Side A: 1. Needle In A Haystack, 2. Crushed Pearl, 3. The Dock Of The Bay, 4. Good To Me, 5. If I Don’t Have You, 6. Instrumental, 7. Jam, 8. Mona.

Side B: 1. My Girl, 2. Pain In My Heart, 3. These Arms Of Mine, 4. Tracks Of My Tears, 5. Tramp, 6. Work, Work, Work.

It is always nice to listen to newly liberated Stones outtakes, especially when they come from such renowned labels like OBR (the longest running bootleg label celebrating this year its 42^nd birthday). Here we have Volume Four of the famous Bird’s Vault series released for the time being only on vinyl and if somebody is disappointed by this and eagerly waiting for some Jap copycat to release its own cd version, it could be that in the long run a cd version from OBR would include some bonus material, thus justifying a 2^nd purchase. These tracks do not feature Jagger, but Richards and Wood playing mostly known Rhythm & Blues standards, these tracks are finally available and no longer marked as unverified, but saved for posterity.

Concerning the music, many are Otis Redding tracks, either written by him (Good To Me, The Dock Of The Bay, These Arms Or Mine) or performed to success (Pain In My Heart, My Girl) add to that classic standards like Tracks Of My Tears and Tramp, Needle In A Haystack by Norman Whitfield and William Stevenson, better known as Mickey, a song originally released by the Velvettes, If I Don’t Have You by Gregory Isaacs and Work, Work, Work by Alain Toussaint (first recorded in 1965 by Lee Dorsey) that was also played by the Artwoods and the list is really interesting. However, that is not all since we get another early version of Crushed Pearl sung by Keith Richards and a couple of instrumental tracks that should have been recorded on February 27^th together with These Arms Of Mine and the picture is complete. The atmosphere in the studio is relaxed, so these should have been rehearsals recorded during the wait for Jagger to show up. On Side A, which could haven recorded in January, Wyman is not heard and the drums do not seem to be from Watts, maybe Stu, Chuck Leavell or even Ron Wood played them. Most of the tracks seem to have Ron Wood on bass and all feature Keith Richards on vocals; Crushed Pearl seems the first take of the song which would be finished in the April-June sessions of the same year. The Dock Of The Bay is just a snippet, unfortunately in mono, Good To Me has the chord progression that reminds I Got Dreams To Remember. If I Don’t Have You is in mono too but shows great work by Richards on guitar. The Instrumental has a somewhat familiar riff, while The Jam could potentially have developed into an interesting funky take. Side B, most likely recorded in February, starts with a long version of My Girl (8.24 minutes) which seems to have Wyman on bass and Watts on drums and features Ron Wood on vocals too. The setup is the same for the rest of tracks on this side, Pain In My Heart is very short with no bass and blends into These Arms Of Mine which lasts over 5 minutes in mono, but after that there is a switch with Tracks Of My Tears back in stereo, however sounding like it belonged to Side A with just a bass drum. Tramp, which is an instrumental, is in stereo too and we are back on the band’s line-up. Finally Work, Work, Work has again just a bass drum but is in stereo.

The overall sound output is not that exciting though, with the drums too low in the mix, but this is secondary and do not have influence on the final judgment, due to the rarity of these recordings. Packaging is superb with he artwork painted by meinmyownheadx which shows on front cover a ‘Shaky Ink Cap Mushroom Girl’. The cover is the same for blue or black vinyl, however the latter has a note on front identifying it as such, a different spine and an extra little ‘bird’ on the back