FISHERMAN'S BLUES: TOO CLOSE TO HEAVEN

This is part four (and the final) of the Fisherman's Blues compilations that I put together.

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The Waterboys released their 4th album, Fisherman's Blues, on October of 1998. The Fisherman's Blues recording sessions were an epic undertaking that spanned cities, countries and even continents. The recordings took place from 1996 to 1998 and produced an insane amount of music. The sessions began at Windmill Lane Studio in Dublin and lasted from January through March 1986. From there they moved to San Francisco and recorded for a few more months before moving back to Windmill Lane and finally ending the recording sessions at the Spiddal house in Galway. Mike Scott describes the process; "We started recording our fourth album in early '86 and completed it 100 songs and 2 years later. There was a lot of indecision. I got too involved in the album and I lost perspective. We had blues songs, gospel songs, country songs, rock songs and ballads. I didn't know where to take it. It could've been a gospel or country album. It could've sounded more like This Is The Sea or it could've been a traditional album. It could've been anything."

14 years after the release of Fisherman's Blues came Too Close To Heaven or Fisherman's Blues Part 2 (with an extended tracklisting) as it was known as in North America. "Quite how 'Too Close to Heaven' – a song that is easily worthy of either John Lennon or Van Morrison - languished in the vaults for 12 years is a matter for Scott's conscience (and his accountants)" said the Guardian.

25 years after the release of Fisherman's Blues the Waterboys released a 7-CD box set which contained 121 tracks from the album sessions (including all those on the original record and subsequent editions) plus a further 85 unreleased tracks!

After years of taking stabs at creating an all inclusive best of the Fisherman's Blues boxset for my own listening pleasure I finally did it. I pared down the epic 121 track boxset to a 64 song four part listening experience.

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Part 4 is called: Fisherman's Blues: Too Close to Heaven

Part 3 can be found here.
Part 2 can be found here.
Part 1 can be found here.

Tracklisting:
Fisherman's Blues [Piano Version]
A Golden Age
Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down
Too Close To Heaven
You Don't Have To Be In The Army To Fight In The War
I Miss The Road
Higherbound [Prototype]
Killing My Heart [2nd Version]
Good Man Gone
Pictish National Anthem (Comati)
One Step Closer
She Could Have Had Me Step By Step
The Good Ship Sirius [Set Of Jigs]
If I Can't Have You
As Soon As I Get Home [MF Edit]

I'm the song of the river
Speeding unceasing to the sea
I'm alive!
I'm in love!
Each and every time
There's some for me

'96/97 ALRIGHT THEN

This is the fourth part of my series of Beck compilations. It is made up of the singles, b-sides, compilation tracks and live on the radio shows that he did before and during the Odelay era.

I am copying and pasting this blurb from '93 Feelings to give some hindsight:
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Beck has so much goddamn music out there. He was insanely prolific from 1993 to 1998 which always made me crazy when people referred to him as a slacker. He released close to 100 songs as singles, b-sides, outtakes, compilation tracks, remixes, and live on air sessions. That is on top of releasing the following albums: Golden Feelings, A Western Harvest Field By Moonlight, Stereopathetic Soulmanure, Mellow Gold, One Foot In The Grave, Odelay and Mutations. Seven albums, fifteen singles, eight collaborations, twenty seven compilation tracks, remixes of and from various musicians and a bunch of videos. There's also a missing album he recorded with Jon Spencer's Blues Explosion; nthe unreleased follow K Records follow up to One Foot In The Grave and an album he made that would have been "a more rock-based follow-up to Mellow Gold, an album that sounds like a Pavement, Sebadoh kind of thing”. All of this in a span of 5 years. That's fucking insane.
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To make "96/97 Alright Then" I used the bonus songs, remixes, singles and b-sides from "Odelay"; The non-album single, Deadweight; An outtake from the unreleased K-Records follow up; Plus a live song from KCRW.

You can find 94/95 Gold Too here.
You can find 94/95 Gold here.
You can find 93 Feelings here.

Tracklisting:
Electric Music & The Summer People
Richard's Hairpiece [Aphex Twin Remix]
Clock
Somewhere Far Along
Erase The Sun
000.000
Lemonade
Feather In Your Cap
Deadweight
Buried Alive
Brother
The New Pollution [Mickey P Remix]
Burro
Lloyd Price Express [John King Remix]
Twp Bit Cares
American Wasteland

Entering the solar sphere
Planets meld crystal clear
Thrashing in the astral glow
Flashing in their fleshly show