Albums that were buried by their creators or label

Spirit's "The Adventures Of Kaptain Kopter And Commander Cassidy In Potato Land" was recorded in 1973/74 but not released until 1981 -



- there is also "The Original Potatoland" -



_ which seems to be a little suspect as far as being an official release.

 

Thanks for the update - no record player anymore so was just running on the old memory system - it's not too hot.

 

Another missing for years album by Spirit is "Model Shop", a soundtrack recorded by the original line up in 1968 for a film that was considered a failure so the album was shelved -



- but finally saw the light of day in 2005 despite much of the material having appeared on other contemporary albums of theirs.

 

Juliana Hatfield's "God's Foot" was shelved by her and Atlantic, although two tracks came out later on a comp.

 

Interestingly, I think MSL is better than NerveNet.

 

I haven't checked the entire thread but Michaelangelo, a group that got signed to Columbia Records. Made one (very good) LP in 1971. Supposedly bad blood between the producer and the president of Columbia resulted in the LP not being supported or promoted. The album became pretty collectible.

 

Around 1999, the Dave Matthews Band recorded an entire album that their label rejected because the material was deemed too dark/depressing. The recordings leaked and are referred to as the "Lillywhite Sessions". That album has never been officially released-- however some of the songs were re-recorded and included on a later album.

Unrelated to that, John Payne (the vocalist for Asia from 1992-2005) had mentioned numerous times up until 2013 or so that a new album was ready to be released by his official spin-off band Asia Featuring John Payne. However, only one track was ever released (on iTunes) and it doesn't look like the rest will ever surface.

 

I don't think the label was trying to bury it, but they should have known better than to give it a title like that. They found out too late that you can't say the artist doesn't like the album (although Wolf went on record referring to it as "dogsh*t").

 

Nope, actually not mentioned and a great example. I've still never heard any of those songs (not that I ever really looked). I imagine the original pressings probably fetch crazy bucks.

 

Heh, I forgot I even started this thread, it turned out to be a good one!

A "disowned by artist" example I don't think I mentioned before was Dr. Dre's 1996 followup to The Chronic that came out on his new self-owned Aftermath label, also titled The Aftermath. It had one sorta-hit in "Been There, Done That" but nothing else went anywhere at all, virtually all of the artists who appeared on the record were soon dropped by the label, and it was quickly forgotten. By the time his next album, 2001, came out in 1999 he was even virtually pretending it never existed (there's a line about "Haters say Dre fell off / How, n*gga? My last album was The Chronic").

There's a lot of other lyrics on the album that heavily imply he'd been gone from the rap scene since the early '90s and was only now making his triumphant return. When called out in interviews about it, he'd claim that The Aftermath was never a "real" record and was only intended as a promo for the new label (which isn't how it was pushed at the time really). You could say he has a good argument because Dre doesn't rap much on the album, and it is mostly a showcase for the entire Aftermath roster - but he does produce all those songs, and what was The Chronic itself if not mainly a collection of Dre's production showcasing the Death Row roster? I'm not sure if The Aftermath is in print anymore, but I kinda doubt it.

 

Alan Douglas released 2 albums of 1963 Richie Havens demos overdubbed with electric instruments (The Richie Havens Record and Electric Havens). Havens had both of them pulled from the market since they were conflicting with the sales of his authorized albums. The same thing happened with the re-release of an early locally released album of Joan Baez. The re-release was misleadingly titled The Best of Joan Baez. She had it pulled.

Warner/Reprise refused to release the Beach Boys' Adult Child. I like it in all its quirkiness, but I can understand why the label wouldn't release it. It's the second strangest album in the Beach Boys' canon, the strangest being Smiley Smile.

Sweet Thursday's one and only album was released on Tetragrammaton the day the label went bankrupt. A true lost classic.

Tom Paxton released 2 albums on Reprise: The brilliant How Come the Sun and another one I haven't heard. The label didn't promote them. Tom said they were "released at midnight and out of print by dawn."

 

Oh yeah....... I actually saw a copy of "The Aftermath" in a used CD store years back and wondered what it was, I'd never heard of it until that moment!

 

Yeah, I remember it hitting the used bins very quickly (and turning into one of those dollar-bin staples, at that). I haven't listened to it in years, but from what I remember there's a few decent tracks, but it's wildly tonally inconsistent and Dre was pushing for a more pop/R&B-oriented sound that both didn't really work and wasn't what people wanted from a Dr. Dre album. You'd have a hard gangsta-edged beat on one track, followed directly by something Mariah Carey might have called too generic or saccharine. It's a weird record.

 

Another that maybe qualifies, Johnny Cash's planned-for-1984-but-unreleased-til-2014 Out Among the Stars. The way I take it, Columbia didn't want Cash working with Billy Sherrill anymore because their previous album together had been a relative flop, so they just pushed this one aside. I say "maybe" since I'm not sure how finished this exactly was back in 1984 - the 2014 version features some newly-recorded instruments and overdubs. Reports at the time said it was only very lightly touched up, and it definitely sounds that way though.

 

It was called The Howlin' Wolf album; Wolf dismissed it as 'Dogs**t"

 

Columbia didn't want Johnny Cash full stop at this time. He made, in 1979/80 Rockabilly Blues, which was produced by Earl Ball and, on Without Love, Nick Lowe. In 1983 Cash made Johnny 99, which was recorded away from Nashville, in Hollywood, and was produced by Brian Ahern. This was a great album, but the Springsteen covers may have caused the country-buying public to shy away from it. The Adventures of Johnny Cash was a return to Nashville, but produced by Jack Clement, and was, in the main, a poor album.

However, in 1982, Cash also cut The Baron, produced by Billy Sherrill, which, justifiably, wasn't much good. Chattanooga City Limits, and The Reverend Mr Black weren't that bad, as cuts go, but the remainder was terrible. In 1981, Cash also cut some sessions with Marty Stuart; only two tracks, Doin' My Time and I'm Never Gonna Roam Again, turned up on The Legend boxed set. I think there was a gospel album, produced by Marty Stuart, that appears on the Soul of Truth Bootleg Series Vol 4, around the same time.

What made matters worse was that Chicken In Black was recorded at the same time as some of the Out Among The Stars cuts. I think Chicken set Cash's career back a decade: it was an awful contrast between the covers of Nebraska Bruce Springsteen cuts, and this disposable bit of garbage. Columbia then let Chips Moman work with Cash on Rainbow and The Highwayman album. Rainbow had some good choices, marred by 80s production, but I think Cash had lost heart in what he was creating.

I'm sure, putting aside Out Among The Stars, that there's even more unreleased Cash in the vaults. There's definitely a re-recorded Home Of The Blues from Class of 55, a live Rock'n'Roll Ruby, and some unreleased stuff with Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins from The Survivors gigs of 1981. I know Cash, Lewis, and Perkins got together in the Netherlands, and that there's some more from Stuttgart as well.

 

You imagine wrong! At least,I wouldn't think they're worth much - they're actually pretty common finds in the used bins up here.

 

Do John and Yoko's three avant garde albums count? I mean.... when the boxed set of John's discography was released, those were casually omitted.

(Though to be fair, they did get remastered CD releases - with bonus tracks even - so that might disqualify them; still not certain why Yoko lopped off the last 30 seconds of "Two Virgins"??)

 

This was finally released last year in pristine quality from the original tapes.

 

This was finally released last year in pristine quality from the original tapes.

 

And even then they left one of the best songs off of it. Utter ******** what went on with that album. Worse part it was their best offering since the 70's.

 

Zapple Records, an Apple Records subsidiary run by Barry Miles, a friend of McCartney, was intended as an outlet for the release of spoken word and avant garde records, as a budget label.[8] It was active from 3 February 1969[9] until June 1969, and only two albums were released on the label, one by Lennon and Ono (Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions) and one by Harrison (Electronic Sound). An album of readings by Richard Brautigan was planned for release as Zapple 3, and acetate disc copies were cut, but, said Miles, "The Zapple label was folded by Klein before the record could be released. The first two Zapple records did come out. We just didn't have [Brautigan's record] ready in time before Klein closed it down. None of the Beatles ever heard it."[10] Brautigan's record was eventually released as Listening to Richard Brautigan onHarvest Records, a subsidiary of Apple distributor EMI, in the US only.[10]

The first record that was done for Zapple was by poet Charles Olon.[11] According to Miles, a spoken word album by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, which had been recorded and edited, would have been Zapple 4, and a spoken word album by Michael McClurehad also been recorded.[10] A planned Zapple release of a UK appearance by comedian Lenny Bruce was never completed. An early 1969 press release also named Pablo Casals as an expected guest on the label. American author Ken Kesey was given a tape recorder to record his impressions of London, but they were never released. Miles also had the intention of bringing world leaders to the label.[8] Zapple was shut down in June 1969 by Klein, apparently with the backing of Lennon.[12]

 

Garth came within a hair of surpassing The Beatles in album sales in 1999.

 

Kind of surprised not to see this one, yet...
Dino Valenti in 1968 was considered a major find, worthy of a major label contract, but...
Apparently he made such a horse's ass out of himself at Epic Records ( calling Clive Davis in the middle of the night and cussing him out,
scrapping an entire Jack Nitzsche-produced album, hectoring his studio musicians....among some other diva-like behavior) that the label
felt he was much more trouble than he was worth and released his self-titled (they mis-spelled his name) album with little to no promotion, and booted him off the label.
It's actually a pretty decent album.

 

Man I feel like I've been using this example/artist/albums in a lot of threads here lately but it fits in this case, too. Sacred Songs, Daryl Hall's first solo album, produced by Robert Fripp, was initially shelved by Hall's record label RCA fearing that the album's style would alienate many of his fans. It was released three years later quietly but with good sales.