Marching Song began as a one-off nine minute composition for a shelved album, recorded by Mike with a Sextet in 1966, previously unissued, it is included here as a bonus track on Disc 3. An expanded 15 piece Concert Band performance of the composition, by then developed into a 2 hour anti-war epic, first took place in 1967 at Plymouth's Athenaeum. The full piece was finally recorded in early 1969 and released by Decca Records in the UK on their Deram imprint on two separate single LP volumes. In 1970 the LPs were combined for a 2LP release in the US. The recordings were produced by Peter Eden, then in the prime of his modern jazz producing tenure with Deram, capturing the cream of the British Jazz scene which had steadily risen from the mid 1960's onwards. This box set also features on Disc 3 both sides of a single produced by Peter of Mike's Concert Band with Norma Winstone for a one-off single in 1970, never before reissued. This box set of the two remastered Marching Song volumes, plus the bonus material mastered from the analogue tapes in Mike's archive, are packaged with a booklet containing rare photographs from the 60's live performances plus a major essay on Mike, and these compositions, by noted jazz critic and writer Duncan Heining.
