Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies (1994)

 

1. Rotten Apple

2. Nutshell

3. I Stay Away

4. No Excuses

5. Don't Follow

6. Swing on This

7. Brother

8. Got Me Wrong

9. Right Turn

10. Am I Inside?

In between recording Alice in Chains' albums Dirt and S/T, they recorded two acoustic EPs. In fact Jar of Flies would go on to be the first EP to get #1 on the charts and the single from the EP No Excuses would also get to #1. But it wasn't even their first acoustic EP. Their first one would be Sap which came out the same year as Dirt. I combined the tracks from both EPs but took out two tracks. At 45 minutes it would've been their shortest album. 

Guided by Voices - The Door is Much Smaller (1993)

 

1. The Terrible Two
2. Dank Star Ground Control
3. Flesh Ears From June
4. Shifting Swift is a Lift
5. The Fool Ticket
6. Exploding Anthills
7. Sickly Sweet
8. Unshaven Bird
9. Boston Spaceships
10. Drugs & Eggs
11. Grope
12. Heavy Crown
13. Home by Ten
14. Hallway of Shatterproof Glass
15. Shocker in Gloomtown
16. Alien Lanes
17. Break Even
18. Big School
19. Damn Good Mr. Jam
20. Glow Boy Butlers
21. Gelatin, Ice Cream, Plum...
22. Bye Bye Song

Like I said in my post about the early unreleased GBV album Learning to Hunt, I went through the first two Suitcase box sets looking for material to use for a classic era album, around 92-93. I didn't find a lot of good material at first cause most of the good stuff was from the late '80s. Eventually I found enough material to make an album. I used Suitcases 1, 2, and 4 and two EPs. 

Tool - Opiate (2000)

 

1. Sweat
2. Hush
3. Part of Me
4. Cold and Ugly
5. Jerk-Off
6. Opiate
7. Maynard's Dick
8. The Gaping Lotus Experience
9. No Quarter (Led Zeppelin Cover)

Tool are a well-known band that has only released 5 albums but not a lot of material in between. In fact the only non-album tracks that I was able to find was their Opiate EP from 1992 and two tracks from their Salival album from 2000 which were outtakes from their Aenima album from 1996. The versions of Cold and Ugly and Jerk-Off on the EP were live so I used studio versions of them. At 40 minutes long it would be their shortest album.

The La's - Cocktail (1989)

 

1. Knock Me Down

2. Endless

3. Come In Come Out

4. Who Knows?

5. Man I'm Only Human

6. All by Myself

7. Clean Prophet

8. Over

9. Callin' All

10. I Am the Key

The La's were a band that famously only put out one album in 1990 before breaking up in 1992. But the band had apparently been around for almost ten years and attempted to record their debut album several times before getting it right. In fact their big single There She Goes was originally released in 1988 but wouldn't become a big hit till it was re-released in 1990. Though they recorded enough material to put out a second album. The version of Over that was released as a bonus track when it was reissued was a version recorded live in a barn in Liverpool, so the version used came from a radio session.

The Stooges - Open Up and Bleed (2 LP) (1975)

 

Side A:
1. I Got a Right
2. Hey, Peter
3. I'm Hungry
4. Gimme Some Skin
5. Johanna

Side B:
6. Scene of the Crime
7. Open Up and Bleed
8, Cock in My Pocket
9. I'm Sick of You

Side C:
10. I Got Nothin'
11. Rubber Legs
12. Head On
13. Wild Love

Side D:
14. My Girl Hates My Heroin
15. She Creatures of the Hollywood Hills
16. Till the End of the Night

The Stooges were a legendary band that only released three albums. Their last one was released in 1973, though fans have speculated about what a fourth album by them would be like. They would later go on to release a fourth album in 2007, but after the release of the third album, lead singer Iggy Pop went on to have a solo career. He released his first three albums in 1977, though one of which was an album recorded in 1975 called Kill City. I used one track from it as well as a 6 CD box set of Raw Power outtakes called Heavy Liquid to make this. I mostly focused on discs 3 and 4 which had low quality rehearsal tapes though I thought disc 3 had slightly better quality. 

Kiss - Snowblind (1979)

 

Side A:
1. All American Man - Paul Stanley

2. Rockin' in the U.S.A. - Gene Simmons

3. Larger Than Life - Gene Simmons

4. Rocket Ride - Ace Frehley

5. Any Way You Want It - Paul Stanley

Side B:
6. Snowblind - Ace Frehley
7. Move On - Paul Stanley
8. Tunnel of Love - Gene Simmons
9. Ozone - Ace Frehley

In 1978, Kiss made rock history when every band member released their own solo album on the same day. A best of album was put out at the time, but after listening to the solo albums, I decided I liked Paul's and Ace's albums the most and Gene's and Peter's albums the least. So I made a version of it about two years ago. In that time though I since found out that the fourth side of their second live album Alive II included five tracks that were technically performed live without an audience. And I thought I could make a second side of other songs I didn't include. The song Any Way You Want It is technically by The Dave Clark Five as the Journey song came out in 1980. 

Bad News - S/T (1987)

 

1. Hey Hey Bad News
2. Warriors of Genghis Khan
3. Bohemian Rhapsody

4. Bad News

5. Masturbike

6. Drink Till I Die

7. Pretty Woman

8. Life With Brian

9. Cashing In on Christmas

Bad News were a parody hair metal band that was created for a British TV show and was most well-known for their cover of Bohemian Rhapsody. I was inspired to make a post about this album when I saw that it only had 6 tracks when it was originally released but 22 tracks when reissued. I thought that I could find a middle ground. But there were a lot of spoken word tracks that I cut. 

Crosby, Stills, and Nash - Melody (2 LP) (1978)

 

Side A: Graham Nash
1. Grave Concern
2. You'll Never Be the Same

3. Oh! Camil (The Winter Soldier)

4. On the Line

5. Another Sleep Song

Side B: Stephen Stills
6. Turn Back the Pages

7. In the Way

8. Shuffle Just as Bad

9. Cold Cold World

Side C: Crosby and Nash
10. Take the Money and Run

11. Low Down Payment

12. Fieldworker
13. Love Work Out

Side D: Crosby and Nash
14. Spotlight

15. J.B.'s Blues

16. Foolish Man

17. Out of the Darkness

Similar to the Volume 4½ album by the Traveling Wilburys, I felt like I had so much material I could go through that I could make a second album. Not only do we have solo albums from three of the four members, we also have the band split up into a dichotomy of sorts with David Crosby and Graham Nash getting together to form Crosby and Nash who had three albums but we'll use two of them, and Stephen Stills and Neil Young getting together to form The Stills-Young Band. 

When David Crosby and Graham Nash released their album Wind on the Water in 1975, it was their second album but it was also their first in a three album deal with ABC Records. So they released their third album in 1976 and their fourth album in 2002! How did it take them 27 years to finish their contract? Well after recording the third album, they got back together with Stephen Stills and released a new fourth CSN album instead of Human Highway. But when they released their fourth album in 2002, it was a double album! I didn't include Neil on this one cause I mostly used up the tracks from the Stills-Young Band album and he also had a bunch of solo albums around this time that would've been too much to listen to so I mostly focused on four albums.

The Velvet Underground and Nico - White Light / White Heat (1968)

 

Side A:
1. White Light/White Heat

2. Lawns of Dawns

3. Lady Godiva's Operation

4. Here She Comes Now

5. Facing the Wind

6. I Heard Her Call My Name

Side B:
7. Stephanie Says

8. Julius Caesar (Memento Hodié)

9. Temptation Inside Your Heart

10. Evening of Light

11. The Gift

Last year I listened to the unreleased fourth Velvet Underground album but didn't think I could change it beyond the track listing I found for it online. However in the comment section of a different post, I saw someone propose a question, "What if Nico never left The Velvets?" Well this is an interesting one because was Nico ever really in the Velvets? She was brought in by Andy Warhol to be a chanteuse but he also wanted to be their producer and manager. She only sang on three of the songs but after the album became a commercial flop, Warhol was fired as manager and Nico became a solo artist, and she left the group as casually as she entered it. 

The year before the unreleased album though both the Velvets and Nico recorded an album. The Velvets released White Light / White Heat and Nico released The Marble Index. WLWH had a couple long tracks that I could take out and I can also include both sides of a single that I couldn't on the other album. And Nico's album is only half an hour long so I thought I could use a couple tracks from her album and combine them with the Velvets album.

Jimi Hendrix - First Rays of the New Rising Sun (2 LP) (1970)

 

Side A:
1. Dolly Dagger
2. Night Bird Flying
3. Room Full of Mirrors
4. Earth Blues
5. Freedom

Side B:
6. Ezy Ryder
7. In From the Storm
8. Drifting
9. Straight Ahead
10. Bleeding Heart 

Side C:
11. Valleys of Neptune
12. Drifter’s Escape
13. Come Down Hard on Me
14. Stepping Stone
15. Angel

Side D:
16. Hear My Train a Comin'
17. Lover Man
18. Send My Love to Linda
19. Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)

There have been several attempts made at reconstructing Jimi Hendrix's unfinished fourth album that he was working on before he died. But the most common attempts at these reconstructions involve a mysterious tracklist that was supposedly written by someone else. It consists of three sides of a 2 LP album with two track names repeated. For my reconstruction, I won't use any instrumentals like Cherokee Mist or Beginnings, I won't use any unfinished tracks like Belly Button Window or Midnight Lightning, and I won't use any tracks not officially considered for the fourth album like My Friend or Pali Gap. I also didn't use Astro Man but I think it turned out good.

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young - Human Highway (2 LP) (1976)

 

Side A:
1. And So It Goes - Graham Nash

2. Black Coral - Stephen Stills

3. Homeward Through the Haze - David Crosby

4. Human Highway - Neil Young

5. Long May You Run - Neil Young

Side B:
6. Midnight on the Bay - Neil Young

7. Ocean Girl - Neil Young

8. Prison Song - Graham Nash

9. See the Changes - Stephen Stills

10. Taken at All - Graham Nash

11. Through My Sails - Neil Young

Side C:
12. As I Come of Age - Stephen Stills

13. Carry Me - David Crosby 

14. Different Tongues - Stephen Stills

15. Let It Shine - Neil Young

16. Love/Art Blues - Neil Young

17. Mutiny - Graham Nash

Side D:
18. My Favorite Changes - Stephen Stills

19. New Mama - Stephen Stills

20. Separate Ways - Neil Young

21. Time After Time - David Crosby

22. Traces - Neil Young

23. Wind on the Water - Graham Nash

Human Highway was intended to be the band's third album after Deja Vu in 1970. However due to conflicts between the band members’ "schedules", the album was worked on between 1973 and 1976 but never came out and the band's third album wouldn't be released till 1977. Graham Nash stated that the album was always intended as a single album of ten tracks, but in that time many of the songs from the sessions would later get released on their solo albums. 

But the odd thing is that although the band got together many times during this period to work on the album, they also split into a dichotomy of sorts. David Crosby and Graham Nash got together to form Crosby and Nash and Stephen Stills and Neil Young got together to form The Stills-Young Band. Although Crosby and Nash put out three albums around this time, The Stills-Young Band only put out one but it was the closest album to being a reunion around this time. 

There was an initial track list of ten tracks for the album, but I included another track called Prison Song by Graham Nash cause it was said that a full band version of the song existed. There was also a list of songs from bandmates' solo albums that were written around this time so I used that to form the second record. But a couple of the songs I had to take out for being written around this time but recorded afterwards such as Graham Nash's song It's All Right from Earth and Sky. 

Some notable songs include the title track for which I'm using a version recorded in 1977 but versions from 1976 exist, as well as an alternate version of See the Changes from their CSN album but released on their CSN box set, and Stephen Stills' version of a song which Neil wrote. I also don't usually list the tracks alphabetically but I liked the flow of it this way.