The Rolling Stones - Could You Walk on the Water? (1966)

 

Side A:
1. Mother's Little Helper
2. Take It or Leave It
3. What to Do
4. 19th Nervous Breakdown
5. Out of Time

Side B:
6. Ride On, Baby
7. Sittin' on a Fence
8. Sad Day
9. Long, Long While
10. I'd Much Rather Be With the Boys
11. My Girl
12. Looking Tired

When the Rolling Stones were working on their Aftermath album, they originally planned to call it Could You Walk on the Water? and gave it a release date of March 10, 1966. It had a tracklist of 10 tracks in which 5 of them made it on the Aftermath album which had 14 tracks. However before they could issue it, The Beatles made a controversial statement that they were more popular than Jesus, and they used the cover for an American compilation called Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass) which came out later that month. Aftermath wasn't be released till April.

However the American version was released in July which took out four tracks from the British version and instead included the song Paint It Black which was released as a single in May. Not only that but they released a single called 19th Nervous Breakdown in February which didn't get included on Aftermath but would later get included on Big Hits. So I thought what if we took these four extra tracks along with others like Breakdown to form this proposed album?

Some tracks wouldn't be released till they were featured on other compilation albums like Flowers in 1967 and Metamorphosis in 1975. Only the track Looking Tired was never officially released even though it was included in the original tracklist for the album. However I did include some songs from earlier in 1965 to round out the album.

The Who - Jigsaw Puzzle (1966)

 

Side A:
1. I'm a Boy
2. Run Run Run
3. Don't Look Away
4. So Sad About Us
5. I Need You
6. Disguises
7. In the City

Side B:
8. Boris the Spider
9. Whiskey Man
10. See My Way
11. Happy Jack
12. A Quick One, While He's Away

This is an alternate version of The Who's second album A Quick One. I found an initial tracklist online which had 12 tracks though the final version had 10 tracks. It included the covers Heat Wave and Barbara Ann as well as the instrumental Cobwebs and Strange but excluded the song So Sad About Us and the mini-suite A Quick One While He's Away. It also included the song Circles which was released on the American version of their first album which would've came out earlier in the year. But the American version of A Quick One replaced Heat Wave with their song Happy Jack. With all these changes and lots of songs to choose from, I replaced Cobwebs with the song Disguises which came from the same EP as Circles. 

The Who - Introducing the Who (1966)

 

Side A:
1. I'm a Man
2. I'm the Face
3. Here 'Tis
4. Zoot Suit
5. Leaving Here
6. I Can't Explain
7. Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere
8. Barbara Ann          

Side B:
9. Daddy Rolling Stone
10. Bald Headed Woman
11. Lubie (Come Back Home)
12. Shout and Shimmy
13. Heat Wave
14. Motoring
15. Anytime You Want Me

I originally envisioned this as an alternate version of The Who's first album, but I think there's actually enough songs to make a secondary album. Most of these songs are covers since this is from their "Maximum R&B" period, but it includes tracks like I'm a Man which was left off the American version of their first album and replaced with Circles, and Heat Wave which I left off my take on their second album but was actually an outtake from the first album. Either way this would've been released between their first and second album. 

The Monkees - Missing Links (1966)

 

Side A:
1. Apples, Peaches, Bananas, and Pears
2. I Don't Think You Know Me
3. So Goes Love
4. Teeny Tiny Gnome
5. Of You
6. All the King's Horses

Side B:
7. I Prithee (Do Not Ask for Love)
8. I Won't Be the Same Without Her
9. Tear Drop City                               
10. Looking for the Good Times
11. I Never Thought It Peculiar
12. Ladies Aid Society

Hey here's an idea I had. It was a Monkees alternate universe discography. I had been a fan of them since I was a kid but was only familiar with their six main albums. I never listened to the three albums made after Peter Tork left or the three volumes of the compilation series Missing Links. Did you know that they recorded those six albums in three years including three in 1967? 

Well apparently they had so much unreleased material that they could've released three more albums in that time. The band's first three years were considered the peak of their success. So much so that when it came to recording a new album after Peter Tork left the group in 1968, the decision was made to record new songs that would be mixed in with older songs. The band recorded three more albums in 1969 and 1970, each one including some of their earliest material.

When the Missing Links compilation albums came out in the '80s and '90s, it revealed that the band recorded a ton more material in their early days, some of it being unreleased. This album takes tracks from the first two volumes of Missing Links as well as the last three albums they made before breaking up. It's intended to be their second album of 1966. I took out two tracks from Volume Three, a jingle for Kellogg's and their theme song.

The Hollies - Bus Stop (1966)

 

Side A:
1. Bus Stop
2. I Am a Rock
3. Sweet Little Sixteen
4. We're Through
5. Don't Run and Hide

Side B:
6. Look Through Any Window
7. Mickey's Monkey
8. Fortune Teller
9. Honey and Wine
10. Yes I Will

When I was looking up the discography of the Hollies, I saw that they released three albums in 1966. I thought this was impressive because this was one year before The Monkees released three albums in 1967. As it turns out one of the albums was American in origin and simply contained tracks from the band that hadn't appeared on American versions of their British albums. You see during the British Invasion, British albums would have American versions that would have different track listings, but for the Hollies, they'd have American and Canadian versions! 

Not only that but the album included material from their whole discography at that point, including material from their first album which they recorded in 1963! They were reportedly unhappy about this which caused them to leave their American label. But I thought if I can't make it an album of original material, maybe I can make the material more current. So all the tracks on the first side are from 1966 and all the tracks from the second side are from 1965. The album is shorter by two tracks so I can't say if it's better, but all the material is new except one track.

Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde (1966)

 

Side A:
1. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
2. Pledging My Time
3. One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)
4. I Want You
5. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
6. Just Like a Woman

Side B:
7. Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine
8. Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?
9. Temporary Like Achilles
10. Absolutely Sweet Marie
11. 4th Time Around
12. Obviously 5 Believers

This is a single album version of Bob Dylan's double album Blonde on Blonde. Not only is this his first double album but it's also THE first double album, beating The Mothers of Invention's Freak Out! by a week. One interesting thing is that the last song is 11 minutes long but also takes up the last side making it considerably shorter than the other sides. Because of this I wanted to see what kind of bonus material I could include which I don't usually do when condensing an album, but I also cut out the two lengthy 7 minute long songs so it seemed necessary. 

Three of the songs from this period I couldn't include because they were a minute long: Medicine Sunday, Jet Pilot, and Lunatic Princess, but some songs I could include are Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?, I Wanna Be Your Lover, She's Your Lover Now, and I'll Keep It With Mine. The last two were incomplete so I ended up only using the first one. These were recorded during the New York sessions which lasted from October 1965 to January 1966, but only one song made it to the final version of the album. Afterwards recording sessions moved to Nashville.