Late 1981 saw the release of the third Martha and the Muffins album , the rather wonderful ‘This Is The Ice Age’, which managed to navigate an elegantly confident path between finely crafted commercial pop and an increasingly experimental edge, with a far more gentler, introspective air to a good many of the tracks. I was familiar with the single released in the UK, ‘Women Around The World At Work’, which as well as being rather fine piece of music also came housed in one of my all time favourite Peter Saville related sleeve designs. This single was also released in a handful of other territories, including the band’s native Canada. However, in mainland Europe, with a West German pressing, the single that was lifted from the album instead was ‘One Day In Paris’.
^ Martha and the Muffins – ‘One Day In Paris’ European 7″ front/back cover design
Bill Nelson’s 1986 ‘Getting The Holy Ghost Across’ album is one that deserves a fuller write-up given its complex trans-Atlantic history and many variations. I will get there someday, but as a taster for that, today’s focus is on the UK cassette edition, another cassette pet that offered its own unique content for those willing to seek it out at the time.
^ Bill Nelson – ‘Getting The Holy Ghost Across’ UK cassette front cover design
May 2026 has witnessed signs of life from the Scritti Politti camp by way of two news pieces of interest, the announcement of some live dates to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Rough Trade record label and a new ‘deluxe’ re-issue of 1985’s ‘Cupid & Psyche 85’ album. Sadly though, still no news of any new album release, which leaves ‘White Bread Black Beer’ the band’s last album release to date, twenty years ago in 2006, the subject of today’s post.
^ Scritti Politti ‘White Bread Black Beer’ Japanese Limited Edition CD + DVD, front cover design with OBI
This 1988 CD EP release is something of a curio as it contains two mixes by Visage that have for whatever reason been rather forgotten about in the digital age. Not that you would know from the sleeve design, as it doesn’t provide any details on the specific mixes included. But these two mixes of interest are the original extended 12” mix of ‘Fade To Grey’ and the ‘Dance Dub’ mix of ‘Beat Boy’.
This original 12” mix of ‘Fade To Grey’ first emerged not on the 1980 UK 12” single but on the West German 12” single release. (The UK 12” single featured the same single edit as the 7” mix). The West German 12” release (Polydor 2141 318) – see discos.com entry – featured an extended mix of ‘Fade To Grey’, though its fair to say that this 12” extended mix has since been eclipsed and replaced as seemingly the ‘definitive’ 12” mix of the song by the later ‘Dance Mix’ version that first appeared on the US ‘Visage’ Mini-Album (Polydor, PX-1-501) released in July 1981, as featured in a previous post. For example, on many various artists compilation CDs in recent decades whenever there is a 12″ or extended mix of ‘Fade To Grey’ it is almost always the ‘Dance Mix’, or, even more confusingly, a slightly shorter edit of this ‘Dance Mix’. (See ‘Postscript’ below for more detail on this.) The most recent example of this is from Rusty Egan’s 4-disc ‘Rusty Egan Presents Blitzed!’ collection (view the discogs.com entry), which features the full-length ‘Dance Mix’ version of ‘Fade To Grey’ in all its glory – it truly is a superb mix.
^ Visage ‘Fade To Grey’ 1988 West German CD single front cover design
Meantime, the ‘original’ 12″ mix as featured on this CD single is quite a different affair. It lacks the downright irresistible straight-ahead funkiness of the Dance Mix and has in the past come in for the occasional comment that its basically just the single mix repeated twice.
This curious 12″ release is notable for featuring an edit that was never commercially released, and that unlike various other edits doing the rounds managed to truncate all of the tracks that make up the full version of the original album version ‘Trans-Europe Express’ / ‘Abzug’ / ‘Metal on Metal’ into one edit of 5’42” duration instead of the full 13’38” run time
^ Kraftwerk ‘Trans-Europe Express’ US Promo-only 12″ single front
