Live In Session May 1994

Dark Company Live In Session May 1994.

Here is something special from the Wud Records archive. These are rough recordings of Dark Company in a session of rehearsal and jamming in Silent Running Studios in May 1994. This was during the last days of Dark Company’s second incarnation.

Pete had been very unwell for a long period at this time and Dark Company had drafted in Andy, the man with the golden larynx, to sing. Jeff was not around during these recordings, it was just Andy and George. If you happen to play bass, you can pretend to be Jeff and play along whilst listening. :)

To make these recordings of Dark Company Live In Session May 1994, the backing tracks were played on the DAT machine using the live mix tapes. Andy sang and George played guitar live whilst giving Andy cues and everything ran through the desk to the cassette machine.

The playlist has been arranged in the same order as the songs were recorded on cassette with a few doubles and oddities placed at the end. At some stage they may be re-arranged into a more set-like format. Terminal Road to Sacrifice were both sides of one cassette, with White Bird on Ivory having a very short curtailed version at the end of side one and beginning side two. The dates given are 15th May 1994 for side one and 16th May 1994 for side two, although the 16th may refer to the second cassette which is undated and the track list was written using a different pen. So it’s possible that everything from cassette two, which begins with Prisoner, may have been recorded on a third day. However, from what can be remembered, all of this was done in just the two sessions.

During Asylum Child, George had to answer the phone whilst the song was being laid down. During Golden Eye, he had to see a visitor to the studio and Andy took over the guitar at the end, and did a fantastic job of it too!

Andy showed fabulous potential as the new Dark Company singer and it was a great pity that everything to do with Dark Company turned to rubble within a few weeks of this recording being made. It led to the Bastard Sons of Dennis being created and during their first performance at Exeter’s Cavern they played a few Dark Company songs.