Pandora's Box

WESA 821 : a Westside post-script

Westside regard this album as 'a post-script' to their Plus ... ! series. It replaces their projected 'Still There'll be More' record, which fans may find advertised at record shops who are acting on the basis of a premature release-sheet from a former Westside employee. Fans are advised to treat any reference to it 'with a block of salt'.

Although Westside refer to this album as 'Still There Won't Be More', their BBC-sessions project is still in prospect (though see here).

The first five tracks are said to be true stereo, taken from four-track tapes discovered, unmixed, by Cube after Westside had brought out Procol Harum ... plus! The other tracks are all stereo too: Pandora's Box itself evidently never had a vocal added; In the Wee Small Hours of Sixpence is yet another version, which is said to prove that the song was in the band's repertoire at the time the first album was made. The alternative Walpurgis weighs in at a mouth-watering 7 minutes 27 seconds: surely this is what will sell the album (which is not a cheap one, despite the 48-minute running-time: Westside have spent good money on a hitherto-unseen six-piece colour shot of the group at the time of AWSoP's recording, taken by David Wedgbury, the Decca staff photographer (AWSoP came out on Deram, a Decca sub-label).

Wish Me Well is the track Westside thought was a new song called Gospel According to Matthew: it's a new mix with a brief flurry of extra Trower guitar on the end; and A Whiter Shade of Pale is the stereo version, and the only track here that's available on any of Westside's other exhumations.

More news when we have it. The record was released in the UK on 25 October 1999