A previously unreleased live set recorded at London’s legendary Town and Country club and available for the first time on this two CD set. By the late 80s years of substance abuse had left Gil Scott-Heron rotten-toothed and out of it a lot of the time. In 1987 he missed a gig at London's Town & Country Club completely, turning up long after the venue had shut. The T&CC stuck with him though, booking him again in 1988 and hoping for the best. By then he'd gained a new manager, Freddie Cousaert, who had been responsible for turning the career of Marvin Gaye round in the early 80s, getting him off cocaine and back into the studio.
Spirit spent four years as a rock quintet, followed by a quarter-century of being a format for showcasing guitarist, singer, and songwriter Randy California. The major labels lost interest by the mid-'80s, but California continued to perform and to make numerous recordings in his own studio until his death by drowning at the start of 1997. Cosmic Smile, released in 2000, was the first posthumous album to be drawn from his archives, and Sea Dream, the second, marks (according to Mick Skidmore, who assembled it) the beginning of a series of further ones. At first glance, the title seems unfortunate to the point of being in bad taste, yet Skidmore writes that "Sea Dream is not meant to portray some dark fascination with the macabre but was used because one of the unreleased projects that Randy had been working on at one point was a 'spiritual' album entitled Sea Dream."
This collection of ten Classical symphonies concertantes was recorded (quadraphonically!) in 1977 and issued as a five-record set by EMI Electrola. Now it has been licensed by CPO and reissued economically on just three CDs.