The Compact and Mercurial Bill Nelson Part 1: Quit Dreaming And Get On The Beam

Welcome to the wonderful world of Bill Nelson on CD – a small number of CD variants that played fast and loose with running orders, which may either leave you smacking your lips in anticipation of the otherwise unavailable obscurities to be found, or bamboozled at the wrecking of otherwise fine tracklists. Starting with Bill’s first solo release on Mercury records, ‘Quit Dreaming And Get On The Beam’.

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Cocteau Records, JC CD 15

The first UK release on CD, released 25th July 1986 according to one of my Bill Nelson fan club newsletters from June 1986, five years in from the original release date.

This edition was largely faithful to the original album release tracklisting except for the addition of one extra track, ‘White Sound’, slapped bang in the middle of proceedings and swapping the version of ‘Living In My Limousine’ for the 12″ remix version. The sleeve design also stayed close to home to the original for the front/back, but the inner spread made use of two photos from the same session as used for the ‘Do You Dream In Colour’ single, by the excellent Brian Griffin, sadly uncredited on this release. The inner spread doesn’t attempt to replicate the original so there are no lyrics, but the original credits in hand-written style are preserved.

‘White Sound’ had been the extra track on the B side of the 12″ ‘Living In My Limousine’ single. The sleeve notes of ‘Quit Dreaming…’ make mention that what was on the final album constituted about two thirds of what was recorded for the album in intervals between February and June of 1979. I’m uncertain if there has ever been a definitive list of what the missing material is, though some is easy to assume as being so – some of the B sides from the album’s singles recorded at Rockfield studios, produced by John Leckie or engineered by Ted Sharp for example, seem like prime contenders. These include the three tracks on side B of the ‘Do You Dream In Colour?’ single (‘Ideal Homes’, ‘Instantly Yours’ and ‘Atom Man Loves Radium Girl’), ‘Mr Magnetism Himself’ (B side of 7″ and 12″ of ‘Banal’), the aforementioned ‘White Sound’ and possibly at least one from the ‘Youth Of Nation On Fire’ double pack single. (There are minimal recording credits on that one – I know that ‘Rooms With Brittle Views’ dates from Autumn 1979 though, from the credits to the Disques du Crepuscule single release of the song – so, ‘Be My Dynamo’ may be a possibility.

Quite where the tracks recorded at Bill’s then home studio set up of The Echo Observatory fall into this is uncertain – for example, the other two tracks found on the ‘Banal’ 12″ for sure and likely others from the other two singles after the album.

The version of ‘Living In My Limousine’ included on the CD is actually the 12″ Remix version, oddly enough. Of the other singles from the album (there were four singles peeled from the album in the end!), all the other remain faithful to the original album versions. Interestingly, the 7″ single edit of ‘Youth Of Nation On Fire’ (which as well as being edited, is also slightly sped up!) and the longer 12″ version of ‘Banal’ have never resurfaced on CD format as yet. Actually, the 7″ Remix of ‘Living In My Limousine’ hasn’t re-appeared as yet either.

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Enigma/Cocteau, 7 73385-2 (1989)

Wind forward four years and the US label Enigma embarked on an extensive Bill Nelson re-issue programme, amongst which was an edition of ‘Quit Dreaming…’ that went in for a fairly extensive refit in the songs that were selected for inclusion.

Why so? Well, it’s my theory that key to understanding why so much change took place to the Enigma CD issues of this album and also ‘The Love That Whirls’ lie in the ‘Vistamix’ compilation album from 1984. You see, ‘Vistamix’ basically took the ‘Chimera’ mini album and mixed it in with two tracks apiece from the first two Mercury albums. (‘Do You Dream In Colour’, ‘A Kind of Loving’, ‘Flaming Desire’ and ‘Empire Of The Senses’.)

This would help to explain why those tracks are missing from the Enigma CDs and replaced instead by an odd selection of tracks in their place. In the case of ‘Quit Dreaming…’ these further blur what ‘belongs’ to the originally envisioned album listing mentioned above, since the tracks drafted in both date from a 1983 EP given away as part of Bill’s Acquitted By Mirrors fan club subscription, the tracks in question being ‘Indiscretion’ (titled ‘Indescretion’ on the sleeve here) and ‘The World And His Wife’.

‘Indiscretion’ would later appear on the ‘Practice Of Everyday Life’ box set in 2011, but other than this CD, ‘The World And His Wife’ Remains otherwise unavailable except the original 7″ vinyl EP.

Otherwise, the tracks from the original album remain as they were from the UK vinyl release, including ‘Living In My Limousine’. The packaging goes one better than the UK CD version by also miniaturising the lyrics, even rendering the extra tracks in similar script to the rest – nice work, even if you do really need to get the magnifying glass out to read it all.

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Mercury Records

2005 saw a long overdue re-issue of the album on CD in the UK, appending no fewer than 8 extra tracks along for the ride, with a particular emphasis on the packaging – themed artwork to the original and extensive sleeve notes, alongside the lyrics too.

As nice as it was to have extra tracks, inevitably given the prolific nature of Bill and his recording, it is just scratching the surface of what’s available. Think about it – there were four singles released from the album and each of those four had three non-LP tracks alongside them – it’s a whole other album really.

What we did get as extras was one track form the B side of the ‘Banal’ single (‘Mr Magnetism Himself’) plus all of the B sides from ‘Youth Of Nation On Fire’ and all of the B sides from ‘Living In My Limousine’ – and the 12″ Remix of the latter for good measure too. No room at the inn for any of the B sides from ‘Do You Dream In Colour’ though. It is worth noting that in line with other issues of ‘Rooms With Brittle Views’ on CD, this once again misses off the original kick drum beat intro that was present on the original vinyl singles – going straight into the guitar part instead.

Imagining that someday there could ever be a further reissue and that it may be expanded to a double disc edition, what all might be included? If we assume that disc 1 is reserved for the album as originally released back in 1981 on Mercury, that provides the following as a possible disc 2 selection?;

Single Versions:

Banal (Long Version)
Youth Of Nation On Fire (7″ Version)
Living In My Limousine (7″ Remix)
Living In My Limousine (12″ Remix)

B Sides and period pieces:

Ideal Homes
Instantly Yours
Atom Man Loves Radium Girl
Turn To Fiction
Hers Is A Lush Situation
Mr Magnetism Himself
Be My Dynamo
Rooms With Brittle Views
All My Wives Were Iron
White Sound
Birds Of Tin
Love In The Abstract
Dada Guitare
Indiscretion
The World And His Wife
Tony Goes to Tokyo (and Rides the Bullet Train) (as The Revox Cadets)

Bill has also mentioned that there was a mix of the track made for airplay purposes that removed the ‘video junkie looking for a fix’ reference, but I have yet to come across that on my travels.

Last but not least – no mention of ‘Sounding The Ritual Echo’ here, which of course came packaged with ‘Quit Dreaming…’ on its original release. Goodness, that would take this up to a three disc set at least! A box set perhaps? Well, Bill has always been fond of them!