LPCDreissues: Looking forward to the past

Goodbye Suzie Family Man The Flame Maybe Someday In Miami Gone Away Missing Key Spellbound Guess Who's Coming To Dinner Deadly Nightshade Kid In A Big World Bonus tracks: Third Man (single b-side) Small Town, Big Adventures (album session) Pearl Parade (For Fred and Ginger) (album session) Party Deuxm (demo) Werewolves (demo) Cue Dream Sequence (demo) Goodbye Suzie (alternate mix) "If there’s a more surreally evocative line in mid-70’s pop, Uncut has yet to hear it. What a discovery!" Uncut Produced in 1974 by Tony Meehan at Abbey Road (engineer Peter Bown - Beatles , Barbara Streisand) and by Paul Phillips at Apple Studios (engineer Phil McDonald - John Lennon ), “Kid In A Big World” comprised ten Howard original compositions. It featured musicians of the calibre of Argent’s keyboardist Rod Argent and their drummer Bob Henrit and was launched by CBS in 1975, with a special concert Howard gave for the media at The Purcell Room plus full-page ads in the music press and magazines, as well as full window displays in major retailers. The resulting word-of-mouth interest and positive press response garnered a respectable 15,000 sales in a couple of weeks, but with only Radio Luxembourg supporting the first single lifted off the album, “Goodbye Suzie”, and hardly any play for the follow-up “Family Man”, and, surprisingly, no live work to support it, CBS stopped promoting the album within a couple of months of its release. “Kid” was lost. Who knows what could have happened if CBS hadn't pulled the plug and had continued to support the album . The re-release of “Kid In A Big World” by RPM includes not only the original ten tracks but also several extras, made up of demos of songs meant for “Kid” but never used. About “Kid In A Big World” Howard, says: “It’s primarily a songs album. Stories-in-song I’d been writing while gigging in the North of England 1970-1973 and during my first few months in London where I moved in August ‘73. It’s the sound of a young guy going, ‘Listen to me. I’ve got something to say. These were songs I’d written and performed during my latter teenage years up to my arrival in London as well as a couple I’d composed at Chappell. They reflected the fantasies, dreams and observations of a young guy from the North of England. Akin to Elton John in his piano vocal style Howard was particularly adept at putting over his stories in song, and the sympathetic production from Tony Meehan, backing all with subtle string arrangements or leaving stripped down to the piano, enhances the impression left by the songs