In the 80s, it was common for music shows on TV to be hidden away in a graveyard slot. With almost every household owning a VCR, such things were no longer missable, and for rock fans it became common practice to record shows like The Power Hour and Live From London for weekend viewing. Live From London was particularly interesting. Running between1983-1985, it would show footage of all manner of rock bands – ranging from Husker Du to Uriah Heep – captured at the Camden Palace (now Koko).
Tag Archives: esoteric recordings
ALAN WHITE – Ramshackled
Taking some well earned time between band projects in 1975, the five members of the then current Yes embarked on solo ventures. As you’d expect, each release had elements which tipped the hat towards the mothership – especially strongly in the case of Chris Squire’s excellent ‘Fish Out of Water’ – but the freedom of writing alone and working with other musicians also brought a fresh angle. When heard as a whole volume of work, those five albums – Squire’s ‘Fish…’, Jon Anderson’s fanciful ‘Olias of Sunhillow’, Steve Howe’s underrated ‘Beginnings’, Patrick Moraz’s ‘I’ and Alan White’s ‘Ramshackled’ – make for an interesting listen. In some ways, the finest elements from each can be cobbled together to make a great Yes album that never was.
Predictably, the releases from Anderson, Squire and Howe all achieved UK success upon release, charting at #8, #25 and #22, respectively. Moraz’s rather complex ‘I’ has gained cult status over the passing decades, but White’s sole venture has often been considered the runt of the litter.
GREENSLADE – Large Afternoon
Between 2018-2019, Esoteric Recordings – the prog rock subsidiary of Cherry Red Records – ran a brilliant reissue campaign for 70s band Greenslade. Their four major albums were lovingly repackaged and expanded with a wealth of live material, BBC Sessions and various alternate edits. In the case of fan favourite ‘Bedside Manners Are Extra’, the 1973 album was even coupled with a bonus DVD featuring the band’s appearance on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test, making the short set available in full, officially, for the first time. Such a good job was made of these affordable reissues that it was hoped that the campaign would be extended to include keyboard maestro Dave Greenslade’s first two solo albums – 1976’s ‘Cactus Choir’ and 1978’s lavish album and book set ‘The Pentateuch of The Cosmonololgy’ – since both deserved a similar level of TLC. Sadly, it wasn’t to be: instead, fans merely got a compilation disc presenting the best of Greenslade appended with one rare nugget – ‘Feathered Folk’, recorded live at the Reading Festival in 1973, which, in fairness, should’ve featured on the ‘Bedside’ reissue. [As of April 2025, neither of those aforementioned solo discs have had a decent CD send off; the Angel Air reissue of ‘Cactus Choir’ sounds awful, and ‘Pentateuch’ exists in an inferior edited version.]
VARIOUS ARTISTS – Ring The Bells & Sing: Progressive Sounds Of 1975
Whenever a new, yearly themed box of prog rock cuts gets released by Esoteric Records, genre fans automatically know they’re in for some great listening. Even when their ‘Underground Sounds’ and ‘Progressive Sounds’ anthologies merely recycle a world of album cuts, these affordable multi-disc sets create something that isn’t just well rounded; when approached in the right mood, they’re compilations which are incredibly absorbing. Whether approaching them from a nostalgic perspective or in the hope of discovering something new – hopefully both – these anthologies supply a huge amount of entertainment.
Tangerine Dream: Bootleg Box Set Vol. 2 to be reissued in November
Tangerine Dream completists will be well aware of how hard it is to collect everything. Between the re-recorded works, various compilations with minor differences, bounteous live recordings and box sets, their legacy of work literally spans well over a hundred titles.
There’s some good news for the keen collector: On November 25th 2022, Cherry Red Records will be reissuing ‘The Bootleg Box Set, Volume 2’ via their Esoteric Recordings imprint. Not to be confused with “The Official Bootleg Series” (also in the hands of Cherry Red), the original “Bootleg Box Set” releases were issued by Castle Music back in the 00’s and soon became hard to find. The second volume, in particular, was a very short run and over the years has become incredibly sought after, occasionally fetching three figure sums on the rare instances it came up for sale on eBay.