Alan Wilder's 1984 "Some Great Reward" demo tape
Notes
Alan Wilder provided at least four demo tracks for "Some Great Reward". These tracks are thought by many to be Red Flag or I Start Counting demos (in the latter's case, band member David Baker even claimed two of the demo tracks as his), however that does not seem to be the case; these demos are almost certainly Alan's.
PeterToo on Home indirectly affirmed that these tracks are Alan's demos in this thread (requires registration to view; quoted below):
excitermode on 2010-01-21, 20:47:31:
- Quote from: ruskprick on 2010-01-21, 14:24:34
- Not to be nosey, but could you be a little more specific? This song has been deemed a fake for years and years. A source for the opposite would be nice... ;)
It come from the same cassette tape that 'if you want' was on. This tape was presented to depeche by Alan for the recording of SGR. Only 1 song made it. There were 4 songs if memory serves correctly. They had no titles listed on the inlay card, so the titles that exist today are ones made up by fans many years ago when the tape was found and started to spread. When Alan was asked about 'i feel no guilt' I can understand why he had no recollection of it. My source cannot be revealed I'm sorry. Take it or leave it.
PeterToo on 2010-01-22, 05:59:39:
That's the definitive answer. End of discussion.
Furthermore, a fan has asked Alan during a webchat whether the I Feel No Guilt demo is fake, and Alan replied that it is indeed a fake. However, "I Feel No Guilt" is not necessarily the true name of the track, as these demos had no titles listed on the inlay card as mentioned in the above quote. All of the track titles are made up by fans except for If You Want, since that is the only track from this demo tape that appears in Depeche Mode's catalog, specifically as the penultimate track on the 1984 album "Some Great Reward". It is possible that Alan replied that the track is fake because he is unfamiliar with the track when referred to as I Feel No Guilt, or he was embarrassed at the track and did not want it attributed to him. He has mentioned disappointment with the tracks he penned for Depeche Mode on his Shunt Q&A site:
- From: Jam
- E-mail: [email protected]
- If you think 'But Not Tonight' and 'It's Called A Heart' were too pop, what do you think of If You Want and Fools?
Alan: I think they're too poppy as well. I don't like any of my old songs.
These tracks have all circulated before on various bootleg releases, but in poor quality at best and horrendous quality at worst. The tracks were transferred by the webmaster from a second-generation cassette. There is some slight distortion and hiss present, no doubt stemming from the normal position cassette that was used, but it is easily dismissed. Many, many thanks to a kind collector for generously lending me his tape.
Until You've Sown The Seed is sometimes referred to as "Cliché" due to the song's tongue-in-cheek lyrics.
I have transcribed the lyrics to all of these tracks with the best of my ability, along with some help from Ronny. They are included in this torrent as lyrics.txt. You can also find the lyrics for each track if you click on their title in the track listing below.
Track list
- [4:39] Violence
- [4:29] If You Want
- [5:03] I Feel No Guilt
- [5:17] Until You've Sown The Seed
- Total time: 19:28
All tracks written by Alan Wilder. Track titles may not reflect the true titles, which are unknown, except for If You Want.
Stream
Lineage
- second generation Sony HF90 normal position cassette -> Nakamichi Cassette Deck One with fresh belts & upgraded capstan motor, tape wound & rewound before transferring, azimuth optimized -> Monoprice heavy-duty RCA to 3.5mm cable -> ASUS Xonar DX sound card -> Adobe Audition CC 2014.1 (32-bit / 96 khz) -> slowed down 2.0% (iZotope Radius algorithm), channels independently normalized to -0.1dB and any DC bias removed -> WAV (32/96) -> tracked using Audacity 2.0.6 -> WAV (32/96) tracks -> FLAC 16-bit 44.1khz using FLAC 1.3.0 64-bit (level 8 compression) and foobar2000 v1.3.5 with its Resampler (SoX) component v0.8.3 (best quality)
- Cassette tape photos and auCDtectTaskManager log included
Download
- Download via torrent - FLAC 16-bit 44.1khz - 123MB
