The Fall - On The Wireless (Non-Peel Radio Sessions) (3-Disc Set)

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the infamous on-stage set-to between members of The Fall at Brownies in Lower Manhattan on the tail end of their American tour that year... the fight that led to the immediate and permanent departure of longtime band stalwarts Steve Hanley, Karl Burns and Tommy Crooks and forever changed the direction of the group. From YouTube, here's the video of the entire shambolic set, with band leader Mark E. Smith instigating the situation approximately 25 minutes into the hour-long gig - it quickly deteriorates from there:

The spring 1998 U.S. tour of The Fall started out on a bad note. For some reason or another, drummer Karl Burns and guitarist Tommy Crooks missed the transatlantic flight from Manchester to the States - a situation that, of course, drove Smith into a towering rage even before the plane got off the ground in England. The two showed up in New York later that day, but that didn't improve Smith's attitude.

Another major point of tension/contention centered around the itinerary - it was scheduled to be a week-long campaign and then some, beginning in New York and moving on to venues up and down the U.S. East Coast from Boston to Washington DC, with shows practically every night. But bizarrely, the group was only booked to stay in New York City hotels. Why?

Well, back during the 1993 American tour in support of the then-recently released The Infotainment Scan, when there was (then) plenty of label cash to throw around, The Fall were provided suites at the ultra-swank Gramercy Park Hotel for

a week. Smith took a particular liking to this style of living while on tour in the States, so much so that for The Fall's return visit to the States in 1994, he insisted upon staying there again, and made the hotel his central point of operations during their East Coast concerts. As a consequence, the band would play venues hundreds of miles away from the city, only to pack up their gear each night and be bused back to Manhattan... arriving back at the Gramercy Park often in the wee hours to stumble exhaustedly into their opulent beds for a couple of hours of sleep, before having to load up and be out on the highway again later in the day. Needless to say, this was not an ideal situation for anyone in the group (other than Smith, I suppose). Fortunately, there were only three or four East Coast dates on that tour, before The Fall headed to venues in the Midwest and West, so the band members sucked it up for that short period.

During this 1998 U.S. jaunt, Smith once again booked a room at the Gramercy Park for himself and his girlfriend, keyboardist Julia Nagle - an expense the group/label frankly could hardly afford at the time due to some serious tax issues they were facing back home [full disclosure - I've stayed at the Gramercy Park Hotel a couple of times myself in the past; believe me, cheap it ain't...]. The rest of the band was ensconced across town at the decidedly more downmarket Quality Hotel East Side (apparently, the concern with economy and on-tour penny-pinching during this period didn't apply to Smith personally...). As with the 1994 visit, The Fall's gigs (all in the Northeast U.S.) were arranged as before, with the group returning to New York each night to ensure that Mark got to spend as much time as possible wallowing in the hotel's grandeur. But there were twice as many East Coast shows on this tour than there were in 1994. It was inevitable that fatigue and bad feelings would begin to set in among band members.

And then, Smith queered the deal almost immediately upon arriving in America, before the first note at the first show was even played. Obviously still in a rage regarding Burns' and Crooks' tardiness, Smith proceeded to trash his hotel room practically the minute he walked into it - breaking lamps, telephones and furniture - and was thrown out of the Gramercy Park within an hour of arriving. The main "justification" for making those long back-and-forth bus trips to and from places like Boston and Philadelphia was thereby removed... but it was far too late to arrange for lodging closer to the tour stops, and the transportation contract couldn't be cancelled. Smith and Nagle were forced to stay at - and return each night to - the same ramshackle Manhattan Quality Inn with the rest of the band... a situation that did nothing to improve the attitudes of any of the involved parties.

The first couple of shows on the tour (at Coney Island High in New York, The Loop Lounge in Passaic, NJ and The Middle East in Cambridge, MA) reportedly went well, with no overt outbursts or out-of-the-ordinary aggression noted from Smith towards his bandmates (although it was noted in a couple of news outlets that Smith appeared to be sporting a black eye during the New York gigs - who knows if those reports was accurate, and if so, the source and circumstances behind that shiner). But as the tour went on, with weariness increasing and tempers shortening, things began to quickly deteriorate.

Apparently, the first overt conflict occurred during their gig at The Trocadero in Philadelphia on April 4th. From Steve Hanley's 2014 book The Big Midweek detailing his life as a member of The Fall:

"During the gig [specifically, during the band's rendition of "Jungle Rock"] [Mark] tries to push me aside so he can fuck with my amp. It is the first time he has laid a finger on it in years. He's lurching towards it, trying to grasp hold of the knobs like on those machines at the fair that never picks up a toy, no matter how much money you put in and no matter how much the child cries. I push him out of the way with the end of my bass and turn my back. ...I finish the song and walk off, to be joined shortly after by Tommy and Karl, leaving [Mark] with nothing else to do but sing "Everybody But Myself" all by himself."

The three commandeered the tour bus and returned immediately with most of the band equipment to New York, leaving Smith and Nagle in Philly to fend for themselves. To exacerbate an already bad situation, upon their return to Manhattan, the bus was broken into overnight and a large quantity of the group's instruments (including Nagle's cherished keyboards) were stolen. The band got through their next gig, a show on Sunday, April 5th at The Black Cat in DC, with borrowed equipment... but the tension and bad blood within and between the group members was palpable.

All of which led up to the Brownies debacle on Tuesday, April 7th. I won't go into further details regarding that gig; If you're a Fall fan, I'm sure you already know more than enough about it - if not, I refer you to the video above. The site Dangerous Minds has a superb summary of the circumstances behind the fight - check it out here. And of course, the "cherry on top" of that night, with the Fall kaput and the rest of the U.S. tour cancelled, was the after-gig arrest of Smith at the Quality Hotel in the small hours of that following morning, allegedly for assaulting Nagle back in their room... an ignominious end to a tumultuous period.

I've already provided my impressions and opinions on the immediate and long-term impact of the Brownies altercation on the future history of The Fall - no need to reiterate my thoughts here. This post is more concerned with heretofore unavailable/hard-to-find music from the pre-brawl period (mostly) that I happen to have in my possession.

The set provided here (another long unavailable offering from the defunct Symphony Of Ghosts website) appears to be a re-release of/upgrade to 2004's Unreleased Radio Sessions '81-'99 two-disc bootleg - another boot set that I acquired from God knows where (perhaps the old Young Moss Tongue site) many moons ago. Both compilations have almost the exact same contents, although the overall track list is different; here's the lineup, with sources listed (if known):

Disc 1:
01 Lay Of The Land (David 'Kid' Jansen Session 02-19-1984)
02 God Box (David 'Kid' Jansen Session 02-19-1984)
03 Oh Brother (David 'Kid' Jansen Session 02-19-1984)
04 C.R.E.E.P. (David 'Kid' Jansen Session 02-19-1984)
05 Stephen Song (Janice Long Session 1 09-09-1984)
06 No Bulbs (Janice Long Session 1 09-09-1984)
07 Draygo's Guilt (Janice Long Session 1 09-09-1984)
08 Slang King (Janice Long Session 1 09-09-1984)
09 Copped It (Saturday BBC Live 09-29-1984)
10 Elves (Saturday BBC Live 09-29-1984)
11 Fortress / Marquis Cha Cha (Saturday BBC Live 09-29-1984)
12 Interview (Saturday BBC Live 09-29-1984)

Disc 2:
01 Frenz (Janice Long Session 2 05-19-1987)
02 Get A Hotel (Janice Long Session 2 05-19-1987)
03 Ghost In My House (Janice Long Session 2 05-19-1987)
04 Haf Found Bormann (Janice Long Session 2 05-19-1987)
05 In These Times (Piccadilly Radio Session 02-25-1988)
06 Carry Bag Man (Piccadilly Radio Session 02-25-1988)
07 Cab It Up (Piccadilly Radio Session 02-25-1988)
08 Oswald Defense Lawyer (Piccadilly Radio Session 02-25-1988)
09 Glam Racket (Mark Goodier Session 05-17-1993)
10 War (Mark Goodier Session 05-17-1993)
11 15 Ways (Mark Goodier Session 05-17-1993)
12 A Past Gone Mad (Mark Goodier Session 05-17-1993)

Disc 3:
01 Fit & Working Again (Dutch Session 05-17-1981)
02 Fantastic Life (Dutch Session 05-17-1981)
03 New Face In Hell (Dutch Session 05-17-1981)
04 Shake Off (XFM Session 04-15-1999)
05 F'oldin Money (XFM Session 04-15-1999)
06 Jet Boy (XFM Session 04-15-1999)
07 Touch Sensitive (XFM Session 04-15-1999)
08 Antidotes (XFM Session 04-15-1999)
09 10 Houses Of Eve (XFM Session 04-15-1999)
10 Inevitable (XFM Session 04-15-1999)
11 This Perfect Day (XFM Session 04-15-1999)

This just goes to show that John Peel wasn't the be-all and end-all of Fall live sessions; the band did extensive and superb work with a number of radio hosts, both influential and obscure. This set collects the best of their work from that period.

So for your listening pleasure, here's The Fall's On The Wireless (Non-Peel Radio Sessions), a three-disc bootleg made available in the summer of 2005. Enjoy this offering, with the hope that it brightens this dark day in Fall history for you! And as always, let me know what you think.

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[10 Apr 2018 (p.m.) - Quick note: OK - repaired the previously posted files (at least most of them...) - these should be good to go now. If you have any issues with these tune files, let me know upon receipt - thanks.]

The Fall - Scherzo Schist

Well...  I promised in my previous posting that if I found it, I'd immediately post it here - so here you all are. Special thanks to blog friend Ji De for hooking me up - finally - with this long sought-after bootleg collection of ostensibly hard-to-find Fall tunes I first heard about on the Symphony Of Ghosts blog more than a decade ago.

Here's the track list and sources:

01  In The Park (Acklam Hall)
02  The Man Whose Head Expanded (live) [PBL video version]
03  Couldn't Get Ahead (live) [The version on the VHS8489 video]
04  US 80's-90's (live). (What's That Noise 7", also on Backdrop)
05  Kimble (Peel Session)
06  Why Are People Grudgeful? [more funky, more upbeat version. 12" mix?]
07  Noel's Chemical Effluence (The 27 Points)
08  Crying Marshall (Filthy Three mix from the F'Oldin' Money single #2)
09  Powder Keg (Version) (0161 compilation)
10  Spencer Must Die (Peel Session)
11  Beatle Bones [Peel Session '96, Beefheart cover]
12  Touch Sensitive (Peel Session version)
13  Inch [the main version from the Inch CD single]
14  Calendar (from Masquerade double EP)
15  Das Katerer (The Post Nearly Man version)
16  Two Librans (demo) (Voiceprint Ltd. giveaway CD promo)
17  Blindness/Blindman (Voiceprint Ltd giveaway CD promo)
18  Life Just Bounces (In the City) (same version as on A World Bewitched)

This set of "rarities" didn't turn out to be as 'rare' as I had hoped... For example, I'd previously provided "Calendar" in my Masquerade posting from a while back, along with "Das Katerer" in my The Post Nearly Man writeup, "Inch" in my posting of the same name and "Kimble" way back in 2011 with the Kimble EP here.  And a lot of these other songs are available on the

excellent The Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004 box set (which every self-respecting Fall fan should have already long had as part of their collection) and other more mainstream band releases (Backdrop, The 27 Points, etc.).  But there are enough true obscurities included here to make this disc worth acquiring... plus, it's nice to have everything all in one easy-to-access package.

So, this isn't an essential bootleg by any means... but overall, still worthwhile.

So for your consideration, here's The Fall's Scherzo Schist bootleg, compiled by that same secretive group of British fans that brought you King Of Moscow Road back in 2005.  Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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The Fall - King Of Moscow Road

I ran this one down more than a decade ago in my search for any and all things Fall-related, from a now long-defunct music blog (Symphony Of Ghosts). Here's a description of this disc from the website, and the circumstances by which it was acquired:

"Fan bootleg sent out by unknown group of an eBay seller or 1 or 2 other fellows working together to spread some rare Fall joy to a few select fans - not known to be for sale..."

Here's the track lineup:

01 I'm Bobby (Excerpt - MES Solo)
02 Words Of Expectation (Live)
03 Rowche Rumble (Live)
04 In These TImes (Piccadilly Radio Session)
05 Oswald Defence Lawyer (Piccadilly Radio Session)
06 Cab Driver (Version Of City Dweller)
07 A Past Gone Mad / Passable
08 War (Goodier Session)
09 Don't Call Me Darling (source unknown)
10 'Ol Gang (Live Masquerade EP)
11 Christmastide (Levitate bonus CD)
12 My Ex-Classmates Kid (Rude All The Time version)
13 Janet VS Johnny (Fall Vs 2003 EP)
14 Mod Mock Goth (RNFLP-Narnack version)
15 Recovery Kit #2 (RNFLP-Narnack version)
16 Portugal (RNFLP & Sparta FC single hidden track)
17 Theme From Sparta FC (video edit version)

Some of these songs you may have seen provided elsewhere, on other Fall boots and releases (including some I've recently posted here)... while others are true band rarities. Take them as offered for what you will.

(One thing I'm still kicking myself over in regards to this disc: on the Symphony Of Ghosts site, the moderator mentioned that he received both this disc AND another fan-fabricated bootleg (Scherzo Schist) on the same day in the mail from an unknown provider in the UK. For some reason - either stupidity or oversight - I failed to download the music on the latter disc at the same time as King Of Moscow Road. Of course, the files for Scherzo Schist have long been unavailable off of this blog, and I've been searching for them ever since (ten-plus years now), with no luck whatsoever... Annoying.)

In any case...

Here, on what would have been Mark E. Smith's 61st birthday, I offer to you in his honor The Fall's King Of Moscow Road bootleg, compiled by mysterious and unknown British individuals in April 2005. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

Happy Birthday, MES - you're not forgotten down here, 'cock'.

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Various Artists - Not All That Terrifies Harms 7"

Another Barbara Manning-related post...

Late in 2016, I provided a requester, Jon Der, with a link to my World Of Pooh Land Of Thirst posting from a few years back, and in the process had a great back-and-forth dialogue with him about bands we were mutual fans of, including this one and The Fall (my all-time favorite band, as I've mentioned ad nauseum (and recently shown) here on this site). Jon clued me in to the news that an in-depth oral history of World Of Pooh had just been published in the then-latest issue of Jay Hinman's Dynamite Hemorrhage fanzine, a podcast/magazine devoted to underground alternative music; it was that article that sent him on a search that led him to my site.

Information on the great but obscure World Of Pooh is extremely hard to come by in this day and age, so of course I was champing at the bit to read the story. As the article was (then) not an online posting, but a print story only, Jon kindly scanned it for me from the magazine copy he had in his possession.

All in all, "World Of Pooh: The Oral History" is a superb and informative article. Band members (guitarist Brandan Kearney, bassist Barbara Manning and drummer Jay Paget) and other friends/scenesters from that time offer up their recollections and reminiscences of those heady, frenetic bygone days, the creation, rise and dissolution of an underground and generally unheralded-in-their-time rock band. The piece filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge about the group.

I was especially interested in the section regarding the writing and recording of The Land Of Thirst, the band's sole LP release and one of my all-time favorites. When I did my write-up on this album all those years ago, I did so under the assumption (based on clues provided in the Trouser Press Record Guide review and other sources I'd found like this blog posting from almost a decade ago) this this disc was the brilliant but intense product of a vicious, painful breakup saga then unfolding between Kearney and Manning. To quote that post:

Apparently, [they] had been dating for a while, and by the time the record was being recorded, their relationship was on the rocks. They took out their relationship strains not directly on one another, but like most other couples with problems they addressed their angers and frustrations with one another indirectly, in their case through the songs (I understand they broke up soon after this record came out - which makes sense, since the band also ceased to exist around that time).

However, in the course of reading "The Oral History", I became aware that what I considered to be gospel and the "true Hollywood story" regarding WoP and their music wasn't quite accurate.

The first (and most important) point of correction is the most pertinent and far-reaching, in terms of my understanding this band - Manning and Kearney were never a couple, per se. Sure, they spent a lot of time together in their musical and social pursuits... but this didn't develop into any sort of romantic attachment. There was already more than enough madness swirling around in their lives while they were in the band. But that craziness had nothing to do with any sort of long-term "lover's spat", and more to do with the weird, tense and uncertain atmosphere inherent in being in an obscure band playing in San Francisco's indie/underground scene in the late '80s/early '90s.

That isn't to say, however, that the members of World Of Pooh didn't play up on this boy-boy-girl dynamic. The back cover of The Land Of Thirst infamously displayed an S&M/bondage-themed photo of three people that the band found in a porn shop on Polk Street in the city, with the implication being that the picture portrayed the actual band members and their relationship (it wasn't, and it didn't). Barbara Manning said:

"We chose the picture on the back on purpose - I think it might have been my idea, even... The idea [was] that we were selling ourselves as this threesome."

Brandan Kearney continued:

"We did have some misgivings about using the photo... but it looked enough like us that it was hard to say no... Besides, we were always using sexual imagery... I sometimes worried that we were confining Barbara, or that she'd feel like we were. The picture is ambivalent, which struck me as poignant at the time. It's not very well thought out, but you could say that about any decision we made back then."

In short, the group played at being weirdos and freaks, with Kearney and Manning upping the ante by semi-pretending to be more than just band mates... and people believed it. And oddly, after a while, the members of World Of Pooh began buying into that narrative as well. As Manning observed in the article:

"I feel like we were people with a weird relationship portraying people with a really weird relationship. Over time, the distinction vanished."

In the wake of the album release, and in the process of living up to this created narrative in the city's music atmosphere of the time, tensions began rising within the group. This led to bickering and conflicts between the members that eventually began being displayed in their live performances - many times exacerbated by prodigious booze consumption before and during their act. A friend of the group provided the following memory/assessment in the article:

"[Those] onstage disagreements of whatever were literally showstoppers. The big question was always: would they stop sniping at each other long enough to play another song let alone finish the set? Intraband relations seemed to be getting worse the more shows they played, but musically they kept getting better and better... For a while they were one of the best bands in the city. Talking to other fans at their shows, we had the feeling that they weren't going to be around much longer... The last time I saw them, it was their biggest show to date and by then they were outright arguing on stage in between songs... Despite how great the music was, the set felt like a fiasco and, by the time they left the stage, I had the distinct impression that it was going to be their last show."

This friend was almost correct regarding the timing of the band's demise - it was pretty much over for World Of Pooh by the end of 1989. However, circumstances intervened somewhat in early 1990.

Brandan Kearney: "People assume we broke up after our East Coast tour, but we'd essentially broken up before the tour... the strain Barbara and I were under was not sustainable... In the midst of this uncertainty, we accepted an offer to tour the East Coast for about a week... This gave us a reason to hold things together, but I think it also gave us the sense of an attainable endpoint..."

After (and despite) well-received shows in Boston and New York in March of 1990, World Of Pooh broke up immediately after the end of this tour.  There were a couple of posthumous EP releases (G.H.M. later in 1990; A Trip To Your Tonsils in 1991), but even those led to more trouble and conflict within the group.  The tracks on the latter EP were part of a set of eight or so that World of

Pooh had been developing for a planned full-scale album follow-up to The Land of Thirst (the EP included the only four tunes closest to completion, remixed and remastered by Kearney). During the final mixing of these EP tracks, Kearney added some sound effects that Manning, when she heard it/them, interpreted as negative coded messages directed at her personally... with the result being that the relationship between the two fully ruptured, and they didn't speak for many years. Fortunately, they eventually reconciled, even reuniting for a one-off show in late 2015.

Kearney pithily summed up the rise and fall of his band, and their overall dynamic:

". . . when you scrape away the dazzling veneer of also-ran indie-rocker glitz, you're really just talking about emotionally unstable people with very little impulse control and a dangerously high alcohol tolerance."

He also had this to say regarding their only album:

"The only thing that bothers me about the album's latter-day reputation is the myth and lore of Our Unhappy Relationship, which I sometimes worry is the only reason people are still listening to it. The fact is, Barbara and I were getting along just fine when we recorded The Land Of Thirst. People sometimes present it as some indie-pop version of Rumours or Shoot Out The Lights. I know we brought this on ourselves through public displays of madness and worse, but most of that stuff happened after the LP had been written and recorded. Love it or hate it, The Land Of Thirst was the product of a somewhat crazed but extremely close and supportive working relationship, and I dislike seeing it portrayed as an album by and about people who were at each other's throats. Terrible things happened, to our eternal discredit, but most of them happened later on."

So, from the horse's mouth itself, I hereby stand corrected.

The very end of the article listed World Of Pooh's entire discography, all of the music they released on Nuf Sed and all of their compilation appearances. I knew that some of the stuff listed there (like the band's rare early-career cassette-only releases No Little Taxis Shining Their Light and Dust) I'd never have any hope in hell of ever tracking down. But as for one-off compilation tunes, my WOP collection was fairly complete, except for one selection: a cover of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Dominance and Submission”, included on an obscure 7" EP in 1992. Being the obsessive completest that I am, I made it my mission to track down a copy of this record and song, and after an exhaustive search, found the vinyl for sale from an overseas source - couldn't buy it fast enough.

Enjoy the Not All That Terrifies Harms 7", a ridiculously hard-to-find joint release by Ajax and Nuf Said Records in 1992, scorched off of my vinyl copy, featuring some rare releases by San Francisco bands both legendary and obscure - including Thinking Fellers Union Local 282's "Trevor" (a track otherwise only available on a 1995 Japanese import compilation) and the only source for World Of Pooh's Blue Öyster Cult cover (which, of course, is excellent).

And as an added bonus, here's a link to the entire issue of Dynamite Hemorrhage #3, now online, containing "World Of Pooh: The Oral History" - a much cleaner version of my scanned copy from earlier last year.

Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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The Fall - TV Appearances 1978-2004

And for my final posting in my week of Fall-related releases in the wake of the death of Mark E. Smith, here's a fan-assembled compilation (in .mp4 format) of television appearances, videos and interviews by the band over more than a quarter-century. You could say that this amalgamation serves as the visual

companion to The Fall's Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004 box set, released in 2005. There are some superb and iconic performances featured here, from the band's appearance on Tony Wilson's So It Goes program in the late 1970's to the "Cruiser's Creek" video. Get ready for over TWO HOURS of Fall goodness!

Enjoy and remember what we'll all be missing, now that Mr. Smith is no longer with us. And as always, let me know what you think.

R.I.P., Mark.

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Von Südenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions

In August 2004, German electronic collective Mouse On Mars released their eighth album, Radical Connector.  On this album, the group continued its shift from a pure electronic sound (evident on some of their earlier '90s albums like Vulvaland and Autoditacker) to a warmer, more poppier and almost danceable vein, a sound the band had begun fully experimenting with on their previous album, 2001's Idiology.

One of the songs on Radical Connector included a funky and thumping, although somewhat leaden and plodding, tune called "Wipe That Sound", which featured Mouse On Mars' percussionist Dodo Nkishi on vocals:

The album received generally good reviews, but it wasn't considered a significant departure from what the band produced on Idiology.

The next year, Mouse On Mars produced a Wipe That Sound EP, reworking/reimagining this track with guest vocals from The Fall's Mark E. Smith. In lieu of my own words, I'll refer to an analysis of this EP track provided by the blog Music Geek Corner:

"It's a major re-thinking: the track begins with a new drum part whose offbeat hi-hat accents work well to diffuse the original's clompiness. Smith's vocal, of course, adds a completely new texture to the track - but what's often overlooked about Smith is his skill as melodic minimalist. Smith essentially adds a two-note chorus to the song (the recurring bit about the garden), and it provides an effective hook to the track. The string synth part also makes this version more song-like (and commercial, in fact - although the multiple tracks of crosstalking MES are unlikely to contribute to that direction)."

I really didn't follow Mouse On Mars back in the mid-2000s, so I don't know when or how I first became aware of this track. But once I heard it, I thought it was fantastic, and quickly ran out to acquire the song. I heartily agree with every word of Music Geek Corner's analysis above.

I think it was sometime in late 2006/early 2007 that I got word that Smith's work with Mouse On Mars members Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner wasn't just a one-off; they had joined forces into a supergroup of sorts called Von Südenfed. At first, it seemed sort of weird to me that Smith would expend so much time on and effort with an electronic music group, a genre that in the past he'd expressed nothing but disdain for. But, after reflection, I realized that his work with the group was no weirder than his previous collaborations with other unlikely musicians, included Coldcut and Edwyn Collins. Plus, I'd enjoyed what the combo had released on that EP in 2005. So I was somewhat looking forward to hearing what this musical meeting of the minds would generate.

The collective's first release, Tromatic Reflexxions, came out in 2007; I had it rush-delivered to me via mail order. And I have to say that I was NOT disappointed. The album is actually very funky, quirky and dancable, and Smith is in fine form here. He actually sounds happy on some of the songs, perhaps because he's free of the structures (mostly self-imposed) inherent in his main group.

On this album, they even redo the 2005 version of "Wipe That Sound" (retitled "That Sound Wiped" here), and actually improve upon what I thought was already near-perfect. In the Von Südenfed version, they open up the song and the beat, allowing Smith more space to rant and croon - yes, he's actually singing here! - about the "yellow-helmeted bike messenger" who "don't look like no goddamn singer-songwriter" to him. Just a superb effort:

There are so many other great songs on this album - including the very dancable "Fledermaus Can't Get It" and my personal fave "The Rhinohead".

All in all, I found this disc to be a superb addition to the Mark E. Smith canon, and came at a time when he and The Fall were enjoying a critical resurgence of sorts, with the band's album release that year (Imperial Wax Solvent) making it into the British Top 40 (their first appearance of a Fall album there since 1993's Top Ten The Infotainment Scan). I was looking forward to hearing more from this group... but later that year, in December 2007, Smith sent out a notice on the official Fall website that he had been "sacked" from Von Südenfed. There was some confusion as to whether this was true; from all indications, Toma and St. Werner kept the door open for Smith to rejoin them. But for some reason this never happened, and now with Smith's death, never will... which is a damn shame.

At least we have their sole release as some consolation. Here's Tromatic Reflexxions, released by Von Südenfed (with group member Mark E. Smith) on Domino Records on May 21st, 2007. Have a listen, and as always, let me know what you think.

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The Fall - Demos & Rarities

 

Nabbed this one donkey's years ago from an online source; I think it was The Ultimate Bootleg Experience (T.U.B.E.), although it's been so long now, I simply don't recall.

No matter; this is a superb collection of heretofore unreleased/hard-to-find Fall music, recorded between 1981 and 2002. Here's the track lineup:

01. Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul (1981 demo)
02. Neighbourhood Of Infinity (1983 demo)
03. C.R.E.E.P. (1983 demo)
04. Hey! Mark Riley (1985 demo)
05. Whizz Bang (1989 Peel Session, never broadcast)
06. Simon’s Dream (1990 demo)
07. Middle Class Revolt (Prozac mix, Drum Club remix 1994-95)
08. Middle Class Revolt (Orange In The Mouth mix, Drum Club remix, 1994-95)
09. Bonkers In Phoenix (1994 demo)
10. The Chiselers (1996 demo)
11. The Ballad Of J. Drummer (1996 demo)
12. The Horror In Clay (”Post Nearly Man” 1998 demo)
13. Nev’s Country (”Hot Runes” 2000 demo)
14. Rubber (”The Unutterable” 2000 outtake)
15. Weirdo (”The Unutterable” 2000 outtake)
16. Iodeo (”Green Eyed Loco Man” 2002 demo)
17. Dramatic (”Country On The Click”/”Real New Fall LP” 2002 outtake)
18. 1983 MES Interview

Not much else needs to be said regarding this offering - it's real, it's rare, it's The Fall!

So enjoy the band's Demos & Rarities bootleg, posted online way back in the mid-2000s (probably around 2006, although I'm dating it from the last song included), and a pain in the butt to track down nowadays. So it's provided here for your edification and convenience.

As always... well, you know.

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Mark E. Smith And Ed Blaney ‎– Smith And Blaney

A late-2000s one-off "collaboration" between Mark E. Smith and on-again/off-again band member, manager and Fall second-in-command Ed Blaney. I use the term "collaboration" loosely, because it appears to be mostly a Blaney effort, with Smith (as vocalist) present on maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the dozen tracks. And speaking of that effort, it doesn't seem that Blaney put very much into it here - three of the seemingly half-thought out songs on this disc ("Transfusion" (a cover of a Nervous Norvus tune), "The Train" and "Ludite" (misspelled in the track list)) appear twice in various forms, or barely modified at all. Included on this track list is a version of The Velvet Underground's "We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together"; needless to say, Patti Smith's definitive cover version of this song has nothing to fear from the Smith/Blaney go at it. Frankly, in my opinion, a lot of these tunes sound like leftovers from the Are You Are Missing Winner debacle from years earlier, that Blaney was also involved in (see previous post for details on that disaster).

With that being said, there are some songs and portions that are somewhat interesting, and differ in some ways from the music The Fall generally puts out. But there's nothing truly essential on this disc; it's mainly for Fall completists only, and not worth breaking the bank over...

Instead of doing that, you can get it here for free! Here's Smith And Blaney, released on Voiceprint Records on October 13th, 2008. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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The Fall - Country On The Click (Bootleg Version)

In the aftermath of the infamous April 1998 punch-up at The Fall's Brownies gig in New York, when most of the band (including longtime stalwarts like Steve Hanley and Karl Burns) permanently departed the group, Mark E. Smith and remaining member (and his then-girlfriend) keyboardist Julia Nagle quickly cobbled together some replacement musicians (including bass guitarist Adam Halal, drummer Tom Head and guitarist Neville Wilding) to constitute a 'new' Fall. This hastily assembled lineup

somehow managed to coalesce into a unit, and released two well-received and critically acclaimed albums, 1999's The Marshall Suite and 2000's superb The Unutterable.

But, as usual and true to form, Smith just couldn't leave well enough alone. Due to either real or contrived reasons (some reports suggested that there was a royalty payment dispute among band members, although Halal later denied this), he sacked all of the new members in early 2001, reducing The Fall to just himself and Nagle once again. After another chaotic, haphazard scramble for new members (which was apparently too much for Nagle; she too left the band that spring), another group lineup (consisting of guitarists Ben Pritchard and Ed Blaney, drummer Spencer Birtwistle and bassist Jim Watts) was assembled. I assume that in doing so, Smith hoped he could once again recapture the same sort of creative magic he got just two years earlier, from musicians not fully initiated into the whys and wherefores, the history and mythology of The Mighty Fall. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way, initially.

Although The Unutterable was superior to its predecessor and got outstanding reviews, its sales and chart position were significantly below that of The Marshall Suite. This was probably due to the lack of support from the band's new label; Smith attempted to parlay the success of The Marshall Suite into a better recording deal, and moved from Artful Records to Eagle Records (a division of Universal Music Group) in late 1999/early 2000. But the English label (home to ancient prog-rock groups like Deep Purple, Yes, Jethro Tull and Emerson, Lake & Palmer) didn't quite know how to market The Fall, with predictable results.

The result of this was that the band was in dire financial straits in 2001. So while it was necessary to get an album released that year to generate some much-needed revenue for the group, they really didn't have the funds to do a top-notch job of producing it. Feeling that they had been mismanaged and underpromoted, The Fall had left Eagle for Voiceprint Records earlier that year (the latter label had acquired Smith's own Cog Sinister imprint in 1997) - but this label wasn't exactly rolling in money either (Voiceprint's holding company ended up going insolvent a few years later). As a result, the first album with this latest lineup was recorded on the cheap, very quickly in subpar conditions. Ben Pritchard later described the wretchedness of the situation:

"It was a very miserable experience making that album. We were recording it in a studio where there were rats running around. There was a weightlifter's gymnasium above us, you'd be recording a take and suddenly you'd hear BOOM dropping barbells and dumb-bells on the floor and you'd have to stop and start again... I wasn't there a lot of the time they were recording that album. Just cos I couldn't deal with it. Ed Blaney, Jim, Spen, Mark, Steve Lloyd the producer was there. I didn't really know anyone, it was my first time recording and it was a miserable, horrible experience... [It was] rushed. Two or three weeks, it was done. He needed the album out, the group needed the money for it."

The resultant disc, Are You Are Missing Winner (released in November 2001), frankly sucked, in my opinion - full of (mostly) bad songs ill-conceived and poorly executed, recorded with a wildly uneven mix; apparently the album was pushed out the door so fast, there was little time spent properly mastering the tracks. Even Pritchard, who played on it, referred to it as a "horrible album". The critics savaged it, and it was the first Fall album since 1983's Perverted By Language to completely miss the British Top 200 charts. Are You Are Missing Winner was a trainwreck from start to finish.

In serious trouble now, the group responded by touring relentlessly during the latter part of 2001 and the first half of 2002. These shows included an extensive U.S. tour in the fall of 2001, the first in this country by the band since the Brownies debacle nearly four years earlier (I saw them play at the Knitting Factory in New York that November, during their three-night stand at that venue), along with two full-scale European

tours.  This intense series of concerts produced 2G+2, a June 2002 release (on yet another new label, Action Records) consisting mostly of live material culled from their U.S. shows, along with three new studio songs ("New Formation Sermon", "I Wake Up in the City" and "Distilled Mug Art"). This album actually charted in Britain this time; no great heights (#116), but high enough to keep the wolf from the band's door for a bit.

The scheduling of this multitude of shows, one on top of the other, had another more salubrious effect; it transformed this version of The Fall into a cohesive group, with chops honed from dozens of live performances. This group was more than ready for their next challenge; to improve upon their debut studio recording debacle.

The Fall entered Gracieland Studios in Lancashire in December 2002 to begin work on this latest release, sessions helmed once again by longtime band producer Grant Showbiz. After eight weeks of recording and a month of remixing by Showbiz and Watts, promo copies of the new album, titled Country On The Click, were made from the mixing reference discs and forwarded to selected reviewers, with an eye towards an early spring 2003 release date.

However, an unnamed and unidentified individual, for reasons of his/her own, leaked these demo versions onto the Internet shortly before the scheduled release.  As Jim Watts recalled in a post on The Fall Forum about three years ago:

"I found one of the reference CDs in a drawer recently. The leak came from those CDs and if I remember correctly there were only a handful ever made. I think I worked out exactly who leaked the album in the end. I know they meant well but at the time I was just as annoyed as Mark about the leak. I think they thought by getting it out there it reinforced our version versus Mark's but it just made a bad situation worse.

The leak version was pretty much mine and Grant Showbiz's vision. We edited and mixed all the tracks. I followed Grant's lead as at that point he was the named producer of the album and I thought we had Mark's blessing. I really wanted the album to be a lot more solid than [Are You Are] Missing Winner musically and sonically. I slept on the engineers drafty living room floor for 5 days while we were mixing in London."

The unauthorized release of these album tracks enraged Smith; just as Watts mentioned above, Mark saw it as a power move by the producer to subvert his "artistic vision" of what he wanted the release to sound like:

"Mark heard that CD and was really unhappy with it. I totally understand why, me and Grant had painstakingly gone through every single utterance of Mark's from the tapes then edited the vocals very heavily. Obviously after all my effort I was quite upset too. We fell out and Mark took the album into Dingo's studio and they worked on it."

In his rage, Smith commandeered the basic album tracks from Showbiz and, as Watts mentioned, took them to Simon 'Dingo' Archer's 6dB Studios in Salford (Mark's hometown), whereupon he proceeded to remix and partially re-record the disc (Archer's bass-playing skills were utilized in the new recordings of four songs, including "Green Eyed Loco Man" and "Mad Mock Goth"). These efforts took up most of the summer (during which The Fall made another swing through the U.S., to make up for a planned late 2002 tour that fell through). At the end of this, Smith used his remastered

tracks to re-sequence the entire album, and renamed it The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country On The Click). The disc was released in England in October 2003.

The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country On The Click) was greeted with near-ecstatic reviews by the critics. A few examples of the praise for this album:

"If The Fall... have not just released their best record in a decade, they have certainly released a more consistent and accessible one, just in time for the tail-end of the post-punk renaissance."

"This is the sound, throughout, of a remarkable institution doing all the things they do best and sounding as alive as they ever have."

"Great by Smith's standards. Practically genius by everybody else's."

"It's brilliant."

Smith completely disowned the leaked version of this album, and as time has passed, this initial mix has faded into the background, obscured and buried beneath the torrent of praise the released version engendered. But that isn't to say that the Showbiz/Watts version is without merit. There are significant differences in the music featured on both versions, but in my opinion not enough to sway one's overall preference from one to another. I think BOTH versions are superb. And in that, I completely agree with Watts' assessment:

"I 100% support the released version as the definitive album... But I suppose more than enough time has passed now for the leaked version to be accepted for what it is without stealing the official version's thunder now."

And here it is, for you all to listen to and accept for yourself: the bootleg version of Country On The Click, the alternate mix of The Real New Fall LP, released under shady circumstances onto the Internet in early 2003. Enjoy, and as always let me know what you think.

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Mark E. Smith - The Post Nearly Man

In the day since Mark E. Smith's passing, there have been tributes and commentaries galore about the nature of the man and his music. In addition to the Guardian's notice I posted yesterday, here's but a small sampling of what's been published in the past 24 hours:

NPR
The New York Times
BBC News
The Scottish Herald
The Evening Standard
The Irish Times
Pitchfork
His local paper The Salford Star
The French magazine Liberation
The Dutch online newspaper NU
The Spanish daily paper ABC
... and, of course, the Times of London

I don't feel that I'm up to the task of matching this worldwide outpouring of eloquence in regards to the life and work of this man.  Nor do I feel the necessity to reiterate how much Mark and his band have meant to me over the years; I've covered that topic seemingly countless times in this blog. Smith and The Fall have been a reliable constant in my life for decades, and I looked forward to each new offering that appeared like clockwork year after year; no matter if the band's latest disc was brilliant or banal - it was The Fall, and that was enough for me. It is odd to contemplate the fact that there will no longer be any new music arriving from that quarter; Smith's voice has been stilled, and his brilliant, strange, obtuse and thought-provoking wordplay will no longer grace my eyes and ears. His death leaves a giant hole in my musical life, one that I can't foresee will ever be adequately filled again.

Enough of my overwrought prattle about a singer and band that the vast majority of people in the world were profoundly unfamiliar with, uninterested in and/or indifferent to. Mark E. Smith and The Fall's music was definitely an acquired taste; I'm just glad I was admitted to the banquet... and brave/open-minded enough to sample and appreciate the wares being offered. If you're a fellow Fall fan, you know exactly what I mean.

I think that, instead of words, the greatest tribute I can render unto the man on this blog is to provide to you all over the next few days with access to some of my favorite, most obscure works of his (either with The Fall, individually or with other artists) from my collection of Fall-orabilia. I'll start with his first solo spoken word release, The Post Nearly Man, released on Artful Records in August 1998.

Enjoy, remember, and as always, let me know what you think.

More to come...

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Mark E. Smith, 1957-2018

I am floored.

The Guardian's obituary.

Can't even comment coherently on this now. For me, a profound loss - the leader of my all-time favorite band is no more. Don't know what to say.

More later...

The B-52's - Various Rarities

This year marks the 40th anniversary of The B-52's as recording artists - hard to believe they've been around, and have been part of my life, for so long! I'm sure that none of the members of this "tacky little dance band from Georgia" ever contemplated that four decades removed from their first late-night jam session after getting buzzed on Flaming Volcano drinks at a restaurant in downtown Athens, they'd still be at it all these years later, packing in fans the world over. Love, love, LOVE me some Bee-Fives!

In honor of their anniversary year, and in response to some recent requests, I thought I'd make available a few of the following group rarities/hard-to-find items:

"Rock Lobster" b/w "52 Girls" - The record that started it all; the original DB Records pressing, released on that 

label in April 1978. Both of these versions are faster and rawer than the rerecorded ones that came out on Warner Brothers the following year; I've always found all versions of these songs equally enjoyable.

What I find very weird is that, given the humongous significance and importance of these tunes in the overall B-52's canon, these 1978 versions have NEVER appeared on CD in any band compilation release. What's maddening is that the label itself (Warner Bros.), not the band, put the kibosh on any and all efforts to bring these versions to a wider audience.

From what I can gather, the 1998 compilation album Time Capsule was originally planned as a box set featuring rarities from across the band's career and several new tracks, as well as remastered older tracks. Warner Brothers management, assheads that they were, didn't think a comp like that would sell - instead, they had the band cut it back to a single disc, heavily weighted towards later-period B-52's tunes (I've already said my piece about what a sorry, half-assed set this turned out to be). Had Time Capsule been released as per the band's wishes, it would have included not only the original single versions of "Rock Lobster" and "52 Girls", but also a whole host of demos and outtakes that Cindy Wilson had prepared, and a number of new songs that the band had been working on (not just "Debbie" and "Hallucinating Pluto", as it turned out)... and in all likelihood I wouldn't be writing this post, since most of the stuff provided here probably would have been included.  A dumb decision driven by Corporate Accounting Department logic on Warner's part, in my opinion.

"Adios Desconocida" - I've already said quite a bit in a previous post about the band working with David Byrne in

the early '80s on the aborted Mesopotamia sessions. As I mentioned in that post, Warner Brothers was anticipating releasing a full-blown B-52's album in 1981, not an EP; to that end, the group had worked up a number of songs with their producer that were in various stages of production by the time Byrne left/was fired from the project. The tentative lineup for the expected Mesopotamia album (in no particular order) was:

"Cake"
"Deep Sleep"
"Loveland"
"Mesopotamia"
"Nip It In The Bud"
"Throw That Beat In The Garbage Can"
"Big Bird"
"Butterbean"
"Queen Of Las Vegas"
"Adios Desconocida"

Of course, only the first six songs made it onto the various abbreviated Mesopotamia EPs released in 1982. As for the other four songs, the first three were all re-recorded and included on The B-52's follow-up album, 1983's Whammy!. On that album, "Queen Of Las Vegas" was changed drastically from the Mesopotamia demo (which can be heard on the Nude On The Moon anthology). And I recall the group playing "Big Bird" during the Providence leg of their Meso-Americans tour, a show I attended in early 1982 - the Whammy! version was identical to what I heard back then. As for "Butterbean", the earlier version has never been released, so I couldn't tell you if the 1983 version was that much different.

That leaves only "Adios Desconocida" as the only unreleased track from those sessions. This tune is unusual for the band in that it's a languid guitar-driven romantic ballad, sung by Fred Schneider with backing vocals by Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson - very atypical, and unrelated in almost any way to both the band's signature sound from their previous two albums or the slate of tunes from those Byrne sessions. I've tried to determine whether the song was written by group members or brought in from outside, but can't find any definitive information on authorship. It's my guess that it was the latter, because after the demo was recorded, Fred himself nixed any further work on it, citing his boredom with and disinterest in the song, and the rest of the band didn't raise much of a fuss about it. As such, "Adios Desconocida" was scrapped, and never appeared in any version on subsequent releases. Rightfully so, in my opinion; like I said, it just doesn't seem to "fit" with what The B-52's were about. But have a listen and decide for yourselves.

"Don't Worry" - Before his death, John Lennon specifically cited The B-52's (in particular their song "Rock Lobster") as the catalyst/inspiration for his return to the recording studio in 1980. Taken from a recent article in Atlanta magazine:

In Bermuda, an assistant dragged the reclusive ex-Beatle to Disco 40. Upstairs, a DJ was spinning the club’s namesake musical genre. But the downstairs bar was dedicated to New Wave, where “Rock Lobster” by The B-52’s was playing.

“I said, ‘That’s Yoko!,’” Lennon recalled that fall in an interview with the BBC. “I thought there were two records going at once or something. Because it was so her. I mean, this person had studied her. I thought, ‘Get out the ax and call the wife!’ I called her and I said, ‘You won’t believe this, but I was in a disco and there was somebody doing your voice. This time, they’re ready for us!”

After Lennon's death, The B-52's became great friends with his widow, Yoko Ono, a dream come true for most of them, since they'd all been fans of hers for years (Cindy later admitted that the noises she made on "Rock Lobster" were indeed a homage to Ono's music). As an acknowledgement of/tribute to their relationship, the group dedicated a song on Whammy! to her, the seventh track "Don't Worry" (a nod to Ono's 1969 release "Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)", the b-side to The Plastic Ono Band's "Cold Turkey" single).

While the Whammy! song was definitely NOT a cover of Ono's tune, the band still listed Ono in the credits for "Don't Worry" - apparently believing that this further acknowledgement of their friendship was a good idea that would please Yoko.

Well, apparently The B-52's didn't realize that in doing this, they would be obligated to pay royalties to Yoko based on Whammy!'s sales. As the album rose higher on the charts in 1983 (eventually reaching #29 and going Gold), Ono's attorneys began licking their chops, and began making demands for a sizable amount in songwriting royalties on behalf of their client (while it doesn't seem that Ono instigated these actions against the group - they were apparently corporate-driven - I'm sort of curious as to why she didn't tell her lawyers to stand down...). To avoid paying out big bucks, The B-52's agreed to replace the track with "Moon '83" (a remix of "There's A Moon In The Sky (Called The Moon)" off of The Yellow Album) in later album pressings.

"Don't Worry" rapidly disappeared from the album track list, and since then has been somewhat difficult to find; fortunately, I purchased an early copy of Whammy! which has the song. It's not the greatest tune in the Bee-Fives' ouevre... but they probably could have avoided a TON of trouble and kept it on the album had they just checked with Ono's lawyers first and got everything straightened out beforehand. Oh well. I will mention that, to their credit, both The B-52's and Yoko Ono didn't let this incident poison their connection; they all remain good friends to this day.

"Creature In A Black Bikini" - Ricky Wilson found out he was stricken with AIDS in 1983, during the Whammy! sessions, and was understandably terrified by this diagnosis. He was reluctant to let anyone know about his condition, but eventually broke the news to band member Keith Strickland, his best friend from their childhood days in Athens, Georgia. Keith was shocked as well, but determined to support and help his friend. He and Ricky began taking trips to New York City together, away from the other band members (everyone had moved up from Georgia and settled in and around the Bethel, NY area), to plot a plan of action. It was during these trips that the two decided the band should work on another album, with the feeling being that the activity would do Ricky good.

After flying down to Brazil to take part in the Rock In Rio festival on the weekend of January 18th-20th, 1985 (Ricky's last public performance with the group), The B-52's entered Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia later that year for the Bouncing Off The Satellites sessions. Initially, the band was very productive - they quickly recorded the Wilson/Strickland-penned songs "Wig", "Detour Through Your Mind" and "Communicate", and jammed together on a number of other songs the two came up with, that eventually never made it onto the album.

But as Ricky's condition deteriorated over that summer and fall, so did his creativity and ability to write tunes. He still continued to contribute songs for the album, including "Ain't It A Shame" and "She Brakes For Rainbows", but these songs have a noticeably downbeat quality compared to the earlier music he wrote - perhaps reflecting his attitude at the time.

It got to the point where, due to his obviously declining health, he was spent creatively. Ricky and Keith told the other band members that if they had any solo material to offer, even stuff recorded with different bands, they could put it on the album as well - Fred and Kate responded with "Juicy Jungle" and "Housework", respectively (I've always felt these two songs didn't quite "fit" on Bouncing Off The Satellites - now I know why). For all intents and purposes, most of the basic album tracks were completed by September.

Ricky Wilson was admitted to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City in early October, 1985. It was only then that the rest of the band was informed about the nature and severity of his condition. He died three days later, on October 12th. The group still wanted to release the album, as per Ricky's desires and as a final tribute to him. But most of them (especially his sister Cindy) were too distraught to participate in final mixing and overdubs - Keith and a host of session musicians took care of that. The final album did not entirely fit Ricky's vision for it; Warner Brothers insisted that the group add more synthesizers to their music, to make it more "commercial". And in the end, Keith/the band acquiesced to the label's wishes - they just wanted to see the album out. Bouncing Off The Satellites was released in September 1986 with little label support and no band appearances or tours to promote it, and quickly faded off the charts. It was the band's last release for almost three years.

It's too bad that Ricky hadn't lived; Bouncing Off The Satellites would have ended up a much different and better album - possibly one of the band's greatest. As I mentioned earlier, there were a number of brilliant songs that Wilson and Strickland came up with during these sessions that the band noodled over, but never quite committed to. One of the best was "Creature In A Black Bikini" - only an excerpt from a recorded jam session survives, but it's enough to whet the appetites of B-52's fans who've heard it (and they're not many of those who have, as this tune has never been released) and have them wistfully wonder "what if?"...

I've got a couple of other hard-to-find B-52's nuggets laying around (mostly b-sides of some of their late '70s/early '80s singles releases), but I think I might post that stuff later. For now, here for your listening pleasure are the following:

• "Rock Lobster" b/w "52 Girls", recorded by producer Danny Beard in Athens, GA in February 1978 and released on his DB Records label in April 1978;
• "Adios Desconocida", from the aborted Mesopotamia sessions, recorded at Blank Tape Studios in New York City in September 1981 (never released);
• "Don't Worry", recorded at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas in December 1982/January 1983, and originally a track on the 1983 album Whammy! before being subsequently pulled; and
• "Creature In A Black Bikini", a jam session outtake from the Bouncing Off The Satellites sessions, recorded in Philadelphia in the spring/summer of 1985 (never released).

This post is for the true B-52's fans! If you count yourself amongst them, as I do, here you are! Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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"Rock Lobster" single (1978): Send Email
"Adios Desconocida": Send Email
"Don't Worry": Send Email
"Creature In A Black Bikini": Send Email