Pink Floyd - Household Objects

  

Pink Floyd - Household Objects

(soniclovenoize reconstruction) 

Side A:

1.  Side A

 Side B:

2.  Side B

 

Household Objects is one of the most intriguing and experimental projects by Pink Floyd, though it was never officially released. The album was conceived in the mid-1970s as a follow-up to their highly successful The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). It's often referred to as a "lost album" or "unreleased album," and its story is a fascinating example of the band's creative process.

The concept behind Household Objects was a radical departure from their earlier sound. The band aimed to create music using everyday objects, rather than traditional rock instruments like guitars, bass, and drums. The idea was to incorporate things like cans, bottles, radios, and other common items to create unique, experimental sounds. This was part of Pink Floyd's ongoing exploration of sonic experimentation and their desire to push the boundaries of music production.

The sessions for Household Objects began in 1974, with the band experimenting with various objects to create sounds. Some of the ideas included using the resonance of a cardboard box, the clinking of glasses, and even the sound of a vacuum cleaner. The idea was to manipulate these sounds in ways that would form musical textures, beats, and atmospheres. While some of the material recorded during these sessions was quite promising, the project faced multiple challenges.

One of the key issues was that the band's vision for the album was not fully realized. The soundscapes created by household objects, while innovative, were not always easy to arrange into cohesive songs. Additionally, there were technical difficulties in capturing and processing these sounds in a way that would make them musically satisfying.

The Household Objects project was eventually abandoned around 1975. Much of the material was shelved in favor of more traditional studio work, and Pink Floyd turned their attention to the recording of Wish You Were Here (1975), which became another classic in their catalog.

Though Household Objects was never officially released, some of the ideas and experiments from this project can be heard in fragments throughout the band's later work, especially in the more experimental passages of Wish You Were Here and Animals (1977). There are also rumors that some of the recorded material exists in bootleg form, though it's not widely circulated.

In the years since, the concept of Household Objects has become a fascinating "what if?" story in the Pink Floyd legend, a testament to the band's willingness to experiment and take risks during their creative peak. While it wasn't completed, it remains a notable part of Pink Floyd's legacy as a pioneering force in progressive and experimental rock music.

The sound of Pink Floyd's Household Objects is one of the most elusive and experimental in the band's history, as the album was never officially completed or released. However, we can get an idea of what it might have sounded like based on various descriptions and the experimental direction the band was exploring at the time.

The idea behind Household Objects was to create music using everyday objects instead of traditional musical instruments. This meant that the sound would have been characterized by non-traditional, often organic, and unusual sound sources. Here are some key elements of what the music might have sounded like:

1. Experimental Soundscapes

The album would have been rich in unconventional soundscapes, with a heavy emphasis on textures. Pink Floyd was keen on experimenting with the sonic possibilities of objects like bottles, cans, pieces of wood, and metal. These objects would have been struck, rubbed, or manipulated to produce percussive sounds or resonant tones. The result would likely have been ambient, eerie, and atmospheric, with a focus on creating mood rather than melody or traditional song structures.

2. Industrial and Mechanical Noises

The concept of using household items meant that the sound palette would include everyday mechanical noises — like the hum of a vacuum cleaner, the clink of glass or metal, or the whirr of machines. These sounds would be distorted, looped, and layered, giving the album an industrial, avant-garde vibe. Given that Pink Floyd was already exploring deep, atmospheric sound on The Dark Side of the Moon, Household Objects would have pushed that even further with an almost otherworldly, alien quality to the music.

3. Minimalist and Experimental Instrumentation

Some of the music from Household Objects has been described as being minimalist, with long stretches of time where subtle sound textures and tones take precedence over melodic or rhythmic development. The use of household items likely resulted in strange, mechanical rhythms that were far more abstract compared to the more traditional rock drumming or keyboard patterns heard on albums like The Dark Side of the Moon or Wish You Were Here. There were also reports of the band experimenting with things like a "cardboard box drum kit," which would have made the sound even more unconventional.

4. Atmospheric and Spacey

Given that Pink Floyd was at the height of their exploration into spacey, psychedelic atmospheres during this time, Household Objects would have likely had a dreamlike, floaty quality to it. The experimental use of everyday objects would have created a surreal sound environment, with drones and ambient noises filling the space between what might have been sparse, abstract compositions. Some of the sounds would probably have felt very organic and organic, as though the objects themselves were the instruments.

5. Fragmentary and Incomplete

Since the project was never fully completed, the recorded material from Household Objects might have lacked the cohesive structure found in Pink Floyd's more finished works. The idea of creating music with found objects would have resulted in a fragmented sound, one that could be viewed more as an exploration of sound rather than a fully realized album.

6. Hints of Experimental Rock

Even though the album was meant to avoid traditional instruments, some of the material recorded during the Household Objects sessions reportedly included fragments of more conventional rock instrumentation, possibly hinting at the direction that the band would take on later albums like Wish You Were Here and Animals. There are mentions of tracks that utilized more familiar elements like synthesizers or guitars but mixed them with the unusual sounds created from the household objects.

Overall Vibe

The music would have been abstract, experimental, and deeply atmospheric. It might have been unsettling at times, almost like the sonic equivalent of an avant-garde film, with elements of surrealism, industrial noise, and ambient sound blending into a unique listening experience. The absence of traditional structure or melody would have made it feel far more exploratory and avant-garde compared to Pink Floyd's more polished albums, focusing on creating mood and texture over conventional songcraft.

While it’s impossible to know for sure what Household Objects would have sounded like, it’s clear that it was an ambitious project that would have explored new boundaries in music production, sound design, and experimentation.

 

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The Zombies - Remember You

 The Zombies - Remember You

(soniclovenoize “1965 Album” reimagining)

 

Side A:

1.  She’s Coming Home

2.  I Want You Back Again

3.  I Must Move

4.  If It Don’t Work Out

5.  Don’t Go Away

6.  I Know She Will

 

Side B:

7.  Just Out Of Reach

8.  Whenever You’re Ready

9.  I’ll Keep Trying

10.  I Love You

11.  Don’t Cry For Me

12.  Remember You

 

At long last, we are revisiting The Zombies!  This is the first in a series of album reimaginings which recontextualizes The Zombies’ discography as a series of albums, rather than the scattered releases that have existed in numerous forms throughout the last 50 years.  Remember You collects the singles sessions recorded throughout the spring and summer of 1965 into a cohesive album, meant to be the proper follow-up to their debut album Begin Here.  The best sources were used, additional mastering performed on the demo tracks to match the mixes of the single releases, and presented as the band originally intended– all in mono!  

Following the surprise double-punch hits of 1964’s “She’s Not There” and 1965’s “Tell Her No”, The Zombies seemed to be a formidable adversary of another British pop group.  Although sharing three-part harmonies, original intricately-written pop songs and a modern rock ‘n’ roll backbeat, these “Fab Five” seemed a bit more posh and cultured than their Liverpool contemporaries.  Their two hits were collected into their debut album Begin Here in April 1965 (or alternatively, released as The Zombies in the US in January 1965) and the band embarked on endless gigs throughout the European college circuit, displaying their songwriting prowess as well as their penchant for American R&B covers.  

While The Beatles were asking for Help and The Rolling Stones were Going Out of Their Heads, The Zombies’ patrons Decca Records chose to instead make them a “singles band”, and to forgo recording another proper LP like their contemporaries.  On March 2nd, the quintet entered the studio to record a slew of new, original compositions, in the hopes that one (or more) would be a hit: keyboardist Rod Argent’s “She’s Coming Home” and “I Want You Back Again”, and bassist Chris White’s “I Must Move” and “Remember You”.  Also tracked was a song penned by lead singer Colin Blunstone, “Just Out Of Reach” (and its variant “Come On Time”) meant for the film Bunny Lake Is Missing, which actually featured the band on-screen!  An additional session was held on March 31st for two more songs meant for the film’s soundtrack: “Nothing’s Changed” and an alternate version of “Remember You.”  “She’s Coming Home” b/w “I Must Move” was released in April, but did not hit the Top 40.  “I Want You Back Again” b/w the Begin Here deep-cut “I Remember When I Loved Her” was released in June but barely scraped the Top 100.  Strike one and strike two...  

After returning from their first US tour, the band re-entered the studio on June 24th in a second attempt to record a hit single, this time with Argent’s uptempo rockers “Whenever You’re Ready” and “I’ll Keep Trying”, and White’s ballad “Don’t Go Away”.  A second session a few weeks later on July 8th spawned even more excellent quality songs: White’s “I Love You”, “Don’t Cry for Me” and “I Know She Will”, Blunstone’s “How We Were Before” and Argent’s “If It Don’t Work Out”.  While the later became a demo presented to Dusty Springfield for her Ev’rything’s Coming Up Dusty album, “Whenever You’re Ready” b/w “I Love You” was released as a single in August in the US (September in the UK) and while it gained critical praise, refused to chart.  Three strikes and The Zombies were out.  

Although music history would later trumpet the band’s 1968 last-ditch effort Odessy and Oracle as a forgotten cult classic, the sixteen original songs recorded by The Zombies during the spring and summer of 1965 remained as either failed singles or outtakes in the vaults, heard only as bonus tracks on various reissues.  Four of these recordings (“I’ll Keep Trying”, “If It Don’t Work Out”, “Don’t Cry for Me” and “I Know She Will”) would later be embellished and overdubbed in the studio by Argent & White in December 1968, for inclusion on a proposed posthumous Zombies album R.I.P., which was ultimately scrapped, leaving these revised versions also unreleased.  Luckily, the entire Zombies discography was collected and released on the boxset Zombies Heaven in 1997.  

But should this really be the fate of the only band that this author believes could hold a candle to The Beatles?  Are two albums and a smattering of random songs the best way to appreciate The Zombies through the modern lens?  I propose that it is not, and we are able to make an additional two albums as a stopgap between Begin Here and Odessey and Oracle, as well as a restructured R.I.P. as a fifth and final album.  

The first entry into this reimagined Zombies discography is Remember You, which specifically culls the best twelve songs from the sixteen recorded between March-July 1965, for a theoretical August 1965 release.  I believe this specific set of songs could have been quite a strong album in itself, far superior to Begin Here.  I have used Zombie Heaven as the source material, as it features all the original mono masters of the songs; I will be using the original 1965 “undubbed” versions of the four R.I.P. tracks, for which I have used Ozone Izotope Master Rebalance to match the mix of the other songs.  

 

Sources used:

• The Zombies - Zombie Heaven (1997 CD release) 

   

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The Who - Lifehouse (2025 Upgrade)

The Who – Lifehouse

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

January 2025 UPGRADE

Side A:

1.  Teenage Wasteland

2.  Time Is Passing

3.  Love Ain’t For Keeping

4.  Going Mobile

5.  Pure and Easy

Side B:

6.  Baba O’Riley

7.  Mary

8.  I Don’t Even Know Myself

9.  Greyhound Girl

10.  Bargain

Side C:

11.  Naked Eye

12.  Behind Blue Eyes

13.  Too Much of Anything

14.  Let’s See Action

Side D:

15.  Getting In Tune

16.  Won’t Get Fooled Again

17.  This Song Is Over

A country ravaged by pollution and ecological destruction… a fascist government that controls the populus by feeding them digital media to pacify them…  Sound familiar?  Of course it does because I’m only talking about my upgrade to The Who’s unfinished 1971 rock opera Lifehouse!  

Originally planned as a double concept album and the soundtrack to its accompanying film, Lifehouse was too technically complex and conceptually baffling to all except Pete Townshend.  After a nervous breakdown while making the album and the lack of support from manager and producer Kit Lambert, Lifehouse was scrapped and paired down to the single LP Who’s Next, which became one of The Who’s crown achievements, critically and commercially.  This reconstruction attempts to pull the best sources of all tracks associated with the Lifehouse project recorded by The Who and assemble them not only in a pleasing and cohesive track order, but to follow the storyline of the film.  All four sides of the album have been crossfaded to be four continuous pieces of music, each beginning with Townshend’s synthesizer experiments to represent The One Note.  

The upgrades to this January 2025 edition are:

• Upgraded sources from the Who’s Next / Life House boxset– especially the long-lost true stereo mix of “Time is Passing” and the Olympic studio recording of “Naked Eye”-- as well as the original 1971 mixes of “Too Much of Anything” & “I Don’t Even Know Myself” and unedited mixes of “Pure and Easy” & “Let’s See Action.” 

• “Pure and Easy” is moved up to end Side A; as a song that is essentially an exposition-dump, I felt it was necessary for it to occur much earlier in the album, so the listener can contextualize the information about The One Note, as the subtext to the rest of the album.  

• “Baby Don’t You Do It” is dropped entirely to make the album more concise, with side runtimes at 20:33, 22:38, 19:36 and 19:48.  

• Addition of sections from Townshend’s “Baba M2” synthesizer experiments to the beginnings of Sides C and D, so that all four sides begin with iterations of The One Note; notably, a section is overlaid onto the intro of “Getting In Tune”, creating a new arrangement.  

Following the critically and commercially successful 1969 rock opera Tommy was no easy task for The Who.  At first the beginnings were modest with a self-produced EP recorded in May 1970 at Pete Townshend’s garage studio (dubbed Eel Pie)—possibly to mimic the stripped and fantastic Live at Leeds, released that month.  Featuring recent songs written while touring Tommy, The Who tracked “Postcard”, “Now I’m A Farmer”, “Water”, “Naked Eye” and “I Don’t Even Know Myself”.  This EP never saw the light of day for various reasons, including questions of marketability and inflated song length.  It's more likely that Townshend had instead concocted an epic idea worthy enough to follow-up Tommy—another rock opera that not only functioned as a soundtrack to a companion film, but would include an audience-participated live performance with the band itself.  That September, Townshend began recording elaborate demos for much of the album, tracking all the instruments himself.  Unlike Tommy, the material for this project—now called Lifehouse—would consist of approximately 20 stand-alone songs, without the need for musical interludes to propel the storyline; each song would be self-sufficient. 

The original storyline itself was simple, albeit Bradbury-esque.  The setting was in the not-too-distant future, in an ecologically-destroyed United Kingdom.  Most people live in the major cities and are electronically connected via special suits to The Grid, a Matrix-like virtual reality computer program that feeds, entertains and pacifies the populace, which is controlled by a villainous character named Jumbo.  Since it is not approved by The Grid, music is outlawed completely; despite this, a hacker musician named Bobby who lives outside the city amongst the hippy-gypsy farmer communes broadcasts a signal of classic rock (called Trad) into The Grid.  Some rebellious few congregate to the secret Lifehouse to experience the music Bobby broadcasts, which are somehow tailor-made for each individual person, the music representing their own life experience (and performed by, who else, but The Who!). 

The story begins with Ray and Sally, husband and wife turnip farmers, also living in a traveling commune outside of the city.  Their teenage daughter Mary intercepts the Lifehouse broadcasts and runs away from her family to seek the source of the pirate signal.  While Ray goes after her, Sally finds Bobby attempting to find The One Note, a musical note that represents all people and unites the universe.  After falling in love, the pair travel to London to find and play The One Note at The Lifehouse. By the end of the double album, Ray catches up to the couple, Jumbo’s troops storm the rock festival at The Lifehouse just as Bobby plays The One Note, and we find the rebel youth have simply vanished, transcended to another plane, along with any civilians attached to The Grid who had witnessed the event. 

The story seems to make sense to us, in the internet age.  But the rest of the band members failed to understand Townshend’s concept (specifically Roger Daltrey’s inability to conceptualize wireless communication), and likewise Towshend had difficulty articulating it.  To make matters more confusing, Townshend intended not only live performances of The Who to be intercut within the narrative in the film, but the performances themselves were to be metaphysical music that would be “tuned” to each individual audience member.  The final touch was that The Who, by the end of the performance, would become holograms.  These performances at The Young Vic Theatre beginning in January 1971 and carrying on sporadically until the spring seemed to be unpromoted and open to the general public—anyone curious enough to wander into the Young Vic and discover The Who playing new material!  Unfortunately, The Who were a band who wanted to make metaphysical music that represented the souls of the individual audience members, who themselves casually arrived just wanting to hear the bands’ hits.  The Young Vic performances were a failed experiment and in the end simply amounted to public rehearsals of the new Lifehouse material.  With Townshend disheartened that not only the audience “didn’t get it” but his band as well, The Who relocated to New York to record the new songs properly in the studio, giving Lifehouse one final chance. 

Initial album tracking began at the Record Plant in March 1971, produced by manager Kit Lambert as usual and featuring legendary keyboardist Al Kooper and guitarist Leslie West of Mountain.  At least six core Lifehouse songs were all worked on to completion or near to it: “Baby Don’t You Do It” (allegedly a studio warm-up), “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, “Love Ain’t For Keeping”, “Behind Blue Eyes”, “Pure and Easy” and “Getting in Tune”.  By this time the band’s relationship with Lambert had broken down completely.  Lambert was producer only in name, as he was preoccupied with a heroin addiction and was unable to even mix the session!  Townshend (himself by this point a chronic alcoholic) also had problems finding a common-ground with Lambert in regards to the Lifehouse narrative; Kit had helped Townshend flesh out the concept of Tommy two years before, but they were unable to agree upon a script for the Lifehouse film.  The situation reached its boiling point when Townsend overheard Lambert blasting him at their hotel room, including his recommendation that the band should abandon the project.  Townshend in effect spiraled into a nervous breakdown, later claiming to have attempted to jump out of the hotel window.  That was the deathblow to Lifehouse. 

Still needing to finish an album—be it Lifehouse or otherwise—producer Glyn Johns was brought in to mix the Record Plant sessions and to see if it was salvageable.  Johns thought the recordings were up to par but recommended restarting the project with him at the helm, as he could better capture the essence of The Who to tape.  Recording began at Mick Jagger’s mansion Stargroves in April, testing the waters with “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.  Impressed with the results, Johns and the band relocated to Olympic Studios in May to overdub it and to record at least another 15 songs.  At this point in time, Johns urged an already discouraged Townshend to shelve the Lifehouse concept indefinitely and release the best material as a singular, non-conceptual album.  The result was Who’s Next, regarded as not only one of The Who’s greatest albums, but one of the greatest in rock history. 

While Johns apparently made the correct call in whittling down Lifehouse to Who’s Next, Townshend never really gave up on the project.  He continued working on it, adding new songs to the project that regardless found their way onto other Who singles and albums (“Join Together” and “Relay” in 1972, “Slip Kid” in 1976, “Who Are You” in 1977, etc).  After a failed attempt to write a new Lifehouse screenplay in 1980, the themes and basic plot outline were recycled by Townshend for his 1993 solo album Psychoderelict.   Townshend eventually commissioned a Lifehouse radio play for the BBC in 1999 and released a multi-disc boxset of his original 1970 Lifehouse demos, the radio play and its soundtrack in 2000 as The Lifehouse Chronicles.   To top it off, Townshend performed a series of concerts of the Lifehouse material later that year, released as Pete Townshend Live: Sadler Wells 2000.

While Townshend clearly gave his final word on the project, is it possible to rebuild the original Lifehouse that The Who attempted to raise in 1971?  An exact tracklist was never published and Townshend has revealed only the basic plotline, lacking any specifics or subplot descriptions.  And while The Lifehouse Chronicles gives an excellent overview of the material, presented in a cohesive narrative framework, it is very much retro-active, including later 70s compositions not originally included in the 1971 project and based upon the largely rewritten and convoluted 1999 BBC radio play.  For my reconstruction we will attempt to only use the songs originally intended to be a part of the 1971 project, using exclusively The Who recordings with gaps filled-in by Townshend’s 1970 solo demos.  Our tracklist will follow what we know of the original storyline, as reflected in the song lyrics, with further insight from the performance order of Townshend’s Live: Sadler’s Wells 2000.  Structurally, the first disc will be set in the Scottish countryside and follow Mary’s journey to find Bobby, and Ray’s journey to find Mary.  The second disc will be set in The Grid of London and portray Bobby’s search for The One Note and his final confrontation with Jumbo’s army.  No live material is included, as I believe that intent was scrapped after the failure of The Young Vic experiments.  As my previous version, I will be using the Japanese 2010 SHM CD remaster of Who’s Next as a the core-body of this reconstruction (being, imo, the post pristine and dynamic version of the album available), as well as Townshend’s demos from The Lifehouse Chronicles; any remaining sources are found on the new Who’s Next / Life House Super Deluxe boxset.  

Side A opens with “Baba M1” representing The One Note as an introduction, crossfaded into “Teenage Wasteland”, both Townshend’s demos taken from Lifehouse Chronicles.  Since there is an overlap between this and “Baba O’Riley”, the song is faded out before the redundant passages.  Here Ray introduces the listener to his world: living on the land in a caravan outside of The Grid.  Next, we introduce Bobby who is performing music in his own caravan with “Time Is Passing”, using the newly-discovered true stereo mix from Who’s Next / Life House.  “Love Ain’t For Keeping” follows (using the Olympic take from Who’s Next with the extended Record Plant jam from Who’s Next / Life House tagged onto the end), character development for Ray who sings this love song for his wife Sally.  The couple and their teenage daughter Mary travel the countryside in “Going Mobile” from Who’s Next, until Mary hears Bobby’s pirate broadcast and decides to leave her parents in search of whomever is sending these magical signals.  Ray chases after her, which his perceived betrayal is also reflected in the song’s lyrics.  The side concludes with a caravan elder explaining the nature of The One Note in the more majestic Olympic take of “Pure and Easy” from Who’s Next / Life House.  

Side B opens with Bobby experimenting with The One Note in “Baba O’Riley” from Who’s Next.  Mary finds him and joins his caravan, on its way to London to host a rock concert at The Lifehouse, intending to free the populace from The Grid.  Bobby falls in love with Mary as heard in Townshend’s demo of “Mary” from Lifehouse Chronicles, but Mary is reluctant as heard in the Olympic version of “I Don’t Even Know Myself” from Who’s Next / Life House.  Bobby tries to win Mary over in Townshend’s demo of “Greyhound Girl” from Lifehouse Chronicles, and disc one concludes with Ray vowing to retrieve his daughter no matter the cost—even venturing into the city to find her—in “Bargain” from Who’s Next.

Side C takes place in the future city of London (as heard from a minor-key section of “Baba M2” from Lifehouse Chronicles), as we see the populace hooked up into The Grid, living a virtual reality life, an idyllic illusion meant to control them.  Here we use the legendary Olympic take of “Naked Eye” from Who’s Next / Life House to create this setting and describe The Grid; I have used a patch to fix the brief drumming error going into the first verse (the reason imo this recording was never actually released for fifty years!). Following, we are introduced to Jumbo, the controller of The Grid, who attempts to convince the listener he’s just misunderstood in “Behind Blue Eyes” from Who’s Next.  As Bobby and Mary infiltrate the city, they attempt to show people that their Grid lives are an illusion in the original mix of “Too Much of Anything” from Who’s Next / Life House.  Both Bobby, Mary and Ray all arrive at The Lifehouse together and prepare for the rock concert in the unedited, long version of “Let’s See Action” from Who’s Next / Life House.  

The show begins in “Getting in Tune” from Who’s Next, as Bobby hacks into the Grid and broadcasts The Lifehouse concert live to all linked into The Grid; this includes a section of “Baba M2” overlaid on top of the piano and bass intro, as Bobby literally “gets in tune” to The One Note.  Then the revolution begins as Jumbo’s army storms the Lifehouse during “Won’t Get Fooled Again” from Who’s Next just as Bobby plays The One Note.  Right as the soldiers close in, all the protagonists and concert-goers vanish from their reality—as well as all the people on The Grid watching the show from their homes.  The closing credits presumably play over “This Song Is Over” from Who’s Next.  In keeping with tradition, I am retaining the appropriate cover art created long ago by I Design Album Covers.  

Sources used:

The Who - Who’s Next (2010 SHM remaster)

The Who - Who’s Next / Life House (2023 Super Deluxe, lossless Tidal rip)

Pete Townshend - Lifehouse Chronicles (2001 Eel Pie Records)

 

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The Beatles - London Town

The Beatles - London Town
(soniclovenoize reimagination)

Side A:
1.  Blow Away
2.  Cafe on The Left Bank
3.  Here Comes The Moon
4.  Just One of The Boys
5.  Backwards Traveler
6.  I’ll Still Love You

Side B:
7.  I’ve Had Enough
8.  Soft-Hearted Hana
9.  I’m Carrying
10.  Not Guilty
11.  Morse Moose and The Grey Goose

Merry Christmas! 

At long last, here is my final album reimagining of 70’s-era Beatles albums, that postulates “What If The Beatles Didn’t Break Up?”  This would be the second album of the band’s theoretical “Lennon-less” albums (along with 1976’s Between The Lines), that are more centered on the pairing of Paul and George as creative centers of the band, presuming John had decided to take a delineated role in the band, choosing to instead be a stay-at-home dad for Sean.  With that said, there are some John Lennon surprises here!  London Town encompasses the timeframe between 1977-1978, chronologically between two other imaginary Beatles albums, Between The Lines and Skywriting By Word of Mouth. 

As with my previous Beatles 70s Albums, I will adhere to three rules, although there are some slight modifications for these albums that follow Lennon’s real-life domestication and retirement:

1)  One album is represented per year, culled from tracks each Beatle recorded that year; this rule is revised so that one album spans two years instead of one.  Not only will this accommodate a lack of new material from some of the Beatles during this time, it will also force the outcome to be of better quality. 

2)  Generally speaking, to include five Lennon songs, five McCartney songs, three Harrison songs and one Ringo song; this rule is revised to presume that Lennon largely retired from The Beatles, occasionally contributing as a studio musician but leaving most of the heavy lifting for Paul and George.  

3)  The chosen songs must be Beatle-esque in nature; we will attempt to avoid the idiosyncratic musical tangents each Beatle pursued in the 70s and vie for the solo songs that would have been most likely recorded by The Beatles (i.e. not vetoed by the rest of the band).

4)  The songs must flow together and make a unified album that shares a specific tone.

London Town combines the material from Wings’ 1978 London Town and George Harrison’s self-titled 1979 album.  Although Wing’s Back To The Egg was literally recorded simultaneously with George Harrison, I have chosen to pair the aforementioned albums together because they had a more similar production aesthetic and the songs seemed to compliment each other better than George Harrison and Back To The Egg.  Additionally, we are using the George-written “I’ll Still Love You” as Ringo’s contribution to the album, a hold-over from 1976’s Ringo’s Rotogravure, due to the distinct lack of ex-Beatle involvement in his contemporaneous Ringo The 4th and Bad Boy– not to mention how awful those albums are anyways.  Lastly, as on Between The Lines, we will use a token Lennon demo from this time period for flavor– “One of The Boys”, dating from late 1977.  I’ve also included some additional Dakota-era Lennon dialog on “Cafe on the Left Bank” and “Morse Moose and The Grey Goose” that seemed eerily appropriate.  These little flourishes make London Town that much more like a theoretical Beatles album, in this author’s opinion anyways!

Side A begins with one of the highlights of the album, George’s late-period chestnut “Blow Away” from George Harrison.  This is followed by “Cafe on the Left Bank” from London Town, bookended by John Lennon’s humorous dialog about the literal cafe on the Left Bank that McCartney was referencing in the song!  This is crossfaded into the conscientiously Beatle-esque “Here Comes The Moon” from George Harrison, and the most fully-realized Lennon home demo that wasn’t destined for Double Fantasy–”One of The Boys”, here taken from Home Tapes.  This was intended as a medley paired with “Backwards Traveler” from London Town, which bleeds into “I'll Still Love You” from Ringo’s Rotogravure.  Side B begins with McCartney’s standard 50s rocker “I’ve Had Enough” from London Town, followed by George’s “Soft-Hearted Hana” and Paul's gorgeous ballad “I’m Carrying”.  We could not possibly make this re-imagined Beatles album without George’s “Not Guilty”, and the album closes with the divisive “Morse Moose and The Grey Goose” from London Town.  Here, I have included some humorous Lennon sea shanty poetics into the instrumental bridge sections, making the track a bit more interesting and as an appropriate late-era collaboration between Paul and John. 

So sit back and imagine an alternate timeline…

Eh, let’s just be honest here…  It’s a fun listen but this is a contractual obligation album, isn’t it?  Although George had saved some solid material, he also relied on an ancient Beatles outtake (“Not Guilty”) and a sequel to a Beatles classic (“Here Comes The Sun”).  Paul had some fun contributions, but the band was a bit skeptical as he seemed to be saving more electrifying material for his own solo album Back To The Egg, to be released the following year!  Like the last album, John simply phoned in a solo acoustic song, as well as some humorous dialog, apart from his rhythm guitar parts and reluctant solo on “I’ve Had Enough” (a song he otherwise loved). But in two years, John would have a more prominent role in their following 1980 album, Songwriting By Word of Mouth, his final one with the band. 

 

Sources used:

• George Harrison - The Dark Horse Years 1976-1992
• John Lennon - Between The Lines (2006 bootleg)
• John Lennon - Home Tapes (2010)
• Paul McCartney - London Town (1993 CD Remaster)
• Ringo Starr - Ringo's Rotogravure (2009 Rhino Remaster)

 
 LISTEN TO THIS ALBUM REIMAGINATION ON MY PATREON

Pink Floyd - The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes (UPGRADE)

Pink Floyd – The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes

(soniclovenoize “The Man & The Journey” studio reconstruction)

October 2024 Upgrade

Side A:

1.  Daybreak, Pt 1

2.  Work

3.  Afternoon

4.  Doing It!

5.  Sleeping

6.  Nightmare

7.  Daybreak, Pt 2

Side B:

8.  The Beginning

9.  Beset By Creatures of the Deep

10.  The Narrow Way

11.  The Pink Jungle

12.  The Labyrinths of Auximenes

13.  Behold The Temple of Light

14.  The End of The Beginning

After long last, this is an upgrade to a studio reconstruction of the never-recorded experimental performance piece of “The Man and The Journey”, often titled The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes.  This reconstruction attempts to present a version of the performance that would have taken the place of the More soundtrack and Ummagumma album, only utilizing studio recordings and condensing the performance down to two sides of a vinyl album.  This upgrade changes two aspects I thought were missing from my previous versions of this reconstruction: 1) each side is more concise, spanning 20-minutes each, and 2) I have utilized and manipulated vintage-era sound effects from the EMI library to replicate the Azimuth Coordinator from the original The Man and The Journey performances, what I feel is essential for the full listening experience of these theoretical recordings.  I have also used some slightly different song choices to replicate the final fourth of the album.  And finally, this reconstruction is meant to co-exist and complement my previous 1969 Pink Floyd re-imagination, Vantage Point.  

Musical soul-searching was the predominant mindset in 1969 for Pink Floyd.  The previous year had seen the band attempt to mimic their former bandleader’s singles-oriented approach to psyche-pop with their second release A Saucerful of Secrets as well as the single releases “It Would Be So Nice” and “Point Me At the Sky”.  While both singles failed to make any significant chart impact, it was actually the latter’s instrumental b-side “Careful With That Axe Eugene” that garnished some underground FM-radio play, prompting the band to make it a live staple.  Following the cues of their audience’s reaction to the one-off track, Pink Floyd switched gears and focused on what the remaining four members could do the best without Syd Barrett: sprawling, experimental psychedelic jams. 

The perfect opportunity to test these waters came in February 1969, recording the soundtrack for the film More at Pyre Studios in London.  For several months, the band tracked a few songs and a number of musical themes for director Barbet Schroeder that ranged from Pink Floyd’s typical space rock to pastoral ballads, from exotic influences to even proto-metal hard rock.  The soundtrack album was released in June and while not a critical nor commercial success, several of the album’s highlights were added to their current set, including “Green is The Colour” and “Cymbaline”.  But More was not all; by then Pink Floyd had also been working on their own proper follow-up to A Saucerful of Secrets. 

That Spring, each member of Pink Floyd entered Abbey Road studios alone to record solo material, intended to be collected together as the next Pink Floyd album.  Although Nick Mason and Richard Wright’s material was largely instrumental and experimental, Roger Water’s and David Gilmour’s material each featured a song that had already been performed live with the full band, “Grantchester Meadows” and “The Narrow Way”.  Paired with exquisite live recordings from The Mothers Club on April 27th and the Manchester College of Commerce on May 2nd, Ummagumma was released in October and cemented Pink Floyd’s status as a cult band, prepared to push rock’s envelope, even without hit singles.

While both More and Ummagumma tell a story of Pink Floyd’s progress in 1969, it is not the complete story.  With new and original material spread across two separate albums essentially recorded simultaneously, as well as another two albums-worth of material in their back pocket, the band pondered how to present the material in a cohesive live setting beyond the typical rock band performance.  Choosing to cull the highlights from both projects as well as their favorite instrumental jams from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets (as well as the b-side that was the catalyst for it all), Pink Floyd designed a series of performances from April to June, sometimes entitled The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes but usually titled “The Man and The Journey”. 

“The Man & The Journey” was arranged as two 40-minute movements, and utilized the newly-built Azimuth Coordinator, a primitive incarnation of a surround sound system which played pre-recorded samples meant to fit into the performances itself.  The first set—called “The Man”—seemed to follow the events of a typical person throughout his mundane, British, post-Industrial life.  The set included the members of Pink Floyd actually building a table on-stage (to represent ‘Work’) and being served tea (to represent ‘Teatime’).  The concept, as explained by Gilmour, was inspired by graffiti near Paddington Station, which said “Get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, [repeated]... How much longer can you keep this up?  How much longer before you crack?”

The concept of the second set is less clearly defined and seemed to be largely instrumental and improvisational.  Called “The Journey”, sketches from the performances’ playbill—and even the songs themselves—seem to suggest the piece follows a pilgrim’s quest.  A member of Pink Floyd’s crew even appeared in a sea creature’s costume, moving through the audience and appearing on-stage near the end of the set.  Is there some greater meaning or metaphor beyond this?  Is this the Man’s own spiritual journey through existence?  Knowing Pink Floyd’s conceptual pretensions, that very well might be the case. But Pink Floyd has never given any hints of what the journey nor its prize was, the task apparently left to the imaginations of the listeners.  My own interpretation is that “The Journey” is the evolution of agricultural mankind into industrial mankind, the quest for knowledge and technology; while there isn’t an actual Greek name Auximines, it could be stemmed from the Latin auxiliāris (to help) and the first pharaoh of Egypt, Menes (whose name translates to “he who endures”), literally a metaphor for the king (of humanity) who is assisted by gadgets (our technology) as he endures (history). 

After two seasons of performances of “The Man & The Journey” which concluded with a final performance in Amsterdam on September 17th professionally recorded by VPRO Radio, Pink Floyd retired the conceptual pieces in time for Ummagumma’s release in October.  Unfortunately, the music assembled as “The Man & The Journey” was never formally recorded in the studio, suggesting that it was simply a way for the band to present the disparaging More and Ummagumma material in a live setting, rather than “The Man & The Journey” being the true genesis of either albums.  But is there a way to construct a studio version of “The Man & The Journey”, to condense and create some sort of conceptual order to Pink Floyd’s 1969 output? 

For my newest iteration of “The Man & The Journey” will have several guidelines:  

1) We will only use 1969-era studio recordings of Pink Floyd.  This will exclude both live material and anything after 1969.  The problem that arises from this rule is that some of these pieces (“Work” and “Behold The Temple of Light”, for example) were never properly recorded by Pink Floyd.  The solution to this is… 

2) We will substitute some unavailable tracks for other similar ones, assuming they are still from this same era.  Likewise we will try to avoid using previously-released tracks (“Pow R Toc H” or any section of “A Saucerful of Secrets”, for example) so that this album reconstruction can fit into any continuity you desire.  Note that this iteration once again uses slightly different songs to replicate the final fourth of the album.  

3) Although my previous iterations had 24-minute side lengths, I have trimmed the sides down to a more concise 20-minutes each.  This keeps the album moving and becomes a much tighter listen, something I enjoyed much more over my previous versions, which sort of dragged.  

4) After a lot of soul-searching, I have decided that the Azimuth Coordinator is an essential part of this album.  Here I have used a lossless rip of some of the actual EMI sound effects library.  This would have been the same recordings actually used by the band to create the relevant sound effects originally heard in 1969, although often heavily manipulated.  

Side A–The Man–begins with my own personal “short” edit of “Grantchester Meadows” as “Daybreak”.  This edit significantly cuts the intro, solo and outro, making the song just over four minutes in length.  This is followed by a train whistle from the EMI sound effects library slowed down to sound like a factory steam whistle–what I am fairly sure Pink Floyd actually did for their performances–then goes to “Work” (since this musical piece was never recorded by Pink Floyd, we will use a similar-sounding track, “Sysyphus Part III” from Ummagumma).  In this iteration, I chose to use a fragment of “The Narrow Way I” (aka “Baby Blue Shuffle in D Major”) to represent “Tea Time”, and acting as an outro to the song.  “Afternoon” follows (“Biding My Time” from Relics), as well as the track “Doing It!” meant to represent sexual intercourse (often a Nick Mason drum solo, Pink Floyd often used either “Up the Khyber”, “Syncopated Pandemonium” or “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party (Entertainment)” for this; here I use the later from Ummagumma).  Next the Man falls asleep (using a new short edit of “Quicksilver” from More) and slips into a “Nightmare” (as represented by “Cymbaline” also from More).  The side concludes with the Man waking from his dream to the next day’s “Daybreak” (a short edit of "Grantchester Meadows") and the sound effect of an alarm clock from the EMI effects library.  

Side B—The Journey—begins with the pilgrim leaving the British pastoral countryside (“Green is the Colour” from More) by sea, when they are soon “Beset By Creatures of The Deep” (depicted by “Careful With That Axe Eugene” from Relics).  Using storm sound effects from the EMI sound library–as Pink floyd originally did–as a crossfade between the two, the pilgrim’s ship plows through a 'horrid storm' (as depicted by “The Narrow Way III” from Ummagumma).  They finally arrive on land, moving through a “Pink Jungle” (while Pink Floyd performed “Pow R Toc H” for this piece, here we will substitute a different ‘tribal’ track based around a rolling bass riff: an edit of “Main Theme” from More with the animal vocalizations from “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict”).  Our adventurers next creep through the “Labyrinth of Auximenes” (this piece often featured the bassline to the verses of “Let There Be More Light” juxtaposed with guitar effects and ominous drums; when stripped of the bass line, we are left with a track reminiscent of the first few minutes of “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party II” from Ummagumma, which I used here) and “Behold The Temple of Light” (the chord sequence from “The Narrow Way II” also from Ummagumma).  “The End of The Beginning” is a problematic conclusion to the album, as any use of “Celestial Voices” would be reusing an old track, not to mention an anticlimax if using the subdued studio version that lacks the bombast of how it was performed for “The Man and The Journey”.  Here, we will substitute a different song that features a very similar design of a climaxing organ phrase: “Sysyphus Part IV” from  Ummagumma.  Although I had previously used “Cirrus Minor”, this, I feel, creates a more inspiring and strange ending to a likewise inspiring and strange album.

Sources Used:

Relics (1996 remaster)

Soundtrack to the Film ‘More’ (2011 remaster)

Ummagumma (2011 remaster)

EMI Productions - Sound Effects (1970)

 flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

 

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