The Twelve Days of Gheorgemas: Day Twelve

On the twelfth day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe gave to me...

Twelve Lost Albums I Want to Hear

Eleven Months of Wisdom
Ten Things from Florence

Nine Games Worth Notice

A Moment of Rest

Seven Things for Reading

Six Old and New Musical Experiences
Five Roadsters You Can and Should Buy Right Now
FORE! An Overdue Update on LIV & the PGA Tour
Three Ways of Coping
Stories from Two...Three Strokes
And much needed hip mo-bili-ty

Day 12 is here!

Welcome one and all gheorghies to Day 12 of Gheorghemas. For the second year in a row, we’re finishing our Gmas run in January rather than, say, late March. I take that as progress.

As I posted earlier, I have moved past issuing 12 appreciations – but not the music that accompanied them. In these darker days, I appreciate even one simple word from my favorite bands that will ring the proverbial recess bell for fun and games. (Rob and Squeaker, that sentence was for you guys.) String a few words together with musical accompaniment, and I might even forget about the major morass created by one moronic ass leading this country.

So, let’s do a Whitney’s Dozen deep dive into a random subtopic in the world of music. Like really random. Please enjoy Day 12…

12 Lost, Unfinished, and Unreleased Albums of Rock History

It goes without typing that now more than ever, you can track down whatever album you want. Sure, on occasion it gets harder to do when someone goes all Neil Young on a particular platform, or when a band’s works suddenly and inexplicably vanish from a major outlet. Like, for example, the Housemartins recently getting removed from Spotify. Right when I wanted to sooth my anxieties by hearing “Anxious”! Oh, well – more room for Not-ify to do what it does.

If an album isn’t on Apple Music or Spotify or Google Play, it’s certainly on YouTube, right? Well, usually… but what if it never got released? Hmm. Then it’s a crapshoot. The game of the hunt, rare music-style, is something I engaged in for a decade and a half of tracking down the most obscure finds on compact dinosaur. And yet the game is still alive!

Over the last 60 years of rock and/or roll, there have been blue moon occasions when a highly anticipated record from a well-known act never saw the light of day. The reasons generally fell into one of these 10 categories:

1. The artists changed their minds and scrapped it
2. The label refused to release it
3. A creative control wrestling match turned it into something unrecognizable
4. Both of those
5. The tapes got damaged or destroyed
6. The tapes were stolen!
7. It never existed beyond rumor
8. It never got finished because the band imploded
9. It never got finished because the artist died
10. No one knows

Sometimes, after eons of dormancy, some musician or producer or relative or random janitor relocates and dusts off the material, and maybe just maybe that previously “lost” treasure gets the green light to reach the clamoring masses. Which is fun! Though often times that release then can’t clear the Dick Fosbury-height high jump bar of hype, and it’s a flop.

The number one such lost album in music history has to be the Beach Boys’ Smile. Riding the wave of Pet Sounds success back into the studio in 1967, Brian Wilson’s perfectionism and a host of distractions (in human and narcotic form) invaded the entire band, especially the one frustratingly labeled “genius.” Kablooey. After decades of universal lament, Brian and friends eventually cobbled together what may have been as close to a definitive version as can be created from old tapes and faded memories, and it was mass-released in 2004. Hype 1, Smile 0, though it’s a pleasant listen most of the way through.

Other famously “lost” albums that have been released over the past decade or two:

• The Beatles, Get Back (original version)
• Prince, The Black Album
• Marvin Gaye, You're The Man
• David Bowie, The Gouster
• David Bowie, Toy
• Buckingham Nicks, Buckingham Nicks
• The Stone Roses, Garage Flower
• The Velvet Underground, 1969
• Neil Young, Hitchhiker
• Neil Young, Chrome Dreams
• Neil Young, Homegrown

[Neil Young nearly warrants an entire post. It’s actually really cool the way he kept hours and hours (more like months and years) of old recordings for decades. You could argue that his issuing of these long-lost archival albums (some of which clearly overlap in content) is commercial and cash-grabby… and then you’d think about it for 5 seconds and realize who you’re talking about and how ridiculous that notion is.]

Oh! And one more!

• Guns N' Roses, Chinese Democracy

Not really quite the same, but worth a chuckle as I remember the GTB take on that debacle. 

There are too many classic lost, unfinished, and unreleased albums in rock history to compile an exhaustive list, but a few you might have heard of: 

• The Who, Lifehouse (insane concept album follow-up to Tommy)
• The Beatles, Carnival of Light
• Paul McCartney, Hot Hitz / Cold Cuts
• Joy Division, Warsaw (full release)
• Dr. Dre, Detox
• The Replacements’ reunion album
• A number of lost Beck albums
• Ryan Adams, 48 Hours
• Misfits, 12 Hits from Hell
• Nirvana, Sheep
• Zack De La Rocha’s solo debut
• Soundgarden’s final album
• Red Hot Chili Peppers’ shelved album after By the Way
• Mick Jagger and the Red Devils' blues albums
• Noel Gallagher with Amorphous Androgynous

And Beastie Boys, Hot Sauce Committee Part 1. Just kidding. And so were they. Part 2 was a joke, a la Surf II.

Bits and pieces may have come out here and there, but a proper issue from the artists has not. Tragic, in a few cases. Curious in others. Forgiving in some.

Okay, here we go now, on to the Big 12.

1. Bruce Springsteen, Electric Nebraska (1982)
Leading off with a bang. Yes, I do indeed love the stripped-down, four-track, just-Bruce-and-some-pretty-frickin’-dark-thoughts version with which he began and finished the Nebraska album creation cycle. I never did really love it until one night a few years back when I was down at the Martha Wood Cottage all alone. I popped it on after a handful of cold chilly-pops when the ocean could be heard but not seen. Stared out into the sandy darkness and soaked it in. Ran that sucker back a few times. It’s something.

But man, I’d still love to hear what the E Streeters did with it. Bruce made the call to go with the demo tapes as Nebraska, and he’s made the continuous call to keep those sessions under wraps since. Not saying it’d be better. But after 40 years, I just want to hear it. Max says the band did all the tracks and “it was killing.” Let’s find out.

Closest You Can Get: “Atlantic City” from Live in New York City is an amped up version. Still not quite there.

2. John Fogerty, Hoodoo (1976)
Springsteen stubbornly keeping that one album on the shelf goes against type for him. On the other end of the spectrum is John Fogerty. That dude is irascible. He recorded his third solo album (following an ugly CCR breakup) and released a couple of singles… then decided to have the label destroy all the tapes. Cue the odd duck at the bar in Erin Brockovich.

Erin Brockovich (YouTube): You were told to destroy those?
Charles Embry (Asylum Records employee): That's right… Of course, as it turns out, I wasn't a very good employee.

So we have some bootlegs out there, many in old-school bootleg quality. But those singles are worth a listen. I’m an easy mark; Fogerty’s voice is truly singular to my ears and I can never get enough. I’d love a clean shot at the rest of Hoodoo.

Closest You Can Get: The actually released singles, one of which is below.

3. Prince, Dream Factory (1986)
Speaking of stubborn… Back in the late 70’s, Steely Dan was known for three things, and one of those was studio perfectionism. In the mid-80’s, the Purple One was precisely the same way. Prince was also known as the most prolific of two pastimes, writing tremendous funky tunes and getting delirious with the era’s sexist M.F.’s. He’s shelved more killer tracks than many Top 40 hitmakers could possibly create.

To wit, Dream Factory. Prince’s time with and tolerance for the Revolution were fading in 1986. They put this album on tape but not on wax yet (industry jargon). The label said, “We’re set to pop here, honey.” Prince said, “Uhhhh... hang on, sloopy.” Back into the studio, a little of this, a little of that, rework, rewrite, re-record, scrap this, toss that, dash of pepper, all new album of different songs with different people, mostly himself, call it Sign O’ the Times. Here ya go. Platinum seller. That all happened in a preposterously short period of time. Dayummmn. And that was the end of the Dream… Factory.

Closest You Can Get: a “fan-edit” (what does that mean, beyond the self-evident???) bootleg release gets close, if you accept that their selected track listing and order plus (minus) diminished sound quality are part of it. Check it out here.

4. Marvin Gaye, Love Man (1979)
Marvin Gaye, also a wealth of talent not afraid to shelve an album. See You’re the Man, referenced above, or the sweet slow jam long-play called Vulnerable, a 1977 recording that made its way to us long after he had left us.

So the late 1970’s were a tough time for The Prince of Soul, thanks to his big D (divorce, you lout), his love for Charlie, and the fiscal fallout that we know comes with both of those. His move further from his pure Motown beginnings into early 70’s soul, then funk, and ultimately disco tracks led him to record a full album of such material called Love Man. And then ultimately ditch it. He redid a few of the tracks for In Our Lifetime?, which hit the streets in 1981. He got his life together by ’82 for Sexual Healing, and then it all got taken away from him. Really shitty.

Closest You Can Get: Dig it. The super disco breakin' lead single from Love Man, "Ego Tripping Out." Its flopitude made him abandon the rest of the record. Missing from this version below is the spoken lines at the start, an early (to my ears) musical inclusion of the term “homeboy.”

5. Green Day, Cigarettes And Valentines (2003)
Sometimes the problem isn’t the artist or label’s whimsy – it’s the damn security guard! In 2003, Green Day was putting the finishing touches on their 7th album (4th major label), a record called Cigarettes and Valentines. 

And then… just like Keyser Soze… just like that… it’s gone. Swiped from the studio.

According to Billie Joe:

“I’ve never heard that ever happening to anybody. It was a bummer, for sure. We put a lot of work into it, but at the same time, it was a blessing. We were like, ‘Let’s just start from scratch. Let’s try this over again.’ Maybe it’s just a sign that maybe we made a crappy record and we should make a better one.”

And they did. American Idiot. Super strong record.

Closest You Can Get: Some demos are out there, and the song “Homecoming” was the lone carryover to American Idiot.

6. Jimi Hendrix, Black Gold (1970)
Let’s take a step into the weird, shall we? As gifted as they came, Jimi had already hit it big thrice over in the studio and worldwide on the stage by 1970. He was having fun. His creative contributions to come were tragically cut short when he died in September. You can listen to “Night Bird Flying” to get a sense of it, but what you’d miss is his stuff that transcended the blues and rock. Like a bunch of tunes he wrote and demoed for something he called Black Gold.

“It's mostly cartoon material. I make up this one cat who's funny. He goes through all these strange scenes. You could put it to music, I guess." --Jimi Hendrix

Cartoon material? Intriguing. Well, the tapes were lost, naturally, and found, supposedly, 20 years later by Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell. But never released. If the one released song that purportedly came from this work is any indication, it’s far less weird and interesting than Jimi described. As teasers go… this was not one. Hoping the real thing was too bizarre for commercial success. And that we hear it anyway.

Closest You Can Get: That one released song... Suddenly November Morning. No cartoons. Not funny.

7. Weezer, Songs from the Black Hole (1996)
This one’s been talked about quite a bit, if only because Weezer gets talked about quite a bit, even on SNL. Case in point, Weezerpedia! (Whitneypedia was around first... I think.) Here is Weezerpedia's entry on Songs from the Black Hole, the original slate of songs to follow up their 1994 debut (blue) album. It was conceived as a space rock opera. Yep. Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo:

"There's this crew - three guys and two girls and a mechanoid - that are on this mission in space to rescue somebody, or something. The whole thing was really an analogy for taking off, going out on the road and up the charts with a rock band, which is what was happening to me at the time I was writing this and feeling like I was lost in space."

So, Star Wars. Look, here's what we know: Rivers Cuomo is a brainy guy, and the overwhelming life that young success afforded/forced on him was way too much. He also had surgery in 1995 "to correct a congenital condition that caused his left leg to be 2 inches shorter than his right. The surgery involved breaking his femur and fitting it with a metal brace." Yipes. All that, and he was enrolled at Harvard.

So, as Crash Davis said, we're dealing with a lot of shit. So a 17-song demo about robots and rescues in space is about the mildest mental meltdown Cuomo could've had. Eventually, though, he bagged the idea and wrote new or reworked SftBH songs to create Pinkerton in 1996... which, Dave will tell you, is their masterpiece. The Deluxe version of which has some SftBH tunes. You can also find some of those demos on a latter-day solo release called Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo.

Closest You Can Get: Of all the tunes that didn't cross over into Pinkerton, the one I enjoy most does not, oddly, feature Cuomo on lead vox. Rachel Haden, the singer from a band called That Dog, slides in perfectly on the very Weezer track "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams."

 

8. Pink Floyd, Household Objects (1974)

You want something even weirder? You got it. Talk about going off the deep end after a big success. Pink Floyd has always worked to incorporate weird, unorthodox, non-instrument sounds into their music. Along the way, Roger Waters led the charge to make an entire album minus the instruments and exclusively featuring... yes, the title spoiled it... household objects. That would apparently consist of items such as appliances, hand mixers, rubber bands stretched between two tables, etc. They had toyed with it before, but after the sonic boom of Dark Side of the Moon in '73... it was a go.

Well, not really. Apparently there is only so much you can do without a guitar, or keys, or any musical instruments. Even for those creative guys. Household Objects was abandoned. 

Closest You Can Get: One track, "Wine Glasses," was finished (I guess?). Running fingers around the rims of wine glasses has always been fun. Who knew it could be prog-rock? Floyd fans will recognize it as having been later adapted into the intro for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond." How fitting that that looney song was a tip of the cap to madcap Syd Barrett.

9. Madness, Unreleased Madness album (1987)

We haven't had a reason #8 yet! (It never got finished because the band imploded.) Well, here we go. In 1986, Madness were coming off a long world tour and an album (Mad Not Mad, 1985) that both reviewed and sold poorly. They were just three years from the international megahit "Our House" and a slew of tunes that did great abroad. Doesn't matter. As another Brit once penned (Oscar Wilde, perhaps?), "Fame, fame, fatal fame. It can play hideous tricks on the brain." So... exhausted and bereft of winning ideas, the nutty boys nonetheless trudged back into the studio, sketched out 11 tracks, and laid down a pair of cuts.

What happened next? Just as they were set to announce the album and its track listing in the fanzine, they busted up! Called it quits. Ska-daddled. Skattered. Skatastrophically. (Ska bands love the wordplay.) Madness went out UB40-style. No, not brother against brother like the Campbells. Instead, four of the seven went one way (forming the very different-sounding band The Madness) and the other three went a different way. Like in UB40's divide, those bands didn't go very far. 

A re-released old Madness song hitting the charts in '91 was enough of an emotional reminder of what was important in life to these crazy kids from Camden Town: money. (I'm sure there was the spirit of camaraderie in there, too.) The umpteen (like way too many) Madness compilation albums weren't enough, and I for one am glad that they didn't rest on those royalty laurels. They reunited in 1992 for a festival and have never looked back. To wit, and squeak, we saw them last May in Boston! (They're super fun.)

Closest You Can Get: Remember I said they laid down two cuts? (I sure hope so, it was all the way back two paragraphs ago.) Well, the lead single was this: "(Waiting for the) Ghost Train."

10. The Clash, Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg (1982)

Speaking of bands on the brink of break-up... The Only Band That Matters was about to become dark matter. Let's review:

1. The Clash forms in London from the ashes of the 101ers and other acts, taking cues from the Pistols... and then running right by them.
2. They release The Clash and Give 'Em Enough Rope in '77 and '78. Well received. Great stuff.
3. London Calling in 1979. Not much will ever beat that. Big fame.
4. Sandinista! in 1980. Whoa, dogie. Sprawling. Colossal. Experimental. Chancy. Not well received. But great stuff.

Although I will vehemently defend the crazy 3-LP "something for everyone" party train that is Sandinista!, I will also acknowledge that it's a massive aural undertaking. As such, I have trimmed the rougher edges and provided a salve for those seeking more taut rock. It's part of my Spotify "as a Single LP" series. Give it a spin:

So... that's where Joe, Mick, Paul, and Topper were in 1981. A crossroads. Mick Jones, the mastermind behind much of The Clash's best music, wanted to go further. Take the meanderings of Sandinista! and go deeper into studio wizardry with fringy instruments and a mélange of musical styles. World music in a blender. Meanwhile, Joe, the heart and soul of the band, wanted to get back to basics. He brought back Bernard Rhodes, #3 band manager/damager behind The Colonel and Malcom McLaren, to steer the ship back into safe harbors (i.e., pop charts). It was like mixing Jack Daniel's with Jose Cuervo. Don't try this.

A such, in 1981 Mick took the band to Electric Ladyland Studios in the Village (presumably where Jimi would have recorded the rest of Black Gold), where he served as producer and mixer and swami and got down with his bad self. They recorded a goodly number of tunes, many of which were Gheorghian in length (the man, not the blog, though this post emulates Mr. Mureșan.) It would be a double album called Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg. 

Oh, but then Joe's man Bernie hired Glyn Johns, he of Desperado and Slowhand and a bunch of Who records and much more. The safe bet. And that side of the gulley went in and tweaked, smoothed, cut, finessed, and neutered Mick's work. Voilà! Combat Rock. Both versions had the most popular songs, albeit in either very slightly or rather noticeably different forms. But the soul of the record was a different offering entirely. 

So Joe Strummer won. Combat Rock came out in 1982 and did exceedingly well. And not for nothin', he sacked Topper and Mick to boot. Bernie hired a few randos to replace them, but it was like having Buckethead instead of Slash. Billy Burnette instead of Lindsey Buckingham. Kenney Jones instead of Keith Moon. Anyone instead of Dave in Random Idiots. That's not the band I know. Or want. They released a since-disowned album of mostly crud and said cheerio.

Closest You Can Get: A few of the Rat Patrol tracks have popped up on box sets and other compilations here and there. But a couple of years ago, the full boat got posted on YouTube. Hallelujah. Give it a listen. Like I said, it's a sprawling, swirling, messy assortment of goodies and grime from The Only Band That Mattered.

11. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Human Highway (1974)

You might have assumed that The Clash and their Rat Patrol debacle would be the genesis for this post, but instead, it was this one. I went down a 3-month rabbit hole on this stuff, and I cannot remember exactly how. 

If there was ever a band suited to break up before they got the good stuff down, it was CSNY. How lightning rods like Croz and Neil ever co-existed in a studio, much less in a band, is a minor miracle. And don't give too much of a free pass to Nash and Stills. Sleeping with and/or dating exes, forming mini-factions (hard to do when the band is just four dudes, but boy these guys are pros at it), and generally being disagreeable about what songs go where and how they're supposed to sound. Add in success, money, fame, with the ego and expectations therein. Oh, plus piles of cocaine that resembled the salt hills in Egypt. What could go wrong?

Unlike Madness, they had a title for the record right away. Human Highway. Graham Nash still thinks that title was aces. And with the Neil title track in tow, they were on their way. In 1973, they met in Hawaii, and then at Neil's Broken Arrow Ranch in ("I've been to") Redwood. Tunes were penned and many parts were laid down. But it fell apart for reasons the quartet can't even agree on. Throughout '73 and '74 they played CSNY shows to keep the groove alive and the bank accounts full. They even played at Foreman Field in Norfolk, three blocks from where I was living!

In 1974, CSNY regrouped at multiple studios in multiple cities to record multiple songs in hope of a single album to generate from their work. Ultimately, three things happened:

1. Some really, really great music got recorded. The harmonies are exquisite, to put it in a way that my punk rock self snarls at.
2. Nobody could agree on much of anything, and they got sick of it. And each other.
3. Shit went down like people stripping certain others' vocals off a track and releasing it as a faction fragment. See The Stills-Young Band, Crosby & Nash, and of course, CSN.
4. Songs featuring all four -- truly where the magic is with these guys -- did pop up on solo records and compilations over time.

And that was that. It fell by the wayside, and everyone moved on. There never was a Human Highway album. Later in life, each member said something to the effect of "What a shame."

Closest You Can Get: Because of that item #4 there, it is possible to do what these four singer-songwriter-sourpusses could not. Assemble something cohesive featuring tracks with the full foursome and call it Human Highway. 

Alas, friggin' Not-ify. A couple of tracks are not on the platform. So I have cobbled together 7 songs from these sessions that feature the whole team and added 3 YouTubes to make it a whole 10. Best I can do in these crazy times. No matter who it says the artist is, these tracks have the full complement in tow.

A perfect one to end on. I have been playing this stuff ad inifinitum. Pretty great sounds.

12. Random Idiots, the original session (1989)

Four young men come together topwrite and record stirring music that recounts the sagas of their lives in gritty terms with a D.I.Y. punk sensibility. No, not in London. Williamsburg, VA. The lottery that brought this quartet of friends to reside for 9 months in small rooms whose doors were 10 feet from each other was random. They were idiots. Random Idiots was born. 

One night in '89, one bottle of bottom-shelf vodka down, the band began to ink some lyrics. Seems they messed up the order of that. They regrouped. Mo Lester and Death teamed up for a handful of compositions formally attributed to Lester-Pellicane. This was the backbone of what would be their debut album: Bloodfinger. Highcheese came back to the regroup with nothing, Not one word. Doug E. Fish came back with a song. The band came to wish he'd come back with nothing.

The seeds that were sown that night (nothing weird, fellas) were the stuff of legend, nearly incomprehensible and yet clearly higher plane material. A cassette tape captured it all. And then... people along the hall borrowed the tape to play, and to laugh at these Random Idiots. As Idiots, there were no copies of the cassette made. Nobody took the five minutes to do the fast-record thingy everyone used to do with cassettes. 

Instead, the young manager who'd applied for and been awarded the role of Band Manager... we'll call him Obray... took the tape and played it for a friend late one night in a drunken haze. Here's the only truly (truly) amazing part: he ended up recording his dimwitted conversation over the music... BUT you could hear BOTH the music AND the conversation AND some high-pitched shrill noise over it all.  Bizarre, but that was the high tech world of 90-minute Maxells back then.

As Idiots, they recorded a "studio" version of the songs (i.e., sober) minus Highcheese and Doug E. Fish and plus Obray on backup vox: seems he got a promotion for his idiocy, fittingly enough.

We will never get back the recording of the original magic. I mean, Mo and Death have been playing together off and on for 36 years now, so it must really have been something. But we can imagine it...

Closest You Can Get: A few of Random Idiots' songs' masters were transferred to mp3 sometime in the late 1990's/early 2000's. The re-record of Bloodfinger is digitally available. And the compilation album The Best of Random Idiots / The Worst of Random Idiots 1989-1999 contained one tune salvaged from Obray's trashing and the dumb-assed re-record over the originals. It's below, and uh... it's rough. You can't say you weren't forewarned. It's the lone Doug E. Fish contribution. 

Les Coole & The Cukes · Random Idiots - I'm a Glom

In 2025, the original cassette was rediscovered by yours truly. I can only listen to it on a Walkman I still happen to have, pack rat that I am. Right now I am listening to the conversation between Obray and a lunchbox about my girlfriends. It's worse than the music playing beside it on the recording. I'm still fascinated at how this could have happened, technologically speaking. Stay tuned for digitizing. 

*  *  *  *  *

May what is lost be found someday, and may what is found live up to the longing hype that came before it. Happy listening, and happy trails on the human highway.

Well there you have it -- the end of the list, and the end of Gheorghemas. Enjoy the rest of this holiday season (Gheorghemas lasts until midnight of the day Day 12 goes up). As always, I thank the gheorghies for allowing me to close out the season every year, and for their patience to wait for it, even when it's overlong and yet underwhelming in its arrival. 

Cheers!