The Who - Magic Bus (1968)

 

Side A:
1. Disguises
2. Glow Girl
3. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
4. Faith in Something Bigger
5. Little Billy
6. Call Me Lightning
7. I'm a Boy

Side B:
8. Magic Bus
9. Someone's Coming
10. Doctor, Doctor
11. Dogs
12. Pictures of Lily
13. Substitute
14. In the City

I've been wanting to make a second post about the Who during my classic rock marathon. So when I heard that they put out a compilation album to promote a newly released single with the word bus in it, I was like hey that's what the Hollies did but two years earlier! And while I didn't think I had enough material to make a new version of Bus Stop, I had more than enough material to make a new version of Magic Bus. I took out songs that previously appeared on albums and one song that was a cover and included a few new songs. 

The Beatles - Help! (1965)

 

Side A:
1. Help!
2. The Night Before
3. You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
4, I Need You
5. Another Girl
6. You're Going to Lose That Girl
7. Ticket to Ride

Side B:
1. Yes It Is
2. It's Only Love
3. You Like Me Too Much
4. Tell Me What You See
5. I've Just Seen a Face
6. Yesterday
7. I'm Down

Though Beatles for Sale was the band's last album that's half covers, Help! is technically the band's last album to feature covers, as there were only two. However Past Masters show us that there are two original songs we can swap out, so this one required the least amount of work. 

Pavement - Sordid Sentinels (1996)

 

1. Stare
2. Raft
3. Coolin' by Sound
4. Strings of Nashville
5. Jam Kids
6. Haunt You Down
7. Unseen Power of the Picket Fence
8. Nail Clinic
9. Saginaw
10. Sensitive Euro Man
11. Dancing With the Elders
12. Painted Soldiers

This is an album combining B-sides and bonus tracks from their seminal sophomore album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain along with a couple tracks from the deluxe edition of Wowee Zowee that I didn't include on my 2 LP version. I had enough tracks to make another three side album like Wowee Zowee but I cut out a side's worth of tracks to make it closer to Crooked Rain. 

The Appleseed Cast - Low Level Owl (2001)

 

1. On Reflection
2. Blind Man's Arrow
3. Steps and Numbers
4. Sentence
5. Mile Marker
6. Convict
7. A Tree for Trials
8. Signal
9. Strings
10. A Place in Line
11. Shaking Hands
12. Rooms and Gardens
13. Reaction

The Appleseed Cast released two albums in 2001 which were volumes of a series called Low Level Owl, an experimental and sometimes instrumental soundscape. For its 10 year anniversary, both volumes were released as one at almost 2 hours long. However half the songs were instrumental, so I took those out and left in the ones with vocals. It's about as long as the original, which means you could also make an all-instrumental album as well. 

Guided by Voices - Daredevil Stamp Collector (2000)

 

1. Catfood on the Earwig
2. Whiskey Ships
3. Girl From the Sun
4. Pick Seeds From My Skull
5. Powerblessings
6. The Kissing Life
7. James Riot
8. Shrine to the Dynamic Years
9. Trashed Aircraft
10. Underground Initiations
11. Interest Position
12. Fly Into Ashes
13. A Crick Uphill
14. Idiot Princess
15. Avalanche Aminos
16. Perfect This Time
17. Sucker of Pistol City
18. Wrinkled Ghost
19. Now I'm Crying
20. Real

Guided by Voices' first hi-fi sounding album was Mag Earwig! in 1997. But I think their next album Do the Collapse is a bit better remembered because it was produced by Ric Ocasek who made them throw away numerous songs in order to record new ones in a similar move he would do with Weezer when producing their Green Album two years later. Because of that there were enough songs to make a second album of outtakes.

Guided by Voices - Let's Welcome the Circus People (1999)

 

1. Submarine Teams
2. Smokey Joe's Perfect Hair
3. The Big Make-Over
4. Digging Up Wooden Teeth
5. Television Prison
6. Mayhem Stone
7. Strictly Comedy
8. Far-Out Crops
9. And So On
10. Snatch Candy
11. White Gloves Come Off
12. Making a Garden
13. You Can't Hold Your Women
14. Town of Mirrors
15. Vertical Insect (The Lights Are On)
16. Island Crimes
17. Maid to Order
18. Liquor Bag
19. Lucifer's Flaming Hour
20. 100% Delay
21. And the Crowd Showed Up

This is the last album in a trilogy of combining solo albums by Guided by Voices front men Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout from the late '90s. All I can say is that I liked Tobin's albums more. 

Guided by Voices - Moonflower Plastic (1998)

 

1. Make Use

2. Get Out of My Throat

3. Just Say the Word

4. Subspace Biographies

5. Paper Cut

6. Waved Out

7. Beast of Souls

8. Angels Hang Their Socks on the Moon

9. People Are Leaving

10. Steeple of Knives

11. Rumbling Joker

12. All Used Up

13. Since I...

14. Second Step Next Language

15. Curious Things

16. Exit Planes

17. A Little Bit of Dread

18. Hit Junky Dives

19. Water on the Boater's Back

In real life, Guided by Voices didn't release an album this year, but in our universe, they released The Flying Party is Here, an album of outtakes from Under the Bushes, Under the Stars, and now this one. And I guess we're also assuming that Tobin didn't leave the group the prior year. 

Guided by Voices - The Flying Party is Here (1998)

 

1. Mice Feel Nice (In My Room)
2. Not Good For the Mechanism
3. Dodging Invisible Rays
4. Color of My Blade
5. Deaf Ears
6. Why Did You Land?
7. June Salutes You!
8. Key Losers
9. The Stir-Crazy Pornographer
10. Systems Crash
11. The Who vs. Porky Pig
12. A Life in Finer Clothing
13. Subtle Gear Shifting
14. Beekeeper Seeks Ruth
15. Cocksoldiers and Their Postwar Stubble
16. The Winter Cows
17. He's the Uncle
18. The Ash Gray Proclamation
19. Roofer's Union Fight Song
20. Pink Drink
21. Bug House
22. Pantherz
23. Finks
24. Beneath a Festering Moon

Guided by Voices' last lo-fi album was Under the Bushes, Under the Stars in 1996. It didn't produce a lot of hits for the band but it did produce a lot of material. The previously talked about album Bee Thousand had 20 tracks released but had 64 tracks recorded for it. I wasn't familiar with a lot of their more obscure songs from afterward but I was surprised to find that this album also had a lot of outtakes. I found 32 for this one and 22 for another called Do the Collapse. I cut out the intros to Beekeeper Seeks Ruth and Pantherz. 

Guided by Voices - Not in My Airforce (1996)

 

1. Maggie Turns to Flies
2. The Natural Alarm
3. Girl Named Captain
4. Get Under It
5. Release the Sunbird
6. E's Navy Blue
7. Parakeet Troopers
8. Carnival Boy
9. Chance to Buy an Island
10. I've Owned You For Centuries
11. Martin's Mounted Head
12. Flat Beauty
13. King of Arthur Avenue
14. Gas Daddy Gas
15. Psychic Pilot Clocks Out
16. Prom is Coming
17. To My Beloved Martha
18. White Flyer
19. Double Standards Inc.
20. I Didn't Know
21. Hermit Stew
22. The Last Man Well Known to Kingpin

1996 turned out to be an insanely prolific year for Guided by Voices in this alternate universe. They released their last lo-fi album Under the Bushes, Under the Stars as well as the album Tonics and Twisted Chasers. Also UTBUTS produced enough outtakes to release an album two years later called The Flying Party is Here. So wouldn't it be crazy if they released another album this year? Well apparently both front men Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout released solo albums in 1996, 1998, and 1999, giving us ideas for 3 potential albums as if we didn't have enough. 

Guided by Voices - Back to Saturn X (1992)

 

1. Fantasy Creeps
2. Perch Warble
3. Dusty Bushworms
4. Squirmish Frontal Room
5. Scalding Creek
6. Melted Pat
7. Spring Tigers
8. Crutch Came Slinking
9. Mallard Smoke
10. Sopor Joe
11. Tricyclic Looper
12. Scissors and the Clay Ox (In)
13. Back to Saturn X
14. Mr. Japan
15. My Big Day
16. Our Value of Luxury
17. Bottoms Up! (You Fantastic Bastard)
18. The Garden
19. Heartbeat

Guided by Voices released an album in 1992 called Propeller, however it was compiled from two album projects they were working on at the time, Back to Saturn X and The Corpse Like Sleep of Stupidity. In fact one of the tracks on Propeller was a "radio report" medley of tracks from the unreleased Saturn album. When Propeller first came out, it featured a ton of variations of the cover, each one basically being unique. The one I used was one of those unique variations. 

Guided by Voices - Learning to Hunt (1989)

 

1. Blue Gil

2. Turbo Boy

3. Soul Flyers

4. Let's Go Vike

5. Dust Devil

6. Uncle Dave

7. Settlement Down

8. We've Got Airplanes

9. I Can See It in Your Eyes

10. Long Way to Run

11. Where I Come From

12. Oh, Blinky

13. Telephone Town

14. The Lodger Carried a Gun

15. Soul Barn

16. Lonely Town

17. The Issue Presents Itself

18. Cox Municipal Airport Song

This is probably the most well known early unreleased album by Guided by Voices. Some of the songs would later go on to be on the album Self Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia, and one song called Taco, Buffalo, Birddog, and Jesus would later go on to be an outtake for Bee Thousand and end up on my 2 LP version of that album. In 1995 when they were compiling their first box set, they added an exclusive album called King Shit and the Golden Boys. The first side contained two songs from the unreleased album Learning to Hunt and five songs from the unreleased album Back to Saturn X. The second side mops up outtakes from Bee Thousand.

Because the band had so much unreleased material, starting in 2000 they began releasing box sets as part of a series called Suitcase, named so in reference to band leader Robert Pollard's literal suitcases full of cassette tapes. I listened to the first two cause the years for the songs seemed to be well documented. However I was hoping to create an album in the style of their classic era, say 92-93, when a different era emerged. An earlier, poppier sound from them began to unfold in the era 87-89. And by that I just mean there was a lot more material.