The Pretty Things - Copenhagen Beat Festival, K.B. Hallen, Copenhagen, Denmark, 8-22-1970

I'm pretty psyched to present this album. One thing I like doing with this blog is trying to fill in musical gaps. For instance, the Pretty Things were a great band in the 1960s especially, and great live performers, but there are very few surviving live recordings worth listening to. So here's something to help fill in that gap.

I believe this recording comes from a European TV station that broadcast the entire Pretty Things set from the Copenhagen Beat Festival in 1970. You can find the entire video on YouTube in black and white. That makes this one of the earliest surviving musical recordings from the band. 

However, there were some sound quality issues, even though it was recorded by a professional film crew. One problem was that the lead vocals were low in the mix. I fixed that using the MVSEP program. For many of the songs, I went through line by line to bring up particularly quiet bits. I did the same with the banter between songs. But I took extra steps there. For instance, I ran all of those bits through Adobe's vocal enhancer program, and I got rid of extra reverb. Before, it was virtually impossible to understand most of the banter. Now, I can make out most of it.

Note that I've posted a BBC concert by this band from just a couple of months earlier that has a similar set list. But "similar" isn't the same. For instance, one nice surprise here is a cover of "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (although it's drastically different, and mostly instrumental, with only one verse the same as the original). This concert and the BBC one I just mentioned are the best two early concerts by this band that I've come across so far.

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Blue Serge Blues (Pretty Things)
02 talk (Pretty Things)
03 She's a Lover (Pretty Things)
04 talk (Pretty Things)
05 In the Square - The Letter - Rain (Pretty Things)
06 talk (Pretty Things)
07 Sickle Clowns (Pretty Things)
08 talk (Pretty Things)
09 Old Man Going (Pretty Things)
10 Mona - Drum Solo (Pretty Things)
11 Ohio (Pretty Things)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EMB7dab3

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/9v4eaYVJNUA4XTC/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. I took it from a YouTube video of the concert. That was in black and white. But I used the Kolorize program to colorize it. That's lead singer Phil May in the black leather jacket, and Pete Tolson behind him.

The Pretty Things - BBC Sessions, Volume 3:John Peel's Sunday Concert, London, Britain, 6-14-1970

I recently noticed that although I've posted three volumes of the Pretty Things at the BBC, I never posted any concerts from them. There's very little live music from their late 1960s/early 1970s heyday that has been recorded with good sound quality. But there is a BBC from 1970. I hadn't posted it previously because it's rather short, at only 27 minutes. I'm guessing the band was given half of an hour long show, which was common in those days. However, I've decided to post it anyway. Since it is short, I've added three songs to give it a more decent length.

The main show featured here was hosted by BBC DJ John Peel. I'm sure there's an introduction that's missing, since he always had one at the start of his shows. But other than that, it's complete. It also has excellent sound quality, helped by the fact that it's been officially released as part of the album "At the BBC."

Just about the only other excellent sounding concert recording from this time is from the Paradiso in Amsterdam in 1969. Unfortunately, it only features a few full songs. I've already included three of those on "Volume 2" of my BBC series, since they were never otherwise done for the BBC at the time. That left two other full songs, neither of which were played for the John Peel concert in 1970. So I've put those two at the start. However, I noticed the lead vocals were rather low in the mix, so I boosted those using the X-Minus audio editing program. That's why they have "[Edit]" in their titles.

The other song I've added is the last one, "Cries from the Midnight Circus." It was done live for the Beat Club TV show in Germany. (You can find a video of it on YouTube.) I put it at the end because it took place after the John Peel show. I added some applause at the end since to help it fit in with the other songs, since it was played without any audience there. I also added applause to the two Amsterdam songs at the start. Those were done in front an audience, but the recording barely captured any of the clapping.

This album is 41 minutes long, including the three extra songs.

Note that there already was a "Volume 3." But I just renamed that "Volume 4" to make room for this one. I just redid the cover art for that one, and made other changes with the new title. I also redid the cover art for Volumes 1 and 2, since I'd never put "Volume" in their titles.

01 She Says Good Morning [Edit] (Pretty Things)
02 SF Sorrow Is Born [Edit] (Pretty Things)
03 Blue Serge Blues (Pretty Things)
04 talk (Pretty Things)
05 She's a Lover (Pretty Things)
06 talk (Pretty Things)
07 In the Square (Pretty Things)
08 The Letter (Pretty Things)
09 Rain (Pretty Things)
10 talk (Pretty Things)
11 Sickle Clowns (Pretty Things)
12 Old Man Going (Pretty Things)
13 Cries from the Midnight Circus (Pretty Things)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700881/TPRETTYTHGS1970_BBSessonsVolum3SundyConcrtLndnBrtin__6-14-1970_atse.zip.html

I'm not sure when or where the cover photo comes from. But based on the hair styles and clothes, it looks to be around 1970.

The Pretty Things - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1971-1975

It's been a while since I posted anything from the Pretty Things, but I'm still at it. I've posted four stray tracks collections, one alternate version of an album ("Emotions"), and then two collections of BBC performances. Here's the third BBC collection.

This is also the last BBC album from the band that I'm planning on posting. In opinion, their best years were the 1960s into the early 1970s. Around 1972 or 1973, with drastic changes in the music world, they switched to more of a hard rock style. In my opinion, they did some good things in this new style, but were much more hit or miss. Then in the mid-1970s, the band fell apart for a few years, only to reunite again in the late 1970s, after changing styles again. So I'm only including some songs here, the ones I like. Also, the band's appearances at the BBC petered out after 1975, so this is the last of the BBC stuff I plan on posting from them.

Now, let me get to the music. As I said above, the band still had plenty of good new songs in this time period. Oftentimes in these years, the band had trouble with the production of its studio albums. In my opinion, the BBC performances are better, since its closer to the band in their natural element, performing live on stage. Most of the songs are from their new albums at the time, but they also played the classic "Route 66" and one of their earliest hits, "Rosalyn."

All but one of the songs here have been officially released. That one song is the first one.

01 In the Square - The Letter - Rain (Pretty Things)
02 Stone-Hearted Mama [Edit] (Pretty Things)
03 Cold Stone (Pretty Things)
04 Summertime (Pretty Things)
05 All Night Sailor (Pretty Things)
06 Rosalyn (Pretty Things)
07 [Get Your Kicks On] Route 66 (Pretty Things)
08 Religion's Dead (Pretty Things)
09 Havana Bound (Pretty Things)
10 Old Man Going (Pretty Things)
11 Bridge of God (Pretty Things)
12 Dream-Joey (Pretty Things)
13 Not Only but Also [Instrumental] (Pretty Things)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700886/TPRETTYTHGS1971-1975_BBSessonsVolum4_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is of the band playing in concert in 1974 in London. I cut off the organ player because he was way off to the side, and I would have had to make everything else much smaller to include him.

The Pretty Things - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1968-1970

On May 15, 2020, Phil May, the long-time lead vocalist of the Pretty Things, died at the age of 75 due to complications from a cycling accident. May he rest in peace. His death reminded me that I'd lost track of my posting of Pretty Things albums. I posted the first of three BBC albums in November 2019. Here's the second one. Hopefully, the third one will follow soon.

This continues my long-standing ambition to erase the vocals of Brian Matthew and the other BBC DJs from whenever they'd talked over the music. For this album, out of the ten songs, four of them needed edits to erase or patch over such vocals.

It's actually more like four out of seven songs that needed fixing, because only those seven are actual BBC performances. Six of them come from an official BBC compilation for the band. The seventh is from a various artists compilation consisting entirely of BBC performances. The remaining three songs - "Alexander," "Renaissance Fair," and "Talkin' about the Good Times" - all come from a concert in Amsterdam in 1969. Two of those have been officially released on a rarities album. The third sounds just as good. For all the live tracks, I've removed the vocals. If you didn't read this paragraph, you'd assume they were more BBC performances, because the sound quality is just as good.

The Pretty Things existed from 1963 all the way until 2018. During their many years together, they often had a Spinal Tap-ian existence where they had to suffer indignities of unpopularity, despite being very talented. Even in the late 1960s, which was one of their more popular eras, they had to resort to performing songs under an assumed name (The Electric Banana), only to find those songs often added to porn film soundtracks.

That said, this was a very strong time for them musically. Their 1968 album "S.F. Sorrow" was a definite highlight. Even though it was complicated psychedelic music, four of the songs here are from that album. The rest generally have that psychedelic vibe.

Note that I've only included songs here that I didn't put on my stray tracks albums. There are three songs - "Send You with Loving," "Spring," and "Marilyn" - in which their BBC performances are the only decent surviving recording, or maybe the only recording at all. So all three of those have gone on the 1969 stray tracks album "Eagle's Son."

01 Balloon Burning [Edit] (Pretty Things)
02 S.F. Sorrow Is Born (Pretty Things)
03 She Says Good Morning [Edit] (Pretty Things)
04 Alexander (Pretty Things)
05 Renaissance Fair (Pretty Things)
06 Talkin' about the Good Times (Pretty Things)
07 Old Man Going (Pretty Things)
08 Sickle Clowns [Edit] (Pretty Things)
09 She's a Lover (Pretty Things)
10 Cries from the Midnight Circus [Edit] (Pretty Things)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700882/TPRETTYTHGS1968-1970_BBSessonsVolum2_atse.zip.html

I wish there were lots of good color photos of the band on stage in the late 1960s. If there were, I'd use one here. But since I couldn't find one, I've used a publicity photo. At least I'm glad they're wearing outlandish outfits that show them at the height of their psychedelic phase.

The Pretty Things - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1964-1967

I've posted a bunch of stray tracks albums by the Pretty Things. In short, this band is way underappreciated, in part because so much of their best music didn't make it onto their albums. There's no live album or even concert bootleg from their 1960s prime. But luckily, they did leave behind a lot of BBC recordings. So here's the first of three albums of their BBC material from the 1960s and early 1970s.

There have been a few good official BBC collections released over the years. The most recent one is four discs long. So most of the songs here come from such official sources. That said, my version differs in two important respects. For one, if a song wasn't officially released at all and the best known version comes from a BBC performance, I put that on one of my stray tracks albums, and not here. I generally try to avoid duplication like that. Secondly, I've added some live versions of songs that weren't performed on the BBC. There aren't a lot of good live recordings of the band in the 1960s, but there are a few.

I've included five live songs on this album. I have to admit that the sound quality of all five is a notch below the BBC recordings. But they're still more than worthy of inclusion.  All five come from TV performances, so these are hardly dodgy audience recorded bootlegs.

By the way, fun fact: two songs here, "The Moon Is Rising" and "You Don't Love Me" come from a festival that was shown live on Dutch TV. The Pretty Things looked and behaved so outrageously that the TV station was deluged by people phoning in complaints, causing the station to cut away from the performance. By today's standards, it's hard to see what the problem was. But in 1964 and 1965, the Pretty Things looked and sounded more outrageous than virtually any other band, such as the Rolling Stones. For instance, look at the 1964 cover art and note how long lead singer Phil May's hair was, even compared to the Beatles' "mop tops" and the hair of other such bands.

I don't know why I included "Edit" in the title for the song "L.S.D." It's been a while since I edited these songs, so I don't remember. But since they're BBC recordings, I'm guessing I edited that song and some others in order to cut out the annoying BBC DJs talking over the starts and ends of songs.

01 Big Boss Man (Pretty Things)
02 Don't Bring Me Down (Pretty Things)
03 Mama Keep Your Big Mouth Shut (Pretty Things)
04 Roadrunner (Pretty Things)
05 Big City (Pretty Things)
06 The Moon Is Rising (Pretty Things)
07 You Don't Love Me (Pretty Things)
08 Raining in My Heart (Pretty Things)
09 Sitting All Alone (Pretty Things)
10 Midnight to Six Man (Pretty Things)
11 Buzz the Jerk (Pretty Things)
12 L.S.D. [Edit] (Pretty Things)
13 Children (Pretty Things)
14 Reincarnation (Pretty Things)
15 Defecting Grey (Pretty Things)
16 Walking through My Dreams (Pretty Things)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700883/TPRETTYTHGS1964-1967_BBSessonsVolum1_atse.zip.html

The cover art dates from 1964. Obviously, the band must have been making a TV appearance, but I don't know which show they were on.

The Pretty Things - Wild and Free - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1971)

Sigh. I feel bad for the Pretty Things. I've already posted four albums by them, showing that the material they released in the 1960s was only about half of what they should have made widely available, both in terms of quality and quantity. It turns out their problems continued into the 1970s, as this post shows.

In June 1970, the Pretty Things released the album "Parachute," which was widely acclaimed but didn't sell well. They didn't release their next album, "Freeway Madness," until the end of 1972. By the time they did, their style had changed, going in more of a glam rock or hard rock direction. It turns out they had enough material to release a quality album in 1971. This is that album.

What they did instead was release six songs exclusively as A- and B-sides to singles in 1970. Then, in 1971, they recorded three more good songs that didn't get released until decades later. Plus, they played two songs at the BBC not appearing anywhere else that also didn't get released until decades later. If you add it all up, it makes for an album that's 42 minutes long, which would have been an ideal album length back in those days.

I like all these songs, but I'm not a big fan of the musical direction the band pursued from 1972 onwards. So I don't plan to post any more another albums of studio stray tracks from this band. However, I do have some albums of them playing at the BBC in the 1960s and early 1970s that I plan on posting later.

01 Blue Serge Blues (Pretty Things)
02 October 26 (Pretty Things)
03 Cold Stone (Pretty Things)
04 Stone-Hearted Mama (Pretty Things)
05 Summertime (Pretty Things)
06 Circus Mind (Pretty Things)
07 I’d Love Her If I Knew What to Do (Pretty Things)
08 Everything You Do Is Fine (Pretty Things)
09 Wild and Free (Pretty Things)
10 Slow Beginnings (Pretty Things)
11 Sweet Orphan Lady [Spider Woman] (Pretty Things)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700877/TPRETTYTHGS1970-1971_WldndFree_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is of the band in 1971.

The Pretty Things - Eagle's Son - Non-Album Tracks (1969)

Okay, I think it's time for some more Pretty Things. And that means telling another strange but true story.

I wrote in my last Pretty Things post how the band fell on hard times due to poor record sales, and wound up creating a second band persona, the Electric Banana, in order to release songs that were mainly meant for the soundtracks to soft core porn films. Strange but true! Check out the post I wrote on the "Deflecting Grey" album for the whole story.

In 1968, things improved somewhat for the band, due to their album released that year, "S. F. Sorrow." It was considered the very first rock concept album, beating out "Tommy" by the Who by a year. (The Small Faces put out "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" earlier in 1968, but only half of that fit a concept.) "S. F. Sorrow" is a great five-star album, no question, and in my opinion it was the highlight of the band's career. I'm not posting it at this blog because there's nothing to change, and you should buy it.

But unfortunately, even though the album was critically praised and it gave the band a lot of hip credibility, sales still weren't very good. In fact, the album didn't even reach the top 100 in either the US or Britain. So the band continued with their yearly Electric Banana albums. The first five songs on this album come from the third such album, called "Even More Electric Banana." Fans of the genre generally agree it's the best of the lot. (There were two more, in 1973 and 1978, that are pretty much forgettable.)

That's not the story I want to tell you here though, because the Pretty Things had another side project that was at least as strange. Even though the band was just barely popular enough to stay together, it turns out they had a super fan in the form of a rich French man named Philippe DeBarge. He was a young playboy, and he wanted to be a rock star. So he offered the Pretty Things a lot of money if they would write and perform a bunch of songs so he could make an album. All he would do is sing the lead vocals.

Such a vanity project sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, right? But a couple of interesting things happened. For one, the Pretty Things were firing on all cylinders at this time and seemingly were unable to create bad or even mediocre songs. So most of their songs for this project were just as good as the songs they were doing for themselves. But then, even more improbably, DeBarge turned out to actually be a good singer, and with no trace of any French accent. In fact, he was such a Pretty Things super fan that he modeled his vocal stylings on Pretty Things' lead singer Phil May to the point that it's almost impossible to tell that it's some random French dude singing these songs instead of the Pretty Things doing their usual.

But while DeBarge and the Pretty Things made a surprisingly good album together, the outside world never knew. DeBarge shopped the album around to many record companies, but no company was willing to release it, and apparently that was the end of DeBarge's musical career. So it sat on a shelf collecting dust all the way until 2009, when more recent Pretty Things super fans found out about it and worked with the band to finally get it released.

I've included six of the 12 songs from that album. Three of the other songs were also used on "Even More Electric Banana," another was done by the Pretty Things on the BBC, and another one ("Graves of Grey") evolved into another song they used elsewhere. That only leaves one I didn't include simply because I didn't like it.

There are four more songs here that are actually performed by the Pretty Things using the Pretty Things name (gasp!). Two of them are originals that were were played on the radio for the BBC but only released on a BBC compilation decades later. Another one, "Marilyn," was also only played for the BBC at the time, but it STILL hasn't been officially released, despite the fact that the band has put out two BBC compilations in recent years and the second one is 4 CDs in size. And it's a good original song that was recorded well! I don't understand why it was neglected then, or why it still is until today.

Finally, I've included an instrumental version of the Byrds' song "Why." This is a bit strange in that the Pretty Things played a 15 minute long version of this song at a particular concert, but only the last six minutes of it were bootlegged, and bootlegged in pristine soundboard quality, no less. By that point in the song, the band had gone off with psychedelic jamming to such a degree that it's basically unrecognizable as that particular Byrds song. But it's a really good instrumental jam, so I've included those six minutes anyway.

Let's sum up what we have on this album, all from 1969. The five Electric Banana songs weren't publicly available at the time, since their albums under that alias were only meant for industry insiders, in order to be considered as music for movies. Even if some ordinary person did stumble across a copy, there was no way they could have known Electric Banana in fact was the Pretty Things, since that was kept a secret. Then there were the three songs done for the BBC and not released at the time. Plus there's a cover of a Byrds song that also has been unreleased in any form until today. Finally, there are six songs done with Philippe DeBarge that weren't released until decades later.

So, add it up, and the Pretty Things released a really good 1969 album that absolutely nobody was able to hear or buy! And that's a shame, because they put out a great album in 1968 ("S. F. Sorrow") and they would put out another great one in 1970 ("Parachute"), but in the late 1960s rock world, it was common to release an album a year, sometimes more.

The Pretty Things didn't even release a single of new material for all of 1969, much less an album, so they dropped out of sight. Yet in fact they had lots of great songs. For instance, consider the song "Alexander" from "Even More Electric Banana." The band liked it enough to play it at the BBC that year, and they also played it in concert. They still played it in concert decades later. Yet, for decades, there was no way an ordinary fan could buy a copy of that song in any form, under any band name.

I think the band sabotaged themselves, repeatedly. If you haven't heard much of the Pretty Things, there are good reasons for that. Bands are largely judged by their recordings, be it studio or live, but the band squandered many really good songs on bizarre side projects. It was almost like they were trying to fail.

Here's a quote about the band by the band's long-time manager Mark St. John from a 2018 article in the Guardian that reinforces that idea: "They have a completely enveloping understanding of mayhem, with zero attention to detail, really undisciplined.They are the most unprofessional f**king band.”

But time can change perspective. Decades later, we can finally hear the 1969 album that should have been another high point in the history of the band.

Incredibly, the band would go on to not release an album in 1971 when they had a bunch of excellent songs for that year too. I'll get to that the next time I post something from them.

01 Alexander (Pretty Things)
02 It'll Never Be Me (Pretty Things)
03 Eagle's Son (Pretty Things)
04 Blow Your Mind (Pretty Things)
05 Rave Up [Instrumental] (Pretty Things)
06 Send You with Loving [Edit] (Pretty Things)
07 Spring [Edit] (Pretty Things)
08 Marilyn (Pretty Things)
09 Why [Instrumental Version] (Pretty Things)
10 You Might Even Say (Pretty Things & Phillippe DeBarge)
11 You're Running You and Me (Pretty Things & Phillippe DeBarge)
12 Peace (Pretty Things & Phillippe DeBarge)
13 New Day (Pretty Things & Phillippe DeBarge)
14 All Gone Now (Pretty Things & Phillippe DeBarge)
15 I'm Checking Out (Pretty Things & Phillippe DeBarge)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15853023/TPrettyT_1969_EaglsSon_atse.zip.html

This album cover needs a bit of explanation. In 1969, the Pretty Things appeared in a flop comedy movie called "What's Good for the Goose." But, as usual, the band screwed up what little career boost they could have had because they appeared in their Electric Banana guise, a band name most people in the audience would never hear of before or after. And there was no way to buy copies of the two songs they played. Ugh! Anyway, the cover is taken from a screenshot of their movie appearance, where they are the house band at a "groovy" private party. I got the unique lettering from one of their singles covers, but I forget which one.

The Pretty Things - Deflecting Grey - Non-Album Tracks (1967-1968)

I've posted a couple of albums by the Pretty Things in recent days, and they're very good. But I'm keen to get to this ones, and the ones that follow, because they're excellent. Yet the Pretty Things are a drastically underrated band. Why?

I hope you're comfortably seated, because this is a weird and convoluted story, but an interesting one. Starting out as a rocking band steeped in soul and the blues (very much like the Rolling Stones at the time), the Pretty Things changed drastically for their 1967 album "Emotions." Then they changed again for the music on this album, which is where they dove headlong into psychedelic music. It turns out this type of music plays to their strengths.

Unfortunately, some of their best songs were only put out on little-noticed singles, such as "Deflecting Grey" and "Talkin' about the Good Times." The B-sides to those singles, "Mr. Evasion" and "Walking through My Dreams," were just as good or better, but even more obscure. They also had a strong song, "Turn My Head," that they only played once for the BBC and didn't release until decades later. (There is a rare studio version, but the audio quality is low, so I've included the BBC version.)

But here's where it gets weird. The band was barely hanging on financially, because their singles and record sales were dismal. In fact, from 1967 through the rest of their career, virtually nothing they would release would even make the top 100 singles or album charts in the US or Britain! To make ends meet, they recorded records under another name, "The Electric Banana."

They began putting out albums with this name, about one a year. But these albums weren't even available for sale for the general public! Instead, they were targeted at entertainment insiders, for possible use as background music in low-budget films. The idea was to have songs audiences had never heard before that fit with the "groovy" rock sound so popular in the late 1960s. A couple of B-movies did use their songs, and the band even got to perform on screen as the Electric Banana in one, "What's Good for the Goose," in 1969. Check it out at YouTube. (Search for the band name plus "Mod Discotheque Scene.") But mostly, their Electric Banana songs were used for soft-core porn films!

(The band name is a reflective of this porn focus, being slang for a dildo / vibrator. The album covers are too, shaping the large text into an obvious phallic shape. I'm including a version of one of the album covers so you can see what I mean.)

This is all very strange. I don't know of any other 1960s rock band that did something similar. But what's frustrating is that many of their songs that came out on these Electric Banana albums were just as good as the songs they were putting out as the Pretty Things, but there was virtually no way for record buyers to get their hands on them. And even if they somehow did, the albums were a poor value, because each of them had one side of songs with vocals, and then another side of the exact same songs with the vocals removed, since instrumentals work well as background music in movies.

The band put out the album "Electric Banana" in 1967 and "More Electric Banana" in 1968 under their alternate name. (There are additional albums by that name, but I'll deal with those in later posts.) Ive taken what I consider the three best songs from the first one and the four best songs from the second one and added them here. (In doing so, I think I only left three songs with vocals behind.)

Rock bands were very prolific in the late 1960s, typically releasing an album a year, or sometimes more. (Creedence Clearwater Revival actually released three studio albums in 1969 alone!) The Pretty Things might have made a little food money with their weird Electric Banana scheme, but they would have been much better off in the long run putting that music out under their own name, to build up an impressive overall discography. As this album shows, they easily had enough songs for a solid album between "Emotions" in early 1967 and "S. F. Sorrow" in late 1968. That would have been key to show audiences at the time that they were on top of the new psychedelic sound.

It's a few decades too late, but here's the album they could have and should have put out back then. What's sad is that, as I'll post later, it turns out the band had "coulda, woulda, shoulda" albums in 1969 and 1971 too. No wonder the band is underappreciated, when many of their songs could only be heard under an alias as background music in soft-core porn films!

01 Defecting Grey (Pretty Things)
02 Mr. Evasion (Pretty Things)
03 Turn My Head (Pretty Things)
04 Walking Down the Street (Pretty Things)
05 If I Needed Somebody (Pretty Things)
06 Free Love (Pretty Things)
07 Talkin' about the Good Times (Pretty Things)
08 Walking through My Dreams (Pretty Things)
09 Street Girl (Pretty Things)
10 Grey Skies (Pretty Things)
11 Love, Dance, and Sing (Pretty Things)
12 A Thousand Ages from the Sun (Pretty Things)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700879/TPRETTYTHGS1967-1968_DefctingGry_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the cover of the "Deflecting Grey" single as the basis. I carefully removed the name of the B-side ("Mr. Evasion") which snaked above the head of the band members just like the A-side song title. But the cover still looked blah, in my opinion, with an ugly pea green wash over a black and white photo of the band. So I darkened everything and changed the color to purple, but varied it up with swaths of blue and red. That left the lettering hard to read, so I surrounded those with white. Now I think it's a cover that's worthy of the psychedelic music inside.

The Pretty Things - Emotions - Alternate Version (1967)

Since I've been listening to a lot of the Pretty Things, here's another album from them.

I'm very happy with what I've accomplished here, I must say! "Emotions" is a 1967 album from the Pretty Things that wasn't well received when it came out, and was almost immediately disowned by the band. They've been critical of it ever since. I hope I've tweaked things to come up with a version that would meet their approval, and hopefully yours as well.

There's an interesting story behind this album. In late 1966, the Pretty Things were on a commercial decline. Their rocking R n' B msuci was going out of style, and musical tastes were drastically changing fast. They owned one more album to their record company Fontana Records. Fontana wanted hits from them, and forced a producer on them, Steve Rowland who had made some hits for a couple of lightweight bands. The band members tried their best to go along with the record company's demands, writing songs in a new style and acquiescing with the producer's methods, which was to slather horn sections and strings all over the songs.

Keep in mind that this was 1967, and the new psychedelic style often had very ornate production. Consider how drastically the Rolling Stones changed their style for one album that year, "Their Satanic Majesties Request," to fit in with musical trends. (The Stones would soon disdain that album of theirs as well, although I think it's a really good one.)

The good news was, the Pretty Things wrote a very good bunch of songs, proving they had the talent and versatility to go beyond R n' B. But the producer way overdid it with the strings and horns, badly undermining the songs. Two band members were so upset that they quit the band in frustration in the middle of recording the album, never to return. The band never played any of the songs from it in concert (except one, "Children," and that only briefly). The album did poorly commercially, so all the selling out was for naught, but at least the band was done with their Fontana record company contract. They would go on to greater things with their next album ("S. F. Sorrow").

Luckily, it turns out that various archival releases have included alternate versions of most of the songs, stripped free of the strings and horns. I was able to find alternate versions for eight of the twelve songs. Of the remainder, two of them don't have that much overproduction. But you will definitely notice the horns on the first song, "Death of a Socialite," and the strings on another song, "Growing in My Mind." Overall,l this is much closer to how the band wanted the songs to sound, before the producer went wild on them.

Since the band has continued to express their frustration with this album even to this day, I'm kind of surprised they haven't made an alternate version just like this one. The alternate versions I found were scattered all over the place. Perhaps if they search their archives they could find alternates for the remaining four songs as well, and fully undo the mistakes of the past.

For bonus tracks, I've included two other songs from the same era that similarly had production issues. (One of the songs, "Progress," is from 1966, but December 1966.) These bonus tracks use alternate versions that are similarly stripped down. I'm putting the non-alternate versions of these two songs on different albums.

UPDATE: On November 18, 2020, I updated the mp3 file. I didn't add or remove any songs. But I did change some of the songs. This is because someone pointed out to me that there's a version of the album with extreme stereo separation, putting all the horns and strings in one channel for some songs. I used this to strip the horns and strings from "Death of a Socialite," "House of Ten," "Growing in My Mind," and "Bright Lights of the City." So now the album is even closer to the original vision the band had. Basically all the ornate production they didn't like has been removed from all the songs. The only song that didn't get changed is "Tripping," and that's because there was nothing objectionable to change for that one song.

01 Death of a Socialite [Alternate Version] [Edit] (Pretty Things)
02 Children [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)
03 The Sun [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)
04 There Will Never Be Another Day [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)
05 House of Ten [Alternate Version] [Edit] (Pretty Things)
06 Out in the Night [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)
07 One Long Glance [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)
08 Growing in My Mind [Alternate Version] [Edit] (Pretty Things)
09 Photographer [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)
10 Bright Lights of the City [Alternate Version] [Edit] (Pretty Things)
11 Tripping (Pretty Things)
12 My Time [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)

Defecting Grey [Alternate Mix] (Pretty Things)
Progress [Alternate Version] (Pretty Things)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700876/TPRETTYTHGS1967_EmtionsAltrnte_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I simply used the cover for the officially released album.

The Pretty Things - Midnight to Six Man - Non-Album Tracks (1964-1966)

The Pretty Things are a drastically underrated band. If you like the kind of 1960s and 1970s music that I post a lot of here at this blog, such as the Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, the Move, and so on, the Pretty Things should be right up your alley. But they were far less popular than they should have been back then, and their catalog is still messed up together, keeping them underappreciated. I plan on posting a whole bunch of albums here that should allow you to appreciate their musical legacy.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the first phase of their career, which actually was their most commercially successful. In 1964 through 1966, they had the only significant hits in their long career, especially with "Don't Bring Me Down" and "Honey I Need." They were very much like the early years of the Rolling Stones and the Animals, doing lots of rocking covers of soul and blues songs, and original songs in the same vein. They had a few really great songs from this time period, especially "Rosalyn" and "Don't Bring Me Down," both of which would later be covered by David Bowie. But in my opinion, they weren't consistent, and a lot of songs on their early albums were just ordinary.

Thus, this album is my selection of their best stuff from the early years. Happily, it's 40 minutes of music, which would have been an ideal length back in those days.

Some bands continued to mine this style for a long time, or even their entire career, with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers being an example of the latter. But the Pretty Things quickly moved into coming up with their own songs in different styles. In particular, they fit psychedelic music very well, while still continuing to rock. You can already see this transition happening on this album.

"Midnight to Six Man" in particular is a song that stands out. It should have been a huge hit, and the band expected it would, but it didn't even make the Top 40 in Britain, which is baffling. "L.S.D." is an even better example of where the band was going. And what chutspah for a well-known band in 1966 to give a song that title! (Supposedly, the song was about money, and the "L" in the title was the symbol for the British pound, but that was just the thin cover story.)

This is a good album, and if you haven't paid attention to the Pretty Things, this is a good place to start. But the band's peak era was from 1967 to 1971, in my opinion, and that's what I'll be posting about in the future.

01 Rosalyn (Pretty Things)
02 Don't Bring Me Down (Pretty Things)
03 Honey, I Need (Pretty Things)
04 Road Runner (Pretty Things)
05 Cry to Me (Pretty Things)
06 Can't Stand the Pain (Pretty Things)
07 You Don't Believe Me (Pretty Things)
08 Gonna Find Me a Substitute (Pretty Things)
09 London Town (Pretty Things)
10 Raining in My Heart (Pretty Things)
11 Midnight to Six Man (Pretty Things)
12 Come See Me (Pretty Things)
13 L.S.D. (Pretty Things)
14 A House in the Country (Pretty Things)
15 Me Needing You (Pretty Things)
16 Progress (Pretty Things)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15271602/TPrettyT_1964-1966_MidnghttoSixMn_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used a cover art for the "Midnight to Six Man" single. However, the French version of that looked really good, so I used that. I had to make a few minor changes as a result, most notably changing "Les Pretty Things" to "The Pretty Things." But "Les" was colored green, so I colored "The" the same green.