Celebrating vinyl / CD / cassette / memorabilia releases of musical gems and curiosities from the punk era onwards
A selection of Ultravox badges from 1981’s ‘Rage In Eden’ tour merchandise and general era. I wasn’t able to make any of the live dates at the time, the tour badges would come along later – my first one of this era was the Smash Hits giveaway one, if I recall. I had a few from 1980 though, they will be published in the next part of this ongoing series…
A fine example of the mid-’80s trend to load up the cassette version – and increasingly the CD too, with its rise to format dominance – of albums with extra tracks and/or extended mixes. Win’s wonderful high-tech pop debut, ‘Uh! Tears Baby (A Trash Icon)’, got the treatment good and proper.
Continue reading “Win ‘Uh! Tears Baby (A Trash Icon)’ cassette and CD version craziness”
For no reason other than on my travels over the years I have come across these and I do love a nice little enamel lapel pin, here are a few record company logo badges. The most unusual is probably the Genetic Records badge – Martin Rushent’s label back in the day. The Capitol and Parlophone ones came via an early Record Store Day goodie bag courtesy of London’s fine Sister Ray records on Berwick Street.
Continue reading “Button badge goodness: Assorted record company logo pins”
Newly published, the long journey of John Foxx and his story of ‘The Quiet Man’ has eventually surfaced in book form, with this hardback edition. ‘The Quiet Man – Short Stories by John Foxx’. Along the way, there have been many side paths and distant echoes of the quiet man’s footsteps heard, most notably the ‘Quiet Man’ CD release from 2009 and of couse, ‘London Overgrown’, alongside the new book, I thought I would focus on the first time I recall one of those excerpts, published way back in 1980 as part of the ‘In The City’ fanzine’s Ultravox special, ‘Past Present and Future’ (and with reference to ‘Church’ and ‘Cathedral Oceans’ along the way too, which have also featured excerpts of the story that find their way into the new book).
The Cure were no strangers to giving fans a bonus side of music to their cassette releases, with 1981’s ‘Faith’ cassette coming with the long form ‘Carnage Visors’ soundtrack piece as a cassette-only exclusive. By 1984 and their renaissance as a more pop-oriented act (on the surface at least as the Sturm und Drang outings from ‘The Top’ such as ‘Shake Dog Shake’ and ‘Give Me It’ would attest), time was ripe for their first live album in the shape of the faux bootleg look and feel of ‘Concert’ (The Cure Live)’. Limited to a single album rather than the more traditional sprawling double, it was a fair trawl through various highlights, heavy on the singles and a side order of more recent album tracks. Fair enough. But of more interest, certainly for longer term fans, was the cassette-only ‘Concert and Curiosity’.
Continue reading “The Cure – ‘Concert and Curiosity’ UK cassette (Fiction, FIXHC10, 1984)”