Tag Archives: reissues

I wish I was as cool as Calvin

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I was introduced to Too Much Joy by my friend Chris back in 1990 when the major label reissue of their second album Son of Sam I Am dropped, and I was immediately hooked. At that point in time I was still listening to far more doom and gloom music than I really should have been listening to, and TMJ was refreshing, noisy and funny but without being too absurdist or corny. I put this cassette in my Walkman quite a lot near the start of my sophomore year when I needed a pick-me-up. Later on in the summer of ’91 I would see them live at the Hatch Shell, where I very nearly got hit by flying glass. Whee!

It’s not a brilliant album by any means, and they’re firmly entrenched in the ‘punk band that definitely doesn’t take itself seriously at all’ genre, but instead of going the meathead drunk-and-partying route, they took the intellectual Gen-X ennui-and-irony route, which caught the attention of several kids my own age. While it never got enough major airplay, they were a firm favorite on alternative radio and retained a loyal fanbase. Years later in 2020/2021 they reunited and have released two new albums since then.

The album ran the gamut between the ‘bad karma thing to do’ action of making fun of bums, to being traumatized by clowns…

…to singing about reincarnation (a song I still know all the words to!)…

…and not just a cover of an LL Cool J song….

…but a cover of the weird-yet-catchy classic by Terry Jacks.

So why a major reissue of an album from 1988 and reissued in 1990? Simple: after thirty-five years, the rights to their breakthrough album finally reverted back to them. They’d gotten the quite-aged masters back and got them cleaned up, and they sound fresh and vibrant once more.

Pure silliness, but I highly recommend this album because it’s just that much fun.

A Flock of Seagulls, Fortyish Years On

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Yes, folks. I am old enough that I remember the iconic and extremely low-budget (most of it seemingly spent on tinfoil) video for A Flock of Seagulls’ song “I Ran (So Far Away)” being new on MTV and loving it to bits. Never mind that the non-instrument props are from whatever they had in the studio’s back closet, this was taking the idea of music video to another level. They were part of a British wave of, well, New Wave. Distinctly pop yet heavily steeped in fashion, science fiction and even a bit of doom-and-gloom. It took Cold War darkness and tension into unexpected and highly creative directions.

This past week, the band dropped a Deluxe edition of their first album, a three-disc collection of a new album remaster, single mixes and b-sides, several BBC radio sessions, and even a short live set. The remaster itself sounds amazing, given that it’s not always easy to give a synth-heavy sound a warm feeling. The remaster gives the album plenty of breathing room and clarity for each performer. And Paul Reynolds’ distinctive guitar work, similar to that of U2’s Edge with its soaring and extremely melodic qualities, sounds crisp and clear.

The rest of the album may have its filler moments, but it also contains some bangers such as the singles “Space Age Love Song” and “Telecommunication” as well great deep cuts “DNA” and album closer “Man Made”. I highly recommend giving it a spin!

A Year of Reissues

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While the events of 2020 has put a lot of entertainment on the backburner, even including the regular release schedule of albums, it hasn’t exactly put the kibosh on the usual round of reissues and remasters. These are usually planned well in advance, of course, with most of the remastering production done over the course of the time leading up to it.

Here are a few of my favorites that have dropped this year!

Porcupine Tree, In Absentia (Deluxe Edition), released 28 February. This release of their stellar 2002 record features recent remasters — a day job lead singer/guitarist Steven Wilson has been busy with for the last few years — and numerous demos and rarities.

The The, See Without Beeing Seen, released 27 March. Cassette copies of one of Matt Johnson’s early teenage projects recorded before 1981’s Burning Blue Soul were unearthed, prepped and made widely available for the very first time. It may not be as professional as his later work, you can definitely hear the seeds of his signature style.

Paul McCartney, Flaming Pie (Archive Collection), released 31 July. Paul’s 1997 album was deeply inspired by two things: the Beatles’ Anthology project and his relationship with Linda as she fought cancer. It’s full of lovely classic Macca pop songs and features an abundance of guests such as Ringo, Steve Miller, and Jeff Lynne. This reissue features numerous demos, single sides, and the six-part ‘Oobu Joobu’ radio show he’d put on as part of the album’s promotions.

Prince, Sign ‘o’ the Times (Super Deluxe Edition), released 25 September. I posted about this one earlier, and I can’t say enough about how amazing it is. It somehow manages to fit the remastered 1987 album, the multiple 1986 projects that led up to it, and a full live show.

John Lennon, Gimme Some Truth, released 9 October. This is not so much a ‘greatest hits’ collection but an extended selection of hits, singles and deep tracks, all of which have been remastered with ‘Ultimate Mixes’, and they sound so much clearer than I’ve ever heard them.

The Replacements, Pleased to Meet Me (Deluxe Edition), released 9 October. The Mats’ 1987 record (the first one of theirs I’d bought, by the way) gets the remaster / reissue here with rough mixes and demos. It’s one of their poppier albums and a fun listen.

Elvis Costello, Armed Forces (Super Deluxe Edition), released 6 November. Elvis’ third album was his breakthrough record and remains a fan favorite. There’s not too much new and unreleased in this collection, but it gathers as much related music from the 1978-79 era and drops it in one place, and it sounds great.

Shut up already! Damn!

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I’ve been looking forward to this rerelease for a good couple of months now. It’s one of my favorite albums of 1987, and it’s a solid record from start to finish. It’s a soundtrack of my later teen years, in between the bouts of listening to college radio and the waning months of listening to pop radio.

Prince’s Sign o’ the Times intrigues me because it’s the end result of three different music projects. It’s the aborted next album with the Revolution, Dream Factory. It’s a solo project of androgynous sped-up vocals, Camille. and it’s a collection of both plus more, built into a three-disc behemoth called Crystal Ball. It features the best of all three, and decades later, the deluxe reissue (which drops tomorrow) features nearly everything else that was left off.

The three projects are quite different in their own ways… Dream Factory kind of picks up where Parade and Around the World in a Day left off, improving on his stellar mid-80s songwriting and the band’s tight and often improvisational sound. Camille on the other hand veers towards his uninhibited Sexy Prince character (which would surface less over the years but when it did, such as on The Black Album, it didn’t hold back). Crystal Ball ended up being sort of his White Album, a sprawling mass of past and present ideas and egos.

Some of what got left off of the final version of Sign o’ the Times eventually popped up on b-sides, soundtracks or future albums; the eventual official version of Crystal Ball, released in early 1998, would feature some of the outtakes as well. Prince being Prince, however, his recording regimen was so prolific that there was still so much left in his legendary vault. I’ve heard some of the rarities via bootlegs — a fantastic Revolution-backed version of “Strange Relationship” is a must-hear, for instance – and it’ll be great to hear them with a clear remastering.

I’ll do a recap of the reissue once I’ve given it a good listen! Stay tuned!