Iain Purdon wrote:drakula63 wrote: Does anyone know exactly when it was recorded? A shame they only recorded 7 new tracks for it.
As Ivo's records indicate, Tasty was not recorded as an entity. The recordings were made in 1974 and 1977. However none of the tracks had been released up to this point so, to the record buyer, they were all new.
In these days, the musicians were working as Shadows only part-time, so EMI would have had to wait until it had sufficient tracks to make an LP of them.
That's not strictly true. They recorded an album's worth of tracks in 1974 (all instrumental with Dave Richmond on bass) which WOULD have made up the 'Specs Appeal' album (which I'll assume would have come out very late '74) had it not been for the offer to do the Eurovision. They then set about recording the six songs for this. Naturally EMI must have thought that it would be wiser to delay the release of the album and then put the six vocals on there along with six of the instrumentals. Thereby, Specs Appeal was an even split between the instros (with Richmond) and the vocals (with Tarney). This was all fine and good, and I'd be willing to bet that the inclusion of the Eurovision songs (especially LMBTO) would have increased its sales... but we then had six instros with no home.
Fast Forward to the beginning of 1977 and we have a golden opportunity and reason to release another album ASAP. It was quite a long time between 74 and 77 and I do wonder what would have happened to those four tracks if Tasty hadn't come along. Not least of all because by then the band looked and sounded quite different. As speculated, I do wonder if they had originally intended to put another 1974 track on Tasty, or maybe even put another brand new track (i.e. rec 1977) on, until they realised that for timing reasons they didn't need it.
This is all speculation, of course. Personally I don't feel that there was any 'plan' by either EMI or the Shadows themselves to wait until they had enough tracks down to release another album. 20GG pretty much saved the band, after a string of flops and a few not very successful albums, and I think we can really thank its success for getting the Shadows not only back out on tour, but also back into the studio. When I said 'new' I meant recorded in 1977 as opposed to recorded in 1974. Again, I don't believe that EMI were waiting (as you suggest) for the Shadows to record some more tracks to add to those already recorded. It's just the way it worked out. Serendipity!