BOC: ST, AoF remasters, + Mirrors, Jethro Tull, even HW

[Stephan Forstner]

> ...if nothing else,
> Mirrors would present an opportunity for everyone to hear The
> Devil's Hangnail, which is the original song that metamorphosed
> into The Vigil and had some nasty Patti Smith lyrics.

Although I can somewhat understand it, I have to put up a (small) protest to
the slagging Mirrors occasionally takes here. Sure, it's got its share of
dogs (Dr. Music) and somewhat boring stuff (Moon Crazy, Lonely Teardrops),
but The Great Sun Jester is definitely one of my all-time favorite BOC
pieces, The Vigil is likewise great, I am the Storm is pretty good, and I
really like In Thee, which I take at face value as a completely non-ironic
statement and love it for both its sentiment and its presentation.
Admittedly the album is a very mixed bag, but the good tracks here are
really good, in several different ways. Maybe the fact that they seem to be
all over the place turns people off? Or is it that this was too 'pop'-py an
album?

> As for rejected songs being lesser than songs that make an album, that
> is not always the case.  There are any number of reasons a song
> might be dropped from an album.  Sometimes the song just doesn't
> quite fit in with the rest of the songs...so no matter how good it
> is, it gets cut.  This happened fairly frequently with Jethro Tull,
> for instance...

As was amply demonstrated with the fantastic 20 Year (5 LP/3 CD) boxed set
that collected lots of these 'extra' tracks, and, to a much lesser extent,
disc 2 of Nightcap. Many of those unreleased songs were really good, as good
as the prviously released 'official' material, in some cases even better. I
think though that some cleanup and additions were done for some of those
tracks before they were let out for the boxed set. Incidently, the BBC DJ
who appears doing voiceover on some of the early live tracks collected for
the JT 20 year set (Brian Matthews) can also be heard on the 2 Hawkwind
tracks from the BBC transcription disc (collected on the Dawn of Hawkwind boot).

Hey, now I've linked 3 of my favorite bands - HW, JT, and BOC - in one post
- without stretching - I feel all tingly. Woohoo!

Stephan