[quote="Roger"]I think it's excellent One of the reasons why it's so good is that most of the people involved had been gigging together and recording together pretty regularly over a short period of time.......[quote]

Debauched Dilettantes,

Roger makes a salient point.

Friend Ferry was 29 when he did this and already had a huge amount of experience under his belt. Some of it (with the Gasboard) in non too savoury venues where, if you failed to please, you were likely to get something thrown at you - ‘The Cellar’ in South Shields being a prime example.

By the time he got to the RAH he was battle hardened and well rounded as a musician. My friend and I both commented at the time that few rock musicians could have pulled this off. He put the best around him but the choice of material left him very exposed.

OK, he’d recorded the songs and knew them but the studio and TRAH are two different things and mistakes with the likes of TFT and SGIYE notice.

As we all now know he is a perfectionist and he pulled the whole thing off with such aplomb.

This album is such a fitting tribute to what was, in many ways, the start of his solo journey.

Salutations,

W2

No.18 in the UK album charts .

The Official Chart 'Record Store Chart' has gone which is a shame as it wasnt skewed by supermarkets and the sorts of 'at the till' promotions places like HMV put on. However, looking at other measures of sales on the official site, the album is number 5 on the Physical Albums Chart, 5 on Vinyl, 6 on Sales and perhaps unsurprisingly for a fan base that invariably wants something to hold, it's 67 on both the download and streaming charts.

These Foolish Things
Mother of Pearl
Twins

Has there been any word on why the omitted tracks weren’t included? Surely it has to be for technical reasons as there seems to be plenty of time left on the CD for them?

Scott,

W2 isn’t a technical person and can only imagine how ‘live’ recording techniques have changed since ‘74.

When you consider that together with the business of storing the tapes for 46 years, it is truly a miracle that we have what we have.

This all points to the quality of the other tracks not surviving so well.

Salutations,

Windswept

I guess that the tapes would have transferred to digital as soon as digital was available. Cd's were around in 1980 ish?

It’s strange though if they have been damaged as the songs weren’t played together - you can see it if it was a whole section of four songs played in sequence and that part of the tape got damaged.

I’m just hopeful that they’ll see the light of day so it would be good to know if they were damaged or not.

Didn't BF refer to 'tapes' of it being discovered? That said, even if he did, it's still a term those of us of a certain age use today to describe recording something digitally, so it might not mean much. However, the abiding impression I have is that BF doesn't possess that degree of foresight. If he did why would even discovering the digitally-saved recordings come as such an apparent surprise?

I have a vision of all manner of goodies lying in the cellar of Studio One as a rising water table prompts nearby boxes to float about precariously. Someone get the bilge pump working for God's sake.

I think one or more of the tracks didn't get released as they just didn't 'work'. Max Bell in his generally very enthusiastic review for the NME:



Bell seemed to like 'Help Me Make It Through The Night', so maybe there was an issue with the recording quality on that track.

He did note that John Porter had technical issues early on with his guitar only being heard intermittently, and the problem was not solved until 'It's My Party'.