FarFlung techincal question/Grenas apology?

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Wed, 23 Dec 2009, mike coleman wrote:

> I always wondered why my copy of "so many minds" bugged me a bit but I just
> noticed (again, years later) that while the CD advertises 8 tracks, my copy
> only reads 4, and that track  goes on for like 40 minutes...
> so....
> are there some hidden tracks that can be recovered or do I gave a collectors
> item and need to head out to Amazon???

 	Mine is like this too, I think they all are. Well, actually mine's 
not quite like that: there are four audio tracks as seen by the CD player; 
the track-listing on the back of the case lists six; and the sleeve notes 
also refer to tracks #7 & #8. So none of it adds up. If yours isn't like 
that then one of us may have a collectors' item, but I'm not sure which or 
by how much.

 	Years ago I mailed Buck McGibbony, the original bass player who's 
on the first three albums, about this--at least, I mailed the contact 
address on the initial Farflung website--all praise the Wayback Machine! 
it's been archived, having apparently been taken down in early 2001, at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000824132513/www.wgn.net/~gnudarve/farflung/
--and that's who answered. He's an odd man and didn't make things quite as 
clear as one might have liked, but if I remember rightly this much is 
true:

(i) the mastering plant and the artwork people both screwed up--but I'm 
not sure whether there were supposed to be six or eight tracks in the 
'right' version.

(ii) I had it `roughly right' that `Raven' as it stands is the correct 
full track #1, `Sonic Evaporation' is the following track with the "I'm 
disintegrating..." refrain as far as the unexpected multicoloured organ 
cascade, which is `Helianthus', `Candied Electronic Atmospheres' is what 
happens next and `Alius Orbis' starts with the crushing downwards riff 
that we can also identify because it's been in a live set or two like the 
Strange Daze CD-R. `The Way the Sky Is' is of course on _So Many Minds_ so 
we know that one, and `(It's Not A Bad Dream)' refers to the forty-minute 
circus organ outtro we all know and dread. (Dare *you* listen to the thing 
carefully enough to see if it repeats anywhere? I'm not sure it's looped, 
I think they may actually have played it.)

(iii) However, if I'm only `roughly' right about that I have no idea 
where I might be wrong, if you follow. If you had to make eight out of 
this I would split either `Sonic Evaporation' or `Alius Orbis', which does 
in this scheme have a lengthy second part that's not in the live version, 
but I'm not sure which, and count `Not a Bad Dream' as a separate track 
for #8. I could be way wrong though. It would make more sense 
maybe to split `Sonic Evaporation', because then track #4 and 
track #8 would both be organ-led which might explain the common 
writing credit they have in the sleeve, but since track #8 was apparently 
recorded separately anyway there might be nothing in that. Who knows? 
Presumably Greñas, if anyone wants to ask him. Annoyingly, this seems to 
have been in the term's worth of mail I forgot to back up when I first 
graduated, so I can't go back to the original words McGibbony (or Alien 
Gnudarve Lovejoy, as he was trading) or I used. Oh well.

 	And, as a postscript, let's note that both McGibbony in e-mail and 
McGibbony on the website claim that _So Many Minds..._ contains the full 
two-part version of the `Raven' suite, and indeed my copy of _So Many 
Minds..._ has the lyrics for the latter part, but it's not actually on the 
disc, only the same first half as is on the eponymous album is there. 
Since the album also has tracks 3 and 6 listed in the opposite order to 
which they appear through the speakers, I assumed this was another 
mastering plant error, but now that I think about it it is strange that 
McGibbony *believed* it had the full version on, because unlike a lot of 
what he seems to have believed, and may still believe wherever he now is, 
this could easily be checked. Do I have a weird version of *this* disc, or 
is everyone else's like that too? Yours,
 					 Jon

ObCD: Hawkwind - _California Brainstorm_
-- 
       Jonathan Jarrett, Cambridge    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
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