as REM and The Posies, who became some of the friends they thanked, for making this all so probable.

Sources:

Big Star - Complete Third

Big Star - Argent Test Pressing, 1975

Bruce Springsteen - American Madness (1976)

Bruce Springsteen released his breakthrough album, Born to Run, in August 1975, through Columbia Records. It came after two highly critically acclaimed albums that sold poorly, and cemented his status as one of the greatest songwriters of the '70s, as well as giving him the financial stability he so deserved. It was a last-ditch effort by him and his label, who gave him a large budget to make the best album he possibly could. He produced BTR alongside music critic Jon Landau, who would later go on to become his manager. Before that, all his albums were produced by manager Mike Appel, with whom Springsteen argued constantly during sessions for the record, and planned on making him play a much smaller role in his career from then onwards. Born to Run's success was followed by a successful year-long tour, divided into two legs, which only ended in May 1976. After the tour's end, Bruce planned on entering the studio in August 1976, with Jon Landau as his producer and the then year-old "classic" lineup of the E Street Band, to record the much-awaited followup to Born to Run. In preparation for the sessions, he and the band held daily rehearsals at his barn in Holmdel, New Jersey in the early summer, testing out arrangements and rehearsing some material Bruce had been writing on and off since at least January 1976, during breaks in their touring schedule. However, things went south for Springsteen and his plans before he managed to even set foot on a recording studio.

Excited with the sudden success of his client, manager Mike Appel had pretty ambitious plans for Springsteen, planning out a live album, to be made out of recordings from December 1975, as well as a tour to be played in a circus tent, of all places, later in the year. Fortunately, Landau convinced Bruce that it was both too early for a live LP, and the circus tent was simply a stupid idea and logistical nightmare, which angered Appel, who now thought Landau had too much influence over his client. Coupled with the fact that Bruce wanted to renegotiate the ownership of his songs and wanted to have more control over his own songs, their relationship finally broke down, and matters ended up being resolved in court, where it was decided he couldn't enter the studio until this matter was resolved. Unable to record, he went back on the road, embarking on the very ironically titled "Lawsuit Tour" that August. Accompanied by the Miami Horns, the band played some fantastic songs during the almost year-long tour, which in addition to keeping Bruce and the band busy, helped pay for almost all of the legal costs in his ongoing court case. Bruce kept on writing material during the tour, debuting a very different batch of tracks in the final months of the tour in early 1977. Finally, the lawsuit was settled on May 28, 1977, with the judge finally allowing Bruce and the E Street Band to enter the studio and start work on their fourth album. Wasting no time, they entered Atlantic Studios in New York City just four days later, almost a full year later than he had intended.

By then, he had written some 30 new songs and would write even more during the sessions, inspired by his disillusionment with the recording industry, the recent rise of punk rock, and the massive hype for a follow up to the classic he had released two years prior. All of that led to a change of direction, with less operatic, more direct, and stripped-down music, with darker lyrical themes and concepts, according to some presenting the grim reality behind the escapist dreams of Born to Run. Because of that, many of the songs he had considered key tracks and conceptual centerpieces only less than a year before were completely abandoned, while others were adapted and changed in both arrangement and lyrics to fit in with the new concept, replaced with newly-written tracks. After some seven months and almost fifty tracks were recorded, Darkness on the Edge of Town was finished in April 1978. Praised by many as Springsteen's greatest recorded achievement, it was a very different album than many were expecting, which led it to it having some lackluster sales, when compared to what came before. But with its glowing reviews and the legendary tour that followed, it has more than deserved its place in rock and roll legend. However, many of the people who saw the early Lawsuit Tour shows and became enamored with numbers such as "Frankie" and "The Promise" wondered what would've happened had things gone differently, and he made the album he intended to make at first.

So, with all of that, the question remains: what if Bruce had managed to get into the studio in August 1976? In order to answer that question, we need to set up some ground rules first. Only songs debuted live or known to have been written before December 1976 will be included. That means songs debuted late into the Lawsuit Tour, such as "Don't Look Back", cannot be included, as they're outside the period such an album would be culled from. Similarly, songs from before January 1976 and BTR outtakes are not included for the same reason, even though "Linda Let Me Be the One" from August 1974 was included in some of the first tracklists for Album #4, alongside "Frankie" and "Darkness on the Edge of Town". Such an album would be recorded from August to September 1976, be produced by Jon Landau at the Record Plant in New York City, and feature some eight tracks, since there are some pretty long songs under consideration. In accordance with the way both Born to Run and Darkness were sequenced, the so-called "four corners" approach. We start and end the album sides with the most extravagant and thematically important tracks, and fill in the sides with the lighter, simpler pop songs. Considering Born to Run also featured eight tracks, we can try to mimic its track sequence as much as possible, drawing parallels between the songs we have and the songs on the album. Anyway, not to stretch this out any more than we already have, here's our tracklist for today:

Darkness on the Edge of Town (Darkness)

Rendezvous (The Promise)

Candy's Boy (The Promise)

Racing in the Street (The Promise)

-

Frankie (Tracks)

Save My Love (The Promise)

Something in the Night (Thrill Hill Vault)

The Promise (Thrill Hill Vault)

Bonus tracks:

Talk to Me (The Promise)

Sherry Darling (The River)

Clarence Clemons, Springsteen, and Stevie Van Zandt playing live in Sept. 1976

We start the album off with the first of our four epics, "Darkness on the Edge of Town", which was also one of the songs rehearsed at the Holmdel barn. Although it wasn't performed live in the Lawsuit tour, it started being written that January, and was included in his first "Album #4" sequence early in the year, making it a great opener for this album, with a 30-second piano and organ intro added in, of course. Filling in the four corners with more easily digestible material is "Rendezvous", which from its first live performance in August 1976, was virtually unchanged from its officially released studio counterpart, so no changes are needed. Up next is another shorter song, "Candy's Boy", which is also unchanged between its "barn version" to the version released on The Promise, so then again there's no rearranging needed. Finally as our side-closing epic, a song Bruce started to write right after New Year's Eve 1975, "Racing in the Street". It was also rehearsed alongside all of the other tracks on this reconstruction in his NJ home, but unfortunately, no recordings exist of said versions, so we're left to speculate on what it would sound like. Personally, I believe a 1976 arrangement of RITT would be more much bombastic and produced than the more subdued, stripped-down version of it we got. So, the alternate arrangement from The Promise, which is slightly more quick-paced and has Bruce on the harmonica, would fit like a glove here, and provide a fantastic, and very emotional finale to side one. I would, however, remove the violin track David Lindley added to it in 2010, to keep the song as vintage as possible.

Starting side two on a more optimistic note is "Frankie", a fan favorite which was first debuted live in March 1976. While the only available studio version we have of the song comes from 1982, six years after this album was supposed to be recorded, it's funny to notice that the live versions from the Born to Run tour are much more similar to the version from Tracks than the unfinished, 1977/78 takes of the same song! Sure, it's slightly slower, and some lyrics have been changed, some of them being used instead on a different song on the album, "Candy's Boy", but this version of "Frankie" is pretty close to what we would've gotten back then. Another song recorded way after the fact is "Save My Love", which was rehearsed at the Thrill Hill barn and considered for his fourth album, but inexplicably wasn't even attempted during the sessions for Darkness, so it was left unfinished until Bruce and the E Street Band tracked it in 2009 for inclusion in The Promise. I include it here as the arrangement is unchanged from the rehearsal to the finished version, and it was performed by the exact same musicians. Up next, functioning as the "story song" of the album, much like "Meeting Across the River" in Born to Run, is "Something in the Night", live in August 1976. This earlier version was quite shorter and much simpler in its arrangement, sometimes even resembling a spoken word track, just like its BTR counterpart, and functions as a fantastic introduction to the final epic of the album.

And said epic is "The Promise", which was first performed live in August, during one of the first dates of the Lawsuit Tour. Here, it's featured in its unedited band version, which clocks in at about 7 minutes long. Sometimes, Bruce would play the song solo on piano live, as he did with "Thunder Road" too, but I have no doubt the song would feature a band arrangement had he gotten into the studio. As with "Frankie", some of the lyrics changed between its live debut and the final, studio take of it, but that's honestly for the better, and since no absurd changes were made, we can include this version without much changing. A very emotional finale to a great record, with a song that could very well be its' title track. And as for bonus tracks, we can include the two more "doubtful" tracks from this time period. "Talk to Me", which he later gave to Southside Johnny, had some of its lyrics used as an intro to "She's the One" in live performances during the year, and we're not sure if that means the song already existed, or if it was just an idea he hadn't given a home to yet. With "Sherry Darling", we see that Bruce introduced it as "from two summers ago" when playing it in '78. Does that mean the song is from mid-1976 or is Bruce just bad at math? We can't be sure, so a bonus track it remains. We end up with an album that mimics BTR's format (be it with the four epics opening and closing sides, the unusual opener, the spoken-word track just before the closer), with the quality to match it.

Clocking in at about 39 minutes, with one 18-minute and one 21-minute side, American Madness is a great record, managing to stand as an equal to both the album that came before it, and the one it would become due to the circumstances. It acts as a midway point between two very different directions, a sort of transitional record that would ease the stark differences between Born to Run and Darkness. It's not quite as good as BTR, but succeeds in pointing the way to a new direction without alienating his present audience, which is something DOTEOT couldn't quite do. Its title comes from one of the two working titles of his 1978 album, Badlands and American Madness. Since The Promise was never considered as a title, and Badlands is the name of a track that hadn't been written yet, I chose the latter, especially considering it would've been released on the year of the American Bicentennial. And as for the cover, I used a picture of Bruce with his guitar from late 1976, similar to Born to Run, made it darker, and used the typewriter font from Darkness to write the album title and artist. Luckily, this album has plenty of potential singles we can choose from, but I'd go with the safer option, "Rendezvous", with "Save My Love" as a potential follow up, depending on the former's commercial performance. We honestly can't complain about how things went down, but it would be interesting to see this album released during such an important transitional period for Bruce, which could go on to change his very career.

Sources:

Bruce Springsteen - The Promise

Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town

Bruce Springsteen - Thrill Hill Vault 76/78

Bruce Springsteen - Tracks

Bruce Springsteen - The River

Pink Floyd - Paranoid Delusions (1974)

Pink Floyd released their eighth studio album, The Dark Side of the Moon, in March 1973. A concept album, it had been part of the band's setlists for more than a full year before its release date, and its massive commercial success and critical acclaim made Pink Floyd unexpected superstars. After the tour in support of the album ended, in October 1973, the band initially took an extended break to rest from their incessant touring, but after a while, decided to tackle the daunting task of following up DSOTM. And their first idea, Household Objects, was as idiosyncratic a followup could be. Harkening back to their more experimental roots, the main concept behind Household Objects was to make music without using any actual instruments. In the two pieces the band completed in early '74, "Wine Glasses" and "The Hard Way", they achieved keyboard-like sustain by sliding their wet fingers over wine glasses, played basslines on rubber bands, created percussion by stamping their feet, and so forth. However, after the second track was completed, Waters, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason lost interest in the project, and instead, they decided to focus on more, let's say, conventional musicianship. With a tour of France booked for the Summer of 1974 fast approaching, the band wrote two brand new pieces: "Shine on You Crazy Diamond", a 20-minute long meditation on the influence and life of Syd Barrett, and "Raving and Drooling", a frenetic and jammed-out song about insanity. 

They were both road-tested during this tour, and were later joined by "You've Got to Be Crazy", a very critical and acidic song about business and capitalism, during their November 1974 British Tour, with a gig at Wembley in the 16th being professionally recorded. With those three songs amounting to more than 50 minutes when played live, there was more than enough reason to believe that this would serve as the backbone of the next Floyd album, as they were known to work out their material live before heading into the studio. Guitarist David Gilmour seemed to agree with this notion, citing his wish that those three be the next PF album, while bassist Roger Waters disagreed. Waters thought that while "You've Gotta Be Crazy" and "Raving and Drooling" were good songs, they didn't fit his vision for the next record, and that he wanted to use only "Shine On", and expand on its themes of the demise of Barrett and the Music Industry. In the end, as we all know, Waters ended up winning this musical tug-of-war, and the classic Wish You Were Here album got made. It had three more songs being added alongside SOYCD, which acted as a bookends to the album, divided into two parts. And as for those two leftovers, both ended up undergoing some considerable rewriting, getting adapted into "Dogs" and "Sheep", from PF's Animals, from 1977, which some consider an even stronger album than the one that came before it. As is Pink Floyd tradition, not a note was wasted.

So, the purpose of this reconstruction is to answer the question: what if Pink Floyd had released an album consisting of those three songs? Had Gilmour won the fight for the future of the next PF record, what would such a record look like? And to answer that question, we'll need to set up some ground rules first. No live recordings will be accepted, as this is supposed to be a studio album, after all. We can use them for reference when it comes to basing our edits, but not use the live, unfinished versions themselves. Second of all, only those three are allowed as part of the album, due to time constraints. During the band's 1975 US tour, they played then brand new tune "Have a Cigar" alongside the three aforementioned songs, a couple of months before they finished recording WYWH. And as much as I like it, it doesn't fit the general theme of the record, and since the album is already much too long as it stands, nevermind when we add yet another song. And as for the two Household Objects songs, "Wine Glasses" got lucky and got included added as the intro to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", but since "The Hard Way" was not recycled in any form, we cannot use it, unfortunately. Since the Animals versions of the outtakes are the closest we have to a finished product, we'll use alternate versions of them, with explanations of what would be different in their 1974 versions provided by me. Anyway, not to stretch this any further, here's what said album would look like:

Raving and Drooling (The Extraction Tapes)

You've Got to Be Crazy (The Extraction Tapes)

-

Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Wish You Were Here)

Bonus tracks:

Wine Glasses (Wish You Were Here)

The Hard Way (The Dark Side of the Moon)

Gilmour, Mason, Waters and Wright performing live at Wembley, November 1974

The album starts off with "Raving and Drooling", for which we use the Extraction Tapes version of "Sheep", with the bass guitar intro, and original (unfinished) lyrics reinstated. Had Waters agreed with Gilmour's idea of making an album out of the three songs they already had, he would probably end up revamping its lyrics considerably, as he did to make it fit the Animals concept. As for the musical structure of the song, it was already set in stone by late-1974, which means this version is faithful to the band's original idea of the track before it became "Sheep". And as for "You've Got to Be Crazy", we use another June 1976 take from The Extraction Tapes, which features almost the same lyrics as "Dogs", minus its 6/4 synthesizer solo, and with a horrible Roger Waters guide vocal. The original 1974 lyrics to the song didn't please David Gilmour, who thought it had "too many words", and found himself having almost to rap in order to get all of the words out. This problem was solved when, before their 1975 American Tour, Waters rewrote the lyrics of the track, making them into the words we all know as "Dogs", minus some animal references ("collar and chain" was "brittle and bit", "pat on the back" was "seat on the board", and so forth), and the aforementioned synthesizer solo. It also had David singing lead throughout, with the exception of the outro, which would probably also be the case here, with the tune clocking in at 13 and a half minutes, as performed live in 1975.

Occupying the whole of side two as a side-long epic, as originally intended, is "Shine on You Crazy Diamond", which I created by editing together the two parts, as a mockup of how the song was performed live in 1974. During the band's British Winter Tour, Part V segued into Part VI by overlaying the latter's introductory bass riff with the fading guitar riff of the former, which is how I edited both pieces together here, crossfading the outro to Part V to the intro of Part VI. The whole piece is 25 and a half minutes long, which is pushing the limits a vinyl record could hold, but was still doable (remembering side two of Atom Heart Mother is 28 minutes long!), if not recommended due to loss of fidelity. If you want to keep to those constraints, you can edit out the guitar solo on part III (which is the only part of the song that's edited out in every Floyd comp), and bring it down to a slightly more reasonable 24 and a half minutes. As for Paranoid Delusions' sequencing, I decided on having "Raving and Drooling" as the opener instead of the SOYCD suite, as by 1975 the former had become PF's opening number on live performances, with Crazy Diamond serving as the finale to set one, before an intermission and a full performance of The Dark Side of the Moon. It also works fairly well, making for a better listen than having the two sides in their "original" orders. If Waters could only finish the lyrics to R&D in time, they'd have one hell of an album ready by early 1975.

Clocking in at 49 and a half minutes, Paranoid Delusions would easily be one of my favorite Pink Floyd albums ever, if not my favorite. It features the band in their performance and songwriting apex, and with three epic suites, marks the Floyd at their proggiest. Much more complex than The Dark Side of the Moon, but still retaining its world-weariness and bleak outlook, it feels like a natural step forward from it, to a greater degree than Wish You Were Here ever could. However, due to its expansive nature, I can see this selling less than WYWH did. Not that it would be a poor seller (impossible, after the massive success of DSOTM!), but without a radio-friendly single such as the title track or "Have a Cigar", it'd lose a bit of its mass appeal. But if that's the price to pay for such a fantastic LP, I'm all for it! I took the name Paranoid Delusions from a bootleg of a 1973 show, as I felt it fit in pretty well with the album's material, and calling this Household Objects could be a bit misleading. And as for its cover, I recycled one of the booklet artwork pieces from WYWH, which was placed right next to the lyrics of Shine On, as I felt it represented well the feelings present on the album, especially on SOYCD, evoking a strong feeling of absence. It's a shame that the band didn't explore this option further, as we the fans would greatly benefit from it. But we can't complain about how it all turned out, with the Floyd calling out the Machine and reading too much George Orwell.

Sources:

Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here [Immersion Edition]

Pink Floyd - From Abbey Road To Britannia Row - The Extraction Tapes 1975/76

Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon [Immersion Edition]

Frank Zappa - Sleep Dirt (1975)

Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention released their tenth studio album, "One Size Fits All", in June 1975. Featuring the Fall 1974 lineup of the Mothers, it was the last studio album Zappa released under the MOI moniker, as he disbanded the group in mid-1975. The album was recorded mostly in two separate sessions: one, which took part from early to late December 1974 at James Guercio's Caribou Ranch in Colorado, and sessions in mid-January 1975 at LA's Record Plant. With both of the sessions combined, Zappa and the Mothers recorded enough for a double record, with half of the material being more rock-oriented material with vocals, and the jazz-fusion inspired instrumentals making up the other half. Interestingly enough, Frank released the rock-oriented songs as the OSFA record, leaving the jazzier, more experimental songs in the vault, from which they'd only come out in 1978 in the earliest. Afterward, the guitarist changed his focus to a Beefheart collaboration album, recorded both live in the studio, called Bongo Fury, released in October, and to using a full-scale orchestra in concert, in September of the same year.

The songs from those sessions would still figure as part of Läther, a four-LP box set which was supposed to be released in late-1977, alongside material recorded both live and in the studio, from 1969 to 1977. His record label, Warner Bros, didn't quite like that idea (I wonder why), and seen as FZ was in the middle of litigation with both his former manager and his label, Zappa split the tunes into four different albums, with most of the songs from the sessions coming out in Studio Tan, from 1978, and Sleep Dirt, in 1979. However, according to Zappa himself, a long time before both Läther and the four record split, this material was supposed to make an album of its own. Frank says in the liner notes of One Size Fits All that it was recorded simultaneously with its followup, and stated in an interview in April 1975 that "Greggery Peccary", started in the December 1974 sessions and finished in LA in January, would be a part of the record. So it seems that Zappa had intended to release these songs in 1975 after all, only to wind up getting distracted by Bongo Fury and his Orchestra project and shelving the songs, leaving them in the vault.

That leads us to this reconstruction's primary question: what if Frank Zappa had released his second installment of the December/January sessions? And to answer that question, we'll have to set up some basic rules first. We can't take tracks from either One Size Fits All or Bongo Fury, in order to keep his already confusing and messy discography as cohesive as possible, and to let it coexist with the two LPs it would be released in between of. In addition to "Greggery Peccary", we'll include only songs he deemed worthy of inclusion in either Läther or the four albums, in order to keep some kind of quality control over the material. Whether it would be released as a Mothers or a Frank Zappa solo record, it's pretty debatable. On the one side, it was recorded with the same band as the Fall 1974 incarnation of the MOI, but on the other, Zappa normally released his fusion projects, such as Waka Jawaka and Hot Rats, as solo albums. And considering the 1979 Sleep Dirt was almost subtitled "Hot Rats III", and it features almost all of the songs on our reconstruction, I feel like it's safe to assume this would be a solo album. Anyway, here's our tracklist: 

Regyptian Strut (Sleep Dirt)
Sleep Dirt (Sleep Dirt)
Flambé (Sleep Dirt)
Spider of Destiny (Sleep Dirt)
RDNZL (Studio Tan)
-
Time is Money (Sleep Dirt)
Greggery Peccary (Studio Tan)

Bonus tracks:
A Little Green Rosetta (Läther)
Planet of My Dreams (Them or Us)

Zappa performing live with his band in 1975

In December 1974, he and his band recorded "Sleep Dirt", "Regyptian Strut", "Flambé", "Spider of Destiny" and "Time is Money", from the album Sleep Dirt, and "RDNZL" and parts of the 20-minute "Greggery Peccary", from Studio Tan. They also recorded the basic tracks for "Planet of My Dreams", which would only see release in 1984's Them or Us. In January, they also tracked "Revised Music for Guitar and Low Budget Orchestra" and the rest of "Greggery Peccary", from Studio Tan, and recorded the first part of "A Little Green Rosetta", from Läther. From those, we can exclude both the then-unfinished "Little Green Rosetta" and "Planet of My Dreams", seen as neither of them were up to Frank's quality control back then. One more exclusion we'll need to make is "Revised Music for Guitar and Low Budget Orchestra", seen as it doesn't fit in as well with the rest of the material, and has much more in common with the September 1975 Orchestral Shows (of which it was part of), than this more fusion-like record. We can include it and "Rollo" on an expanded version of Orchestral Favorites, bringing its length up from a mere 34 minutes.

Now that we've narrowed the song list to album length, all we need to do is sequence the songs in a proper and interesting way. We start side one off with "Regyptian Strut", and end it with "RDNZL", taking our cues from the Läther album's original sequence, which had the former as album opener and the latter as last song on side three. We also reserve most of side two to "Greggery Peccary", as it was the final track on the final side of Läther, only adding the short "Time is Money" as side opener, making side two a healthy 23 minutes. And as for the rest of side one, I sequenced "Sleep Dirt", which would probably still be our title track, as track two, and put the combination of "Flambé" and "Spider of Destiny", which worked pretty well together on the Sleep Dirt album, as tracks three and four. I'd also note that none of the songs are included in their Läther mixes, due to some anachronistic vignettes being included in the start and end of tracks, which Zappa employed as a thematic link, and due to the fact that the Sleep Dirt mixes are considerably longer than their unreleased counterparts at times, which is beneficial when it comes to this.

Had FZ taken this project further, it would probably have been released sometime in September 1975,  through his own DiscReet records, with the release of Bongo Fury postponed to December or even January of 1976. I do believe that he would have still used the Sleep Dirt name, with the Hot Rats III subtitle as per his wishes. The cover would obviously be replaced by a Cal Schenkel work, seen as he was Zappa's artist of choice, and the released cover by Gary Panter isn't particularly great. No singles would be released off this album, seen as none of them have much commercial potential, and it's not as if he expected any hit singles to come out of an album like this. When compared to the two other installments of the Hot Rats Trilogy, it certainly is no slouch, and can stand as an equal to both Hot Rats and Waka Jawaka, maintaining his experimentation with jazz and experimental music, and it's probably no coincidence that they were to be released in three-year gaps (1969, 1972, 1975) either. It really is a shame that we never quite got to enjoy these fantastic tracks the way they were originally meant, as a lost brother to his most celebrated album.

Sources:
- Frank Zappa - Sleep Dirt
- Frank Zappa - Studio Tan
- Donlope - FZ Chronology

Cream - Goodbye! (1969)

Cream played their final concert at the Royal Albert Hall, in November of 1968. It was the last date on their Farewell Tour, which they embarked upon after releasing Wheels of Fire, a half live, half studio album, which further cemented their spot as one of the biggest groups in the blues-rock and psychedelic rock genres. However, not all was well in the band by that point. The group had decided to quit right before the release of the aforementioned album, mostly due to the constant fighting between bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker, as well as guitarist Eric Clapton's wish for a change of musical direction in the band, inspired by first hearing The Band's Music from Big Pink. After their farewell tour wrapped up at the Albert Hall in November, they were to finish a final album, fittingly titled Goodbye, before moving on to their respective solo projects. Recording started in October 1968 at London's IBC studios, where the band tracked three songs, one by each of the band members, produced by their regular producer, Felix Pappalardi.

The album they were making was supposed to follow on Wheels of Fire's footsteps, in that they intended to split the album into a "live" disc, chronicling their final performances together, as well as a "studio" disc, which was supposed to feature three compositions by each of the band members, in order to make for a truly collaborative effort. The three songs recorded in October seemed to be a strong starting point for this new record, with "Badge", Eric's tune, featuring George Harrison on guitar and co-writing status, apparently as a thank you for playing on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". Bruce's "Doing that Scrapyard Thing" and Baker's "What a Bringdown" are also pretty good songs, all rooted in the type of psychedelia Cream did best. However, it seems the band lost interest in such an idea, and the strain in their relations was such that they never really got any further than those three songs. In order to fill out an album, three live recordings from a gig at the LA Forum were added, which meant their final album amounted to a paltry 30 minutes.

However, what you all might be asking by now is: what if Cream had managed to go on with their plan of a double album version of Goodbye? And to answer that, we will first set up some ground rules: We will keep ourselves to only nine songs on the "studio" half, with all the songs coming from either Blind Faith's first and only album, or from Jack Bruce's Songs for a Tailor album, as those were the two releases that immediately followed Cream's demise. The songs that most closely resemble the type of material the group played, or that had strong evidence of being part of their later repertoire, will be included. And as for the "live" half, we will keep ourselves to five to six songs in total, as the band improvised quite a lot live, and the live part of WoF consisted of only four songs. We will also try to keep the selection of material restricted to their final October and November 1968 shows, with only one exception that will be explained later. Either way, not to stretch this out any further than I already have, here's our reconstruction of Goodbye:

Never Tell Your Mother She's Out of Tune (Songs for a Tailor)
Theme for an Imaginary Western (Songs for a Tailor)
Do What You Like (Blind Faith)
In the Presence of the Lord (Blind Faith)
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Badge (Goodbye!)
Weird of Hermiston (Songs for a Tailor)
Doing That Scrapyard Thing (Goodbye!)
What a Bringdown (Goodbye!)
The Clearout (Songs for a Tailor)
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I'm So Glad (Goodbye!)
Politician (Goodbye!)
Sitting on Top of the World (Goodbye!)
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White Room (Live Cream Vol. 2)
Deserted Cities of the Heart (Live Cream Vol. 2)
Steppin' Out (Live Cream Vol. 2)

Bruce, Baker, and Clapton playing live at the RAH, November 1968

In order to select six more songs to fill out the studio side of Goodbye, first, we will need to look at what the three band members were doing right after the band split. Luckily for us, Clapton and Baker came together again, alongside Traffic's Steve Winwood and bassist Ric Grech, to form Blind Faith. While most of the band's material doesn't quite sound like Cream, it does feature two compositions by the pair: Clapton's gospel-tinged "Presence of the Lord", and Baker's 15-minute jam fueled "Do What You Like". That brings us to our first two problems: we only have a song each, and one of those is almost a side long. The solution would be to edit Baker's opus down to a more sensible five minutes, which is the length it was performed in during BF's first gig, and to fill out the album with whatever it is Jack Bruce had available back then. Luckily for us, Jack released a pretty good solo album that year, which was produced by Pappalardi, and even featured a couple of songs that Cream had demoed way back in 1967. So our final four will have to come from him.

And out of all songs on the Songs for a Tailor album, the more adequate would be the opener, "Never Tell Your Mother She's Out of Tune", as it's very Cream-like and even features Harrison on guitar, "Theme for an Imaginary Western", which the band was supposed to record before the split (and would sound a hell of a lot more like the Mountain version of the track, with Clapton's input added in), as well as "Weird of Hermiston" and "The Clearout", which the band had demoed for the Disraeli Gears record, but didn't include as they were "too weird". All arrangements I didn't mention before stay the same, except for "Presence of the Lord", which gets a Clapton lead vocal, as he performs it live nowadays. As for the second disc, we keep those three songs from the original Goodbye album, while adding "White Room" and "Deserted Cities of the Heart", both from the same LA Forum gig, and an earlier recording of "Steppin' Out", which despite being slightly anachronistic, is the perfect way to close the final Cream album, all things considered.

As an album, I honestly think Cream's farewell is a better listening experience than its predecessor, Wheels of Fire. The live side especially is miles better, focusing more on their ensemble playing and fierce improvisation, rather than on drum solos and solo spots. As for the originals, they certainly don't reach the heights of songs like "White Room" or "Politician" (although "Badge" and "Imaginary Western" surely come close), but make for a much more uniform record, without any particularly bad songs. Its lead single would probably be "Badge", which already did pretty well in our timeline, with "What a Bringdown" as its b-side. We honestly have no reason to change the album's great and certainly pretty ironic artwork, so we get to keep it as well. It certainly is a shame that the relations between band members were so strained and uncompromisable that they couldn't go out on a more positive note. Hopefully, with this reconstruction, we managed to paint a clearer picture, of what the final words of one of the most important bands of the '60s were supposed to be.

Sources:
- Cream - Goodbye!

- Jack Bruce - Songs for a Tailor

- Cream - Live Cream, Vol. 2

- Blind Faith - Blind Faith