Old Ramon (lost unreleased songs from Red House Painters album; 1990s)

From The Lost Media Wiki
Revision as of 15:51, 29 January 2018 by Rno (talk | contribs) (→‎Gallery: Edited video)
Jump to: navigation, search

Old Ramon album art.

Status: Lost


Old Ramon is the final Red House Painters album, released in 2001. It is notable for its more light-hearted feel compared to other Red House Painters albums. The album went through a troubled production, however, as it was originally intended for a 1998 release, but was stalled for three years. The ordeal ended up getting the band dropped from Island Records altogether.

For over four years, Kozelek struggled to find a record company willing to put down the money to buy it from Island, who wanted more than the album was worth to have it released. The band got trapped in limbo along with many other alternative and indie bands from the 90s who also have missing material (such as Whiskeytown's album Pnuemonia, which reportedly has around 100 missing tracks). SubPop Records finally offered a huge sum of money to buy the album in 2001 and get it released.

Fans were pleased with the album until a 2001 interview with Mark Kozelek[1] confirmed that Old Ramon was intended to be a double album. Surprisingly, the unused tracks of Old Ramon have not been bootlegged, which was fairly common for other unreleased albums and songs from the late 90s onwards.

Among the album's still-missing material is a longer, 18-minute version of "Michigan" and a 20-minute-long dark song called "The Mission". It is not known if Island, SubPop, or Kozelek himself hold the master tapes, or if the tapes even still exist.

Video

Red House Painters' cover version of John Denver's "Fly Away", suspected by some to have been taken from the 18-minute cut of "Michigan".

References