Unreleased, Lost or Abandoned Albums
 

I was listening to the band JJ72 earlier, in particular the handful of rather excellent songs that were leaked from their unreleased third album, and I was thinking how many bands have had record companies shelve their albums? Their third album was completed and due for release in 2005 and there were even two promo singles released from it, but a dispute with their record label Sony meant that the album never saw the light of day.

I know there's also quite a few cases of artists abandoning or even scrapping entire albums and starting again from scratch. One recent example I can think of are Deftones who shelved their proposed album titled 'Eros' when their bassist Chi Cheng was seriously injured in a car accident. They then recorded a more positive album in his absence with another bass player and this was released as Diamond Eyes. I also know that Weezer and Neil Young have also abandoned albums which were subsequently leaked in recent years.

Anybody have any good examples or interesting stories about albums that never got released?

An obvious choice, but I've always found the story of SMiLE, especially what Brain Wilson went through, to be on the same level of an epic Greek tragedy. They're releasing what's supposed to be the closest thing to the original SMiLE album sometime this year. I am definitely looking forward to hearing an album that allegedly was gonna top Sgt. Pepper's status. I doubt it will, but I'm really looking forward to it.

Brand New had a series of 9 demos leak before The Devil and God was released, and as a result, they were almost entirely scrapped. Only a couple of tracks were re-worked or released at a later date. Complete shame too, because some of the demos were potentially their best material.

The Smashing Pumpkins recorded songs in 1989 that were supposed to make up their debut album but Billy decided to abandon the sessions and start again from scratch because he thought the songs weren't good enough. These songs were later released on the bootleg Reel Time Sessions as well as some other bootlegs. Four songs were re-recorded and appeared on their debut album Gish, 'I Am One', 'Rhinoceros', 'Daydream' and 'Bury Me'. But there were other songs that were really incredible, songs like 'Sun', 'Honeyspider' and 'Vanilla', that didn't make it onto any Pumpkins albums. There is also an early version of 'Love' which was re-recorded for MC&TIS.

When The Fall were about to release their Country On The Click album the whole thing leaked on the internet so Mark E Smith decided to record the whole thing again from scratch. That finally got released as The Real New Fall Album, When it came to releasing it in America they released another totally different version of the album.

Pink Floyd has loads of unreleased and rare material, along with famous bootlegs. But something that has bothered the hell out of me, is knowing that there might be two unreleased Floyd albums. I'll take all the Floyd I can get, and these albums sound like they would make Floyd that much more unique. The first one that might exist, is Household Objects, where the band did just what the title says, they recorded an entire album with household objects. It was apparently the result of the band not knowing what musical path to take after their 1973 hit Dark Side of the Moon. I don't know about you, I am intrigued as hell to find out what this sounds like, and it appears that the band plans to release some tracks on their new box sets, so they have answered some of my prayers. The second rumored album that is lurking about somewhere with all the jam sessions and rare tracks, is The Big Spliff. This one is rumored to have taken place during and after the Gilmour era 1994 The Division Bell. It was a result of extra recordings and unused material, and consists of mostly ambient music. Pink Floyd doing an ambient album would be amazing, and if it's out there, I'm just hoping that they will release this before I die.

I've always been curious about Household Objects as well. I don't think they recorded very much of it though.

Before Green Day recorded American Idiot they went and recorded an album called "Cigerettes and Valentines". The master tapes of this album were stolen and they decided to abandon the album and make "American Idiot". I'd be curious to hear if all the toons on there were more commercial then C&V.

From what I've read it was supposed to be more aggressive and punk-sounding like Insomniac and a reaction to the criticism they got on the back of Warning.

Beach Boys - Smile
The Who - Lifehouse
Prince - Dream Factory