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The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2014 11:58 pm
by Live in Phoenix
This is a supplementary thread to the "That's All Right" 60th anniversary thread.
http://acclaimedmusic.net/forums/viewto ... ppa#p26173

In celebration of Elvis cutting his very first song, “My Happiness,” one hot July 18th many years ago, I’m posting the earliest song (or awfully close) I can find on YouTube by all of the current AM top 100 artists. It’s open season on cameos, collaborations, and old band names, as I’m going as early as possible, irrespective of other parallels with “My Happiness” (except that all singles here will lead off with the A-side). I am weaseling out of any 100% guarantee that every song here is definitely a first recording, by labeling these “fledgling” recordings (anyway, this is a playlist first and foremost, so the song still has to be found online – so if James Brown cut a song as part of a gospel group once upon a time, if I can't find it, I can only mention it in passing). For solo musicians who have straddled solo and band careers (Zappa, Lennon, MJ), I am going with the first thing they were ever involved with; for one-name bands (Bob Marley, Captain Beefheart), I follow the leader back to his first recording; and old groups count that shared most every band member with the newer, more famous group. Some messiness for this kind of thread is nigh-inescapable, and in fact upon further reflection I've decided to make it messier with some quotes from the artists themselves. Presumably, most every bloody musician here has some demo or two to their name, but I'll mention in passing the ones I know about. The presentation for this thread will be rolled out slower, probably taking until August 16th (the day Elvis died). Enjoy!

The photos give some indication of the availability of the playlist selection's A-side.




Elvis Presley - “My Happiness” b/w “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin” (rec. 18 July 1953)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, by Peter Guralnick

In later years he would always say that he wanted to make a personal record "to surprise my mother." Or "I just wanted to hear what I sounded like." But, of course, if he had simply wanted to record his voice, he could have paid twenty-five cents at W.T. Grant's on Main Street [instead of $3.98 at Sun].
...
[Marion Keisker (assistant to Sam Phillips)]
He said, "If you know anyone that needs a singer. . . ."
"What kind of a singer are you?"
"I sing all kinds."
"Who do you sound like?"
"I don't sound like nobody."
I thought, Oh yeah, one of those. . . . "What do you sing, hillbilly?"
"I sing hillbilly."
"Well, who do you sound like in hillbilly?"
"I don't sound like nobody."
...
When he finished ["My Happiness"], he embarked upon "That's When Your Heartaches Begin" ... Here he was not so successful in his rendition, running out of time, or inspiration, and simply declaring "That's the end" at the conclusion of the song. The boy looked up expectantly at the man in the control booth. Mr. Phillips nodded and said politely that he was an "interesting" singer. "We might give you a call sometime." He even had Miss Keisker make a note of the boy's name, which she misspelled and then editorialized beside it: "Good ballad singer. Hold."

AC/DC - "Can I Sit Next To You, Girl" b/w "Rockin' in the Parlour" (22 July 1974)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
One of the rare occasions of identical overlap with the other thread. Both songs were taken from the EMI Studios/Sydney demo sessions, recorded January 1974. This version of "Can I Sit Next To You, Girl" has never been officially released outside Australia.


Arcade Fire - "Winter for a Year" (rec. 2001) (youtube link)
2001 demo track listing: Winter for a Year / My Mind Is a Freeway / Accidents / Goodnight Boy / Asleep at the Wheel / In the Attic / Can't Let Go of You / You Tried to Turn Away My Fears / Instrumental / The Great Arcade Fire
Rolling Stone, "The Unforgettable Fire: Can Arcade Fire Be the World’s Biggest Band?"

“The first time I saw Arcade Fire, it was in a loft in Montreal,” recalls Tim Kingsbury, the band’s guitarist and bassist. “It was Win [Butler] and Régine [Chassagne], two drummers, this guy Myles playing guitar, and this girl Anita playing the harp. I just remember 30 people sitting on the floor, and Win being supertall and imposing and standing over everyone. The first time I actually talked to him was when he and Régine came to one of my band’s shows. Afterward he came up to me, like, ‘I really liked that second song – but you should probably cut the last verse.’ Just immediately coaching us. I was like, ‘Who is this asshole?'” ... [Richard Reed] Parry says. “There’s no question [Win]’s the leader of this band. Which is fine by me. I’m a Quaker, and consensus is fucking slow and hard. And at the end of the day, the fact that we can all get behind any idea and move forward is a small miracle.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollin ... 94440/amp/

The Band (all 5 members) --> Ronnie Hawkins [and the Hawks] - "Mojo Man" (rec. 2 February 1962, overdubbed 1963)
https://youtu.be/vUAqpBqxuck
It is possible that all 5 Band members are also on the track "Arkansas."
Extra: Ronnie Hawkins - "Who Do You Love" (March 1963; rec. January 1963) [Dead link]
4 out of 5 members; this song (the B-side to a "Bo Diddley" single) is featured on both Band box sets.
Ronnie Hawkins Talks About "The Boys" -- Then and Now, interviewed by Carol Caffin

Well, when that group came together, they were all young and strong and talented, so what I did was that -- we worked mostly seven days a week, but for sure six, and we practiced five days a week -- it was my rule back then, you know?

...Robbie Robertson came in early on kind of as a roadie-type person, just runnin' errands and listenin' to music and practicin'. He was already into music, he already had little bands, and he was a street-smart, hip kid. So we brought him in first -- Levon [Helm] did, when the Arkansas boys decided to go back.

...The sad thing about gettin' popular and makin' a little money is they stopped workin' and stopped practicin' and started partyin' and chasin' women and drugs and everything there is to do that makes a young man think he's doin' somethin.' But see, they stopped playin' as a unit and individually, almost, except for Rick [Danko] ... They would invite 30 people out for sushi in L.A. and pick up the tab. I mean, you can't do that -- not unless you got a hit record goin'! [laughs] But anyway, they wasted too much money and had too much fun ... Well, they left behind some unbelievable music.

https://theband.hiof.no/articles/Ronnie ... Bite5.html

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 1:43 am
by Live in Phoenix


The Beach Boys --> The Pendletones - "Surfin'" demo (rec. early September 1961) (youtube link)
Extra: "Happy Birthday Four Freshmen" (1960) [Dead link]
Hidden track on the Good Vibrations box set -- Brian Wilson using his multi-track tape recorder to sing "Happy Birthday Four Freshmen" to his favorite vocal group.


Beastie Boys - "Riot Fight" (1982) (youtube link)
This song is also on the CD compilation Some Old Bullshit. The compilation cassette New York Thrash also includes the song "Beastie" [the same song as "Beastie Boys" from Polly Wog Stew and the Sounds of Science anthology?]
Rolling Stone, 25 Astonishing First Appearances By Famous Rappers:
The Beastie Boys - "Riot Fight"

Long before they were hip-hop pranksters, Michael Diamond and Adam Yauch were teenage goofballs who started a jokey hardcore band with what the latter called "the stupidest name possible." Their early run is either the stuff of legend or a standard tale of greasy kid antics: They played their first gig on Yauch's 17th birthday, broke-up because "it didn't seem funny anymore," signed to an indie label run out of a basement, reformed, recorded a 11-minute EP in two days, broke up a second time, reformed again, broke up again, and eventually traded guitarists for a playwright's son named Adam Horovitz.
Adam Yauch – Beastie Boys Anthology: The Sounds of Science compilation liner notes

New York-based bands like the Stimulators, the Awfuls, Loud Fast Fools, and even Reagan Youth were still playing slower, punk rock-style music. So Kate [Schellenbach], Mike [Diamond], John [Berry] and I started Beastie Boys as a hardcore band. I guess it really began as a total goof. We never intended for it to last more than a couple of shows. I don’t think John was ever that into it, but he agreed to play just for fun.

[On writing some early songs, a couple of which are co-credited to John Berry on the compilation]
So one day after (or maybe instead of) school, John and I got together to play some music. We met up at his loft on 100th Street and Broadway. He told me that he had written a couple of songs and picked up his guitar and started playing some chords. I did my best to play along with him and to remember what he’d just played, but honestly who knows what it really was. Later when I asked him to show it to me again, he said, “I don’t know, I just made it up while I was showing it to you.”

The Beatles --> The Quarrymen - “That’ll Be the Day" b/w "In Spite of All the Danger” (rec. 12 July 1958)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)


Beck - "MTV Makes Me Want To Smoke Crack" (1993) (youtube link)
Included on a four-song 7" split vinyl single--along with "To See That Woman Of Mine"--with someone called Bean. "MTV..." is included on CD, on the 1994 four-song "Loser" [UK #2] single.
Extra: "To See That Woman Of Mine" (youtube link)
N/A: "Living room demos" (recorded ca. 1991)
The Beatles Anthology
Paul McCartney:
In those early days, you could go to the local studios and, as long as you could get the money together -- five pounds, which was a lot for kids to find -- you could cut a record. You would show up with all your equipment and wait; it was a bit like a doctor's waiting room. When the group or the performer before you had made their record, you would go into the studio and a guy would come in, adjust a few microphones and you would sing. Then it was back out the waiting room for fifteen minutes while he processed the tape (I think it was tape, though it went straight onto shellac), and off you went. It was a very primitive recording.

...There were five of us: George, John, Colin Hanton, 'Duff' Lowe and me. Duff was a friend of mine from school who could play the piano. He could play the arpeggio at the beginning of Jerry Lee's 'Mean Woman Blues'. That was the reason he was in ... We went to Phillips in Kensington, which sounded very posh. John sang 'That'll Be The Day', and the B side was 'In Spite of All The Danger'; a self-penned little song very influenced by Elvis ... John had [the record] a week and passed it on to me ... Colin had it for a week and passed it to Duff Lowe -- who kept it for twenty-three years. Later, when we were famous, he said, 'Hey, I've got that first record.' I ended up buying it back for a very inflated price.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 3:38 am
by Bruce
Interesting project. I may be able to help on a few items.

Here's what I believe is the earliest Rolling Stones recording (it's not very good, they needed a lot of practice). From 1962.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFCXL5-okR8

Aretha Franklin - 1956 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGgsI4vzDho

Buddy Holly - 1949 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_inGZnNmcA

Little Richard - 1951 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNYbpv03E-s

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 4:31 am
by Live in Phoenix
Thanks, Bruce -- I have some kind of selection on hand for all of the 100 musicians on the list, but while I knew about Aretha and Buddy Holly, I completely missed Little Boy Blue and The Blue Boys, a.k.a. The Rolling Stones. As for Little Richard, I was planning on using "Get Rich Quick," because that was the earliest master number I could find, from the same 10/16/51 session as Taxi Blues and Every Hour.

Do you have any suggestions for determining the values of 45 rpm releases (more for the other playlist thread)? I don't usually look that stuff up, and I noticed a Goldmine price guide, but only going up to 2009.

On the back of Little Richard's The Formative Years 1951—53 CD:
Image

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 3:22 pm
by Live in Phoenix



Chuck Berry
Joe Alexander And The Cubans ‎– "Oh Maria" b/w "I Hope These Words Will Find You Well" (1954)
A-side: (see post below)
B-side: (youtube link)
Berry performed guitar under the pseudonym Chuck Berryn. (The name change occurred in his AFM contract "in an attempt to camouflage my worldly doings from the holy environment my father's name was associated with.")
N/A: reel-to-reel recordings (rec. summer 1951 - May 1955)
Chuck Berry: The Autobiography
I bought a secondhand reel-to-reel magnetic wire recorder from a friend who recorded me singing on it at his house. I think I would have stolen it if he hadn't sold it as I was completely fascinated by its reproduction qualities. It was that inspiration that started me to recording the first of my original improvisations, both poetical and melodical.

With the recorder, I starting hanging around more with Ira Harris. I picked up a lot of new swing riffs and ideas from Ira's playing, which was similar to the style of Charlie Christian's. Ira showed me many licks and riffs on the guitar that came to be the foundation of the style that is said to be Chuck Berry's.

Björk - "I Love to Love" (recorded ca. 1976) (youtube link)
Wikipedia: After a school recital in which Björk sang the Tina Charles 1976 hit "I Love to Love", her teachers sent a recording of her singing the song to the RÚV radio station – then, Iceland's only radio station. The recording was nationally broadcast and, after hearing it, a representative of the Fálkinn record label offered Björk a recording contract.
The Observer, "'I didn't like being a celebrity. It's a service job. Like washing toilets,'" by Polly Vernon

"There was a radio show where everybody who did something well, did something. One did magic tricks and one did, er, what you call it? Flick flacks? And I sang. Because that is what I did. On the school bus I would sing. All the time. And some guy contacted my mum and wanted to make a lot of money and do a child record, and my mum said: 'Yes.' I can't even remember being asked."

The album sold well, and Björk became a star.

Was that fun?

"No! I hated it! I didn't really like it. I think children should pick for themselves. They shouldn't be pushed. I was too young."

Does she resent her mother for allowing it?

"Little bit. She should have known better."

Björk, child star, refused to make a second album, and ducked out of the whole business for several years. She formed a punk band called Spit and Snot when she was 14 - "just at school, with four girls. It was fun. I played drums" - but didn't release any more records until the mid-1980s.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/ ... opandrock2

Black Sabbath --> Earth - demo tape, e.g. "The Rebel" (recorded ca. 1969) (youtube link)
Other demo songs include "Song for Jim," and "When I Came Down."


Blur --> Circus - 1988 recordings, e.g. "Hippy Children" (youtube link)
Before they were Blur, they were Seymour; and before that, it was Circus.
More on the recordings from this period at: http://www.vblurpage.com/info/songlist/unreleased.htm
Extra: "She's So High" rehearsal (recorded ca. 1988-1989 -- Seymour period?) [Dead link]
Bit of a Blur, Alex James (permanent Blur bassist, who joined during the Circus period):

Graham [Coxon, Blur lead guitarist] and Paul [Hodgson] and I went to the Beat Factory, a bijou, pristine studio near King's Cross. We were going to listen to what this band of Graham's had been doing. They'd just finished recording some new songs. We didn't hit it off straight away, Damon [Albarn, Blur lead singer] and I. He was wearing a necklace and he still had 'up' hair. No one at college was doing the 'up' hair thing any more. Hair spent most of the eighties going in the wrong direction, but things were getting back to normal again.

... They played the songs, which were a bit cheesy ... They really weren't that great. They were too drama college; they needed to be more art college. Damon asked me what I thought of them, what they sounded like to me, just, you know, as someone who had never been in a recording studio before ... I told him I thought they weren't quite right, which they weren't. He kind of knew it, really, but he was obviously shocked. I didn't mince my words. It was the only stick I could possibly have bashed him with. In the Robin Hood stories, Robin likes to have a fight with everyone he meets before he becomes their friend. Damon loves Robin Hood and he loves a tussle. We said, cheerio then.

On Alex James's first playing session with Circus, along with Blur drummer Dave Rowntree, December 1988:
I showed them some chords that I'd been strumming in my room. Graham started to play them on the guitar, there was a drum machine going boom whack and I start grooving along on the bass that was lying around. Damon started jumping up and down saying, 'Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! You're a natural!' He got his lyrics book out and started singing, 'She is so high, she is so high.' It all happened there and then. It was instantaneous, shockingly so. Graham wrote the lyrics for the verse, over the same chords, and sang a backing vocal on the choruses. I'd never been in a band with backing vocals. The two of them sang really well together, they'd been doing it for years. We made a tape and I went home for Christmas thinking, 'I'm in the best band in the world.'

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 4:46 pm
by Bruce
Live in Phoenix wrote:Do you have any suggestions for determining the values of 45 rpm releases
I have a 2010 Osborne Price Guide if you want me to look anything up.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 4:51 pm
by Bruce
http://www.crlf.de/ChuckBerry/upto1954.html

Some time in the late Eighties someone discovered old session protocols of Oscar Washington's Ballad label. In these protocols he found the name of Chuck Berryn playing guitar on two songs published under the name of Joe Alexander and the Cubans. At this time Chuck was going by the pseudonym Chuck Berryn.

Image

Up to now Chuck Berry has not acknowledged that his first recordings were not Maybellene and Wee Wee Hours. However, record shops and many collectors today see Oh Maria b/w I Hope These Words Will Find You Well (Ballad AA 1008-X45) recorded August 13th, 1954 and published shortly thereafter as the very first Chuck Berry record. The record itself is a huge rarity and easily sells for US $1000. There are also Bootleg reprints of the record available. Oh Maria has been re-published on the CD Cruisin' Classics Volume 1 (MR DJ 101). In 2007 Digimode Entertainment finally released both Joe Alexander recordings as bonus tracks to Chuck Berry Rocks (GTR 39508) , a CD otherwise containing early CHESS recordings.

Image

Disregard the year listed (1957) in the video, the record was released in 1954.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 2:36 am
by Live in Phoenix
Cool, I'll update it

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 7:35 pm
by Live in Phoenix


David Bowie --> Davie Jones with the King Bees - "Liza Jane" b/w "Louie, Louie Go Home" (5 June 1964)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
N/A: London demo (date & content unmentioned)
Shortly after Bowie's death, 60 Minutes posted unaired 2003 interviews with the program, where his very first trip to a studio was mentioned.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/david-bowie ... nterviews/
CBSnews.com: "He first recorded his music in London, when he snuck into a studio with a friend after hours and 'nicked some time' to make a demo. These were days before 24-hour radio, he recalled, and before you could record an album at home. Back then, the process of making a record was "rather arcane and special and magical," he said. "So stepping... through the portals of a recording studio was as though you'd been admitted to a higher world, you know?"


James Brown --> James Brown with the Famous Flames - "Please Please Please" (March 1956) (youtube link)
B-side: "Why Do You Do Me" (youtube link)
N/A: The Ever Ready Gospel Singers - "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" (recorded ca. 1952)
This gospel group was spun off from the Community Choir; James Brown appeared with them on local radio station WLET during this same time.
N/A: The Flames - "So Long" (ca. 1954). In his book, Brown mentions cutting several local records in Toccoa, GA, for local labels such as NRC out of Greenville. Only "So Long" is named. ("We didn't even know whether the companies were selling the records or not. We didn't care; we just wanted to be on stage in front of all those women.")
N/A: "Please Please Please" demo (rec. 1955), recorded at a radio station ("It became the most requested song around Macon, even though you couldn't buy a record of it.")


The Byrds --> The Jet Set - "The Only Girl I Adore" (rec. mid-1964?)
Track #1 from the There Is a Season box set, recorded before Michael Clarke and Gene Clark joined.
(youtube link)


Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band --> Don Vliet - "Lost In A Whirlpool" (recorded ca. 1958-59) (youtube link)
One of Zappa's early 'field recordings,' made in his college classroom with he and his brother Bobby both on guitar.
James Brown: The Godfather of Soul - James Brown with Bruce Tucker

I was willing to do any kind of job, to get a foothold in anything. I even thought boxing might be a way to go ... The Ever Ready Gospel Singers were doing well, singing in all the churches, and I thought it was time we made a record. I kept my eyes open when the Community Choir was in WLET's studio, and I thought we could make a tape there without too much trouble. We got permission from the owner of the station and taped "His Eye Is on the Sparrow," the song Ethel Waters made famous. We took the tape and had it pressed into an acetate, the kind that is cut from the inside of the record to the outside to keep you from competing with record companies.

Now that we had a record like this, we had to get somebody to play it. I vaguely knew that air play might attract the attention of a record company or at least help our little group get real gigs; beyond that, I didn't really have any sort of strategy figured out. But I did know which radio station I wanted to air it--WLAC in Nashville. WLAC was all we ever listened to. In the daytime they played country music, which we didn't listen to, but late at night Gene Nobles, John "R" Richbourg, and Hoss Allen played blues, rhythm and blues, and black gospel ... The funny thing was that a lot of people, including black people, thought those disc jockeys were black, talking all this smooth jive, and then you'd go in the station and find out they were white.

Somehow word had gotten around that the WLAC disc jockeys were willing to listen to new things ... So I got someone to drive me to Nashville with the record. We found the WLAC studio, but instead of going in we waited at the back door until the jocks came out. We first asked Gene Nobles to play it, but he turned us down. We waited until 3 A.M. when John R came out. He listened to it but said he couldn't play it either. At least he took more interest in me than anybody else did, which is why he will always be number 1 in my book when it comes to disc jockeys. Later on, he helped me a whole lot ... With the gospel record and the trip to Nashville, I had made my first move toward trying to be a professional musician. The idea wasn't full blown yet, but the next time Bobby Byrd asked me to join his group I said yes.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 12:26 am
by Live in Phoenix


Johnny Cash - "Wide Open Road" 1:50 demo version (rec. 1954) (youtube link)
Disc 1 of 5 of this box set contains three versions of the song, the other two being approx. 2:30 each. This is track #1 on the box set.


Nick Cave --> The Boys Next Door - "Blitzkrieg Bop" (19 August 1977)
(youtube link)


Ray Charles - "St. Pete's Blues" (also called "I Found My Baby There" and "Done Found Out") (rec. 1948) (youtube link)
Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story - Ray Charles and David Ritz
About the time I was playing hot hillbilly piano, I recorded my first tunes, though at the time I just considered it fooling around ... (B)y singing on top of my playing, I was able to create--at least in my own head--a guitar-like, bluesy effect. Years later the song popped up on several albums ... I never got any money from it. And I never even bothered to find out who had gotten hold of it. Early on in the music business I learned to enter certain fights, swinging with all I got, and to avoid others, knowing that I wouldn't accomplish anything even if I won.
This is the voice of a 17-year-old. Recorded with a primitive wire recorder at a friend's house, along with: "Walkin' and Talkin'," "Wonderin' and Wonderin'," "Why Did You Go?" The link refers to the song as "St. Pete Florida Blues" -- David Ritz mentions that Ray often wrote songs and didn't give them a name.

Wikipedia: Ray attended school at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine from 1937 to 1945, where he developed his musical talent. During this time he performed on WFOY radio in St. Augustine.
Cash: The Autobiography - Johnny Cash with Patrick Carr

When I made my first move on Sun, I told Sam Phillips on the telephone that I was a gospel singer. That didn't work. The market for gospel records, he told me, wasn't big enough for him to make a living producing them. My next try didn't work either--that time I told him I was a country singer. In the end I just went down to the Memphis Recording Service one morning before anyone arrived for work and sat on the step and waited. Sam was the first to appear. I stood up and introduced myself and said, "Mr. Phillips, sir, if you listen to me, you'll be glad you did." That must have been the right thing to say. "Well, I like to hear a boy with confidence in him," he replied. "Come on in."

...I sang "I Was There When It Happened" and "It Don't Hurt Anymore" for him. I sang "Belshazzar." I sang Hank Snow songs, a Jimmie Rodgers song, a couple of Carter Family songs, whatever else I'd taken into my repertoire ... Though I didn't think it was any good, I told him about "Hey, Porter," and he had me sing it for him.

That did it. "Come back tomorrow with those guys you've been making the music with, and we'll put that song down," he told me. I was really nervous in the studio the next day, and the steel guitar player, Red Kernodle, another mechanic at the Automobile Sales Company, was even worse; he was so jittery he could hardly play at all. The results were predictable: the first track we recorded, "Wide Open Road," sounded awful, and it didn't get any better. After three or four songs, Red packed up his steel and left. "This music business is not for me," he said, and I didn't contest the point. After that we settled down a little and managed to get a respectable take on "Hey, Porter." Sam liked it. "That's going to be a single," he declared.

"What do you mean, a single?" I asked. I thought we were still auditioning.

"We're going to put out a record," Sam replied.

What a wonderful moment that was! I hadn't thought we had a chance, and now there I was, about to become a Sun recording artist.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 1:26 am
by Bruce
Great thread LIP.

Curtis Mayfield is outside of the top 100, but this demo of "For Your Precious Love" is probably his first recording, as well as the first recording of the Impressions and Jerry Butler.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 1:31 am
by Bruce
Jerry lee Lewis paid to make a two sided acetate in 1952.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 3:30 am
by Bruce
Live in Phoenix wrote:Chuck Berry
Joe Alexander And The Cubans ‎– "Oh Maria" b/w "I Hope These Words Will Find You Well" (1954)
A-side: (see post below)
Here's the other side:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cOF4Bqhy44

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 3:55 am
by Bruce
Here's an ad for the Chuck Berry thing. Sounds like he's the vocalist on "Oh Maria."

http://books.google.com/books?id=oiEEAA ... so&f=false

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 3:58 am
by Live in Phoenix



John Coltrane’s Naval Reserve enlistment mugshot (1945)


The Clash - "I Know What To Think About You" 29 August 1976 concert (youtube link)
Welcome to the horrible world of bootlegs! This track sounds better than some other stuff I was sifting through, though. This concert included the Buzzcocks and the Sex Pistols, as well. There are 2 other tracks from this concert on YouTube. "Deny", not available, was the first song in the band's set.
The lineup here should be: Joe Strummer; Mick Jones; Terry Chimes aka Tory Crimes - drums; Keith Levine - guitar; Paul Simonon.

Extra: "I'm So Bored With The U.S.A." Beaconsfield Film School / Julian Temple demo (rec. 1976) (youtube link)
This demo also includes "London's Burning," White Riot," and "1977."
Are you sitting down? (Well, I assume you already are.) In the Clash's autobiography, published 9/27/2011, Julian Temple is virtually unmentioned, and Guy Stevens gets recognition for the first recording session. The Sound System box set monstrosity pictured above, released 9 September 2013 and newly re-mastered by Mick Jones himself, contains an "extras disc 3" with the one & only one version of "I'm So Bored With The U.S.A.," as the lead-off track, under the Wikipedia description "first ever recording session at Beaconsfield Film School 1976 produced by Julian Temple." (Allmusic.com refers to "extracts" from the band's first recording session in 1976; and then Polydor demos from that same year produced by Guy Stevens.) Wikipedia refers to the Guy Stevens session as the "second ever recording session November 1976, Polydor demos produced by Guy Stevens" -- I assume, by the way, that these descriptions are coming to you courtesy of the box set itself. All of this matter aside, neither of these sessions are necessarily the first recording of the band, though I'm not sure of the exact date of the Julian Temple demo.


Leonard Cohen
Songs Of Leonard Cohen (27 December 1967)
Track #1, "Suzanne": (youtube link)
Extra: Judy Collins - "Suzanne" (from In My Life, November 1966) (youtube link)


John Coltrane
Dexter Culbertson, John Coltrane, Norman Poulshock, Willie Stader, Joe Theimer/Timer – "Koko" (rec. 13 July 1946) (youtube link)
N/A: Jimmy Johnson Big Band – unknown titles (rec. middle 1945)**
N/A: U.S. Navy Band - unknown titles (rec. December 1945-July 1946)**
Source: Jazzdisco.org
**Jazzdisco refers to the July 13, 1946 session being recorded by the Dexter Culbertson’s U.S. Navy Band. The 800-page John Coltrane Reference, edited by Lewis Porter, begins its discography with the July 13, 1946 session, and considers the "Navy band" label incorrect. ("They were a few band members getting together on their own.") The book also calls out Jazzdisco by name and states there is no reason to believe that there was ever a recording of the Jimmy Johnson big band (nor, by extension, the U.S. Navy Band.)
"Embraceable You" is the actual lead-off track (unavailable on YouTube, and unavailable on Spotify in the United States). That song, and the other 6 recorded titles from that session--Ornithology, Sweet Miss, It's Only a Paper Moon, Sweet Lorraine, Now's the Time, Hot House--are all on the CD collection above, First Giant Steps.

The Clash, The Clash

Joe Strummer, on "I'm So Bored With the USA":
When Mick [Jones] demoed it to me I thought he said it was called I'm So Bored with the USA and I jumped out of my chair going, 'Great, greeat' [sic] because then, like now, we live on a diet of American TV programmes and I said, 'Great, I'm so bored with the USA', and Mick says, 'No, I didn't say that, this is a song about my girlfriend, called "I'm So Bored With You"' and I said, "Never mind that, let's write it now. "I'm So Bored With the USA".' It became a big favourite with American audiences; they used to scream if we didn't play it.

The 29 August 1976 Screen on the Green concert:
Mick Jones: I don't think we played very well at the Screen on the Green because we'd spent the whole day looking after the equipment and watching The Outlaw Josey Wales. It was a Sunday and we had to wait until 1 a.m. to play, and we'd had to build the stage too. So we were a bit knackered by the time we got on the stage.

Paul Simonon: I recall there was supposed to be some kind of deal where we would put up posters for the Screen on the Green gig and build the stage, but I don't remember doing any of that. Maybe someone gave me some posters and I chucked them in the bin. I wasn't going to stick up any posters that weren't my own.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 4:16 am
by Bruce
Live in Phoenix wrote:
[imgsize 225x300]http://cdn2.openculture.com/wp-content/ ... ltrane.jpg[/imgsize]
John Coltrane’s Naval Reserve enlistment mugshot (1945)
Looks like today's haircuts.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 1:40 pm
by Live in Phoenix
Bruce wrote:Looks like today's haircuts.
Yeah, Coltrane fares better than this guy on the playlist:

Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuce?
[imgsize 375x300]http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/ ... rge-13.jpg[/imgsize]

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 1:47 pm
by Live in Phoenix
The Cure --> Easy Cure - "I Wish I Was Your Mother" (rec. 3 July 1977) (youtube link)
This snippet, from a gig at Crawley, Queen's Square, is featured in a VHS video compilation, Staring at the Sea - The Images. This gig is so far back that Peter "not that Peter" O'Toole is the singer. A demo tape (uncirculated?) auditioning for a German record label may precede this, whereas a 1977 demo that is easily found on YouTube, starting off with "Meat Hook" and including "I Want to Be Old" (a song featured in a Three Imaginary Boys deluxe reissue), is supposed to be from a few months later.

"Studio Demos for Hansa International, recorded at Sound And Vision Studios, London [11 October 1977]" (youtube link)


Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 2:46 am
by Live in Phoenix


Daft Punk --> Darlin’ - “Cindy, So Loud” and “Darlin’” (April 1993)
"Darlin'": (youtube link)
"Cindy, So Loud" (youtube link)
These two titles were featured on a multi-artist compilation from Duophonic Records. (The YouTube picture of the track listing is an insert for this compilation, I believe.)
Pre-robot parts, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo formed Darlin' (playing bass and guitar) with Laurent Brancowitz in 1992, with the band name inspired by the Beach Boys song. Wikipedia mentions that the two Daft Punk men met in 1987 while attending the Lycée Carnot, and later recorded demo tracks with others from the school.


Miles Davis
Rubberlegs Williams with Herbie Fields' Band - "That's the Stuff You Gotta Watch [Alternate Take 1]" (rec. April 24, 1945)
(youtube link)
Master take 3 was available on YouTube, but gotten taken down.
Miles Davis (tpt); Herbie Fields (ts, cl); Henry "Rubberlegs" Williams (voc); Teddy Brannon (p); Leonard Gaskin (b); Ed Nicholson (d)
The recording date and ensemble is according to Miles Ahead: A Miles Davis website. http://www.plosin.com/MilesAhead/Sessions.aspx?s=450424
Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe - Miles: The Autobiography

I might have been confident in my playing with most people, but I was still only nineteen and felt that I was too young to play with certain other people--though there weren't many that I felt that way about. But Bird [Charlie Parker] used to build up my confidence by saying he had gone through the same bullshit when he was younger back in Kansas City.

I did my first recording date, in May 1945, with Herbie Fields. Man, I was so nervous about making that date that I couldn't even hardly play. Even in the ensemble playing--I didn't get to play no solos. I remember Leonard Gaskin on bass on that date, and a singer named Rubberlegs Williams. But I tried to put that record out of my mind and I forgot who else was on that date.

The Doors --> Rick & the Ravens - demo tape, e.g. "Moonlight Drive" (rec. 2 September 1965) (youtube link)
Also from the demo: My Eyes Have Seen You / End of the Night / Go Insane / Summer’s Almost Gone / Hello, I Love You


Nick Drake - home demos, e.g. “My Sugar So Sweet” (recorded ca. 1967-68) (youtube link)
The home demos collected on the Tanworth-in-Arden 1967/68 bootleg are of the same vintage as “Been Smoking Too Long” and “Strange Meeting II,” from the Time of No Reply CD. Drake also recorded piano songs onto a reel-to-reel tape recorder as a youngling in the late '50s.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 1:26 pm
by Live in Phoenix



Bob Dylan
Harry Belafonte - “Midnight Special” (rec. June? 1961) (youtube link)
Dylan plays harmonica here. In his book, he mentions this as his professional recording debut, but doesn't go into details of the session, other than saying it was the only recording date that would stand out in his mind for years to come. Dylan, who prefers very few takes, is said to have met his opposite in Belafonte and left the session after one song (though he praises Belafonte at length in the book).
Chronicles: Volume One - Bob Dylan

Harry was the best balladeer in the land and everybody knew it ... He could play to a packed house at Carnegie Hall and then the next day he might appear at a garment center union rally. To Harry, it didn't make any difference. People were people. He had ideals and made you feel you're a part of the human race. There never was a performer who crossed so many lines as Harry. He appealed to everybody ... The folk purists had a problem with him, but Harry--who could have kicked the shit out of all of them--couldn't be bothered, said that all folksingers were interpreters, said it in a public way as if someone had summoned him to set the record straight. He even said he hated pop songs, thought they were junk. I could identify with Harry in all kinds of ways.
Eminem --> Bassmint Productions - “Crackers and Cheese” (recorded ca. 1988) (youtube link)


Brian Eno
Malcolm Le Grice's Berlin Horse (1970) / Sound by Brian Eno (youtube link) 6 minutes, 37 seconds of it
Like the film piece itself, the "sound" is a loop, with small variations.
Extra: The Cornelius Cardew & Scratch Orchestra ‎– The Great Learning, Paragraph 7 (1971) (youtube link)
Wikipedia: "The first released recording in which Eno played is the Deutsche Grammophon edition of Cardew's The Great Learning, as one of the voices in the recital of The Great Learning Paragraph 7. Another early recording was the Berlin Horse soundtrack, by Malcom Le Grice, a nine-minute, 2 × 16 mm-double-projection, released in 1970 and presented in 1971."


Fleetwood Mac - "I Believe My Time Ain't Long" b/w "Rambling Pony" (November 1967)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
N/A: Mike Vernon / Decca West Hampstead Studios demos (rec. 1967)
Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures in Fleetwood Mac - Mick Fleetwood with Stephen Davis

Fleetwood Mac's earliest recording sessions were illicit late-night raids on the supposedly closed Decca West Hampstead Studios after gigs at the Railway Hotel, about a hundred yards away. Decca had been extremely interested in signing Peter Green when Greenie left [John] Mayall, but they wouldn't offer their staff producer, Mike Vernon, a label deal for his Blue Horizon Records, for which Peter had agreed to record. So Vernon used his key to the studio to record us after hours; these were the tapes (some with Bob Brunning on bass) used to sell us (and his label) to CBS Records.
The Way I Am - Eminem with Sacha Jenkins

I was making songs whenever I could, but because our equipment was so ghetto, I’d have to nail it in one take. If I messed up, I’d have to do it all over again from the top. So I had to not only write the song, but learn it by heart. Back then, I was with a group called Bassmint Productions—my first rap group. We would take the finished product up to Lisa Lisa and this guy named DJ Dick—they were radio personalities in Detroit and had a show called “Open Mic” every Friday night. They gave us our first shot, telling people to check us out.

Mark Bass heard our song called “Crackers and Cheese” on the radio and he liked it. He and his brother Jeff had a studio, F.B.T., the Funky Bass Team. He called up Lisa Lisa and asked, “Who is that?” We talked to him on the air, and then we ended up going to his studio, and we made a three-song demo.

I was too young. It was too early in my career. The Bass Brothers had a connection, and they played it for some folks at Elektra Records. The label said, “Eminem sounds too young.” My voice was real squeaky. (Not that it wasn’t on “My Name Is,” but I’ll get to that soon.)

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 5:31 pm
by Live in Phoenix



The Parliaments. The earliest members of the Mothership, so to speak, that I've read about include George Clinton, Ray Davis, Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon, and Grady Thomas. (In case you're wondering, none of these guys become "the diaper guy" -- that's Garry Shider from the '70s.)


Aretha Franklin
Songs of Faith (recorded live; released June 1956)
Track #1, "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood" (youtube link)
Since the album was recorded live, I'm using the album as Aretha's "first recording." (For the "Never Grow Old" b/w "You Grow Closer" single, see the "That's All Right" thread.)


Funkadelic/Parliament
The Parliaments - "Poor Willie" b/w "Party Boys" (1959)
A & B sides: (youtube link)
Extra: Rose Williams / George Clinton and The Funkedelics - "Whatever Makes My Baby Feel Good" (1968)
(youtube link)
N/A: B-side "Whatever Makes My Baby Feel Good (Instrumental)"


Marvin Gaye --> The Marquees - "Hey Little School Girl" b/w "Wyatt Earp" (1957)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
Lead Vocals are by Reese Palmer. The B-side is based off a popular TV show, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. (Palmer: “Marvin and me would sit up in front of a television set for hours. Matter of fact, that’s how he wrote his first song, ‘Barbara.’ He stole the melody from the theme of The Perry Mason Show.”)
Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye, by David Ritz

Reese Palmer: “Bo [Diddley] produced our first record date. He took us to New York where the Marquees cut our one and only single … Bo brought his band from D.C. with Billy Stewart, also one of Bo’s discoveries, on piano. The New York people didn’t like the sound, so we recut it with some heavy cats like Sam the Man Taylor and Panama Francis. Didn’t matter, though, ‘cause the Silhouettes came out with ‘Get a Job’ that year and buried us.”

Marvin Gaye: I’d been wanting to sing lead since we started the group. I was never the team member I should have been. Given my nature, it’s impossible for me not to compete with other singers, even if they are my partners, and especially if they’re good.
Al Green --> Al Greene & The Soul Mates - "Back up Train" b/w "Don't Leave Me" (January 1967)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
Take Me to the River, Al Green with Davin Seay:

I couldn’t shake that nagging feeling that there had to be something more to my musical destiny than singing for the Creations ... With the Creations, I cut a few sides in some run-down studio on 28th Street in Grand Rapids. I wish I could remember more about those first recording sessions, but even the names of the songs escape me for the simple reason that my heart and my mind were already elsewhere. … In a studio, with only those machines out there listening, I found myself becoming stiff and self-conscious. … It would be a long time before I found a way to make the music real in an empty room.

...I may have been somewhere else, but for everyone else, the music was right on the money. And in a couple of weeks, just like the Zodiac people had promised, Lee Virgis got a box full of singles in the mail. I have to admit—it really was a magical moment as we all stood around, holding up handfuls of black platters spindled on our thumbs, laughing and carrying on as we listened to ourselves over and over again, reading the label and smelling the fresh vinyl. If we could have found a way to eat those records, we probably would have done that, too.
N/A: The Creations - unknown titles (recorded ca. 1967)
This one's so crazy and tragic that it's sort of funny: Al Green doesn't remember the name of the releases from fly-by-night Zodiac Records; and even though there is a group called The Creations, on a record company called Zodiac Records, from the year of 1967, I don't believe it's them, and the record is worth little in the Goldmine price guide. (The songs in question are "Foot Steps" b/w "A Dream." A lot of times on the Internet, this record is attributed to Al Green, but I've also heard about two Creations groups.) I've heard the rumor that the record didn't even exist, but besides what I already mentioned, Green writes that the Creations got played a few times on the local radio, "and word got back to us that we were getting spins as far away as Chicago and Cincinnati," which got the group invited to a big talent contest in Cleveland (so big that they never got a chance to perform).

Aretha: From These Roots, by Aretha Franklin and David Ritz (Mr. Ritz making his 3rd appearance here)

As my commitment to music deepened, the trips on the road with my dad got longer. Chess Records asked Daddy whether they could record me, and he agreed. My first record has been reissued in many versions, and, I'm proud to say, is still available and played on many gospel programs, some four decades after I sang the sacred songs. Composed of nine numbers recorded live--some at New Bethel, some during out-of-town services--it reflects my musical inclinations and influences as a teenager.

Some of it was recorded at the Oakland Arena, scene of one of my fondest memories. The arena was spirit-filled as I sat at the piano and played and sang the Thomas A. Dorsey classic "Precious Lord." As singers say today, I was not singing that Sunday; I was "saang-ing." Later in my life "Precious Lord" was the one song that Dr. King always requested of me. My recorded version was done under the auspices of our promoters, the Reed Brothers. By then Daddy had become so popular that the civic auditorium was too small; that's how we wound up in the Arena.

Three of the songs on that album--"There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood," "The Day Is Past and Gone," and "While the Blood Runs Warm"--are associated with my mentor, Clara Ward. She and Daddy remained my dominant influences. "Never Grow Old" came from my childish infatuation with Billy Kyles of the Thompson Community Choir in Chicago. Billy was a close associate of Dr. King. In fact, moments before Dr. King was assassinated, Billy was a few feet from him. Dr. King was going to dinner at Billy's home.

Other songs on my debut album--"He Will Wash You Whiter Than Snow" and "Jesus Be a Fence Around Me"--were my first solos with the young adult choir. (And even earlier than that, at the old New Bethel, my first choice and favorite was "I Am Sealed.")

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 7:30 pm
by Live in Phoenix



Guns n' Roses - "Welcome to the Jungle" (rec. 1985)
Between Slash's book and Steven Adler's book, I've never heard about so many goddamn demo tapes by one group. The earliest might be the 1985 Mystic Studios demo, included on the 2018 box set Appetite for Destruction: Locked N' Loaded; it starts off with "Welcome to the Jungle," which is also what aired on KNAC, a Los Angeles radio station, when I read about the first station to play the group's demo (on a Sunday night show that played local bands).
"Welcome to the Jungle" (version recorded 1985?) (youtube link, with some glitches)


PJ Harvey
Automatic Dlamini - Here Catch, Shouted His Father (rec. late 1989 and early 1990)
YouTube video: Automatic Dlamini - "Principles v Feelings": (youtube link)
Said to be from a West Country TV prog called Tongue & Groove. The Here Catch album is the only Automatic Dlamini material to feature Harvey and remains unreleased; however, bootleg versions of the album are circulating. Track #1--which I couldn't locate--is "A New Kitchen"; track #11--ditto--"Heaven" is a solo PJ Harvey track.
PJ Harvey:
I ended up not singing very much but I was just happy to learn how to play the guitar. I wrote a lot during the time I was with them but my first songs were crap. I was listening to a lot of Irish folk music at the time, so the songs were folky and full of penny whistles and stuff. It was ages before I felt ready to perform my own songs in front of other people.
Jimi Hendrix
The Isley Brothers - "Testify (Part I)" b/w "Testify (Part II)" (June 1964)
Parts 1 & 2: (youtube link)


Buddy Holly & the Crickets --> Buddy Holly - "My Two-Timin' Woman" (rec. 1949) (youtube link)
Buddy's around 13 years old here. The recording was done on a wire recorder, the same contraption Ray Charles used for his first recording.

As an example, here is a wire recorder listed as a 1950 Silvertone model:
Image
Starting At Zero: His Own Story - Jimi Hendrix

I went to New York and won first place in the Apollo amateur contest, you know, twenty-five dollars. I dig playing at the Apollo Theater. So I stayed up there, starved up there for two or three weeks. I’d get a gig once every twelfth of never. I lived in very miserable circumstances. Sleeping among the garbage cans between them tall tenements was hell. Rats runnin’ all across your chest, cockroaches stealin’ your last candy bar from your very pockets. I even tried to eat orange peel and tomato paste. People would say, “If you don’t get a job you’ll just starve to death.” But I didn’t want to take a job outside music. I tried a few, including car delivery, but I always quit after a week or two. I’d worry a bit about not having any money but not enough to go out and rob a bank.

Then one of the Isley Brothers heard me playing in a club and said he had a job open. So I played with the Isley Brothers for a while, and they used to make me do my thing (play with my teeth, etc.), because it made them more bucks or something. Most groups I was with didn’t let me do my own thing.

But it wasn’t so groovy after all. I had to sleep in the clubs when they were playing, and there were a lot of cockroaches and rats. The bastard animals were all over you during the night! I quit the Isley Brothers in Nashville. I got tired of playing in the key of F all the time, so I turned in my white mohair silk suit and patent leather shoes and began playing on the street corners again.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 4:01 am
by Live in Phoenix


Michael Jackson --> The Jackson 5 - "Boys And Girls, We Are The Jackson Five" 3:48 (rec. 1965?) (youtube link)

Michael Jackson: For the Record is beyond exhaustive in its chronicling of Michael Jackson (naming unreleased songs from court documents and copyright filings), although it doesn't quite help me know what the first recorded song was. But it mentions a UK release, The Jackson Five Featuring Michael Jackson (Stardust STACD 081), released internationally under other titles, that contain bonus tracks labeled "Parts of the Original Sessions from 1965 to 1967 - From the Rehearsals," leading off with The Introduction, then the playlist selection above (For the Record says the bonus tracks are "most likely recorded by Joseph Jackson and/or Shirley Cartman in their living room(s)")
Moonwalk, by Michael Jackson

On the beginnings of the Jackson 5:
No one was to touch the guitar while [Dad] was out. Period. Therefore, Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine were careful to see that Mom was in the kitchen when they "borrowed" the guitar ... Of course, something had to give sooner or later, and one day a string broke ... I heard Tito crying after Dad found out and I went to investigate, of course. Tito was on his bed crying when Dad came back and motioned for him to get up. Tito was scared, but my father just stood there, holding his favorite guitar. He gave Tito a hard, penetrating look and said, "Let me see what you can do." My brother pulled himself together and started to play a few runs he had taught himself. When my father saw how well Tito could play, he knew he'd obviously been practicing and he realized that Tito and the rest of us didn't treat his favorite guitar as if it were a toy ... [My mother] told him that we boys had talent and he should listen to us. She kept pushing for us, so one day he began to listen and he liked what he heard. Tito, Jackie, and Jermaine started rehearsing together in earnest. A couple of years later, when I was about five, Mom pointed out to my father that I was a good singer and could play the bongos. I became a member of the group.
The Jam - "In the City" b/w "Takin' My Love" (29 April 1977)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)


Jay-Z
Jaz O, Jay Z, Big Daddy Kane - [Freestyle] (recorded ca. 1986) (youtube link)
Extra: High Potent - "H.P. Gets Busy" (1986) (youtube link)
I'm not sure which of these came out first. Both feature Jay-Z's mentor, Jaz O. Rolling Stone selected this track for their article, 25 Astonishing First Appearances by Famous Rappers, but they were going by commercial releases.
N/A: B-side "H.P. Gets Busy (Instrumental)"
Decoded, by Jay-Z

Like a lot of the DJs in the city, Gordy [Fresh Gordon] was doing mix tapes, and he had a relationship with my friend Jaz, so he invited us to come rhyme on a track he was recording with Big Daddy Kane. I laid my little verse down, but when I went home I couldn't get Kane's freestyle out of my head. I remember one punchline in Kane's verse: put a quarter in your ass / cuz you played yourself. "Played yourself" wasn't even a phrase back then. He made it up right there on that tape. Impressive. I probably wrote a million rhymes that night. That tape made it all around New York. It even traveled as far as Miami. (This was back when black radio had slogans that assured listeners they were "rap free," so hip-hop moved on an underground railroad for real.) People were talking about the second kid on the tape, the MC before Kane--I was getting great feedback. I couldn't believe people even noticed my verse, Kane's was so sick.
[Kane's punchline officially made onto Marley Marl's 1988 track "The Symphony" (featuring Masta Ace, Craig G, Kool G Rap & Big Daddy Kane)]


Elton John --> Bluesology - "Come Back Baby" (July 1965) (youtube link)

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 6:07 am
by Bruce
Live in Phoenix wrote: N/A: The Creations - unknown titles (recorded ca. 1967)
This one's so crazy and tragic that it's sort of funny: Al Green doesn't remember the name of the releases from fly-by-night Zodiac Records; and even though there is a group called The Creations, on a record company called Zodiac Records, from the year of 1967, I don't believe it's them, and the record is worth little in the Goldmine price guide. (The songs in question are "Foot Steps" b/w "A Dream."
That record is the one that Al Green is on. The rest of the group is Curtis Rodgers, Palmer James and Gene Mason. They also made three earlier records on the Globe label, one in late 1966 and the the other two earlier in 1967 than the Zodiac record. I don't think that Green is on the Globe stuff although Joel Whitburn says he was in the Creations from 1964-1967. Whitburn also says that Green first recorded for Fargo in 1960. That's the label that had the big hit "You" by the Aquatones. Here's the Fargo record:

Fargo 1004 - Al Green - Girl I Love / Never Had A Chance

I'm guessing that it's a different Al Green. THIS Al Green was only 14 years old in 1960.

The Zodiac release just before the Creations record was a huge hit:

1004 - Ruby Andrews - Casanova (Your Playing Days Are Over) / I Just Don't Believe It - 1967
1005 - The Creations - Footsteps / A Dream

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9eEDJo4TkM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bykQajNHORA

The record is in the Manship Northern Soul Price Guide for 150 British pounds (about $250).

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 2:24 pm
by Live in Phoenix
Thanks, that one was driving me a little crazy

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 2:27 pm
by Live in Phoenix


Joy Division --> Warsaw – "Inside the Line" (rec. 18 July 1977) (youtube link)
Demo tape track listing: Inside the Line / Gutz for Garters / At a Later Date / The Kill / You’re No Good for Me
Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division, by Peter Hook
Terry, still our manager, had the job of copying the demos and sending them out to venues. The idea was that he'd ring the venue a bit later, find out what they thought of the tape, and see if they'd give us a spot. "All right, it's Terry Mason, manager of Warsaw--just wondered what you thought of the demo I sent you?" That sort of thing.
But every time he rang someone he was getting the same reaction.
"Terrible."
"Absolutely shit, mate."
"Fuckin' awful."
So Terry was saying to us, "No one wants you, lads. They all say you're shit," which we couldn't understand because other groups who were much shittier than us (like the Drones, for example) were getting gigs out of town. Us? Nothing.
So I said to Terry, "Terry, give us one of them tapes and let me have a listen to it, and make sure it's all right."
He went, "All right, Hooky, here y'go," and fished one out of his jacket, one of those tapes you get--or used to get--in a pack of three; TDK, something like that. I put it on in the car and it started off okay ... We're sounding like a band, a good band. The kind of band you'd want playing at your venue, surely. . . .
Then suddenly I heard the theme tune to Coronation Street drown it all out. And next I hear this voice, Terry's mum, Eileen, saying, "Come on now, Terry, your tea's ready. . . ."
Now, back then the only way you could record tape-to-tape was by using two little flat cassette players, put speaker-to-speaker, which was what Terry had been doing. But the dozy bugger had been recording them while he was watching telly and waiting for his mum to do his tea. No wonder no one wanted to book us.

The Kinks --> The Ravens - late 1963 demos, e.g. "I Believed You" (youtube link)
X-Ray: The Unauthorized Autobiography, by Ray Davies
Although I had written a few songs for the group, Shel [Talmy], Larry [Page] and Arthur Howes had decided between them that we should record the old Little Richard song, 'Long Tall Sally'. This was a song that the Beatles had put into their stage act for their European tour and our management thought that it would make an excellent first release. Pye Records had agreed to release the record on their label, and we paid all our own recording costs. We also recorded three other songs which I had previously demoed: 'You Do Something', 'You Still Want Me' and 'I Took My Baby Home'. We had also made demos of other songs I had written, 'I Believed You' and 'You Really Got Me'. Page had said that the record company would not go for 'You Really Got Me'. On a previous occasion when I had played the demo in his office, Page had even stopped the tape before it got to the end of the song. The general consensus was that it was either 'too bluesy' or 'not pop enough'. We were starting to put the song into the stage act, but everybody thought that it was too risky to record it.
Kraftwerk --> Organisation - "Tone Float" (August 1969) (youtube link)
(Front and back album covers shown above)
Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider formed and fronted Kraftwerk, and had originally performed together in the quintet known as Organisation. The cone logo, featured on the back side of Organisation's album, was also featured front-and-center on Kraftwerk's first two album covers.
Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music, by Pascal Bussy

Ralf Hütter: “We were very lucky, at the time there were electronic music concerts, happenings, the Fluxus group etc. It was very normal, we played on the same circuit, the galleries. When we began we didn’t have any engagements in the traditional music world, we were engaged in the artistic world, galleries, universities, etc.”

Florian Schneider remains conveniently forgetful perhaps to maintain the mystery: “We were very young, and we were just trying different things. The group was me and Ralf, and some other people who changed from time to time. We were maybe the most important members, but both of us also worked on different projects. I don’t remember so well…”

Group friend and journalist Paul Alessandrini: “The interesting thing is that both of them came from families of the upper middle class. Sometimes I get the feeling that they were intellectuals from the high bourgeoisie who wanted to discover another world. They have always been fascinated by discoteques and girls, and coming from the sort of social background and education they did, music was the only way. They had this German aspect, the family aspect, very starchy – and they wanted to team up with the rock world.”

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 6:28 pm
by Live in Phoenix



LCD Soundsystem - "Losing My Edge" b/w "Beat Connection (Extended Disco Dub)" (8 July 2002)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side (Disco Dub Version) [same thing?]: (youtube link)
James Murphy -- "SOUNDSYSTEM AND VISION," by John Doran

When I was DJing, playing Can, Liquid Liquid, ESG, all that kind of stuff, I became kind of cool for a moment, which was a total anomaly. And when I heard other DJs playing similar music I was like: ‘Fuck! I’m out of a job! These are my records!’ But it was like someone had crept into my brain and said all these words that I hate. Did I make the records? ... So, I started becoming horrified by my own attitude. I had this moment of glory though. People would use me to DJ just to get them cool. They’d be like ‘It’s the cool rock disco guy’ and this was really weird. And to be honest I was afraid that this new found coolness was going to go away and that’s where ‘Losing My Edge’ comes from. It is about being horrified by my own silliness. And then it became a wider thing about people who grip onto other people’s creations like they are their own. There is a lot of pathos in that character though because it’s born out of inadequacy and love.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060117202 ... ystem.html

Led Zeppelin
P.J. Proby - "Jim's Blues" (rec. September 1968) (youtube link)
Recorded before completing touring obligations as the New Yardbirds.


John Lennon
[see The Beatles / The Quarrymen]
Extra: John Lennon's very first written song, "Hello Little Girl," from the unsuccessful 1962 Decca audition tape (youtube link)
Not even sure I have plans to follow through on this, but some further ideas for playlists along the same lines would include a “My Bonnie” playlist dedicated to musicians' first commercially released recording (barring overlap, it would be a short list filling gaps for musicians like The Beatles, Radiohead, U2, Stevie Wonder, The Byrds, Michael Jackson, Pixies, Sinatra, and maybe a dozen other names). Another idea would involve the first song ever written by the top AM artists; I shudder to think of the impracticality involved in this one, but I bet some results would pop up.


Little Richard - "Get Rich Quick" (rec. 16 October 1951) (youtube link)
Richard's first session on October 16th resulted in four recordings (in order of master #): "Get Rich Quick," "Why Did You Leave Me," "Taxi Blues," and "Every Hour." (For the Taxi Blues / Every Hour single, see the "That's All Right" playlist, or Bruce's post near the top of this page.)

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 6:36 pm
by Live in Phoenix


Madonna --> The Breakfast Club - demo tape, e.g. "Trouble" (recorded ca. 1979) (youtube link)
The earliest incarnation of the Breakfast Club just fell together, featuring Madonna, her friend Angie, Dan Gilroy (Madonna's boyfriend) and his brother Ed. Angie left the band under somewhat vague circumstances, maybe because of personal and professional jealousies.
Madonna and the Breakfast Club (2019)

Madonna:
I have always been fortunate to have people around me who believed in me … there was Dan Gilroy – he lived in an abandoned synagogue in Queens with his brother Ed. They played in a band together. I was sick of being an out-of-work dancer, so he taught me how to play guitar. I wrote my first song in that synagogue [“Tell the Truth”].

Gary Burke (later band member):
It was a good band. It was a good punky band. Madonna would come out from behind the drums and do her two songs. She had star quality. I could see that right away, on night one.

...We played one particular gig [at Bo's Space] ... there was a difference between when Madonna came out and did her two numbers. The crowd really went wild for those two numbers.

Dan Gilroy:
At the Bo's Space thing, I think that that was maybe the first time where she -- I'm not sure -- but felt like, whoa, there's somethin' happening with me and my microphone that isn't happening when I'm behind a keyboard with someone else singing ... She was thinkin' about maybe she didn't wanna be in a band; or, she wanted to front the band. [Madonna left with half the band after she didn't get the chance to sing more numbers.]

... It was obvious that Madonna wasn't here permanently. That was from the word go. You could see she was kind of [mimes something blowing past] -- and you know, you grab her for a little while, is what it was.
Against any reasonable odds, the Madonna-less Breakfast Club scored a top 10 hit many years later, in 1987. (The song was "Right on Track," co-written by Stephen Bray, whom you may recognize as a Madonna collaborator, and who was in an early Madonna band with some Breakfast Club players.) Madonna name-checked some of her old bandmates, Dan and Ed Gilroy, during her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame speech (her quote above is from that speech, and the clip is featured in the Breakfast Club docudrama). In 2020, Madonna posted on Instagram an old Breakfast Club demo, with the message "Early days........First Demo's [music emojis] #research #screenplay".


Bob Marley and the Wailers --> Robert Marley & Beverley's All Stars - "Judge Not!" b/w "Do You Still Love Me?" (1962)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
Songs of Freedom box set liner notes, by Rob Partridge

When Bob quit school he seemed to have but one ambition: music. Although he took a job in a welding shop, Bob spent all his free time with Bunny [Wailer], perfecting their vocal abilities. They were helped by one of Trench Town’s famous residents, the singer Joe Higgs who held informal lessons for aspiring vocalists in the tenement yards. It was at one of those sessions that Bob and Bunny met Peter McIntosh, another youth with big musical ambitions.

In 1962 Bob Marley auditioned for a local music entrepreneur called Leslie Kong. Impressed by the quality of Bob’s vocals, Kong took the young singer into the studio to cut some tracks, the first of which, called “Judge Not”, was released on the Beverley’s label. It was Marley’s first record.

The other tunes – including “Terror” and “One Cup of Coffee” – received no airplay and attracted little attention. At the very least, however, they confirmed Marley’s ambition to be a singer. By the following year Bob had decided the way forward was with a group. He linked up with Bunny and Peter to form The Wailing Wailers.

Massive Attack - "Any Love" (featuring Daddy Gee and Carlton) 12" single (1988)
Original: (youtube link)
Acapella: (youtube link)


Metallica --> Mettallica* - "Hit the Lights" Metal Massacre version, first pressing w/Lloyd Grant (14 June 1982) (youtube link)
*The band is listed as "Mettallica" as a typo in the first pressing. The second and third pressings correct for this, and also feature a new recording of the song, with Dave Mustaine in place of Lloyd Grant.


I've now posted over 50 acts... Time to take a little break, as we await the 2014 update like Christmas Eve! :happy-bouncyblue:

Overall, this thread has increased my admiration for the musicians here, as they all record their own version so to speak of "My Happiness," fighting to make this what they do for a living.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 4:32 am
by Bruce
This seems to be the first thing ever recorded by the Drifters. They did 4 songs with the first group that was hired to back up Clyde McPhatter, but only one of them (Lucille) was released back then. The others were redone with a new group of singers. Here's the first version of "Gone" from the first group. The version that was released in 1955 was a redone version with the newer group of guys. This one was from their first session in 1953.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2014 8:47 pm
by Live in Phoenix
Thanks, Bruce, for the additional names and info.

The 2014 update is now upon us, which renders our next musician out of fashion, along with some other acts. A 2014 playlist will be posted later on, but right now the dust hasn't settled. (When it has, I will post more trivia as well. I did notice that Elvis's last release, the LP Moody Blue, hit stores on July 19th, exactly 23 years after his first release, "That's All Right" :( ) My upcoming vacation aside, the 2013 presentation will go on for a couple more weeks, through August 16th.


Now, on with the countdown!
Image



Charles Mingus
Russell Jacquet - "Penny's Worth Of Boogie" b/w "Look What You've Done To Me" (ca. 1945)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
Calvin Boaz (trumpet) Russell Jacquet (trumpet, vocals) Teddy Edwards (alto saxophone) Maurice Simon (tenor saxophone) Arthur Dennis (baritone saxophone) Bill Davis (piano) Charles Mingus (bass) Chico Hamilton (drums)
Source: http://www.jazzdisco.org/charles-mingus/catalog/
This is another one I uploaded myself. Go me


Joni Mitchell --> Joni Anderson - "House of the Rising Sun" from CFQC AM, Canada (ca. 1963) (youtube link)
N/A: unknown titles? (from the CKBI-TV show For Men Only — LOL — August 1963)
Nineteen-year-old Joni Anderson was booked as a one-time replacement at a late-night moose-hunting show. During the program Joni was interviewed and performed several songs accompanying herself on baritone ukulele.
Source: https://jonimitchell.com/chronology/byy ... ?year=1963


Van Morrison --> Georgie and The Monarchs - "Boo-Zooh" b/w "O Twingy Baby" (December 1963)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
Band lineup: George "probably not THAT George" Jones (guitar, vocals), Billy McAllen (guitar), Van Morrison (saxophone), Wesley Black (keyboards), Harry "Mac" Megahey (saxophone, trumpet), George Hethrington (drums), Roy Kane (Drums), Jimmy Law (vocals), Davey Bell (saxophone), Leslie Holmes (trumpet)


New Order - "Ceremony" initial single version b/w "In a Lonely Place" (6 March 1981)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: "In a Lonely Place" (youtube link)

The A-side and B-side were written as Joy Division prior to the death of Ian Curtis. There are three recorded versions of "Ceremony" by Joy Division in existence, including the band's last recording on 14 May 1980. Technically, since New Order was formed from Joy Division, we could head back once again to "Inside the Line," Joy Division a.k.a. Warsaw's first song.

A re-recorded September 1981 version was used on all subsequent compilations until Singles in 2005, when the original recording was released on CD for the first time.
Extra: Joy Division - "Ceremony" (youtube link)

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2014 3:00 am
by Live in Phoenix


Nirvana --> [no name] - "Downer" (early March 1987) (First Show)
Nirvana's With the Lights Out box set contains "Heartbreaker" from this same, first-ever concert, but based off this link, as well as Charles R. Cross's Heavier Than Heaven, "Downer" kicked off the set. I believe the band was unnamed at this point, and then called itself Skid Row.

Extra: Fecal Matter - Illiteracy Will Prevail demo (rec. March 1986?) (youtube link). Nirvana songs "Downer," "Anorexorcist," and "Spank Thru" are on this tape, but you could argue the tape is Kurt Cobain's lineage instead of Nirvana's lineage, since no other Nirvana members were in the Fecal Matter band. Regardless, "Spank Thru" was pulled from the demo for Nirvana's Sliver: The Best of the Box release, which also claimed the demo was from December 1985.
N/A: Organized Confusion demo (rec. 1982)
The photo below is Kurt Cobain around the time of the Organized Confusion demo in December 1982. Early dates are via the Nirvana exhibit, at the Experience Music Project Museum in Seattle. In the Kurt & Courtney documentary, Cobain's Aunt Mari starts playing back the Organized Confusion recordings on some ancient equipment, but legal action apparently prohibited the song's inclusion past a few seconds. The recordings haven't surfaced, despite the floodgates being opened for old Cobain recordings.

Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana, by Michael Azerrad
During the time frame of the "Heartbreaker" gig:
Kurt Cobain:
I wanted to put out a record or play some shows, instead of having it fall apart like everything else for the past six years. We would play the set and then I would just start playing the songs again right away without even looking up to see if those guys wanted to play them again. I'd just whip them into shape ... We took it very seriously ... We just had to play a show. God, if we could just play a show, it would be so great.

Azerrad: 'Their first real gig was a house party in nearby Raymond, a town even more isolated than Aberdeen, opening for a metal band featuring Aberdeen's then-reigning guitar hero ("this guy knew all the Eddie Van Halen licks," says Chris [Novoselic], still semi-impressed). [Drummer Aaron] Burckhard recalls the hosts were "these higher-class yuppie people" ... "We had everyone so scared of us that they were in the kitchen hiding from us," says Kurt. "We had the run of the entire living room and the rest of the house ... Of course, by the end of the evening, most of the girls at the party had talked their boyfriends into wanting to beat us up."'

Oasis - The Live Demonstation cassette (June 1993)
Track #1, "Cloudburst": (youtube link)


OutKast
TLC - "What About Your Friends" Radio edit w/ rap (10 November 1992) (youtube link)


Pavement - Slay Tracks (1933–1969) EP (1989)
Track #1, "You're Killing Me" (youtube link) (available on CD on Westing (by Musket and Sextant))
Stephen Malkmus:
It was pretty reasonable to be able to make a single for $1,000, so we decided to go for it. We didn't have any real plans because we weren't a real band ... There's something empty about Stockton [California]. I wanted to convey that in our music.

Scott Kannberg:
You go into [Gary Young's] house and it's stuff everywhere, old dogs lying around, big pot plants everywhere, and Gary tells us that he got all his equipment by selling pot!

I'd send off these little notes [with copies of Slay Tracks] to my favorite labels like SST and Twin Tone and ask, 'How do I do this?'"

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 2:24 pm
by Live in Phoenix


Pink Floyd --> The Pink Floyd - "Interstellar Overdrive" full-length Tonite Lets All Make Love in London version (rec. early January 1967) (youtube link)
An extended version of "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Nick's Boogie" were originally recorded for Peter Lorrimer Whitehead's film Tonite Lets All Make Love in London in 1967, and the former appeared in edited form on the soundtrack album. The 1990 See for Miles Records UK reissue of the soundtrack album includes "Nick's Boogie" and the non-edited version of "Interstellar Overdrive."


Pixies - The Purple Tape, e.g. "Break My Body" (rec. March 1987) (youtube link)
This was a 17-track demo tape, nicknamed the Purple Tape. 8 of the songs from the sessions were released on Come on Pilgrim that same year, slightly remixed. In 2002, an official Pixies EP was released containing all of the non-Come on Pilgrim songs.
Extra: Charles Thompson a.k.a. Black Francis - "The Holiday Song" (youtube link)
Disc 1 of Frank Black Francis consists of a March 1987 solo acoustic demo tape recorded by engineer Gary Smith, just prior to the first Pixies recording session.
Fool the World: The Oral History of Band Called Pixies - Josh Frank and Caryn Ganz
Joe Harvard, Fort Apache studio co-founder:
[W]hen the heat came on it was like clang clang. In the beginning when we just couldn't get around it, it was so bitterly cold in Boston that we had to have it on, there were a number of tracks that had what we called "the organic percussion." ... The Pixies were freezing their asses off, as I recall.

Joey Santiago, guitarist:
[Black Francis a.k.a. Charles Thompson] was in the warehouse with just headphones. I couldn't hear the music and all I saw was him in the headphones in front of a microphone screaming. There was nothing to reference the music on. It looked crazy, in a good way. Holy Christ, you know.
The Police - "Fall Out" b/w "Nothing Achieving" (1 May 1977)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)


Portishead - "To Kill a Dead Man" soundtrack (1994) (youtube link)
The DVD version of Roseland NYC Live contains this piece, as a bonus short film.
Broken Music, by Sting (at the time living on the dole):

Something has to happen, and thank God, Stewart has a plan.

We are going to record his two songs, “Nothing Achieving” and “Fall Out,” on which I will sing and play the bass and Stewart will play the drums and most of the guitar parts because he’s better than Henry. Then we are going to get the record pressed at the RCA factory in Durham and hand deliver it to record stores ourselves. Such passion and ingenuity is truly inspiring, and a telling contrast to the lily-livered procrastination that is my only abiding impression of the established record industry of the time. Stewart’s energy is a breath of fresh air, and I’m transported by it even if the music isn’t exactly my cup of tea.

The RCA pressing plant in County Durham is a shrine to Elvis Presley. His picture seems to be on every wall in every corridor in the place. The first Police single is scheduled to be released in May, so Stewart, Henry, and I stop at the plant to pick up the first pressings on our way to a gig at Newcastle Poly.

We are led into one of the listening rooms, and through a common glass window is another listening room with six ladies, all in advanced middle age, each wearing headphones and identical working smocks. They sit like religious devotees under their portrait of Elvis with the blank look of people in a trance, staring at nothing in particular, isolated in their private world. Two of them are knitting, one is crocheting, the other three are reading magazines. They are checking for crackles on the discs, one after the other, for hour after hour, day in day out. They could be listening to Puccini or Ziggy Stardust, they don’t care. I feel like we’ve walked into some obscure suburb of hell, and I must force myself not to look at them.

... The next night at Newcastle Poly is far from being the glorious homecoming I’d envisioned. We get blown off the stage by a local punk group called Penetration who are, to be honest, absolutely wonderful. The best punk band I’ve ever seen, and that is not just local pride. When we walk onstage all the Penetration fans have left, and we face a discreet smattering of disapproving Last Exit followers, a few polite music lovers, Keith Gallagher, my best man, Terry Ellis, my erstwhile guitarist, Phil Sutcliffe, the father of the whole enterprise, and my ever-loyal brother. We play well and are applauded politely. Cherry gets the same response. Keith will tell me that he thinks the Police are a one-man show. I assume he means me, but I don’t press him for clarification. Terry has disappeared. Phil Sutcliffe is sphinxlike, and my brother, who now sports an awful mustache, thinks we’re crap. We sell four records.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2014 4:06 am
by Live in Phoenix



Primal Scream - "The Orchard" (recorded ca. 1983) (youtube link)
[Alan] McGee put the band [Jim Beattie and Bobby Gillespie] in the studio in 1983, for their first recording session, one track called "The Orchard", which featured another Glasgow friend, Judith Boyle, on violin and vocals. Beattie later claimed it was so bad they burned the master tape. Circa 1982, Beattie and Gillespie recorded "elemental noise tapes," in which Gillespie would bang two dustbin lids together and Beattie played fuzz-guitar.


Prince --> 94 East - 12/4/75 recordings, e.g. "If You See Me" (initial tracking 4 December 1975) (youtube link)
Led by Pepé Willie, the former husband of Prince's cousin, 94 East's recordings have been released many times over, such as the two-disc Symbolic Beginning. Initial tracking took place on 4 December, 1975, at Cookhouse Studios, Minneapolis, MN, USA (during the same set of sessions as Games, I'll Always Love You, If We Don't and Better Than You Think), marking the earliest recording sessions featuring Prince to have been released.
Source: http://www.princevault.com/index.php/If_You_See_Me
[For what it's worth, "If You See Me" is the first of the aforementioned songs featured on Symbolic Beginning.]
Pepé Willie - Rolling Stone, Inside Prince's Funky First Recording Sessions, April 26, 2016

He didn't know how to read music or anything. He just learned on his own. ... Prince played better than a professional session player, and I've been to a lot of sessions. None of the guitar players I'd worked with played as well as Prince for his first time in a recording studio. It just totally blew my mind. He was definitely a better guitar player than me [laughs]. ... [L]ater, we got dropped from the label because Hank [Cosby] got fired from Polydor. When I told Prince and Andre [Cymone] that we got let go, Prince was more upset than I was. He told Andre, "We have to go back in the studio with Pepé." So we went back in the studio and did "Just Another Sucker" – Prince and I wrote that one – and "Dance to the Music of the World" and "Loving Cup" ... You show Prince something once, and he's got it. It's like a photographic memory in his fingers. [Laughs]. I've never seen a musician like Prince, and I don't know if we're ever going to see anybody like him again. He was on the cover of guitar magazines, bass magazines, keyboard magazines, drum magazines and Rolling Stone. I mean, come on.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... 426?page=4

Public Enemy --> Spectrum City ‎– "Lies" b/w "Check Out the Radio" (1984)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
Bomb Squad member Hank Shocklee (founder of Spectrum City in 1975) suggested a name change, after two songs on a later demo tape had "Public Enemy" in the title.
Fight the Power: Rap, Race, and Reality - Chuck D with Yusuf Jah

When records started coming out I noticed that with records someone could use a word in a song and within the span of a week everybody would know the word, but if a story came out in a newspaper it would take about six months for people to know about it, and still a lot of people wouldn't know about it. The recorded word was a powerful medium. Hank [Shocklee] used to say back in 1979 when we first hooked up, "Yo, we have to make a record."

What inspired me to do lyrics specifically for records was when we had the radio show, and I wanted to do a record once in a while to show my rapping skills, and also to promote the radio show. I did both the low-tempo record "Check Out the Radio," and another song called "It's Working" to promote the radio station WBAU, but I didn't want to do a record with a record company because we had interviewed too many people who told us nightmare stories about their experiences in the music industry, and how they were not getting paid properly.

Eventually in 1984 we released a record as Spectrum City called "Lies." The B side was "Check Out the Radio." We knocked out "Check Out the Radio" in about five hours, and that turned out to be the jam. "Check Out the Radio" was originally called "Low Tempo," which was a slow-tempo record. Run-DMC loved "Check Out the Radio." Rush Productions actually based two of their future jams off of that song. The Beastie Boys had a B side called "Slow and Low," and Run-DMC did "Together Forever"; both records were based on that same low-tempo vibe.

Radiohead --> On a Friday – demo tape(s), e.g. "Fragile Friend" (rec. 1986) (youtube link)
Other YouTube results from '86 include "Everybody Knows," "Girl (in the Purple Dress)," and "Lemming Trail."




The Ramones - "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" (live at CBGB, 15 September 1974) (youtube link)
A couple other Ramones songs are performed here, as well.
Extra: "I Can't Be" demo (rec. February 1975) (youtube link)
Commando: The Autobiography of Johnny Ramone

Sensitive soul Johnny Ramone:

The first couple of times we played at CBGB's, our set list was six or seven songs long. We started playing there every week, charging a dollar at the door. We'd get ten or fifteen people to show up. Our September 15 [1974] show at CBGB's got taped by a theater group that was opening for us, and we watched that over and over. After that clip, we made a lot of changes. Tommy and I would assess what we did and how we could do things better. Then we'd tell the other guys what to do. Joey was still doing these kicks and getting down on his knees and singing and doing this fag rock thing, this dumb stuff. It was really terrible, just ridiculous, and we realized it was no good. So we told him to just stand up straight and hold on to the mic stand. Dee Dee was still playing with his fingers, and we told him that it looked better to play with a pick. After that, we were always taping, whenever we could, looking to figure out what we could improve on. We learned a lot from that. As soon as we looked at that first tape, we realized we had to get uniformed...

I'd give Tommy a lot of the credit for that look. He explained to me that Middle America wasn't going to look good in glitter and said that we needed a more streamlined image. Glitter is fine if you're the perfect size for clothes like that. But if you're even five pounds overweight, it looks ridiculous... We wanted something that kids could relate to, something timeless.

Otis Redding --> The Shooters featuring Otis - "She's All Right" b/w "Tuff Enuff" (October 1960)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
Source: http://www.45cat.com/record/t33312


Lou Reed --> The Jades - "Leave Her For Me" b/w "So Blue" (Fall 1958)
A & B-sides: (youtube link)
I've also seen "So Blue" listed as the A-side.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2014 1:27 am
by Live in Phoenix
Image
R.E.M., approx. two months after their debut gig
Article: http://www.ijamming.net/rem-in-1980-foo ... ns-remain/



R.E.M. - Atlanta’s Wuxtry Records show (recorded ca. 6 June 1980)
"Dangerous Times": (youtube link)

Extra: Cassette Set, e.g. "Sitting Still" (rec. April 1981) (youtube link)
Track listing: Sitting Still (fast “Polka” version, snippet) / Sitting Still / Radio Free Europe / White Tornado / White Tornado (take 2, aborted) / Radio Free Europe (Radio Dub). Download: http://thepowerofindependenttrucking.bl ... -rare.html
N/A: Bombay Studio / Joe Perry demo (rec. February 1981)
The results of a one-day session: Sitting Still / Gardening at Night / Radio Free Europe / Shaking Through / Mystery to Me / (Don't go Back to) Rockville / Narrator / White Tornado.
"They were very serious ... I worked with them when they made the digital transfer of the tapes in 1994, but I don't think they've ever used the songs," says Perry, who adds that to his knowledge, the eight-song Bombay session has never been issued as a bootleg. "I just hope they realize how good that session really was. I was kind of reluctant to give it back to them until I could make them understand it was good stuff and they needed to take care of it."
More at: http://onlineathens.com/rem-hall/storie ... ning.shtml


The Rolling Stones --> Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys - “Around and Around” (recorded ca. 1962) (30-minute tape)
Band lineup: Mick, Keith, Dick Taylor, Bob Beckwith, Allen Etherington.
Contents: Around and Around / Little Queenie / Beautiful Delilah / La Bamba / On Your Way to School / I Ain’t Got You / You’re Right, I’m Left, She’s Gone / Down the Road Apiece / Don’t Want No Woman / I Ain’t Got You (take 2) / Johnny B Goode / Little Queenie (take 2) / Beautiful Delilah (take 2).
In Bill Wyman’s book, he mentions this tape selling in 1995 for £52,250.
Keith Richards - Life
My guitar, this time an f-hole arch-top Höfner steel string, was Blue Boy—the words written on its face—and because of that I was Boy Blue. That was my very first steel-string guitar … And I left it either on the Victoria line or the Bakerloo line on the London Underground.
Extra: "Diddley Daddy" (rec. 11 March 1963) (youtube link)
Included with other IBC demos "Road Runner," "Bright Lights, Big City," "Honey What's Wrong," and "I Want to Be Loved" on the bonus disc of the Super Deluxe Edition of Grrr!
Bill Wyman with Richard Havers - Rolling with the Stones
Brian [Jones] was really bowled over by these tracks. He was more proud of them than anything else we ever recorded. Years later he would often play these songs for friends or acquaintances. Glyn [John]’s boss, George Clewson, tried to interest record companies in our tape. He took it to six or seven, but everyone turned him down. The consensus was that that we were not commercial enough for the pop charts.

Keith Richards - Life and According to the Rolling Stones
Stu was the only guy that knew somebody that could actually open a door to a studio late at night and get an hour there. In those days it was like going into Buckingham Palace or getting an entrée into the admiralty. It was nearly impossible to get into a recording studio … it was like leaping over the moon. A mere dream.
Glyn was another Ian Stewart connection. They used to share an apartment together. It was filthy, underwear and baggy pants hanging all over the place -- disgusting. Not like Edith Grove, we'd leave them on the floor; that was called the carpet. In fact very few of us had underpants; underpants were a sheer luxury.

Roxy Music - "Sea Breezes" BBC session (rec. 18 February 1972) (youtube link)
N/A: January 4th, 1972 BBC sessions, including: Re-make/Re-model / If There Is Something / The B.O.B. Medley / Would You Believe
N/A: mid-1971 demo tape

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2014 3:27 am
by Live in Phoenix


The Sex Pistols - "Problems" Chris Spedding demo (rec. May 1976) (youtube link)
Demo contents: Problems / No Feelings / Pretty Vacant. Included on Spunk/This is Crap, a rarities album included with the 1996 reissue of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols.


Simon and Garfunkel --> Tom & Jerry - "Hey, Schoolgirl" (1957) (youtube link)


Frank Sinatra --> The Hoboken Four - "Shine" (rec. September 1935) (youtube link)
Extra: Frank Mane band, Frank Sinatra - "Our Love" demo (rec. March 18, 1939) (youtube link)
Frank Sinatra: An American Legend - Nancy Sinatra
September 8, 1935: Frank Sinatra's first big break came when he and a local trio who called themselves the Three Flashes auditioned separately for an appearance on Major Bowes and His Original Amateur Hour, a popular radio show broadcast nationwide on NBC from the stage of the Capitol Theater in New York. "They won and I won," said my father, "and when I was accepted, the old man said, 'They're going to be on the show a week from Sunday. Why don't we put you on together and we'll call it the Hoboken Four.'" ... They sang the Mills Brothers song "Shine"--and racked up the biggest vote in the history of the show, with 40,000 people calling in. Bowes was so impressed that he brought them back several weeks in a row.
The library copy I have of this book doesn't include a CD, but if it had, I believe the snippet of "Shine" was supposed to be contained on it.


Sly and the Family Stone --> Sylvester Stewart - "Long Time Alone" (1961) (youtube link)
N/A: B-side: "I'm Just A Fool"
N/A: The Stewart Four - "On the Battlefield of the Lord" b/w "Walking in Jesus' Name" (1952)
That is not the album cover above, but the back side...somehow the front side did not come up on a search.

Source: http://www.chrisspedding.com/session/sp/sp1.htm
Chris Spedding:

I'm quite proud of the Sex Pistols demos, especially when compared to their other later recordings. On my demos you can hear everything quite clearly - the bass and drums are really audible plus you can actually hear what the rhythm and lead guitars are doing. Part of why they (McLaren and the Pistols) didn't like my demo was that because I like R&B, I highlighted their rhythm tracks with a big bass drum and bass aloud, particularly because Matlock had some intensely played bass runs. They wanted a guitar soup. I think that whenever you've got an interesting rhythm section like that, a band sounds like they can actually play, and since that was the whole point of my demo - to prove they could play - that's what I pushed. When you have a guitar soup, which is what the demo they recorded later sounds like, you have to face the fact that someone's trying to cover up the fact that they can't play. And that's what McLaren wanted people to think that they couldn't play, that was just an idea, a way of making all this anarchy stuff happen.

The only overdubs are the two guitar solos (of course, by Steve Jones). The reason the first note is so long on the 'Problem' solo is that (I was watching his face when he played it) Steve Jones was so surprised at the sound and sustain he got out of my amp that he almost forgot to play!

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2014 5:04 am
by Bruce
Live in Phoenix wrote: Sly and the Family Stone --> Danny (Sly) Stewart ‎– "A Long Time Alone" promo only? (1961) (youtube link)
N/A: B-side: "I'm Just A Fool"
N/A: The Stewart Four - "On the Battlefield of the Lord" b/w "Walking in Jesus' Name" (1952)
That is not the album cover above, but the back side...somehow the front side did not come up on a search.

That album is a various artists bootleg from decades later. You should be showing the 45. And it did come out as a regular release on a second label.

Image

Image

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2014 5:07 am
by Bruce
Live in Phoenix wrote:
Frank Sinatra --> The Hoboken Four - "Shine" (rec. September 1935)
Here's the record they were trying to emulate. It was a big hit in 1932. It's Bing Crosby WITH the Mills Brothers.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 4:51 am
by Live in Phoenix
[imgsize 260x477]http://www.historylink.org/db_images/Bi ... hmBoys.jpg[/imgsize]
Bing Crosby and Al Rinker

The funny thing is, I was of the mind (earlier today) to post an entry for Bing Crosby, in return for Bruce’s occasional input here. Back when I was planning this thread and I thought I might post some “bonus names,” Crosby was one of them and I bought his Call Me Lucky book. And then morning became afternoon…and quite a lot changed! But for all I know, Bruce is still reading, and I'll post this anyway as my tribute to his services. (I lost track of Bing's book, though....My wife then said, You'll find it when we move again.)

383 chart singles (including 41 No. 1 hits) ago, Crosby shared a duet with Al Rinker on this track:
Don Clark and His Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel Orchestra - “I’ve Got the Girl!” (December 1926, backed with "Idolizing"), recorded to where Crosby and Al Rinker inadvertently have high-pitched voices. (youtube link)


And guess who’s next on the playlist – it’s everyone favorite, Patti Smith!



Patti Smith - “Hey Joe (Version)” b/w “Piss Factory” (rec. 5 June 1974)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
"Piss Factory" is included on the Land (1975–2002) compilation.
Extra: Blue Oyster Cult - "Baby Ice Dog" co-written by Patti Smith (from the Tyranny and Mutation album, released 11 February 1973) (youtube link)


The Smiths - demo tape(s), e.g. "Suffer Little Children" Decibelle Studio, Simon Wolstencroft on drums (rec. 1982)
(youtube link)
Autobiography - Morrissey
On Johnny Marr (whom he first met at the Ardwick Apollo, the performing musician being........Patti Smith)
Johnny despairs of things as they are and wants to change them, even if, beneath the grit and growl, his favorite group of all-time is Pentangle.

...I am shaken when I hear Johnny play guitar, because he is quite obviously gifted and almost unnaturally multi-talented. Since he shows an exact perspective on all things, I can't help but wonder: What is he doing here with me? ... It seemed to me that Johnny had enough spark and determination to push his way in amongst Manchester's headhunters -- yet here he was, with someone whose natural bearing discouraged openness. Stranger still, we get on very well. It is a matter of finding yourself in possession of the one vital facet that the other lacks, but needs.

Sonic Youth - "Untitled" (rec. 18 June 1981) (youtube link)
From their first show, at Noise Fest, in New York City.
Girl in a Band – Kim Gordon
Despite the number of bands playing around the city, clubs were closing down left and right. … The owner [of Hurrah], thinking he owed the world an elegy, said, “Oh, there aren’t any good bands anymore anyway. They all sound like noise.”

Back then, noise was an insult, a derogatory word, the most scornful word you could throw at music. But it was from Hurrah’s owner that Thurston [Moore] got the name for the nine-day-long festival he launched in June of 1981 at White Columns. Thurston said he wanted to reclaim the word noise, even though nobody really knew what a “noise band” was or was supposed to sound like.

Basically, the Noise Fest came about because there was nowhere else for downtown bands to go onstage and play. I organized an exhibition of visual art by some of the musicians playing the festival. Over a nine-day period, three to five bands performed nightly, one of which was Sonic Youth.
Confusion Is Next: The Sonic Youth Story, by Alec Foege
A friend told Thurston about his girlfriend, Miranda, a keyboard player. “When I went to play with her, I said to myself, I’m just going to throw away everything that I did with Coachmen – I just didn’t want to play D to C to G anymore,” says Thurston … Ann[e] DeMarinis and Thurston first met at the Brooklyn loft she shared with her companion, the visual artist Vito Acconci … When Miranda [who had moved to bass] lost interest in the group, Kim [Gordon] took her place. “I thought Thurston was really inventive,” says Kim. “I didn’t know he didn’t know how to play guitar—to me, he was really impressive. Ann had the opposite problem: Because she was musically trained, she couldn’t invent anything. She was too neurotic.” ... “As soon as we came up with the name Sonic Youth [previously Male Bonding, then Red Milk for their first show, then the Arcadians, and finally Sonic Youth for the Noise Festival], we started getting a better idea of what direction to go in,” says Kim.

Bruce Springsteen --> The Castiles - "Baby I" b/w “That's What You Get" (rec. May 1966)
A-side: (youtube link)

N/A: "That's What You Get"
Allegedly only four copies of this single are still known to exist.

From http://oneweekoneband.tumblr.com:
Springsteen was 16 when the band recorded “That’s What You Get” and “Baby I.” Although Bruce would later take on increasing lead vocal responsibilities in the band, George Theiss was the Castiles’ frontman at the time; both songs are credited to Springsteen/Theiss.
Just Kids - Patti Smith
Lenny, Richard, and I merged my meditation on [Patty Hearst's] situation with Jimi Hendrix's version of "Hey Joe." The connection between Patty Hearst and "Hey Joe" lay within the lyrics, a fugitive crying out "I feel so free."

We had been thinking of doing a single, to see how the effect we were having live could be translated to a record. Lenny [Kaye] was knowledgeable in producing and pressing a single, and when Robert [Mapplethorpe] offered to put up the money, we booked time at Jimi Hendrix's studio, Electric Lady. In homage to Jimi, we decided to record "Hey Joe."

Wishing to add a guitar line that could represent the desperate desire to be free, we chose Tom Verlaine to join us. Divining how to appeal to Tom's sensibilities, I dressed in a manner that I thought a boy from Delaware would understand ... Whether or not my getup impressed Tom, I'll never know, but he enthusiastically agreed to record with us.

We recorded in studio B with a small eight-track setup in the back of Electric Lady. Before we started, I whispered "Hi, Jimi" into the microphone. After a false start or two, Richard, Lenny, and I, playing together, got our take, and Tom overdubbed two tracks of a solo guitar. Lenny mixed these two into one spiraling lead, and then added a bass drum.

...At the end of recording "Hey Joe," we had fifteen minutes left. I decided to attempt "Piss Factory." ... It was at the time a personal anthem of extricating myself from the tedium of being a factory girl, escaping to New York City. Lenny improvised over Richard's sound track, and I riffed off the poem. We got our take at exactly midnight.

Robert and I stood in front of one of the space-alien murals that lined the hall of Electric Lady. He seemed more than satisfied, but could not resist pouting just a little. "Patti," he said, "you didn't make anything we could dance to."

I said I'd leave that to the Marvelettes.

Lenny and I designed the record. We called our label Mer. We pressed 1,500 copies at a small plant on Ridge Avenue in Philadelphia and distributed them to book and record stores, where they sold for two dollars apiece. Jane Friedman could be found at the entrance to our shows, selling them from a shopping bag. Of all the places, our greatest source of pride was to hear it on the Max's jukebox. We were surprised to discover that our B-side, "Piss Factory," was more popular than "Hey Joe," inspiring us to focus more on our own work.

Poetry would still be my guiding principle, but I had it in my mind to one day give Robert his wish.
From what I read of Patti's book, what struck me was her encounters with Hendrix, and Janis Joplin, as well as her mourning Jim Morrison. And of course, there’s the tribute recording of “Hey Joe.” For a long time, I used to feel like there was almost an uncrossable divide between “classic rock” and “alternative rock” (reading Spin’s alternative album guide didn’t help matters). In a way, this version of "Hey Joe" symbolizes something powerful in the face of musical labels.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 4:58 am
by JimmyJazz
Beautiful and poignant point at the end, Live in Phoenix. It is examples like these, among some others that I can't quite recall at the moment, that are basically a complete and total rebuke of the kind of closed off, genre versus genre, generation versus generation mentality that Bruce embodied. Excellent hard work overall put into this great and highly informative thread BTW!

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 7:08 am
by Live in Phoenix
Thanks, JimmyJazz! I wonder what Mr. Crosby would think about being caught in the middle of all this (well, and the other things he's missed in 37 years). This thread basically started because I was surprised by how little I knew about musicians' first recordings, even when I thought I knew. It's different in, say, the comic book world, where the first appearance of anyone has a special aura around it.

I would have bet this morning that Bruce would still be around by the time this thread was over, but he couldn't make it out of the album cover poll. Having taken a couple photography classes, I think Horses is a great cover even just from its technical values. Now then, personally speaking, I haven't paid much attention to music from this current decade/generation (participating in all these polls hasn't helped :D ), and I will sometimes be dismissive toward it, yet I find my own opinions in the matter highly suspect. I assume if I didn't already have "enough music," and the current crop of musicians were the soundtrack to my rites of passage, I'd have a much different opinion of the 2010s generation. As it is, I try to keep my opinions on that time frame to myself, in the hopes that I'll come up with a better and more knowledgeable opinion.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 1:44 am
by Live in Phoenix


Steely Dan --> Walter Becker, Donald Fagen - 1968-1971 demos, e.g. "Sun Mountain" (youtube link)
With Kenny Vance on lead vocals.


The Stooges - "I Wanna Be Your Dog" b/w "1969" (July, or 5 August, 1969)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
The artwork above is from the Italian single, which explains the different B-side.
Supposedly "Ron's Jam" and "What's You Gonna Do?" were recorded in 1968, in Wampler's Lake, Michigan, when the band was known as The Psychedelic Stooges, according to a 1988 bootleg, Live 1971 & Early Live Rarities. But it's even more likely that they were from 1971 as well, with the latter song sung by an Iggy Pop soundalike from the audience!


Talking Heads - "Sugar on My Tongue" demo (rec. November 1975) (youtube link)
"I Want to Live" is also from this period.
Extra: "Psycho Killer" (live at CBGB, rec. 6 December 1975) (youtube link)
The Talking Heads: Chronology DVD includes a few CBGB performances from 1975. There is a longer CBGB clip of "Psycho Killer" available on YouTube, but it is much muddier.
How Music Works - David Byrne
On recording demos:
One was recorded at a studio on Long Island where bubblegum hits had been made. Two others were paid for by record companies, partly so they could hear us over and over without having to visit grotty clubs every time. These recordings sounded tinny and thin and gave no sense of what the band sounded like live. There is an art to capturing the sound of a band, and it seemed at the time that neither we nor the guys who made those recordings possessed that particular skill. Even those professionals in their big studios didn't seem to know how to do it, and we thought those skills came with the job!

This was a real mystery. One could see why musicians and recordings engineers would be inclined to get magical and mystical about studios where epochal recordings were made. It was [as] if glorifying the aura of those places was a way of admitting that skill is not enough, that some invisible mojo was present in the woodwork at Sun Studio or Motown Studio, and it was that ineffable essence that made the records made in those places so good.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 1:51 am
by DocBrown
Live in Phoenix, I'm really enjoying this thread, and the research you're putting into it. I think I'll prefer it without the interruptions, although this was an obvious place for someone's positive (few and far between) contributions. You, however, obviously understand that the only two ingredients a great song need are Heart and Soul. (Oh, and an 8 track recording studio, an engineer, a graphics artist...)

David Byrne's book has been on my bedside table for a while now.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 5:47 pm
by Live in Phoenix
Skimming through all these books has been interesting in itself, as I get a sense of different writing voices. Some musicians-as-authors write well but are a little long-winded, some are borderline dull (my own interest may partially be a factor), some are VERY opinionated but have basically nothing to say about their first recordings. David Byrne seemed a little wordy :twisted:, though I suppose it's unfair to pass judgment when I haven't read the whole book, plus his is a different kind of book. Johnny Ramone's book was a trip, because it's like 140 pages and he's brutally short about everything and everyone. Sting was funnier than I thought he'd be, while some people weren't necessarily likable, or I wasn't a huge fan of their music, but they were good storytellers for their first recording, or in general.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 4:15 am
by Live in Phoenix


U2 - "Street Mission" from the TV show Youngline (March 1978) (youtube link)
Rolling Stone Flashback: U2 Scam Their Way Onto Irish TV in 1978

The four members of U2 were still in high school when they managed to scam their way onto the Irish children's show Youngline in March of 1978. Bono heard the program was looking to feature a young band and convinced a producer to attend one of U2's rehearsals. The group played "Glad to See You Go" by the Ramones. "He said, 'That's amazing. Did you write that?'" Bono recalls in the group's oral history U2 by U2. "And I said 'Yeah.'"

When the group arrived at the studio a few days later they simply played their original song "Street Mission." The producer didn't even realize it was a different tune.
N/A: The Hype - drunken, out-of-tune show (rec. December 1977)
Unfortunately, I couldn't find this recording...maybe, à la Achtung Baby, there will be a $400 Uber Deluxe Edition of Boy that will include it, ha ha.
U2 by U2 with Neil McCormick

The Edge:

We had a gig lined up at the Nucleus, a little club in Raheny, but we played so badly at the school disco that the DJ who worked at the Nucleus, who was also from Mount Temple, wouldn’t put us on. He insisted on coming to an audition. We played him some songs and very begrudgingly he put us on at the Nucleus. Before the show we decided to go and get drunk, because we knew that was what you did when you were in a rock band. So, as appalling as we normally were, we were just indescribably bad, and the sound was atrocious. We were in this tiny little prefab scout hut and we couldn’t afford a proper PA. We recorded the show and a couple of days afterwards we listened to it in utter disbelief at what we were hearing. Bono was just bellowing and all you could hear was this really distorted noise that sounded like the early Stooges. Unfortunately I think we were playing an Eagles song. That was the same occasion when Bono introduced ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ and my brother started playing ‘Brown Sugar’, getting his Stones mixed up. It was truly one of the absolute low points. Everyone was out of tune. On the recording you can hear the DJ leaning in when we’re halfway through the set saying, ‘Would you ever just stop? Please stop! They’re all sitting outside.’ Listening back to that show, it was the first time I thought ‘Oh God, no! This isn’t going to work.’ We were so hopelessly inconsistent. One show would have that moment of promise and coming together and then the next three would be utterly crap.

The Velvet Underground --> The Falling Spikes – demo tape (rec. July 1965)
Track #1, "Venus in Furs": (youtube link)
Demo tape contents: Venus in Furs / Prominent Men / Heroin / I’m Waiting for the Man / Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams / All Tomorrow’s Parties
The band became “The Velvet Underground” that November.
Source: The Velvet Underground: New York Art
Peel Slowly and See box set liner notes, by David Fricke

[John] Cale documented many of the band's early practice sessions on a Wollensack reel-to-reel machine that he had inherited from Tony Conrad. [Cale and Conrad had both played in LaMonte Young's "proto-Minimalist performing group" the Dream Syndicate.] ... [Lou] Reed, Cale and [Sterling] Morrison are the only Velvets featured on the tape ... compiled for the purposes of ultimately making an official demo tape. Angus MacLise [the original drummer, "another LaMonte Young associate"], as befits his phantom legend, did not turn up for these sessions. "Angus was really living on the Angus calendar," says Cale.

...Later that summer, on one of his periodic visits to England, Cale took with him a demo reel featuring (according to Morrison) performances of "Heroin," "Venus in Furs," "I'm Waiting for the Man" and "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams" and tried to do some amateur promo. He even tried to pass a copy to Rolling Stone Mick Jagger via Marianne Faithfull. "I brought it to her and said 'We're looking for a deal, think you can get Mick to put in a word for me?'," Cale says, chuckling at his own chutzpah. "She looked at me like I had horns on my head." [Incidentally, Mick Jagger would later admit to "Stray Cat Blues" (1968) getting its sound from "Heroin."]

Tom Waits - "Goin' Down Slow" (rec. late 1971) (youtube link)
Track #1 from The Early Years, Vol. 1, which consists of demos issued on the record label owned by Waits’ ex-manager.
Tom Waits on Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters - Edited by Paul Maher Jr.

On the early days:
Tom was discovered by [Frank] Zappa’s manager Herb Cohen, while performing at a Monday night hoot at L.A.’s Troubadour. He would take the 6 o’clock bus from San Diego, make a couple of transfers and try and get a good spot in line. Once onstage he’d only have an opportunity to do three or four songs before having to sprint to the station to catch an early morning bus back to San Diego.

People come from Georgia, Texas, New York City . . . if they don’t make it. . . .

Tom only had to risk a three-hundred-mile round-trip and he played nearly every Monday for more than a year. I’d hear stories like there were all these guys with cigars there to sign you up. You know McGuinn’s tune ‘So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star?’ Well the Troubadour is where it all starts.

You arrive at the Troubadour at ten in the morning and wait all day. They let the first several people in line perform that night. When you finally get up there, you are allowed four songs—you can blow it all in fifteen minutes. I was scared shitless.

They allow you one night a month. At first nobody really knew my face or my name so I could do it twice sometimes.

***

I had a manager when I was a kid, I threw in with a guy named Herbie Cohen, who worked with Zappa. I wanted a big bruiser, the tough guy in the neighborhood, and I got it.

Jonathan Valania: A knee-breaker?

You said that, not me. I got to be careful what I say about Herbie. I’ll wind up in . . . court.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 2:20 pm
by Live in Phoenix


Kanye West
Grav - "Line For Line" (1996) (youtube link)
N/A: At age thirteen, West apparently recorded a rap song called "Green Eggs and Ham", after persuading his mother to pay $25 an hour for time in a recording studio.


The White Stripes - "Let's Shake Hands" b/w "Look Me Over Closely" (February 1998)
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
Included on The White Stripes, Japanese edition.


The Who --> The High Numbers - "Zoot Suit" b/w "I'm the Face" (3 July 1964)
"Written" by the manager, tailored to the mod audience (borrowing the tunes from "County Fool" by The Showmen and Slim Harpo's "Got Love if you Want It," respectively). After this, the band went back to being The Who.
A-side: (youtube link) ... B-side: (youtube link)
Extra: The Naturals - "It Was You" (1964) (youtube link)
N/A: The Detours - "It Was You" (rec. late 1963)
Who I Am, Pete Townshend

We recorded my first song, 'It Was You', in late 1963 at the home studio of Barry Gray, who wrote music for children's TV puppet series like Thunderbirds and Fireball XL5. Dick James, The Beatles' co-publisher at the time, heard 'It Was You' and signed me to his company. ... The song was recorded by The Naturals, a Merseybeat-style band (actually from Essex), and a couple of other groups. It wasn't a hit, but the fact that it was published at all gave me tremendous confidence. I felt I now had a right to speak up about the band's musical direction, and even get bossy about it. Roger was definitely in charge, but there was a new tension between us. We were both really keen to make it and had our own ideas about how to do so. Still, we developed a grudging respect for one another that would last a lifetime.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 5:28 pm
by Live in Phoenix



Frank Zappa's high school band, the Black-Outs. “The name derives from when a few of the guys, after drinking peppermint schnapps, purchased illicitly by somebody’s older brother, blacked out.”


Wilco --> Uncle Tupelo - "Before I Break" Colorblind & Rhymeless demo (rec. 1987) (youtube link)
Other demo songs include: I Got Drunk / Screen Door / Blues Die Hard / Pickle River.
Extra: There a few YouTube posts out there that are possibly earlier. The Primitives - "Psycho" (Halloween, 1985?) (youtube link)


Stevie Wonder
Little Stevie Wonder - "I Call It Pretty Music, But The Old People Call It The Blues (Part 1)" (summer 1962)
[Needs YouTube link]


Neil Young --> The Squires – “The Sultan" b/w "Aurora” (1963)
"The Sultan": (youtube link)
I got a few YouTube hits for live performances of "The Sultan" in 2008-2009, as well! (Don't dare Neil to whip this song out in concert?) "Aurora" is actually the first track of six Squire songs on The Archives Vol. 1 1963–1972, but "The Sultan" is the A-side of the 45 release. (At any rate, I couldn't find "Aurora" on YouTube.)
Waging Heavy Peace - Neil Young

My very first recording session was on July 23, 1963, at CKRC radio in Winnipeg ... It was at this session that I first sang on tape. I had a couple of songs, one of which I called "I Wonder" ... The two tunes picked from the audition session were "The Sultan" and "Image in Blue" [later "Aurora"]. During the second session we practiced recording these, working on the arrangements.

... After a few long weeks of anticipation, the record was released on V Records, a local company that mainly did polkas but was just getting into rock and roll. We were very excited. Then the big moment came, and we heard "The Sultan" on the radio! I was in my mother's car with my bandmate Ken Koblun [bass], driving somewhere. I felt so good. I am sure I was walking on air for weeks. The Squires were recording artists. My mother was telling everyone she knew. I could hear her on the phone calling all of her friends. She was my biggest fan!
Extra: Neil Young's Elektra audition, e.g. "I Ain't Got the Blues" (recorded ca. 1965) (youtube link)


Frank Zappa/The Mothers of Invention
[see Captain Beefheart a.k.a. Don Vliet - "Lost In A Whirlpool"]
Extra: Frank Zappa - The Worlds Greatest Sinner soundtrack (1962 film) (youtube link)
The Captain Beefheart song is track #2 on The Lost Episodes. Track #1 "The Blackouts," named after Zappa's first band, is only 22 seconds of chatter.

Black-Outs line-up, besides Zappa: “Three of the guys (Johnny Franklin, Carter Franklin and Wayne Lyles) were black, the Salazar brothers were Mexican and Terry Wimberly represented the other oppressed peoples of the earth.”
A perfect storm was created between the fact that this was an “integrated” R&B band in the Mojave Desert, and the fact that an R&B show had once played at the fairgrounds, “and legend had it that ‘colored people brought dope into the valley when they did that damn show, and we’re never gonna let that kind of music ‘round here again.’ I didn’t know about any of this shit when I put the band together.”

The Real Frank Zappa Book – Frank Zappa with Peter Occhiogrosso

On the Black-Outs’ gig at the local women’s club hall:
One day, I got a great idea: I decided to promote my own gig—a dance—at the local women’s club hall, and I asked Elsie [his record store employer] to help me. I wanted her to rent the hall for us, and she agreed to do so. Now, I’m pretty sure about this—it was Elsie who had promoted the original “colored-person show with optional chemical commodities”—and I didn’t fully grasp the local sociopolitical ramifications of all this when I asked her to book the hall.

...The evening before the dance, while walking through the business district at about six o’clock, I was arrested for vagrancy. I was kept overnight in the jail. They wanted to keep me long enough to cancel the dance—just like in a really bad 1950s teenage movie. It didn’t work. Elsie and my folks got me out.

We played the dance. It was a lot of fun. We had an enormous turnout of black students from Sun Village … After the dance, as we were packing our stuff into the trunk of Johnny Franklin’s wasted blue Studebaker, we found ourselves surrounded by a large contingent of lettermen (The White Horror), eager to cause physical harm to our disgusting little ‘integrated band.’ This was a mistake because, upon seeing the Gathering of the Ugly Jackets, a few dozen ‘Villagers’ started hauling chains and tire irons out of their trunks, with a look in their eyes that said, “The night is young.”

The lettermen folded, in total humiliation—God, they’re so sensitive about that sort of thing—and went home to their coots & codgers. They remained hostile to me and the other guys in the band all the way through to graduation.

Re: The “My Happiness” playlist – fledgling recordings

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 5:34 pm
by Live in Phoenix
The original July 2014 line-up. Artists in red have since dropped out (as of March 2022).

AC/DC
Arcade Fire
The Band
The Beach Boys
Beastie Boys
The Beatles
Beck
Chuck Berry
Björk
Black Sabbath

Blur
David Bowie
James Brown
The Byrds
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
Johnny Cash
Nick Cave
Ray Charles
The Clash
Leonard Cohen

John Coltrane
Sam Cooke
Elvis Costello
Creedence Clearwater Revival
The Cure
Daft Punk
Miles Davis
The Doors
Nick Drake
Bob Dylan

Eminem
Brian Eno
Fleetwood Mac
Aretha Franklin
Funkadelic/Parliament
Marvin Gaye
Al Green
Guns N’ Roses
PJ Harvey
Jimi Hendrix

Buddy Holly
Michael Jackson
The Jam
Jay-Z
Elton John
Joy Division
The Kinks
Kraftwerk
LCD Soundsystem
Led Zeppelin

John Lennon
Little Richard
Madonna
Bob Marley and the Wailers
Massive Attack
Metallica
Charles Mingus
Joni Mitchell
Van Morrison
New Order

Nirvana
Oasis
OutKast
Pavement
Pink Floyd
Pixies
The Police
Portishead
Elvis Presley
Primal Scream

Prince
Public Enemy
Radiohead
The Ramones
Otis Redding
Lou Reed
R.E.M.
The Rolling Stones
Roxy Music
The $ex Pistols

Simon and Garfunkel
Frank Sinatra
Sly and the Family Stone
Patti Smith
The Smiths
Sonic Youth
Bruce Springsteen
Steely Dan
The Stooges
Talking Heads

U2
The Velvet Underground
Tom Waits
Kanye West
The White Stripes
The Who
Wilco
Stevie Wonder
Neil Young
Frank Zappa/The Mothers of Invention

Not in the top 100 in July 2014, now in (March 2022):
32. Kendrick Lamar
62. Duke Ellington
69. Frank Ocean
70. Beyoncé
84. Vampire Weekend
85. Queen
91. Kate Bush
92. Arctic Monkeys
98. Sufjan Stevens


Out from July 2014 to March 2022:
101. The Jam
102. Nick Drake
104. Eminem
119. Frank Zappa/The Mothers of Invention
122. Primal Scream
128. Captain Beefheart
130. Sam Cooke
142. Little Richard
146. Buddy Holly & The Crickets

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Here are the newest top 100 artists, from the final 2014 update (quotations are from Wikipedia):




Arctic Monkeys - "Ravey Ravey Ravey Club" (rec. 13 June 2003) (youtube link)
From Arctic Monkeys' first gig, at The Grapes pub in Sheffield.
"Arctic Monkeys' Career So Far: From Rubble to the Ritz," by Ava Muir

Initially, [Alex] Turner has reservations about getting behind the mic. "We did try another lad out as the singer, but he choked when it came to show what he could do," he'll tell Abu Dhabi's The National. "There was no way that I wanted to be the singer. The band that we followed at the time was the Strokes, and they seemed too cool for school in every way. I didn't feel I could live up to that. Even when I finally got round to writing my own lyrics, I had this sense of dread that the others would laugh me out of the room."

All four are beginners on their instruments and it takes over a year of practice in both Turner and [Matt] Helders' garages, as well as at Yellow Arch Studios in Neepsend, Sheffield, before they muster up the courage to play their first gig.

On June 13, 2003, Arctic Monkeys play their inaugural concert at The Grapes pub, supporting fellow local act the Sound. The set list features covers of "Hotel Yorba" by the White Stripes, the Undertones' "Teenage Kicks" and "Harmonic Generator" by the Datsuns. The band are paid £27; the crowd's reception is riotous.

https://exclaim.ca/music/article/arctic ... o_the_ritz

Kate Bush - demo recordings, e.g. "Something Like A Song" (recorded ca. 1973) (youtube link)
Around 1972-73, a barely teenage Kate Bush made a lo-fi demo tape of 50 of her songs. (It's been said that the number of demoed compositions goes up to 200.) The above song is the first track from a bootleg, The Early Years, that came fairly close to being released by a German label.
Flexipop! magazine, 1982, “Testament of Youth,” by Kate Bush
[M]y father had a piano in the house – and without that I’d never have got round to playing music … I wasn’t an easy, happy go lucky girl because I used to think about everything so much and I think I probably still do. I was writing songs from the age of ten – and I was never really into going to discos and dances and stuff. Obviously I used to like to go and meet boys, but I mainly just liked playing with the piano. I never told anyone at school that I did that because I feared it would alienate me even more. I was too shy to be a hooligan but inside I had many hooligan instincts.

Capital Radio (London ILR) From Small Beginnings – Babooshka and more, 17th July 1982
Each song was just me and the piano, and these would be sent off to record companies. And of course, someone who doesn’t know me, or know the lyrics or anything, would just be listening to 50 continuous songs of the same kind of sound, which was something I didn’t realise at all. And it wasn’t until it was pointed out to us that, in fact, it’s a much better idea to just put two or three songs on a tape because people would take it in a lot better, and won’t be stunned by the amount of material.

http://www.flexipop.com/testofyouth04.html
https://www.katebushnews.com/the-homegr ... hive-1982/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.thegua ... p-hooligan
(People were surprised that Bush could have opened up about her past, so there's even a many-years-later article where the Flexipop co-founder defends the article. "The thing is people forget what they said 34 years ago – and then it comes back and bites them in the bum.”)

Duke Ellington --> The Washingtonians - "Choo Choo" (December 1924)
"Choo Choo" (youtube link) ... A-side(?) "Rainy Nights" (youtube link)
RYM puts the initial issue of the single in the order of "Rainy Nights" b/w "Choo Choo." These are the first two tracks on the above Chronological Classics CD (with "Choo Choo" as the first track).
Ellington: The Early Years, by Mark Tucker

Duke Ellington:
When I began my work jazz was a stunt, something different. Not everybody cared for jazz and those who did felt that it wasn’t the real thing unless they were given a shock sensation of loudness or unpredictability along with the music.

Author:
In the fall of 1924 … Ellington made his publishing and recording debut with a novelty song, “Choo Choo (I Gotta Hurry Home)” … when the Washingtonians recorded “Choo Choo,” the tune had already become popular. In October it had been featured on discs by the Ambassadors (directed by Willie Creager), the Original Memphis Five, Earl Randolph’s Orchestra, and the Goofus Five (with Adrian Rollini) … a lively duet version appeared on Victor by comedians Billy Murray and Ed Smalle backed by an orchestra.

…Two factors in the Washingtonians’ performance of “Choo Choo” help explain how they turn a novelty song into an effective jazz instrumental. One is the strong playing of the rhythm section. Ellington, [banjo player George] Francis, and especially [drummer Sonny] Greer provide a steady undercurrent that drives the train ahead yet holds back [alto saxophonist Otto] Hardwick’s and [trumpet/cornet player Bubber] Miley’s impatience to reach their destination. A good example of their teamwork comes near the end of the first chorus, when Greer’s choked cymbal accents punctuate Ellington’s walking bass line and make the rhythm rock. The other factor is Bubber Miley’s hot cornet solo … Here Miley demonstrates the muting, growl, and bent-note techniques that were to figure so prominently later in Ellington’s music.



Pulp - John Peel session (rec. 7 November 1981) (entire set)
Turkey Mambo Momma 2:54 / Please Don't Worry 3:21 / Wishful Thinking 4:18 / Refuse to Be Blind 4:28
N/A: Pulp(?) - demo tape (recorded ca. 1981, given to John Peel October 1981)
The band's first fixed line-up was under the name Arabicus Pulp, and consisted of Jarvis Cocker, Peter Dalton and two friends of theirs, David Lockwood and Mark Swift (the latter two are absent from the debut Peel Sessions credits, with Jamie Pinchback and Wayne Furness instead in the line-up).




As for the 2015 update:

Blondie - The Alan Betrock demos, e.g. "Out in the Streets" (rec. June 1975) (youtube link)


My Bloody Valentine
This is Your Bloody Valentine (January 1985)
"Don't Cramp My Style" (youtube link)
N/A: 1984 demo "Girl on the 13th Floor", "Halfwalk", "Last Tango in Paradise", "The Garden of Delight" and "Don't Cramp My Style", the latter of which was re-recorded for their 1985 This is Your Bloody Valentine debut.
In March 1984, Kevin Shields, Stephen Ivers and lead vocalist David Conway recorded the band's first demo on a four-track recorder in Shields' parents' home in Killiney. Kevin Shields and Colm Ó Cíosóig [who first met each other at a karate tournament] overdubbed bass and drum tracks at Litton Lane Studios, and the tape was later used to secure a contract with Tycoon Records.


Queen - "Keep Yourself Alive" demo (rec. December 1971) (youtube link)
The 2011 Universal Records reissue bonus disc of their 1973 debut contains their early demos: "Keep Yourself Alive", "The Night Comes Down", "Great King Rat", "Jesus", and "Liar," first recorded at De Lane Lea Studios in December 1971, when the band was hired to test the studio's new equipment in exchange for being allowed to record proper demos for their attempt to find a record company. In-between the demo and the debut, Queen released their first music (sort of) with the "I Can Hear Music" / "Goin' Back" single, recorded while killing time at the studio and credited to Larry Lurex (Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor).

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2014 additions to the Top 100 Artists that have since dropped off:

Animal Collective --> Automine - Padington Band 7" single (1995)
Contents: Circuit Spread (youtube link) / Crocodiles and Zebra / No Last Ball

M.I.A. - Diplo remix of demo song "Lady Killa" (December 2004): (youtube link)
From the Piracy Funds Terrorism Volume 1 mixtape, distributed at M.I.A.'s live shows and via the internet to promote the release of Arular.
N/A: six-song demo (recorded ca. 2002)
The three songs I've heard of from the demo tape are "Lady Killa", "M.I.A.", and "Galang".

The Strokes - 2000 demos, e.g. "In Her Prime" (youtube link)
Other demo songs from this period include: Modern Age, Cant Not Know Try a.k.a. Last Nite, Barely Legal, Rhythm Song, This Life

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More recently:

Image

Beyoncé --> Girls Tyme – “Talking ‘Bout My Baby” (1993) (youtube link)
Beyoncé – “Self-Titled”: Part 2. Imperfection short film

When I was in the studio [for 2013’s Beyoncé], I was threading the songs together, and I thought of this [Star Search] performance, which was a really defining moment in my life as a child. [Footage of Ed McMahon: “The hip-hop rappin’ Girls Tyme!”] In my mind, we would perform on Star Search; we would win, we would get a record deal; and that was my dream at the time. There’s no way in the world I would have ever imagined losing as a possibility. [Footage of Ed McMahon: “The judges give champions Skeleton Crew…four stars! A perfect score. The challenger, Girls Tyme, receives…3 stars!”] You know, I was only nine years old. So at that time, you don’t realize that you could actually work super hard, and give everything you have, and lose! It was the best message for me! When I put Ed McMahon introducing us as “The hip-hop rappin’ Girls Tyme!” [in sync with Ed McMahon footage], it clicked something in my mind.

I feel like, something about the aggression of “Bow Down,” and the attitude of “Flawless” -- the reality is, sometimes you lose! [Laughs] And you’re never too good to lose, and you’re never too big to lose, you’re never too smart to lose. It happens, and it happens when it needs to happen. And you have to embrace those things.
Beyoncé was born in Sept. 1981, which would seemingly place the Girls Tyme performance around 1990-1991, though everything on the Internet is pointing to the appearance being from 1993.
Girls Tyme would eventually flourish under a different name, Destiny’s Child.