(Rock) Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}

During a recent Badfinger bootleg flood, I came across a title that had a couple of cuts by an unfamiliar band called "Natural Gas". I dug them, so I did a bit more investigating and found that they had a short but interesting history. I also found that their one and only album had never been released in any digital format (and the quality of the drop on that bootleg was only passable).

Armed with this information, I took a trip to Pittsburgh's greatest cultural icon (Jerry's Records in Squirrel Hill) and found (of course) a minty fresh white label promo for four dollars. So now I share this drop with you.

Release Info...

Natural Gas - Natural Gas
1976 Private Stock Records PS 2011

Joey Molland - Guitar and Vocals
Mark Clarke - Bass and Vocals
Peter Wood - Keyboards
Jerry Shirley - Drums

Produced by Felix Pappalardi

Band Info...

Natural Gas were a rock band featuring Peter Wood, Joey Molland, Mark Clarke and Jerry Shirley. They released one album, Natural Gas, produced by Felix Pappalardi, in 1976.

Joseph ("Joey") Charles Molland (born June 21, 1947, Liverpool, England) is a composer and rock guitarist whose recording career spans four decades. He is probably best known as a member of Badfinger. Molland left Badfinger in late 1974 due to disagreements over management. In 1975, he joined with Jerry Shirley (formerly of Humble Pie) and formed a group called Natural Gas. The band released the LP Natural Gas on Private Stock Records in 1976, and enjoyed a successful tour with Peter Frampton the following year. According to Molland, a general lack of organization led to the band's demise late in 1977. Molland and former Badfinger band mate Tom Evans recorded two albums under the Badfinger name, Airwaves in 1978, and Say No More in 1981. Molland and Evans split acrimoniously after Say No More and the two performed in rival touring Badfinger bands until Evans' death in 1983. Most of Molland's career since 1983 has been with various groups performing tours under the Badfinger name, or as "Joey Molland's Badfinger." Earlier versions of these groups sometimes included original Badfinger drummer Mike Gibbins. Molland's solo recordings have been relatively sporadic. His first, After The Pearl, was released in 1984 on Earthtone Records. His second, The Pilgrim, was released in 1992 on Rykodisc. His third, This Way Up, was independently released in 2001.

Mark Clarke (born July 25, 1950, in Liverpool, England) is a former member of Colosseum and Uriah Heep. He was the bass guitarist for Colosseum from 1970 until 1972 (and from 1994 after Colosseum's reunion), when he briefly joined Uriah Heep, performing (and co-writing) on just one studio track, "The Wizard", on their 1972 album Demons & Wizards. He also played bass on Ken Hensley's solo albums. In 1975 he went on to join Natural Gas, Ritchie Blackmores Rainbow, and in 1980 started working with Billy Squier and recorded Don't Say No, The Stroke, In the Dark and many other albums with him. In 1985 he joined The Monkees and until recently still worked with Davy Jones. Clarke has also worked with Mountain (Leslie West) and Ian Hunter (Mott the Hoople), recording albums with both of them.

Peter Wood (1950–1993) was a British musician, born in Middlesex, England. In his early years he lived with his parents in Hythe Field Avenue, Egham, Surrey. He was a member of Quiver, and Natural Gas, before he began to work closely with Al Stewart, Roger Waters, as well as Cyndi Lauper, Jonathan Kelly, Tommy Shaw and Bob Dylan just to mention a few. Wood is the co-writer of the 1976 Al Stewart single "Year of the Cat". He was one of the original members of 'The Bleeding Hearts Band' (John 'Willie' Wilson, Andy Bown, Snowy White and Peter Wood), who featured as a supporting/backing band in the 'The Wall' live shows in 1980 and 1990, and after his death the group toured extensively with Roger Waters, although with additional musicians. Wood died in 1993.

Jerry Shirley (born 4 February 1952, Waltham Cross, London) is an English rock drummer, best known for his work with the bands, Humble Pie and Fastway. Shirley began playing drums at an early age and was recruited by noted vocalist and guitarist Steve Marriott to join the newly-formed Humble Pie when he was just 17 years old. Shirley remained as Humble Pie's drummer throughout the group's entire career. He also worked on Steve Marriott's solo projects, and was a co-founder of the popular 1980s group Fastway. Shirley co-wrote Fastway's biggest hit, "Say What You Will". After Fastway disbanded, Shirley decided to reform Humble Pie in the United States. Being the only original group member, the band was called Humble Pie Featuring Jerry Shirley. Former Victory and Ted Nugent band singer Charlie Huhn joined Shirley, and together they performed as Humble Pie Featuring Jerry Shirley with several other rotating musicians for approximately ten years. During this time, Shirley also worked as a disc jockey at WNCX in Cleveland, Ohio. Aside from Humble Pie and Fastway, Shirley has worked with David Gilmour, Alexis Korner, Billy Nicholls, Syd Barrett, John Entwistle, Sammy Hagar and Benny Mardones.

Needledrop info...

Turntable - A vintage VIP Boyscout circa 1966 recently upgraded with a custom plinth hand made of Nubian Dragon wood illegally harvested from Djibouti at great personal risk but used for it's exceptionally nubian tonal response.
Tonearm - SMEK series 1984 modded with X-1R Crawler Track Lubricant from the Space Shuttle to give an out of this world character.
Cartridge - Koetsuzuki Ivory Platinum, a very limited production run of fifty three units, each one hand carved from a white key removed from the Blьthner Grand Piano that was used by The Beatles during the "Let it Be" sessions. The resulting musicality and magical aura is thought to be obvious to all.
Phono stage - Womanley Labs Marlin all tube stage with Russian Svetlanovski tubes that have had a few hundred months burn in time as used in the system of Sergei Rachmaninov as he listened to RCA Victor Program Transcription pressings of Beethoven symphonies for inspiration.
A/D converter - Apologee Schmenke 192 converter with firewire and vintage ESDI interfaces.
Software - Audacious for Vistakon OS with proprietary dither program written for me by Peter Gotcher because we're boys.
Cleaning - VIP Monsoon machine with a top secret fluid. This special enzymatic fluid is made with several proprietary agents, including pure bile removed from Steve Hoffman's gall bladder during his recent back surgery. The Hoffman magic shines through on every one of my drops.

Ugh...okay...I made all of that up...here is the actual "mid-fi" system that was used...

Fisher Direct Drive Turntable MT-6225
Audio-Technica AT440MLa Cartridge
Marantz Model 2230 Receiver (Phono Pre)
Digidesign Digi 001 (ProTools Hardware)
Protools Software (pencil tool, levels and track splits) Tracks recorded and processed at 24/48. Post processing is done at this rate then the Redbook files are created by dithering to 16/44.1.
Lightly polished with ClickRepair
Stray pops missed by CR manually removed with Audition single click tool (never batch processed).
No other signal processing is used.

Another quality GALEMARK needledrop
"When you care enough to send the very best"

Always traded, never sold
Always trade lossless

EAC extraction logfile from 29. October 2008, 22:01 for CD
Natural Gas / Natural Gas

Used drive : TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-S182M Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure with NO C2, accurate stream, disable cache
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No

Used output format : C:\Program Files\FLAC\flac.exe (User Defined Encoder)
128 kBit/s
Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=EAC FLAC -8" %s

Other options :
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Installed external ASPI interface

Track 1
Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Family\My Documents\Downloads\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\01 - Little Darlin'.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:02.00

Peak level 88.6 %
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC A81DF2DE
Copy CRC A81DF2DE
Copy OK

Track 2
Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Family\My Documents\Downloads\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\02 - Once Again, A Love Song.wav

Peak level 97.4 %
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC EA12EA60
Copy CRC EA12EA60
Copy OK

Track 3
Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Family\My Documents\Downloads\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\03 - You Can Do It.wav

Peak level 71.0 %
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 9319D521
Copy CRC 9319D521
Copy OK

Track 4
Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Family\My Documents\Downloads\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\04 - I've Been Waitin'.wav

Peak level 90.5 %
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC E7C342D8
Copy CRC E7C342D8
Copy OK

Track 5
Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Family\My Documents\Downloads\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\05 - I Believe It's Love.wav

Peak level 87.2 %
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 7591C62F
Copy CRC 7591C62F
Copy OK

Track 6
Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Family\My Documents\Downloads\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\06 - The Right Time.wav

Peak level 98.3 %
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC CF750369
Copy CRC CF750369
Copy OK

Track 7
Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Family\My Documents\Downloads\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\07 - Christmas Song.wav

Peak level 73.1 %
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC 67EC6B7F
Copy CRC 67EC6B7F
Copy OK

Track 8
Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Family\My Documents\Downloads\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\08 - Miracle Mile.wav

Peak level 96.3 %
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 49E95211
Copy CRC 49E95211
Copy OK

Track 9
Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Family\My Documents\Downloads\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\09 - Dark Cloud.wav

Peak level 91.3 %
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 8E4E8ADA
Copy CRC 8E4E8ADA
Copy OK

Track 10
Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Family\My Documents\Downloads\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\10 - St Louis Blues.wav

Peak level 95.4 %
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 0F90A06C
Copy CRC 0F90A06C
Copy OK

No errors occured

End of status report

AUDIOCHECKER v2.0 beta (build 457) - by Dester - opdester@freemail.hu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Started at: воскресенье, 12. 07. 2009. - 19:54.01
10 files found

01 -===- D:\Rock Music\N\Natural Gas\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\01 - Little Darlin'.flac
Extracted successfully
Conclusion: this track is CDDA with probability 100%
Tempfile successfully deleted.

02 -===- D:\Rock Music\N\Natural Gas\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\02 - Once Again, A Love Song.flac
Extracted successfully
Conclusion: this track is CDDA with probability 100%
Tempfile successfully deleted.

03 -===- D:\Rock Music\N\Natural Gas\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\03 - You Can Do It.flac
Extracted successfully
Conclusion: this track is CDDA with probability 100%
Tempfile successfully deleted.

04 -===- D:\Rock Music\N\Natural Gas\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\04 - I've Been Waitin'.flac
Extracted successfully
Conclusion: this track is CDDA with probability 100%
Tempfile successfully deleted.

05 -===- D:\Rock Music\N\Natural Gas\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\05 - I Believe It's Love.flac
Extracted successfully
Conclusion: this track is CDDA with probability 100%
Tempfile successfully deleted.

06 -===- D:\Rock Music\N\Natural Gas\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\06 - The Right Time.flac
Extracted successfully
Conclusion: this track is CDDA with probability 100%
Tempfile successfully deleted.

07 -===- D:\Rock Music\N\Natural Gas\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\07 - Christmas Song.flac
Extracted successfully
Conclusion: this track is CDDA with probability 100%
Tempfile successfully deleted.

08 -===- D:\Rock Music\N\Natural Gas\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\08 - Miracle Mile.flac
Extracted successfully
Conclusion: this track is CDDA with probability 100%
Tempfile successfully deleted.

09 -===- D:\Rock Music\N\Natural Gas\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\09 - Dark Cloud.flac
Extracted successfully
Conclusion: this track is CDDA with probability 100%
Tempfile successfully deleted.

10 -===- D:\Rock Music\N\Natural Gas\Natural Gas - Natural Gas (1976) [VINYL] {Badfinger, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Al Stewart}\10 - St Louis Blues.flac
Extracted successfully
Conclusion: this track is CDDA with probability 99%
Tempfile successfully deleted.

Finished at: воскресенье, 12. 07. 2009. - 19:59.46 (operation time: 0:05.45)