Los Shakers In The U.S.A. (Part Six)
After the immediate success of ‘Red Rubber Ball’ and ‘Hallelujah’ across the world, Los Shakers returned to Argentina to record what would become their double album ‘La Conferencia Secreta Del Toto’s Bar.’ It was decided that the project would be recorded as two separate parts with a break in between to allow for several months of touring. The album was set to be released in June of 1968 and recording of the album began in June of 1967, allowing the group a full year to complete the project comfortably. A memo in August 1967 was sent to Capitol Records, alerting the fact that a Los Shakers release could not be produced until January 1968 at the very earliest if permission was given to produce the first disc’s worth of material on its own, and not until June or July 1968 when the entire double album was finished. To combat this large gap in their release schedule, Capitol Records decided to create a fourteen track compilation album entitled ‘Escala Musical: The Best Of Los Shakers.’ Given the state of previous Shakers releases, Capitol spent a little more time ensuring that a quality product could be produced. One of the large attractions to this new release would be the original versions of material from the group’s South American debut recorded in 1965 which hadn’t come out in the United States or Canada, instead being substituted for new stereo remakes. The release was to include a full colour booklet, much like The Beach Boys’ ‘Concert’ release or The Rolling Stones own greatest hits album titled ‘Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass).’ Originally planned for a November 1967 release, the album eventually got pushed back due to its complexity and other projects taking a larger priority at Capitol such as The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour album, another album which included a large, full-colour booklet.
In October of 1967, Capitol Records released ‘Lovely Lola’ backed with ‘Hear My Words,’ which failed to chart on the Billboard Top 200. The single was doomed to fail, being an uncommercial song (with a previously released B-side) and no promotion by the group in the country. This lack of success put plans of the compilation album into uncertainty as the group’s popularity was beginning to waver to the point that the label would struggle being able to gain profit from the album’s extravagant packaging and tape sourcing.
On the 30th of November 1967, Capitol received a tape of new Los Shakers recordings. It was nine new songs that were completely unreleased. Also included was a mockup of the album cover. Odeon Pops had sent this as confirmation of the group’s efforts, and for safe keeping for a quick release of the double album as promised in the memo months earlier. Capitol had failed to realise this intention, either not remembering or wanting to ignore Odeon’s previously established wishes. On the 9th of January 1968, a single-disc version of ‘La Conferencia Secreta Del Toto’s Bar’ was released with ‘Lovely Lola’ included as the tenth track. Within the week, all copies were withdrawn with both the group and their record label extremely unhappy. The group had received word about the unauthorised release whilst on tour, after an anonymous fan who seeked praise about their new material including specifically mentioning song names which up to that point had been kept long underwraps. Swift action was taken when Odeon executives heard the news, threatening to sue Capitol and end their contract with Los Shakers. Once this information had spread to the public, many were not pleased including John Lennon who publicly defiled Capitol over their “butchering” of previous releases by The Beatles. Lennon’s vocal distaste over Capitol’s poor decision making would be one of the driving motives towards the creation of The Beatles’ own record label, named Apple Records later that same year.
Although the leaking of this album proved to be a major event for the group’s American distribution, putting Capitol in a do-or-die situation it also encouraged many other record labels to seek and actively follow the rules and wishes of artists and other record labels for their releases, resulting in a globalisation of record releases in the 1970s. Nowadays, this record is a collectors item with only a few thousand copies of this album known to exist. As the tape sent to Capitol was only in mono, the more widely available stereo version was in duophonic stereo making the “untouched” mono release significantly rarer with less than hundred copies of it known to currently exist. This alternate release featured wildly different mixes to that of the final double album. Such noticeable differences include: ‘Mr. Highway, The Enchanted’ being drastically reduced in time including an earlier fade and an instrumental break edited out, the album’s accordion prelude not being included at the start of the album but instead brief snippets before ‘Candombe’ and after ‘On A Tuesday I Watch Channel 36,’ an alternate mono mix of ‘Lovely Lola’ with an earlier fade, and additional chatter/whistling on ‘The Shape Of A Rainbow’ that was mixed out of the final release.
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