Micky Greaney: Little Symphonies For The Kids

Not on label.  1994.  LITSYM009

Not listed on Discogs

I kicked this blog off back in February with Micky Greaney’s unreleased second album.  “Michael” was keen to hear his debut, so here it is.

I wrote quite a lot about Mickey back in February, so I won’t repeat the tragic story of his musical career here, but I will update it.  Micky’s low key return to music making is continuing, with infrequent gigs at small venues.  However his rather glamorous band is no more – I don’t know what the story is, but I guess they grew tired of a lack of progress and a lack of money.  He’s now playing with a young keyboard player, and a cellist who, bizarrely I used to work with.  It’s actually an improvement – with Mickey the less backing he has, the more effective his material, so while I prefer him solo with an acoustic guitar, this new band is an improvement I think.  He’s still making promises about an album in the pipeline, but I’ll believe that when it happens.

This album is the closest he’s ever come to releasing anything properly.  It’s a commercially produced silver CD with proper artwork, but he had no record contract and self released it.  I don’t know why it happened that way – back in ’94 there was quite a buzz around Micky and it’s surprising a label didn’t pick this up.  It doesn’t sound like a self- released album; it’s actually pretty slick, thanks I guess to producer Bob Lamb (not as big a name as John Leckie who produced Micky’s second album, but a name none-the-less).  Lamb’s involvement, and the money which was obviously spent on this album makes the self release even stranger.  Maybe the idea was that a low key release would be picked up by a major as happened to The Lilac Time (also with a Bob Lamb production).

I absolutely love this album, and it’s purely down to the songwriting and Micky’s delivery.  For me the production only distracts from that and I’d sooner it was recorded as a demo, but really, I’m happy just to be able to listen to it at all.

I bought my copy of this CD, which is now impossible to find, from Micky after a gig.  It has no artwork, so thanks to Andrew for sending me a scan of his.  I really wish Micky was making money from this himself, but there’s no sign of that.  Hopefully hearing this might persuade a few people to go to one of his gigs (rarely outside Birmingham though I’m afraid).