World Of You: The Complete Recordings (Uk)

First-ever complete anthology of teenage American band who recorded an unreleased, heavily Beatles-influenced album at Abbey Road in 1969. Includes the full album, outtakes, demos, alternative versions, solo recordings and no less than eleven previously unissued tracks. After a locally-recorded demo attracted the interest of Capitol Records, The Aerovons - Beatles-obsessed teenagers from St. Louis, Missouri - persuaded the company to let them approach EMI with a view to recording at Abbey Road. Three separate visits to England followed, with an impressed EMI overseeing an Aerovons album, recorded March-June 1969 in between the group's trips to Carnaby Street and starstruck encounters with various Beatles and Hollies members. Two singles - including the stunning 'World Of You' - were issued in the UK, but Parlophone cancelled the album's release at test pressing stage after the group suffered personnel issues that left them unable to promote it. Leader Tom Hartman went on to record as a solo act before returning to his studies, but The Aerovons remained a dropped stitch in time until their lost-in-action album was finally disinterred and, as Resurrection, given a long-overdue release by the rpm label in 2003. Greeted by ecstatic reviews, 'Resurrection' belatedly established The Aerovons as one of the forerunners of the 70s power pop genre, their heavily Beatles-influenced sound residing in the same ballpark as the likes of fellow Anglophiles Nazz and The Raspberries. A 2CD digipack set, 'World Of You' features that stillborn 1969 album, various demos and alternative versions from the same period as well as Tom Hartman's 1971 solo single and a clutch of subsequent home studio recordings that follow the trail of musical breadcrumbs left behind by his teenage band. Featuring eleven previously unreleased tracks, 'World Of You' is the final, definitive word on a group whose story reads more like a fan fiction fantasy than the real-life adventures of American teens suddenly transported to the heart of the late 60s British music industry