Disc One: 1. Sign Language , 2. All Our Past Time, 3. County Jail, 4. Carnival, 5. Tried To Make The Devil Mad, 6. Won’t Somebody Tell Me, 7. Big River, 8. Right Now #1, 9. Right Now #2, 10. It’s Eric’s Birthday, 11. Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Adios Mi Corazon on cover), 12. The Water Is Wide, 13. Idiot Wind, 14. Carnival To Rio.

Disc Two: 1. Who Do You Love, 2. Stormy Monday, 3. What Would I Do Without You # 1, 4. What Would I Do Without You # 2, 5. What Would I Do Without You # 3, 6. Hard Times, 7. Tenho Sede, 8. Steppin’ Out, 9. Jam #1, 10. Jam #2.

This release from Empress Valley’s subsidiary label Mid Valley presents material that was issued as Limited Edition in only 100 copies, it is in fact a copy of a release with the same name from Paddington (057-58) that came out some time ago, except for the addition of Carnival To Rio. Due to the label’s heavy inclination to print Cpt. Acid’s work, I thought this could be the case but there is no indication of that on the cover, plus Carnival To Rio was not on the former. Eric Clapton, who cared about this success, adopted reggae extensively with his album called No Reason To Cry which was released in 1976. Recordings were held at the Shangri-La Studio in Malibu, California whose open climate was reflected in his work. This studio was owned by The Band and the session produced by Rob Fraboni, all the recordings happened with luxurious guests. They seem to be kind of a preview of what would happen later the same year with the Band Last Waltz concert. Although the album was not a huge hit, its sales exceeded the previous work. These takes included here were recorded during the sessions for No Reason To Cry.   Personnel on these sessions consists of Bob Dylan, Ron Wood, Georgie Fame, Van Morrison, The Band, Jesse Ed Davis, Billy Preston, Chris Jagger and Melvin Ragin also known as Wah Wah Watson besides Clapton and his own band; allegedly also Pete Townshend was there some time. Sign Language music is provided by Bob Dylan, here Dylan vocals are more prominent than Clapton. Eric is also a wonderful vocalist, but cannot but bow in front of Dylan’s presence. Also, at the same time Dylan himself recorded famous songs like Idiot Wind and so on. This title contains all songs that have been confirmed as being leftovers from the No Reason To Cry sessions where have been recorded with a number of invited players and a great variety of guests and is in fact a bit longer than the previous ones with the same title, Disc One due to the inclusion of Carnival To Rio and Disc Two by about 2 minutes. Many of these tracks were just rumoured, but here they are available having been preserved in great shape and can be enjoyed in full. The first 4 songs are not in excellent sound, but from Tried To Make The Devil Mad onwards the sound is much better; then come a couple with Billy Preston, the second of which is a great jam directly dedicated to him by the keyboards player on the occasion of its birthday (30 March) which seems to be when most part of these tracks come from. Then comes a long jam with parts of 3 Dylan songs, Seven Days was also rumoured to have been played here but it is not present here, just like Buried Alive from Ron Wood. Disc Two opens with 2 standard blues played with the help of Van Morrison, then we have Richard Manuel from the Band on 3 takes of What Would I Do Without You, the last of which is a long great blues jam over 21 minutes long, followed by Hard Times by Rick Danko, who was recording his solo album as well at the times in the same studios. The front spot is then given to Yvonne Elliman and Marcy Levy from Clapton’s own band, then comes 1 song from Levon Helm and 2 instrumental jam sessions, judging by the last one they should have been plating right before What Would I Do Without You. Packaging is quite nice with all details on back cover, however it is not clear why No Reason to Cry is written in brackets. Note that for some reason the discs labels show the official No Reason To Cry setlist.