We Are Sane
Human Being
This City
World Without End
Fact And Fiction
The Poet Sniffs A Flower
Creepshow
Love Song
Twelfth Night's 1983 album Fact And Fiction, long regarded to be their finest work, will get a lavish three CD Definitive Edition release through the F2/Festival label on June 11.
The new version sees the addition of a wealth of cover versions and re-workings of the material, plus new recordings commissioned from band members, contemporaries and current artists to show how other artists interpreted the tracks, and these really complement the Twelfth Night versions, and bring out the true strength of the original songs.
To accompany the CDs there are some extensive sleeve notes written specially, including an extract from Michael Anthony’s Words & Music book that reviews Geoff Mann’s lyric writing in incisive detail. In addition there are never-before seen scans of some of Geoff’s original handwritten lyrics and sketches, as well as new photos, etc.
The content of the three CDs is: Disc One – Studio 1982, Disc Two – Live 1983-2012 and Demos 1982, Disc Three – Covers & Interpretations 1983-2018.
Disc One includes all the recordings done at Revolution studios: the album, the single, and the original version of Human Being.
Disc Two includes a live version of each album track compiled from a number of different sources enabling you to hear how the band's singers Geoff Mann, Andy Sears and Mark Spencer interpreted the songs on stage. Several of these recordings are previously unreleased, most notably the three tracks recorded at Geoff’s farewell shows in 1983. Although these songs were released on Live And Let Live, two of these versions are from the night not featured on that album, specially remixed for this release by Karl Groom. There are also as-they-were-played renditions of World Without End and Creepshow, the latter from 2012’s Summers End show, described by Prog Editor Jerry Ewing as “simply amazing!” Plus, the guitar-based version of Fact And Fiction from A Night To Remember, recorded at the Barbican in December 2012.
The live tracks are followed by the demos, recorded in the band's favourite local studio (where the band recorded Blondon Fair for Virgin several years later). It was the time of the first affordable drum machines so to save time the band often used them when recording demos as was the case for three of the demos here, while Fistful Of Bubbles and Creepshow featur the band playing live in the studio. For the first time the demo of Creepshow (closing section) has been added which starts with a completely different speech.
Disc Three contains at least one version of all the original album’s eight tracks. Mark Spencer has given advance mixes of two tracks, one featuring Lee Abraham, that he will one day release on his own version of Fact And Fiction. Tim Bowness, Clive Nolan, and Coburg recorded their tracks especially for this release, as did Galahad’s Dean Baker & Stuart Nicholson, which is fitting as in their early days, Galahad played several songs from Fact And Fiction although no releasable recordings exist. Pendragon’s version of Human Being was originally released on the Geoff Mann tribute CD Mannerisms. The first version of Love Song on Disc 3, arranged by Mark Spencer and performed by Alan Reed and Kim Seviour, was released in 2014, in aid of cancer research, while the Eh Geoff Mann Band tracks were previously issued on Recorded Delivery a compilation of Geoff’s live performances with various bands.
