Nick Lowe - Rollers Show - Non-Album Tracks (1975)

Now that I've posted a couple of albums of stray tracks from Brinsley Schwarz, Nick Lowe's early 1970s band, I can start posting albums of material from Lowe's solo career, as well as his work with Rockpile. I'm psyched, because I think Lowe is a great songwriter, and is still very underrated.

1975 was a transitional year for Lowe. Brinsley Schwarz fizzled out in 1975, after recording a final album, "It's All Over Now," in 1974, which wasn't released at the time. Lowe's solo career was slow in getting started. His first single under his own name wouldn't come out until 1976, and his first solo album wouldn't come out until 1978. So spent time writing songs, including for others, and producing for others.

One problem he had was that he was still signed to a record company that he didn't like. The company dropped everyone from Brinsley Schwarz except him, because they knew he was an excellent songwriter. In order to free himself, he came up with the idea to record some songs so bad and uncool that the company would lose interest in him. At the time, the Bay City Rollers were all the rage with kids, so he wrote a couple of cheesy novelty songs about that band. The problem was, he was too talented, and couldn't help but come up with some fun songs, even though they were about a pretty bad boy band. The record company loved his songs ("Bay City Rollers, We Love You" and "Rollers Show"), and one of them was actually a big hit in Japan (released under the name "Tartan Horde"). So it would take him another year of lying low before he could finally get released from his contract and sign a new one with a different company.

This album shows that Lowe certainly had enough good songs to have released a really nice album in 1975 if the circumstances had been different. And that's just with the songs we have recordings of. There are many other songs from the time that he gave to others, with no recordings of his versions yet to emerge. For instance, in 1975, he had such songs recorded by Dr. Feelgood ("Because You're Mine"), and the Kursaal Flyers ("Television"), with more in the next couple of years, including a top ten hit by Dr. Feelgood ("Milk and Alcohol").

Most of the songs on this album weren't released at the time. About half of them come from a bootleg of still unreleased demos, with most of them acoustic. This is rather unfortunate, since he was very much into rocking at this stage of his career, and the songs were the kind meant to be played with a full band. But what we have is better than nothing. In 1975, Lowe formed a band called Spick Ace and the Blue Sharks. They toured some that year in the Netherlands, and planned to release an EP, but it didn't come out due to the above-mentioned record company problems, and they soon broke up. Hopefully, that material will become public someday.

By the way, one of the acoustic demos, "Time and Time Again," was incomplete. It included a first verse, chorus, and second verse, but then stopped right as the chorus was about to repeat. So I copied the chorus from earlier in the song and pasted it in after the second verse to make the song more complete. I also removed a bad skip from this song and one of the other acoustic demos by patching in identical parts from elsewhere in the songs.

01 Fool Too Long (Nick Lowe)
02 Bay City Rollers, We Love You (Nick Lowe)
03 I Respect You for That (Nick Lowe)
04 Little Darlin' (Nick Lowe)
05 She's My Baby [Acoustic Demo] (Nick Lowe)
06 So Heavy (Nick Lowe)
07 Here She Comes Again [Early Version of Deborah] [Acoustic Demo] (Nick Lowe)
08 Tonight [Acoustic Demo] (Nick Lowe)
09 Cruel to Be Kind [Original Version] (Nick Lowe)
10 Living in the 70's [Early Version of Dose of You] [Acoustic Demo] (Nick Lowe)
11 Time and Time Again [Acoustic Demo] [Edit] (Nick Lowe)
12 Rollers Show (Nick Lowe)
13 Allorolla, Pt 1 [Instrumental] (Nick Lowe)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264430/NickL_1975_RollrsShw_atse.zip.html

I had great trouble finding a good picture of Lowe in 1975, since he kept a low profile that year. I found one I really liked of him in concert in 1978, so I used that one.