The Squire Presents

When Fleetwood Mac started in 1967, they were a British Blues band that ended the decade outselling The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. After numerous line up changes and relocating to the USA, the band released ‘Rumours’, one of the greatest and biggest selling albums of all time. With an album, how do you follow it up. Lindsey Buckingham, the man who pretty much kept the sessions for Rumours going even with a mountain of cocaine and the collapse of the inter band relationships trying to get in the way, through that ‘Tusk’ should be competing with the New Wave acts dominating the charts at the time. ‘Tusk’ sold well, but nowhere near a much as ‘Rumours’. 

Then there was ‘Mirage’, the forgotten album from the classic Buckingham/Nicks era of the band. This album did something ‘Tusk’ and ‘Tango In the Night’ did not, which was to make Number 1 in the USA but in terms of singles, none really cut it in either the US or UK charts. Well, ‘Hold Me’ made the top 5 in the US but that was about it. Listening to the  ‘Mirage’ album though, it could be argued that the band members who wrote the songs were not producing their best work for the band at this time. Stevie Nicks has realised ‘Bella Donna’, her first solo, which had reached Number 1 on the US Billboard chart and was very successful in other territories as well. 

Lindsey Buckingham had also release this first solo album in the shape of ‘Law & Order’ which was not in any way shape or form as successful as Stevie Nicks. Mirage came out a year later and then there was five year gap before the next Mac album, ‘Tango In The Night’. In-between ‘Mirage’ in 1982 and ‘Tango In The Night’ in 1987, each of the band songs writer released a solo album. In fact, ‘Tango In the Night’ started life as a Lindsay Buckingham solo album until he was convinced otherwise, but what would have happened if the band had decided to have release another record in 1985 instead of the solo albums. Well, here is an attempt at answering that question.   

Side A

1. Go Insane – Go Insane
2. Who’s Dreaming The Dream – Christine McVie
3. Gate & Garden – The Wild Heart
4. I’m the One – Christine McVie
5. Stand Back – Stevie Nicks
6. Slow Dancing – Go Insane

Side B

1. Loving Cup – Go Insane
2. Nothing Ever Changes – The Wild Heart
3. The Smile I Live For – Christine McVie
4. Bang The Drum – Go Insane
5. Beauty & The Beast – The Wild Heart

B-Sides

1. Enchanted – The Wild Heart
2. Nightbird – The Wild Heart
3. Ask Anybody – Christine McVie
4. D.W. Suite – Go Insane

I thought that being democratic with each of the three song writers receiving four songs each, taking the total songs on the record to 12. However, unless we did what Dire Straits did at the time which was was to do some editing here and there so that the album would have a different run time on vinyl and CD, then this was not going to happen. The songs are quite long apart from Stevie Nicks, who only seems that have one way of writing songs. Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham produced records that did not sound as though they would fit on the Mac album. Anyway, I digress. McVie would only have three songs on this record with Buckingham and Nicks having four each. 

I may have been critical of Stevie Nicks, but when putting this album together, her songs were the most commercial and are arguably the best ones on this record. Her album, ‘The Wild Heart’ is pretty good and she had so much material knocking about that she was able to release another album in 1985, which was called ‘Rock A Little’. As albums go, I feel that this would have been a stronger collection than ‘Mirage’, but still not up there with the best albums this line up produced. 

This record was geared to a the length of a vinyl LP, so there were a number of good songs left over. I felt that it would have been a shame to lose them so in this time line, these would have been used a B-Sides. The Stevie Nicks songs, like those used on the main album are the strongest here. If this had been, I am sure that Nicks would have been rather annoyed that she had produced so many quality songs that were not allowed to be on the parent album. I can hear her arguing with Buckingham about the inclusion of Nightbird, which is a good song. However, I can hear Buckingham saying ‘We cannot have Nightbird on the album as it sounds too much Gypsy form the last album’, which would no doubt get Nick’s back up.

By this point in music history, Mac were releasing 12” singles so there was room for some of the longer more experimental songs on the B-Sides. Whatever the A-Sides would have been, there are four B-Sides for you to enjoy. In reality, there is no way on God’s Earth that this album would have been released. It is amazing that they actually managed to get their act together to release ‘Tango In The Night’. That album came out in 1987 and in thirty four years since then, they had produced three albums of new major. To put that into context, before that, they had released fourteen albums. The band essentially finished in 1982 and ‘Tango’ aside, they have become like the Beach Boys. Releasing the odd album here and there but essentially going out on the road to perform old hit for ever increasing ticket prices. Fleetwood Mac are one of the greatest bands of all time but they have never been the same since. 

The front cover is adapted from the promo CD release of the Stevie Nicks box set compilation, Enchanted. They band name is at the base of the quill to have the effect that the person has just written it. There are no band pictures from 1984 so I went with this image instead. Fits quite nicely I think. 

After listening to the ‘Complete 1969 Recordings’ box set, especially the live recordings, it was clear that a good number of of the songs that would end up on either the second King Crimson album ‘In the Wake of Poseidon’ or the ‘McDonald & Giles’ LP were already being performed by the band. This lead me to think what a second King Crimson album would sound like if the original line up and not imploded at the end of 1969. Reasons for the split are many. Drummer Michael Giles was finding the touring life a strain, as well as not coping very well with the bands increasing popularity. Too much speed plus not enough sleep and missing home, McDonald was also missing his girlfriend. Multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald was also not coping very well with life on the road. Both Giles and Mcdonald were also not fans of where the music was going, with guitar player Robert Fripp taking the band into new and darker places. They felt that their more pastoral infused sound would be lost. Vocalist and bass player Greg Lake, was also talking to keyboard player Keith Emerson who was in The Nice about forming a band. The Nice were supporting Crimson at the Filmore East shows. A friendship ensued and by April 1970, Lake had also left Crimson to form Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Only Fripp and Lyricist Peter Sinfield were left. 

Fripp was keen to continue with King Crimson and there was enough material from the previous twelve months for a new album. This would be ‘In the Wake of Poseidon’. This second album can be seen as a stop gap before Crimson really become the progressive behemoth they are famous for today. The album sounds similar to ‘In The Court of the Crimson King’, but there is some progression there as well. This similarity in sound could well be down to the fact that apart from Ian McDonald, the other three members from the first album are present, if only as sessions players or in Greg Lakes case, on the promise that he would receive King Crimson’s PA’s on payment. He would take this PA with him when he formed ELP. McDonald & Giles would join forces and release a self titled LP in 1971 that would also follow the template laid down by ‘In The Court of the Crimson King’. 

However, what I was interested in was what if the original line up of King Crimson had stayed together for another year and recorded a second album. All the elements are there, even though nothing can quite replace the bombast of ‘21st Schiziod Man’ as an opening song. I decided to go with something a little calmer to start off this album which is the folk inspired ‘Is She Waiting’. This really highlights the pastoral side that Ian McDonald was afraid would not get a look in with King Crimson once Robert Fripp started to assert some dominance over the band’s sound. We then follow this up with the Michael Giles penned ‘Tomorrow’s People’ which predates King Crimson, but as far as I can see, this song was not recorded before. 

‘Cadence and Cascade’ was originally recorded with Fripp’s school friend Gordon Haskell singing.  However, there is a version of this song with a Greg Lake guide vocal which I decided to use as it fits in with the theme of this being a continuation from the first album. The song ‘Peace’ featured in three different configurations on the original ‘In The Wake of Poseidon’ and I did plan on using it as the opening song on this record but it just didn’t flow in a way that sounded good to me, but it fit nicely after the end of the title track. 

The second side is taken up with the ‘Birdman’ suite which also took up the second side of the ‘McDonald & Giles’ album. The song took some cues form the track ‘Trees’ that had been played live by Crimson in 1969. Some of the song was written by Robert Fripp and his section would become ‘Pictures of a City’. This Fripp penned tune did not make the cut here but ‘Birdman’ does, along with another section of ‘Peace’. To finish off, I have included the single edit of ‘Cat Food’ which the band would perform on Top of the Pops. Who thought that this song would be a commercial success really must have been on something. I ditched the original B-Side which was called ‘Groon’. I replaced it with ‘Flight of the Ibis’, which does share some similarities with ‘Cadence & Crimson’. That is because originally the ‘Ibis’ song had the ‘Cadance’ lyric. When he left Crimson, Ian McDonald took the tune with him and Robert Fripp composed a similar tune to the lyrics. It would have been interesting to have had a combination of the ‘Ibis’ tune with the ‘Cadence’ lyric, but unfortunately this was not to be. 

Side A

1. Is She Waiting?*
2. Tomorrow’s People – The Children Of Today*
3. Cadence & Cascade (Greg Lake Guide Vocal)
4. In The Wake Of Poseidon
5. Peace – A Beginning

Side B

1. Birdman*
2. The Inventor’s Dream (O.U.A.T)
3. The Workshop
4. Wishbone Ascension
5. Birdman Flies!
6. Wings In The Sunset
7. Birdman – The Reflection
8. Peace – An End

Single

1. Cat Food (Single Mix)
2. Flight of The Ibis* 

The cover art is the image that was on the back of the original ‘In The Wake of Poseidon’ gatefold sleeve. 

This record could not be reproduced on Spotify. 

*McDonald & Giles – McDonald & Giles LP

**King Crimson – In The Wake Of Poseidon LP

Well, today is the second Record Store Day of the year so here, as promised earlier in the month is my fantasy RSD release by Giles, Giles & Fripp with Judy Dyble. 

Side A

1. I Talk To The Wind (Judy Dyble Vocal)

Side B

1. Make It Today (Judy Dyble Vocal)
2. Under The Sky (Judy Dyble Vocal)

The version of ‘Under The Sky’ sung by Judy Dyble is taken from her Gathering The Threads collection, as this corrects a slight drop out in the tape that was evident on The Blondersbury Tapes version.

This EP collects the remaining vocal performances from Judy Dyble that were not included on the ‘Metaphormosis’ album from earlier in the month. https://www.thesquirepresents.co.uk/giles-giles-fripp-metaphormosis/

The EP cover was taken from an image produced by YouTuber Les Chants de Maldoror with some text added and Record Store Day sticker.

It is not quite true to say that King Crimson exploded fully formed out of nowhere, which the ‘Complete 1969 Records’ tries to put forward. Granted, the sound of Gile, Giles & Fripp is very different from what was to come, but with the song ‘I Talk to the Wind’, the progression was already in place. What King Crimson did that GG&F did not do was to take their sound out on the road. The band honed their craft in the basement of the Fulham Palace Cafe (on Fulham Palace Road), the first live shows were in February 1969 at the Change Is venue in Newcastle. Over the eleven months, the band would play the standard venues of the day including the Marquee in London, festivals and universities. This was before they set off for a a series of gigs in the USA which would bring tensions that had been bubbling under the surface to a head. By 14th December 1969 and their gig at the Filmore West, the original line up of King Crimson had disbanded. 

What we present here is a collection of live tracks that were recorded, mostly by fans in the audience of the first King Crimson line up. The fidelity of these recording sis not great, but it is fantastic that we have any at all and that they have survived. As King Crimson were keen to branch out with their playing, having a single disc set would not showcase the bands talents fully so I decided that a double would have to be complied. I also wanted this to be a mix of songs that had or would be recorded in the studio, as well as tunes that did not. There also needed to be a bit of editing here and there to make it sound as though all of these tunes came for the one gig, Enjoy. 

Side A

1. A Man, A City – Live At The Filmore East* 
2. Epitaph – Live At the Filmore East

Side B

1. Get Thy Bearings – Live At Victoria Ballroom, Chesterfield 

Side C

1. Drop In – Live At Victoria Ballroom, Chesterfield
2. Mantra – Live At Victoria Ballroom, Chesterfield
3. Travel Weary Capricorn** – Live At Victoria Ballroom, Chesterfield

Side D

1. Mars – Live At Plumpton Racecourse (9th Annual Jazz & Blues Festival) 
2. I Talk To The Wind – Live At Victoria Ballroom, Chesterfield
3. 21st Century Schizoid Man – Live At the Filmore East

*The gig announcement was taken from their set as one of the opening acts for the Rolling Stones at their Hyde Park gig, 5th July 1969. 

** On the original, the segues in a passage of improvisation. Due to the time constraints of the vinyl format, this improvisation was cut and some audience applause from another performance added. 

The cover is adapted from the protective sleeve that came with 2020’s, ‘Complete 1969 Recordings’. 

With the release of the King Crimson ‘Complete 1969 Recordings’ at the end of 2020, I thought it was about time that reassess the early years of the band along with the group, Giles, Giles & Fripp, the group that ultimately lead to that latter bands formation. 

GG&F were formed when the Giles Brothers advertised for a singing keyboard payer. Robert Fripp responded to the advert even though he played guitar and didn’t sing. The trio ended up moving to a flat in London and whilst there, they made a series of rather good sounding demos that lead to them being given a contract with Decca’s newly formed Deram label. Even by the standards of the day (and by day I mean 1968), the resulting album, which was called the ‘Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles & Fripp’ is a bit weird. The records contains two spoken word pieces mixed with songs that range from jazz, pop, psychedelic and novelty. Even though the band appeared on the now lost to history BBC Show, Colour Me Pop, the singles and album failed to set the charts alight. The band might have ended up as another footnote in the history of popular music except for the fact that by 1969, the group had evolved into the vastly more successful King Crimson. This What-If compilation looks at the year between the release of the Cheerful Insanity album and the King Crimson debut record. 

What Giles, Giles & Fripp (GG&F) had that very few, if anyone else had at the time was their own private studio, sort of. The had managed to acquire a second hand Revox tape recorder along with some microphones, some headphones and a metal box fitted with attenuators and coaxial socks that was essentially their mixer. It did help that they knew a chap called Russell Medcraft who had once worked at EMI’s Technical Research Department and was able to not only maintain the equipment, but helped calibrate the Revox so that the band was able to use the tape machine as a primitive two track machine, meaning that they could overdub tracks. They became so proficient at this that the recordings are missing the enormous amounts of hiss that would be expected from constantly recording from one part of the tape to the other. The fidelity of these recordings is exceptionally good considering the conditions in which they were recorded.

It was at this time that an advert from June of 1968 caught the eyes of Peter Giles. It was from Judy Dyble, who hd been in the original lineup of Fairport Convention. Dyble was looking to form her own band but ended up joining GG&F, and brought her boyfriend at the time, Ian McDonald along with her. He also brought with him his friend and lyricist Peter Sinfield into the fold. Dyble did not stick around long, but she did contribute to a number of the songs and even though I have included songs that were mostly sung by the men on the group, I felt that her performances were good enough that if this second album had been released, this would have been a good candidate for a GG&F and Judy Dyble Record Store Day release (which I will post later this month). However, I digress.  

The band continued to record but Peter Giles was beginning to lose interest. He and his brother had been in bands for eight years and he had enough of living a hand to mouth existence, so quit to find a proper job. The split was amicable enough that he would come back to play bass on the second King Crimson album, appear with them on their 1970 Top Of The Pops appearance and on the McDonald & Giles album. However, with the exception of the Judy Dyble sung ‘I Talk To The Wind’, these recordings sat in a cupboard, tea chest, someone’s shed (delete as appropriate) until 2001 when they finally escaped. Even though it does show some hints at what wad to come with King Crimson, the majority of these recordings hark back more to the GG&F ‘Cheerful Insanity’ album than ‘In The Court of the Crimson King’. However, it is these recordings that I used for the basis of what a second GG&F album would have sounded like, and pretty good it sounds too. In fact, I would argue that this is a better record. Would they have re-recorded the songs that had Judy Dyble vocals?  Well, the versions I have used were the only versions of these songs that were available so I decided to use them reasoning that the album sounded better with them than without them. Hypocrite was also recorded before the band had moved to London, but for a lack of other material, it had to go in. The only other songs I really had to think about using was ‘I Talk To The Wind’, because it was used later on the ‘Court of the Crimson King’. However, if this album was to have been released in 1969, then it would have had to have included it is one of the best song they recorded up to this point. 

Even though this was recorded on such primitive equipment, it sounds great. To show how good the quality of these recordings were, the band mimed to them on their appearance on Colour Me Pop, a performance which has been mentioned before unfortunately been lost in time. I would recommend reading the sleeve notes to the original Brondesbury Tapes CD to find out how they managed to record these songs. GG&F did not get to release another album and King Crimson did not release their record on Deram/Decca. They were just another in a long line of artists who were on that label but went onto greater success somewhere else. Imagine what Decca would have been if they had actually signed The Beatles and kept King Crimson, Genesis, David Bowie and the like. 

The album cover was a direct copy of LP Metaphormosis that was released by Tenth Planet in 2001. It contained highlights from the sessions that produced the demos that make up the songs on this album.

Side 1

1. Murder (Judy Dyble Vocals) 
2. Plastic Pennies (Judy Dyble Vocals)
3. Passages Of Time (Judy Dyble Vocals)
4. Why Don’t You Just Drop In (Peter Giles Vocals)
5. Scrivens
6. Wonderland (Peter & Michael Giles/Ian McDonald Vocals)

Side 2

1. Tremelo Study In A-Major – Spanish Suite
2. She Is Loaded
3. Hypocrite (Peter Giles Vocals)
4. Make It Today (Michael Giles/Ian McDonald Vocals)
5. I Talk To the Wind (Michael Giles/Ian McDonald Vocals)
6. Under The Sky

All the songs are taken from a mixture of ‘The Brondesbury Tapes’ CD and as the GGFF recording from the ‘Complete 1969 Recordings’ box set. The only exceptions were ‘She Is Loaded’ and ‘Under The Sky’ which came from the expanded edition of The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles & Fripp from 1992

A playlist for this complication could not be produced due to one or more songs not being available on Spotify. 

Back in March 2020, I put together a two disc version of Derek & the Dominos ‘Layla’ album in the style of a Deluxe Edition. The first disc contained the album as was released with the second containing outtakes from those sessions as well as the best (in my opinion) of what was recorded for their second LP, which was never finished. A brief story of the band can be found here as well as that playlist can be found here. https://www.thesquirepresents.co.uk/derek-the-dominos/. 

I did consider putting together an attempt at the second Dominos LP, but so many other people have had a go and there was only so much material that has surfaced that is actually worth listening to. The sessions for the second Dominos LP were fraught to say the least. The band had set out on tour after completing the ‘Layla’ album, the results of which can be heard in numerous bootlegs as well as a couple of officially released albums. The officially released albums all contain songs recorded from the bands gig at the Filmore East. The band had consumed a good deal of drugs in the studio and would continue to do so on tour. Clapton’s personal life was also in turmoil due the death of his grandfather and his unrequited love for Patti Boyd, then wife of George Harrison. He would also lose friend Jimi Hendrix as well as Duane Allman, the man who had brought the ‘Layla’ session to life once he joined the band in the studio. 

Keyboard player, Bobby Whitlock was also having issues with drummer Jim Gordon. On stage, Whitlock would be positioned in such a way that he was looking at Gordon, who mouth things to Whitlock about what he would like to do to him. Whitlock would say that Gordon ‘liked to swing both ways’. Whitlock had also signed a solo deal that would mean any new material  as well as anything he had already written would be siphoned off for those. The Dominos backed him up on these albums but it would seem that the whole band did not play on any of the songs. Clapton even played bass on one of the recordings, something that he seems not have done before nor since. 

By the time the band reconvened at Olympic Studios in Barnes, England, the magic had gone. Inter-band relations were be strained. The quality of the new material was not up to the standard of the first LP and Clapton was most probably missing a second guitar player to bring the best of him, much in the way Allman had done in the ‘Layla’ sessions. That is not to say that everything is not up to scratch. Anyway, things quickly started to fall apart with Jim Gordon seemingly being the instigator of it. 

He wanted more song writing credits, and three of his songs were recorded in the sessions. None have seen the light officially as of June 2021. He was also displaying the first symptoms of as yet undiagnosed schizophrenia and this was shown on the sessions notes when the engineer wrote ‘what the fuck is he doing?’ The end of the band came about when Gordon spent an enormous amount of time tuning his drums. The atmosphere was already tense and this tuning exercise did nothing to cut the tension. Clapton, who was tuning his guitar, made some remark about the merits of another drummer which Gordon took exception to. An exchange of words took place which ended when Gordon said ‘would you like me to tune that thing for you?’, referring to Clapton’s guitar. More words were exchanged and Clapton left the studio saying that he would never work with Gordon again. He never did. It would also take him until 2000 to play with Whitlock again even though bass player Carl Radle was a member of Clapton’s band for most of the 1970s.   

So, how to put together what could have been the second LP. ‘Layla’ was made up of nine original songs and five covers. When the band were recording the album, they were worried that they would not have enough material for a single album, let alone the double that it became. The covers and the extended nature of some of the songs helped up the run time. There is no need to try and emulate the double sided nature of that album. A single disc LP will have to do here. 

The Dominos played a good number of songs live that were not recorded in the studio. One of these was a Whitlock original called ‘Country Life’, but as this appeared on his first solo album, I did not use this as it was recorded before the Dominos second album seasons had started. What does this leave me with. Well, there are four second album seasons that were released on the Crossroads Box Set back in 1988. They are ‘Evil’, ‘More More Chance’, ‘Mean Old Frisco’ and ‘Snake Lake Blues’. I went for these mixes instead of the 2010 versions as they are how I originally heard those songs. I decided to use the 2010 version of ‘Got To Get Better In A Little While’ because Whitlock was brought into the studio to finish the track off as he was not on the version released on the Crossroads set. 

‘High’ was also recorded by the Dominos but it did not include any vocals. I have used the version from 1975’s ‘There’s One In Every Crowd’ which does, even though with the female backing vocalists, it is not quite how the original would have sounded. There is also room Jim Gordon original (‘Till I See You Again) , and another one could have been used as a B-Side if a single had been released from this album. If I was to chose it, ’Got To Get Better In A Little While’ would be the obvious choice. ‘Motherless Children’ was another songs the Dominos would play live but I have used the  studio version taken from Clapton’s 1974 album, ‘461 Ocean Boulevard’. 

The rest are covers from the band’s tour which I have decided the use these to make up for the shortfall in usable studio cuts. These are taken from ‘The Majestic Stand’ set and this includes a guest appearance from Delaney Bramlett. This gave Clapton a sparing partner to play off, which beefs up the sound and shows what the band could have sounded like if they had taken a second player out with them. In some respects, it follows the template that Clapton would follow with his solo work during the 70s. A smattering of originals padded out with covers. 

This is nowhere near the classic album that ‘Layla’ is, but it does have its merits. The version of ‘Evil’ being a particular highlight. Some of the live recordings are not professionally recorded either so the sound quality is a bit of a mixed bag I am afraid.

Side A

1. Motherless Children – 461 Ocean Boulevard
2. All Night Long – The Majestic Stand**
3. Everyday I Have The Blues – The Majestic Stand***
4. One More Chance – Crossroads (1988 Box Set)
5. ’Til I See You Again – Unreleased 2nd Album Session
6. High – There’s One In Every Crowd

Side B

1. Got To Get Better In A Little While – 2010 Version)
2. Evil – Crossroads (1988 Box Set)
3. Ramblin’ On My Mind – The Majestic Stand*
4. Stormy Monday – The Majestic Stand**
5. Mean Old Frisco – Crossroads (1988 Box Set)
6. Snake Lake Blues – Crossroads (1988 Box Set)

B-Side of a potential single

It’s Hard To Find – Unreleased 2nd Album Sessions

*Concert at Electric Factory Theatre, Philadelphia (PA), United States. 16th October 1970

** Concert at Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica (CA), United States. 20th November 1970, 1st show with Delaney Bramlett (slide guitar)

***Concert at Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica (CA), United States. 20th November 1970, 2nd show with Delaney Bramlett (slide guitar)

The cover was taken from a forum discussing the second Dominos album. It uses a painting like ‘Layla’ but I am not sure how the person who produced this decided upon the title. Much like the album, the cover is nowhere near as memorable as the first LP but I must thank whoever made this for posting it.