"Riley, Riley, Wood and Waggett" by SHAPE OF THE RAIN – July 1971 UK Debut Album on RCA Neon Records NE 7 featuring Keith Riley, Len Riley, Brian Wood, Iain 'Tag' Waggett and Pete Dolan with guests Eric Hine, Bob Skelland, Nip Healey and David Brookfield (22 May 2020 UK Grapefruit Records 3CD Deluxe Edition Reissue with an Unreleased Second Album, Demos and Rehearsals and Live Material – 61 Tracks with 17 Unreleased and Many Other Rarities – Oli Hemingway Remasters) - A Review by Mark Barry...

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"…Rusty Road..."

Seen as Country Hick and terminally unhip by much of the buying public - RCA Victor's answer to the progressive rock craze that was sweeping music in the late Sixties and early Seventies was the ill fated RCA Neon label. With its beautiful Venus In A Shell logo, jet-black labels and inner bags - this home of the obscure and supposedly Avant Garde managed only 11 albums in 2 years (1971 to 1972) and the first was a reissue of an LP initially released in 1970 (Fair Weather's "The Beginning Of The End").

Complete with staggeringly dull please-don't-buy-me because I want to be obscure gatefold sleeves (obligatory for all these releases it seemed) - names such as Fair Weather (NE 1), Chris McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath (NE 2), Indian Summer (NE 3), Tonton Macoute (NE 4), Dando Shaft (NE 5), Spring (NE 6), Raw Material (NE 8), Centipede (NE 9), Mike Westbrook Orchestra (NE 10) and The Running Man (NE 11) - don't exactly role off the tongue - even now. I have an October 1973 RCA Victor product catalogue and only NE 9 and NE 10 were listed as available for sale – all others were deleted. None of them sold jack and the one-album-then-we-died SHAPE OF THE RAIN effort on RCA Neon NE 7 was no different. They weren't even Prog. SOTR music was West Coast Country Rock via the Byrds meets British Folk Rock via Matthews Southern Comfort, Cochise and Brinsley Schwarz – not an Elf nor a Manticore nor a bank of noodley synths anywhere in sight.

Still - up steps our UK reissue heroes Grapefruit Records in 2020 and they think – screw those I woke up this morning with the post-pandemic woke-generational blues. 

What the hell – let's give these Northern mining-village reprobates and their Seventies Big Star-ish Americana music a whopping great 61-track 3CD anthology and damn the accounting torpedoes. We can even give the album a gatefold card repro sleeve (the public will just love that legal firm LP title that absolutely no one will remember), throw in an unreleased second album complete with homemade artwork of the period, demos, rehearsals and badly-recorded live material before they finally broke up in 1973 and Remaster the damn lot like the flashy gits we are. And who am I to disagree with wiser and hairier men than I. Let's get shapely...

UK released Friday, 22 May 2020 - "Riley Riley Wood and Waggett (Deluxe Edition)" by SHAPE OF THE RAIN on Grapefruit Records CRSEG067T (Barcode 5013929186705) is a DELUXE EDITION 3CD 61-Track Reissue and Anthology of Remasters that plays out as follows:

Disc One – The Album Plus Bonus Tracks (79:13 minutes):

1. Woman [Side 1]

2. Patterns

3. Castles

4. Wasting My Time

5. Rockfield Roll

6. Yes

7. Dusty Road [Side 2]

8. Willowing Trees

9. I'll Be There

10. Broken Man (a) Every One A Gem (b) After Collapsing At Kingsley's

Tracks 1 to 10 are their debut and only album "Riley, Riley, Wood and Waggett" - released July 1971 in the UK on RCA Neon NE 7 (no US release). Produced by ERIC HINE and TONY HALL - it didn't chart.

BONUS TRACKS:

11. My Friend John – 29 October 1971 UK Non-Album 45 Single A-side on RCA Victor RCA 2129 with an edit of the LP cut "Yes" on the B-side (last minute lopped off) and the group now credited as SHAPE

12. The Very First Clown *

13. What You Gonna Do Now? *

14. You're The One *

15. From Me And From You *

16. No Use Cryin' Again *

17. Watercolour Sunshine *

18. Nothin' You Could Do *

19. We Can Put It Right *

20. Lady Of My Dreams *

21. It All Depends On You *

22. Listen To Your Heart *

23. Now's The Time To Start *

24. Don't You Know *

25. Second Time Around *

Tracks 12 to 25 (*) are all PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED

Disc Two – The CD "Shape Of The Rain" (aka "The Red Album" 1966-1973) (79:40 minutes):

1. Broken Man (Demo Version)

2. I Don't Need Anybody

3. I'll Be There (Demo Version)

4. We're Not The Boys

5. Hallelujah

6. Hello 503

7. I Doubt I Ever Will

8. Willowing Trees (Demo Version)

9. Canyons

10. Spring

11. Words

12. Look Around

13. Advertising Man

14. Go Around And See It

15. It's So Good Here

16. Big Black Bird

17. Everyone The Fool

18. You Just Call

19. It's My Life

Tracks 1 to 19 previously issued in 2001 as the CD "Shape Of The Rain" (aka "The Red Album") on Background HBG 123/14

BONUS TRACKS:

20. Dusty Road (Demo Version)

21. Too Many Lies

22. Yes (Demo Version)

Tracks 20 to 22 are PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED

Disc Three – Previously Unreleased Live Recordings (1968-1973) (76:26 minutes):

1. Willowing Trees

2. Passing Of Time

3. Imagination

4. I've Been Wrong

5. Spring

6. Everyone The Fool

7. Vanishing Cottage

8. Calling

9. Big Black Bird

10. Go Around And See It

11. Say It's Goodbye

12. Woman

13. We're Not The Boys

14. Hello 503

Tracks 1 to 8 recorded live at Alfreton hall, in England, 2 May 1970

Tracks 9 to 13 recorded live at Manchester University circa 1973

Track 14 is a Live Acetate recorded at Velvet Underground/Down Broadway clubs in 1968

SHAPE OF THE RAIN was:

KEITH RILEY - Lead Guitar, 12-String Guitar and Vocals

LEN RILEY - Bass Guitar

BRIAN WOOD - Pedal Steel Guitar, Bass and Vocals

IAIN 'Tag' WAGGETT - Drums and Percussion

PETE DOLAN on Guitar and Bass from 1973

GUESTS included:

ERIC HINE - Electric Piano on Tracks 5, 7, 8 and 10 on Disc One

BOB SKELLAND - Bass on Track 5 on Disc Two

NIP HEALEY - Drums on Tracks 2, 4 and 11 on Disc Two

DAVID BROOKFIELD - Synths of some of the Keith Riley Home demos - Tracks 12 to 25 on Disc One

Once out of its shrink-wrap (I put the titled sticker on the booklet, difficult peeling it off) - the outer lightweight slipcase holds three card sleeves inside and a 24-page colour booklet. They give the LP the Keef artwork gatefold sleeve (apparently an outtake from the set of the Oliver! film) while the other two are singles with credit details on the rear of those cards instead of taking up pages in the booklet. DAVID WELLS of Cherry Red's Grapefruit Records (and Esoteric Recordings) gives us new January 2020 liner notes with contributions from band players and associates - Keith and Linda Riley, Tag Waggett and Pete Dolan. You get several black and white period photos, Melody Maker reviews, Acetates pictured, the labels for their two singles from May and October 1971 pictured, homemade artwork for the aborted second album and even a calling card for an early embryo of the group as 'The Gear' in a 1965 village hall. There is also a superb two-page collage of support tour press adverts with the likes of Love, Fleetwood Mac, Jethro Tull, Curved Air, Mighty Baby, Elton John and even Pink Floyd in March 1971 at Chesterfield's St. James Hall. It's a classy and in-depth display, as one would expect from Grapefruit. Wells also makes no bones about management mistakes that put the band on the Prog-obscure Neon label (thereby guaranteeing dismal sales figures for an album that deserved better) instead of the more commercially viable RCA Victor label with the likes of David Bowie, Sweet, The Kinks, Jefferson Airplane and Nilsson to name but a few. It’s an entertaining and informative read.

OLI HEMINGWAY has handled the Remastering of the album while Audio Engineers KEITH KNIVETON, KEITH RILEY (of the band) and JONATHAN KIRKPATRICK digitised and remastered the Acetate, Home Demos and Live stuff. It's a very mixed bag. The album sounds good but the sheer haphazard nature of the rest is ok to good only. To the music...

Neon tried to pre-empt interest in the band and the album by issuing Side 1's opener "Woman" as a 45 - but the 21 May 1971 UK 7" single on RCA Neon NE 1001 with "Wasting My Time" on the flipside did no business. Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs of St. Etienne featured the "Wasting My Time" B-side on their "Occasional Rain" CD and 2LP compilation for Ace Records just recently (May 2020) - thinking highly of the pleasant acoustic strummer. Maybe "Patterns" would have been a better choice - its Byrds-like jangling-guitars with Pedal Steel overtones hitting that Matthews Southern Comfort crowd with a lovely and catchy tune. "Castles" offers the first hint of Genesis-type acoustic-guitar Prog (only hints mind) - gorgeous 12-string strums rattling around your speakers - build your castles in the air - and yet another possible single.

Things start to clavinet boogie with the short and jolly instrumental "Rockfield Roll" - but soon return to something way more substantial with truly excellent "Yes". It's album-sized Big Star-sounding jangle-and-strut groove of 5:51 minutes was cut by one minute as an edit for the stand-alone single in October 1971 of "My Friend John" - the band momentarily returned to the orange RCA Victor label and now called just SHAPE. In fact when you play the Country-Funky Pedal Steel bopper that is "My Friend John" and you throw in the excellent "Yes" B-side, you can't help thinking the public missed a trick on this one. We go full on Country Rock with "Dusty Road" – a clavinet and distant vocal that could almost be Poco Americana in its delivery (Riley sounds like a young Matty Healy from The 1975 with his 'time' regional twang) – another sweet melody on an album packed with them. Despite some great ideas in the melody, "Willowing Trees" feels badly produced, all those clever guitar moments lost in a muddy mix. "I'll Be There" talks of giving a hand in another potential mid-tempo single. The album ends on the only real rocker on the record "Broken Man" - a good guitar chugger but again with a vocal that lacks muscle or definition. 

I hadn't expected much of the thirteen unreleased tracks that come as Bonuses on Disc One but shockingly Shape Of The Rain sound like another set of tune makers who didn't get the recognition they deserved - Unicorn - over on Transatlantic and Harvest Records. There isn’t anything Prog or Psych about these – all acoustic guitars and at times Pedal Steel. There is even traces of Duncan Browne in the lovely and hooky "The Very First Clown" and the brokenhearted "What You Gonna Do Now?" The well-recorded America-sounding "Now's The Time To Start" is a 'we can make it if we try' song.

The audio drops more than a tad on the looking for a hit "You're The One" and the peaceful (but hissy) "From Me And From You". Best of the others are the decidedly Matthews Southern Comfort vibe to the wash my soul of "Watercolour Sunshine", the how can we tell them "We Can Put It Right" and the McCartney strum/doubled vocals of "Lady Of My Dreams" - all good but needing full realisation in a studio. And you can't help thinking that "Second Time Around" would have been a melody pace setter for that Badfinger meets Brinsley Schwarz-sounding second album.

The first nineteen tracks of Disc Two covering recordings from 1966 through to 1973 was first issued as a stand-alone CD in 2001 as "The Shape Of Rain" on Background HBG 123/14 (Barcode 5032379231421) and typically it comes on as a good compilation with recording values fluctuating from great to poor. The four demos of album tracks "Broken Man", "I'll Be There", "Dusty Road" and "Yes" were recorded in 1970 at DJM Studios by Rodger Bain and Tony Hall - the last of the four being incredibly poor audio so not surprising its been left in the can all these years. "I Don't Need Nobody", "We're Not The Boys" and "Words" were recorded in 1973 at Phonogram Studios and show Shape Of The Rain still playing melodic Folk-Rock tunes with a West Coast influence. Beatles Engineer Geoff Emerick recorded the decidedly poppy "Hello 503" at Abbey Road with Tony Hall as co-producer.

Despite the muddy recordings, there were tunes going a begging in 1969 with "I Doubt I Ever Will", "Canyons" and "Spring" - its just a shame they never got the last especially into a real studio and onto the LP. Sixties Who leaps out at you with "Look Around" recorded in 1966 in Nottingham (Pete would either have been proud of them or ready to punch their copycat lights out). Better is a home recording made at Brian Wood's house in 1972 in the shape of "Go Around And See It" - a hit in the making had it been Badfinger.

The first eight songs from 1970 on the live disc are disappointingly little more than bootleg quality, distant vocals, not much fidelity and therefore not something you’re going to return to any time soon. By the time we reach 1973 the band recordings are marginally better and the playing much tighter and more accomplished. And while "Woman" rocks rather well, the whole of Disc Three is very disposable.

SHAPE OF THE RAIN devotees will love the all-guns-blazing splurge of new material while Seventies-curious Badfinger nee Big Star worshipers will probably find much to love here even if not all of it is essential. But whatever your musical poison, once again, Grapefruit Records of the UK has gone the full hog here and they are to be praised for it...