After a
quite long wait here is Bird’s Vault Volume 4 cd version that contains, as
expected, some bonus tracks, namely 3 versions of Crushed Pearl, These Arms Of
Mine and Tracks Of My Tears plus Open The Door To Your Heart, rehearsal
version. It must be said that the overall output is better than what was heard
on the vinyl version and not only because louder. About content we just have to
repeat what posted in the LP review:
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, here we get 3 takes of Crushed Pearl sung by Keith
Richards, the second one being a very long one and a couple of instrumental tracks
that should have been recorded on February 27th together with 3
takes of These Arms Of Mine, the new ones in stereo. Next follow 3 takes of Tracks
of My Tears with the last that feature excellent intertwining guitars; the
atmosphere in the studio is relaxed, so these should have been rehearsals recorded
during the wait for Jagger to show up. In the first tracks that should have been
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.
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 Jam could
potentially have developed into an interesting funky take. The rest most likely
was recorded in February, starting 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, Pain In My
Heart is much longer than the LP version with no bass and These Arms Of Mine first
take which lasts over 5 minutes in mono, but after that there is a switch with
Tracks Of My Tears back in stereo. Finally Work, Work, Work has again just a
bass drum but is in stereo. Open The Door To Your Heart is a Darrel
Banks-Donnie Ebert soul tune, said to be one of the finest non Motown song to
come out of Detroit. It was released in 1966 in USA and shortly after in the UK
by London Rec., however it was later discovered that London Rec. had no rights
to release it, so all copies were destroyed, except for one locate in 2014 that
grossed over 14.500 £ at an auction! The track here is but some chords and
vocals, maybe in preparation for the song to be properly recorded.
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 great with the artwork painted by
meinmyownheadx which even shows on front cover a small drawing of the ‘Shaky
Ink Cap Mushroom Girl’ which is displayed in full on the back cover, otherwise
the art is the same as the vinyl version.
