Familiar Songs

Familiar Songs is an album released on Reprise Records in 1972 by American singer-songwriter Tom Rapp, the leader of folk-rock group Pearls Before Swine.

According to Rapp,[2] Reprise wanted to issue an album of the best songs from his Pearls Before Swine recordings, and he went into Brooks Arthur's [3] 914 Studios in New York City, with musicians Robbie Merkin (piano), David Wolfert (guitar) and Morrie Brown (bass), to work up ideas for re-recording some of the songs in a new way.

However, his manager, who (rather than Rapp himself) held the contract with Reprise, passed the tapes to the record company, and later disappeared.

The album eschews the atmospheric, sometimes psychedelic, arrangements of the Pearls Before Swine records for a more orthodox rock sound.

Although most critics have disregarded the album because of its contentious origins, Rapp himself has commented favourably [2] on the quality of the musicianship and on some of the song treatments.