The Idle Race - The Birthday Party (1968) [Japan Mini-LP CD 2007]

Posted By: Andi_Deris

Date: Nov. 19, 2016

After almost half a year in the making, The Birthday Party was released in the UK during October 1968 and was one of the first albums to be housed in a gatefold sleeve (the first of course was by the Beatles). Jeff, Greg, Dave and Roger lounge rather dapperly around an oversized invitation asking one and all to come to their first birthday party.

The album was recorded at Advision Studios in London and produced by Eddie Offord and Gerald 'Peanuts' Chevin on Sundays! This is where the Move had just recorded their first self titled album where Offord and Chevin had been the sound engineers. It's at this point where everything seemed to fall into place with Roy Wood being the link in the chain…

Roy managed to convince Eddie and Gerald to see the Idle Race at the Cedar Club and it was soon after, that they offered to help the Idle Race record their debut album.

Advision gave their engineers weekends to experiment and practice new recording techniques and so on the advice of their friend Roy Wood, the Idle Race took up the offer from Mr. Offord and Chevin. Driving down the motorway to London, they acted as willing guinea pigs and in the process recorded their first album! They were in fact in an envious position of getting more studio time than most new bands could only dream of!

During this time, Jeff's fondness for the recording studio must have been growing stronger with every trip down the M1. Before this he would of spent hours locked away in his parents front room with his primitive recording equipment, guitars, amplifiers and such, experimenting like a mad scientist!

To Jeff, it must of felt like Christmas every Sunday during the recording of that very first album and handful of singles that preceeded it.

Eddie Offord and Gerald 'Peanuts' Chevin must be congratulated as the Birthday Party album is fully of creative editing, short samples and sound effects which compliment the bizzare nature of the subject material! The enthusiasm they showed at the time obviously rubbed off…

Jeff was suitably impressed, and when the time came to record the second album, he began his career as a producer. ~ Strange Music

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Track Listing

01. Skeleton And The Roundabout (2:26)
02. Happy Birthday (0:23)
03. The Birthday (3:00)
04. I Like My Toys (2:12)
05. Morning Sunshine (1:48)
06. Follow Me Follow (2:48)
07. Sitting In My Tree (1:59)
08. On With The Show (2:22)
09. Lucky Man (2:38)
10. Don't Put Your Boys In The Army, Mrs. Ward (2:14)
11. Pie In The Sky (2:27)
12. The Lady Who Said She Could Fly (2:22)
13. End Of The Road (2:05)

Produced by Gerald Chevin, Edward Offord and The Idle Race
Digitally remastered by Peter Mew at Abbey Road Studios, London

The Band

• Jeff Lynne - vocals, guitar, piano
• Dave Pritchard - guitar, vocals
• Greg Masters - bass guitar, vocals
• Roger Spencer - drums, vocals

EAC Log

Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 1 from 15. November 2010

EAC extraction logfile from 7. June 2011, 1:11

The Idle Race / The Birthday Party

Used drive : PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-215D Adapter: 0 ID: 1

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 48
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 128 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -8 -V %s

TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 2:26.04 | 0 | 10953
2 | 2:26.04 | 0:23.15 | 10954 | 12693
3 | 2:49.19 | 3:00.65 | 12694 | 26258
4 | 5:50.09 | 2:12.40 | 26259 | 36198
5 | 8:02.49 | 1:48.47 | 36199 | 44345
6 | 9:51.21 | 2:48.35 | 44346 | 56980
7 | 12:39.56 | 1:59.73 | 56981 | 65978
8 | 14:39.54 | 2:22.10 | 65979 | 76638
9 | 17:01.64 | 2:38.40 | 76639 | 88528
10 | 19:40.29 | 2:14.47 | 88529 | 98625
11 | 21:55.01 | 2:27.53 | 98626 | 109703
12 | 24:22.54 | 2:22.12 | 109704 | 120365
13 | 26:44.66 | 2:05.69 | 120366 | 129809

Range status and errors

Selected range

Filename C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\The Idle Race - The Birthday Party.wav

Peak level 96.6 %
Extraction speed 0.3 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 8C4E51F2
Copy CRC 8C4E51F2
Copy OK

No errors occurred

AccurateRip summary

Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
Track 10 not present in database
Track 11 not present in database
Track 12 not present in database
Track 13 not present in database

None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database

End of status report

Many thanks to the original uploader

ELO and many, many more!

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