The Smiths - The Troy Tate Sessions

So it looks like the FROXX supporters took an unscheduled Spring Beak holiday. There is no required attendance for this class.

So what better to admonish our absence and neglect tha the self-imposed misery of a little Smiths (that's what she said...)

I only recently discovered this gem. I'm so bad about fetishizing a band's debut and never following the career arc. Yeah I saw the video for "How Soon Is Now" and I'm sure they did some nice stuff after their debut... don't care really. I've always loved their debut. Always looking for new sounds, this really was one. So after listening to Smiths S/T consistently for more than 20 years, encountering the Troy Tate Sessions was pretty seismic (as seismically rocked as my internal Smith's world gets).

So here's the story according to the Magic Answer Machine called the Internet: These are the original studio recordings from the summer of 1983 for the Smiths' debut album with producer Troy Tate, hence the name, "the Troy Tate outtakes or sessions," or incorrectly referred to as the Troy Tate demos. Unsatisfied with his work as a producer, the Smiths re-recorded their debut with producer John Porter and this is what ended up being released. Unfinished versions (at varying degree) of the shelved Tate recordings are in circulation on various bootlegs.

The Troy Tate recordings are grittier, more organic and portray the Smiths in a light inconsistent with what I suspect was Moz's vision (refined & elegant, etc.) Of course I prefer it to the Porter recordings for that very reason. These are the torn jeans and dirty hair Smiths and not the dapper buttoned-down, precious/dandy Smiths.







Hear