For years, a demo has been floating around, purporting to be a Roger Taylor solo track, from the Strange Frontier sessions, called "I Can't Get You Out Of My Head." Roger sings lead vocals on this demo and it sounds pretty complete. The general consensus was that it, along with other leaked Roger demos, was from 1983, when Roger was recording his second solo album (the aforementioned "Strange Frontier"). Other demos appeared, also supposedly from that period:
- Keep On Running (a cover the Spencer Davis track)
- Celebration
- I Wanna Take You Higher
- I Can Take You Higher
Now, because of an earlier thread, I discovered that in May of this year, Clayton Moss released a solo album (The Cross Section) and on it is a recording of "I Can't Get You Out Of My Head," as well as a few re-recorded Cross tracks:
- Penetration Guru (Moss)
- Better Things (Moss)
- Ain't Put Nothin' Down (Moss)
Clayton Moss wrote those three songs. His website doesn't list writing credits, so are we to assume he wrote all the songs on The Cross Section album? If so, it means he wrote "I Can't Get You Out Of My Head." Which means the demo version floating around is a Cross track, not a Roger solo track. So, which album is it from? I'm guessing either Mad, Bad And Dangerous To Know or Blue Rock (as Roger wrote all the Shove It tracks). Does any of this cast doubt on "Celebration"'s origin (It's been argued that it's a Shove It era track)?
""Another song, "I Can't Get
You Out Of My Head", was long considered to
be a Roger Taylor solo song from his "Strange
Frontier" sessions and never released but as
claimed by Clayton himself, this is an
unreleased The Cross song and a demo which
exists features Clayton on the guitar.""
A few other websites repeat this same information, though I can't seem to backtrack the original statement by Moss. However, because it's on his album now, and it doesn't make sense to put a cover of an obscure demo by another artist (Roger) on a small indie label internet release (Moss would lose royalty $s on the song), I have no reason now to doubt it's Moss's song, originally for The Cross.
So, for which Cross album was the mis-identified demo recorded?
And what of the other demos I mentioned in the first post? Are their origins suspect now too?
I did send Clayton Moss the link to the discussion and asked him if he could clear this up for us but he did not answer. Pobably because Pim Derks did not edit his post :-) Maybe we will know more if Roger's solo stuff should come out...
I read the other thread and it seems Clayton's statements conflict with JSS's attributions of which songs/demos came from which sessions.
"I Can't Get You Out Of My Head" is a Clayton Moss penned song.
"Celebration" is a Spike Edney penned song.
John, I don't know how to reconcile that information with what you have in your collection.
Clayton mentioned on his youtube comments that those two songs are from "the Jam studio recording sessions." Does anyone here know what session/album this is refering to? I looked, and there's no Jam Studio credit on any of the three Cross albums.
In fact, Josh said that "Celebration" was initially an idea by Peter Noone, not Spike. The confusion comes from the fact that all these songs are on the Strange Frontier album John described in the other thread. Looking at the BMI database I do not find Celebration or "Can't Get You.." at all.
Haven't any idea about that, but someone said something about dropping Roger a line to ask. Is there a Roger site? Or anything official that's Roger related? I've never been able to find any.
Very briefly, around Electric Fire's release (ten years ago) there was an official Roger site, from which they ran the "One Night Stand" remix contest (which went nowhere). After that, about five years ago I guess, the same link took you to a single page with a photo of Roger and a caption saying "No," or "Sorry," or something. These days, the link is defunct.
catqueen wrote:
Haven't any idea about that, but someone said something about dropping Roger a line to ask. Is there a Roger site? Or anything official that's Roger related? I've never been able to find any.
Apparently Roger is working on a new website - I think this was mentioned in a recent fanclubmagazine?
catqueen wrote:
Haven't any idea about that, but someone said something about dropping Roger a line to ask. Is there a Roger site? Or anything official that's Roger related? I've never been able to find any.
Apparently Roger is working on a new website - I think this was mentioned in a recent fanclubmagazine?
Great, Pim! Nice to see that again after a whole decade.
Miklos wrote: link
a bit of nostalgia for those who tried to connect with 28k modems to watch the cyberbarn event ;)
Ohhh, I was one of those. I even recorded the concert with a handycam pointed to my computer screen! haha :D The audio was Ok, fluid and all, but the images were frozen most of the time.
My mother picked me up from school early so I could get home to watch the concert in full. Also I had to borrow my grandmother's credit card to buy Roger's album online that very same day. The first time I bought anything over the Internet.
Eventually I did get the album and a limited edition certificate (500 in total) the size of a CD with my name on it saying I had been part of the making of a Guiness Record by "attending" the Cyberbarn gig. Sadly, Roger's signature was printed.
I had to wait almost 7 years to finally get his autograph in person.. :)