As I mention in my previous La's post, the band's leader Lee Mavers never wanted to release the band's one album, 1990's "The La's," because he was unhappy with the production, and has never come up with a follow-up album. Since about 1992, he's pretty much disappeared. It turns out that at some point around then, he developed a bad heroin addiction. Apparently, after some years he quit drugs entirely, which is very good to hear.
But it seemed to derail his music career. There have only been a few hints that he's done anything new in the years since. There are some bootleg recordings, but their sound quality is so terrible that I'm not including anything from them. He did get the La's back for two short tours, one in 2005 and another in 2010, but they pretty much played the exact same songs they played in 1990. There are rumors and hints that he's been tinkering away on some great stuff, but who knows if that's true, and if that'll ever come to light if it exists.
So that leaves us just with the music from the band's late 1980s and early 1990s prime. Most of the songs here didn't come out at the time, although there are a couple of B-sides. Two of the songs here, "Tears in the Rain" and "Callin' All," also appeared in the first volume of the band's stray tracks. I've included these versions because they're significantly different from the versions on that other volume, but just as good.
Six of the songs here remain officially unreleased. Three of them come from what is called "The Kitchen Tapes," where in 1989, Mavers and the rest of the band went through songs that might go on their next album. This was recorded in the producer's kitchen, I think, so the sound is a bit rough, but still decent. There were a bunch of other songs, but most of them either were done better on other occasions or were mere fragments of ideas and aren't worthy of inclusion. For one of these songs, "Go Go Daddy," the band played parts of the song over and over, since it seems they were learning it as they went. So I edited that one down considerably to make it a more coherent song. The other two from this source, "Our Time" and "Tears in the Rain," also got some minor edits just to clean things up a bit.
Speaking of edits, I took this version of "Fishing Net" from YouTube. A poster there found a rough sounding live recording of the song and did some tinkering to make it sound better. It sounded better to me, so I used that one. It sounds quite good now.
By the way, the La's weren't entirely Lee Mavers' band. He had a right hand man of sorts in John Power. Two of the songs here, "Alright" and "Follow Me Down," were written and sung by Power, though they're very much in the style of the others. In 1992, Power got tired of waiting for Mavers to stop obsessing over the same songs on "The La's" album and move on to these new songs. He quit the band and started his own band called "Cast." They had a big hit in Britain in 1995 with "Alright."
This album is 41 minutes long. I've given it the title "Cocktail" because there's a reporter who claimed to talk to Mavers in the 1990s and was told his planned follow up album was going to have that title. Who knows if that's true, but it's as good as any other title, so I've used it.
01 I Am the Key (La's)
02 That'll Be the Day (La's)
03 Our Time [Edit] (La's)
04 Tears in the Rain [Slow Version] (La's)
05 Go Go Daddy [Edit] (La's)
06 Clean Prophet (La's)
07 Over (La's)
08 Fishing Net [Edit] (La's)
09 Rebound [Edit] (La's)
10 Callin' All [1990 BBC Version] (La's)
11 When Will I See You Again (La's)
12 Alright (La's)
13 Follow Me Down (La's)
14 Swashbuckler [Instrumental] (La's)
https://www.upload.ee/files/16700798/TLAS1989-1991_Ccktail_atse.zip.html
For the album cover, I used the cover to the single for "Timeless Melody." It's very similar to the cover for "The La's" album, except with a female eye closed instead of open. It seems there were several different versions with different colors. I liked the orange one the best. I enlarged the eye a bit and changed the text.
Thanks!
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