(soniclovenoize reimagination)
Side A:
1. Savoy Hollywood
2. Hang On Groovy
3. Twist, Shake and Roll
4. Stomp, Scream and Holler
5. Jump, Thump and Jive
6. Walk, Wobble and Roll
7. Freaky If You Got This Far
Side B:
8. The Big Royalty Check
9. Blowin Your Nose
10. Want A Danish?
11. Shake It Mable
12. Ring Worm
13. The Story of Dumb George
This admittedly is one of my more bizarre album assemblages, originally
began as a joke by a friend of mine that morphed into a dare. He jested that it couldn’t be done; challenge
accepted! Thus, this is my
”reimagination” of what could have been Van Morrison’s second album, recorded solo
for the sole purpose of fulfilling his contract with Bang Records in 1968. Aptly titled Contractual Obligations, I have
taken the 31 “revenge songs” that Van Morrison recorded, organized them by
musical key and lyrical theme, and edited the fragments together to create
thirteen more-or-less complete songs and sequenced them into a semblance of a
an album.
Let Van Morrison be an example of the plight of young artists by the
hands of corporate greed and exploitation.
Hastily signing to himself to Bang Records in 1967 in order to avoid
literal starvation, Morrison recorded an album’s worth of material he didn’t
feel amounted to an actual album. He
left the March 1967 recording sessions thinking that those eight songs—one of
them his immensely popular hit “Brown Eyed Girl”—would be released as four
separate singles. Instead, Bang Records collected
the songs and released them as Van Morrison’s debut album, Blowin Your
Mind. Not only was this done completely
without his consent, but Bang promoted the album in full psychedelic fashion,
an image Morrison himself detested. To
make matters worse, label head Burt Berns’ passing in December allowed for his
widow Ilene to impose ridiculous performance restrictions on Morrison, all
which were allowed by the contract that he himself signed.
Van Morrison’s salvation lied within a simple loophole in his contract:
deliver 36 original songs to Bang Records.
And so sometime in early 1968, Van Morrison entered a recording studio
and performed 31 intentionally half-assed bullshit songs in order to escape the
clutches of Ilene Berns. The songs were
all musically simple--often I-IV-V progressions in E or G—and the lyrics
presumably improvised, meaningless, random, inane. Some were even gibberish. Morrison had farted out over thirty nonsense
songs that were all completely unusable in an act of musical revenge, which
fulfilled his contract. Bang Records
refused to release them at the time but the collection eventually appeared as
rare bonus material on legally-questionable international anthology releases
throughout the years.
For my reimagination, we will postulate how Bang could have assembled
these throwaway fragments into some sort of cohesive album. A listen through the material will tell you
that Morrison did not put much thought into the “compositions” musically and they
follow similar chord sequences, all standard open chords within the same
harmonic family. We are thus able to easily
group most of the songs together by key.
Even luckier, many of those musically-similar compositions share similar
lyrical qualities, further identifying possible associations. Although this was undoubtedly unintentional
by Van, we can
exploit this tendency and edit these similar fragments together, creating full
songs from the fragments. Using the 31
fragments I was able to create eleven complete songs, leaving two fragments to
remain their own stand-alone songs.
Side A begins with “Savoy Hollywood” which is a combination of the
songs “Do It”,"Go For Yourself” and “Savoy Hollywood”. The beginning tape wow opens the album up mid-song
and prepares us for Van’s bumpy ride with strumming and vocal stutters. Follows is “Hang On Groovy” which is a
combination of “La Mambo”, “Just Ball” and “Hang On Groovy”, less a mockery
of the classic songs “La Bamba” and “Hang On Sloopy” but more a mockery of
Bang for expecting something more than pop-song contrivance for this album. The next four songs gather together
Morrison’s inane send-ups of movement-centric 1950s rock n’roll classics:
“Twist, Shake and Roll” (a combination of “Twist and Shake” and ”Shake and
Roll”), “Stomp, Scream and Holler” (a combination of “Stomp and Scream” and
“Scream and Holler”), “Jump, Thump and Jive” (a combination of “Jump and Thump”
and “Drivin Wheel”) and “Walk, Wobble and Roll” (a combination of “Walk and Talk”,
”The Wobble” and “Wobble and Roll”). The
fact that these song are all in a row should drive home how ridiculous
this album is, and without the proper mindset is a very painful listen. Van Morrison himself agrees, as the closing song
on side A is the stand-alone “Freaky If You Got This Far”, which it truly is.
Side B starts with an explanation of the album itself: “The Big Royalty
Check”, which is a combination of “Big Royalty Check”, “Thirty Two” and “All
The Bits”. Following is “Blowin Your
Nose”, a combination of “Blow In Your Nose” and “Nose In You Blow”, a mockery
of the first album that Morrison never approved of. “Want A Danish?” (a
combination of “Want A Danish” and “Chickie Coo”) is followed by more silliness
in “Shake It Mable” (a combination of “Shake It Mable”, ”You Say France and I
Whistle” and “Up In Your Mind”). The
most noteworthy of the “revenge songs” follows, the stand-alone ”Ring Worm”. To end Contractual Obligations, I united all
four songs about the character Dumb George and sequenced them in a logical and presumably chronological
order, called “The Story of Dumb George” (a combination of “Here Comes Dumb
George”, “Dum Dum George”, “Hold On George” and “Goodbye George”). The icing on this distasteful cake is the
original artwork by EAB, in which Bang Records’ contrived psychdelicism is
literally consuming Van Morrison.
Is this a good album? Oh, God
no, this album is fucking awful! But
intentionally awful, for good reason, and thus worth a listen. It is an absurd album, especially knowing who
this is—this is Van Morrison, a genius who combined folk, jazz, soul and pop on
his legendary Astral Weeks album, recorded under a year later from Contractual
Obligations’ horrific nonsense. With
this in mind, itin t is a fascinating look at the effects of big business on
artists, relevant even today. Sometimes,
cause is more relevant than effect and the context of the music is more
interesting than the music itself. Contractual Obligations shows us this as it lies somewhere between
pain and pleasure but as an album that never was.
Sources used:
Van Morrison - New York Sessions 67 (1997 Recall Records)
flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR & Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included
Another excellent idea, Yours & Van's
ReplyDeleteThanks for this — I'd never heard the fragments, and this is probably the only way I'd want to. Do the Wobble, baby!
ReplyDeleteMeant to add that in its own way, this is right up there with the Stones delivery of their one missing track to Decca: Cocksucker Blues.
DeleteI'd like to ask you to recostruct Who's 1968 unreleased album Who's For Tennis?,my perfect tracklist:
ReplyDeleteSide A
1.Glow Girl
2.Faith In Something Bigger
3.Dogs
4.Early Morning Cold Taxi
5.Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
6.Melancholia
Side B
1.Magic Bus
2.Little Billy
3.Call Me Lightning
4.Gittering Girl
5.Someone’s Coming
6.That Motherland Feeling
Wow, I'm unfamiliar with that one, but I'll look into it. Looks do-able and a cool listen.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI've been working on this one myself for a while, but still not happy with it. There is potential to do two versions, an 'original mix' version and a 'remixed / remastered' version. My current tracklist (for the the 'original mix' version at least) is:
DeleteSide One:
Glow Girl
Glittering Girl
Someone's Coming
Girls Eyes
Early Morning, Cold Taxi
Melancholia
Side Two:
Magic Bus (extended take)
Little Billy
Jaguar
Faith in Something Bigger
Fortune Teller
Hall of the Mountain King
Bonus tracks (non-album singles):
Call Me Lightning
Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
Dogs
Would love to see your take on it, soniclovenoise!
Pink Floyd album if Roger Waters didn't quit?
ReplyDeleteDo you mean "Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking" with cool Gilmour solos?
DeleteLike what would pros and con of hitch hiking sound like? what would radio kaos sound like and what would amused to death sound like?
DeleteI'd like a cleaned-up version of Pink Floyd's soundtrack for The Committee, please. It would have to be an e.p., but that would be very nice to have.
DeleteWell, you definitely put in more effort in this than Van did. When you had earlier mentioned you intended to put together a Van Morrison album, I assumed it would be "Mechanical Bliss" so this was a surprise
ReplyDeleteWhat is next for the blog?
ReplyDeleteYou will have to wait and see! ;)
DeleteWow. I wasn't aware of this "warm up" for Astral Weeks, or the history behind it. I haven't heard the 31 individual tracks, but I'd say you did an excellent job stitching them together, because this is fucking great! Why the hell wouldn't Ilene Berns release this? Definitely one of those late night, clear-out-the-room (but I'll stay here and listen) type albums. One of the best, I'd say. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteExcellent mix! What a charmingly insane album. :)
ReplyDeleteThis is very cool. Thanks for the assemblage work on these fragments. Whether I'm a big fan of the original material or not, I always grab your reconstructions to hear what's behind the always interesting liner notes and history. Truly appreciated.
ReplyDeleteNow you just need to overdub 3 or 4 guitars and Herb Lavelle on drums. ;)
ReplyDeleteI just discovered this blog recently and became an instant convert - the Pink Floyd albums that never were are especially mind-blowing - amazing what some prudent recontextualizing and crossfades can do. Not that you haven't already received about a billion suggestions for future projects, but I recall hearing somewhere that Lou Reed's Berlin was originally slated as a double album. Was the change of plan made before recordings were made of the omitted material, or are the missing pieces floating around out there? Does anybody even know what they are?
Yr Blowin My Mind right now cause Astral Weeks is my favorite album and I've never heard of this shit.
ReplyDeleteAnd a request - Van Morrison - Mechanical Bliss
ReplyDeletePLEASE CONSIDER ANY OF THESE:
ReplyDelete• Beach Boys: Add Some Music
• Beach Boys: California (1974)
• Beach Boys: Holland Revisited
• Beach Boys: Lei’d in Hawaii
• Beach Boys: Oldies (Love You, 15 Big Ones & other oldies covers)
• Beach Boys: Reverberation
• Beach Boys: Wild Honey/Smiley Smile (combined & reimagined)
• Beach Boys: Winds of Change
• Beach Boys: Worst Of
• Beatles: Bizarro World
• Beatles: Great Lost Psychedelic Album
• Beatles: Helter Skelter
• Beatles: More post-Beatles reimaginings (continuous series)
• Beatles: Revisions of classic work (other potential Beatles-era albums)
• Beatles: The Real Last Album
• Beatles: White Album (alternative or single version)
• Beatles: Worst Of
• Bee Gees: A Kick in the Head…(1972-73)
• Bee Gees: Halloween
• Big Star: Third (Revised)
• Buffalo Springfield: Stampede
• Derek & the Dominoes: Second Album
• Dylan: & the Dead (Mix)
• Dylan: Oh Mercy (revision & improved)
• Dylan: Etc (80s & 90s albums reimagined & improved)
• Dylan: Self Portrait #2 (revised as single or recreated as 4-CD set)
• Hendrix: Band of Gypsys (studio recordings)
• Hendrix: Black Gold
• Kinks: Four More Respected Gentlemen
• Kinks: Great Lost Kinks Album #2
• Morrison (Van): Before Astral Weeks (lost album) [Bang material + studio demos]
• Morrison (Van): Mechanical Bliss
• Nilsson: Sings the Beatles
• Rolling Stones: Could You Walk on the Water?
• Rolling Stones: Necrophilia
• Rolling Stones: Lost, unrealized albums from ‘70s & ‘80s
• Small Faces: 4th -- 1862
• Springsteen: Nebraska (electric)
• Springsteen: Reconstruction of his classic albums w/ extra tracks
• Stooges: 4th (post-Raw Power)
• Brian Wilson: Brian Loves You
• Brian Wilson: Sweet Insanity
• The Who: Jigsaw Puzzle
• The Who: Naked Eye
• The Who: Rock Is Dead
• The Who: Other potential lost ‘60s albums
• Yardbirds: Last Album (1968)
Come on, "Ring Worm" is a track of transcendent, wistful beauty.
ReplyDeleteWow, what a load of crap ! Having represented VM's songs and worked very closely with his attorneys and managers over a dozen years, I know that most of this is a "load" ! However, the mis-representation and injustice done to everyone involved by statements like "in order to avoid literal starvation" - Makes Van, Bert and all those involved sound like assholes and cheats. If you understood the business side of things - you would know the truth ! And of these songs listed - you are missing 6 others that represented the "final installment" of Van's contractual commitment. I think when people misrepresent "facts" that are common and accepted ways of doing business - you do the music industry as a whole a huge injustice....
ReplyDeleteWow, what a load of crap ! Having represented VM's songs and worked very closely with his attorneys and managers over a dozen years, I know that most of this is a "load" ! However, the mis-representation and injustice done to everyone involved by statements like "in order to avoid literal starvation" - Makes Van, Bert and all those involved sound like assholes and cheats. If you understood the business side of things - you would know the truth ! And of these songs listed - you are missing 6 others that represented the "final installment" of Van's contractual commitment. I think when people misrepresent "facts" that are common and accepted ways of doing business - you do the music industry as a whole a huge injustice....
ReplyDeleteat least he knows how to post only once
ReplyDeleteat least he knows how to post only once
ReplyDeleteLove this mix soniclovenoize. Reposted here: http://pettyvendetta.com/van-morrison-contractual-obligations/
ReplyDeletePeace,
PeaVey
Thank you Great!!
ReplyDeleteIngenious, but I like the original. It may be a piece of crap, but it's fookin brilliant crap. Obviously not to the taste of some admirers, but he has many sides to him. This one seems like punk unplugged: short, fast, self-parodic, obnoxious 3-chord attacks on the Biz corporate plague. "I tell you you're very lucky to have . . . . . . ringworm. 'Cause you may have had something else." Did Lester Bangs have a chance to review this?
ReplyDeletePS: I do admire your bricollage, but I think collating the songs really weakens the album's attack on the practice of throwing out one piece of derivative vacuity after another. The whole POINT is, "Splish Splash took Bobby Darin 15 minutes? I can compose 15 songs in the same time, and play them too." My God, I remember the Twist Again era, only 5 years before. Twist and Scream and tear your hair. This album is based on the 1-minute wonder, a genre he perfected, if he didn't invent it. "Do the sha . . . get 16 guitars . . . " But I do admire your work.
ReplyDeleteIt's fun playing along with this on an acoustic.
ReplyDeleteRe-up please :)
ReplyDeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteCould you please make this one available for download on mega?
Hope to hear from you soon.
Thanks very much,
empty3
ReplyDeletehttps://mega.nz/file/W4BTXQhI#1Y8-I5cq8uPTKLOLKNSbrw2UuqpfsFxDoR7PFTx5suk
listless flak
https://mega.nz/file/65Qj2SKC#Odp_a6ybI-OV37rZID0ZWG3ayb6xht6bv9m6uN044Vk
If you would continue "demo's into albums" format, you could create unreleased first albums by artists like
ReplyDeleteBob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne. All three made dozens of wonderful publishing demo's before their debut albums were officially released.
Also ... you could see if there is an album hidden of what is known from Steel Mill or Bruce Springsteen Band soundboard tapes. There is some great songs in those recordings. At least enough for 1 album for each group.
1 one more suggestion: Bruce now officially released dozens of songs from the "Darkness On The Edge of Town" sessions. Is there a great double in there somewhere? Or maybe could he have released 1 album of the 1977 and 1 of the 1978 sessions?
Oh yeah I second the option for the 2nd Derek And The Dominoes album.
Thank you for considering.
soniclovenoize does a fantastic job.
ReplyDeleteel enlace pide clave.
ReplyDeleteHey soniclovenoise!
ReplyDeleteLongtime listener, first time caller. I love the work you do and recommend it to all my friends. Thank you for recreating so many great albums!
Astral Weeks is one of my all-time favorite albums. But it feels pretty unique in his catalog. I love Moondance, but I've always wondered what happened to the transcendental, expansive sound of AW. Are there demos or outtakes or any lost albums that point to this change?
Thanks so much,
Nico
This one appears to have disappeared. Would it be possible to re-up it? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteHello, I am once again please asking for your support for a re-up!
ReplyDelete