Band of Georges: unfinished Concept Album demos compiled

The unfinished Concept Album demos for The Concept Album have been compiled and released as a new collection of songs. You will find it in the Band of Georges pages at the Wud Records website, and at SoundCloud.

The Concept Album never had an actual name, just its working title. It was first conceived by George in early 1983.

A lot of the music was composed fairly quickly in the spring of that year, and the songs soon fell into an order. The lyrics, however, were not so rapidly forthcoming.

In the summer of 1983, George and his girlfriend spent a week in a caravan in some woods at the edge of Dartmoor. They planned to write the lyrics and work on the storyline of The Concept Album.

In the end, the pair of them managed to write a whole song called They Painted Their Bodies. They did indeed organise the story a little, but most of the week was spent doing other things that teenagers enjoy doing in caravans far away from parents and responsibilities.

All the same, they felt it was progress and returned to the same caravan for another week later in the summer. This time, no more songs were completed, although they certainly had a tremendous amount of fun.

By and by, The Concept Album fell a little by the wayside. It was not revived until a couple of years later, around the end of 1985 and the beginning of 1986.

By this time, George had a new girlfriend, and she also helped out with the lyrics. During a burst of creativity, several songs were completed and the storyline was adjusted. And then, The Concept Album returned to the back burner for a time.

The next outbreak of creativity came in the early part of 1987, when George managed to write a few more of the songs. A few extra songs had been added to the album’s original running order. Everything was organised into a brown folder. It still exists… somewhere. We didn’t find it yet!

The songs that exist, and have been recorded as 4-track demos, have all been put into this new compilation of The Concept Album. The songs that are there play in the correct order.

However, there are several songs that are not present. Three have been written and not recorded – The Ceremony (working title), Round in a Circle (a whole actual song), and The Return (possible actual title, or possible working title). There is also the issue that a small number of the songs have never been written.

In case there should ever be another outburst of creativity regarding The Concept Album, we shall let you know in our News service, our Bandcamp Community, and on BlueSky and X (formerly Twitter). We would suggest that you don’t hold your breath!

Will The Concept Album ever be finished? We cannot say. But for whatever it is worth, we made the compilation. You can hear it right now, as it stands.

To listen to unfinished concept album demos for The Concept Album at its own page here at the Wud Records website, please click here.

To listen at SoundCloud instead, please click here.