Celebrating vinyl / CD / cassette / memorabilia releases of musical gems and curiosities from the punk era onwards
‘The “Sweetest Girl”’ never provided Scritti Politti with the full-on pop chart hit that might have ambitiously been hoped for, but the impact it made with its sea-change in style ensured its high profile all the same. What I had not quite appreciated until more recent years was just how many versions of the song there are and it’s curiously stop/start release history.
Continue reading “Scritti Politti – ‘The “Sweetest Girl”’ version craziness”
Time for the third and final part of this short series focussing on my badge collection for The Cure got back in the day… this time almost all from the 1985 UK tour (which I didn’t actually see and have my good friend Lieutenant 030 and frequent contributor to thank for buying them for me. The final one is the official ‘Cure Club’ badge from 1984 when I joined – it was a relatively short lived Cure official fan club of the time.
Of note, the 1985 badge set pack only contains the three button badges, it does NOT include the metal enamel badge – that was available separately, I just slotted it into the pack to keep them all together nicely.
1988 saw the band return from what, to the outside world, probably looked like some kind of extended break, but had witnessed the band finesse their studio in Acton and record the album ‘Blue Bell Knoll’. Along the way, it also saw the band make changes in their relationship with 4AD records, including signing a new deal for five further albums for the label and their American releases made via Capitol records, as well as further worldwide territories.
The original release of the vinyl album came packaged in a tri-fold sleeve and, unlike previous releases, it was not the work of 4AD’s in-house designers 23 Envelope, but by designer Paul West and Jeremy Tilston, with photography by Juergen Teller.
Part 2 of this short series, this time around the focus is on the badges which were on sale at the merch stall for the 1984 UK tour to promote the album ‘The Top’.
New Musik will always be a favourite of mine and there has been no shortage of previous VersionCrazy coverage, what with ‘The Planet Doesn’t Mind’ version craziness, ‘Greatest Hits’ Promo 7″ EP (GTO, XP112, 1981) and New Musik ‘Anywhere’ UK cassette (GTO, GTMC044, 1981) posts. They have also been relatively fortunate in that their back catalogue has been re-issued fairly regularly since the 1990s onwards, so they have never been left behind and forgotten about. My slightly sanguine ‘relatively fortunate’ is because over the years the re-issues have had a tendency to play a little fast and loose when compiling extra tracks as bonuses to the standard album track lists.
