Suede will release an expanded 3CD edition of their 2022 album Autofiction in December.
The first CD in this set is the standard album, while disc two includes four songs that were only available digitally during the first week following the album’s release (to help get it up the charts via a ‘digital deluxe’). Those are: ‘The Sadness In You, The Sadness In Me’, ‘Days Like Dead Moths’’, ‘The Prey’ and ‘Still Waiting’. The Japanese-only bonus track ‘You Don’t Know Me’ is also included on CD 2 along with an unreleased song from the Autofiction album sessions called ‘There Is No Me If There Is No You’ (a very ‘Suede’ title, I’m sure you’ll agree).
The newly packaged Autofiction: Expanded
The third disc in this newly expanded set features the entire album, in order, played live. These recordings were culled from various Suede shows during the band’s UK tour in March 2023.
Autofiction: Expanded will be released on 8 December 2023, via BMG.
SDE sat down recently with Duane Tudahl who has been working for the Prince Estate for around five years and has recently taken over from Michael Howe. We discuss Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls, his Vault of unreleased material and the approach to putting together the super deluxe edition box sets.
SDE: With Prince you never fail to be impressed with all the music he didn’t release and the quality of it, in particular.
Duane Tudahl: The main thing to me about somebody like Prince is he’s got a whole world of great music that wasn’t released, kind of hidden, that just didn’t fit the project. A lot of his outtakes are what another band or group would be very happy to have on their main album. And they’re complete tracks, because I’m guessing when he was recording them he always “this could be on my album”. He puts a lot of care into every piece of what he does.
Diamonds and Pearls was the first tour that I saw Prince play live, at Earls Court in 1992. I would have been 22 at that point.
That was a great tour to see. Compared to a lot of other bands, Prince puts on a show. A lot of bands would come up and play, but he would actually put on a show. And the nice thing about his concerts is that you could go to several in a row, and they’re all slightly different.
Of course, people will get a feel for this show through the the Glam Slam 92 concert, which forms a large part of this box set
The fact that this is documented on film, is so cool, historically. Because what you’ve got is a guy trying this stuff out, and he’s even trying stuff out for the next album, which is just crazy. He’s already on to the next album, even though he’s just starting to promote this album. But you look up at the stage and you’ve got around 20 people up on this small club stage at one point, doing different things. You don’t even know where to look, sometimes. But it’s a great show.
The thing I always find interesting is that it always looks semi-spontaneous, but when you see the complexity and the detail in the dance routines, and how everyone has to work together on stage, you know it isn’t really like that and there’s been so much rehearsal.
A lot of work goes into making it look easy. Although even though it’s really rehearsed, there’s still an air of spontaneity in there. He’s built it up so high, and they’re all so solid, that he can now do something on top of that. He’s worked the band so hard, to get them to the point where they know everything by rote. They’ve got that down, so now let’s go to the next level! And a lot of bands don’t actually go to the next level.
Duane, we should introduce you to the SDE audience, because I’ve spoken to Michael Howe in the past about Prince’s Sign O’ The Times and 1999 reissues. He’s no longer working with the Prince Estate so you’ve obviously taken over that role and, and are working on this project. How long have you been on board and how has it all been going?
I’ve been with the Prince estate for about five years. I was working with Michael, during that time. So I did work on the Sign O’ The Times box set and the 1999 box. I was the guy who put together the videos for those things as well as curated a lot of the music for it. I come from a TV and documentary background. I worked in television for about 30 years as a writer, director, producer, editor and so I did a lot of reality TV, a lot of documentaries, a lot of films. My official title is the ‘Senior Researcher and Archivist’ for the Vault. So it involves going in there and finding the footage, finding the audio – finding all the options. And, you know, you try to uncover things, and you have to listen to every tape and because sometimes there’ll be something in the middle of a tape.
What have the challenges been with Diamonds and Pearls? As we know with Prince, there is this constant flow of material, new recordings, and one project often meshes into another, so the marker points where one thing starts and another ends might not be so obvious. How do you get going with a project like this?
You start at the beginning, and the biggest thing is figuring out where the beginning is. So for this project, you have songs being recorded during the Nude tour, which is in 1990, in London, and that is really where it started. The tricky thing with Prince is that projects start and end and they overlap quite a bit. So you have to be a little selective about things and you want to make sure you stay within the right parameters. This was started, like I said, in London in July of 1990, during the Nude tour and ended right about when the album’s being released, in October of 1991. So you’ve got a little over a year during that time. Now it’s tricky because, he’s recording for other artists; he’s recording for himself; some of his songs came out on later albums; some of the songs went nowhere… So the challenge is trying to figure out what tells the story the best. The first outtake was called ‘Schoolyard’. The fun thing for me is that the beginning of the album is ‘Thunder’ and the last outtake is the ‘Thunder Ballet’, so it kind of bookends the whole collection. ‘Thunder Ballet’ was done a couple of days after the album came out, so we still think that’s within the range, because sometimes he’ll record a B-side later. But you also want to make sure the songs honour his legacy and do not detract from it; you don’t want to put things on there for numbers.
If you have multiple versions of tracks, is it a case of just making a judgement on the best one?
You have a lot of things you got to think about. First off, you have to think what represents him best. And you look for songs that he’s mixed [himself], so that’s a complete version; the goal is to have as many as many complete versions of what he does as possible. Sometimes you get a song like ‘Cream, take 2’, that was never mixed, because that was an early version of it. So we have to mix that and we have Chris James, who used to work with Prince doing the mixing of that. We try to confer with as many of the engineers and band members as possible. The interesting thing is, sometimes he’ll do a mix of something on the 24-track and then he will go back and change the 24-track. Like he’ll take something out and put another thing in. Sometimes he would go right in the middle of a track where there’s a bass line and he’ll just punch in a guitar lick. So that makes that mix that was done [before] completely unique, because it will never be possible to be recreate it.
You talk about a 24-track tape… Because of the unique way he recorded, do you have evidence of what had gone on in a particular session? Bits of paper that documented it?
There’s often a track sheet which has listed what’s on there, but that doesn’t necessarily mean is exactly what’s on there. Sometimes it says “Sonny bass”, sometimes it just says “bass”. And then you have to actually go to the band and say, “Sonny, what did you play on this?” And sometimes the band members are like, “I don’t remember”. The other part about this is that I’m a writer. I’ve been working on books about Prince’s studio sessions. So I’ve been collecting his work orders for the past 30 years. And so I go into my archive on this stuff and look at what I find on work orders and things that were from this from the studios, whether it’s Paisley Park or Sunset Sound or wherever.
How did you get access to that material, in the first place?
I started writing about Prince about 30 years ago and part of my books are about the studio session, so I went to the studios to talk to them about this stuff. And they said, we’ll tell you what, we’ll give you the work orders and let you make copies of them. Or talk to the engineers, you know, like Michael Koppelman or Susan Rogers; a lot of them have notes about some of their sessions, and they will talk to you about this stuff. Susan Rogers worked on the Sign O’ The Times stuff, but Michael Koppelman worked on Diamonds and Pearls. So I talked to him and other engineers. You build a relationship with these people and you see the paper trail of what was recorded. That is used quite a bit when writing sessionographies in the box sets. It is a bit of a mystery, and like any big mystery, you start talking to the people that were closest to the event
What do you make of the Diamonds and Pearls album? Because, I must admit, as someone who loved Prince in the 80s, you know, Parade, Sign O’ The Times, etc., I remember being a little bit disappointed that he was going down the Rap / Hip Hop kind of route. It felt a little bit to me like he was going to be a follower, not a leader anymore. I was reading the notes in the booklet and there were some interesting conversations at the time around the topic of whether this was going to come across as ‘authentic’ Prince? Are the fans gonna abandon him, will black radio reject him, etc. What’s your take on the direction he was going in?
One of the cool things about Prince is that it’s hard to get bored with him. He’s always gonna throw you a curve. Graffiti Bridge didn’t do that well, and that was basically a Prince solo album, although a lot of that stuff was brought up from The Vault. With this album, he said I’m going to find a new sound by blending Oakland, California, and Minneapolis – put them together and see what happens. But with every Prince project, there’s the risk of liking it or not liking it. And as a fan, you go, I’ll if I don’t like this, I’ll meet you on the next album. I think some of Diamonds and Pearls has aged really well and love the fact that people like Chuck D are coming out and talking about [rapper] Tony M and it’s great that Tony’s getting some love now. The fun thing for me is is when you see the outtakes from this Vault material you see that some of it is not like Diamonds and Pearls [at all]. It just doesn’t fit. There’s a song called ‘I Pledge Allegiance to Your Love’. One of the best songs on the box; it’s a blues song. It could easily be a BB King song. It doesn’t fit on the album but he didn’t try and cram it on there. A lot of artists would cram a great song onto an album where it didn’t belong.
Is it a stretch to say that Prince needed a hit album at this point? Warners were probably thinking along those lines, but do you think Prince stopped and thought, I need to do something different, go in a new direction? Or did that commercial reality never enter his brain?
There’s two different sides of this. The bottom line to me is, when Prince gets pushed into a corner, like when The Revolution was disbanded, he came up with Sign O’ The Times. Kind of like, I’ll show you what I can do. Diamonds and Pearls came right after Graffiti Bridge, which did not do very well. Of course, there’s a competitive side to him, but did he need to do anything? No, Prince wanted to do things, and the only need would be internal. Warner Brothers may have been saying, “we want you to do this”, but Prince is gonna do what Prince does. And that’s one of the coolest things about him; people will look at him for artistic integrity. He goes in so many different directions and each each album or era is just slightly different.
He was already crazily prolific, as everyone knows, but with this band on tap, it would have been an even quicker process to record. He’s not there having to do it one instrument at a time, layering tracks.
I think you’re probably right on that. I mean, he was quick, just by doing himself too, but I think what happened is that these band members really did connect with him. You’re not in Prince’s band, unless he wants you there, because he’s getting something from you, but I think having those great players in the band did make it a little faster, a little richer, maybe. But he was also influenced by these people, so they take him in a direction which just bends slightly, from perhaps what was intended. They’re young, and energetic and excited, and that kept him excited. I think that’s what he did with every band. You’ll find that over the course of his career, he would always have to renew it with fresh blood; new people, new spirits, new outlooks.
And the thing I always find interesting is that Prince wouldn’t waste time for the sake of it. So for example, ‘Thunder’ at the beginning of this record, wasn’t recorded with the NPG but he didn’t re-record it so it sounds a bit more like the rest of the album. Rather like how there’s a live track on Sign O’ The Times. He wasn’t worried about those kinds of details.
And he would go in sometimes with a band recording and overdub some of their stuff. I mean, it’s got to be tricky having a boss that can walk up to you and do your job better than you, at any point.
You mentioned how it started in London. So on a day off from touring, he’d go to the studio for 12 hours and record a few tracks. How did he even secure the studio time at such short notice? Would someone have booked that in advance just to be on the safe side?
By this point, he had a habit of doing that. So I think everybody around him understood that this is going to happen. During that time, during the Nude tour, for quite a while, he stationed himself in London, so I’m sure he set up things way ahead of time. But everybody knew that his his his propensity is to go into the studio and that he had more music than than he had time, if that makes sense.
The notes in the book are brilliant and there’s lots of stuff about how he works with the record label. Everyone always thinks of Prince falling out with Warners and butting heads and stuff like that, but it’s quite pleasing, in a way, to see that they worked together very well on this record. And even though he probably didn’t like it, they would say to him, we need something for black radio and he’d come back with ‘Gett Off’. Was this the last album where that kind of cooperation, or collaboration, worked so well?
Probably. I have a daughter. Early on, our relation was very collaborative. She’s in her teens now, and is branching off and trying things and there’s going to come a point where she’s gonna say, “I don’t need your help anymore”. And I think to a certain extent, it was like that with Prince. And he had hits, so he didn’t have to sit there and think, how can I write a hit? I do think he benefitted from the organisation that that Warner Brothers brought to him, whether it came to selling and promotion and things like this. But this is probably the last time that they really worked really well together. And right after this, was when he did the 100 million dollar contract deal with them and within the next five or six years, they were separating [laughs]. It was a really healthy relationship for a long time, but this is probably the last major album push that they had together.
He was definitely pushing the boundaries, wasn’t he? Because there’s a great story [in the book in the box set] about how he privately presses up 1500 copies of ‘Gett Off’ without officially informing his label. On the one hand, that’s brilliantly creative, but doing those kinds of things was never going to last within the confines and constraints of a major record label.
I’ve always looked at Prince’s career in three stages. In the early stages, he was a rebel, and he was doing what he wanted to get attention. Then, 1999 and Purple Rain came along and he became a superstar, and he stayed superstar for a long time. But I think, a little bit after this album, and maybe even during some of this album, he became the rebel again, saying to himself, you know what, I’m going to take charge this stuff again. That’s such a great story, going behind Warner Brothers’ back to press this song [on vinyl]. To me, that’s the funniest thing ever. Knowing that he actually did that is hilarious, to me. But I don’t think he had the cooperation with with Warner Brothers on an album after this, like he did with Diamonds and Pearls. You’re right, that’s a good point.
Tell us about the Dolby Atmos mix of this studio album. Who did that spatial audio mix and how did that come about?
That was Chris James. He is our main mixer for a lot of stuff. Chris worked with Prince during the last few years of Prince’s life. So he understood what Prince wanted, he had worked intimately in the studio with him. I think you want to have somebody that can refer back to lessons he learned from Prince. That’s really important.
Are there any plans to go back and do Sign O’ The Times or 1999 in Atmos?
I don’t know of anything like that, but I think it’d be cool if we could do something like that. But I don’t have any visibility as far as that is concerned.
What’s the state of Prince’s Vault? This might be a stupid thing to say, because I know it’s massive, but has it all been digitised yet? Or do you just digitise it as and when you need to for what the project you’re working on?
What I can say is that the ball is always in motion. There’s always something going on and you have a 40 year career and you want to make sure you do a proper investigation of each thing. You don’t want to just randomly digitise everything. There’s so much to it, because you have half-inch mixes, quarter-inch mixes, two-inch tapes, one-inch videos tapes, you have 3/4″ videos, you have all these different types of video formats, some of which aren’t even around anymore. You have all these cassettes, you have film, you have stills, you have everything that is basically the collection of a man’s career. So it’s gonna take a little time to make sure you get everything done. The priority is getting it done right, and not right now. Curation is very important because you want to be as meticulous as possible, and make sure that you connect the dots. For example, on the box set there’s a song called ‘Dark Side’ and there’s also a song called ‘Blood on the Sheets’. ‘Dark Side’ is the early version of ‘Blood on the Sheets’ and they’re both instrumentals, but they both on here to hear how his sound changes over time. The first one is recorded in Japan and the second one is recorded at Paisley Park, a few months later, and it’s much harder sound. And that to me is fun. Because when you get to see and hear the progress of a song. To me, it’s like going back to Rembrandt drawing sketches, where you can say, okay that’s what he started with. You go to his notebooks, and you see these little sketches. I think it’s a great lesson for anybody who studies music, or anybody who’s in a band to see, basically, how the sausage is made.
But there isn’t too much of that, though, to be fair, because if you think of The Beatles, and a song like ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, one of the box sets has quite a few different versions of that song but you’re not really giving us that with these Prince box sets…
I love the Beatles’ boxsets. But the Beatles didn’t have nearly the kind of vault that Prince did. And they recorded for eight years, so they didn’t have this deep reservoir of music. With the Prince box sets you may not see the individual tracks doing that, because he didn’t really do demos that much, but you see it in what he did, because there’s dozens of songs on these box sets that tracks his emotions. What we do is we try to make sure that the Vault songs are in chronological order. So they tell the story of what Prince is going through at the time. Each song is really like a Polaroid photo where he is at that moment. Happy, sad, angry, whatever it is, and he may do the song in a few hours. That’s a great snapshot of exactly what he’s doing at that moment. So when you do the box sets, you want to honour Prince by making sure you allow him to tell his story, via his music, in chronological order. Towards the end, there’s a song called in ‘A Letter for Miles’. And that was really important because it came right after Miles Davis died. So the story is not necessarily being told by having 15 versions of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, which I admit is still cool, but there’s not really 15 versions of anything. Okay, you do have 15 versions of ‘Gett Off’ but those are remixes.
Thanks to Duane Tudahl who was talking to Paul Sinclair for SDE. The Diamonds and Pearls box sets are available now.
The Black Crowes’ 1992 album The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion has been remastered and expanded for CD and vinyl reissues next month. The reissue has been overseen by Chris and Rich Robinson and album producer George Drakoulias.
A 3CD super deluxe edition box set features 14 unreleased tracks including two studio recordings,a live February 1993 concert, and the never-before-heard live in-studio performances at the end of the Southern Harmony session – along with B-sides and the original album (which was remastered from the original 1/4″ production master tape). This box also comes with ‘stuff’ which includes a “hymn book” with insights from both Chris and Rich Robinson, sheet music and four lithographs.
The 3CD super deluxe of The Southern Harmony… (click image to enlarge)
There’s also a 2CD deluxe which features the original remastered album with the bonus ‘Best Of The Box’ highlights disc with nine rare and unreleased selections from the super deluxe.
In terms of vinyl, there’s a single remastered black vinyl edition as well as a 4LP super deluxe which repeats the content on the 3CD set. Sadly, there appears to be no ‘cheap’ 3CD edition, which fans had the option of buying for the Shake Your Money Maker reissue of 2021.
The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion will be reissued on 15 December 2023 via UMR.
1962-1966 and 1967-1970, the two classic Beatles compilations – better known as the ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ Albums – are newly remixed and expanded with the notable inclusion of ‘Now and Then’ the first ‘new’ song from the Fab Four since ‘Real Love’ in 1996.
Standard CD and vinyl editions of the 2018 concert performance from London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall that features full orchestral re-imaginings of Roxy Music tracks as performed on stage by Roxy Music legends Andy Mackay & Phil Manzanera
The full audio for the much hyped ‘last’ Beatles song Now and Then has been made available. Have a listen below and let us know what you think. Do you like it and does it live up to expectations? Leave a comment!
Now and Then is officially released on 3 November 2023 with various vinyl editions available, along with a CD single. It also features on the new ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ albums which are released on 10 November.
Part 1: 1983-1984 – Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy Plus…
Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy (May 1983)
1. The Milkman Of Human Kindness 2. To Have And To Have Not 3. Richard 4. A New England 5. The Man In The Iron Mask 6. The Busy Girl Buys Beauty 7. Lovers Town Revisited
Album Extras
8. Strange Things Happen (Alternative Version) 9. The Cloth 1 10. Love Lives Here 11. Speedway Hero 12. Loving You Too Long 13. The Man In The Iron Mask (Alternative Version) 14. This Guitar Says Sorry (Alternative Version) 15. Love Gets Dangerous (Alternative Version) 16. The Cloth 2 17. A13, Trunk Road To The Sea 18. Fear Is A Man’s Best Friend
John Peel Session 27/07/83
19. A New England 20. Strange Things Happen 21. This Guitar Says Sorry 22. Love Gets Dangerous 23. Fear Is A Man’s Best Friend 24. A13, Trunk Road To The Sea
Live at the ICA, London 05/01/84
25. The Busy Girl Buys Beauty 26. The Man In The Iron Mask 27. A New England
Part 2: 1984-1985 – Brewing Up With Plus…
Brewing Up With… (October 1984)
1. It Says Here 2. Love Gets Dangerous 3. The Myth Of Trust 4. From A Vauxhall Velox 5. The Saturday Boy 6. Island Of No Return 7. St. Swithin’s Day 8. Like Soldiers Do 9. This Guitar Says Sorry 10. Strange Things Happen 11. A Lover Sings
Album Extras
12. It Must Be A River 13. Won’t Talk About It 14. Talking Wag Club Blues 15. You Got The Power 16. The Last Time 17. Back To The Old House 18. A Lover Sings (Alternative Version)
Between The Wars E.P (February 1985)
19. Between The Wars 20. Which Side Are You On? 21. World Turned Upside Down 22. It Says Here (Alternative Version)
Days like These E.P. (December 1985)
23. Days Like These 24. I Don’t Need This Pressure Ron 25. Scholarship Is The Enemy Of Romance 26. Between The Wars (Live at Festival Des Politischen Liedes, Berlin)
Part 3: 1986 – 1988 – Talking With The Taxman Plus…
Talking With The Taxman About Poetry (September 1986)
1. Greetings To The New Brunette 2. Train Train 3. The Marriage 4. Ideology 5. Levi Stubbs’ Tears 6. Honey, I’m A Big Boy Now 7. There Is Power In A Union 8. Help Save The Youth Of America 9. Wishing The Days Away 10. The Passion 11. The Warmest Room 12. The Home Front
Album Extras
13. Shirley 14. The Tracks Of My Tears 15. Wishing The Days Away (Alternative Version) 16. The Clashing Of Ideologies (Alternative Version) 17. A Nurse’s Life Is Full Of Woe 18. Only Bad Signs 19. Hold The Fort
From ‘Levi Stubbs’ Tears’ (June 1986)
20. Think Again 21. Walk Away Renee (Version) (Introducing Duane Tremelo)
From ‘Greetings To The New Brunette’ (November 1986)
22. The Tatler 23. Deportees (With Hank Wangford) 24. Jeane 25. Sin City (With Hank Wangford)
Part 4: 1988 – 1989 – Workers Playtime Plus…
Workers Playtime (September 1988)
1. She’s Got A New Spell 2. Must I Paint You A Picture 3. Tender Comrade 4. The Price I Pay 5. Little Time Bomb 6. Rotting On Remand 7. Valentine’s Day Is Over 8. Life With The Lions 9. The Only One 10. The Short Answer 11. Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards
Album Extras
12. The Price I Pay (Demo) 13. Love Has No Pride 14. That’s Entertainment 15. She’s Got A New Spell (Demo) 16. Little Time Bomb (Demo) 17. Bad Penny (Demo) 18. Reason To Believe (Live at Club Soda, Montreal, November 1988) 19. Raglan Road (Live at Womad Festival Toronto, August 1989) 20. She’s Leaving Home (With Cara Tivey) (Single, March 1988) 21. Wishing The Days Away (Ballad Version) (from ‘Waiting For The Great Leap Forward’, August 1988)
Part 5: 1990 – 1991 – The Internationale Plus…
The Internationale (May 1990)
1. The Internationale 2. I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night 3. The Marching Song Of The Covert Battalions 4. Blake’s Jerusalem 5. Nicaragua Nicarauguita 6. The Red Flag 7. My Youngest Son Came Home Today
Album Extras
8. Joe Hill (With The Pattersons) 9. This Land Is Your Land (With Heathens All) 10. Never Cross A Picket Line 11. A Change Is Gonna Come 12. A Miner’s Life
Live And Dubious E.P: Help Save The Youth Of America (April 1988)
13. Introduction 14. Help Save The Youth Of America (Live) 15. Think Again (Live) 16. Chile Your Waters Run Red Through Soweto (Live) 17. Days Like These (DC Remix) 18. To Have And To Have Not (Live) 19. There Is Power In A Union (With The Pattersons)
Billy Bragg Live (Canada 1991)
20. Levi Stubbs’ Tears (Live) 21. Ideology (Live) 22. The Short Answer (Live) 23. Seven & Seven Is (from ‘Rubáiyát (Elektra’s 40th Anniversary)’, March 1990)
Part 6: 1991 – 1992 – Don’t Try This At Home Plus…
Don’t Try This At Home (September 1991)
1. Accident Waiting To Happen 2. Moving The Goalposts 3. Everywhere 4. Cindy Of A Thousand Lives 5. You Woke Up My Neighbourhood 6. Trust 7. God’s Footballer 8. The Few 9. Sexuality 10. Mother Of The Bride 11. Tank Park Salute 12. Dolphins 13. North Sea Bubble 14. Rumours Of War 15. Wish You Were Her 16. Body Of Water 17. Bad Penny (from ‘Sexuality’, June 1991)
From ‘You Woke Up My Neighbourhood’ (September 1991)
18. Ontario, Quebec And Me 19. Bread And Circuses 20. Heart Like A Wheel
From ‘Accident Waiting To Happen’ (February 1992)
21. Accident Waiting To Happen (Red Star Version) 22. Sulk 23. Revolution
Part 7: 1996 – 1997 – William Bloke Plus…
William Bloke (September 1996)
1. From Red To Blue 2. Upfield 3. Everybody Loves You Babe 4. Sugardaddy 5. A Pict Song 6. Brickbat 7. The Space Race Is Over 8. Northern Industrial Town 9. The Fourteenth Of February 10. King James Version 11. Goalhanger
Album Extras
12. Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet? (Demo)
From ‘The Boy Done Good’ (May 1997)
13. The Boy Done Good (Extended Edit) 14. Run Out Of Reasons 15. Just One Victory
From ‘Bloke On Bloke’ (June 1997)
16. The Boy Done Good 17. Qualifications 18. Sugardaddy (Smokey Gets In Your Ears Mix) 19. Never Had No One Ever 20. Rule Nor Reason 21. Thatcherites
Part 8: 1998 – 2012 – The Mermaid Avenue Recordings
From ‘Mermaid Avenue’ (June 1998)
1. Walt Whitman’s Niece (With Wilco) 2. Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key (With Wilco) 3. Birds And Ships (With Natalie Merchant) 4. She Came Along To Me (With Wilco) 5. Ingrid Bergman 6. I Guess I Planted (With Wilco) 7. Eisler On The Go (With Wilco) 8. The Unwelcome Guest (With Wilco)
From ‘Mermaid Avenue Volume 2’ (November 1999)
9. My Flying Saucer (With Wilco) 10. Hot Rod Hotel (With Wilco) 11. Stetson Kennedy (With Wilco) 12. All You Fascists (With Wilco) 13. Meanest Man (With Wilco) 14. Black Wind Blowing
From ‘Mermaid Avenue Volume 3’ (June 2012)
15. Bugeye Jim 16. My Thirty Thousand (With Wilco) 17. Ought To Be Satisfied Now 18. Go Down To The Water 19. Jailcell Blues (With Wilco) 20. Don’t You Marry 21. Give Me A Nail (With Wilco) 22. Union Prayer 23. Be Kind To The Boy On The Road (With Wilco) 24. I’m Out To Get (With Wilco)
Part 9: 1998 – 2002: Billy Bragg And The Blokes Plus…
England, Half English (March 2002)
1. St. Monday 2. Jane Allen 3. Distant Shore 4. England, Half English 5. NPWA 6. Some Days I See The Point 7. Baby Faroukh 8. Take Down The Union Jack 9. Another Kind Of Judy 10. He’ll Go Down 11. Dreadbelly 12. The Tears Of My Tracks
From ‘Take Down The Union Jack’ (May 2002)
13. Mystery Shoes 14. England, Half English (7″ Remix) 15. Take Down The Union Jack (Band Version) 16. Yarra Song 17. You Pulled The Carpet Out
From ‘The Mermaid Avenue Tour: You Can Call Me Cupcake’ (January 1999)
18. Christ For President (Live in the studio October / November 1999) 19. California Stars (Live in the studio October / November 1999) 20. Hoodoo Ska Voodoo (Live in the studio October / November 1999) 21. My Father’s Mansion (from ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone: The Songs Of Pete Seeger’, March 1998) 22. England Half English Meets John Barleycorn (With Eliza and Martin Carthy) (from ‘The Imagined Village’ E.P., (September 2007)
Part 10: 2006 – 2010 Mr. Love & Justice Plus…
Mr. Love & Justice (March 2008)
1. I Keep Faith 2. I Almost Killed You 3. M For Me 4. The Beach Is Free 5. Sing Their Souls Back Home 6. You Make Me Brave 7. Something Happened 8. Mr. Love & Justice 9. If You Ever Leave 10. O Freedom 11. The Johnny Carcinogenic Show 12. Farm Boy 13. Ash Wednesday (Band Version) 14. Like Soldiers Do (Acoustic Version) (from ‘I Keep Faith’ 7-inch single, March 2008) 15. The Price Of Oil 16. Down In The Willow Garden (from ‘The Progressive Patriot: Complimentary Music’, November 2006) 17. Old Clash Fan Fight Song (from ‘Johnny Clash’ single, August 2007) 18. The Big Lie
From ‘Six Songs From Pressure Drop’ (April 2010)
19. Home 20. Same Again 21. There Will Be A Reckoning (Pressure Drop Version) 22. All You Fascists 2010 23. Tomorrow’s Going To Be A Better Day (Pressure Drop Version) 24. The Battle Of Barking 25. A New England (from ‘A Concert For Kirsty MacColl’, Shepherds Bush Empire 10/10/2010)
Part 11: 2011 – 2015 – Tooth & Nail Plus…
Tooth & Nail (March 2013)
1. January Song 2. No One Knows Nothing Anymore 3. Handyman Blues 4. I Ain’t Got No Home 5. Swallow My Pride 6. Do Unto Others 7. Over You 8. Goodbye, Goodbye 9. There Will Be A Reckoning 10. Chasing Rainbows 11. Your Name On My Tongue 12. Tomorrow’s Going To Be A Better Day
From ‘Fight Songs: A Decade Of Downloads’ (November 2011)
13. We’re Following The Wrong Star 14. Never Buy The Sun 15. Last Flight To Abu Dhabi 16. Constituition Hill 17. Lay Down Your Weary Tune (from ‘Chimes Of Freedom: The Songs Of Bob Dylan’, February 2012) 18. Song Of The Iceberg (from ‘No One Knows Nothing Anymore’ 7-inch Single, April 2013) 19. There Is Power In A Union (recorded for the film Pride, September 2014) 20. Hope St. (With The Levellers) (Single, 2014) 21. Kilroy Was Here (from ‘Joy Of Living: A Tribute To Ewan MacColl’ October 2015) 22. Sunday Morning (With Courtney Barnett) (from RockWiz Sunday Morning September 2015)
Part 12: 2016 – 2017 – Shine A Light Plus…
Shine A Light: Field Recordings From The Great American Railroad with Joe Henry (September 2016)
1. Rock Island Line 2. The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore 3. The Midnight Special 4. Railroad Bill 5. Lonesome Whistle 6. KC Moan 7. Waiting For A Train 8. In The Pines 9. Gentle On My Mind 10. Hobo’s Lullaby 11. Railroading On The Great Divide 12. John Henry 13. Early Morning Rain
Live at Buxton Opera House with Joe Henry 21/01/2017
14. Why We Build The Wall (Live) 15. The Midnight Special (Live) 16. The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore (Live)
Bridges Not Walls (November 2017)
17. The Sleep Of Reason 18. King Tide And The Sunny Day Flood 19. Why We Build The Wall 20. Saffiyah Smiles 21. Not Everything That Counts Can Be Counted 22. Full English Brexit
Part 13: 2021 – The Million Things Plus…
The Million Things That Never Happened (October 2021)
1. Should Have Seen It Coming 2. Mid-Century Modern 3. Lonesome Ocean 4. Good Days And Bad Days 5. Freedom Doesn’t Come For Free 6. Reflections On The Mirth Of Creativity 7. The Million Things That Never Happened 8. The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here No More 9. I Believe In You 10. Pass It On 11. I Will Be Your Shield 12. Ten Mysterious Photos That Can’t Be Explained
Lockdown Live: The Million Things Streamed Launch (September 2021)
13. Sulk (Live) 14. Moving The Goalposts (Live) 15. Ten Mysterious Photos That Can’t Be Explained (Live) 16. The Million Things That Never Happened (Live) 17. King Tide And The Sunny Day Flood (Live) 18. Mid-Century Modern (Live) 19. Cindy Of A Thousand Lives (Live) 20. Lonesome Ocean (Live)
Part 14: Rare and Previously Unreleased Recordings 1987 – 2015
1. Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve) (Live) 2. The Internationale (with Pete Seeger) 3. Salt of the Earth (with Peter Buck) 4. My Youngest Son Came Home Today (with Michael Stipe) 5. PF Sloan Billy Bragg (with Mike Mills) 6. Darling, Let’s Have Another Baby (with Kirsty MacColl) 7. If I Had A Hammer Billy Bragg (with Eliza Carthy) 8. Slipknot 9. Marching Out From Selma 10. When The Ship Comes In (Live) 11. Don’t Do It Liza Billy Bragg (with KT Tunstall) 12. The Drugs Don’t Work Billy Bragg (with KT Tunstall) 13. I Ain’t Got No Home (with Foy Vance) 14. On A Good Day 15. Talkin’ World War III Blues 16. The Rebels of ’48 (Live) 17. An English Revolutionary (Live) 18. Ballots and Bread (Live) 19. Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You (with Joe Henry) 20. If We Make It Through December (with Joe Henry) 21. Springhill 22. Can’t Be There Today
Kate Bush has delivered on her promise of ‘special presentations’ of her classic 1985 album Hounds of Love with three new editions, none of which offers any new audio.
The Baskerville Edition is a gatefold vinyl presentation with entirely new artwork by Glasgow-based design studio Timorous Beasties (who delivered some of the illustrations for Before The Dawn). Inside the gatefold is a LED light (“little light…shining”) which doesn’t require batteries since it’s powered via a solar panel on the rear of the product! Oh yes. You can see clearly what the product is like from the video below. There are no bonus tracks or anything like that and indeed this edition uses the same 2018 remaster as the recently announced black and coloured vinyl reissues. Interestingly, ‘The Big Sky’ is no longer indicated as the ‘single mix’ even though it must be, if they are using the 2018 version. The Baskerville Edition is retailing for £138 from Kate’s newly-designed website.
The other two editions actually split the album in half. The Boxes of Lost At Sea Edition consists of two boxes, each containing one side of the album. Each disc features a UV printed illustration on white vinyl and a battery powered LED light. Kate says: “The idea was to create a hybrid of an album and a piece of artwork you could hang on the wall. They’re based on something I designed for an auction for the charity War Child”. (In 1993 Brian Eno asked Kate to contribute to an auction for War Child, and she came up with the idea of two identical box frames, each containing a flashing red LED with text on brass plaques). A donation will be made to War Child from each new box that is sold.
The Boxes of Lost At Sea editions are part art, part album
These boxes are £285 each, so that’s £570 for the album, although there’s a bundle edition of this hybrid album/art edition available which costs £500.
All three new editions of Hounds of Love will be released on 1 December 2023 via The state51 Conspiracy. They appear only to be available via Kate’s site. Don’t forget you can order the standard coloured vinyl indie editions from the SDE shop as an alternative to the above!
The back of the ‘The Baskerville Edition’ of Hounds of Love. The black square is a solar panel that charges the LED light within
Tracklisting
Hounds of LoveKate Bush /The Baskerville Edition
Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) (2018 Remaster)
Hounds Of Love (2018 Remaster)
The Big Sky (2018 Remaster)
Mother Stands For Comfort (2018 Remaster)
Cloudbusting (2018 Remaster)
And Dream Of Sheep (2018 Remaster)
Under Ice (2018 Remaster)
Waking The Witch (2018 Remaster)
Watching You Without Me (2018 Remaster)
Jig Of Life (2018 Remaster)
Hello Earth (2018 Remaster)
The Morning Fog (2018 Remaster)
Tracklisting
Hounds of LoveKate Bush /The Boxes of Lost at Sea Edition – Box A
Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) (2018 Remaster)
Hounds Of Love (2018 Remaster)
The Big Sky (2018 Remaster)
Mother Stands For Comfort (2018 Remaster)
Cloudbusting (2018 Remaster)
Tracklisting
Hounds of LoveKate Bush /The Boxes of Lost at Sea Edition – Box B
The ‘new’ Beatles single Now and Then will be released as a CD single, it has just been confirmed.
This format was notable for its absence when the release was announced last week, but it’s now happening. Like all other formats, the CD will feature ‘Now and Then’, plus the 2023 stereo remix of ‘Love Me Do’.
The release date remains 3 November 2023 which rather suggests that this was in the planning all along.
The pre-order window for the Soft Cell Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret SDE-exclusive blu-ray CLOSES TODAY. This is No 15 in the ongoing SDE Surround Series and will be packaged the same as previous editions and ships with a free, collectible SDE Surround Series slipcase with the number 15 on the spine.
This blu-ray audio offers you a Non-Stop Immersive Cabaret, featuring a brand new 2023 Dolby Atmos Mix of Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret created at Abbey Road Studios under the supervision of the band. Additionally, three non-album singles ‘Memorabilia‘, ‘Torch‘ and ‘What!’ are also included in Dolby Atmos, meaning this blu-ray includes all five of Soft Cell’s UK top 10 hits, in Atmos!
Furthermore, instrumentals of the album and the three bonus tracks are also included in Dolby Atmos and the same 13 tracks also feature in the original 1981 stereo mix, remastered.If that’s not enough, four original Tim Pope promo videos for ‘Bedsitter’, ‘Say Hello Wave Goodbye’, ‘Torch’ and ‘What!’, available physically in HD for the very first time.
Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret blu-ray is released on 1 December 2023, alongside the other reissue formats, including the 6CD box set. Secure your copy by ordering via the SDE shop using this link or the pre-order button, below.
Don’t miss out! This is your last chance to guarantee you get a copy. There may be some cancellation/contingency stock around the time of release, but this is not definite.
Tracklisting
Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret Soft Cell /SDE-exclusive blu-ray
You can always rely on The Beatles – or should I say news of a Beatles archival product – to get the SDE audience engaged. The SDE post about last Thursday’s announcement of both a ‘new’ song called ‘Now and Then’, and a set of new-and-improved 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 compilations (more commonly referred to as the ‘Red‘ and ‘Blue‘ albums), has generated more than 300 comments so far. As is often the case, opinion is split. One person’s “why can’t they leave these alone – they’re perfect as they are?” is another’s “Nice to see they are filling up the excess capacity on CD with more songs!”.
There’s certainly a lot to unpack. Arguably, the most exciting aspect has been the least heralded: the new mixes of songs from 1962-1965, made possible by the advance of so-called ‘demixing’ technology, first used by Apple Corps for the 2022 remix of Revolver. Together, these tracks form a taster menu for future super deluxe editions.
Of course, commerce and art are not always great bedfellows and, inevitably, there’s more than a few decisions that leave you head-scratching. For example, why do the CD editions of ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ have their additional tracks inserted chronologically into the running order, while the LPs herd them together on a third record? Why does ‘Now and Then’ (correctly) end 1967-1970 on the 2CD set when on vinyl it sits before tracks from The White Album, Let It Be and Abbey Road?
The remixed tracks form a taster menu for future super deluxe editions
Paul Sinclair, SDE.
Also, at the time of release, these two compilations included every UK Beatles single. 50 years later, the updated versions, despite all the extra tracks, do not. ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ are missing. Should we look forward to ‘Now and Then’ being similarly sidelined for future compilations?
By far the biggest query (I’m being polite: the biggest complaint) is to do with the Dolby Atmos versions of the new Red and Blue compilations. Let’s remember, we were assured that the omission of the Atmos version of the new mix of Revolver on blu-ray in last year’s box set was logistical misfortune and not a change in strategy. Fair enough, so what’s the reason this time? (insert Oscar Wilde quote, from The Importance of Being Earnest).
In 2017, so committed were Apple Corps to surround sound via physical product that they gave us a blu-ray and a DVD in the Sgt. Pepper box set. Now for the second year in a row, a major Beatles reissue campaign has no blu-ray at all. Some sources (scroll down to the bottom of this Stereophile article) have Apple boss Jeff Jones explicitly stating that they’ll be no more Atmos blu-rays going forward. Just as I am noticing a new enthusiasm from fans and a shift in thinking amongst artists and labels with regards to physical blu-rays – with recent reissues including The Rolling Stones, Prince, Van Morrison and Pink Floyd offering them as standalone products – The Beatles are going in the opposite direction. Why? Surely it’s obvious that the demographic for these products are the very people who value physical media and invest in pricey hi-fi set-ups, with many desiring spatial audio in its highest quality form: blu-ray.
Some sources have Apple boss Jeff Jones stating they’ll be no more Atmos blu-rays going forward
Paul Sinclair, SDE
Finally, Paul McCartney’s oft-quoted observation that The Beatles always wanted to give value for money to fans (with new compositions on B-sides and not putting singles on albums, etc.) should now be consigned to history and looked upon with curiosity, like bowler hats or queuing at bus stops. The new single ‘Now and Then’ is available in at least SEVEN different formats, mostly coloured vinyl variants. This may be modest compared to The Rolling Stones’ 43+ versions of Hackney Diamonds, but the Fabs have seen the bandwagon and they’re going to jump on it. A CD single has just been confirmed.
This article was first featured in the SDE Newsletter on 29 October. The 2023 reissues of the ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ albums are released on 10 November 2023, via Apple/UMR. ‘Now and Then’ is out on Friday, 3 November.
The recently announced Neil Youngalbum, Before & After, is being made available on the blu-ray audio format.
With this album, Young chooses favourites from his playbook like a trip into his music history and performs them mostly alone on a solo acoustic journey. Apparently, each of the songs blend into each other and “morph with mesmerising clarity into a continuous flow of music creating a 48-minute pure and intimate listening experience”.
The 13-track record spans Neil’s career, from his early Buffalo Springfield contribution, ‘Burned’ (1966) to the recent ‘Don’t Forget Love’ (2021) and includes the previously unreleased song ‘If You Got Love’.
The blu-ray comes with a poster lyric sheet
Neil is well known for his interest in high quality audio but it has been over a decade since he has issued a new album on blu-ray as a standalone format (he did it twice in 2012 with Americana and Psychedelic Pill) so this is certainly welcome.
This special blu-ray audio edition offers a Dolby Atmos Mix, a hi-res 96-24 stereo mix and interestingly a ‘binaural’ mix which offers a spatial audio mix via headphones.
Before and After is released on 8 December 2023 via Warner Records. You can order your copy of the blu-ray audio from the SDE shop using this link or via the button below. Given how expensive the CD is, this makes the investment in the blu-ray more attractive!
Depeche Mode’s video/film collections Strange (1988) and Strange Too (1990) are brought together for a blu-ray and DVD release in December.
Only ever issued on VHS and Laserdisc, these collections of music videos and short films by Anton Corbijn were undertaken for, arguably, their two best albums 1987’s Music For The Masses and 1990’s Violator (although the final Black Celebration single, ‘A Question of Time’, also features on Strange).
This new combined collection presents 11 Anton Corbijn/Depeche Mode music films, newly restored from original Super 8mm sources, alongside six previously unseen outtake “vignettes” from the DM archives. When assembling the final edits for Strange and Strange Too, Corbijn created a visual running order where the individual music videos are perceived as one continuous film, with additional interstitial content not seen in the original promo clips.
The new Strange / Strange Too blu-ray/DVD package
Remembering the filming, Corbijn says “The idea to make this into a connected series of little films and fake interviews came late into the process of shooting these. I was shooting all the films myself on black & white Super 8 film. We put all this together on a shoestring budget; those were the days. We have to look at these films in the light of us being young; we were experimenting and I am happy we were given that space at the time by Daniel Miller.”
The blu-ray and DVD configurations of this release come in a digipack with a 16-page concertina booklet featuring photographs and new liner notes penned by Anton Corbijn.
Strange/Strange Too will be released on 8 December 2023, via Sony Music Entertainment.
The Fab Four’s ‘new’ song is released physically on Friday just 8 days after it was officially announced. There’s at least eight different versions, including multiple coloured vinyl seven-inches, 12-inch vinyl and cassettes.
Last year Amazon Music unveiled some new and exclusive remixes of tracks from George Michael’sOlder album by new dance and electronic producers and collaborators including LF System, Emily Nash, Kiimi and Absolute. These were digital-only, but this week they are released physically on a 12-inch vinyl. The tracks are LF System’s remix of ‘Fastlove’, Emily Nash’s remix of ‘The Strangest Thing’, Kiimi’s remix of ‘Spinning The Wheel’ and Absolute’s remix of ‘Star People ’97’.
Belinda Carlisle’s third album features the hit singles ‘Leave A Light On’, ‘La Luna’, ‘(We Want) The Same Thing’ and ‘Summer Rain’. This half-speed mastered vinyl is housed in a poly-lined sleeve and this package comes with an OBI-strip and four-page insert.
A very exclusive playback event is happening on Thursday 2 November in Central London where the new Dolby Atmos Mix of Soft Cell’sNon-Stop Erotic Cabaret will be premiered in front of a small audience.
SDE will be there co-hosting this and I’d like to offer the opportunity for a few SDE readers to come along and hear this Non-Stop Immersive Cabaret.
So if you would like to attend, and you are available, early evening on Thursday (details will be provided), please leave a comment below. We’ll randomly select eight lucky winners on Monday morning at 8am and be in touch via email.
The Dolby Atmos Mix features on the SDE-exclusive blu-ray of Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. If you haven’t pre-ordered your copy yet, it’s available only via the SDE shop using this link, or the button below.
The blu-ray also features bonus singles (‘Memorabilia’, ‘Torch’, ‘What!’) in Atmos, Dolby Atmos Instrumentals, the remastered original stereo mix of the album and four HD videos. It’s released on 1 December 2023 alongside the 6CD box set and vinyl formats.
Tracklisting
Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret Soft Cell /SDE-exclusive blu-ray
SDEtv explores the new Kirsty MacColl box set that features eight CDs worth of music from across her career including over 40 previously unreleased tracks. Watch the video!
Perhaps no artist lends themselves as well to the super deluxe box set treatment as Prince. As everyone knows, he recorded vastly more music than he ever released. Even the quickest flick through Duane Tudhal’s books, which dissect his studio sessions from 1983-84 and 1985-86 with in-depth research and scholarly rigour, leaves you both agog at Prince’s Stakhanovite approach to music – did the guy ever sleep? – and profoundly glad you weren’t working with him: subject to phone calls in the middle of the night demanding your immediate presence in the studio or, in the case of one member of The Revolution, obliged to leave your own wedding party midway through in order to record a new track. Paisley Park’s infamous Vault – wherein, it’s alleged, lurk thousands of unreleased tracks – has proved impossibly fertile ground for posthumous compilers. It slightly undersells the vastly extended editions of Purple Rain, 1999 and Sign O’ The Timesthat have appeared over the last eight years to say they contain ‘extra tracks’: they are home to albums and albums of material as good as the stuff he deigned to release in the 80s. Sometimes, what’s emerged is of a quality that’s baffling: if he had an album as good as Welcome 2 America in the can in 2010, why didn’t he release it then, instead of the sub-par 20Ten?
Which brings us to the latest instalment in the super-deluxe series of Prince reissues. On release, 1991’s Diamonds And Pearls sold 6m copies – his biggest album since Purple Rain – but it occupies a hotly-contested position within the Prince canon. There are people who’ll tell you it was the last incontrovertible classic Prince released in his lifetime, a brilliant and unexpected marshalling of his energies and eclectic tastes after the uneven Batman soundtrack and the disaster of Graffiti Bridge; the final time Prince made an album that needed no special pleading, with his genius evident from soup to nuts. Equally, there are people who think that particular ship sailed some years before, and that Prince’s genius last seemed unquestionable on Lovesexy or even Sign O’ The Times. There are also people who’ll tell you that Prince’s greatest album is The Rainbow Children or Musicology, but they’re either insane or engaged in posturing of the eye-understand-Prince’s-work-on-a-deeper-and-more-profound-level-that-U variety and either way their opinion need not detain us.
Diamonds and Pearls occupies a hotly-contested position within the Prince canon
Alexis Petridis
After consuming the box set – which expands the original album’s 65 minutes to over seven hours of music (plus a blu-ray featuring a frankly astonishing 1992 live performance from Prince’s Minneapolis nightclub Glam Slam), and arrives packaged with an impressively detailed hardback book and features vinyl mastered by Bernie Grundman, whose name is about as close to a trademark of quality as you can get in these matters – you find yourself wavering between the two viewpoints. On the one hand, Diamonds And Pearls itself contains more no-further-questions classics than either of its predecessors – ‘Gett Off’, ‘Money Don’t Matter 2 Night’, ‘Insatiable’, ‘Cream’, the title track – and it’s impressively varied in its scope. It variously touches on jazz, T Rex, funk, Steely Dan, hip hop and soul. Opener ‘Thunder’ attempts to meld together psychedelia (by way of a sitar), early 90s R&B, squealing hair metal guitars and a nagging pop chorus, a cocktail no one other than Prince would have thought of mixing. The backing track of ‘Willing And Able’ sounds a little like The Police, of all people.
On the other, it feels noticeably more dated than Prince’s earlier albums. The influence of New Jack Swing is pronounced, which locks it into its era, partly because the version of New Jack Swing it alights on – stabbing samples, then-cutting-edge drum machines heavy on the cowbell sound – is one that 21st Century pop has yet to revive. There are good songs among the deep cuts – the jazzy ‘Strollin’’ is lovely – but nothing you’d describe as an overlooked masterpiece, and not all the experiments work. As Chuck D puts it in the accompanying booklet’s introductory essay, Prince “didn’t jump into rap right away”, which is a tactful way of saying he dabbled in it – rapping on 1983’s ‘Irresistible Bitch’ – then took to dismissing it: “the only good rapper is one that’s dead,” he sang on The Black Album’s ‘Dead On It’. By the time of Diamonds And Pearls, he’d clearly reconsidered, apparently impressed by Digital Underground’s ‘The Humpty Dance’. Indeed, the outtakes and b-sides assembled on the box set reveal that Diamonds And Pearls might have been a far more hip hop-influenced album than the one he eventually released: ‘Something Funky This House Comes’, ‘Horny Pony’, ‘The Last Dance (Bang Zoom And The Whole Nine)’, ‘Things Have Gotta Change’.
There are good songs among the deep cuts – the jazzy ‘Strollin’’ is lovely – but nothing you’d describe as an overlooked masterpiece, and not all the experiments work.
Alexis Petridis
The problem was Prince’s choice of rapper: it was a golden age for hip hop, and Prince could presumably have had his pick of top-tier collaborators, but instead he opted to stay local, employing Tony M, a Minnesotan whose rhymes were of a similar standard to those found on early 90s pop/dance tracks – ‘Rhythm Is A Dancer’ by Snap!, ‘Dirty Cash’ by The Adventures Of Stevie V. His presence makes Prince’s ventures into hip hop seem a little dilettantish, as if something of it lay beyond his grasp: a disappointment, given that he’d previously seemed capable of making pretty much any musical genre bend to his will.
Outside the album itself, and the plethora of additional remixes – ranging from the essential (the Damn Near 10 Minutes version of ‘Gett Off’), to completists-only single edits – the haul of songs from The Vault seems a little less abundant than that on 1999 or Sign O’ The Times, perhaps because a lot of the tracks here ended up being released by other artists: El DeBarge, Rosie Gaines, Mavis Staples, three songs from Martika’s 1991 album Martika’s Kitchen. Then again, that doesn’t stop Prince’s original versions being great: you listen to the joyous title track from Martika’s Kitchen and boggle that it was only a minor hit in the UK, and flopped altogether in the States. And among the material that never found a home, previously known only to bootleg collectors and file-swappers, there’s real gold. Not enough to suggest that Prince could have easily released two albums of equivalent quality in 1991, but enough to have drastically reconfigured Diamonds And Pearls itself, and possibly to have improved it: the frantic ‘Streetwalker’ – co-written with Rosie Gaines – the vaguely ‘Little Red Corvette’-esque ‘Lauriann’, the stuttering electronic funk of ‘Hey U’. The best thing here might be the drum-machine-driven ‘Schoolyard’, which is implausibly funky and richly melody, although you can understand why Prince elected to keep that one to himself: even by his standards, the lyrics are a bit much. They depict his first sexual encounter, aged 16, with a girl two years younger than him, complete with – and there’s no easy way of putting this – a fairly detailed description of her vagina.
Elsewhere, even the less essential stuff is intriguing: a remix of Glam Slam from which ‘Gett Off’ was ultimately derived; a hugely extended and re-arranged version of ‘Thunder’ that was used as music for a ballet; ‘Letter 4 Miles’, a jazz piece composed in response to his friend and sometime collaborator Miles Davis’ death. You can argue that it would have been more exciting had the super-deluxe treatment been meted out to one of Prince’s unquestionable classics – Around The World In A Day, or Parade – but wallowing in what’s here is still a pleasure. Diamonds And Pearls has its flaws, evidence that Prince wasn’t as unfailingly great in 1991 as he had been four or five years earlier, but he was still great: great enough to make a deep dive as extensive as this seem a delight, rather than a chore.
Review by Alexis Petridis for SDE.
The Diamonds and Pearls reissue is out today via Warner Records. The exception to this is the blu-ray audio edition which is delayed until 24 November. It’s available via the SDE shop using this link or the button below.
2023 Editions of ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ on CD & vinyl with extra songs & 36 new stereo mixes • ‘Now and Then’ added to the ‘Blue’ album & available as a physical single
1962-1966 and 1967-1970, the two classic Beatles compilations – better known as the ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ Albums – will be reissued next month, newly remixed and expanded with the notable inclusion of ‘Now and Then’ the first ‘new’ song from the Fab Four since ‘Real Love’ in 1996.
The two compilations were first issued in 1973, created by Apple and EMi/Capitol in response to 4LP vinyl bootlegs called Alpha Omega Volumes I & II: The Story Of The Beatles being advertised on TV and radio stations in the US and sold by mail order. In fact, Allen Klein, the maligned manager of Apple’s and The Beatles’ business affairs instigated the two official collections not long before he was dismissed.
Both compilations remain 2CD sets, despite the extra tracks (1967-1970, pictured above)
‘The Red Album’ starts with ‘Love Me Do’ in 1962 and ends with ‘Yellow Submarine’ from 1966. It included none of The Beatles’ many cover versions, nor any songs written by George Harrison, all being Lennon-McCartney compositions. For the new edition of 1962-1966, 12 songs have been added, including George’s ‘If I Needed Someone’ (from Rubber Soul) and ‘Taxman’ (from Revolver). ‘Twist and Shout’, the last song recorded for 1963’s Please Please Me by a voice-shredded John Lennon also features, as does ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ which is sung by George and features on With The Beatles (also released in 1963, of course).
Revolver was, arguably, under-represented originally (only featuring ‘Yellow Submarine’ and Eleanor Rigby’), so now in addition to ‘Taxman’, ‘The Red Album’ now features ‘Got to Get You into My Life’, ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. At seven tracks, there’s now a case for the pendulum having swung too much in the other direction and it might be over-represented!
1967-1970 has fewer tracks added. The only addition to what was the first record in this 2LP set is George’s ‘Within You, Without You’ from Sgt. Pepper. Harrison’s ‘I Me Mine’ (the last Beatles/Threetles session until the 1990s) is added to what was LP 2, along with ‘Dear Prudence’, ‘Glass Onion’, ‘Blackbird’, ‘Hey Bulldog’, ‘Oh! Darling’, and ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’.
The cover art to ‘Now and Then’ is by Ed Ruscha
The headline news is that a ‘new’ Beatles song called ‘Now and Then’ ends what is now an inaccurately titled 1967-1970. Like ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’, this song is an old John Lennon demo from the 1970s that Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr attempted to ‘finish’ during the Anthology period of the mid-90s. It was abandoned, reportedly because Harrison was apparently not too keen. ‘Now and Then’ features elements from the 1995 sessions including George’s guitar parts, and vocal and instrumental parts recorded by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in 2022, along with a new arrangement for strings. It’s produced by Paul and Giles Martin. Talking of ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’, it’s curious that neither song earns a place at the end of ‘The Blue Album’ while ‘Now and Then’ does.
The songs are all in stereo versions with 36 of the 75 tracks across the four CDs in brand new stereo remixes using state of the art ‘de-mixing’ technology utilising ‘Machine-Aided Learning [MAL]’, which was used for last year’s Revolver box set. The 36 songs are mostly (but not entirely) from 1962 to 1965. All tracks have been mixed for Dolby Atmos too (existing or new mixes), although for the second year running there is no physical blu-ray to host the Atmos Mixes of a major Beatles reissue campaign. John Harris contributes new sleeve notes.
In terms of the actual new physical products, on CD 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 remain 2CD sets. The extra songs have been slotted in place in chronological order. On vinyl, both titles become 3LP editions. 6LP and 4CD box sets are available but they only add a slipcase.
‘Now and Then’ is also being issued as a seven-inch vinyl record with ‘Love Me Do’ on the B-side, in various coloured vinyl editions. There are also 12-inch and cassette variants. The single is officially ‘released in a week’s time on 2 November.
1962-1966, 1967-1970 and ‘Now and Then’ are all released on 10 November 2023 via Apple/UMR.
NOW That’s What I Call Music continue their vinyl-only 80s Dancefloor series with a 2LP set focussed on Disco & Electro.
The first volume (HI-NRG and Pop) was issued earlier this month, while this new selection features 29 tracks pressed on purple and pink vinyl, including songs from Carly Simon, Irene Cara, Sister Sledge, Diana Ross, Donna Summer, Chaka Khan, Nu Shooz, The SOS Band, Malcolm McLaren and many more.
NOW 80s Dancefloor: Disco & Electro will be released on 1 December 2023.
Compare prices and pre-order
Various Artists
Now 80s Dancefloor - Disco and Electro - 2LP coloured vinyl
