She held a bass guitar and she was playing in a band, and she stood just like Bill Wyman, now I am her biggest fan.

Welcome to the first night. It was long ago indeed.  So long in fact. that the album we're considering wasn't just merely released thirty years ago, rather closer to 37. Per the header, I didn't feel the need to spell out the name of the artist in question, as a quick scan of the sleeve to your below right tells you virtually everything you need to know about what you're in store for. 

Released in 2016 while Smithereens prime-mover Patrick Di Nizio was thankfully still with us, this limited edition two-fer CD, ironically didn't contain the original album mixes of Especially For You, or even remixes, rather 47 tracks of live material, demos, studio and session oddities surrounding their remarkable, and frankly classic 1986 debut. Back then, no one, presumably the band themselves, were focused on how the album would be regarded several decades later.  

EFY isn't consistently found hovering on top-ten desert-island lists, even amongst power pop aficionados, and for that matter it's most familiar songs ("Behind the "Wall of Sleep" and "Blood and Roses") aren't crowding out the likes of say, "How Soon is Now?" on classic-alternative radio, Spotify, etc. Yet the half million or so of us who got the Smithereens in the mid-80s, know there's absolutely no substitute in the world for records like Especially..., Green Thoughts, and 11.  

Containing no liner notes or credits, save for a detailed track list on the tray card, the anniversary edition of this compendium is divided into four fairly even quadrants - a live configuration of the album, followed up by a demo mock-up of EFY, leading into a second disc populated with live acoustic performances and a hodgepodge of alternate versions, more live takes and some occasional offbeat curios. Sure, this set is for the diehards, but recurring as the tracklist gets it's a testament to how well these dozen songs have held up so many years after the fact across different permutations, be they live, unplugged, in prototype form or otherwise.   

So what are the highlights here? The live bait takes the cake, most of which is plucked from shows relative to the Especially... era, with one exception, "Behind the Walls of Sleep" being taken from a '94 gig at the L.A. House of Blues. Though I never caught the band performing "Hand of Glory" in concert, I wish I had attended a few more Smithereens gigs based on the riveting version  presented here.  The demos portion isn't as consistently revelatory as I had hoped, but pretty much anywhere we luck out and get a track with vocals the results can be nearly as rewarding as the finished product. As for the instrumental demos, it's almost eerie not to hear Pat's voice, even though he was still alive and well at the time.

The brunt of the eight live acoustic numbers are culled from 1985 shows at Folk City in New York.  Given the lovelorn and romantic heft of DiNizio's prose fan favorites "Strangers When We Meet" and "Cigarette" work perfectly in a stripped down context as much as they do when blasted through Marshall stacks.  That still leaves us with fifteen miscellaneous nuggets filling up the remainder of disc two, albeit luckily with virtually no filler. I won't give too much away, but the outtake versions of "Blood and Roses" are fun, and in 2004 our Jersey heroes fired up the grill for a fresh taste of "White Castle Blues."  Click to enlarge the entire track-list above. BTW, the physical variant of Especially For You 1986-2016, 30th Anniversary is sold out.

One more thing.  I want to throw in a plug for the 'reens Lost Album, which just came down the pike a few months ago, unleashing for the first time a dozen songs tracked in 1993, when the band was between labels (Capitol and BMG).  Nothing from this session carried over to their 1994 album, A Date With the Smithereens, so it's Lost Album moniker is wholly sincere and apropos. Dare I say a first for supposed "lost albums?"

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