...The Best Reissue For 2005...

Then

Bio...

The psychedelic folk band Pearls Before Swine was the brainchild of singer, composer and cult icon Tom Rapp, born in Bottineau, ND in 1947; after writing his first song at age six, he later began performing at local talent shows, and as a teen bested a young Bob Dylan at one such event. Upon relocating to Melbourne, FL, Rapp formed Pearls Before Swine in 1965, recruiting high school friends Wayne Harley, Lane Lederer and Roger Crissinger to record a demo which he then sent to the ESP-Disk label; the company quickly signed the group, and they soon travelled to New York to record their superb 1967 debut One Nation Underground, which went on to sell some 250,000 copies. The explicitly anti-war Balaklava, widely regarded as Pearls Before Swine's finest work, followed in 1968; the group by this time essentially comprising Rapp and whoever else was in the studio at the moment — moved to Reprise for 1969's These Things Too, mounting their first-ever tour in the wake of releasing The Use of Ashes a year later. Two more albums, City of Gold and Beautiful Lies You Could Live In, followed in 1971; moving to Blue Thumb, Rapp resurfaced as a solo artist with 1972's Stardancer, but upon the release of Sunforest a year later he then retired from music, subsequently becoming a civil rights attorney.

Now

Frequently cited as a key influence by the likes of Damon & Naomi, the Bevis Frond and the Japanese psych band Ghost, Rapp made an unexpected return to live performance in mid-1998 when he appeared at the Terrastock festival in Providence, RI, joining son Dave and his indie-pop band Shy Camp; he soon began work on 1999's A Journal of the Plague Year, his first new LP in over two decades. Constructive Melancholy, a retrospective of Pearls Before Swine's tenure on Reprise, also appeared that same year. This sparked renewed interest in the band, with Water music releasing a box set of the Reprise material in 2003 (Jewels Were the Stars) as well as a set of unreleased demo and live recordings entitled he Wizard of Is. ESP also remastered and combined their first two albums as The Complete ESP-Disk Recordings in 2005.

One Nation Underground 1967

Balaklava album 1968

The New Compilation With Both Albums 2005

Reissue Review...

The Complete ESP-Disk Recordings of Pearls Before Swine is simply the handsomely repackaged reissue of both albums cut for the label in 1967 and 1968, One Nation Underground and Balaklava. Re-released in the U.S. by Bernard Stollman's erratically active label, the two-on-one CD package features both albums completely remastered for reissue by veteran studio wiz Joe Phillips. While the Pearls Before Swine website claims that Phillips worked from master tapes, Phillips in his liner note essay says that the masters "are long-lost to History" (sic). Over five years he used his memory of the original recordings produced by Richard Alderson, the supervision of Pearls Before Swine's visionary songwriter and principal vocalist Tom Rapp, and existing copies. They sound great. Given what he had to work with — and some of the atrocious sounding re-releases on CD — this set is basically the reference point from here on out. The sound is clear, flat, and dynamic with many of the subtleties of the original sessions reproduced in unprecedented detail. In addition to Phillips' own introductory tome, the package includes essays by songwriter and labelmate Randy Burns, a brief paragraph by Stollman, and complete lyrics for both recordings.

Bio & Reissue Review By AMG.




Pearls Before Swine Home Page




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