The story of The Troy Tate Sessions is legendary among fans of The Smiths. The Smiths had recorded 14 songs with producer Troy Tate in the summer of 1983, 13 of which were supposed to become their debut album, seemingly titled “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle”. Disagreements arose regarding the sound production, and The Smiths end up going to John Porter, who produced from scratch what is considered the first official Smiths album, the self-titled “The Smiths”. Of course, “The Troy Tate Sessions” exist in various bootleg formats everywhere. To make matters a bit confusing, the early Tate bootlegs seemed too slow, with wrong pitch and rough sound quality. These were corrected in later bootlegs. Then a second batch of Troy Tate recordings appeared. One of the songs recorded is “Accept Yourself”, which ended up being officially released as the B-side to “This Charming Man” in 1983. Now a new set of Troy Tate mixes has surfaced. Basically, they’re much clearer, cleaner versions of what we’ve heard, albeit with some noise issues still apparent. But even cooler is that among the new mixes is a previously unreleased version of “Accept Yourself” featuring Morrissey’s falsetto yelps, and another falsetto vocal overlay close to the end of the track. It’s quite beautiful really. I enjoy the added energy. The thought is that this version comes from the original Troy Tate recordings re-worked by Porter and later scrapped. The recording was made available via someone named ‘Soundsville Paul’ at smithstorrents.co.uk, and then was remastered by ‘Analog Loyalist’ at the blog Extra Track (and a tacky badge). You can hear it below. – David D. Robbins Jr.
Tracklist:
Troy Tate Sessions
01 - Reel Around The Fountain
02 - You´ve Got Everything Now
03 - Miserable Lie
04 - These Things Take Time
05 - Wonderful Woman
06 - Handsome Devil
07 - Suffer Little Children
08 - Pretty Girls Make Graves
09 - Hand In Glove
10 - What Difference Does It Make?
11 - I Don´t Owe You Anything
12 - Jeane
TATE
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