Joan Osborne - Chick - Non-Album Tracks (1992-1994)

Sometimes, putting together an album for this blog is easy; other times it's really hard. This one was really hard. First, let's review the early history of Joan Osborne's musical career. She put out a live album called "Soul Show: Live at Delta 88" in 1991. But then she didn't put out her second album until 1995. That album, "Relish," was a critical and commercial success, and contained her big hit "One of Us." But it turns out she planned to release a different album in 1993 or 1994, to be called "Chick." 

This is a genuine "lost album," but few people have ever heard of it. Luckily, I found a Wikipedia page about it. Not the English Wikipedia though! For some reason, the page only exists in the Portuguese version. Here's the link (you might want to use Google Translate to convert it into English):

Chick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't why the album was never released. Instead, an EP with only three songs came out in 1993, called "Blue Million Miles." Two of the songs planned for it, "Crazy Baby" and "Pensacola," were later included on the "Relish" album in different versions. As a result, I haven't included those here. Another song, "Strenuous Acquaintances," came out on a 1996 movie soundtrack, so I haven't included that here either (though it will find a home on a later Joan Osborne stray tracks album).

Using that Portuguese Wikipedia page as my main guide, I've managed to find most of the songs planned for the "Chick" album. There are no leaks of studio sessions from this time period, so I resorted to using live versions. However, I have included the three studio songs on the "Blue Million Miles" EP, since they were planned to be included on the album too. I couldn't find two of the songs, "Live for Yourself" and "I Should Have Quit You." But I found two other original songs from the time period not mentioned: "With Less than Love" and "Let Your Hair Down Mama."

So far, so good. But I put that together years ago and never posted it on this blog. The reason was sound quality. Frankly, a big chunk of the versions I found simply didn't sound very good. But recently I dug deeper, and managed to find soundboard versions for every song. However, that alone didn't fix the sound problem, because some of the songs had bad mixes, with the lead vocals buried. The breakthrough that came for me was my recent discovery of the Spleeter sound editing program. Using that, I was able to boost the lead vocals on four of the songs. (I also edited down "Open So Wide (All Night)" by three minutes, because its nine-minute length went on too long, in my opinion.)

So yeah, this one was tough to put together. But in the end, I think the result is a very listenable album. I believe all the songs are originals, with the exception of "His Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles," which is a Captain Beefheart cover. What surprises me is just how good these songs are, yet how rare they are. For some of them, such as the last three, I was only able to find one bootleg recording, despite the fact that there are dozens of bootlegs from the early 1990s. I would think that some of these would end up being the kinds of songs that she would play in concerts for decades, but for whatever reason even Osborne seems to have forgotten these songs as soon as the big success of "Relish" happened.

This album is 49 minutes long.

Now that I've posted this one, hopefully it will allow me to move forward and post a long series of stray tracks albums from her. The next one in the series is another lost album from the later 1990s called "Curds and Whey" that is equally interesting, in my opinion.

01 His Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles (Joan Osborne)
02 Billie Listens [To Your Heartbeat] (Joan Osborne)
03 The World Is a Genius [Edit] (Joan Osborne)
04 What You Gonna Do [What about Me] (Joan Osborne)
05 Shack Up with Me (Joan Osborne)
06 Enemy in the Sky (Joan Osborne)
07 How Red Was My Kiss [Edit] (Joan Osborne)
08 With Less than Love [Edit] (Joan Osborne)
09 Open So Wide [All Night] [Edit] (Joan Osborne)
10 Let Your Hair Down Mama [Edit] (Joan Osborne)
11 Madison (Joan Osborne)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15847305/JoanO_1992-1994_Chck_atse.zip.html

I had two ideas for the album cover. One was to use the cover of the 1993 EP "Blue Million Miles." The other was to use a photo of her from that time period. The EP cover was abstract art, without any sign of her. I thought it was interesting, yet lacking. Ultimately, I decided to combine the two ideas. I used the EP cover as the basis, but for a grey area in the middle, I superimposed a photo of her in concert from a concert at the Wetlands club in 1992. I also had to update the text on the cover.