UK - "Third World"

The band UK started off as a prog rock supergroup, whose members had been in King Crimson and Roxy Music.

But after one album and tour, the group split into two camps: drummer Bill Bruford and guitarist Allan Holdsworth formed Bruford, and bassist John Wetton and keyboardist Eddie Jobson soldiered on with new drummer Terry Bozzio.

However, after yet one more album and tour, UK fractured again. Reportedly, Wetton wanted to take the band in a more pop direction and Jobson wanted to record longer songs. These irreconcilable differences led to the breakup of the band and Wetton and Jobson to record solo albums.

I wanted to create what could have been UK's third studio album had the band stayed together.

SIDE A

1.      Turn It Over

2.      Get What You Want

3.       Night After Night

4.       Nostalgia

5.       Caught in the Crossfire

SIDE B

1.      Turn On the Radio

2.       As Long As You Want Me Here

3.       Walking from Pastel

4.       When Will You Realize?

5.      Listen to Reason

After the band broke up, a live album was released that featured two songs that hadn't been on the studio LPs: "As Long as You Want Me Here" and "Night After Night," both co-written by Jobson and Wetton. Also, "Night After Night" was released as a single with a previously unreleased studio track, Wetton's "When Will You Realize?" on the b-side. So we have three actual UK tracks to include. For the rest of the music, I looked to Wetton's and Jobson's solo albums for material.

Somewhat surprising is that although the reports were that Jobson wanted UK to record longer songs, when it came time to release his first solo album, The Green Album, the longest tracks were around six minutes -- not exactly epics. And the lead single (for which a video was produced for MTV) was the poppy, Prog Rock meets New Wave song "Turn It Over," which clocks in at 4:15. I felt that this was a good song to kick off the album.

The second track is "Get What You Want" from Wetton's Caught in the Crossfire album, which was co-written by Wetton and co-written by onetime King Crimson lyricist Pete Sinfield. The title track from Wetton's album ends the first side. In between we've the aforementioned "Night After Night" followed by "Nostalgia." From what I've read, both Jobson's "Nostalgia" and "Walking from Pastel" had been performed by UK on their last tour, and that makes them prime candidates for this album.

The second side starts with Wetton's un-ironic radio-friendly "Turn on the Radio," followed by the second live UK track, "As Long as You Want Me Here," and another Jobson tune, "Walking from Pastel."

Wetton's "When Will You Realize?" has been labeled as the song that broke up UK -- apparently Jobson didn't like it. Wetton re-recorded it for his own solo album, but we use the UK version here. Finally, the album concludes with Jobson's "Listen to Reason."

For cover art, I chose a satellite image of Britain I found online and added the words. I picked Third World for the title as a play on this being the band's third studio album and the shot of the planet from space.