Golden Delicious Demos<\/i><\/a> was released in 2022. And the non-hits keep coming: a new release titled How Much is the Sky: Demos 1967-1969<\/i> bears the subtitle The Iveys Anthology Volume 4<\/i>.<\/p>\nThe first thought coming to mind is how remarkable it is that more than a half century on, previously unreleased Iveys material is still coming to light. Happily, this latest release is thanks to Y&T Music, current-day curators of record for all things Badfinger.<\/p>\n
Even in their Iveys days, the group boasted formidable talent, not only musicianwise, but in terms of songwriting prowess. All four members contributed original material, and songs from all four have found their way onto How Much is the Sky<\/i>. Not surprisingly, Ham and Evans have the most tracks, but songs from Gibbins and Griffiths are sprinkled into the mix as well (though notes point out that those latter songs weren\u2019t ever included in Iveys sets).<\/p>\n
Even though the 19 tracks on this set are demo recordings, the arrangements are well thought out, and the production values are first rate by late \u201860s standards. (Some unobtrusive cleanup work was done to bring these tapes to release.) Ham\u2019s soulful vocals and the band\u2019s tight playing make all of the music worth hearing. Some of the songs are a bit odd: Was Evans\u2019 \u201cFresh\u201d written as an advertising jingle? Ham\u2019s \u201cSausage and Egg\u201d sounds like something Giles, Giles and Fripp (or The Bonzos) might\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n
Had it been re-recorded with a fuller arrangement, Gibbins\u2019 \u201cFace the Sun\u201d would have fit nicely on Magic Christian Music<\/i>. The skeletal demo of the title track hints at what it could have become. Another catchy number is Ham\u2019s \u201cFor My Sympathy.\u201d Here it\u2019s a nearly-campfire styled arrangement, though another (unreleased) version circulates among collectors, an acetate with a more electric feel. (Perhaps that\u2019ll surface on a future volume; see below).<\/p>\n
Ham\u2019s Merseybeat-flavored \u201cI\u2019ll Kiss You Goodnight\u201d is another winner, but there are plenty of fine tunes on this set. And while the lyrics of \u201cJust Look Inside the Cover\u201d are a bit preachy in a Five Man Electrical Band sort of way, it\u2019s an appealing tune nonetheless. Evans\u2019 \u201cStop Before You Go\u201d is a lovely slice of pastoral-meets-freakbeat. The exceedingly lo-fi \u201cGet High\u201d is reminiscent of Jeremy Spencer\u2019s retro-fifties excursions with Fleetwood Mac. Far from a barrel-scraping exercise, How Much is the Sky<\/i> is a fascinating archival dig.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s some arcana for those who\u2019ve read this far. Remarkably, this new collection doesn\u2019t exhaust the cache of unreleased Badfinger-related material. The press materials for How Much is the Sky<\/i> note that an Iveys demo for \u201cBlodwyn\u201d (a song which would be recorded later for Badfinger\u2019s No Dice<\/i> LP) \u201cwill appear on a future volume.\u201d Add to that the fact that my own collection of unofficial recordings includes many other Iveys tracks that have somehow not made it onto any of these four Anthology volumes. Here\u2019s hoping, too, that a long-wished-for recording of late-period Badfinger (with Bob Jackson) live onstage during the band\u2019s tour with Man will someday surface. In the meantime, fans should be grateful for this release. Kudos to Y&T, and to Badfinger archivists Kevin McElligott and Tom Brennan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seasoned Badfinger fans know the broad outlines of the story: before they were rechristened by The Beatles, Badfinger were The Iveys. Under that name, the Welsh group even made an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29408,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,49,51,62,65],"tags":[256,4914],"class_list":["post-29407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-new-release","category-pop","category-rawk","category-review","tag-badfinger","tag-iveys","cat-19-id","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29407"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29432,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29407\/revisions\/29432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Seasoned Badfinger fans know the broad outlines of the story: before they were rechristened by The Beatles, Badfinger were The Iveys. Under that name, the Welsh group even made an album, the poorly-distributed Maybe Tomorrow<\/i>, ostensibly released by Apple in 1969 but only in Germany, Italy and Japan. Good luck laying hands on any of those LPs; used copies start at $200 and go up from there. Save for some unauthorized reissues and a 1992 CD release, Maybe Tomorrow<\/i> remains an obscurity, heard by few.<\/p>\n