The Unreleased Album was not strictly "unreleased". In 1991, when Sheryl Crow was first signed to A&M, she was sent straight into the recording studio to produce her first LP. One year later, the resultant record was ready. Entitled Sheryl Crow (A&M 75021 5393 4), it was only manufactured as a promotional test pressing, not meant for DJ distribution (note: the "4" at the end of the catalogue number means tape cassette, while "2"s mean cd. There was never a legitimate CD of this album).
This tape consisted of the following tracks:"All Kinds Of People"/"Father, Son"/"What Does It Matter"/"Indian Summer"/"I Will Walk With You"/"Love You Blind"(and, on side two)"Near Me"/"When Love Is Over"/"You Want It All"/"Hundreds Of Tears"/"The Last Time"/"Borrowed Time".
Notably, the version of "Hundreds Of Tears" is different from the version commercially released the previous year on the Point Break soundtrack. This version has some guitar, is edited by 45 seconds (from 6:48), and does not feature the heavy drum overdub that dominates the opening of the released version. Another interesting aspect of this tape is that it does not include the track "Hand Mix", which most discographies list as the final track from this album. Sadly, as far as anyone knows, this track has remains unavailable.
The tape was very rare and, frankly, not as good as her later stuff. It was traded on audio cassette for a while, but audio trading tends to be very limited, and every time one dubs, the quality gets worse. With the advent of affordable computer CDRs, in early 1997 or so, somebody started pressing a few CDRs of it, from a bad source (too fast, and hissy). The only way that particular CDR still circulates commercially is through a company called "Media Detox".
Shortly after that, a regular (silver) cd, sourced directly from a pretty clean copy of the tape cassette, showed up. It was, on its binding, called "Sheryl Crow-The Unreleased Album", and its catalogue number is SCPRO1, but it gives no label. It started showing up, again, in very small quantities, in late 1997.This disc starts with the wrong side of the tape though, so you have to play tracks 7-12, then 1-6 in order to hear the album right. There are also three not too spectacular live songs from an unnamed source-Leaving Las Vegas, Happy, and Can't Cry Anymore.
This CD is the best around. It does, though, state that the album was recorded in 1990 (wrong), and implies that LLV is a studio cut (false advertising). Also, the cover is not anything unique, but rather a black and white photocopy of the All I Wanna Do US promo single cover. Very cheap looking, but sounds great. Recently (in the last two months or so) this disc has gotten a much greater circulation than before, but still is not as easy to find as many other boots. There are also several CDRs which generally have not as good fidelity (a little bit of hiss), and, for some odd reason, the most common ones color the Black and White front and binding graphics with a yellow highlighter.
There is yet another (much rarer) CD-R of this album called "Sheryl Crow Unreleased 1992". It features a rather compressed source tape, which also shows some "clipping" of the high end. This is a great pity, as it is the only source for the track "The Real Life" apparently swiped direct from an A&M demo tape.There is no further mention of this track in any information I could gather. Perhaps the source (as the clipping may be a CDR pressing error) for this track will show up, and thus we could get the track in clear quality. Here's hoping!