Entertainment For Lively Minds
Bizarre Reissues....
Posted by Keith Aitken on 21 October 2010 - 9:48am.
In the most recent mailout from a major high street CD retailer (so that narrows it down...) I note that among the crop of upcoming reissues from The Beatles, Wings, Bob Dylan and the usual suspects, are remastered editions of albums from Mel & Kim and Five Star.
Does this strike anyone else as strange or is it just me? I had both of these acts down as ephemeral of-the-moment pop acts with no significant lasting fanbase... but maybe I'm just wrong. Who are the labels expecting to buy these?
KDA
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Not really
There's still fans out there like there are for any act.
not strange
I think the reissue market is growing up and will continue ploughing through the 80's. Each era has sales potential to those who were teenagers at the time and are therefore nostalgic for their formative record buying days, I'm looking forward to the reissue of many more titles from that period though for me not five star or mel & kim. Maybe the industry is also waking up to the fact that it is running dry on ways to exploit the 60's (Beatles, Dylan etc).
Also, there has been plenty of reissues of pop acts thought of as of the moment from the 60's and 70's.
Quite
ten years ago '80s music sounded about 10% as good as it did at the time. Right now, it's back up to about about 65%.
Read this thread
to see who buys these reissues.
http://www.popjustice.com/forum/index.php?topic=19386.0
From page 38:
"So annoyed with how DELAYED my HMV pre-orders were for this week - dispatched last Thursday and all finally arrived today. So, Mel & Kim 2CD...
Looks so good! Front cover is the colourised version of the original UK album and the back of the booklet is the Japan sleeve, so you have a reversable sleeve going on. Tracklisting/spine/credits all use the original/correct font and the artwork themes of the original releases flow throughout. The CDs themselves have colour photo designs on them, and the inner backing card has the Japan back art to match the reversed booklet. Booklet has a very smart UK photo discography, full lyrics, foreward from Kim, detailed biography, track notes from Kim, foreign, re-issue and compilation artwork and rare photos, magazine covers and such. What else could you want?! It's literally the perfect re-issue package. Only super-slight complaint is the small font of the liner notes - it's teeny weeny to read but there's a lot to cram in so worth the squinting, I reckon. Might even be my eye sight...
The audio is super-clean and improved, no vinyl rips here, and 'You Changed My Life' is different/longer to the version released on the CD single, so it is 'first time on CD' for that... really like the 'Alternate Mix' of 'System' and finally! The proper, correct 'Extra Beats Vocal' of 'Respectable'! After many disappointing 80s 12" compilation purchases (that always use the Instrumental Dub Version in error), it's at last on CD. So, that's my fussy review. Top marks. One of the best PWL/Cherry Pop releases yet - easy."
Ah...
...so that's what Charles Shaar Murray's up to these days!
If it's 5-Star LPs you want
Just go into any charity shop. And pick up a copy of No Parlez while you're at it.
You'll find them...
...near the copy of Eternal's Always and Forever that all charity shops are required by law to stock.
I agree with the Pop Justice person
Mel and Kim had a handful of great singles. PWL wasn't all bad, just mostly bad.
Tracie Young
Or Tracie! as she was known back in the day. She's just gotten her recordings from Weller's Respond Records label re-issued in a nice little bundle. I bought it.
I would also buy remasters (providing they were done right) of the following:
Joboxers - Like Gangbusters, Skin And Bone
Endgames - Building Beauty
Friends Again - Trapped And Unwrapped
Love And Money - All You Need Is...
Nick Heyward - North Of A Miracle
I know somebody who would buy remasters of Sam Fox and Sabrina if they were available. Each to their own!
North of a miracle
coming soon according to HMV
I bought the Tracie album too
Only had a couple of singles, but I Love You (When You Sleep) is sheer brilliance.
Arrow
I love this song. And boy could she sing! I'm not a big Elvis Costello fan, but I take my hat off to him for this lovely choon. It's not the only Tracie song I've always had a soft spot for, either. Give It Some Emotion was pretty natty.
I found out about it in a very nice way
http://thesongsthatpeoplesing.blogspot.com/2009/03/random-play-tracie-yo...
That's my little place there, check out the comments on that post...
Ah. Tracie. She still looks good these days too...
Tracie commented!
And you didn't reply?
Great blog, I'm adding you to my blogroll
Was speechless
:)
I'll add you to mine when I get home, I think I've seen yours before; we have some of the same peeps on our lists.
You should send your suggestions
to Cherry Red. It says they take requests!
http://www.cherryred.co.uk/cherrypop/index.php
ideas@cherryred.co.uk
One mans trash and all that
There are Stock, Aitken Waterman completists out there and some of the more obscure stuff is quite collectable.
Its only like those old Nuggets compilations full of stuff probably regarded as throwaway at the time. Plain simple nostalgia is the other.
In fact if you think these seem odd choices for reissue have a browse of the Cherry Red reissue catalogue. Heywoode, Owen Paul, Belouis Some etc. Big seller is The Circle and The Square by the mighty Red Box.
Funny you should mention Circle and the Square...
Lean on Me (the tune with the bloke doing sign language in the video) popped into my head a few weeks ago, for the first time in, I'd say, over twenty years. Reviews of its parent album appeared to be quite good and thus I took a punt on it, and it landed on the doormat last week.
It's a damned good album.
Fascinating Red Box fact...
Apparently the person signing in the Lean on Me video momentarily goes off-message, from the lyrics to something like: "I don't know why I'm doing this; the pay is really terrible."
If there is anyone conversant in BSL that fancies confirming this with a quick look at youtube...
There's a market for everything
I recently bought "The Dollar Album" (the one mostly produced by Trevor Horn), also on Cherry Red, having lived with a vinyl rip for years while waiting for it to come out on CD. I can't believe it set the world alight, but it was probably reasonably cheap to put together, and I'm sure it helps the label's cash flow to have quite a few of these on their schedule...
You'll think I'm mad, but it's a brilliant album...
I, for one,
don't think you're mad. It is brilliant.
I love it
I only just found out that it had finally gotten a release thanks to this thread - I was going to post it above as an album I would buy if remastered.
I love Hand Held In Black And White, it is one of my most favourite singles ever.
Good to see some Dollar love here!
It's the album that convinced ABC to engage Horn for "The Lexicon Of Love", which begat "Duck Rock", Frankie, ZTT et al, so it's all good...
Kudos to Thereza Bazar too, her production on the non-Horn tracks (especially "Give Me Some Kinda Magic") is excellent (she was obviously taking notes!) There are some interesting "alternative" mixes on the remaster too, none as good as the final ones, but it's nice to see pure pop being treated as worthy of closer listening...
My number one album of all time
ABC - Lexicon Of Love.
There are bands - The Jam, The Clash, most of the Motown output, Lee Perry - that I love more, but that album is just perfect, especially the first side. It sounds fantastic, the songs and performances are great and the added nostalgia/memories of being 13 just round it off nicely. I've owned it about seven times over the years.
Whenever I buy a new stereo or try out something audio I put on the Lexicon Of Love. It's my yardstick for such things.
As I said above I love Hand Held, but also the multi tracked vocals on Give Me Back My Heart over the end of the track just make me melt.
Yes, proper pop music.
Don't forget the b-sides
Was that the one with "The Girls are out the Getcha" on the B-side? That B side went onto almost any compilation I made for a year or so - absolutely perfect pop.
That song was a single in its own right...
... from "The Paris Collection" album, though it wasn't a hit. I can't remember it being a B-side, though I've been wrong before...
Just checked
I've just had a look at my collection and I have it as an A-side - I don't know why I thought it was a b-side but it was a lot of brain cells ago.
I went looking on Spotify
to see if you are right about Dollar, and trying to forget everything I know about David Van Day.
No sign of the Cherry Red re-issues but there was what purports to be "The Very The Best Of Dollar"
http://open.spotify.com/album/3vmNwW0P0o60rNA3bLwoIZ
Had a quick listen and thought, blimey these sound a bit tame, nothing like I remember and this weedy production can't be Trevor Horn. A quick trip to iTunes reveals lots of disgruntled reviews, it turns out these are rather poor re-recordings of the original tracks, as often happens for budget compilations.