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Frankie… Say it again on UMC

New era for the iconic ZTT label and its biggest act

By Paul Sinclair

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Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s two studio albums, and the greatest hits Bang!, will be reissued in December by Universal Music Catalogue (UMC) – new owners of the ZTT label – which officially kicks off the process of ‘working’ the band’s back catalogue.

Welcome to the Pleasuredome, from 1984, featured the group’s three number one singles (‘Relax’, ‘Two Tribes’ and ‘The Power of Love’) and the title track, which was the fourth single, and ‘only’ got to number two in the UK.

Follow up Liverpool, issued in 1986, saw engineer Stephen Lipson jump in Trevor Horn’s producer’s seat and deliver a more rock-oriented offering. Of the three singles from that album, only ‘Rage Hard’ was a significant hit. The band split in 1987.

The Bang!…The Greatest Hits Of Frankie Goes To Hollywood was the first ‘best of’,  issued six year’s later in 1993, alongside a spate of single remixes and reissues. The compilation features all seven singles, a few album tracks and the odd B-side.

The reissues fuse the ZTT and the UMC logo together

All three releases are now available again on CD and vinyl. Bang! is now a double vinyl LP for the first time. Although this clearly is not particularly exciting for collectors, it’s normal practice for a label with newly acquired catalogue to get ‘vanilla’ versions in the marketplace before moving on to mining the archives and offering more curated archive reissues and box sets.

The ZTT label was founded by Trevor Horn, Jill Sinclair and Paul Morley in 1983. Other notable acts on ZTT included the Art of Noise, Propaganda, Andrew Poppy, Grace Jones and 808 State. In the last 20 years, the catalogue has been licensed out to German label Repertoire, Union Square’s Salvo imprint and even Universal Music, who issued the Frankie Say Greatest compilation in 2009. The situation today is different to those previous arrangements however, since UMC have bought the label and all its assets outright (along with Perfect Songs Publishing).

Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Liverpool and Bang! are all issued on 11 December 2020.

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Welcome To The Pleasuredome

SIDE ONE

  1. well…
  2. The World Is My Oyster
  3. snatch of fury (stay)
  4. Welcome To The Pleasuredome

SIDE TWO

  1. Relax (come fighting)
  2. War (…and hide)
  3. Two Tribes (for the victims of ravishment)

SIDE THREE

  1. Ferry (Go)
  2. Born To Run
  3. San Jose (The Way)
  4. Wish (The Lads Were Here)
  5. Ballad Of 32

SIDE FOUR

  1. Krisco Kisses
  2. Black Night White Light
  3. The Only Star In Heaven
  4. The Power Of Love
  5. Bang

Liverpool

Side One

  1. Warriors of The Wasteland
  2. Rage Hard
  3. Kill the Pain
  4. Maximum Joy

Side Two

  1. Watching the Wildlife
  2. Lunar Bay
  3. For Heaven’s Sake
  4. Is Anybody Out There?

Bang!… The Greatest Hits of Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Side One

  1. Relax
  2. Two Tribes
  3. War
  4. Ferry Cross the Mersey

Side Two

  1. Warriors of The Wasteland
  2. For Heaven’s Sake
  3. The World Is My Oyster

Side Three

  1. Welcome to The Pleasuredome

Side Four

  1. Watching the Wildlife
  2. Born to Run
  3. Rage Hard
  4. The Power of Love
  5. Bang

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