This week’s new issue of Uncut features another 50 Great Lost Albums – those that are unavailable new or as legal downloads right now – chosen by the mag’s readers. Consequently, I thought it’d be useful to put our original Top 50 online, as they appeared in issue 156 of Uncut (Neil Young was on the cover, narrowing it down a little). We can’t remember such an enthusiastic and interesting response to one of our features, and there were many more than 50 good and unavailable records that you recommended. As a result, I’ll be running some of your submissions here that didn’t make the magazine list. And of course, please fire away with more ideas in the comments box at the bottom of these blogs. One other note, while I think about it: happily, a few of these albums – those by Dion and Sandy Denny, for a start – have been reissued since we put this list together… 50 TIN MACHINE Tin Machine II LONDON, 1991 David Bowie had formed Tin Machine in 1988 with guitarist Reeves Gabrels and rhythm section Hunt and Tony Sales, indulging a shared love of dissonant garage-rock and to hell with the consequences. EMI duly dropped them on the eve of this second album. Yes, Hunt Sales’ vocals on “Stateside” and “Sorry” are two of the most excruciating moments in Bowie’s recorded career, but overall II was actually a better album than their debut. Gabrels’ splintered guitar work has depth and texture, with “Baby Universal” and “Goodbye Mr Ed” offered a return to Bowie’s more allusive art-rock imaginings. Its poor showing in the charts – it was his first album in 20 years to miss the UK Top 20; in the US it crawled to No 126 – has meant a lack of love on the reissue front, too. EXPECT TO PAY: £20 for the CD. Less for the cassette… 49 BILL DRUMMOND The Man CREATION RECORDS, 1986 Before he became The KLF’s money-burning dance-punk art-terror-theorist, the erstwhile visionary behind Liverpool’s Zoo label stepped out as an unabashedly Scottish singer-songwriter with this remarkable LP, created to mark his turning 33-and-a-third. Recorded in five days in a village hall in Galloway, The Man was a surprisingly great sounding LP (not so surprising when you realise his backing band is The Triffids), that found Drummond musing on life, love and rock’n’roll. Its most famous song is undoubtedly “Julian Cope Is Dead”, which saw him recounting his master plan to make The Teardrop Explodes bigger than The Beatles by killing the singer. Elsewhere, there was cosmic country, folk, Roxy-esque sax, Wall Of Sound pop, and a Robert Burns recital by Drummond’s preacher father. “The work of a complete nutter,” enthused Creation boss Alan McGee. EXPECT TO PAY: Quite a lot – sellers are asking £30 to £50 online 48 LOTION Nobody’s Cool SPIN ART/BIG CAT, 1995 New Yorkers Lotion were perpetually described – to their irritation, but with a degree of accuracy – as a cross between REM and Hüsker Dü. Their career encompassed a fine debut, Full Isaac (available on iTunes) and a brief cameo appearance on Buffy The Vampire Slayer. But while the bright and wry college rock of their second LP, Nobody’s Cool, didn’t quite match its predecessor, its current unavailability has resulted in a significant piece of literary ephemera being lost. Drummer Rob Youngberg’s mother was an accountant, and one of her clients, Thomas Pynchon, was implausibly coerced into providing sleevenotes. Pynchon’s essay touched on The Love Boat, The Jetsons and Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash”. “Through-out this album,” he wrote, “beneath the formal demands of rock’n’roll as we have come to know it, between the metal anthems and moments of tonal drama, the darkest of surrealist lyrics, the most feedback-stricken, edge-of-chaos guitar passages, may also be detected the weird jiving sense of humor of a cruise combo.” Rock criticism’s loss, etc etc… EXPECT TO PAY: Very, very little… 47 BUCKINGHAM NICKS Buckingham Nicks POLYDOR, 1973 Misty-eyed Fleetwood Mac fans would call this 1973 debut by young lovers Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks a classic, but those who come to it having gorged on Rumours and Tusk might be underwhelmed. What is remarkable about Buckingham Nicks is that there has never been a CD repress of this cult record. Perhaps the duo, who own the rights, would rather it stays that way. Certainly, Polydor washed its hands of the couple shortly after the LP flopped: longhaired and bell-bottomed, much of the pair’s Cali folk was indistinguishable from that of fellow LA minstrels. Nevertheless, “Without A Leg To Stand On” and “Long Distance Winner” are superb, displaying the flair that convinced Mick Fleetwood to invite them to join his rudderless outfit in 1974. EXPECT TO PAY: £30 for a mint vinyl copy 46 SANDY BULL Demolition Derby VANGUARD, 1972 The New York-born master of cross-cultural guitar spent the ’60s exploring fusions of American folk-blues with Middle Eastern scales, jazz and effects-laden psychedelics. Demolition Derby was the last recording he made before heroin addiction sent him lurching off the radar for 16 years, and it was a strange mix of rarefied improvs and disposable cheeseballs. Bull overdubbed himself playing the Arabic oud, fuggily tremoloed acid guitar, percussion and harmonised vocals which at times descended into goofy falsetto. “Carnival Jump” and “Easy Does It” featured hand drums by Denis Charles, percussionist with free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor; “Sweet Baby Jumper” saw Bull slapping some Jamaican steelpans. But someone responsible should have had a quiet word about the schlock-country “Tennessee Waltz”. EXPECT TO PAY: No more than £20 45 RICHARD & LINDA THOMPSON First Light CHRYSALIS, 1978; HANNIBAL, 1992 (CD) Released after the couple’s three-year sabbatical to follow their recently adopted Sufi Muslim faith, First Light was a cautious return that doesn’t hold a candle to their Island albums or the intensely brilliant Shoot Out The Lights, which followed this, and companion Chrysalis LP Sunnyvista. Linda was in fine, clear voice, but Richard’s contribution was subdued, buried beneath the ill-matched American rhythm section of Willie Weeks and Andy Newmark. Despite some great songs – “Strange Affair”, “Don’t Let A Thief Steal Your Heart” – the album never caught fire. Although First Light was released briefly on CD by Hannibal, Richard has expressed a certain indifference to both Chrysalis albums. But, missing master tapes permitting, “never say never” to a reissue. EXPECT TO PAY: A tenner for the album, quite a lot more for the CD 44 EIRE APPARENT Sunrise BUDDHA, 1969; SEQUEL, 1992 (CD) The Hendrix connection – Jimi produced it, and plays on a number of tracks – has long made this a collectable. But, lifted by Ernie Graham’s fine songwriting, this Irish band’s sole LP deserves to be more than a footnote on the great guitarist’s discography. It is whimsical, sunshiney psych-pop of the post-Pepper type, with hints of Van Morrison here, maybe a little Love there, and remarkably free of the curdling blues-rock you might have expected from a long-term support act to the Experience. Lacking anything approaching a hit, it flopped in both the US and the UK, and a 1992 CD reissue has long since disappeared from view. Which is a shame, as both this and a 1971 self-titled LP (which is available) prove, in Ernie Graham the band possessed a should-have-made-it talent. EXPECT TO PAY: Around £20 for the CD, over £100 for the original vinyl 43 FRANK ZAPPA & THE MOTHERS 200 Motels OST UNITED ARTISTS, 1971; RHINO, 1997 (2CD) Most of Zappa’s catalogue is owned by his estate, but not this. The movie – a punishingly surreal on-tour farce featuring Ringo Starr, groupie queen Pamela Des Barres and Keith Moon as “The Hot Nun” – was finally made available on DVD by copyright holders MGM in March. Does that mean its long-desirable soundtrack will follow suit? The 90-plus minutes of music on the now-deleted ’90s reissue confirmed this as typically ornery Zappa – offering psych-rock, prog, mad jazz, country pastiches and full-blown classical pieces played by The Royal Philharmonic, all under a selection of snigger-snigger titles like “Half A Dozen Provocative Squats” and “I’m Stealing The Towels”. At its best – the blistering “Magic Fingers”, say – it’s excellent, crowned by the harmonies of ex-Turtles Mark Volman and Howard Kayman, aka Flo and Eddie. EXPECT TO PAY: £20-£40 42 TAV FALCO’S PANTHER BURNS The World We Knew NEW ROSE, 1987; TRIPLE X, 1994 (CD) Having pursued the wild, hiccupping spirit of Memphis rockabilly as producer for The Cramps and on his own Like Flies On Sherbet, late Big Star legend Alex Chilton [see pp8-10] continued the quest in 1979 when he hooked up with Dada-inspired video artist Gustav Falco to form the Panther Burns. Rotating around the ever-present Falco, there have been countless manifestations of the band since, but, with Chilton back producing and playing, this was their definitive statement. The World We Knew was a wondrously sloppy, swampy and spooky collection of obscure, even mysterious covers – its blend of the Sun sound, rough-edged R’n’B and stomping Stax soul presenting an underground history of American rock’n’roll. Look out for the 1994 CD re-release, which adds the Jim-Dickinson produced “Shake Rag” EP – four booglarizing slices of Southern Fried, including the killer “Shade Tree Mechanic.” EXPECT TO PAY: £30-£50 41 ADRIAN HENRI, ROGER McGOUGH & ANDY ROBERTS The Incredible New Liverpool Scene CBS, 1967 Following the successful poetry anthology, The Liverpool Scene, published in 1967, featuring the work of Henri, McGough and Brian Patten, the three Liverpool poets were given the opportunity to record an LP, with guitarist Andy Roberts. Patten absented himself last minute, but Henri and McGough performed classic, comical, streetwise poems “Love Is”, “Tonight At Noon”, “Let Me Die A Young Man’s Death” in just two hours – and immediately after an ICA event – at Denmark’s Street’s Regent Sound, where the early Stones demoed. A hit, of sorts, the album spearheaded a revival in performance poetry further fuelled by a Penguin Modern Poets edition, The Mersey Sound. Legal wrangles and lost tapes notwithstanding, a CD release is being plotted. EXPECT TO PAY: £40 40 THE SEARCHERS Play For Today SIRE, 1981 OK, so The Searchers didn’t have the copyright on ringing 12-string, catchy choruses and tight, Scousey harmonies. But in the mid-’60s, they were pretty big in the States, too, and their sound infiltrated a generation of Anglophile powerpoppers – Tom Petty chief among them. Which is probably why Seymour Stein – boss of celebrated New Wave label Sire and something of a fan – thought they would be such a good fit for the late ’70s, rewarding the band with a multi-album deal. It didn’t work out completely for Mike Pender and co: Play For Today was the second and final LP The Searchers cut for Sire, but it’s pretty great – superior, chiming powerpop that acknowledged, albeit tastefully, that punk really did happen. And nestled among self-penned material (“Little Bit Of Heaven”, the surprisingly Smithsy “Another Night”), there’s even a cover of Big Star’s “September Gurls”. EXPECT TO PAY: £15, although copies are getting rarer 39 RAINY DAY Rainy Day ROUGH TRADE, 1984 The Paisley Underground supergroup! Nearly 20 years after the first psychedelic outbreak on Sunset Strip, some of the leading lights of Los Angeles’ emerging neo-psych scene – Dream Syndicate, Opal, The Bangles and The Three O’Clock – pooled resources to cut an album of immaculately chosen covers of their musical heroes. The project has aged remarkably well: here you’ll find an exquisite version of Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It With Mine” sung by The Bangles’ soon-to-be-chart-topping Susanna Hoffs, a haunting take on Big Star’s “Holocaust” by Opal’s Kendra Smith, plus fine stabs at Neil Young’s “Flying On The Ground Is Wrong”, and, of course, Hendrix’s “Rainy Day, Dream Away”, all sympathetically produced by man-on-the-scene David Roback, later of Mazzy Star. It’s bizarre this little-heard gem has never been reissued – although presumably getting permission from all the parties involved must be something of a logistical nightmare. EXPECT TO PAY: Difficult to find, but £25, maybe? 38 ERIC CLAPTON AND MICHAEL KAMEN Edge Of Darkness OST BBC RECORDS AND TAPES, 1985 In the mid-1980s, Eric Clapton’s career was not in robust health. A recovering alcoholic, facing the commercial disappointment of ’83’s Money And Cigarettes, Clapton embarked on a brief detour into soundtrack work with US composer Michael Kamen. Their first outing together was this atmospheric six-track score for the BBC’s landmark conspiracy drama, and was different from anything else in Clapton’s canon: ditching the blues, the master guitarist built low, mournful guitar motifs around Kamen’s chugging semi-industrial score. First issued on vinyl, cassette and – unusually for 1985 – CD, it has never been reissued. EXPECT TO PAY: £15, more for the CD 37 DION Wonder Where I’m Bound COLUMBIA, 1968 Dion’s ’75 excursion with Phil Spector, Born To Be With You is often lauded as his masterpiece. But Wonder Where I’m Bound, a US-only LP comprised mostly of outtakes released to cash in with 1968 hit, “Abraham, Martin & John”, is long due reappraisal, too. This was largely recorded in 1964/5, and buried among the expected doo-wop material were some good surprises, including the fiery garage blues of Willie Dixon’s “The Seventh Son”, and a haunting take on the title track, written by Tom Paxton, which featured a pre-Highway 61 Al Kooper on keys. Dion’s version of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” is astonishing – West Coast folk-rock with added NY grime, it manages to recall The Velvet Underground at their most melodic. But Dion got there first! EXPECT TO PAY: £10 or so, plus postage from the States! 36 BRITISH ELECTRIC FOUNDATION Music For Stowaways VIRGIN, 1980 Following their exit from the Human League (and before heading chartward with Heaven 17) Sheffield synth-stabbers Martyn Ware and Ian Gregory unleashed this album of icy instrumental electronica. It was uncompromising, experimental stuff, on one hand harking back to the Human League’s stark “Dignity Of Labour” EP, and yet somehow foreshadowing much of Warp Records’ output 15 years later. Featuring an early, stripped-back version of Heaven 17’s debut single “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang”, Music For Stowaways (the ‘Stowaway’ being the original brand name for the Sony Walkman) was only ever issued on cassette in the UK – although a limited export vinyl version with five of the album’s tracks and bonus song (“A Baby Called Billy”) was pressed. EXPECT TO PAY: £20, worth it if you’ve still got a working tape player... 35 THE POP GROUP For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? ROUGH TRADE, 1981 The Pop Group were, of course, anything but. Bristol teenagers into James Brown, free jazz and radical politics, their name was a Trojan Horse to sneak the band into the mainstream and cause, as vocalist Mark Stewart put it, “an explosion right in the very heart of the commodity”. If debut LP Y, recorded with dub producer Dennis Bovell, couched their vision in quasi-mystical terms, its 1981 follow-up (never officially reissued on CD) was the stuff of direct action. Poetry took a back seat to polemic – “Nixon and Kissinger should be tried for war crimes!” squealed Stewart – but their white-hot funk was more caustic than ever, while “One Out Of Many” marked a collaboration with spoken word group the Last Poets. EXPECT TO PAY: £40 for a decent vinyl copy, as long as it’s got the four original posters Next: 34-17, 16-1

Previously: 50-35 34 JOHNNY THUNDERS Hurt Me NEW ROSE, 1983; ESSENTIAL, 1995 (CD) So Alone is the title of Thunders’ best known solo LP, but the New York Doll never sounded more exquisitely alone than on this, recorded in Paris in the winter of 1983. Given his instant association with that squalling, fucked-up electric guitar, the big shock was that Hurt Me was almost entirely acoustic: the solitary Thunders right there in your speakers, shredding the guts from six strings as he worked through his own songbook, throwing in Dolls tunes (“Lonely Planet Boy”) and covers (half-remembered readings of Dylan’s “Joey” and “It Ain’t Me, Babe”) along the way. His sneering street whine higher than ever, Thunders sounded fragile but tough, desolate but defiant. Spellbindingly intimate, although it sounded like it was recorded in a derelict attic. EXPECT TO PAY:£50 for the vinyl, £30 for the CD 33 SPRING Spring UNITED ARTISTS, 1972; SEE FOR MILES, 1994 (CD) Among Brian Wilson’s esoteric projects away from The Beach Boys, the group known variously as The Honeys, Spring and American Spring were perhaps closest to his heart: unsurprising, given it comprised his wife Marilyn Rovell and her sister Diane (a significant Wilson crush). Their sole album as Spring (or American Spring, to avoid mix-ups with some contemporaneous prog-rockers) found Wilson providing a few songs, singing harmonies and producing their hushed, mildly uncanny take on MOR; highlights like the superb “Sweet Mountain” would have slotted comfortably onto Surf’s Up. A 1994 reissue on See For Miles, American Spring… Plus, is the one to seek out, with extra tracks including their gorgeously tentative 1973 take on “Fallin’ In Love” (aka the Dennis Wilson song, “Lady”). EXPECT TO PAY: £40-60, maybe less for the CD, if you can find one… 32 DAVE AND TONI ARTHUR Hearken To The Witches Rune TRAILER, 1970 Just before launching her career as a BBC children’s TV presenter, Toni Arthur and her hubby were hanging out in the coven of Britain’s king of the witches, researching folk’s links with pagan traditions. This selection of super-natural ballads was sung with stark, Celtic-tinged accompaniments, as though performed skyclad in a forest clearing: Packie Byrne’s puckish tinwhistle dances across “The Fairy Child”, while Dave added ritualistic bodhrán to “Alison Gross”; “Cruel Mother” – murderous, monotonous – is the most chilling version ever recorded. The cover’s murky photo was taken by producer Bill Leader, whose Trailer catalogue and label rights were purchased by Dave Bulmer of Celtic Music in the early 1980s. In one of the great controversies of British folk, Bulmer has rarely seen fit to make any of this material available again. EXPECT TO PAY: Around £40 31 THE FALL The Marshall Suite ARTFUL/CIRCUS, 1999 Given the chaotic-looking nature of The Fall’s catalogue (myriad labels, shady comps, live sets), it’s surprising to discover that most of it is still in print, with the notable exceptions of their two Artful albums from the late ’90s. 1997’s Levitate, an impenetrable tangle with electronica, turned out to be the last Fall album to feature stalwarts Wolstencroft, Hanley and Burns, the band departing following ugly shenanigans on tour in Ireland and America. The Marshall Suite ushered in a new phase of The Fall that continues to this day: Smith hiring apparently random musicians who sound identical to those they replaced. Something of a mixed bag, it nevertheless featured “(Jung Nev’s) Antidotes”, a glowering techno piece far superior to anything on Levitate; one of Smith’s better rockabilly covers (Tommy Blake’s “F-Oldin’ Money”); and, bizarrely, perhaps his best-known song – “Touch Sensitive”, as featured on Vauxhall Corsa adverts. EXPECT TO PAY: £30 or so 30 VARIOUS Concerts For The People Of Kampuchea ATLANTIC, 1981 Paul McCartney teamed up with UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim and UNICEF to organise four nights, post-Christmas ’79, at the Hammersmith Odeon, in aid of a Pol Pot-ravaged Cambodia. This double LP, featuring The Who, The Pretenders, Elvis Costello, Queen, The Clash, Ian Dury & The Blockheads, The Specials, Rockpile, and McCartney’s 30-strong Rockestra, captures the highlights, particularly The Who’s barnstorming “Behind Blue Eyes”, Robert Plant’s surprise Elvis impersonation with Rockpile on “Little Sister”, and The Rockestra’s tumultuous finale – inevitably, a tearjerking, lighters-aloft “Let It Be”. Like so many charity records – a legal tangle with artists temporarily released from their customary labels – this was a one-off pressing. EXPECT TO PAY: £15 or so 29 THE SOUND From The Lion’s Mouth KOROVA, 1981; RENASCENT, 2001 (CD) As post-punk began to evolve into a more windsept and epic kind of music, Adrian Borland and The Sound seemed well placed for stardom, a passionate and dark-hearted antecedent of Interpol. But while their second LP, From The Lion’s Mouth, still sounds like a crucial document of the era, the success never arrived: Korova put its wallet behind the more photogenic Echo & The Bunnymen, and support dwindled further when the label was swallowed by its parent company, Warners. Borland tragically died in 1999, and The Sound’s six great albums have only briefly been available on CD since. EXPECT TO PAY: £25 for the vinyl, more like £60 for CD 28 MY BLOODY VALENTINE Ecstasy And Wine LAZY, 1989 It has been nearly two years since Uncut reviewed the remasters of Loveless and Isn’t Anything, though both have still not made it to the shops: the problem allegedly being Kevin Shields’ failure to deliver his sleevenotes. In comparison, Ecstasy And Wine’s total unavailability has gone generally unnoticed. A comp of an EP (“Strawberry Wine”) and a mini-album (Ecstasy), both from 1987, it showcased a band scurfing off their goth past and moving towards something more original. At times – on “Strawberry Wine” itself, say – the music was a diffracted version of the era’s jangly indie. At others, though – on the monolithic “Clair”, especially – Shields had already formulated the obliterating noise pop for which he would become known. EXPECT TO PAY: £25 27 VIV STANSHALL Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead WARNER BROS, 1974 After the decline and fall of his Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Stanshall surprised everybody with this unexpectedly swampy Afro-funk tinged solo debut, featuring members of Traffic with African percussionist Reebop Kwaku Baah. But his bosses at Warners were confounded by the content: a voodoo curse against the industry; bitter vignettes of washed-up, preening showbiz types (“Redeye”); misanthropic portraits of the artist’s alcoholic/chainsmoking dishevelment (“Bout Of Sobriety”, “Yelp, Bellow, Rasp Et Cetera”); and Pythonesque odes to his todger (“Prong”, “How The Zebra Got His Spots”). Disgusted by their refusal to press more than 5000 copies, Stanshall trashed a boardroom and secreted a bag of bluebottle maggots behind the Warners president’s radiator. An online petition, begging the label to re-release it on CD, has been signed by 2200 names to date. EXPECT TO PAY: A rather surreal £70 26 AMERICAN MUSIC CLUB California RETOUCH, 1987; DEMON, 1993 (CD) California was the record on which Mark Eitzel found his voice. It was 1988, and American Music Club had made two albums, neither of which had made any great impact. By the time they convened to record their third record in Tom Mallon’s San Francisco demo studio, AMC had begun to knock their influences into a manageable shape. “I knew what California wasn’t more than I knew what it was,” says Eitzel. “It was not going to be a punk rock record. It was not going to be Americana. It was going to be something else.” The sound of the record – sometimes delicate, occasionally exultant, employing poetic imagery and occasional country stylings courtesy of pedal steel player Bruce Kaphan – was the product of the varied tastes within the band. “Mostly what we liked was English music,” says Eitzel. [Guitarist] “Vudi was a huge Echo [And The Bunnymen] fan, I was Nick Drake and Joy Division, and Danny [Pearson, bass] was more Carter Family and straight-up country and Neil Young. I’m not sure where Tom [Mallon] was.” Communications between Eitzel and drummer/producer Mallon broke down after Mallon left AMC, taking the copyright of their first four albums with him. Eitzel remains bemused by the record’s unavailability, but his assessment of Mallon’s contribution to it is generous. “Mallon controlled everything. This was before computers – we were recording on pretty rudimentary gear, and he did a great job. He taught me how to sing in the studio. He made me sing more in tune, he made me sing quieter. It was actually really important to me.” Eitzel still plays several songs from California in his live set, notably the melancholy “Western Sky” and the disappointed love song “Firefly”. He reprised the Drake-ish “Last Harbor” on his last European tour. “I was ripping off Nick Drake: his guitar playing, but more just his feeling. He’s singing from the horizon that’s always fading. There’s always that kind of beauty.” Happily, Mallon plans to re-release those four AMC albums before the end of the year and, having listened afresh to California, considers it to be “fantastic. It siphons all the air out of the room.” Eitzel believes securing a reissue is more important than the historic rifts within the band. “The fractious stuff doesn’t matter to me. Mallon is a pretty honest gentleman, actually. He’s a good person. All I want is the record out.” ALASTAIR McKAY EXPECT TO PAY: £25 if you just can’t wait 25 THE JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MU MU 1987 (What The Fuck’s Going On?) THE SOUND OF MU(SIC), 1987 Considering the notoriety they’d later achieve as the KLF, it’s sometimes easy to forget the significance of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty’s thrillingly deviant assaults on the British music industry as The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu. But everything for which they became infamous in the 1990s – the provocative art statements, establishment baiting and wilful destruction of their back catalogue – can be found in their earliest collaboration, The JAMs. For Drummond – a former A&R man and one-time manager of Echo And The Bunnymen – and Cauty, guitarist with one of Drummond’s signings, Brilliant, their plan was revolutionary. Nothing less, it seemed, than to make an album that pillaged the entire continuum of rock’n’roll, using sampling technology to recontextualise popular music. “We wanted to make an album that in some way would be a British response to what hip hop artists were doing in the States,” explains Drummond today. “It gained instant infamy status due to our wholesale use of sampling. None of which we had sought to get permission. We were artists and artists have the right to use whatever they can lay their hands on to make their art – that was our rationale.” Released in June, 1987… found Drummond and Cauty – under their aliases King Boy D and Rockman Rock – sampling everything from the Sex Pistols to Scott Walker, an edition of Top Of The Pops and, most famously, ABBA, on “The Queen And I”. It was the Swedes who proved to be the JAMs’ undoing. “ABBA’s publishers took exception and requested that we destroy all copies of our album immediately, or they would take legal action against us,” Drummond recalls. “Jimmy and I thought we should sit down with Benny and Björn and have a discussion artist to artist…” So Drummond and Cauty drove to ABBA’s Polar Studios in Stockholm, carrying with them what they claimed to be the album’s remaining stock, plus a gold disc of 1987… to present to the band. Failing to find ABBA in residence, they instead presented the gold disc to a blonde prostitute they pretended was band member Agnetha Fältskog “fallen on hard times” before heading back to London – stopping to burn the records in a field outside Gothenberg around dawn. “I just wished it had been a massive bonfire – hundreds of thousands of our records all going up in flames,” sighs Drummond. “Instead we just had a couple of boxes with us and even then some of them we forgot about. We didn’t discover that last box until we were back on the ferry home. We had to throw them off the back. Burial at sea is never as good as proper funeral pyre. The Vikings had the right idea by combining the both.” But this wasn’t the last of 1987... In October, Drummond and Cauty issued 1987 (The JAMs Edits) with the offending samples removed, replaced by great tracts of silence, interrupted by sudden bursts of beats or Drummond’s acerbic social commentary. The only sample remaining from the original was The Fall’s “Totally Wired”. “We never thought about even attempting to get permission,” adds Drummond. “Nowadays there is a whole section of the industry based on dealing with the ‘clearance’ of samples. Back then they would have just said no…” MICHAEL BONNER 24 ALEX CHILTON Bach’s Bottom LINE RECORDS, 1981; RAZOR & TIE, 1993 (CD) The creepy remakes and covers that comprise Bach’s Bottom were cut in Memphis’ Ardent Studios in autumn ’75, which might make this set look like a candidate for the great, lost fourth Big Star LP. It’s not: Chilton never fully endorsed producer Jon Tiven’s decision to release the sessions, yet when four songs filtered into the punk underground via a 1977 Ork Records EP, listeners found the results quite punk rock. Acrimony between Tiven and Chilton ensured that Bach’s Bottom has a complex history: that Ork EP was succeeded in 1981 by a German vinyl issue, and then by 1993’s expanded CD version. While the CD added, crucially, Chilton’s finest post-Big Star single, “Bangkok”, it also contained some controversial, later overdubs by Tiven himself. EXPECT TO PAY: Depends on the version. £10-20, maybe? 23 DAVID STOUGHTON Transformer ELEKTRA, 1968 A Harvard mathematician, Stoughton played the Boston folk circuit in the early 1960s before coming under the spell of John Cage’s musique concrète. While certain songs – “The Sun Comes Up Each Day”, say – are musically reminiscent of Tim Buckley at his most extreme, Transformer also contained experimental sound collages. Never on CD, vinyl copies are becoming scarcer – but Transformer is scheduled for digital re-release in the summer ahead of Elektra’s 60th anniversary. EXPECT TO PAY: £15, if you find one! 22 JEAN RITCHIE None But One SIRE, 1977 Ritchie’s Singing The Traditional Songs Of Her Kentucky Mountain Family (1952) was Elektra’s first folk album, sung in the purest of voices, accompanying herself on a dulcimer. Ritchie would record for all the key NY folk labels before taking a break in the late ’60s. With None But One, she resurfaced, perhaps surprisingly, on Sire. She adheres to the expected traditional songs and instrumentation – albeit in a more ensemble setting with family and friends like Eric Weissberg adding additional guitars, mandolins, even drums. Mary Travers, Susan Reed and Janis Ian add their voices – “Wondrous Love” a wonderful choral piece. Only discontinued on CD last year – grab one while you can. EXPECT TO PAY: £15 21 NEW KINGDOM Paradise Don’t Come Cheap GEE STREET, 1996 Entire generations have grown up in the shadow of gangsta rap, blithe to the existence of other forms. It’s a crime, then, that this low-slung classic is now available only on Japanese import. For their ominous second LP, New Yorkers Nosaj and Sebastian took hip hop out of the city and dragged it into the dusty Southwestern hinterlands, adding opiated brass, wah-pedalling guitars and the kind of growled flows that made Ol’ Dirty Bastard sound lucid. Cypress Hill and their dope-addled Spanglish are, perhaps, one contextual touchstone; Jimi Hendrix gets a namecheck. But the heaviosity of their breaks and breadth of New Kingdom’s fear and loathing still stuns, 14 years later. A work of urban outsider art, too long neglected. EXPECT TO PAY: Paradise might not come cheap, but this will, at £5… 20 JIMMY PAGE Death Wish II – Original Soundtrack SWAN SONG, 1982 In the lacuna following John Bonham’s death, the Zep guitarist was asked by his Buckinghamshire neighbour Michael Winner to soundtrack the second of his new shoot-em-up franchise starring Charles Bronson. Assembling a motley bunch of British rock survivors – Dave Mattacks, ex-Pretty Thing Gordon Edwards and Chris Farlowe, plus, improbably, the GLC Orchestra – and spanking a gleaming new Roland guitar synth, Page hunkered down in secret, delivering a set of cues that “hit the button totally”, according to Winner. Tracks vary from scudding Houses Of The Holy power-rock (“City Sirens”), testicular riffology (“Jam Sandwich”, “Hypnotizing Ways”), orchestral dissonance (“Hot Rats And Photostats”). Apart from a long-gone late ’90s import, this feverishly composed Zeppelin footnote has never been reissued. EXPECT TO PAY: £20, ballpark 19 VIRGINIA ASTLEY From Gardens Where We Feel Secure HAPPY VALLEY, 1983; ROUGH TRADE, 2003 (CD) Daughter of the composer of TV’s The Saint theme, and Pete Townshend’s sister-in-law, Virginia Astley intended her pastoral ambient suite to evoke the passage of a timeless English summer day. Over gentle, minimalistic drifts of piano, string quartet and woodwinds, she and co-producer Russell Webb (The Skids) spliced field recordings taken from the Oxfordshire countryside: distant church bells, a creaking swing, ticking clocks, plashing oars, bleating livestock and twittering skylarks. Originally issued on Astley’s own Happy Valley via Rough Trade, Geoff Travis’ operation finally put out a CD in 2003; now deleted, it, too, has become highly collectable. EXPECT TO PAY: £40 should do it 18 XTC Apple Venus Vol 1 COOKING VINYL, 1999 An example of how relatively new records can slip through the cracks, Apple Venus and its partner piece, 2000’s Wasp Star – as well as their boxset incarnation Apple Box – are presently only available second-hand. On first release, this was XTC’s first material after the band broke free of their contract with Virgin, and represented the sound of Andy Partridge’s new-found creative freedom, mixing skewed McCartney pop with daintily avant-garde orchestration and devil-in-the-detail lyrics about harvest festivals. The rights have reverted to Partridge, but it seems there is a pretty simple reason why it’s not in print. “I think it will be available again,” a source tells us, “but it was pretty expensive to do…” Meanwhile, all of XTC’s Virgin-era catalogue – even offshoot psych project The Dukes Of Stratosphear – is freely available, an irony Partridge would probably appreciate. EXPECT TO PAY: £5 for the CD, £30 for vinyl, and £50 for the lovely Apple Box 17 THE WHO Join Together VIRGIN, 1990 This odd live double caught The Who in one of its stranger incarnations, trundling across America in 1989. Daltrey, Entwistle and Townshend are bolstered by Deep End, the latter’s back-up troupe for his proposed Iron Man tour, which instead morphed into a Who reunion trek. Hence two drummers, a brass section and full choir. Townshend, apparently suffering from tinnitus, seemed content to play acoustic, with youngster Steve Bolton on lead. Disc one is all Tommy, but disc two is the keeper, with horn-sodden versions of “Love Reign O’er Me”, “Join Together” and the little-heard “Trick Of The Light”. The album peaked at 188 in the US and barely scraped the Top 60 over here. Which, with another 10 live LPs since, hardly makes its reissue a top priority. EXPECT TO PAY: £20 for the CD, the vinyl has sold for double Next: 16-1

Previously: 50-35, 34-17 16 THE UNDISPUTED TRUTH The Undisputed Truth GORDY, 1971 Norman Whitfield was one of Motown’s most successful producers, working on hits for Marvin Gaye, Edwin Starr and, particularly, The Temptations. But it was with his own group, The Undisputed Truth, fronted by Motown backing singers Billie Rae Calvin and Brenda Joyce, that Whitfield embarked on far more radical experiments into psych soul and political commentary. Whitfield used the Truth to expand on his own material – this hard-to-find debut included the first version of “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”, and a thunderous 11-minute take on “Ball Of Confusion” – as well as funky vamps on intriguing covers like Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone”. EXPECT TO PAY: £25 for the UK vinyl 15 PAULINE MURRAY AND THE INVISIBLE GIRLS Pauline Murray And The Invisible Girls RSO RECORDS, 1980 For anyone who knows Murray only as the voice of Penetration, this lost post-punk classic will be a revelation. Produced by Martin Hannett – The Invisible Girls was the band he put together to provide backing on several excellent records by Salford bard John Cooper Clarke – the album sees the legendary Joy Division producer at his poppiest, yet most expansive, too. Drawing on dub, Eurodisco and brittle funk, Hannett crafted a troubled wall of artpop, awash in keyboards, to frame Murray’s wonderfully naïve and breathy vocals –soaring lead single, “Dream Sequence 1”, deserved to be a massive hit. With sublime guitar from The Durutti Column’s Vini Reilly and a Peter Saville sleeve, it’s also a Factory record in all but name – subsequent single “Searching For Heaven” featured Joy Division/ New Order’s Bernard Sumner. EXPECT TO PAY: Still good value at £50 14 PAUL QUINN & THE INDEPENDENT GROUP The Phantoms & The Archetypes POSTCARD, 1992 With a voice pitched somewhere between Bowie’s Thin White Soul and Scott Walker’s deepest melancholy, Quinn ranks alongside The Associates’ Billy Mackenzie as one of the most extraordinary singers out of Scotland. A schoolfriend of Edwyn Collins and associate of Alan Horne’s original Postcard label, Horne’s plans to make him a star on his subsequent Swamplands label ran aground in disputes with owners London Records. Indeed, this album was a major reason behind Horne’s unexpected decision to resurrect Postcard in 1992. Produced by Collins, and featuring original Orange Juicer James Kirk’s guitar genius, Quinn’s voice wandered through dark shadows of soul, pop and country on ballads like “Punk Rock Hotel” and exquisitely desolate covers including The Carpenters’ “Superstar”. A film noir of a record, this has never been re-released, possibly because Horne reckons the world simply doesn’t deserve it. EXPECT TO PAY: £40 if you’re lucky 13 LAL & MIKE WATERSON Bright Phoebus LEADER, 1972 Responding to new directions in folk-rock, the two Waterson siblings hired folk luminaries Martin Carthy, Maddy Prior, Ashley Hutchings, Tim Hart and Dave Mattacks for this chamber folk with an uncanny twist – child sacrifice in “The Scarecrow”, or “Winifer Odd”, smashed by a car while picking up a lucky star from the road. From intimate guitar/voice arrangements to the Nick Drake strings of “Never The Same” and the country rock of “The Magical Man”, the tracks are unpredictable as English weather. Shadows and sunny intervals dominate the lyrics, and the clouds part spectacularly for the closing “Bright Phoebus”, where the sun beams down a spiritual awakening. Aside from a shoddy CD-R from CM Distribution in 2000, this has suffered the same fate as the rest of the Leader/Trailer catalogue (see Dave & Toni Arthur, No 32). EXPECT TO PAY: £30, with a bit of luck 12 T-BONE BURNETT Truth Decay CHRYSALIS, 1980; DEMON , 1997 (CD) T-Bone Burnett was unknown before Dylan recruited him for 1975’s Rolling Thunder Revue, where he met David Mansfield and Steven Soles, with whom he subsequently formed The Alpha Band and recorded three hugely idiosyncratic albums that combined rock, jazz, country, blues, folk and more. Truth Decay was his first solo album and returned him to the roots music he grew up with in Texas and with which he has since become indelibly associated as an award-winning producer. What Truth Decay shared with The Alpha Band was an inclination on songs like “Quicksand”, “Boomerang” and “House Of Mirrors” towards the surreal, satirical and unsettling, clever juxtapositions of off-kilter humour, dark moral fables and a profound disillusionment with a materialistic world, its acidity more brilliantly rendered than any of the infrequent solo albums that followed. EXPECT TO PAY: A tenner for the vinyl, much, much more if you find it on CD 11 VARIOUS ARTISTS Silver Meteor SIERRA, 1980 Subtitled ‘A Progressive Country Anthology’, this excellent set might be noteworthy solely for its brace of rootsy – and rare – 1969 cuts from The Everly Brothers. But the presence of four won’t-find-’em-anywhere-else tracks from The Byrds’ preternaturally talented guitarist Clarence White – recorded in June 1973, just two weeks before his death – have given Silver Meteor elevated status in country rock circles. After The Byrds’ dissolution in late ’72, White secured a solo deal with Warners, and set about pioneering a startling brand of bluegrass and rock with fiddler Byron Berline, guitarist Herb Pederson and mandolin ace (and brother) Roland White. The results – including “Why You Been Gone So Long” with Ry Cooder on slide – are consistently astonishing, and hint all-too-briefly at the directions ’70s country might have taken. EXPECT TO PAY: £30, including shipping – it’s a US-only release 10 JOHN CALE Music For A New Society ZE/ISLAND, 1982; RHINO, 1994 (CD) Even by the frequently disturbing standards of Cale’s many previous excursions into territories of dread and disconsolation, Music For A New Society was daunting, a blasted requiem for an unravelling world and the victims of insane times. It is, in many ways, Cale’s masterpiece. That Music For A New Society is not currently in catalogue is inexplicable. Rhino US licensed the album from Cale, but the term of that licence expired in 2004. Imagine logging onto Amazon to order Blood On The Tracks or Astral Weeks for someone who’d never heard them and discovering they’d been deleted without explanation. You’d be stupefied. Another equivalent would be finding out that someone had taken a tin of whitewash and a very big brush to Picasso’s Guernica, making it disappear beneath a layer of blank undercoat. His previous album, 1981’s Honi Soit, itself now only available as a download, had been a loud, abrasive essay in apocalyptic paranoia, full of squalling guitars and a turbulent sonic mayhem that would be replaced on Music For A New Society by a kind of symphonic minimalism. With the exception of “Changes Made”, which featured a full band, with Blue Öyster Cult’s Allen Lanier on lead guitar, the songs on the album – most of them improvised in the studio – featured not much more than Cale’s handsome Baptist tenor set against brutal reductions of the kind of arrangements he had provided 14 years earlier for Nico’s The Marble Index. There were moments of startling poignancy, among them the exquisite “Broken Bird” and “Chinese Envoy”, and a wracked new version of “I Keep A Close Watch”, an anguished ballad from 1975’s Helen Of Troy. Elsewhere, darkness and violence loomed in livid tandem. “Taking Your Life In Your Hands” and the hugely unsettling “If You Were Still Around” starkly explored three of Cale’s favourite themes: nostalgia, murder and madness. But the album’s grim centrepiece was the long, agonised “Sanities” (originally titled “Sanctus”, but mistakenly re-titled on the album sleeve), on which over an aloof, majestic keyboard drone and fragmenting percussion, Cale’s possessed narration evoked disaster on all fronts, ending with an ominous prediction of terrible things to come, the bleak promise of “a stronger world, a stronger loving world. . . to die in.” ALLAN JONES 9 BIG BLACK Atomizer HOMESTEAD 1986; TOUCH & GO, 1992 (CD) Seething with disgust (at human weakness and perversity) and pummelled by a badass drum machine (succinctly credited as roland: roland), Big Black’s debut took the rage of hardcore punk and fused it with the harsh mechanics of the electronic age. In passing, it established the uncompromising nature of mainman Steve Albini, who’s gone on to engineer more records than any sane human should. Atomizer’s been unavailable for a while because Touch & Go ran out of stock, and Albini and co took the opportunity to remaster it (along with a number of other BB titles). “All of them should be available relatively soon. We intend to keep everything available forever,” Albini says. EXPECT TO PAY: £15 for the vinyl 8 SANDY DENNY & THE STRAWBS All Our Own Work HALLMARK, 1973 The offensively cheap artwork fair screams “cash-in”, and indeed this budget release was designed to capitalise on fan interest. Not in the wonderful Denny, though, but in The Strawbs, who in ’73 were high in the charts with “Part Of The Union”. These tracks were recorded in 1967 in Copenhagen (the sleevenotes erroneously state 1968), before she joined Fairport Convention, and feature the earliest version of her haunting calling card, “Who Knows Where The Time Goes”. Hallmark is not known for its reissue programme, so this seems unlikely to get a re-release soon, although Fairports producer Joe Boyd did compile some other, differently orchestrated material from the Copenhagen sessions for 1991 CD Sandy Denny And The Strawbs. But now that’s out of print, too… EXPECT TO PAY: £15. But search hard enough and it’ll turn up cheaper 7 KRAFTWERK Kraftwerk VERTIGO, 1970 One of 2009’s more disingenuous reissues was The Catalogue, a thorough-sounding Kraftwerk boxset which failed to include their first three LPs. Perhaps that early work was deemed too idiosyncratically human, with the mensch-maschine not yet fully operational and a freestyling hippy fallibility taking precedence. They remain, however, fascinating records, not least the 1970 debut, where Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter embarked on four capricious avant-jams. The heavy-weight electronics were at a putative stage: Klaus Dinger, soon to form Neu!, contributed live drums; Schneider led, jauntily, with a flute. “I’m working on the album tapes,” Hütter told Uncut last year. “It will be Kraftwerk 1 and 2, Ralf & Florian, and maybe one or two live ambient situations, whatever we find in the archive… It needs some more work, redusting and remastering.” EXPECT TO PAY: Approaching £100 6 TOM WAITS Night On Earth OST ISLAND, 1992 Jim Jarmusch’s portmanteau movie Night On Earth presents five encounters between taxi drivers and passengers, all happening in different cities around the world at the same moment. The film’s much underrated in Jarmusch’s canon, which perhaps helps explain why Waits’ soundtrack – at the time, his first new material in five years – has fallen off the radar. It’s mostly instrumental, a main theme evolving as a series of woozy, junky mood pieces designed to reflect the geographical settings of each story, but which are nevertheless all firmly located in Waits’ boneyard carnival. Among the tunes are three vocal turns, “The Other Side Of The World” and two readings of “Back In The Good Old World”. First taken as a rollicking gypsy stomp, Waits’ closing reprise of the song as an aching waltz ranks among his most heartbreaking. EXPECT TO PAY: Up to about £50. Even the cassette is worth a tenner… 5 JONATHAN RICHMAN AND THE MODERN LOVERS It’s Time For… ROUGH TRADE, 1986 When The Modern Lovers Mark II (or III) broke up at the end of the ’70s, Richman laid low for several years, before returning with a trio of albums that showed him fully reinvigorated: Jonathan Sings! (1983), Rockin’ And Romance (1985) and It’s Time For… All three are long out of print; Richman apparently holds them all in low regard. Produced, like its predecessor, with the lightest of touches by Andy Paley, the last is the pick of the bunch. Showcasing Richman’s love of early rock’n’roll and doo-wop, it’s nostalgic without being sentimental, as warm and true as an old valve amplifier. Opener “It’s You” is plausibly one of the ’80s’ most gorgeous recordings; “Corner Store” a paean to vanishing times to rank with his seminal “Old World”; “When I Dance” is the singer at his most magical. EXPECT TO PAY: A high-end £50 4 THE BEATLES The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl PARLOPHONE, 1977 Astonishing to think that, save some stuff on the Anthologies, there is no Beatles live material available on CD. And not just because this was a band that famously forged themselves on the live circuit – this is The Beatles, after all, the biggest cash cow in music history. Things never seem to go smoothly with the Fabs’ catalogue, though, and the long and winding story of the original release of these recordings is fascinating, involving abortive attempts by Phil Spector, much dust-gathering in Capitol’s vaults, and, finally, a heroic salvage job by George Martin. While Martin’s selection (from two shows in August ’64 and August ’65) is scarcely a hi-fi listening experience, it’s still revelatory. Clearly audible among the soprano screams and general hysteria are 13 raw, R’n’B-weighted tracks – including a searing “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” – that proved what a spookily tight, breathlessly exciting live act they could be. Great between-song patter, as well… EXPECT TO PAY: £10. It did hit No 1! 3 VAN MORRISON St Dominic’s Preview WARNER BROS, 1972; POLYDOR, 1997 (CD) Morrison had posed with then-wife Janet Planet for the cover of 1971’s bucolic Tupelo Honey. By this follow-up, the marriage was deteriorating, and he sounded more magnificently restless than in years. While continuing the mixture of radio-friendly R’n’B (the belting “Jackie Wilson Said”) and jazzy Celtic folk-rock (“Gypsy”) that had characterised recent albums, St Dominic’s… saw Morrison also reach back toward the beat visionary ground of Astral Weeks on questing epics “Listen To The Lion” and “Almost Independence Day”. Morrison here dubbed his sound “Caledonian Soul” and on the glorious title track, you hear what he means. Warners started to reissue their Morrison titles in 2008, but the project seems to have stalled. In a 2009 Q&A with Time magazine, Morrison, who has had issues with his old label over ownership of his back catalogue, was asked, “When will we see your out-of-print albums in stores?” His ominous response: “There are no plans right now.” EXPECT TO PAY: A reasonable £20 2 CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & THE MAGIC BAND Lick My Decals Off, Baby STRAIGHT, 1970; ENIGMA/RHINO 1989 (CD) Where do you go after Trout Mask Replica? Beefheart’s follow-up was a riot of bamboozling marimbas and jaw-dropping ensemble playing, with the rapid-fire high intellect of chess grandmasters slamming down their pieces. Like many albums released on Frank Zappa’s Straight label, Decals was released on CD in 1989, but was withdrawn for legal reasons. While copyright issues regarding Straight’s catalogue have now been resolved [see Starsailor panel, p49], allowing Rhino to re-release Decals temporarily on vinyl in 2007, other considerations make it unlikely this will emerge on CD in the foreseeable. The permission of Beefheart himself - (Don Van Vliet) is required, and his relationship with Rhino is understood to be poor. He is also ill, and one presumes a CD release of a 40-year-old LP is low on his priority list. No dialogue is currently taking place, we are told. EXPECT TO PAY: CDs change hands for £40 or so 1 NEIL YOUNG Time Fades Away REPRISE, 1973 There’s a long feature on this in Uncut 156 Next: Uncut Readers' Great Lost Albums