Waterboy Mike Scott's in a 'Special' place

This one is for the WLIR crowd.

If you ever wanted to hear Waterboy Mike Scott's "big music" trimmed back to the essentials, you now can go to a special place.

"In a Special Place" -- The Waterboys' collection of piano demos (mostly) from their classic 1985 album, "This Is the Sea" -- scales back such classics as "Don't Bang the Drum," "The Pan Within" and "Be My Enemy." Gone are Scott's bouzouki flourishes and missing are some of the final lyrics, such as the famous "too high, too far, too soon" refrain from the band's high-watermark single, "The Whole of the Moon."

There's even a song, "Looking for Dickon," that transformed into another Waterboys hit, "Church Not Made With Hands," on 1984's "A Pagan Place" album.

In the liner notes, Scott tells of buying a black book at a Manhattan shop back in the early '80s. He later filled the pages with lyrics and song sketches. "Once it was filled with songs it became alive, a thing of power, the motherlode of my work," he writes. Even stripped down, that work showed an early greatness.