The La's - Cocktail - Non-Album Tracks (1988-1991)

I just posted one album of stray tracks by the La's. There's enough material for a second strong set, so here it is.

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.

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.