BEAUTIFUL SCARLET: RECORDINGS 1969-1975

Rare Bird

•

Crossover Prog

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Rare Bird Beautiful Scarlet: Recordings 1969-1975 album cover

4.92 | 5 ratings | 1 reviews | 60% 5 stars

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Boxset/Compilation, released in 2021

Songs / Tracks Listing

CD 1: 1969 - Rare Bird (45:03)
1. Iceberg (6:58)
2. Times (3:26)
3. You Went Away (4:40)
4. Melanie (3:30)
5. Beautiful Scarlet (5:44)
6. Sympathy (2:46)
7. Natures Fruit (2:38)
8. Bird on a Wing (4:19)
9. God of War (5:35)
- Bonus tracks (1970):
10. Devil's High Concern (2:50)
11. Sympathy (mono single version) (2:37)

CD 2: 1970 - As Your Mind Flies by (48:09)
1. What You Want to Know (6:00)
2. Down on the Floor (2:41)
3. Hammerhead (3:34)
4. I'm Thinking (5:41)
5. Flight (19:44) :
- i. As Your Mind Flies By
- ii. Vacuum
- iii. New Yorker
- iv. Central Park
- Bonus tracks (1970):
6. What You Want to Know (mono single version) (3:35)
7. Hammerhead (mono single version) (3:24)
8. Red Man (1971 version) (3:30)

CD 3: 1972 - Epic Forest (63:57)
1. Baby Listen (3:25)
2. Hey Man (5:53)
3. House in the City (4:24)
4. Epic Forest (9:14)
5. Turning the Lights Out (4:40)
6. Her Darkest Hour (3:36)
7. Fears of the Night (3:20)
8. Turn It All Around (4:45)
9. Title No. 1 Again (Birdman) (6:10)
- Bonus tracks: included on limited edition 7-inch single given with first edition of the album
10. Roadside Welcome (4:28)
11. Four Grey Walls (3:54)
12. You're Lost (10:08)

CD 4: 1973 - Somebody's Watching (45:41)
1. Somebody's Watching (5:27)
2. Third Time Around (4:56)
3. Turn Your Head (4:40)
4. More and More (4:06)
5. Hard Time (3:07)
6. Who Is the Hero (3:40)
7. High in the Morning (3:32)
8. Dollars (0:32)
9. A Few Dollars More (8:12)
- Bonus tracks:
10. Virginia (3:11)
11. Lonely Street (4:18)

CD 5: 1974 - Born Again (48:01)
1. Body and Soul (3:10)
2. Live for Each Other (2:56)
3. Diamonds (4:08)
4. Reaching You (3:32)
5. All That I Need (3:58)
6. Redman (3:42)
7. Peace of Mind (5:25)
8. Harlem (3:23)
9. Lonely Street (3:13)
10. Last Tango in Beulah (6:27)
- Bonus tracks:
11. Don't Be Afraid (3:38)
12. Passin' Through (4:29)

CD 6: 2020 - Live at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, 30th June 1974 (45:01)
1. Somebody's Watching (7:18)
2. Third Time Around (5:15)
3. Hard Time (5:14)
4. All That I Need (4:20)
5. Lonely Street (5:33)
6. Live for Each Other (4:15)
7. Last Tango in Beulah (7:02)
8. Dollars (6:04)

Total Time 295:52

Line-up / Musicians

CD 1:
- Graham Field / organ
- David Kaffinetti / electric piano
- Steve Gould / bass, lead vocals
- Mark Ashton / drums, timpani, backing vocals

CD 2:
- Graham Field / organ, keyboards
- David Kaffinetti / electric piano, keyboards
- Steve Gould / bass, lead vocals
- Mark Ashton / drums, backing vocals

CD 3:
- Steve Gould / vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar
- Dave Kaffinetti / electric piano, Hammond, organ, Farfisa organ, piano
- Ced Curtis / lead guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals
- Paul Karas / bass, vocals
- Fred Kelly / drums
- Nic Potter / percussion (5)

CD 4:
- Steve Gould / lead vocals, guitar, bass (6)
- Dave Kaffinetti / pianos, clavinet, organ
- Andy Curtis / guitar
- Nic Potter / bass (1-5,7-8)
- Fred Kelly / drums, Northern percussion

With:
- Paul Korda / backing vocals
- Nicky James / backing vocals
- Kevin Lamb / backing vocals
- Al Matthews / congas & percussion (8)
- Sammi Abu / congas & percussion (8)
- Paul Holland / congas & percussion (8)
- John Wetton / bass (8)

CD 5:
- Steve Gould / lead vocals, guitars, bass, electric piano (10)
- Fred Kelly / drums, harmony vocals, percussion
- Dave Kaffinetti / acoustic & electric pianos, harmony vocals, Hammond organ, Korg synthesizer
- Andy Rae / Fender bass
- Kevin Lamb / harmony vocals (7,9)

CD 6:
- Steve Gould / vocals, guitar
- Dave Kaffinetti / keyboards, vocals
- Andy Rae / bass
- Fred Kelly / drums & percussion, vocals

Releases information

Label: ‎Esoteric
Format: CD
March 3, 2021

Thanks to mbzr48 for the addition
and to projeKct for the last updates
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RARE BIRD Beautiful Scarlet: Recordings 1969-1975 ratings distribution

4.92
(5 ratings)

Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(60%)
Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(40%)
Good, but non-essential (0%)
Collectors/fans only (0%)
Poor. Only for completionists (0%)

RARE BIRD Beautiful Scarlet: Recordings 1969-1975 reviews

Showing all collaborators reviews and last reviews preview | Show all reviews/ratings

Collaborators/Experts Reviews

Review by Warthur
PROG REVIEWER

This boxed set brings together Esoteric's welcome remasters of the five Rare Bird studio albums, a biography of the band, and a hitherto-unreleased live set hailing from a few months after the release of their swansong, Born Again. The albums are presented in nice-quality cardboard sleeves replicating the LP releases (including gatecovers), which feel nice and sturdy in contrast to some of the thinner buncha-albums-in-a-boxed-set releases out there, so Esoteric have kept up their usual good production quality here.

The remastered studio albums sound as good as they ever have; the tune-up is particularly welcome when it comes to their self-titled debut and As Your Mind Flies By, both albums affected by fairly hasty and low-budget recording processes. I'd say that only As Your Mind Flies By is truly essential - but having good versions of the rest available in a well-priced package is certainly nice, and perhaps this offering might prompt people to give more of a chance to their Polydor-era albums, which seem to get short shrift - whilst I wouldn't put them on the level of As Your Mind Flies By, I think they're rather neat, and a bit more consistent than the debut.

If there's one disappointment to be had here, it's that the live set doesn't really touch on the band's early, more emphatically prog-oriented style. It's a fairly terse set (they weren't headlining, but were playing support for Barclay James Harvest), and it consists solely of songs from Born Again itself and Somebody's Watching - the band clearly wantng to promote their newer sound instead of harking back to their original style. On the plus side, the live set absolutely cooks, injecting a little extra life into this material.

It would have been good to be able to get a nice-sounding live release from their more symphonic era - there's bootlegs which circulate with material from some German dates on the As Your Mind Flies By tour, though having not heard those I can't speak to their sound quality and it's entirely possible that they are simply unusable, so I can't really mark down the box for not stretching to include substandard material.

As it is, this provides a nicely complete summation of the Rare Bird story, a worthwhile archival release that should help ensure the legacy of a band who never enjoyed the mega-success of Charisma cousins Genesis (or, for that matter, the cult stature and the rapturous reception in certain markets that fellow family member Van der Graaf Generator enjoyed), despite the early chart success of the Sympathy single. It's an OK song, but it'd be a shame for their reputation to rest solely on that; with this set, Esoteric have helped make sure that doesn't happen.

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