Once I’d decided to give away the remaining rough mix and pre production cassettes that were lying around I realised (thanks to my sensible wife) I’d better be sure not to give away anything I don’t have a copy of…
So I started cataloguing.

I am working towards a rarities collection so this needed to be done at some point.

I’ve been at it for several days now. All the DATs are done and my Sony Pro Walkman which only plays (it won’t rewind or ff) is now in action.

Amazingly my old Panasonic 3800 DAT recorder worked a treat. Sadly, the same cannot be said for all of the DAT tapes, many of which had become corrupted and were unplayable. I thought I’d lost my only copy of the Electric Lady mixes of Bad Vibes (the ones we didn’t release) but I just found a cassette of them.

I’m using Bias Peak in my Mac and importing whole tapes at a time (in case they only play once..), then I’m getting them normalised (making sure they are as loud as they can be) and making sure they are all 44.1khz (back in the 90’s many folk recorded DATs at 48khz – I don’t know why it had to get to 44.1 for CD) – Peak does all this. Then I’m chopping the audio up into songs, naming them and then putting them in iTunes and converting to mp3.

Here’s what I’ve found so far chronologically –

Demos – 1988-9
The Witching Hour
To the church
Downtown
Sweetheart
A Long Way Down
Ice Cream Girl
Like Lovers Do (not that song – an earlier idea with the same name)
Holier than thou (yes, that song)
I know you too well (unreleased song)
‘I love you’ (song idea – never used, quite good)
What do you know about love?
Shelly I do

Demos with Blair (for his songwriting career) recorded in Glasgow 1988
Shelly I do
The English Weather
I Confess

Album mixes not used
No Blue Skies rough (slightly louder guitars, keys down)
Don’t Look Back (mellower mix, slightly more acoustic)
Blame Mary Jane (longer)

Live Material

Bob Dylan Band @ CBGBs 1989
She Belongs To Me
I want to be your lover
It’s all over now, Baby Blue
I’m set Free
Sway
I want you
You can’t always get what you want
Rock’n’Roll
Highway 61

Live @ The Palace, LA 1990
Why don’t we do it in the road
Perfect Skin
Big Snake
Mr Malcontent
What do you know about love?
A long way down
Sweetheart
Little Sister
Rattlesnakes
Are you ready to be Heartbroken?

Demos 1990-1
To the Lions
Pay For It
Weird On Me
Weeping Wine
The One you never had

DGWOM outtakes
Chelsea Hotel

Album Mixes not used
Original She’s a Girl (different ending, the final mix was an edit)
She’s a Girl instrumental mix (karaoke?)
Weeping Wine original mix
Pay For It (Long version)
There For Her with Blair’s original synths and strings

Bad Vibes Mixes not used
Love You So What b-side mix (more acoustic)
Morning is Broken b-side mix (no backing vocals, different arrangement)
Too Much of a Good thing edit (why? I don’t know.. it was never used)
Everyone’s Complaining (home recording I made in 1990 maybe was going to be a b-side?)

Bad Vibes Electric Lady Mixes (by Adam Peters and Lloyd Puckett some of which are VERY different to finished album)

Here’s the proposed running order (amusing to me as it places maybe my least favourite song I ever wrote second.. and no Can’t Get Arrested)
1
Love You So What
Fall Together
So You’d like to..
Mister Wrong
Morning is Broken
Wild Mushrooms
2
Holier than Thou
Seen the Future
Too Much of a Good Thing
For The Pleasure of Your Company
My Way to You
Radio City Music Hall

Love Story Outtakes 1994-5

Unreleased Songs
She Loves You
Cold Empty Room
Family man
It’ll Never Happen Again

Missing
Rain on the Parade

Millionaire (acoustic mix)

1996
Santa Cruz (vocal version)
Fool You Are (unreleased Etc band version)

2002
Music in a Foreign Language Rough Mixes (only me playing, mixed prior to overdubs)

Music IAFL
My Other Life
Cutting Out
People Aint No Good
Brazil
Late Night, Early Town
Her Alibi (that’s what it was called at that point)
Shelf Life

2005
Antidepressant Rough Mixes mainly just me playing again
How Wrong Can You Be? (2 versions one showing that it took a while to come up with the chorus rhythm idea)
The Young Idealists
Coattails (the song that almost, but didn’t make it – 2 versions, it may be nicer without the singing…)
Rolodex Incident, no bass, early drum arrangement, no vocals (they were not written until quite late in the recording, the singing eventually going where I thought the gaps in the singing would be..)
Slip Away (one of those ‘is this better than the album mix?’ mixes – it probably isn’t but the way the synths work is great, I think).

There’s quite a lot more to work through…