TWELFTH NIGHT - CD SMILING AT GRIEF

Popis - SMILING AT GRIEF:
SMILING AT GRIEF – Definitive Edition Release Drummer BRIAN DEVOIL's SLEEVENOTES written to accompany the CD release in 2009. Smiling At Grief was first released on CD by the French label MSI in 1997 and was available up until the label’s demise several years later. With the recent upsurge in activity of the band we thought it was about time to make it available again but wanted to include more music and background information than before. So when we were approached by Dave Robinson at Festival Music who suggested a ‘Definitive Edition’ we thought it sounded like a great idea. As the 4-piece line-up was relatively short-lived – though it did go on to write and record the Fact and Fiction album - there was not a great deal of other recorded material available to accompany the original tracks. After all, the purpose of Smiling At Grief had been to gather together some demos to try and stimulate some record company interest and also to satisfy the growing number of fans who had been eagerly awaiting new material, particularly now that Geoff had joined the band. We therefore took the decision that it would make most sense to pair the original album with our own Archive Release – Smiling At Grief Live (TNCDR001) - from a concert featuring largely the same tracks, recorded a month or so after the original studio album. So we now effectively have a studio album and a live album. We have also been able to add 3 extra tracks for this release. On Disc One we have the original studio demo of Eleanor Rigby, which was recorded at Woodcray at the same time as the other tracks on Smiling At Grief but never previously released. This demo so excited the owner of Revolution Studios in Manchester that he offered the band the studio time to record the Fact and Fiction album. So while it may not have been our finest musical moment, it played a very important part in our history. The remaining 2 extra tracks were recorded live in rehearsal during the summer of 1981. This City was recorded in the cellar of Geoff's house in Salford, Convenient Blindness a month or so later at Burghfield Mill our rehearsal hideaway deep in the Berkshire countryside (and pictured on the Live at The Target album cover.) As you can hear from the various band members “a whoopin’ and a hollerin”’ at the beginning, Convenient Blindness was being prepared as an encore, so we have slotted it in at the end of the live set on Disc Two. We can’t remember whether we played it that night, but if we did it wasn’t recorded! Finally, at the end of Disc One we have included a very early version of This City by the 5-piece band, before Rick took his ‘leave of absence’. It’s one of a number of different arrangements we tried before settling on the final version, and it’s very different - another example of a TN track that was written and re-written several times before we were happy with it. The sound is a bit rough and ready as it was recorded live onto a portable cassette recorder in a cellar not much bigger than your average bedroom! We hope you like it!