Battered Ornaments
1969-09-02(*) London, England BBC Maida Vale 4 Radio Studio John Peel's "Top Gear" programme (M1-FM)

01. Slag Room
02. Sandcastle
03. Half Past Ladbroke

Total Time ::: 17:08

::: Very fine radio broadcast capture for its vintage. Listen to samples for download justification or mild arousal & foreplay.
::: Warts: Not many. Bit muffled. Some dropouts & dullspots were surely missed & some could only be only ameliorated.
::: (*)1969-09-02 original recording date & 1st broadcast 1969-09-14. Possibly a re-broadcast from later in week, as The Man had regular listening times & unfortunately, on many re-broadcasts, Peel dropped a number from the set (someone might be able to figure out the day from Peel's brief football score report!). According to Garner's "In Session Tonight" (one of the more important resource books on the planet), we're missing 1 song, "Going Underground". If anyone could rectify this glaring ommission & catastrophic disappointment, the world would be eternally grateful (i.e. if you got, please upload... thanks!).
::: Garner notes they barely passed the BBC audition panel, which commented, "avant-garde hairy group for Top Gear-type shows only"! So... you KNOW you need it!

Recording Information ::: BBC Radio mono broadcast (AM or FM?) -> off-air master mono reel-to-reel -> 1st generation Maxell XLII-90 cassette, Dolby B on.

Playback 2012-01-23 ::: 1st generation Maxell XLII-90 cassette on Nakamichi BX-300 cassette deck, Dolby B on, azimuth & pitch adjusted, heads cleaned & demagnatized -> Tascam CD-RW900SL pro CD recorder -> CD-RW -> computer, EAC secure -> wav file.

Remastering 2014-02-xx ::: wav -> Audacity [normalisation to remove DC offset, channel/phase alignment, fades, manual one-at-a-time glitch, bump, pop, click, dropout & dullspot repairs, volume adjustments, no equalisation] -> CD Wave (track splits) -> flacs (Trader's Little Helper) -> yr ears. First uploaded week of 2014-08-30.

Line-up ::: Chris Spedding - electric guitar, vocals // Nisar Ahmed Khan - tenor saxophone, flute, vocals (and other reeds?) // Roger "Butch" Potter - electric bass // Brian Miller - organ, vocals // Pete Bailey - congas, percussion, vocals // Rob Tait - drums, vocals.

Nothing here ever commercially released to my knowledge. If I'm wrong, please advise & I'll take the offending trax offline.

DimeTravel 059 ::: Thanks to the original taper & trader, The Man In The Palace. Without his musical archivin', life would be much more boring! ::: Corrections welcome ::: These guys must have been flying high after their Isle Of Wight performance just a few days before, on August 30th. Spekaing of which, where ARE the tapes from that first day? Not sure who actually appeared & it's a bit off topic here & certainly well-researched elsewhere, but the poster has it as The Who, Moody Blues, Fat Matress, Joe Cocker, Bonzo Dog Band, Family, Pretty Things, Free, Marsha Hunt & White Trash, Battered Ornaments, Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, Blodwyn Pig, Gypsy, Blonde On Blonde, Edgar Broughton Band & King Crimson & if you ain't droolin' in yr soup after that list you'd probably haven been happier on the 2nd, more folky day of the fest. Me, I'd like to hear some live sets by Fat Mattress & The Retaliation & Blonde On Blonde, among others...

Anyway... the Ornaments are still in serious experimental mode here. I'm going to go ahead & use my song notes for the samples, so if there is some duplication you'll just have to eat it. "Slag Room" would seem to be an unissued number, leaning a bit to the Soft Machine jazzy side of progressive music with some other flavors percolating in the mix. Includes a Peel football game report update at end! "Sandcastle" appeared on the undisputed masterpiece (not "Mantlepiece"!), "A Meal You Can Shake Hands With In The Dark". This arrangement takes some new twists & turns, making for a most appetising middle course. All in all, I must say that listening to these songs made me dig out the album, & whenever I hear Pete and/or his cohorts, I do long for more. Can you imagine a few recordings of multiple set evenings circa '68-70 & the bliss that would be contained therein? Then we get to another apparently unissued number, "Half Past Ladbroke", the third & perhaps tastiest course of the 3 included here, particularly for guitar aficionados, of whom I'm sure there will be a few gazing when folks see the "Spedding" moniker, which does generally tend to get a few folk's fingers a twiddlin' (air guitar or no). The song title & the music herewithin are in reference to the Cream's formation in Ladbroke Grove & there is some funny "Sunshine Of Your Love" riffing, which perhaps mighta kept the song from being released at one point. 'Tis also possibly where Spedding got the idea for his "Guitar Jamboree" song. I won't say it'll have you eating chocolate covered potato chips with yr porridge, but it likely will also have you free jazz freaks spilling a pint o' Guinness over yr pasta & eating it anyway. The Battered Ornaments always tended to have that effect on people who spend much of their life in limbo. Be forewarned. Listen, enjoy, show appreciation, share, give, spread peace. Yers truly, Knees

Support the artists! http://www.chrisspedding.com -- and tho' not on this recording, the most honorable Mr Brown is at www.petebrown.co.uk

Do whatever you want with it except sell it, 'cause that ain't cool!