Alright, which came first, the Peel Sessions or Rootin' Tootin' Luton? Because some of the demos sound like they same from the same session (Unless my labels are off). Actually, any info (without referring me to STF) about the Peel Sessions would be good.

It's been a while since I listened to the Peel Sessions, but from memory they're pretty radically different, much more basic, live performances, especially things like Frenzy & Semi-Detached. Not sure which were recorded first though.

Alright, because it was my two versions of I See Red which sounded the same...I think the one I have written down for Peel Sessions is actually from the A&M Frenzy...

The Peel Sessions are from around November 1978. Luton was a few months earlier.

Would the Peel Sessions have been recorded at Maida Vale for the BBC?

I don't have any info on the Split Enz Peel Session. The BBC doesn't know anything about it either!

http://www.frenzforum.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=ge...;f=2;t=000762#000004

Back in 1987 I wrote to John Peel asking about the Split Enz Peel Sessions. I was surprised to get a polite reply from him and his producer, stating that the sessions were recorded at Maida Vale, but that the tapes were officially listed as 'missing'. They promised to have a look into it but I never heard anything back. Just to confirm what Jaffaman says...these sessions ARE completely separate to the Luton tapes.

The Enz also did a session for the Dave Lee Travis show (also on the BBC) around 1978, the master reels of which also appear to have also been lost forever. Off-air cassette dubs are the only remaining source these days, it seems.

Thanks for the info, all. What is an "off-air cassette dub"?

Jaffa (or Anselm, or Camus...)

This is probably a rather dumb question, which answers itself, but I'm going to ask anyway

Why don't bands retain ownership (or at the very least possession) of their recordings, so that this kind of thing can't happen? (I think I've asked this question but in a slightly different way before). That way, a very accurate track could be kept of all the music, but the record companies or whoever could still pay to use or publish the music? That way, in theory, the original recordings would always have to go back to the original artist.

Would that even work

It just nearly makes me want to cry when I read posts about this recording being lost, or that one being damaged or whatever

If a recording had to go back to the artist after each use, surely that would reduce the likelihood of lost tapes?

Jaffaman wrote:

quote:

I don't have any info on the Split Enz Peel Session. The BBC doesn't know anything about it either!

If the BBC were responsible for these recordings, or somehow in control of them, could this answer possibly be someone taking the easy way out? Sometimes its easier not to know something, than to have to go looking for it, or think too hard about it.

I have visions of lost and misplaced recordings being "discovered" somewhere years down the track, when we're all too old or deaf to care That would be a shame

off air cassette dub, highly technical term meaning someone taped it on an audio cassette from the radio at time of broadcast

Texas Rose, the BBC would have paid for the studio, the time, the engineer, the producer, that's why they retain the recording, ownership and the copyright to it. This is also true for most bands when they record an album, they don't own the actual recordings. If the band pays the bills, they own the recordings. From what I can gather the off air recordings of these that do exist were made by Split Enz at the time.

The BBC are pretty notorious for 'losing' things. The're television archive has massive gaps, whole series are missing, and the same is true for their radio archive. Remember the BBC had no mandate to keep anything they produced, back in the seventies when most of the archive was destroyed it was a liability to keep, due to agreements with UK actors union Equity, repeat broadcasts were prohibitively expensive (everyone got a fee from a rebroadcast) and domestic video was virtually non existant as a commercial possibility. Even if the Peel Sessions did exist, I doubt whether we'd see a release. After all, the BBC have the entire Hammersmith Odeon show from 1980, and it's never been commercially released.

I didn't know what an off air cassette dub was either Camus, so thanks I've always referred to that process as "cassette recording"

Thanks also for the explanation about recording ownership. I also didn't realise that record companies paid for bands to record. Silly me I had just assumed that all bands paid for their own recordings and therefore possessed ownership in the first instance

I remember Jaffa saying in another thread that storing recordings can become a very expensive and space-consuming exercise, which is why recordings weren't kept "back then"

We can always hope - the challenge with what's lost is to turn it into what's found, and you only need someone determined enough. After all, the recordings didn't grow legs and walk away, or self-combust, so they have to be somewhere

I'm finding it fascinating at the moment listening to songs that I've known for 20 years or more, recorded in a different way, or with different lyrics. I hadn't previouly realised that well known songs go through such a process of evolution to become the "final product". Its fascinating really

Thanks for the info supplied here - it all helps to unravel the mystery (as I see it) of the music making process just that little bit more

Isn't there some sort of "official" way that people with bootlegs, etc. (and I know they're out there) can get them out to the rest of the fans? Not for their profit, but, you know, give it back to the band? (I understand that there is probably some sort of highly technical reason why they can't.)

Pengi that's up to the band. There are some bands that would be happy to get a hold of bootlegs of their early stuff. But it also depends on the nature of the bootleg - for example, if someone had personal copies of sessions recorded for the BBC then no doubt the BBC would not allow them to be used as they would be subject to copyright. Presumably the Enz might already have a fair amount of this kind of material on cassette that won't see the light of day

A good quality copy of the DLT BBC Session of circa February 1978 is in the Enz archives, so there's a good chance of this being released one day. From my dealings with the BBC when making Enzology, I don't think a CD of this session would be out of the question. The great thing about the Dave Lee Travis session is that two of the four songs were never professionally recorded by the Enz anywhere else. And they're the only studio recordings of the Phil Judd/Neil Finn line-up.

Without a master tape copy of the John Peel session, I'd predict that the band & record co. would be less interested in pursuing a CD release of it. Mind you, apart from running way too fast, the cassette-dub in my part of the Enz archive isn't actually too bad, sound quality-wise. I don't consider the arrangements of the four songs to be radically different from those on the Frenzy album, but they're great performances.

What are the songs DLT sessions?

I'm So Up
Best Friend
So This Is Love
Bold As Brass

That's interesting, Jaffa. I didn't think the BBC would be so easygoing (unless they were planning on releasing it themselves) although now I think about it some of the stuff (by other artists) that has been released from BBC sessions sounds like it could have been taken off home recordings...

Tapes of the Phil Judd/Neil Finn lineup are like pure gold!

Yes, Roy Harper's own label released multiple CDs of off-air BBC recordings.

The BBC doesn't have tape copies of either 1978 Enz session, nor do they have any documentation, so that actually loosens red tape up a bit. The tape copy in the Enz archives of the DLT session is from the master tape, give or take a generation or three. Unlike the bootleg doing the rounds, it does not contain Dave Lee Travis speaking over the top.

I forgot to list The Peel Session songs:
I See Red
Mind Over Matter
Semi Detached
Frenzy

Jaffa, as an aside, Mike Chunn wrote in his book: "at the end of 1978 .... the following months were awash with frustration.....against this ..enz were to forge a creative surge that...would never be equalled. They were about to write and rehearse material of enormous power emotion and insight - and no one would hear them."

Have you heard these, what is he talking about (which songs)? What Phil in this line up?

I always presumed he was talking about Luton there.