Rare Bird celebrated with six-disc box set

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Every studio album, rare singles, outtakes and an unreleased live album in new Rare Bird box set

Rare Bird
(Image credit: Rare Bird)

UK prog rockers Rare Bird are to have their career celebrated with a new six-disc box set. Beautiful Scarlett - The Recordings 1969-1975 is a newly re-mastered 6CD box set which will be released through Esoteric Recordings on April 30.

Beautiful Scarlett - The Recordings 1969-1975 features all of the albums and singles the band released on both the Charisma and Polydor labels between 1969 and 1975; Rare Bird (1969), As Your Mind Flies By (1970), Epic Forest (1972), Somebody's Watching (1973) and Born Again (1974). Epic Forest has been re-mastered from recently discovered first generation master tapes for the first time. The set also features an additional previously unreleased disc of the band’s entire live set recorded by Polydor Records at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London in June 1974 when Rare Bird supported fellow Polydor labelmates Barclay James Harvest.

Rare Bird formed in 1969 and their self-titled debut album featured the band's biggest hit, Sympathy, which reached No. 27 in the UK, was a Number One in Italy and France, and sold over a million copies worldwide. It was later covered by Marillion in 1992.

Despite US chart success for their debut and Epic Forest, Rare Bird never managed to replicate their early success, the original line-up splitting after the band's second album As Your Mind FIies. Later line-ups would feature former Van der Graaf Generator man Nic Potter while the late John Wetton guested on 1973's Someone's Watching.

Beautiful Scarlett - The Recordings 1969-1975 also features an illustrated booklet featuring exclusive interviews with founder members Steve Gould and Mark Ashton and a facsimile of the rare poster given with initial copies of Epic Forest.

Pre-order Beautiful Scarlett - The Recordings 1969-1975.

Rare Bird

(Image credit: Cherry Red Records)
Jerry Ewing
Jerry Ewing

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.