The La's - Callin' All - Non-Album Tracks (1985-1988)

In my opinion, the La's were one of the best bands of their era, the late 1980s and early 1990s. Yes, their music had a 1960s vibe to it, but what's wrong with that? What mattered most was that the songwriting was excellent. Even though they didn't sell tons of records back in the day, their music still has a popular audience, showing how quality can endure.

The big problem with this band, though, was how little music they released. There was only one album, the 1990 album also called "The La's." The band's main singer and songwriter Lee Mavers is still alive and still said to be working on a follow-up album. It's been freaking 32 years as I write this in 2022! I'd be extremely shocked if he ever put out anything new.

That said, there are many more quality songs from the band back in the heyday than what they put on that album. In fact, I have enough for two stray tracks albums. Here's the first one.

Despite the fact that the band only released one studio album, there have been a ton of archival releases in the decades since they broke up. But most of the stuff isn't that interesting, because it tends to be slightly different versions of the same batch of songs over and over. 

Plus, early on, there were a bunch of songs by a different band member, Mike Badger. Unfortunately, his songs simply weren't that good, in my opinion. He was kicked out of the band in 1986 (even though he'd started it) and the band became a vehicle for Lee Mavers and his songs from that point on. I've avoided the Mike Badger songs, as well as song early Mavers ones that also weren't that good.

After cutting all that, there still are many good songs from the band's early years that have generally been overlooked because they didn't come out on a studio album at the time. I should mention that I've named this album "Callin' All" even though there are at least two official archival albums with that same name because apparently there was a plan to release a double album of songs around 1988. That never happened, due to Mavers never being happy with any of the produced versions, a problem that continues until today. But that leaves me with the ideal album cover for music from this time period.

All but one song here have been officially released. That one song, "Callin' All," has been officially released in multiple versions. But I liked this unreleased version the best. It's a studio recording, so the sound quality is as good as the others. Six of the songs are from B-sides and the rest came out on archival albums much later.

You may note that I've edited the two songs with "[Edit]" in their names. In both cases, I felt the songs had some problematic or dull parts, so I edited those out. However, even after being cut down some, "The Way We Came" is still over eight minutes long. It's still clearly the La's, but it's in a different and slower style than their usual stuff.

This album is 48 minutes long, not including the bonus track. 

As I mentioned above, I found enough material for the stray tracks albums from this band. I'll post the other one dealing with the years 1988 to 1991 soon.

The bonus song "Jumpin' Jack Flash" is a cover version of the famous Rolling Stones hit. It's a bonus track in part due to somewhat poorer sound coming from a concert recording. But also, it doesn't fit well with the other songs. Still, I thought it was interesting enough for at least bonus track status.

01 Moonlight (La's)
02 Open Your Heart (La's)
03 Get Down Over (La's)
04 Tears in the Rain (La's)
05 Callin' All (La's)
06 Knock Me Down (La's)
07 Endless (La's)
08 It's Not Impossible [Edit] (La's)
09 The Way We Came [Edit] (La's)
10 Come In, Come Out (La's)
11 Who Knows (La's)
12 Man I'm Only Human (La's)
13 All by Myself (La's)\

Jumpin' Jack Flash (La's)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266644/TLas_1985-1988_CallnAll_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used a cover of the "There She Goes" single. Except I made a few changes. I enlarged the picture of the band, about doubling it in size. And I enlarged the text, as well as changing the words to fit the album title name.