Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (double album)

With Pink Floyd's massive fame following the release and success of Dark Side of the Moon, the band wasn't sure how to follow it up. One idea was to use everyday items around the home as instruments. The working title of the album was Household Objects. After a few weeks of banging on pots and pans and strumming rubber bands, the group gave up on the idea. 

In addition, Pink Floyd had been working on and performing two songs while on tour in 1974: "You've Got to Be Crazy" and "Raving and Drooling." Interestingly, neither one ended up on the subsequent album Wish You Were Here. Instead, both songs were reworked as "Dogs" and "Sheep" respectively for the band's 1977 album Animals.

I thought it might be interesting to combine what was released in 1975 along with other music the band was working on to expand Wish You Were Here into a double album. For this project, I've combined tracks of the actual Wish You Were Here with music the band had produced for this and other projects.

SIDE A
1. Shine on You Crazy Diamond, Parts I-V - 13:32 
2. Welcome to the Machine - 7:32

SIDE B
1. The Hard Way - 2:46
2. You've Got to be Crazy [live] - 18:13

SIDE C

1. Have a Cigar [alt] - 7:12

2. Raving and Drooling [live] - 14:30

SIDE D

1. The Travel Sequence - 2:21

2. Wish You Were Here [alt] - 6:14

3. Shine on You Crazy Diamond, Parts VI-IX - 12:30

I was a little leery at first of mixing studio and live tracks, but it's certainly something Pink Floyd has done before. But with the inclusion of new tracks, some rearranging was necessary to make the length of each album side relatively the same.

We open and close the album the same way: with "Shine on You Crazy Diamond." In fact, the first side remains exactly the same, with the inclusion of the track "Welcome to the Machine." 

For Side B, it opens with the instrumental "The Hard Way," a leftover from Household Objects. The only other known music from that aborted album is "Wine Glasses," which the band incorporated into "Shine on You Crazy Diamond." So there was no need to add it as well. The side closes with "You've Got to be Crazy," recorded live at Wembley Stadium.

Side C opens with a longer, alternate version of "Have a Cigar" that features vocals from Roger Waters and David Gilmour instead of Roy Harper. The next track is the live "Raving and Drooling," also recorded at Wembley Stadium. 

Side D starts with the instrumental "The Travel Sequence," which is actually an outtake from Dark Side of the Moon. That is followed by the album's title track. I used an alternate version, which is longer and features the prominent playing of Stephane Grappelli on violin. And as stated earlier, the album closes with the rest of "Shine on You Crazy Diamond."

All of these tracks, including the live ones, can be found on the box set Why Pink Floyd...? The cover art was actually originally designed by Hipgnosis for Wish You Were Here but was rejected by the band.

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NOTE: Since publishing this post, I've discovered that studio demos recorded for "You've Got to be Crazy" and "Raving and Drooling" are available on a bootleg called The Extraction Tapes. So, if you don't want live tracks mixed with studio ones, you could sub those.

John, Paul, George and Ringo - "Soap Opera"

Rock bands ending in acrimony are fairly common. But no band exploded quite so publicly as the biggest band in the world. John, Paul, George and even Ringo expressed their frustrations through song, providing us an album's worth of material that I've collected together under the title Soap Opera.

SIDE A

1. Wah Wah

2. Run of the Mill

3. God

4. Too Many People

5. 3 Legs

6. Early 1970

SIDE B

1. How Do You Sleep?

2. Dear Friend

3. Back Off Boogaloo

4. Sue Me, Sue You Blues

5. Let Me Roll It

6. Beef Jerky

George was first out of the gate with this All Things Must Pass album that included two songs, "Wah Wah" and "Run of the Mill," regarding his overall disillusionment with John, Paul and The Beatles in general. On his John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album, John declared "the dream is over" with "God" where he disposed of idols, religion, politics and his former band. Paul responded with two songs of his own: one regarding what he saw as John's preachiness in "Too Many People" and his feeling of betrayal by the other three Beatles in "3 Legs." Ringo, often the arbitrator, released a can't-we-all-get-along song in "Early 1970."

The second side kicks off with John's blistering attack on Paul with "How Do You Sleep?" Paul comes back with an olive branch in the form of "Dear Friend." Then Ringo steps in with his own attack on Paul with "Back Off Boogaloo." George expresses weariness regarding all the lawsuits flying about with "Sue Me, Sue You Blues." Paul then returns with possibly the cleverest of the "attack songs," doing a very good John imitation while requesting "Let Me Roll It." And it all comes to an end with a very subtle tip of his hat to Paul by John who incorporates the guitar riff of "Let Me Roll It" in his song "Beef Jerky."

• "Wah Wah" and "Run of the Mill" are from George's All Things Must Pass. 
• "God" is from John's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. 
• "Too Many People" and "3 Legs" are from Paul's and Linda's Ram. 
• "Early 1970" and "Back Off Boogaloo" can be found on Ringo's Blast from Your Past. 
• "How Do You Sleep" is on John's Imagine. 
• "Dear Friend" is from Wings' Wild Life. 
• "Sue Me, Sue You Blues" is from George's Living in the Material World. 
• "Let Me Roll It" is from Wings' Band on the Run. 
• And "Beef Jerky" is on John's Walls and Bridges.

For the cover, I took photos I found online of the former Beatles as solo artists circa '74, cropped them, and mimicked the Let It Be album cover, using a soap bubble background.

Little Richard -- 1955-57 Discography

As I've done with previous posts of redone 1950s discographies for Elvis, Johnny Cash and Chuck Berry, I decided to put together one for Little Richard as well.

Specialty Records released three albums by Little Richard between 1957 and 1959. But the albums didn't match the sessions, with various tracks mixed together. What I've done is rearrange the album track lists to better conform with the timeline.

HERE'S LITTLE RICHARD

SIDE A

1. Tutti Frutti

2. True, Fine Mama

3. Directly from My Heart

4. Maybe I’m Right

5. Blue and Lonesome

6. Baby

SIDE B

1. Kansas City

2. I’m Just a Lonely Guy (All Alone)

3. Wonderin’

4. All Night Long

5. Chicken Little Baby

First off, what a great album cover! But our revised version only includes three of the tracks of the released Here's Little Richard. As you can see, it includes two big Little Richard hits, "Tutti Frutti" and "Kansas City." The rest of the tracks often show a less manic side of him.

LITTLE RICHARD

SIDE A

1. Lucille

2. The Most I Can Offer

3. Can't Believe You Wanna Leave

4. Ready Teddy

5. Slippin' and Slidin'

6. Heeby-Jeebies

SIDE B

1. Long Tall Sally

2. Miss Ann

3. Oh Why?

4. Rip It Up

5. I Got It

6. Shake a Hand

7. Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey! (Goin’ Back to Birmingham)

The album cover is kind of a letdown after the debut. Like the previous entry, our version of this album only contains three tracks from the original. Each side begins with a big hit named after a lady. And the hits keep coming -- "Ready Teddy," "Slippin' and Slidin'," "Rip It Up." Overall, this version of the album has a more frenetic pace than the version of the debut and shows Little Richard at the peak of his powers.

THE FABULOUS LITTLE RICHARD

SIDE A

1. Keep a Knockin’

2. By the Light of the Silvery Moon

3. Send Me Some Lovin’

4. Boo Hoo Hoo Hoo (I’ll Never Let You Go)

5. Whole Lotta Shaking Going On

6. Early One Morning

7. Jenny, Jenny

SIDE B

1. Good Golly, Miss Molly

2. Baby Face

3. She Knows How to Rock

4. Ooh! My Soul

5. The Girl Can’t Help It

6. She's Got It

Guess what? Like the previous two albums, this version includes just three of the tracks that appeared on the actual The Fabulous Little Richard. That tells you just how mixed up the original albums are. With "Keep a Knockin'," "Jenny, Jenny," "Good Golly Miss Molly," "Ooh! My Soul" and "The Girl Can't Help It," this album frantically rocks from beginning to end.

Marvin Gaye - "Marvin Gaye Sings Romantic Standards"

Between 1963 and 1973, Marvin Gaye released a solo studio album every year except 1967. Yes, there was a best-of collection and a duet album with Tammi Terrell released that year, but the lack of a solo studio album seems like an oddity given the Motown Machine's constant pumping out of material, especially for its biggest acts.

In fact, Gaye appears to have planned a 1967 album, even though one doesn't appear on the Tamla Records schedule for that year.

In 1965, Marvin Gaye released an album titled A Tribute to the Great Nat "King" Cole. The album didn't sell very well, and the following year Gaye's next album, In the Groove, was a return to tunes by Motown songwriters. Yet not only were there leftover tracks from the Nat "King" Cole tribute album, but Gaye had recorded a number of other standards and songs from musicals at that time that weren't released.

In early 1967, Gaye went into the studio and re-recorded his vocals on a dozen of the 1965 outtakes. It seems to me that there can only be one reason for doing so -- this was to be a new album. Why else go to the trouble?

SIDE A

1. She Needs Me 

2. Emily 

3. The Shadow of Your Smile 

4. Fly Me to the Moon (in Other Words) 

5. Maria

6. All the Way 

SIDE B

1. Funny (Not Much) 

2. More (Theme from “Mondo Cane”) 

3. This will Make You Laugh

4. Fanny

5. What’s New 

6. Where are You?

At least four of these songs had previously been recorded by Cole, and others had been recorded by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Andy Williams and Bobby Darin.

Why work was done on these old songs when the Nat "King" Cole tribute album wasn't a big seller is a bit of a mystery. And it may have been the reason an album was never realized. Although 1967 did see the release of The Four Tops doing an album of Broadway musical tunes (Four Tops on Broadway) and there was a plan for The Supremes to release an album titled From Broadway to Hollywood (the plan was eventually scrapped). So in this light, a Gaye album of standards isn't surprising.

Without a track list, I just assembled the songs with six tunes on each side. All tracks can be found on Motown Unreleased 1967. For a cover, I used a photo of Gaye I found online and added titles and the Tamla logo.

"Another Age of Atlantic" compilation

Beginning in 1969, Atlantic Records released a trio of rock music compilation albums to promote its roster of artists. The first record, Atco Blockbusters, featured then-up-and-coming acts such as Iron Butterfly, Dr. John and Buffalo Springfield. The next compilation, The Age of Atlantic, continued the format in 1970 and featured Led Zeppelin, Yes and MC5. The final album, released in 1972, was New Age of Atlantic. It again featured Led Zeppelin and Yes, as well as Cactus and John Prine.

These compilations were sold at a bargain price -- less than it would have cost to buy all the singles.

I don't know why other compilations in the same vein didn't follow, but it's possible that they didn't sell well or many of Atlantic's acts by this time didn't need additional promotion. But I wondered what a fourth compilation might have included, and this is what I came up with.

SIDE A
1. D'yer Mak'er - Led Zeppelin
2. Give It to Me - J. Geils Band
3. In the Midnight Hour - Cross Country
4. Jerusalem - Emerson, Lake and Palmer
5. Easy Money - King Crimson
6. Right Place, Wrong Time - Dr. John

SIDE B
1. Angie - The Rolling Stones
2. Isn't It About Time - Stephen Stills and Manassas
3. Jack of All Trades - Heads, Hands and Feet
4. Everything that Touches You - Michael Kamen
5. Prison Song - Graham Nash
6. Jim Dandy - Black Oak Arkansas

To determine the track list, I decided to look at the albums and singles released and distributed by Atlantic and its subsidiaries in 1973. The record company's roster was really varied. But the three compilations released focused on rock acts. So, keeping with that concept, I didn't include pop, R&B, soul or country music.

The resulting tracklist is a really mixed bag of hard rock, country rock and prog rock, with a ballad thrown in here and there. Some groups (Stones and Zep) have stood the test of time, while others (Cross Country and Heads, Hands and Feet) seem more like curiosities now. If you don't already have all the albums these songs came from (and I can't imagine anyone would), you can download most of them individually. The exceptions appear to be "Jack of All Trades" by Head, Hands and Feet and "Everything That Touches You" by Michael Kamen. For those two, you'll have to do a deep dive.

For a cover, I wanted to get inspiration from the covers of the compilation series. But none of those covers showed any relation to the others, so I figured I had free rein. In the end, I decided on a rather simple design that, quite frankly, is nicer than the covers of the actual series.