What are some of the bigger musical "scams" of the recorded sound era?

By "scams" I mean occasions where multitudes of people got a certain record expecting to hear something, and they were disappointed enough by the actual content of the record that they proclaimed it a scam. Like, the music on the record was totally different from the artist's previous output, or an album's only good songs where the two singles, everything else was filler and remixes.

I don't mean to say this "scamming" was necessarily done intentionally by the artist or the record company (that's why I put the word in scare quotes), just that the buyers felt they had been scammed.

One recent example I can think of was the third Daft Punk album, I remember many people on ILM claiming the leaked tracks a fake, up until they heard them on CD.

A personal example I remember from my youth was getting the Spin Doctors album, and learning it had exactly three good songs, the three singles, and everything else on it was very obvious filler.

One case in Finland, which might've been an actual scam, happened a few years ago... This local underground rapper, who had already released two really well-received albums, released a new single and video on Youtube, saying it was from his next record. The single was a nice rap tune with a good beat, so a lot of people pre-ordered the record based on that one tune. Then came the day the album was released, and people who'd bought it learned that it wasn't a musical album but an audio play made by the rapper and his producer!

The only proper song on the record was that pre-released song, any other music on it was just some incidental stuff used on the background of the play. I was reading the discussion on the record on a local rap board, and people were really furious over it. At least some of them who'd ordered it as "cash on delivery" never went to pick it up at their local post office, so they wouldn't have to pay for it. Later on the producer or someone else involved with the record label commented that the record was never advertised as a musical album, but that felt kind disingenuous, as it wasn't advertised as an audio play either, and the only part of it people could listen to in advance was a proper rap song.

So yeah, any other examples like the above?

Load was advertised as a Metallica album.

Beyonce, all of it

Metal Machine Music

I remember, a couple of years ago, buying a CD online which had 15 songs on it, the one song which made me by it in the first place and then 14 other songs which I was looking forward to, but when I played the other songs, oh dear. I'd been had. Terrible, all of them. I never listened to even the 1 one good song again, it was ruined, and I never bought a CD again. Its no wonder the music industry collapsed

people seemed pretty worked up about a Liz Phair album once

Terence Trent D'Arby "Neither Fish nor Flesh"

It wasn't in any way a scam, but when Caetano Veloso was allowed to return to Brazil, it coincided with the release of Transa, his most mainstream recording yet, and it was in all ways a complete triumph. He was not just a musician, he was a folk hero, almost. Then, he chose to follow that up with Araca Azul, a mix of musique concrete and jingles and weirdness, with hardly a song on it, which has influenced people such as El Guincho and Black Dice. It is one of the most returned albums in Brasilian musical history. It's pretty brillaint, though.

I'm sure a lot of people felt this way about Radiohead's Kid A, Scott Walker's Tilt and Portishead's Third, but why should we care if bands dont give many fans what they want and expect? Many regard those as some of the best stuff by either band. They are probably my favorite of each artist.

Are you really looking for bands shortchanging their audience or just albums that were terribly received.

I've seen some fans accuse Current 93 and The Enid of churning out quickies and live albums for a quick buck, but even though I'm a fan of both bands I wouldnt know about that yet.

Yeah, that was the sort of example I was thinking, an artist releasing something totally different than what he had previously done.

(xpost)

I was also thinking of when I got "Loaded" the Velvet Underground, which was the last one of their albums I bought (even after "VU"), of course I knew "Sweet Jane" and "Rock and Roll"..

So, imagine my surprise when the first track I hear is "Who loves the Sun?" which was more like Freddie and the Dreamers than anything anyone else has ever recorded! (Including F&TD)

Are you really looking for bands shortchanging their audience or just albums that were terribly received.

I'm just interested in cases where records were, for one different or other, proclaimed as scam by a multitude of listeners. I don't want to make any objective judgment on whether there was actual scamming involved (in most of these cases there probably wasn't), or whether the music on these records was actually good, I'm just interested in this sort of fan reaction as a phenomenon.

I was never convinced about MMM, it had been widely reviewed and commented upon, did fans really buy it in the hope that maybe *this* copy of it would really prove to be "Rock & Roll Animal Part 2" ?

side 2 of Neu! 2

But if we're talking about actual scams, a while ago I remember reading on some ILM thread that some fairly known indie rock guy or something started a kickstarter to produce a new album, with the promise that everyone who chipped in money would get a physical copy, but after he'd raised the required amount of money the album never materialized. Does anyone remember who this was?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legupmgmt/deacon-animal-collective-at-the-festival-in-the

From Rolling Stone:

Neil Young is the only artist in the history of modern recording to be sued for refusing to be himself. The suit, filed by Geffen Records, Young’s label for much of the Eighties, charged that he was violating his contract by recording ‘unrepresentative’ albums. In other words, Neil Young wasn’t making Neil Young music.

(Oh, that was over the Old Ways and Everybody's Rockin' LPs)

I wonder if there are still people who'll happen to see that that nice Scott Walker who they remember was in them lovely Walker Brothers has released a new album and be a bit surprised when they listen to it.

Something that's a bit of a more generalised and widespread variation on this theme is when e.g. a couple of tangential members of a band who had a couple of hits in the '60s or '70s will get together and record terrible covers and release it as a greatest hits. Some older members of my family have a lot of these and often can't tell the difference even when e.g. '60s beat drum sounds have been replaced with a free software drum machine.

The Who's It's Hard got five stars in Rolling Stone, which called it "their most vital and coherent album since Who's Next." I imagine a fair number of people who bought the record based on that review felt scammed.

xxp That makes Young the Bizarro-world John Fogerty, who was sued for plagiarizing himself.

The band Velvet Cocoon stole some albums from other bands and released them under their own name, later admitting to it.

I've written about it elsewhere on this forum but I really love some of the Jacula/Antonius Rex stuff but I'm pretty sure the band(s) are nothing like what the frontman is trying to pass themselves off as. They have tried to pretend some of their music was released decades ago and some albums are so radically different that it seems as if it was by another band who fell away into obscurity.

This list should help...
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Blue_Sun/albums_that_divided_fanbases/

I'm trying to remember the name of a guy who put out a bunch of records in the 70s under a stage name that were just his vocals overdubbed onto Ten Years After records or something.

Ah, here we go:
http://www.lysergia.com/LamaWorkshop/Kacz/lamaKacz.htm

i didn't say fans are cattle, i said they should be treated like cattle.

Prior to the release of their eight-track album OXXXES in 2002, the band put out a 10" record, billed as a split EP between OXES and Rhode Island noise-rockers Arab on Radar. The A-side of the record was performed by OXES. However, the B-side was also OXES—this time convincingly impersonating Arab on Radar. The unusual idea allegedly came about during practice sessions for the record, whereupon OXES happened to write some songs similar to Arab on Radar's, subsequently recording and releasing the record as an OXES/Arab on Radar split, unknown to the latter band.

treating the 'bigger' of the thread title as referring to the size of the scam rather than the band(s) here fwiw

Does the number of people on ILM who went and bought Big & Rich's debut count?

What was the scam in that?

they were neither.

I remember being excited for Snoop Dogg's "Tha Last Meal" in 2000, and downloading samplers, and many tracks from the album. And then only two of the songs I had d/led even wound up on the album, the rest were scrapped, and I hated it.

hmm...Megadeth's "Risk" counts. basically the moment I heard "Crush 'Em" I knew Dave had lost his damn mind.

I thought "St Anger" was a performance art joke the first time I heard it.

I remember thinking when I got Bone Thugs N' Harmony's "E. 1999" that a lot of people who were expecting to hear sentimental prom night R&B a la "Tha Crossroads" would be getting a real rude awakening when they discovered that the album was packed with horrific tales of gangland murders, slanging llelo, gunning down cops, and smoking sherm sticks in graveyards.

kinda like how anybody who bought that one Sugar Ray album with "Fly" on it was probably surprised to hear the other songs on the album were fucking horrible watered down alternative 'metal' with no hooks.

lol yes, totally. "cash, i need some fucking cash" etc.

there must be many examples of this phenomenon in 90s modern rock

like idk, i have never heard it myself but RUMOR HAS IT that the primitive radio gods album sounds absolutely nothing like the hit they are (he is?) known for, and not nearly as good

Milli Vanilli!

i always wondered what people thought when they bought that blind melon album for the bee girl song and the rest of it sounded nothing like that song. that's my memory of the album anyway. heard it once playing where i worked at the time and everything else sounded like bad guns & roses or something.

wasn't 90s, but the mediocre Stone Sour did that with the ballad "Bother", which sounded nothing like the rest of the album, yet was the big single.

wasn't "Zombie" the only song on the Cranberries second album that had any significant guitar distortion? I remember everybody being disappointed when they heard the rest of the album and it...sounded like the first album.

hell, how do you think all of those horny adult contemp fans felt when they bought Extreme's Pornograffiti for "More Than Words".

granted, the title was a HINT, but....

I did also lament the fact that thanks to "Name", and half of Dizzy Up the Girl, Goo Goo Dolls got seen by everybody as these romantic balladeers, instead of the fun power-poppers I always knew them as.

i think many of the people who bought len's 1999 album felt scammed b/c the majority of it was nothing like "steal my sunshine" (i liked it a lot tho)

I know I fell for this type of scam a buncha times as a kid pre-mp3s, and yet the albums aren't coming to mind.

I know one of the biggest disappointments was Anthrax's "Volume 8: The Threat is Real". going by the Guitar magazine interviews, this was going to be a punishing metal album with catchy tunes, and I bought it, and it was this middling, boring dreck with terrible Jon Bush vocals. And this was at a period of time where I had a shitty job and buying a cd was like something I could only do every two months.

every album with a hit single ever could qualify in this regard. Hardly a "scam" however.

it's a scam if the hit single completely sounds nothing at all like the rest of the album. Not the same as when the hit single is just miles better than the other songs on the album, which are in the same style, but more along the lines of filler.

nowadays not so much, but in the days when actually hearing an album before it dropped was more difficult, sure. I remember going to Blockbuster Music (later Wherehouse) just so I could listen to cds before I bought them.

I still would not describe it as a scam personally.

uhh yeah but we're going by how the original thread poster described 'scam'.

big diff between someone buying Mighty Bosstones cd because of "The Impression That I Get" and not liking the rest of the album, but the rest of the album is still similar in style to the single.....and someone buying a Sugar Ray cd that has a fun mid-tempo pop number and getting an album full of half-baked wannabe meathead "metal".

did Sugar Ray actually adapt their sound later to sound more like "Fly", "Every Morning", etc, full time?

Yeah, like I said I wasn't just interested in actual, intentional scams (which must be pretty rare), but also in cases where a significant amount of listeners/buyers felt like they'd been scammed.

(xpost)

more fool anyone who bought mighty mighty bosstones and sugar ray albums!

In 2013 I am finding there is a lot to like about mid-to-late-90s fucking horrible watered down alternative metal. And yes, Sugar Ray became "Fly"

I felt robbed the first time I bought an Oasis album and there was actual music on it. I was hoping for 60 minutes of arguing and namecalling.

wonder if anyone bought Lou Reed's Mistrial and got upset that it wasn't a hip hop album

Of all the terrible late-90s chart-topping rock bands (STP, Bush, Smash Mouth, Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20) I cannot believe anybody is complaining about Sugar Ray

like those who bought Metal Machine Music not expecting it to sound like a symphony of vacuum cleaners

I would rather listen to STP, Bush, and some Smash Mouth over Sugar Ray. Besides, the point there was Sugar Ray released a song drastically different than the rest of the album with "Fly", whereas the other bands you listed generally sounded similar to the lead single they released on the rest of their album.

it's not as if Bush released "Everything Zen" as a single, and the rest of the album was blues-infused polka shuffle.

I actually remember people returning that Sugar Ray record and saying that it didn't sound anything like the single

No I get it, but "Fly" was the scam, not the rest of "Floored"

again, not wanting to semantic debate, I'm going by the scope of Tuomas's original post, which SAYS:

By "scams" I mean occasions where multitudes of people got a certain record expecting to hear something, and they were disappointed enough by the actual content of the record that they proclaimed it a scam.

Anyone who bought 90s alt rock lite albums deserve what they got. Especially those who bought that Four Non Blondes album.

When "Walking on the Sun" was a hit I spun a demo copy of the album & IIRC every other song was generic ska-punk. "There are going to be a million kids disappointed as hell in this".

Not a record but Fleetwood Mac's manager once arranged a Fleetwood Mac tour containing no members of Fleetwood Mac. The fake Mac then became Stretch and had a hit with Why Did You Do It?, which was an attack on Mick Fleetwood.

The band was put together in 1974 with help from Fleetwood Mac manager Clifford Davis and drummer Mick Fleetwood, to perform as Fleetwood Mac on a US tour because the existing Fleetwood Mac were not in a position to fulfil outstanding contractual obligations.[2] (dead link) However, Fleetwood did not join the tour as planned, and later denied any knowledge or involvement, and partway through the tour it became obvious to audiences that there was no original member of Fleetwood Mac in the band, and the tour collapsed.

Oh sorry, that's a proper scam not a Tuomas-defined non-scam "scam".

Proper scams are fine too!

sugar ray did assume the "fly" sound full-time after it became a hit, basically

The Austrian techno label Sabotage put out a 12" of techno with a presskit and photos and artist identity etc. Several months later, they put out a new record by a different artist with a different photo and bio and song titles and all that . . . but the music was the exact same music as the previous 12". It was a con to see if anybody even noticed or cared, and a prank on journalists who, if I recall correctly, had praised the "bold step forward" as the label moved "from strength to strength" etc.

this thread is a scam, can we lock it

Bowie's original mix of Raw Power
Iggy's remastering of Raw Power
Anything "remastered" with loads of brickwalling and compression

ooh, would misleading artist names count? like "grandmaster & melle mel" being used on the "white lines" single to imply that grandmaster flash was on it when it was just melle mel?

Not so much a scam by Tuomas' standards, but a non-Silver Apples-related guy was playing Silver Apples songs and claiming to be Simian for years. It was only when real-Simian showed up to a festival gig and the promoter said "I've booked Silver Apples before and you are not Simian" that the fraud became known, lawsuits filed, etc. Was that story ever reported? I think it was, no?

i bet a lot of people were somewhat perplexed when they bought 'the flat earth' by thomas dolby having heard hyperactive.

a non-Silver Apples-related guy was playing Silver Apples songs and claiming to be Simian for years. It was only when real-Simian showed up to a festival gig and the promoter said "I've booked Silver Apples before and you are not Simian"

The Silver Apples guy is called Simeon, perhaps that should've been a tip-off

oh, Laughing Stock, Life's what you make it,.. Um.. OFFJ

http://www.eyedealfigurines.com/images/FigMonkeyKeyboardMB017.jpg

:( my spellcheck doesn't like the name Simeon

I've seen loads of reviews of non-metal albums by artists who usually do metal where the reviewer complains "This isnt metal!" and gives it the lowest possible score. But I've seen this for other genres too and it is an almost sure sign of a dumb reviewer.

I remember when the Frank Black Francis album came out. The first disc was exciting Pixies era demos and the second disc was new versions. I got excited when I saw there was a 10 minute long version of "Planet Of Sound", imagining a ferocious epic version of that sound, but it was actually just an uninteresting loop. I barely listened to that second disc so I cant really judge it but it seemed a bit dashed off.

what about people passing off new records as some kind of lost album from another era? have we ever had a thread on that? I remember there being some question about the authenticity of Karuna Khyal and Brast Burn when those were reissued on CD, but I think they were ultimately proven to be real but ultra rare, right? What about that Kosmischer Läufer obviously fake krautrock thing. It seems like some people took the story at face value. I know there were other examples of this kind of thing but I can't remember any of them.

Also what about re-recordings of old hits passed off as the real thing? Spotify is full of that shit.

I felt robbed the first time I bought an Oasis album and there was actual music on it. I was hoping for 60 minutes of arguing and namecalling.

I assume this is Custosing, but there was a 13-minute 7" of arguing and namecalling, recorded at one of their first major interviews, released on Fierce Panda called Wibbling Rivalry, under the cunningly disguised name Oas*s

thatsthejoke.gif

No I get it, but "Fly" was the scam, not the rest of "Floored"

dawg are you my mortal enemy or

thatsthejoke.gif

― Mark G, Monday, October 14, 2013 2:10 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

;)

karaoke covers of songs that are released before the actual single is that ends up reaching the top 10 in the uk chart

OH yeah, there was that totally great H.N.A.S. record which was a fake krautrock album, with song titles like "Marijuana Bruder" and stuff, like long jammy jazzy krautrock pastiche that is almost persuasive as the real thing. What was that called? I have it and its pretty great, but the 80s sounding digital reverbs kind of give the production away a bit . . .

and on the NDW tip, there was this:

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/04/audio_hoaxes_an.html

I'm pretty sure I have some dodgy psych comps from the '80s that did that too. some rare '60s 45s mixed in with tracks that sound suspiciously modern. I wish somebody would research and write about that whole phenomenon.

I have one of those, called "The best of and the rest of British psychedelia", with "My friend Jack" and a lot of unknown, suspicious (to me) stuff.

Did a bit of searching, all proved to be bona-fide.

I guess I was thinking of Beyond the Calico Wall, where Erik Lindgren who compiled it put one of his own songs from the '80s on there. It's not really a scam, since it's mentioned in the liner notes. But it is kind of weird if like me you just bought a CD that says "rare and unreleased '60s classics" on the cover and listened to it without reading all of the liner notes.

also how about Silicon Teens?

http://www.discogs.com/Kamikaze-Welt-Two-Berlins/release/2834267

I bought this as a teenager when I'd never heard any krautrock before and it blew me away, I initially thought it was genuine band from the 70s. I think after researching it on the internet at some point I found out that it was people who had been in couple fairly obscure indie bands, I can't remember their names now.

Any Deluxe Edition where they charge extra for a couple songs is deeply bogus, a travesty of a mockery of two shams.

Of course there's the Dukes of Stratosphear, which I wish they'd had the chutzpah to go all-out and pull the wool over instead of semi-hedging.

The Woolovers would be a great name for a fake "lost" 60s band.

also how about Silicon Teens?

what is the scam hee? love this record

weren't they originally promoted as a group? or was the public in on the joke from the beginning?

No, you are quite right.

Although, it was purely a matter of time until that came true. But at that point, the equipment was still too expensive.

best ever scam version of a touring band was the Frankie Goes To Hollywood one 90s. not one member of the original band! none of the members had a darn thing to do with the original.
http://zttaat.s3.amazonaws.com/images_article/large_22pc/300_fgth_article22.jpg

one can argue the original band was something of a 'scam' too i suppose. kinda.

did anyone really believe that Road Block was a rare old soul record? that's the story that has been put about by Stock Aitken And Waterman since. supposedly it was sent to clubs as a white label and some DJs "fell for it". not sure how likely that is mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF28Z_lr3t4

great tune though.

Speaking of new "old" albums, this LP claims to be a compilation of Finnish cover versions of Italo disco hits that were released in 1980-1985. I don't think they expected anyone to fall for this though, as the pictures of the "different" artists on the cover all seem to feature the same guy with sunglasses and a fake moustache, and all the artist names are punny Finnish translations of the names of the original Italo acts.

Tuomas you are being summoned!

I need to hear that record and I need to hear it now.

I remember when I was younger a thing that happened once.

The Psi-Fi label:

This label produced six "reissues" of albums by the supposedly long lost Pyramid label of Cologne, Germany. These releases are generally considered to be a hoax and it is widely believed that the albums was recorded in the mid '90s in the UK during the height of the Krautrock revival. The source for all of these recordings as well as the Unknown Deutschland compilations on Virgin is Toby Hrycek-Robinson, who had worked as an engineer in Dieter Dierks' studio.

Toby Hrycek-Robinson aka The Mad Twiddler aka Genius P. Orridge (really!) seemed to be the only thing in common between these albums by Golem, Temple, The Nazgul, Cozmic Corridors, Galactic Explorers and Pyramid. They're actually pretty cool overall, just obviously not from the 70s in most cases.

When you say "really", do you mean it's Genesis P? I did hear that rumour..

Unless it's somebody else and "Genius P" another ps-eudonym.

Does that Jurgen Muller LP from a few years back fit into this thread?

Yeah I think the Mueller LP definitely fits.

And XP: I say really because IIRC Hrycek-Robinson claimed he was using the pseudonym Genius P. Orridge before Genesis came around and, I mean, come on.

Fair enough, ta.

speaking of Genesis P he was one of the people behind that fake acid house comp Jack The Tab
Bill Drummond had that record label of fake Finnish bands, all recorded in a pokey East Midlands studio a few hundred yards from where i used to live

Jacula

Of course there's the Dukes of Stratosphear, which I wish they'd had the chutzpah to go all-out and pull the wool over instead of semi-hedging.

Yeah, this. I bought 25 O'Clock not really knowing who XTC were, just that this was supposed to be a psychedelic parody thing. The production is what really sells it.

Just watched the Storyville on Silibil 'n' Brains, where two kids from Dundee got into a major label bidding war just because they pretended to be from California.

The Strangeloves whole schtick wa sthat they were actors that pretended to be Australian but weren't.

Gary Lewis and the Playboys were kind of one in that Gary Lewis couldn't sing but they wanted to use him to sell records due to his parental lineage, so on record they mixed his singing voice in with several other session singers to make him sound fuller. This became very clear when I saw them on one of Jerry Lewis's telethons and Gary sang very, very badly.

there's the whole soul-covers-of-Bowie-songs thing from earlier this year too (and oh my lord would I ever pay for more stuff in this vein)

Does anyone know that Circuit Rider LP reissue thing? I'm convinced that's a fake...

"Having Fun with Elvis on Stage"

The California Raisins cassettes were just a bunch of studio musicians and not singing Raisins

also the Ninja Turtles lip-synched on that Pizza Hut tour

Those two Electric Prunes albums David Axelrod produced/recorded, that the band were so little involved in they couldn't even work out how to perform the songs live.

That last Michael Jackson album

The Strangeloves whole schtick wa sthat they were actors that pretended to be Australian but weren't.

The Koala did this too! They were from New York.

Similar to XTC's Dukes alter egos, The Damned once released an album of garage rock covers under the name Nazz Nomad & The Nightmares

Julian Cope did a Dukes of Stratosphear thing too I think? As Rabbi something or other.

But these aren't really scams so much as artists mucking about

Another one of those "mucking around" things..

http://images.45cat.com/the-incredible-egoreilly-the-birth-of-maudie-1989-2.jpg

George Michael, allegedly:

"Careless Whisper": I remember this purely as the song that always used to finish top of Capital FM’s poll of the greatest songs of all time. Year after year after year, Capital listeners (back in the day when Radio 1 was your pop station and Capital was your slushy pop station and Heart didn’t exist) voted this to the top [...]

For ages I assumed anyone with a Capital FM bumper sticker liked this song, until I discovered that George owned a significant stake in said radio station in the mid 90s.

As much as I want to believe it, I'll have to file this under "too funny to be true" until further notice.

If somebody had rigged a Capital all-time song poll, it's doubtful that anyone would've noticed the difference.

http://s17.postimg.org/n9o215ftn/Chelsea_cigarettes_song_title_contest_1945.jpg

This song-title contest... It depends whether "scams" can include encouraging excessive smoking. The competition was legit – it had 250,000 entries, and winners as promised – but there's no record of them announcing the winning song title. Almost like it didn't matter. Damn you Billboard for running this ad! No, "it was 1945" isn't an excuse. Also, please translate your baffling frontpages.

This is kind of a fun thread actually. Surprised there's no mention of the "Klaatu are the reunited Beatles under a fake name" deal, which began as a baseless rumor spun by a journalist, grew into a sales-driving force with radio stations and the press divining "clues" along the lines of the Paul is Dead thing. Capitol ultimately got in on it, coyly dropping hints but refusing to say (while the band themselves flatly denied the whole thing, which oddly seems to have had no effect). Obviously, aside from the one song that sort of held up the rumor, the record does not sound like the reunited Beatles.

There were also some rather scamy attempts to make faux Beatles albums by labels that wound up with the rights to some of their early Hamburg recordings, like Ain't She Sweet whose title cut is the only true Beatles song on it (with overdubbed drums because the producer didn't think Pete Best was good enough), three Tony Sheridan tracks with the Beatles backing him, and eight tracks from some random band called the Swallows doing Beatles covers. Or a Vee-Jay album called The Beatles and Frank Ifield On Stage, which did include four real Beatles recordings, namely the four songs Vee-Jay obtained the rights to because Capitol boneheadedly declined to sell their first album in America. But despite exclusively showing the Beatles and their songs on the cover, this was primarily a Frank Ifield album with two-thirds of the songs his (including his only US top-40 hit). And despite the "on stage" in the album title, neither act was recorded live.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/37/Beatlesatco.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/09/Beatles_and_Frank_Ifield_on_Stage.jpg

(with overdubbed drums because the producer didn't think Pete Best was good enough)

Overdubbed drums courtesy of none other than Bernard Purdie. There actually was a Beatles record he played on!

And despite the "on stage" in the album title, neither act was recorded live.

The misleading-live-album approach was apparently a thing in the '60s:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61%2BJJcBtf1L._SY300_.jpg

Are you guys familiar with the Metal Enterprise label, that released sophomore releases that turned out to just be the label owner and his friends fucking around instead of the actual bands from the debut albums?

http://thecorroseum.org/features/metalenterprises/index.htm

How about the ELP "Live at High Voltage" debacle. Band headlines the High Voltage festival as their first show in 12 years (and most likely their last), and Sanctuary releases a double disc set called High Voltage which is not actually the live performance, but rather yet another "greatest hits" disc to add to the dozens of such discs they've already released. To make matters worse, there actually IS a live album out there for it, but it's called At the High Voltage 2010, making it seem like the only reason for releasing the former is to bilk another $30 out of hardcore fans. To top it off the actual performance is awful (and the album features a lengthy sound dropout which implies that nobody listened to it beforehand).

Another famous not-so-live album from the '60s, although putting "live" in quotes at least acknowledges the deception. It could be argued this really was recorded live at a party since they invited about 15 of their friends to hang out and mingle during its recording. But that party was in a recording studio, and the 'party' atmosphere didn't come through clearly enough on tape so additional background chatter and clinking champagne glasses were overdubbed.

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0001/583/MI0001583375.jpg

That's maybe more borderline since it's hard for me to really imagine people felt ripped off that it wasn't really a recording of the Beach Boys actually partying, although, I guess, maybe? Maybe it should have had fine print at the bottom like "the Beach Boys are known for really boring workplace parties with no atmosphere."

sorry for mike love party rocking

can kinda hear bb's doing ''party rock anthem'' with a bunch of dubbed in ''woo''s and ''someone should probably make a beer run soon''s

Fun fact: Miles Davis' Relaxin' was originally going to be issued as Miles Davis Party!

They had started overdubbing party-atmosphere sounds, but got no further than Coltrane asking, "Could I have the beer opener?"

Are you guys familiar with the Metal Enterprise label, that released sophomore releases that turned out to just be the label owner and his friends fucking around instead of the actual bands from the debut albums?

http://thecorroseum.org/features/metalenterprises/index.htm

― Sebastian (Royal Mermaid Mover), Monday, October 12, 2015 7:23 PM (Yesterday)

Oh my god, I thought I loved the fake Killer Fox record, but I've just listened to the first three tracks on the fake Thrash Queen album and I genuinely, honestly, adore this.

http://www.winylowo.com/66171-home_default/-gregory-isaacs-the-best-of-gregory-isaacs-lp.jpg

this isnt a best of, it was just one of his albums

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b5/Radiohead.kida.albumart.jpg

(And then, of course a lot of other people got into them. But, really, a lot of people never "got" "Kid A" and started listening to Travis, Coldplay and Muse instead)

I would also guess "One Foot in the Grave" was hardly what fans of "Loser" expected Beck to do back then. People would later get used to his two musical personalities, but it sure was a strange move back then.

(If anyone happens to have mp3s of those two albums I mentioned, I would be super grateful, they're proving pretty hard to find... and it wouldn't even be ripping anyone off seeing as they're fakes anyway.)

Are you guys familiar with the Metal Enterprise label, that released sophomore releases that turned out to just be the label owner and his friends fucking around instead of the actual bands from the debut albums?

http://thecorroseum.org/features/metalenterprises/index.htm
― Sebastian (Royal Mermaid Mover), Monday, October 12, 2015 7:23 PM (Yesterday)

Thank you so much for drawing this to my attention. Amazing.

Weren't a lot of people at the time really confused by Stevie Wonder's Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants?

This was mentioned in the FAX thread, but I think it deservers a place here too, as an example of a genuine scam:

http://216.119.100.169/rseguine/FAX/fax_facts/ManMadeMotion.html

Dr. Atmo released an ambient album in 1999 that literally has the same music as the 1995 album Slow and Low by his former label mate, Tetsu Inoue, only slowed down a bit. I've no idea why he did this, but it's incredible if he thought he wouldn't get caught.

So weird

Foiled again, dr atmo

Speaking of new "old" albums, this LP claims to be a compilation of Finnish cover versions of Italo disco hits that were released in 1980-1985. I don't think they expected anyone to fall for this though, as the pictures of the "different" artists on the cover all seem to feature the same guy with sunglasses and a fake moustache, and all the artist names are punny Finnish translations of the names of the original Italo acts.

― Tuomas, 15. lokakuuta 2013 10:37 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I need to hear that record and I need to hear it now.

― the Shearer of simulated snowsex etc. (Dwight Yorke), 15. lokakuuta 2013 11:52 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In case you're interested, there's another compilation of this stuff now available.

There was that Extreme Music From Africa noise compilation put out by William Bennett. He's never confirmed it afaik but it's pretty much understood that all the tracks were just him.

The "obscure punk" bootleg series Killed By Death has 2 fake volumes, 11 and 16, which were just modern bands playing '77 style punk in the 90s. I've never heard either of them to know if they made a decent attempt at it or not.

I've also heard that some of the tracks on Back From The Grave comps are fakes in that way but I'm not so sure about that one.

http://bapresley.com/silverthreads/music/lyrics/conc1.jpg

put this on the other day. first song is the studio version of "Hair", not even any crowd overdubs or anything.