The Move - I Can Hear the Grass Grow - Non-Album Tracks (1966-1967)

First off, a couple of people asked if I've stopped doing album covers. I haven't. It's just that I've been too busy to work on them lately. But I promise I'll get caught up on those by and by.

A while back, someone asked if I could post albums of the Move. So here we go. I've got a lot to post from them because they have a lot of great non-album tracks. Plus, they pretty much had a second career covering other people's songs for the BBC. So I have three albums of stray tracks to post, plus another four of BBC stuff. That's a lot, considering the band was only in existence for a few years and released five studio albums.

If you like the big British rock bands of the 1960s, like the Beatles, Kinks, Who, Rolling Stones, etc, and you haven't gotten into the Move, you're missing out. They're not as great as that top tier of bands I just mentioned, but they're definitely in the next tier. However, they aren't well known outside of Britain, probably because they only went on one short tour of the US and never had much commercial success there. In that respect, they're similar to the Small Faces, another great British band of the time that only had one hit in the US (which is one more than the Move did!).

Plus, if you like ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) at all, consider the Move to be the 1960s version of that band. Although there were some personnel changes, it's literally true that ELO was just the Move renamed, and of course Jeff Lynne was in both bands (though he hadn't joined yet for the music on this album).

The Move are rather unusual in my opinion in that it took them so long to come out with a debut album. They were formed in late 1965, and many of the songs on this album date from January 1966. They had their first hit in late 1966, "Night of Fear," which reached number two in Britain. That alone would have been enough for just about any band to quickly follow up with an album. They had two more top five hits in 1967, yet their first album, simply called "Move," didn't come out until March 1968. That was an eternity in those days.

It turned out they recorded enough music to have put out an album in 1967, one of that would have been just as good as the album they released in 1968, yet containing all different songs. That's the album here. It contains all their stray tracks from 1966 and 1967, including their hit singles "Night of Fear" and "I Can Hear the Grass Grow." (Their other big hit from 1967, "Flowers in the Rain," was included on their 1968 album.) A few of the songs are covers of soul hits, like "You're the One I Need," "Respectable." and "Too Many Fish in the Sea," but most are originals.

I've gone to the trouble of finding out when all of the songs were recorded, and I've ordered they mostly chronologically. One exception to that are the first two songs. The first song is an intro to the second one, and the second one, simply called "Move," is kind of a theme song for the band, so I figured it makes sense to kick off with that.

The last song is basically a bonus track. It's an acappella version of "Night of Fear." Normally, I don't like to include two versions of the same song on one album, but this one is too good to ignore.

01 Move Intro (Move)
02 Move (Move)
03 You're the One I Need (Move)
04 Winter Song (Move)
05 The Fugitive (Move)
06 Is It True (Move)
07 Too Many Fish in the Sea (Move)
08 Respectable (Move)
09 Don't Hang Up (Move)
10 I Can't Hear You No More (Move)
11 Night of Fear (Move)
12 Disturbance [Single Version] (Move)
13 Don't Throw Stones at Me (Move)
14 I Can Hear the Grass Grow (Move)
15 Wave the Flag and Stop the Train (Move)
16 Vote for Me (Move)
17 Night of Fear [Acappella Mix] (Move)

https://www.imagenetz.de/crF6Y

The cover was a breeze to make. It's the cover of one of the many covers of the "I Can Hear the Grass Grow" single. All I did was clean it up a little bit.