Bitter Wine (Demo): Wow!
 

I just found the demo version of "Bitter Wine" on YouTube, never heard it before. It's a completely different song. I guess I still like the album version more, but when you hear this you can't help but be amazed about the great mood that band was in.

As there had been some talk lately here about how the band has became lazy when it comes to artistical input, go back in time and see the spirits they had back in 1995. They were playing together, jamming, and working on their songs to get them in shape. This is something completely different than their post Crush attitude, which was more about Jon & Richie writing some lines/melodies and make the others play along. This is alive!

When at the end of "Bitter Wine" they go into that fast rock part I was even more amazed - that's "Next 100 Years", only more Rock'n'Roll.

Play them their old demos, put them into a studio and force them to jam. That would be my magical recipe for a great album. This just proves once more what they were capable of - though you clearly hear that this demo is unfinished.

Ooooh, pretty XD

The begining is a rip off of 'With a little help from my friends'

Good song and shows the diversity of the band. The album song probably fits better IMO.

Agreed - that's the first thing I noticed when I first heard it back in 2004.

Now you say it... I knew it reminded me of something! :-)

Any info when/how this has seen the light of day? The youtube link says "only released on the internet"... was it part of the countdown thing on bj.com?

It was released back in 2004 (maybe 2003?) as part of the American XS thing on the official site. If you paid $10.00 you were supposed to get all sorts of goodies. We got that demo and a few others and a few videos and nothing else. Eventually they refunded our $10.00. I don't even remember if they let us download it or if they just put it up for us to listen to. Eventually most of us figured out how to save the songs even if we couldn't download them directly.

Do you remember which other songs were released? What was the reason for American XS closing down anyway?

I can hear some "Shooting Star" influence too...

Gimme some (demo of the sex sells album if i'm not mistaken)
Do it to ya (very rough demo from KTF era)
Here comes the sun ( richie rehearsing for the tribute to george harrison)
Homebound train live
and this version of bitter wine

normally we could only listen, but as kathleen said it was easy to download....

and a bunch of videos too but can't remember wich

too bad they stopped it, it could've been big...

KTF,

Nick