Brand X music

 Brand X revisit their 1977 US tour amid the successful salvage of a heap of reel to reel tapes from Robin Lumley’s attic after nearly 50 years.

Over the decades since Brand X released its seminal LIVESTOCK, recorded during its 1976/1977 UK tours, hardcore fans may have collected a few bootlegs of varying quality levels. For most bands, that’s business as usual, but in the case of Brand X, these sub-standard recordings were made all the more painful since the band never earned a penny from those pirated releases. 

Bootleg collectors or faithful fans who purchased retrospectives of live material in the 1990s, often heard substandard recordings from the band’s 1977 US tour… since none of the bootlegs, poorly produced FM broadcasts such as “SQUARED” or long out of print collections ever yielded a penny for the band, it made sense for Brand X to finally issue its own live album from these reel to reel tapes found in Robin Lumley’s personal collection; if a few of these tracks are already familiar to dedicated fans, the double album THEORY OF NOTHING finally represents a complete concert experience from North America in the fall of 1977. A period which road manager Pete Donovan recalls as the happiest in the band’s short stint through the 1970s. It showcases what can arguably be described as “the band at its peak performance”.

THEORY OF NOTHING was remastered by Percy Jones from a set of stereo reel to reel tapes once intended for broadcast. Audio was meticulously restored so that every number played in these shows could be presented on this record. The band features the usual cast of suspects, John Goodsall, Percy Jones, Robin Lumley, Morris Pert, and Kenwood Dennard on drums. And curiously, three tracks from what would become MASQUES a year later are already performed in earlier arrangements, with Robin on keys and copious live banter from the stage in between numbers. 

This is a new album by Brand X, and take note, for the first time ever, all proceeds go to Percy Jones and estates: John Goodsall’s and Robin Lumley’s. This album is a nod to all Brand X fans, and also an homage to the long lost era of Hipgnosis inventions, when opening the box and leafing through the photos and graphics was the start of the journey!

This is the first in what is sure to be a new series of exceptional releases. 

You can sample a section from each of the album’s ten tracks below: