Redwood Tree

This very well-assembled, handsomely packaged bootleg gathers interesting odds and ends, mostly unreleased, from Morrison's early career. His very early career, actually; ten of the 18 songs were done by his pre-solo career group Them in 1964-1966, while the remaining eight are publishing demos from the summer of 1968. Leading off the set are two unreleased June 1964 versions of songs Them later released, "Stormy Monday" and "Don't Start Crying Now." The "Stormy Monday" take is definitely rawer than the released one, with the kind of eerie knife-scraped descending guitar swoops that prove that Jimmy Page probably didn't play all of the guitar parts on Them's early records. "Don't Start Crying Now" isn't as good as the official version (put out as Them's first single), particularly since one verse or so seems to have been hacked out of the early part of the tape. Then there are four good 1965 BBC live-in-the-studio performances, including…

Yumi Ito is one of the graduates of the first year of the Focusyear program run by the Academy of Music in Basel. I have already had the opportunity to compliment a few projects of the participants of this project in various forums: for example, the duet performances of the heroine of this text with the guitarist Szymon Mika, who also took part in the inaugural edition of the program.