Friday, April 27, 2018

Pete Townshend - Acoustic Psychderelict - Mayfair Hotel, London, Britain, 7-2-1993

I was disappointed with Pete Townshend's "Psychoderelict" album when it came out, and I'm still not a big fan of it. I thought many of the songs weren't up to his usual high standards and it had production issues and too many other voices singing the lead parts.

Happily, I recently came across this. Around the time Townshend was releasing that album, he put on a special performance of all the songs from it to a select small audience of reporters. They were to not to clap, as he was recording it, but nothing from it has been released yet, except for a version of "English Boy." Anyway, somehow, some, but not all of the songs from the show that day have become public. The only musician in the performance was Townshend with his acoustic guitar, but it also included some actors reading their spoken parts from the album. I edited all those bits out, partially because they seem jarring in this context, but also because most of them were incomplete and faded in or out.

What we're left with is a purely acoustic performance that allows one to reassess the album. Personally, I think it comes off much better like this, without the typical 1990s overproduction, but  then again I'm partial to acoustic-styled music.

The song "Outlive the Dinosaur" isn't from that show, but it was done acoustically by him as one of his demos, and it fits in seamlessly. I put it in the track order where it would be if we had a recording of him doing that along with the rest of the album.

This is a short album, just a tad under 30 minutes long. Hopefully, someday the rest of the show will come to light.

01 English Boy (Pete Townshend)
02 Let's Get Pretentious (Pete Townshend)
03 I Want That Thing (Pete Townshend)
04 Outlive the Dinosaur (Pete Townshend)
05 Now and Then (Pete Townshend)
06 I Am Afraid (Pete Townshend)
07 Don't Try to Make Me Real (Pete Townshend)
08 Predictable (Pete Townshend)
09 Fake It (Pete Townshend)

https://www.imagenetz.de/bKGX2

The photo for the cover art is of Townshend in concert in 1993. But it's from a different concert (Brooklyn Academy of Music on August 7, 1993).

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