See His Friends. They have nice things for you. Really...

When I was young and had to save up my pocket money or money from being a paper boy to go and buy a CD from time to time (tell this phrase to a young person today and they'll have several questions), I often bought different various artists types collections. Not necessarily 'The Smash Hits Of The Year' type things. I started with soundtracks - which in the absence of even having a measly VHS player at home - was combining my love for music with my love for film. It was like having some music and at the same time buying a piece of film. I still have most of these soundtracks, though I barely listen to most of them. Some, I have never seen the film, and I have definitely seen a bunch of films of all stripes in the meantime. But I digress.

The second type of various artists compilation I got into a little bit later were various artists paying tribute to an artist type affairs. I think my first such disc was Two Rooms - Celebrating the Songs of Bernie Taupin And Elton John. I was getting a huge amount of known artists on a single disc - whatta concept! Anyway, the point, and there is one, being that I've always liked Tribute albums and carry this love to One Buck Records. Oldtimers of this blog and its lifespan of five months will remember that in early November I posted the first of what will be a number of re-imagined Tribute albums. 

There's three types of things that can lead me to a reworked Tribute album. In the case of the Grateful Dead tribute Day Of The Dead in November, it was about cutting down the original compilation to a more manageable size. There was sumply too much music. Another option is of course swapping out parts of the line-up, deleting weaker selections and - if possible - replace them with better ones. And the very last and simplest one is what happened to the album of the day: Resequencing for improvement!

If you have followed this blog and some of my musings in the alternate albums that I post you will notice that I spend quite a bit of time on sequencing questions. And the Ray Davis tribute/collaborations album See My Friends definitely needed to have a second look in that department. The fact that it isn't a classic various artists Tribute album, but rather one of these mixed collaborations type thing that was popular at the time (John Fogerty's Wrote A Song For Everyone was recorded a year later) also explains why I didn't add anything to the line-up, though I was hesitating a bit on adding  a David Bowie live duet with Davies as a sort of bonus track. But yeah, the sequencing.

Clearly, the compilation was sequenced with an eye of getting the heavy hitters on there early. I love the Boss and he's always game for these kind of things, but leading off with Springsteen's workman-like version of "Better Days" was a mistake. Following that up with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora's version of "Celluloid Heroes" confounded it, as I feel that number is also pretty sluggish. So, the 0-2 beginning meant that See My Friends never really got out of the starting gate. This new version hopefully rectifies some of that, hiding weaker tracks like the two aforementioned ones in the middle of the comp, and generally aiming for a better balance between slower and faster songs and known or more unknown numbers. This is based on the French version, meaning you'll not only get the 'international' bonus track with Mando Diao ("Victoria"), but also Davies' collaboration with Belgian singer Arno, who sings his parts in French. I did one minor tweak to get rid of the stupid small talk between Ray and Amy McDonald at the end of "Dead End Street", a stupid idea that no one will want to listen to twice or more.

However you feel about these kinds of albums, there is definitely some fun to be had on here, and with a line-up including Lucinda Williams (who, as I mentioned for Day Of The Dead is on all tribute albums known to men), Alex Chilton (in his last studio recording before his death), Jackson Browne and - at the time - relative newcomers Mumford & Sons (before they turned crap) and the already mentioned Amy McDonald quality control is assured for major parts of this. 

Ray, get your friends and take it away...