The La's - In the Kitchen (Devon, 1989)
This is a tape recording of The La's, rehearsing new songs, that would potentially have ended up on their second album that never materialised.
The recording is nearly 40 minutes long, and the majority of the tracks have never been heard before.
A cassette copy of it came into my possession about a year ago, but I only just got access to a tape deck this weekend, with which to dub a copy.
The cassette is probably second or third generation (the 1st generation was allegedly a video recording, which I'd love to see if it ever comes to light), and I played it on a Nad deck, directly into my Dell laptop's mic input (sorry, the fancy sound cards' on my desktop, and I couldn't bring that to the cassette player).
It was recorded using Sound Forge 8, and had some light editing (to join sides 1 & 2 nicely, and to improve some of the artifacts at the beginning of side 1). There's been no EQ'ing or anything like that, as I wouldn't know what I was doing. However, if anyone else would like to have a go at improving the sound, be my guest.
I've included a couple of cue files, for people who'd like to load these as images. You'd have to convert them to WAV's, as multiple files, or as a single WAV called "The La's - In the Kitchen (Devon, 1989).wav".
By strange coincidence, another copy of this has recently started doing the rounds. I did my dub of it a few days ago (beginning of June '06), and only found out today that this tape came to light about two months ago. However, this is my own dub, and I have no idea which is the superior copy: the other version has not circulated widely as yet, and seems to be readily available only in lossy formats.
The tracklisting is as follows:
1 When Will I See You Again? 03:13
2 Our Time 02:19
3 Robber Man 02:56
4 She Came Down in the Morning (take 1) 00:31
5 She Came Down in the Morning \ Run to You 04:09
6 Was it Something I Said? (take 1) 00:54
7 Was it Something I Said? 04:31
8 It's Impossible (take 1) 01:18
9 It's Impossible 02:56
10 (chatter) \ Tears in the Rain (take 1) 01:12
11 Tears in the Rain 03:36
12 I am the Key 04:08
13 (chatter) \ Go Go Daddy (take 1) 03:49
14 Go Go Daddy 03:48
The song titles are mainly guesses, based on key lyrics or the band's conversation.
The story behind this is that it was recorded in the kitchen of Andy Macdonald, their label's owner (Go! Discs). It was as a kind of showcase / progress report of their second album, which as we know, has yet to materialise, seventeen years since the first.
This recording is pretty rough, and some of the songs are only half-written. However, as one of the greatest bands of the 1980's (in my opinion, the greatest), this recording is a very important discovery. They've recently reformed, and who knows, may well still make that follow-up: however, this tape can give us some idea as to what we might have got, had the band not lost its momentum.
Don't expect any miracles here - the sound's not perfect, and the songs are unfinished. This is not the second album. But if you're a La's fanatic, I promise you that this is the most important recording to have materialised since the first album was released.