John Evan Band Live '66

[maddogfagin]

It appears that many sites list this release as a "bootleg" or "unauthorised" release. However it was originally released by A New Day Records towards the end of 1990 and sold through the magazine. Dave Rees sought the permission of Ian Anderson to release it which he granted. It was issued on CD and cassette and was a limited edition of around 500 - if my memory serves me well.

From the CD sleeve this is the tracklisting:



The cassette release seems to be fairly rare and I bought it at the time, along with the CD, so I could play it in the car.





Dave Rees' sleeve notes [written in 1990]:

Until fairly recently very little was known about the history of the John Evan Band. We knew that it included many people who were eventually to play in Jethro Tull, but nothing of the following
they had and the places they played, and no way of actually knowing what they sounded like. In 1986 I wrote a piece on Tull for Record Collector magazine, and as a result I recieved a letter
from one Don Read who told me he had managed The John Evan Band in the ' 60s and still had the first demo tape they had recorded, plus a few items that I might be interested in. Indeed I was, and subsequently parted with an arm and several legs to purchase said items, one of which was a press cutting which revealed that the band had actually appeared on TV in 1966. This was surprising in view of lan Anderson' s vague recollection of them having been "the worst band in the world", and my colleague Martin Webb was temporarily jolted out of the serene tranquility of his 'work' with the Civil Service to endeavour to track down anybody who might remember the band, or even have played with them. To this end he placed an ad in the Blackpool press, and waited..... and waited. Just as we had all but given up hope of any response he got a very brief note from Chris Riley, one time guitarist with the band, and eventually we met him and spoke to him at great length about the history of the band. Before and after our meeting Chris did a tremendous amount of work to try to piece together the storyline for us, and at a subsequent meeting he introduced us to another band member, sax player Tony Wilkinson. The conversations we had with Chris and Tony, and later with ex JEB and Tull stars John Evans and Barrie Barlow, along with some amazing photographs courtesy of Tony and John's mum Alice gave us a lot of material to work with, and #2l of "A New Day" was devoted entirely to part 1 of the John Evan Band story. And that was the catalyst for the next part of this story....
In 1989 Tull played a charity gig in Inverness, and Neil Smith (Chick Murray) went along to see them, and met up with lan Anderson for the first time since leaving the JEB in 1967, when his place was taken by Mick Abrahams. Backstage, somebody gave him a copy of A.N.D. #21, and a few weeks later he contacted me offering to come down to talk to us about the band and dropping the bomb shell that he had a
recording of one of their gigs from 1966. He had recorded it just
after joining the band, onto a tape deck tucked away at the back of the stage, simply to enable him to listen to the songs at home and learn them properly! Subsequent listening to the tape
brought a whole new insight to the story, because it proved to be actually rather good! Strange to hear lan Anderson singing a selection of soul and R&B covers, but fascinating stuff
nevertheless. We just had to put it out for the fans! The quality of the recording is obviously not great, but the original tape has been well looked after and the sound deterioration is not disastrous, thankfully. With cunning use of a graphic equaliser and careful positioning of the listener it is possible to
listen to this recording without too much discomfort,which has been cleaned up and digitally remastered by Adrian Wagner, as far as is possible. Having said that though, bear in mind that it is not possible to make a silk pig out of Percy's ear..Or something like that' Look upon this recording as a priceless collectors item detailing a unique piece of musical history, rather than the listening experience of the decade.
The "Thank Yous" to all the people who have helped, directly
or indirectly, to make this possible;- Chris Riley, Tony Wilkinson, John Evans, Barrie Barlow, lan Anderson, Dave Pegg and Kenny Wylie. To Martin Webb for his great work on the John Evan Band story and the family tree. And of course to Neil Smith for making the recording in the first place, and doing the spade work to get us this far- It was worth it in the end!
David Rees, October 1990

Musicians involved on the original recording:

Ian Anderson (vocals), John Evans (organ), Bo Ward (bass),
Ritchie Dharma (drums), Neil Smith (guitar), Chris Riley (guitar), Neil Valentine (sax) and Tony Wilkinson (sax)