Buddy Holly - The NEW Complete Buddy Holly v. 2.0 (Purple Chick) (14 Disc Set + DVD)

Dag nabbit...

A couple of years ago, I posted what was known as the Holy Grail of Buddy Holly offerings, an eleven-disc set compiled by the elusive, reclusive Purple Chick collective purported to contain every known song, utterance and appearance on vinyl or film of the great rock 'n' roll pioneer Buddy Holly. I assumed, as did many of you, that this set was the be-all and end-all, the final definitive word on Holly's vocal and musical appearances, and I presented it as such, in a post laden with stylish poetic trappings and heartfelt tributes to the man and the mass of music he left behind...

Turns out, however, that the Complete Buddy Holly wasn't as complete as all of us thought it was.

Back in 2017, Purple Chick announced that they had put together an even MORE definitive Buddy Holly set, featuring songs that were inadvertently left out or otherwise unavailable for inclusion in the 2005 version. I didn't get wind of this new and improved set until last year... simply because I hadn't been looking for it, since I'd already assumed I had it all. I went ahead and acquired this new version, and started trying to document the changes between new and old for a possible later release on this blog. But honestly, my heart wasn't in it. It took me FOREVER to sort out the titles and tags on the previous set, and I just didn't have the stomach or wherewithal to go through the drudgery of putting together another writeup on this new set, and/or doing a disc-to-disc, track-by-track comparison of the former "Complete" Buddy Holly Purple Chick set and this replacement one. 

Fortunately, the people at Purple Chick saved me the trouble, and already put one together in a text file attached to this compilation. For the sake of my time and my sanity, I've taken the liberty of "appropriating" their narrative/description below:

The original Complete Buddy Holly remains one of our favorite projects. (Some Purple Chick restorations even made it - via Rev-Ola's "Gotta Roll" which added unnecessary processing - onto the wonderful-but-too-flawed Hip-O Select 'complete' collection).

Because a number of new and improved sources have appeared over the last fifteen years or so, we thought it was time for a Purpler Chick Completer Buddy Holly. We redid the whole set from scratch: almost everything has either been sonically improved from the earlier version or - most of the time - is from a different source entirely.

Even better, now that we have a complete* set of Buddy's undubbed recordings we can ignore the posthumous overdubs and present the absolute complete Buddy Holly on just five CDs.

So, if you want, you can completely forget the other discs, depending on how interested you are in their various themes. For example, you might not care about our (completely redone) selection of Buddy's record collection or the experimental stereo extractions and synchronizations. In particular, the "Peggy Sue Got Married" and "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" stereo tracks need more work but we wanted to get the set out before doomsday.

(*NOTE: we believe the so-called 'lesser dubbed' versions of "Wishing" and "Reminiscing" are actually undubbed versions. Even if that is not the case, any overdubs are so unobtrusive that it shouldn't prevent them from being the sole exclusions from the 'undubbed' section).

AND, here's the thing. Maybe you're not a CD person anymore. Maybe you just like the files. Well, they're all named so you can copy and paste into one folder and have them run chronologically, with session recordings and interviews all mixed with the studio sessions (you'll have to remove the 'i' prefix for the interviews. (You probably want to leave the 'BRC' and 'S' prefixes alone for Buddy's record collection and experimental stereo recordings.)

So here's what we have:

DISCS 1 - 5 - The Complete Buddy Holly

All of Buddy's studio recordings, live appearances, home recordings, and interviews.

Everything comes from the best available source; with many significant sonic upgrades including, for the first (*or second) time anywhere:

- Sonic improvements to the 'first four' recordings;
- An in-line "I Guess I Was Just A Fool" without the acetate skip;
- Un-composited alternate "Don't Come Back Knockin'" take fragments;
- The complete live Maybe Baby from Off The Record*;
- "Drown In My Own Tears" without the wow and flutter;
- A new, upgraded source for the KLLL promos; and
- Many more surprises...

DISC 6 - The Completer Buddy Holly

Outfakes, songwriting and a tribute

This disc collects the important outfakes (complete takes created from incomplete sources or edits patching audio errors); all of the songs Buddy co-wrote but never recorded; plus Buddy's friend Snuff Garrett's radio show from the day the music died.

DISCS 7 - 8 - Buddy For Others

All of the circulating sessions featuring Buddy as a session guitarist, vocalist and/or producer

Featuring numerous additional session recordings compared with our last set. It seems the only significant tracks now missing are Lloyd Call's "Little Cowboy" and Carolyn Hester's "A Little While Ago"

Caveat: some of the session appearances might not include Buddy after all. We excluded tracks that definitively did not include Buddy but otherwise took a 'when in doubt, leave them in' approach (while noting any questions about Buddy's contributions).

DISCS 9 - 10 - Dick Jacobs and Norman Petty overdubs and mixes

All of the posthumous releases from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

DISCS 11 - 12

The rest of the posthumous overdubs - from the 1980s right through the 2010s.
(You'll have to buy the recent Philharmonic Orchestra CD and slot in those tracks.)

DISCS 13 - 14

Buddy's record collection; and stereo Buddy.

The original versions of the songs Buddy recorded, plus a selection of Buddy's songs in synchronized stereo and/or digitally extracted stereo.

(Most of these are Purple Chick creations but some we grabbed from the Internet and, unfortunately, did not keep attribution notes at the time. Sorry!)

DVD

OK, this is just the old DVD. We couldn't face redoing it just for about a half-second of additional HighTime footage; and to change the mistaken "Clear Lake" caption. Then again, we improved the sound of some of the 'live' recordings on the CDs so maybe we should have fixed that on the DVD as well.

So, while I am leaving the old post from 2018 up (I hate taking posts down), I am retiring the request link for the music there (the 11-disc version) in favor of the one provided below (the 14-disc-plus set). I still have the old and now apparently obsolete 11-disc version; if you're still burning to have that one as well, let me know.  Just know that everything on that set is present here as well.

Once again, I proudly offer to you all Purple Chick's new and expanded The Complete Buddy Holly v. 2.0 from 2017, in the hope that this will be the final time they modify this huge collection. Take a look, have a listen, and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

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The Fall - Final Gig (QMU Glasgow, 4 Nov 2017)

Well, it was exactly one year ago today that Mark E. Smith died, done in by lung and kidney cancer. Since then, it's been an odd year for me (and many others, I'm sure) in that regard; the first one in memory that wasn't graced by a new Fall release.

As affecting as MES's death has been to me over the past year, what I'm finding equally distressing is the gradual silence which seems to be falling over Fall-world. Yes, there are still diehards who frequent The Fall Forum, posting on band-related topics and the like. But from my vantage point, the number and quality of posts there has declined significantly since the initial flood of comments, tributes and the like that came immediately after Smith died. And The Fall Online blog, a formerly "must-see" site that for many years I used to visit at least weekly, is also slowly and gradually falling quiet. There have been only two posts in the "Fall News" section since last September... I suppose with the band kaput and the leader no more, there wouldn't be much "band news" to report, per se. Still, it's weird to see how quickly that once go-to source has become moribund.

Somewhat related to that: in the wake of Smith's death last January, I figured that, as in the case of other rock legends who pass on, the "floodgates" (as it were) would soon be opened, and longtime fans would have been blessed with a plethora of heretofore unreleased Fall product - rare outtake and demo collections, multi-disc compilations, album re-releases and the like stored away in the vaults, pulled together from the prolific band's long career. I was all but rubbing my hands together in anticipation; it all might not have been of the greatest quality, but I reckoned at the very least these archive releases would have kept the name and legend of The Fall alive for many more years. But for the most part, this hasn't happened... which I find sort of strange. Other than a few live sets (a couple from the 1990s released by Cog Sinister, consisting of some dodgy FLAC-only files of various shows in Sheffield) and a three-disc set of "golden greats" out on Cherry Red, there's really been nothing noteworthy put out. It's as if the world is already forgetting about the honorable Mr. Smith, and deeming the volume and quality of material he and his band produced over the past four decades is inconsequential and unworthy of continued acknowledgement.

Therefore, it's up to us, true Fall fans, to keep Mark's name and legacy alive. And to that end, here's a little something for my fellow Fall travelers - a bootleg recording

of the very last concert by the band, which took place in the Queen Margaret student union at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, only two months before Smith's death. A very obviously ill MES performed seated at center stage for the entire show... but he DID perform, so all props and respect to him for that. The Telegraph (UK) newspaper published a superb review of the gig the day after the show - the story's opening paragraph was prophetic, and therefore now haunting:

Hunched in a wheelchair, right arm in a sling, face bloated and bearded, Mark E Smith sang-spat a repeated phrase – “I think it’s over now, I think it’s ending” – as his sidemen locked into a brutal riff. This sounded valedictory, and a question hovered in the air: could we be witnessing the last days of The Fall, a band that for 40 years has belched like a dirty chimney through the drab skies of British culture?

Sucks to be right sometimes... Anyway, I got this recording from my friend and fellow blogger Jon Der - and subsequently I bestow it unto you all as well.

Here it is, The Fall's final show, recorded on the evening of November 4th, 2017. Enjoy, and spare a moment today to remember the late, great Mark E. Smith, the original Rock Curmudgeon, and all of the outstanding music he and the various incarnations of his band The Fall left behind. He, and they, remain my all-time favorite artist(s), and probably will so for the rest of my life.

And as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

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