Tabla de contenidos para July - August 2021 en Classic Pop

WELCOME Do you remember the first time that you laid eyes on Boy George? For me, like many others of my generation, that came in 1982 with Culture Club’s Top Of The Pops debut as they performed Do You Really Want To Hurt Me. Those four minutes remain one of the 80’s defining musical and televisual moments, the kind of show-stealing appearance that instantly became the major talking point in every schoolyard and workplace the following day as its cultural impact was felt across the nation. But enough of the nostalgia, that does something of a disservice to Boy George and everything he stands for as an artist. We may be celebrating his 60th birthday with a rather special cover feature interview this issue, but George, as was ever thus,…

POP UP Midge Ure tours classic album double-header Midge Ure will celebrate 40 years of two classic Ultravox albums on a nationwide UK tour next year. Rage In Eden, the band’s 1981 LP and the second featuring Ure on vocals, alongside the following year’s Quartet, will be the centrepiece of his Voice & Visions show. Midge explains: “I can’t begin to tell you how great it feels to be back out touring after the uncertainty of the past two years and it’s especially exciting to delve back in time and revitalise two standout albums from my career. This is the logical and emotional follow-up to the 1980 Tour.” Visiting 29 cities, the shows kick off at Bradford’s historic St George’s Hall on 21 February 2022 and ends on 2 April…

CLARE GROGAN READIES SOLO ALBUM DEBUT Altered Images singer Clare Grogan is finally making her debut solo album – 38 years after the band split. Clare revealed to Classic Pop that she had begun writing songs two years ago and developed them during the pandemic. She’ll be collaborating with her long-time friend, Bluebells singer Bobby Bluebell, neighbour Bernard Butler, as well as her husband, Altered Images multi-instrumentalist Stephen Lironi. “Other jobs had got in the way of writing songs,” explains Grogan. “But there’s only so much Netflix you can watch and I thought it was time to focus on writing. I should have a nice collection of songs together by the summer.” After Altered Images ended, Clare recorded a solo album called Trash Mad in 1987, but it was unreleased…

ROGER TAYLOR DRUMS UP SUPPORT FOR NEW SOLO ALBUM Roger Taylor has announced his first live performances outside Queen in more than two decades to coincide with a new solo album. The drummer will play 14 shows across the UK this autumn to promote his Outsider LP, which is released on 1 October. With Queen + Adam Lambert’s epic UK and European tour on pause until 2022, Taylor will play new material and revisit some of the band’s classics as part of the intimate shows. “For some time now, we’ve all just been trying to get by,” explains Taylor. “Now it’s back to the basics, myself and some great musical pals getting back out there to play some rock. Obviously we’ll include some of the Queen classic catalogue and some…

THIS POP MONTH IN POP JULY 1987 IN OUR ROUND-UP OF JUNE 1987’S BIGGEST MOMENTS IN POP, KYLIE MINOGUE AND RICK ASTLEY RELEASE THEIR DEBUT SINGLES, THE PET SHOP BOYS ENJOY THE NO.1 SPOT AND FUTURE STAR KATE NASH IS BORN… SEVE O’ BRIEN 03 Bon Jovi play The Rubber Bowl in Akron, Ohio, as part of their epic 15-month Slippery When Wet Tour. 06 Singer-songwriter Kate Nash is born in Harrow, London. Twenty-one years later she will win the Best British Female Artist gong at the 2008 BRIT Awards. 13 Kylie Minogue releases her debut single, The Loco-Motion, in her native Australia. Its success leads her to Stock Aitken Waterman’s door and a re-recorded version of the song becomes a No.2 UK hit in 1988. 21 Guns N’ Roses release…

BOY GEORGE WILDE ABOUT THE BOY © Sean J Vincent Boy George’s new YouTube album Cool Karaoke Volume 1 includes a duet with Kim Wilde, Name And Number. In return, Kim’s new compilation Pop Don’t Stop, which marks 40 years since Kids In America launched her career, features George singing on Shine On. “That was a wonderful coincidence,” George smiles. “Name And Number has a vibe like the New York club Paradise Garage, and is also a bit 90s Madonna. When I wrote it, I thought, ‘Kim Wilde would be so good on this.’ And then she contacted me to ask me to be on Shine On. It became a simple question of swapping tunes for each other to sing on. I love Kim, she’s really cool in a very…

ICONS OF LOVE During his impressive 40-year career, Barry White was only ever not listed as a producer on his own music twice: I Only Want To Be With You and Come On were both Jam & Lewis productions, on White’s 1994 album The Icon Is Love. Terry thinks Barry felt comfortable enough to let them lead because they “talked to him as fans” and “revered his music”, explaining: “Barry appreciated that we’d taken the time to do our homework. We just wanted to recreate Barry – we weren’t trying to change him.” Not only did Jam & Lewis get Barry to relinquish production duties, they also managed to persuade him to record outside of LA – something he rarely did. “He actually came to Minneapolis,” explains Jimmy. “We did the…

CLASSIC ALBUM BEHAVIOUR THE SONGS 1 BEING BORING While Being Boring only peaked at a comparitively lowly No.20 in the UK after it was released as a single in November 1990, it remains one of the Pet Shop Boys’ defining moments. It is closely informed by the AIDS-related death at the age of 34 of Chris Dowell, who had been friends with Neil Tennant from childhood. The three half-sung/half-spoken verses encompass the teenage parties attended by Tennant and Dowell, and Tennant’s move to London in the 1970s before, in the final verse, Neil reflects on his current life, while Dowell has died and other friends are ill. Despite its pensive mood, it is inspired in part by Stock Aitken Waterman: it replicates their oft-used device of moving up a semi-tone…

MADONNA POSING THE QUESTION: WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? Like many of the fans impacted by Truth Or Dare, filmmakers Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan_often wondered what had happened to the seven young dancers whose apparent confidence and self-assuredness epitomised gay liberation to a generation of Madonna fans. Their curiosity led to the pair tracking them down a quarter of a century later, for an eye-opening, moving documentary, Strike A Pose, which catches up with the six surviving dancers (Gabriel Trupin died in 1995 and is represented in the film by his mother) to see how their lives unfolded. As well as discussing the lawsuit some filed against Madonna in 1992 for invasion of privacy for their depiction in the original film, we see some still working as dancers and choreographers, some recovering from problems with…

LIFE THROUGH A LENS THOMPSON TWINS THE MORNING BEFORE A GIG AT ASTON UNIVERSITY IN THE WINTER OF 1982, THOMPSON TWINS LARKED AROUND ON BIRMINGHAM'S GRAND UNION CANAL WITH PHOTOGRAPHER JUSTIN THOMAS STEVE HARNELL For more of Justin's photography, visit justin-thomas-photography.myshopify.com/…

TOP TEN WEEK ENDING 6 JULY 1986 MADONNA HITS THE TOP SPOT, WHILE WHAM! SAY SAYONARA AND OWEN PAUL ENJOYS HIS ONLY CHART HIT… STEVE O’ BRIEN 01 (2) PAPA DON’T PREACH MADONNA (SIRE) 02 (1) THE EDGE OF HEAVEN WHAM! (EPIC) 03 (4) MY FAVOURITE WASTE OF TIME OWEN PAUL (EPIC) 04 (3) HAPPY HOUR THE HOUSEMARTINS (GO! DISCS) 05 (6) TOO GOOD TO BE FORGOTTEN AMAZULU (ISLAND) 06 (23) LET’S GO ALL THE WAY SLY FOX (CAPITOL) 07 (5) I CAN’T WAIT NU SHOOZ (ATLANTIC) 08 (9) VENUS BANANARAMA (LONDON) 09 (8) NEW BEGINNING (MAMBA SEYRA) BUCKS FIZZ (POLYDOR) 10 (12) DO YA DO YA (WANNA PLEASE ME) SAMANTHA FOX (12) DO YA DO YA (WANNA PLEASE ME) SAMANTHA FOX (JIVE) PAPA DON’T PREACH MADONNA (SIRE) Given that this song was from the POV of a teenager who…

Thank You For The Music: A Guide To SCANDIPOP THE REGION HAS BROUGHT US SOME OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST CHART STARS, WRITERS AND PRODUCERS, PUNCHING WELL ABOVE ITS WEIGHT. SO WHAT MAKES SCANDINAVIA SUCH A FERTILE GROUND FOR GREAT POP MUSIC? FELIX ROWE ABBA set the template for perfectly crafted Scandinavian pop. Their catalogue helps to form the bedrock of modern popular music; jukebox staples that every aspiring songwriter is held up to. Far from a mere outlier, Sweden’s fab four are the musical godfathers and godmothers of a region that has consistently delivered platinum-selling artists, producers and songs that resonate with audiences worldwide But do you know your Alphabeat from your Ace Of Base? Your Roxette from your Robyn or Röyksopp? The effortlessly breezy pop of The Cardigans, the ice-cool…

GARBAGE NO GODS NO MASTERS BMG Shirley Manson, it seems, has some issues to work through. “Too busy hating on myself,” she spits on the tense, deceptively honeyed Uncomfortably Me as she runs through her insecurities, “A waste of time/A waste of space”. She has other targets for her fury, too, many of them male, and it’s hard to argue with her. As she points out at the album’s start, “The men who rule the world/Have made a fucking mess,” and despite the jangling Nile Rodgers guitars offered as an early sweetener, she’s absolutely raging by the song’s chorus, exploding amid its industrial fury. One track later she’s even angrier, with The Creeps’ apocalyptic pace demanding pumping, blinding strobes, and the profanity of Godhead, whose beats stamp like boots on a…

LAURA MVULA PINK NOISE ATLANTIC “I was born in 1986,” Laura Mvula’s said of Pink Noise’s inspiration. “I came out of the womb wearing shoulder pads.” One has to feel primarily for her mother, while also hoping Mvula’s since exchanged her wardrobe, but this description of her reinvention isn’t only colourful but also selfaware. Admittedly 80s references aren’t entirely new to her, but here they’re significantly bolder. From Safe Passage’s opening keyboards and staccato programmed rhythm, her third LP is decked out to such an extent in the era’s finery – not least the crisp Jam & Lewis production of Janet Jackson’s Control, which arrived just two months before Mvula – it’s a wet dream for fetishists. No wonder Coldplay’s Chris Martin, currently indulging his own 80s proclivities, sent fans…

JAM & LEWIS JAM & LEWIS VOLUME ONE BMG Whatever Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have been doing these last years, it doesn’t appear to have included listening to a great deal of contemporary music. Their debut album instead turns to established vocalists whose priority appears to be eclipsing one another’s melismatic capabilities. (The result’s a draw between Mary J Blige and Boyz II Men, though Sounds Of Blackness’ Til I Found You has its moments, too.) Of course, it’s been 35 years in the making, so they’re bound to turn to old familiars, with all of whom – bar Babyface – they’ve already worked. But, given they helped come up with Janet Jackson’s groundbreaking Control, it’s disappointing to hear something this generic, especially Boys II Men’s The Next Best…

PLENTY ENOUGH BURNING SHED Formed in 1986, before singer Tim Bowness co-founded No-Man with Steven Wilson, Plenty finally released their debut in 2018. Making up for lost time, this intriguing follow-up offers seven lockdown-era versions of early songs, five covers, and another seven late 80s demos. Bowness dominates, whether on The Other Side or amid Kevin Coyne’s breathily romantic Forgive Me. The Walker, meanwhile, displays a mood somewhere between Japan and It’s Immaterial, whose New Brighton is also given reverential treatment here. WW…

NICK RHODES & WENDY BEVAN ASTRONOMIA II – THE RISE OF LYRA TAPE MODERN With the Summer Solstice comes Nick Rhodes’ second collection this year alongside Wendy Bevan. Woman Of The Apocalypse layers operatic voices over Moby-like ambience and high-pitched celestial voices lift The Masked Portrait Of Tempesta, while Draconis sees Bevan’s violin floating through shimmering galaxies of textural synth. Not all these sketches are astronomically sublime, however, with Almagest breaking down nervously midway and the title track significantly more ominous. WW…

TOTO WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS THE PLAYERS CLUB/MASCOT This live album features an expanded lineup of what’s apparently Toto’s 15th embodiment. Don’t worry, each member’s introduced at length. Its energetic showmanship suits the fact it was recorded in LA after lockdown ended: Kingdom Of Desire’s prog-metal ain’t subtle at all, and I Won’t Hold You Back is as adult contemporary now as in 1982. However, Hold The Line hammers its point home effectively, and the title track finale threatens to make Joe Cocker’s legendary rendition seem tame. WW…

VARIOUS ARTISTS GARY CROWLEY’S LOST 80S VOL.2 DEMON In 2019, veteran BBC Radio London DJ Gary Crowley’s first volume of forgotten 80s songs was one of the year’s finest compilations, finally allowing everyone to realise how great Intaferon, Paul Quinn and A Craze were, among lesserknown Spandau, Wham! and Culture Club songs. This second volume should be operating on the law of diminishing returns. However, that’s definitely not the case here. Crowley’s first volume was partially a mopping-up exercise of ignored gems like Fashion and Carmel that most true 80s music devotees already knew. Second time around, Crowley is having to dig deep. True enough, there are still some songs which will be familiar to many Classic Pop readers: Blancmange’s Feel Me, Fine Young Cannibals’ eternally gorgeous Blue and Stephen…

VARIOUS ARTISTS NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC! NOW YEARBOOK ’83 NOW There’s been some interesting developments in the Now That’s What I Call Music! camp of late. The brand has spewed out some iffy themed comps recently, reaching a nadir with May’s Now Footie! Back Of The Net. While there had been occasional gems – Now 70s Glam Pop is worth investigating – Now largely seemed to have forgotten what it stood for. Then, just when it looked like the brand was content to exist as a prefix tacked on to fag-packet themes, it oversaw Now Live Forever: a clumsy title, but its contents thoughtfully chosen for its variety of 90s music. In quick order, here’s a 4CD compilation which is exactly what Now should have been doing all…

THE FARM SPARTACUS 30 BMG Although they formed in 1983, Spartacus was only The Farm’s second album on its release in 1991. Initially becoming none-baggier via a standalone cover of The Monkees’ Stepping Stone the previous year, by 1991 the Liverpool mob were ready for their golden moment. They had the perfect manager/producer in Suggs as, like Madness, The Farm were seemingly a good-time band whose rowdy demeanour masked some rather melancholic undercurrents. Groovy Train was irresistible nonsense, but All Together Now remains magical, a powerful anthem transcending scenes to become more of a hymn than a pop song. It’s strange that Spartacus itself isn’t more widely remembered, as there was a lot going on beside the singles. While Suggs’ production is over-reliant on the era’s shuffling beats, he knows…

THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS THE BEST OF EDSEL/DEMON The Psychedelic Furs could occupy space in multiple chapters of music’s annals: post-punk, new wave, new pop, and alt-pop. Despite this, they’ve maintained a sound that is both consistent and distinctive, if not always reliably distinguished, because – like many bands of their era – they rather lost their way after a decade. This is something they appear to acknowledge: there’s only one track, House, from 1989’s Book Of Days and none from 1991’s World Outside. This means the second disc tracks a downturn through 1984’s Mirror Moves and 1987’s Midnight To Midnight, rescued only by the swirl of Don’t Believe from last year’s outstanding comeback, Made Of Rain. More from that album would have been welcome, in fact, but fortunately Disc 1…

TURIN BRAKES THE OPTIMIST LP TWO-PIERS At the forefront of the briefly hip New Acoustic movement of the 00s, Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian were closer to Crowded House’s melancholy harmonies than Travis and Coldplay. The duo’s intertwining and subtly shuffling structures gave much of their 2001 debut a groove to avoid songs like the keening Emergency 72 from becoming too earnest. Copyright issues frustratingly mean that their excellent batch of B-sides (unavailable on streaming, too) are still missing, but there are charming demos for every album track on the bonus disc. JE…

QUINCY JONES THE DUDE UMC/POLYDOR Recorded between Off The Wall and Thriller, The Dude’s sleeker than an oil slick. Patti Austin grooves through Turn On The Action’s extravagant disco and Jones’ biggest UK hit, Razzamatazz, while Blockhead Chaz Jankel’s Ai No Corrida definitely waves a rhythm stick. But James Ingram’s debut recordings – the title track’s Herbie Hancock-style funk, the sentimental Just Once, One Hundred Ways’ glossy soul – aren’t great advertisements. The Dude documents the era’s studio trends, but has dated poorly. WW…

MARK MORRISON RETURN OF THE MACK RHINO Like a Billy’s Boots of R&B, for one brief moment Mark Morrison looked like being a superstar. The title track of his debut was astonishingly accomplished in 1996 and remains a total banger now. Sadly, Morrison’s sturdy voice hasn’t found a song anywhere near as powerful since. Content to coast on one great idea on the rest of his debut, its digital reissue adds 40 remixes, none essential. Still, that title track serves as a calling card of Morrison’s ability. Now on the comeback trail, you hope he can finally gather the right team around him. JE…

KIM WILDE: POP DON’T STOP MARCEL RIJS THIS DAY IN MUSIC BOOKS In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the release of Wilde’s debut single, Kids In America, 2021 is proving to be a fruitful year for her fans with the release of Pop Don’t Stop, a forthcoming career-spanning boxset featuring her greatest hits, B-sides and videos. Published to accompany the set –_and sharing its title – is this stunning biography by Marcel Rijs. A lifelong fan, and founder of the official Kim Wilde fansite, Rijs’ passion shines through in this meticulously researched tribute to his idol, formulating an in-depth portrait which encompasses her entire career. It has been amassed from countless sources – television appearances, press articles plus new interviews with Kim about her career, briefly dating Adam Ant…

OUR CONTRIBUTORS Best known for editing Teletext’s music pages Planet Sound in the 2000s, John Earls has also written about pop for the Sunday People, News Of The World, Daily Star and NME. This issue, Jon interviews our cover star Boy George, takes an in-depth look at Scritti Politti’s back catalogue and helms our reissues section. Lois Wilson is a regular contributor to MOJO and Record Collector. She was deputy editor on MOJO Collections and has written for The Quietus, The Independent, The Times and The Sunday Times. She is also the founder of @NHS1000Maestros. Making her Classic Pop debut, Lois interviews Kim Wilde about her forthcoming greatest hits collection. An award-winning journalist and TV pundit, Will “Ill Will” Lavin is one of the UK’s foremost Black music specialists, covering…

DUFFY’S POST-DURAN BAND THE HAWKS FINALLY TAKES FLIGHT Material from Stephen Duffy’s first band after leaving Duran Duran is finally set to see the light of day. When TV Eye, Birmingham’s Stooges-inspired garage punk outfit split, drummer Dave Twist and guitarists Dave Kusworth and Paul Adams approached Duffy and bassist Simon Colley from that first Duran lineup to join their new project. Forming in 1979 as Obviously Five Believers, the five-piece then changed their name to The Subterranean Hawks before finally settling on The Hawks. “If we’d stuck to Obviously Five Believers we may have stood a chance,” explains Duffy. “It’s how I still think of us. I think we only changed it because [producer] Bob Lamb couldn’t fit the name on the cassette boxes.” The Hawks recorded one highly…

1 HIT WONDER CROSS THAT BRIDGE THE WARD BROTHERS Sibling trio Dave, Derek and Graham Ward offered their surname and their synth-pop to the world in 1986 and were given a pleasantly workmanlike hit in return. Cross That Bridge followed the lite-electro recipe favoured in the mid-80s, eschewing mood or drama in favour of a catchy chorus and a more gruff delivery on verses, raising it above many a standard of musicianship for the genre thanks to an excellent solo from ex-Gordon Giltrap guitarist Graham. With Derek on keyboards and singer Dave also on drums, the Barnsley trio earned a deal with the Siren label, soon to be swallowed up by Virgin, and headed to the States. Debut single Easy Prey missed the chart, but Cross That Bridge – co-produced…

LOST & FOUND SO EXCITED! POINTER SISTERS Without the title having to even imply it, I’m So Excited is one of the most exhilarating dancefloor hits of the 80s, yet it had quite the inauspicious beginning as the almost-title track to a disappointing Pointer Sisters album. So Excited! reached No.59 in the US album charts in 1982 and didn’t get anywhere in the UK, even after singles Slow Hand and Should I Do It from previous LP Black & White had made them well-loved members of the States’ growing cosy dance pop movement. A flop single until reissue two years on, I’m So Excited’s epic delirium begins June, Anita and Ruth’s ninth album and they don’t reach those heights again. Proficient but prudent, the record struggles with identity, flitting from…

BOY GEORGE “I’M CREATIVE, OPTIMISTIC, BELLIGERENT. I’M BOY GEORGE, DARLING… WHEN BOY GEORGE TURNED 60 IN JUNE, HE RELEASED 60 NEW SONGS TO MARK THE OCCASION AS HIS “CREATIVE DIWALI FESTIVAL”. MORE THAN EVER BEFORE, GEORGE’S NEW DECADE SEES ONE OF POP’S GREATEST PIONEERS AT EASE WITH BOTH HIS PAST AND FUTURE. WITH A NEW BIOPIC ON THE WAY, IS THE SINGER – WHISPER IT – COMFORTABLE? “IF I AM, IT’S A FIGHT,” HE TELLS US… JOHN EARLS Boy George has lived in the same house in North London ever since his first serious pop star royalties arrived. Unfortunately for both George, and a nosy Classic Pop reporter hoping for a glimpse of where the singer has found refuge for decades, for our Zoom call to celebrate the singer’s 60th…

BOY GEORGE MAKING HAY WITH CULTURE CLUB While 2018’s Life was Culture Club’s first new album for 19 years, the band are already planning new music. Alongside Boy George’s own sustained burst of creativity, he and Roy Hay – the guitarist who co-wrote most of the band’s classics – have been writing new tunes. Bassist Mikey Craig is there, too, even if Jon Moss’ future is currently far from certain. “I sometimes write songs and think, ‘This is so Culture Club,’” George smiles. “Sometimes, I have to convince the others those songs are right for us! They don’t always work at my pace, or they might want to have co-written the song. He might kill me for saying this, but I spoke to Paul Weller recently and he told me:…

BEHAVIOUR CLASSIC ALBUM BEHAVIOUR PET SHOP BOYS IN 1990, THE PET SHOP BOYS DECAMPED TO MUNICH INTENDING TO MAKE AN ALBUM OF “10 KYLIE MINOGUE SINGLES”. INSTEAD, THEY CREATED A MELANCHOLY CLASSIC INFORMED BY DEATH, INFIDELITY… AND THE MAN WHO WROTE AXEL F OLIVER HURLEY Neil Tennant remembers the moment clearly: it was September 1988 when it unexpectedly came to an end. “In 1987-88, we had three No.1 singles within the space of a year,” he told Pet Shop Boys biographer Chris Heath in a 1996 documentary broadcast on Radio 1. “And then when Domino Dancing came out, I remember being in a car in Sussex and listening to the chart on the radio, and it came in at No.9. This is a record we thought would go to No.1. I…

CLASSIC ALBUM BEHAVIOUR THE VIDEOS SO HARD Dir: Eric Watson Filmed in black and white by Eric Watson, who also took the photos for the cover of Behaviour, the video comprises two elements. Tennant is shown singing the song to camera in various locations, while Lowe stands at his side, looking bored and impassive, a pair of minders perpetually lurking behind them. Two young couples – Paul Gascoigne’s sister Anna plays one of the women – are seen over the course of a weekend in Newcastle, on a night out, playing football and shooting pool. All the while one of the men is flirting with the woman who isn’t his girlfriend, reflecting the song’s theme of infidelity. BEING BORING Dir: Bruce Weber Also in black and white, the video opens…

MADONNA ON THE COVER OF A MAGAZINE As promo campaigns go, nobody knows how to execute one quite like Madonna does and Truth Or Dare was no exception. Despite her knack for self-publicity being used as a criticism against her rather than a talent, her flawless rollout for her documentary, from the Oscars to the Cannes Film Festival, to the string of magazine cover stories that she appeared in was a masterclass in marketing. A collaboration with photographer Steven Meisel, Madonna created a stream of images that became as iconic as the film itself. For her own Hollywood moment, Madonna paid homage to her heroines, adopting the guise of Marilyn Monroe for spreads in Vanity Fair and Vogue, while she channelled Lana Turner and Marlene Dietrich for a Rolling Stone…

SUPER FAN DEVOTED FANS SHOW US THEIR COLLECTIONS AND POP MEMORABILIA ELTON JOHN LUCY DAVIS, MICHIGAN, UNITED STATES Q When did you first become a Superfan of Elton John and what prompted your interest? A It was back in 1974 when his Greatest Hits album came out. I_love his songs and he looked good on my walls! Q Give us an idea about what you have in your collection… A I have all the usual albums and singles – anything vinyl-related in fact – as well as CDs, cassettes and 8-track cartridges. There’s also a wide selection of posters and stand-up displays including an 8ft Elton, books, clothing, mirrors, dolls, autographs, plus smaller memorabilia such as postcards, stickers, pinback buttons and mugs. I even have gold record awards, a neon…

BELINDA CARLISL “GOING SOLO? I SAID ‘SURE’… I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO DO ANYTHING ELSE!” WITH THREE OF HER ALBUMS NOW BEING GIVEN THE VINYL COLLECTABLE TREATMENT, BELINDA CARLISLE LOOKS BACK AT 1986’S BELINDA, 1991’S LIVE YOUR LIFE BE FREE AND 1996’S A WOMAN & A MAN STEVE O’ BRIEN Belinda Carlisle had offers to go it alone all the way through The Go-Go’s career. That’s what happens you’re the frontwoman of a successful, Billboard-topping pop band. But no, The Go-Go’s were a tight one for all, all for one unit. Until their spectacularly messy split in May 1985, that is. So when IRS Records’ Miles Copeland approached the then-26-year-old singer in the weeks after to maybe, possibly, do the solo thing, it was a simple case of why-the-hell-not. “I said…

REViEWS WILL YOUNG CRYING ON THE BATHROOM FLOOR COOKING VINYL From the moment Will Young called out Simon Cowell on Pop Idol 20 years ago, he’s proven himself unusually strong-willed. After winning, he calmly acknowledged his sexuality, and by 2005 he was holding his own against Bob Hoskins and Judi Dench in the BBC’s Mrs Henderson Presents. He’s also been an ambassador for multiple charitable causes, spoken openly about mental health, and, in the wake of his twin brother’s death last year, addressed institutional violence at his privileged prep school. When the man gets the bit between his teeth, he’s admirably unstoppable. Young’s eighth studio album further demonstrates such singlemindedness. Perhaps it’s somehow a smaller stretch for a man who published a book entitled To Be A Gay Man than…

REViEWS UB40 BIGGA BAGGARIDDIM SRG RECORDS UB40 are no strangers to what one might diplomatically call ‘derivations’. Their recent history is – to use a similarly diplomatic term – ‘complicated’, with original co-founder Ali Campbell now performing alongside former colleague Astro as UB40 Featuring Ali & Astro, while, since 2008, his older brother Duncan has fronted the band who held on to the original, more concise name. In addition, there have been dub and cover versions while 1985’s original Baggariddim lured in reggae luminaries (and Chrissie Hynde) to add their voices to reworked tracks from 1983’s Labour Of Love and 1984’s Geffery Morgan. Bigga Baggariddim, as its name implies, picks up where that 1985 release left off, turning to some of its musicians as well as a new crop of…

NEW RELEASES DOT ALLISON HEART-SHAPED SCARS SA RECORDINGS Despite – or perhaps thanks to – the sparsity of her output since shining on cult 90s band One Dove’s only album, Dot Allison has demanded attention with each new release. Her latest, however, couldn’t stray much further from those early roots. “I feel ghosts, ghosts all around me,” she whispers on The Haunted, and there’s certainly enough room for them to flit around. Long Exposure’s tale of betrayal is accompanied by just ukulele and piano alongside Hannah Peel’s frail string arrangement, and Allison’s hushed vocal on Constellations entwines magically with folk singers Amy Bowman’s and Sarah Campbell’s. Forever’s Not Much Time’s bleak melancholy is meanwhile encapsulated in her startling “I miss you like a dead man recalls life” refrain, while Goodbye…

JAMES ALL THE COLOURS OF YOU VIRGIN MUSIC One wonders how James’ new label responded when All The Colours Of You arrived. Another pandemic product, its opening track Zero’s first line is “We’re all going to die” – hardly a marketing man’s dream – while “I’ll sing when you choke” certainly lacks empathy. But, just as singer Tim Booth’s exile in LA from his UK-based bandmates hasn’t held them back, so he refuses to duck difficult subjects on their 16th album, addressing Trump’s America, racism and climate change with relish. Unfortunately, he does so too often in neither subtle nor articulate fashion, shooting wildly from the hip on the title track – “President’s your man, he’s the Ku Klux Klan” – before gauchely wielding the words “Disunited States” like a…

BOBBY GILLESPIE & JEHNNY BETH UTOPIAN ASHES SONY The first album by Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie and Savages’ Jehnny Beth comes wrapped in references to classic pairings like Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, but since neither’s any stranger to poses, such claims come with a pinch of salt. Nonetheless, Utopian Ashes is clearly the result of a sincere, common passion for timeless, elegant songwriting. One only needs hear its overture, Chase It Down, with its soulful wah-wah guitars and Philly strings, to imagine the size of their vinyl collections, while respect’s due to the Scream musicians who, alongside Beth’s partner Johnny Hostile, make this resemble the work of consummate studio veterans. English Town’s arrangement confirms a familiarity with Serge Gainsbourg while Lee Hazlewood is no doubt an influence on You…

NEW RELEASES DURAND JONES & THE INDICATIONS PRIVATE SPACE DEAD OCEANS It’s been a while since Shalamar, The O’Jays and Maze have felt like safe names to drop, but Durand Jones & The Indications intend to change that. Having cut their teeth on two albums of substantial late 60s/early 70s soul revivalism, this five-piece have time travelled forward a decade or so to add the best of that deliciously feelgood era when disco and soul crosspollinated. They announced this subtle revitalisation with Witchoo, and if it’s not the sound of the summer by the time you read this then 2021’s truly let us down. Like William DeVaughan’s Be Thankful For What You Got sped up by Earth, Wind & Fire and remixed by LCD Soundsystem, it struts between Jones’ alluring cheer…

DOM BROWN IN MY BONES SELF-RELEASED Freed from his day job touring as Andy Taylor’s replacement in Duran Duran, Dom Brown spent lockdown completing his fourth solo album. Unsurprisingly it’s full of guitars: he rocks hard on the eastern-tinged Mercury Ascending, employs dobros on Ripples In The Water and strums an acoustic on the piano-led Whisper To The Wise. His voice, meanwhile, wails like Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell’s on the grungy title track and slowly surging power ballad Where You Gonna Run To, though Leap Of Faith will have you dusting off Marillion’s Lavender. WW…

REViEWS YELLO BABY/ZEBRA/POCKET UNIVERSE/MOTION PICTURE/THE EYE UMC/POLYDOR Following the messy Yell40 Years compilation, Polydor offer an unexpected pleasant surprise: belatedly getting Yello’s final five albums for the label back out on vinyl. It’s easy to forgive the label’s reluctance to revisit the duo’s latter catalogue. Seemingly sulking at being out of favour after The Race, neither Polydor nor Dieter Meier and Boris Blank bothered to promote these albums much at the time. They’ve not been championed as lost classics by critics either, and none of the songs have been revived in an advert or film soundtrack. It’s easy to chart Yello’s decline here – 1994’s Zebra tries too hard to repeat past glories, a determinedly zany album which is comfortably the duo’s worst moment, despite slinky ballad Fat Cry. You…

REISSUES LONDON BOYS REQUIEM – THE LONDON BOYS STORY CHERRY POP Report to your nearest roller disco: this is what boxsets are all about. Since their death in a car crash in 1996, Edem Ephraim and Dennis Fuller have been largely forgotten by the mainstream. That ignores what a glorious record their debut album The Twelve Commandments Of Dance had been seven years earlier. Although they’d been schoolfriends in South London, the duo were discovered dancing in a Hamburg club by local producer Ralf-René Maué. There’s a (Ger)manic melodrama throughout their debut, which was only kept off No.1 by Simply Red’s A New Flame. Even ballads such as El Matinero sound like they’re about to break out into a backflip at any moment. Despite being introduced to the UK by…

PETER CETERA LOVE, GLORY, HONOR & HEART CHERRY POP Happily retired since 2017, Chicago singer Peter Cetera’s 6CD boxset consists of his first four solo albums, made either side of his acrimonious departure from the band in 1985. There’s nothing here remotely as good as Chicago’s If You Leave Me Now, with Glory Of Love the only single to trouble the UK Top 50. Cetera remained a reasonablesized deal back home, and half the fun of this boxset is keeping up with the guest cameos: Madonna appears on the mystical drum-heavy Scheherazade, while overblown ballads with Agnetha Fältskog and Cher also feature. David Gilmour’s guitar adds restraint to You Never Listen To Me, and that’s Cetera’s general problem. The further he got from a big hit, the more willing he…

THE AVALANCHES SINCE I LEFT YOU XL One of this century’s greatest, the Australians’ landmark chillout/sampledelia/pop album gets a 21st anniversary reissue adding new remixes including Stereolab and the late MF Doom. They’re all fine, but the original album is impeccable, so those new versions are enjoyable froth. The real fun extras are the remixes The Avalanches did for others – giving Manic Street Preachers’ middling So Why So Sad an absolute shoeing and reworking Belle & Sebastian’s I’m A Cuckoo into a glorious psych monster. Honestly, what an album. JE…

NOEL GALLAGHER’S HIGH FLYING BIRDS BACK THE WAY WE CAME: VOL 1 (2011-2021) SOUR MASH While Liam Gallagher has retained Oasis’ punk snarl in his solo music, brother Noel has mellowed into furthering their more laidback side. It’s not quite as experimental as Noel likes to claim, though – Holy Mountain is no more far out than Roxy Music. The reason it’s so grounded is that Gallagher is incapable of not wanting to lob a bloody great big melody into everything he writes, whether finally channelling his Haçienda roots or showing off his Neil Young record collection. JE…

BOOK REVIEWS DEPECHE MODE BY ANTON CORBIJN REUEL GOLDEN TASCHEN When it comes to creative collaborations between artists and image-makers, few have proved as well-suited and enduring as the one between Depeche Mode and Anton Corbijn. Now 40 years after he first photographed the band, Corbijn has emptied his archives for an exhaustive tome that serves as Depeche’s ultimate visual history. Originally published last year as an individually numbered, signed, clamshell-clad compendium with a hefty £750 price tag, the book was one of the fastest-selling titles in the history of publisher Taschen, leading to this more wallet-friendly incarnation. Minus the case and signatures, this new version is less lavish but maintains all of that previous content. Containing more than 500 images, including iconic portraits, electrifying live shots, rare outtakes as…

TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK: MY LIFE IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS MILES A COPELAND III JAWBONE The Copeland name may be synonymous with Stewart and the global success he achieved as drummer with The Police, but in Two Steps Forward, One Step Back, older brother Miles takes his turn in the spotlight to look back over his own career and achievements managing that group as well as his time as a record label boss. From the beginning of his musical journey with Wishbone Ash, Miles’ story takes in London’s bustling live music scene of the late 60s, touring North America with The Who before utilising his talents behind the scenes, taking up roles as manager, promoter, producer and more. As founder of the hugely influential IRS Records label he…

BOY GEORGE SET TO REVISIT TABOO PRODUCTION Boy George is planning to write a sequel to his West End musical Taboo. The show, which opened in London during 2002 before being largely rewritten for a Broadway run, focuses on Leigh Bowery’s legendary Taboo club. George, who recently released new song The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread, explained: “We are actually talking, me and the original writer, about doing Taboo the sequel because the show kinda got stolen off us – as they always do. So many people were involved in that show. One of the first things that was said to the writer was, ‘Don’t make the show too gay.’ Can you believe that? That was so funny as it had me in it, Leigh Bowery, Philip Salon and Marilyn.…

POP UP PEPSI & SHIRLIE REVEAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY Top of must-read lists for 80s pop fans will be Pepsi & Shirlie’s forthcoming autobiography. The duo’s tome, It’s All In Black And White, tells their story from Wham! girls to chart stars in their own right and much more. It promises to feature unseen photos of the pair working with the late George Michael alongside other significant 80s pop moments and beyond. Pepsi says: “We’ve been inspired to put our memories on the page after many years of requests, reminiscing about our time in the spotlight, on and off the stage. The book also shines a light on our friendship, which has endured over 35 years and been filled with love, laughter and loss.” The book hits stores in September.…

THE POD SQUAD CHECKING IN WITH OUR FAVOURITE CLASSIC POP-FRIENDLY PODCASTS STEVE SPEARS STUCK IN THE ‘80S What’s your podcast about? My co-host Brad Williams and I toast – and sometimes roast – the music, movies, TV shows and pop culture of the 1980s. We’ve been podcasting since 2005 and have produced more than 600 episodes. We’ve interviewed more than 100 artists and celebrities including Jim Kerr, Adam Ant, Howard Jones, Tom Bailey, Olivia Newton-John, Midge Ure, Phil Oakey, Nancy Wilson, Martha Quinn and Steve Perry. How did you get into podcasting? I started podcasting after being bitten by the nostalgia bug during my 20-year high school reunion. Once we realised that people around the world were listening, we couldn’t stop. Over the past 16 years, we’ve received fan emails…

IAN PEEL‘S A TO Z of POP LAST ISSUE, I PONDERED THE SHORT-LIVED AND HIGHLY-INFLUENTIAL WORLD OF NEW POP. AND ONE FACET IN PARTICULAR BEGGED FURTHER INVESTIGATION: THE LINER NOTES. LIS FOR… LINER NOTES As I said at the time, New Pop set out to glamorise the business of music, rather than leaving the music business to glamorise it. ABC with The Lexicon Of Love, for example, presented an album and its singles on their own record label, with their own advertising, catalogue numbers and liner notes. All these trappings made it more than ‘just’ an LP, and the story starts before you take the vinyl out of the cover with those notes: “A to Z affectionately, 1 to 10 alphabetically. From here to eternity without in-betweens…” But let’s be…

BOWERY WOW WOW Having written the 2002 musical Taboo about the infamous London club of the same name, Boy George is surprisingly ambivalent about how he views Leigh Bowery’s cult venue, which was open from 1985-87. Taboo was famously intimidating, its admittance policy making Blitz’s forbidding Steve Strange look like a townie bouncer. “Taboo was fun because of where my head was at the time,” George admits. “If I went there now, I’d probably find it very boring! I wouldn’t need that chaos in my life now, and Taboo was chaotic. It was lots of ego, bitchiness and attention seeking.” Above all, George believes, Taboo was a place “for Leigh to show off”. As cautious as George is about Taboo, he’s fiercely proud of Leigh, who died in 1994 aged just 33.…

JAM & LEWIS BACK FOR THE FIRST TIME JAM & LEWIS REDEFINED R&B AND POP, WORKING WITH JANET JACKSON, MARIAH CAREY, GEORGE MICHAEL AND A HOST OF OTHER GREATS. NOW, THEY’RE FINALLY MAKING THEIR OWN ALBUM AS ARTISTS. IN A RARE INTERVIEW, THEY TELL US ABOUT ACCIDENTALLY LAUNCHING JANET INTO MEGASTARDOM, OFFENDING THE HUMAN LEAGUE AND WHY THEY’VE NEVER HAD AN ARGUMENT. WILL “ILL WILL” LAVIN After 40 years of producing magic for others, the long wait for a debut album by production greats Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis is finally over. The Minneapolis duo’s first artist record, Jam & Lewis Volume One, will feature many of the icons they’ve made hits with including Mary J Blige, Mariah Carey, Usher, Boyz II Men, Babyface and Toni Braxton. “We finally decided…

THE PLAYERS NEIL TENNANT The singer and lyricist started writing songs with Lowe after they met by chance in August 1981. The overall downbeat mood of Behaviour, the Pet Shop Boys’ fourth studio album, was due in part to the death of Chris Dowell, one of Tennant’s best friends from childhood, in 1989. CHRIS LOWE Lowe studied architecture at the University Of Liverpool and spent a year in 1981-82 gaining practical experience in a London architectural practice, during which time he formed the Pet Shop Boys with Tennant. The first song they wrote together, Jealousy, was eventually released many years later as the closing track on Behaviour. HAROLD FALTERMEYER While Faltermeyer achieved success for his work on 80s movie soundtracks – notably Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun – the…

POPARAZZI READERS SHARE THEIR FAVOURITE PHOTOS AS THEY GET UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH SOME OF THE BIGGEST NAMES IN PLANET POP Send your Poparazzi pics now to steve.harnell@anthem.co.uk JEFFREY DANIEL WITH LAUREN PAYAS ”I love this photo of me and Jeffrey Daniel of Shalamar after a show on 23 May 2019 at The Hexagon in Reading. The gig was great and featured some of Jeffrey’s amazing bodypopping. I’ve been a fan of Shalamar, in particular Jeffrey, for around five years now as it was at the age of 16 that my taste in music shifted to the 80s and I’ve never looked back. Jeffrey spent a lot of the time telling me how cool my mum and I were!” STEVE STRANGE WITH BRENDA SPRAY “I met Steve Strange in…

TENSION IN THE DYNAMICS Another of Belinda’s albums getting the reissue treatment later this year is 2002’s Go-Go’s reunion LP God Bless The Go-Go’s. Last year’s feature-length documentary (simply titled The Go-Go’s) reignited interest in Belinda’s one-time band, leading to a new single – their first in 19 years – Club Zero . While Belinda is full of praise for the documentary, she’s uncomfortable at how she comes across in it. “I looked really stiff and kind of nervous,” she says. “I didn’t really want to go into the whole fucking drugs thing again, it’s just like, so boring for me to talk about and for people to listen to. But I thought it was really well done. And the most important thing besides telling the story of the band was that I think [director] Alison [Ellwood]…

THE HOT LIST WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT ON CLASSIC POP ZOOM CATCH-UPS STEVE HARNELL 1 DURAN DURAN INVISIBLE With the added bonus of Graham Coxon supplying subtle guitar textures, Duran Duran’s much-heralded return with their first self-penned single in six years has been universally acclaimed. Invisible boasts a killer chorus, some classic John Taylor basslines and Nick Rhodes on fine, eerie form. Expect more of the same when the Erol Alkan-produced new studio album, Future Past, hits stores on 22 October. Apart from Coxon, further guests include Lykke Li and Bowie pianist Mike Garson. duranduran.warnereprise.com 2 BLONDIE VIVIR EN LA HABANA EP As a taster for their upcoming short film Blondie: Vivir En La Habana, the iconic pop-punkers are releasing a six-track EP that soundtracks their debut live performance in…

ERASURE THE NEON REMIXED MUTE © Phil Sharp Erasure have released six live albums. Yet, for a duo who’ve always championed club culture, it’s startling that The Neon Remixed is only their second mix LP – and their first since The Two Ring Circus overhauled second album The Circus way back in 1987. As solid as that collection was, it was as tightly in-house as labelmates Depeche Mode’s remixes: if it’s Mute, it must be Flood, Daniel Miller and Eric Radcliffe. Three of the nine mixes were orchestral, rather than floorfillers. Having released two remix LPs from the three solo records in his Torsten series, Andy Bell must have been gagging for his day job to open up the floodgates again. Last year’s The Neon is a smart choice for…

CHRISSIE HYNDE STANDING IN THE DOORWAY: CHRISSIE HYNDE SINGS BOB DYLAN BMG Probably the cheapest album Chrissie Hynde’s ever made, Standing In The Doorway is yet another product of lockdown, recorded by her and Pretenders bandmate James Walbourne on their iPhones after hearing Bob Dylan’s 17-minute Murder Most Foul, released days after the first COVID-19 restrictions arrived. Surprisingly, for the most part, these covers’ lo-firoots are barely discernible and even then probably deliberate. In fact, the distant laughter and wind blowing into a microphone on opener In The Summertime, as well as birdsong on an uplifting version of 1965’s Love Minus Zero/No Limit, seem mildly contrived. But perhaps that’s because their remaining budget allowed them to employ veteran producer Tchad Blake to mix the results. Indeed, Standing In The Doorway…

YOLA STAND FOR MYSELF EASY EYE SOUND It’s her voice which hits you first: a true belter, with just a hint of a wobble to add, depending upon its force, a little empathy or emphasis. It’s like listening to Millie Jackson if she’d taken childhood singing lessons, or Amy Winehouse if she’d grown up Pentecostal instead of Jewish, which makes the fact that Yolanda Quartey comes from Bristol quite the surprise. That said, her second album – like 2019’s critically acclaimed Walk Through Fire, which helped her earn three Grammy nominations – was produced by Dan Auerbach at his Nashville studios. In addition, sometime Winehouse bassist Nick Movshon and drummer Aaron Frazer of soul revivalists Durand Jones & The Indications (reviewed on page 87) are also on board, allowing her…

REViEWS JOHN GRANT BOY FROM MICHIGAN BELLA UNION No one can claim John Grant doesn’t give due warning of his fifth studio album’s curious nature. Boy From Michigan begins with two minutes of eerie synth sounds before a strictly programmed rhythm heralds a further five of 80s-influenced synth-pop, an opening line that may have come from Dickens and a saxophone solo nodding to his teens as much as the song’s autobiographical recollections. That it’s one of the more accessible tunes here says much about what to expect, but that doesn’t mean pleasure is elusive. Instead, these acts of public therapy come at one unfiltered, making them initially overwhelming but ultimately engrossing. Sometimes Grant’s enigmatically verbose – “Titania’s fritillary,” Best In Me begins, beneath layers of Kraftwerk synths and stuttering rhythms…

SKIDS SONGS FROM A HAUNTED BALLROOM CLEOPATRA RECORDS Only paling next to the original, Skids’ new version of Into The Valley offers fair indication of their seventh album, a collection of covers, sometimes of their own songs. This labour of love sticks closely to the templates, with Magazine’s The Light Pours Out Of Me and The Adverts’ Gary Gilmore’s Eyes thrilling, and Richard Jobson a gravel-voiced Strummer on Complete Control. Spoken recollections underline a menacing take on David Essex’s Rock On, and Ultravox’s Young Savage raucously belies the band’s OAP status. WW…

THE GO! TEAM GET UP SEQUENCES PART ONE MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES Halfway through making The Go! Team’s sixth album, mainman Ian Parton was diagnosed with debilitating hearing condition Ménière’s Disease. Like fellow sufferer Paddy McAloon, the condition made hearing music unbearable. No wonder that Parton describes the new album as “a life raft”. It means the opening Let The Seasons Work sounds like every previous Go! Team song at once: psychedelic, euphoric, self-empowering and above all borne aloft by a kickass brass riff. At barely half-an-hour, the album can ill afford moments like A Bee Without Its Sting and We Do It But Never Know Why, which sound more like the collective are on autopilot, rather than distilling all their magic into three minutes. That’s atoned for by Pow, a suitably…

COLOURSØUND COLOURSØUND II INGROOVES “Let this be the start of something beautiful,” rasps The Alarm’s Mike Peters as Paradise (Free People) gets underway, but The Cult’s Billy Duffy has other ideas, unleashing a furious display of guitar pyrotechnics which set the tone for their second album. First united in 1999, the duo are clearly raring to rock again, because second track Lightning Strike’s equally ferocious, Peters’ bloody throat competing with Duffy’s inner metalhead. Why reins things in marginally, but if Start A Fire’s hardly novel, the anthemic shimmer of Mourning Call is deliciously unexpected. WW…

REISSUES KIM WILDE POP DON’T STOP – GREATEST HITS CHERRY POP Considering Kim Wilde is such a reliable, welcoming presence, a decent Best Of compilation is long overdue. Wilde’s last 7" compilation was 15 years ago and the only one to chart, The Singles Collection, was way back in 1993. After Cherry Pop’s laudable recent reissue series of Kim’s early albums showed there’s far more to her career than just the singles, Pop Don’t Stop is a reminder that any excuse to revisit those records will always be worth taking. The compilation is available either as a 41-song 2CD set, or a fantastic 5CD+2DVD box adding another 16 singles, plus B-sides and remixes discs, the videos for 47 singles as well as a 40-minute interview with Kim. That’s a very…

REISSUES LEVEL 42 THE COMPLETE POLYDOR YEARS VOLUME 2: 1985-1989 ROBINSONGS The first volume of Level 42’s boxset in April was a reminder of just how unlikely their success was. They could have become Britfunk also-rans, far more prog than the scene’s archetypes. On initial albums, Level 42 appeared to have little interest in becoming a chart act and that boxset cut off at the politically charged True Colours. We all know the rest of their story – huge pop fame and Mark King’s £3 million thumb, before lineup changes sparked a dark end to their imperial phase. If Level 42 were never quite comfortable with stardom, the music stayed unpredictable and Volume 2 does a great job of bringing it all together. The post-True Colours live album A Physical…

DESMOND DEKKER AND THE SPECIALS KING OF KINGS TROJAN/MUSIC ON VINYL With another new album from The Specials’ revived lineup being readied, it’s timely for Music On Vinyl to do their reliably professional job on a vinyl reissue of the most unusual album boasting the band’s name on the sleeve. Released in 1993, when the question of “Just who in The Specials is talking to each other today?” was complex enough to test even the intellect of Professor Brian Cox, the members with custody of the name that week – Lynval Golding, Neville Staple, Roddy Radiation and Horace Panter – joined Desmond Dekker for a covers album. Nobody could pretend that King Of Kings is the greatest work to bear either Dekker or The Specials’ name. But it works well…

DONNA SUMMER THE WANDERER/ANOTHER PLACE AND TIME/MISTAKEN IDENTITY DRIVEN BY THE MUSIC Barely a year after the mammoth 33CD boxset Encore, three of Donna Summer’s later albums are now reissued separately on vinyl. The pick is 1989’s Another Place And Time. Known for the classic This Time I Know It’s For Real, it showed that, when Stock Aitken Waterman were paired with an artist that they already respected, they could knuckle down to produce an album as good as their singles. Less successful was the following Mistaken Identity from 1991, where Summer teamed with Billy Ocean/James Ingram producer Keith Diamond. While Donna was suited to SAW’s froth, she was less convincing copying Janet Jackson’s tough ethos, with Work That Magic one of her weakest singles. The reissues also include 1980’s…

REViEWS MADNESS KEEP MOVING BMG The last Madness album of their first incarnation to feature Mike Barson, it’s not exactly hard to tell something was amiss. You wouldn’t want every Madness album to be so melancholic but, as a mostly one-off, Keep Moving is wonderfully unsettling. One Better Day and Prospects are among their finest ballads, while even the chirpy Waltz Into Mischief carries a strong anti-racism message. Barson’s infectious playing on Brand New Beat ensures he left on a high on an undervalued album worth investigating in this vinyl reissue. JE…

FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE WELCOME INTERSTATE MANAGERS REAL GONE Although commercially dominated by Stacy’s Mom, there are plenty more reasons to treasure the New York indie collective’s third album. Pinwheeling about from They Might Be Giants literacy via Britpop balladry, Cars-esque new wave and Hung Up On You’s country lounge crossover, even by the Fountains’ standard this is ridiculously tuneful fare. The vinyl reissue is annoyingly pricy, nudging £40, but does include a bonus 7" featuring inevitably infectious B-side Elevator Up. JE…

DEACON BLUE FELLOW HOODLUMS SONY LEGACY Reissued on vinyl for its 30th anniversary, Deacon Blue’s third album isn’t generally as acclaimed as its predecessors, despite reaching No.2 in the UK. Twist And Shout (no, not that one) is a diversion into Cajun music that pays off, but it’s a rare bold moment on a record that mostly plays it safe. Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh’s vocal interplay is as charming as ever, especially on One Day I’ll Go Walking, but, aside from the title track’s gentle menace, there’s nothing as compelling as most of the band’s other albums. JE…

SHINY AND NEW: TEN MOMENTS OF POP GENIUS THAT DEFINED THE 80S DYLAN JONES WHITE RABBIT Following his exhaustive foray into the New Romantic era for previous book, Sweet Dreams –_one of the best accounts of that scene – Dylan Jones broadens his scope for Shiny And New. While Sweet Dreams was a sumptuous feast serving up analysis, anecdotes and countless contributions through an oral history format which worked extremely well, the stylistic departure of Shiny And New falls somewhat flat in comparison. Jones’ narrative at times reeks of elitism, sometimes to the point of an off-putting disdain for its subject. Madonna, the only female artist to warrant an entry for Like A Virgin, is dismissed as “a mediocre bar dancer who couldn’t sing or write songs”, while at one…