It Happened One Night & It Never Happened at All

Product Description 'Start strong, stay strong' could be the summary of British-born folk/rock songwriter and performer John Wesley Harding's ongoing career arc. His very first album, 1989's 'It Happened One Night,' was recognized as 'remarkable' (Creem); his latest CD, 2004's 'Adam's Apple,' was described as 'an instant classic' (Paste). In other words, the self-proclaimed 'Bastard Son of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez' has remained a master of literate, brash, insightful and acerbically funny folk, rock and pop throughout a 15-year career and more than ten albums. Appleseed's new 'It Happened One Night & It Never Happened At All' release is a musical and historical windfall for critics, fans and Harding newbies alike: the 2-CD set marries an expanded, remastered 19-track version of Harding's live, solo, acoustic debut, 'It Happened One Night,' with a second disc of 14 previously unreleased studio recordings from the late Eighties, some featuring members of Elvis Costello's Attractions. Although the man known as Wes (real name Wesley Stace; renamed himself after Bob Dylan's 1968 watershed John Wesley Harding album) expresses second thoughts in his characteristically self-mocking liner notes about the common sense of releasing a live debut, 'It Happened One Night' remains a memorable calling card, presenting such favorites-to-be as 'The Devil in Me,' the hilariously irreverent Live Aid 'tribute,' 'July 13 1985,' and the tender 'Save a Little Room for Me.' But according to Wes, 'my first album should have been 'It Never Happened At All' - a whole different album I was making in 1988/89 with great musicians . . .forgotten, dispersed all over the place, and now presented here...To me, it is my alternative first record from a parallel world where you can have two debut albums.' Including eight studio versions of 'It Happened' songs, many with full band accompaniment from members of the Attractions, Lindisfarne, Mark-Almond, and other outstanding musicians, 'It Never Happened' displays Harding experimenting with musical styles - folk, C&W, blues, that rocking Bo Diddley beat - behind his already mature songs of personal and global politics, romantic relationships, and self-effacing but universal verities. The passion, fearlessly confrontational songs, and wit of musical predecessors Dylan, Springsteen, Costello and Billy Bragg are part of Harding's background, but he has blazed his own trail throughout his career, constantly tinkering with production approaches, studio sidemen, and performance lineups (solo or with band). What remains constant is the intensity, courage, perceptiveness, vulnerability, and humor of his outlook, informed by experience, age, perspective, and the can-you-believe-it events of our daily world. About JOHN WESLEY HARDING First there was Wesley Stace, born in Hastings, England in 1965 to a mother who taught singing and a father who was a classics scholar. Then there was pop music - the Beach Boys, David Bowie - for him to listen to. And then there was Bob Dylan, whose songs changed 14-year-old Wes's life (and name). After completing his degree in English Literature at Cambridge University, Wes yielded to the call of songwriting and performance, crafting his own music and pomposity-puncturing stage presence. A subsequent move to London thrust him before larger audiences as the opening act for such diverse artists as John Hiatt, Hothouse Flowers and Ted Hawkins. Signed by the UK's Demon Records, ironically the home of Elvis Costello, to whom Harding was initially compared, Wes and his manager made the strategic 'mistake' that led to his recording premiere, 'It Happened One Night': 'I'd done a total of about thirty gigs before I recorded my debut album; the songs were live, so no one wanted to play them on the radio; I was writing a lot at the time, so I was bored of these songs by the time it came to record 'Here Comes the Groom' (his first US CD and second release overall, described in the L.A. Times as 'the first