THE MARK-ALMOND BAND

Click on the panels for a better view or to download artwork.

THE MARK-ALMOND BAND
City Mourning Freedom [no label, 1CD]
Live in Ohio 1970. Mega-rare restored vinyl. Good to very good FM broadcast.

Mark-Almond (made up of Jon Mark and Johnny Almond and occasionally referred to as The Mark-Almond Band) were an English band of the late 1960s and early 1970s, who worked in the territory between rock and jazz. The melancholy tones of saxophonist Almond were an integral part of the group’s sound, and Almond frequently played flute as well, including the bass flute. - wikipedia

Thanks to Doinker for sharing this at Dime and at Lossless Legs.

Doinker’s notes:

If there ever was a bootleg show that I could take to the grave with me, it would be this one. Musically, it’s that important to me. This music is perfect for listening to at 3 am when you don’t know where or what you are anymore. Complex, inward harmonies blend with haunting sax and striking vocals. And, don’t forget, the social conciousness thrown in for good measure!

The sides were reversed and blended for this torrent as [the tracks were] out of sequence on the vinyl. The setlist listed on the vinyl goes like this:

The City
Mourning
Freedom

In fact there are a couple of mistakes here. The City was played at this show as an encore, Mourning is in fact The Sausalito Bay Suite, and there is another track after The City. The fact that “TSBS” is cut at the point where it is, is a wound deep enough that I can’t heal it. You just have to take the fact that there’s almost 12 minutes of this piece, and leave it like that. I can’t tell you how much it would mean to me if you have this song in its entirety from this show.

After retracking and properly identifying these songs, I come up with the setlist [below].

Beg and Plea: If you have a more complete version of this show, please post it!

Artwork by davies51 - Thanks!

Lineage:
Phonygraf vinyl speed corrected on turntable > Sound Forge 6.0 > Click and Crackle removal > Noise Reduction using SF’s excellent NR suite (”dead space” noise removal) > cdr > Flac via Nero

Click on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (224 kbps). As far as we can ascertain, these tracks have never been officially released on CD.

Please Do Not Hammer The Links. Due to the size of some of the files, please be very patient when downloading the tracks. It could be that the server was very busy. The tracks should still be around. Please try again later. Kindly email us at mybigo@bigozine.com if you encounter persistent problems downloading the files.

Track 01. Freedom 11:11 (18.8MB)
Track 02. Mourning (The Sausalito Bay Suite) 11:45 (19.7MB)
Track 03. The City - Part A 7:40 (12.9MB)
Track 04. The City - Part B 11:22 (19.1MB)
Track 05. Love (Pickup) 7:18 (12.3MB)
50 mins