I’d known of Egg when at school, as a proto-prog precursor to Hatfield and the North, and knew their Civil Surface album, recorded as a tidying up exercise after the group had split.
I also bought a mono version of their first LP for £1 during late 1977 from a grubby little second hand record shop in Manchester (current median price on Discogs - £171.15), and I’ve no idea what became of it.
But downloading and streaming had re-acquainted me with Egg’s studio albums, so I treated myself to this CD of radio and live performances from 1969-72, as much for the accompanying booklet by Dave Stewart, as for the music.
It consists of a selection from all three Egg albums - the radio broadcasts are of listenable quality, although they don’t really add anything to their more hi-fi album versions. Wring Out The Ground in particular sounds plodding and leaden. The live recordings are of lesser quality, with some spaced out organ noises punctuating the three parts of Long Piece (all of which would have benefited from being Short Piece), all otherwise forgettable pieces, while Blane Over Camden gave me a headache.
Very often there’s a perfectly good reason why ‘previously unreleased’ material hasn’t been released.
The accompanying booklet is really good!
2* - one for the completists. The live recordings don’t stand up, and the radio pieces add little to the album versions.
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