dUg – Songs From The Closet/Ty Tabor – Tacklebox

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impulse buy

artist website

impulse buy

Molken Music
Produced by Doug Pinnick/Ty Tabor

To give these releases their full titles: Songs From The Closet: The Doug Pinnick Demos Vol. 1 and Tacklebox: The Ty Tabor Demos Vol. 1 And 2. And now we know what we’re dealing with; some of the original demo versions of songs written for various King’s X records by vocalist and bassist Doug Pinnick and guitarist Ty Tabor over the last 20 years.

A brief note on what’s going on here. A new record company called Molken Music, under the direction of former Galactic Cowboys guitarist Wally Farkas, are basically going to be releasing a string of King’s X related albums, including demos and live concerts. This first collection of Doug’s demos is their very first release, and the double CD set of Ty’s demos follows shortly afterwards. Around half of Ty’s demos were previously available on a CDR release Ty used to sell via his own website called Homeschool, which is now out of print.

Conceptually, Ty’s discs are more interesting. Since these all eventually became King’s X songs, mostly of them will have been sung by Doug, so to hear familiar songs with Ty’s warm voice is a rare treat. Although interestingly, some of Doug’s still include guitar solos, presumably played by himself, so that’s quite an interesting thing to hear. Most of them are short, but they’re all very tasteful and well played. Both albums do include two songs, Wars and Trash In Heaven on Doug’s and About You and Selling My Soul on Ty’s, which thus far have never been released in any form.

Being not completely familiar with King’s X material, I can’t entirely confirm how different these demos sound from the finished versions. What I can do however if view the discs as albums in their own right. A disclaimer on the back sleeve of both albums warns of poor sound quality due to the demos being taken directly from the original four and eight track tapes and that the higher resolution of CDs compared to these tapes will reveal some limitations of the original recordings. To me, this is just artists being picky. All of these songs sound great. With some additional mixing to equal out some of the frequencies, all three of these discs could be bona fide album releases. Doug’s suffers a little from muted guitars, particularly in the chugging opening riffs of Wars, but he is a bass player, so perhaps it’s a favouritism thing.

The most impressive thing in terms of sonic quality is that the songs don’t sound like were recorded over the course of 20 or so years. The mix is reasonably even for the duration of each disc, giving them each the feel of a complete album. It’s likely this has been achieved purely with a little volume adjustment.

Since these releases are pretty much for King’s X fans only, talking about the songs which eventually appeared on King’s X records is marginally pointless. Suffice to say they sound like unmixed/unpolished versions of the originals, perhaps with some differences here and there, mostly in the lyrics (What I Know About Love, for instance). The most interesting thing to all concerned are the “new” songs. The ones not released before.

Both of Doug’s unreleased tracks are very dark and very heavy. Perhaps indicating they were written for the Dogman album? That is widely recognised as King’s X darkest and heaviest album. The liner notes are unfortunately non-existent, in both albums. Both have a single sheet insert which mostly lists MySpace and website addresses for the cover artists, photographers and other people involved in the release of the discs. What does fill in the gaps though is the Audio Commentary tracks at the very end. Doug explains the inspiration for each track and Wars, it turns out, was written in 1989 and musically was inspired by heavy guitar-less dance music Doug used to hear at a club and figured it could do with some guitars. Trash In Heaven was indeed written for Dogman and stemmed entirely from the chronic depression Doug was feeling at the time. The song shows a lot of frustration and brutality and is an exact reflection of Doug’s feelings.

The first disc of Ty’s album actually opens with one of his unreleased tracks. About You is reasonably pleasant song, revolving around doubt, with some very interesting guitar riffs. Selling My Soul on disc two is an acoustic-led track which is, again, quite bright and pleasant. A stark contrast to the dark nature of Doug’s tracks. Ty’s commentary is different to Doug’s. Where Doug explains each song in turn, Ty talks mostly about how he got into writing music, with his friend Marty Warren, who sings on In The New Age, Far, Far Away and Summerland, how King’s X started and how their sound progressed and was formed. Consequently the only two tracks he really talks about in any detail are Pleiades and Wednesday Morning.

Closing the second disc of Ty’s album with Pleiades is a nice touch because it’s the song, with Ty’s school friend Dale Richardson on vocals, that is responsible for giving King’s X their direction and sound, as both Doug and Ty note, it’s the song that made Doug start writing songs with a drop-D tuning (heavier) because Ty had used it on that song.

As previously noted, these albums are for King’s X fans only, who are well known for wanting absolutely everything the band produces. For people new to King’s X, buying these CDs isn’t the way to get into the band. These are demos and are not the way the final songs sound. Interested parties would be better off getting the Live All Over The Place album, or cherry picking recommended titles from the back catalogue like Dogman, Welcome Home Mr Bulbous and the debut Out of The Silent Planet. For the fans though, these discs are a gold mine of interest and insight into their favourite band and its two chief songwriters.

“ gold mine ”

Songs From The Closet Tracklist: The World Around Me / Wars / I’ll Never Get Tired of You / Fine Art of Friendship / Power of Love / The Big Picture / Ooh Song / Sometime / A Box / Human Behaviour / Trash In Heaven / What I Know About Love / We Were Born To Be Loved / Faith Hope Love / Dug’s Audio Commentary

Tacklebox Tracklist:
CD 1 – About You / It’s Love / Mr. Wilson / The Difference (In The Garden of St. Anne’s-On-The-Hill) / Lose In Germany / Freedom / Life Going By / I Can’t Help It / Fool You / Flies And Blue Skies / Lies In The Sand (The Ballad of…) / Wednesday Morning / Cigarettes / Silent Wind / The Burning Down
CD 2 – The Train / Prisoner / Dogman / Selling My Soul / Not Just For The Dead / Dream In My Life / Black Flag / Had To Move / Complain / Legal Kill / Goldilox / In The New Age / Far, Far Away / Summerland / Pleiades / Ty’s Audio Commentary

Written by Andy Lye
More: Albums, Hard Rock, dUg, Ty Tabor