From longtime Numero subscriber Alejandro Borrero comes a an item he felt was unjustly left off Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label. We’re always after the cream, and my personal feeling is that this live Eddie Ray cut falls somewhere in the murky middle, but let us know in the comments section if it was a crime against nature to not issue it.
I started poking around the Prix Label tape transfers I did a couple of years ago for some outtakes that I thought you might enjoy. Here’s an entertaining phone call between Prix owner Clem Price and an engineer who plays a mix back for him over the phone, and then tells him how he went about cleaning up the track. What cracks me up is that Clem says, “Ship It! Ship It!” and gives the okay to print the master after listening to the final mix over the land line. Although we’ve never listened to masters from Peerless this way, we still utilize this method of playing tracks over the phone to artists who are well into their late years of life and are not hip to this internet thing made up of tubes that we use everyday to quickly communicate and share data with one another. Countless calls have been made in the Numero office with the laptop speakers cranking and Rob holding his phone six inches away so we can find out the name of a track, or refresh someone’s memory as to who played on the cut with them. Here’s the conversation in all its low fidelity.
Whenever this song comes up on shuffle I always kick myself. It should have been on Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label, but we convinced ourselves that there might be listener fatigue after so many demos. Such a shame, as it’s possibly one of my most favorite songs in our now 700 strong song catalog.
Sequencing is a sometimes long and arduous process, filled with listening and tweaking followed by raised voices and impassioned pleas. At the end of the day you learn to live with the choices the group has made. We cut “You Never Loved Me” for a few reasons: 1) the aforementioned demo fatigue (there were dozens), 2) the track list was already heavy with Eddie Ray, and 3) to get to an even 20 tracks. Thinking back now the third seems the most absurd, especially when in the long run I’m posting it here for free.
All I can say is enjoy, and sorry for the delay.
