Rarity of the Month: Issue 1

I can’t bring back the Lightning Seeds website and not bring back my rarity of the month, can I? This is my favourite part of it all, and now amounts to nearly 30 years worth of collecting. I’m going to kick it off with my absolute favourite item in my collection and it’s something that seemed to find me – more on that later on.

It’s a cassette acetate issued by Virgin Records in October 1991 demoing what would become the Sense album. It shows the running order has pretty much been finalised, but the eagle eyed readers will notice a little difference at the start and beginning of Side Two.

Yes, there’s no Small Slice Of Heaven, which is sacrilege as it’s my favourite song on the album. But also, it doesn’t end with Thinking Up Looking Down either. In its place is a song called It’s Better This Way, and this is a forgotten unreleased song. It’s never seen the light of day ever since this test pressing and has never been available commercially. It’s a lovely acoustic song, but I would say it perhaps doesn’t suit the rest of the album and is perhaps why it was never included in the final running order. It’s far too good to be unreleased, so should have become a B-side if nothing else.

So, how did I end up with it? Well, there was a record shop in Falmouth once upon a time, which every couple of weeks had a stall at a flea market in the back (or front, depending on what side of the building you entered) of the Hall For Cornwall in Truro. At that point I worked for the local newspaper’s website department in Truro and would take a wander across during my lunch breaks. Got to know the lady that ran the stall reasonably well, and before too long she would hold back items by the Lightning Seeds, Crowded House and World Party for me before she put them up for general sale. I popped in one day and immediately she told me “I’ve got something Lightning Seedsy for you” and showed me the cassette. I had my wallet out before you could say “my best day”. Didn’t take a whole lot of notice of the track listing as I had to go back to work, but was looking forward to playing the tape when I got home in case there were any different versions of songs. Got home, saw the track listing, popped my eyes back into their sockets and assumed it was a misprint. Played the tape in full, and it got to the final track. Oh my goodness, what was this? Scroll down after you’ve read the rest of my waffle to find out exactly what it is.

I asked around on the forums back in the day if anyone had heard this song, and no one had. It was a lost gem, so I recorded it on to CD and have played the tape only a few times since. I’m too scared to play it now in case it gets chewed up. Mat has since digitised it and uploaded it to the fan channel.

Anyway, that’s another post done over as it were, thanks for reading. There will be another rarity of the month next month, until then, see you then, drive safely and listen to It’s Better This Way: