Soul re-issue update

Dee Dee Sharp: Happy 'Bout The Whole Thing/What Colour Is Love/Dee Dee
Edsel 3 on 2 beermat set of the P.I.R. albums. Nice re-mastering job on this issue if Dee Dee of "I'm not in love" fame appeals.

Raydio S/T c/w Rock On 2010 Edsel beermat.
Lovely sounding and if you like the material well early Ray Parker Jr.it's recommended at half the price and the masterings darn good to boot.

Ojays Family Reunion 2010 Edsel beermat
I shouldn't have to say how what the heck how brilliant this album really is to any of you BUT this recent re-master is so good we could add the word 'Audiophile' in the same sentence as is that good PLUS it has the 1977 9.42 I Love Music as remixed by Tom Moulton as the bonus track. Possibly bargain of the year.
Catalogue no. Edsel EDSM0001

Smokey Robinson Smokey c/w Pure Smokey (aka Smokey Robinson Solo albums vol:1)
Hip-o select 2010 beermat
Decent mastering and these two albums are self recommending with Just My Soul Responding's thoughtful mediation and I Am, I Am the precursor to Quiet Storm.

Quiet Storm & Smokey's Family Robinson (aka Smokey Robinson Solo Vol:2)
Defined the whole 'Quiet Storm' soul genre.

Jones Girls S/T c/w At Peace with Woman Edsel 2005
Reissue of the first two albums for Philadelphia International originally issued in 1979 and 80 respectively.

Patti LaBelle: The Spirit In It, I'm In Love Again & Patti Edsel 3 on 2 beermat 2004
The issued studio recordings of her brief time at Philadelphia International, The first album in this collection is rootsy Gospel infused soul from '81 that got lost in those 'Good Times' on the R&B chart where it seemed everything was funkified disco, the second was cash in after her leaving for MCA in '83 but did include such gems as If Only You Knew and remains a strong set and don't even start me on the third when 'da kids' from Sugarhill tried adding electro beats to straight 'in the can' soul to compete against her MCA stuff out like New Attitude. We all saw Beverly Hills Cop back then, right?
Trouble is that sound is just so dated and when it goes into a breakbeat it's positively cringe-worthy atop of what were fine vocal performances. Thankfully Where I Wanna Be and all four tracks from what was side two escape most of this *%^& an can be appreciated as a bonus to the two 'real' albums.
The masterings extremely good btw.

Rollermania

Once upon a time there was a group of five Scottish musicians who were the biggest UK act of their era and to whom induced a hysterical phenomenon in their mainly female fans not seen since the heady days of The Beatles (a beat combo of the 1960's from Liverpool).
You would deck yourself from head to foot with Tartan attire often hand sown with scarves wrapped tightly around your wrists, you'd scream and hug your television on each and every time they were on.
If you were lucky you'd go roller-spotting hoping to catch a glance of any band member, whilst out and try desperately to get hold of one.
You bought each and every record they issued the minute it was, buying the magazines featuring them, the annuals and as much of the merchandise they issued. Back in 1975 much of the slick multimedia promotion of today simply didn't exist nor did the technology such as cellphones so we didn't have ringtones and screens to download.
They were your all embracing passion and for most of us romantic interest rolled in one. I was obsessed with Stuart 'Woody' Wood!

But by the late 1970's a few line up changes along the way their star had dimmed and it was like Abba a few years later, fashionable to deny any liking for them suggesting compared to the 'grown up' rock acts it was light weight pap.
This was to forget a couple of things namely that the band could play their own instruments and in Eric's case very well, that many established acts used session musicians and in any event those of us between 7 and 14 at the time simply could not get into ten minute songs or two record concept albums of the kind artists such as Yes made.
It had to be short, catchy with a easy to understand lyric connected in some way to concepts we understood like romance, love, dancing or being friends. The appeal of a song such as Summerlove Sensation was that of nostalgia for the seaside holiday and the new friends you made and hoped to see again next year and needless to say it was tailor-made for us.

All that stuff kind of explains why over 30 years on many of us remain smitten by the band - OUR band - and Salvo Records decided for the first time ever to issue a four cd box set devoted to the original incarnations of the band and for that matter between Sony Music and 7T's Records their studio albums we cherished back then are available in the cd era.
They called it Rollermania-The Anthology!

For a long period the singles issued from 1972 to the issuing of Remember in early 1974 had been hard to find on record as sales were low and not available on cd and one of the great things about this set is they have issued them for the first time.
Equally they have issued 'Are You Cuckoo?' a song that was a b side of a 45 in the UK but a track in the US version of the Dedication album of 1976 for the first time on cd.
This set has in chronological order all their UK singles and b sides plus stand out album tracks from 1971 to 1981's Ricochet album that had songs featured on the 'Burning Rubber ' movie the band was featured in.

Fall update 2010

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since I started this blog in March 2006 and I mentioned how certain events in my life had impacted on me even talking at one site tentatively about part of my coping mechanism, finding and using the inner child me.

Part of this age regression is a coping mechanism being literally the child-like with vulnerabilities me working within what I can actually cope with rather than pushing so hard at appearing to act more grown up and sophisticated I am left to cope with what I can't with no support and guidance and part is coping with how the nervous breakdown affected me.  
I am wearing more child-like attire privately such as this jersey tunic as it helps to lift me more into that headspace and less likely to be 'read' as a fully grown up girl.
I am looking more at finding people who are more like me to explore it more so I get more from my life on terms that are truly appropriate for me although I will remain at the sites I have belonged for the last few years even if it feels I have to put a bag over my face when it comes to just being open about myself and  my own life beyond.

Leggings

Well they seem to be all over the catwalk this season teamed with either short skirts, minidresses or tunic tops and even seem to mutated in Jeggings a legging that is more like a Jean but with the pull nature of leggings.With terms like that no wonder a fashion store launched a dictionary fashion terms.
The above Leggings are from Cotton Traders and look nice with button detail at the bottom leg.

The Second Time Around

And it is in more ways than one!

The soul music group Shalamar formed in 1976 from three dancers who appeared on the US black music show Soul Train were a passion of mine in the late 70's, early 80's being one of the acts that were the link between the seventies Soul (think Ojays' and solo Smokey Robinson) and the Funk that became prevailed as the main genre of black music in the 80's.

Sufficient I feel to say I bought the 45's usually as imports cos they were cheaper and many of their albums that were very satisfying in themselves having ballads as well as uptempo stompers you can dance to.

Of the albums of these that held and still hold great interest for me they are Big Fun issued fall 1979, Three For Love issued January 1981, Friends Early summer '82 and The Look issued May of 1983 and the last album by the classic original line of Jody Watley, Howard Hewitt and Jeffrey Daniels.

Jeffery pioneered the 'Moonwalk' first shown on BBC UK tv's Top Of The Pops in 1982 and was begged by Michael Jackson no less for the secret of them moves!
The records remain in my collection but like many acts it took a while before anything outside of a compilation got issued in the cd era.

 
That takes us back to the title of this post because in so far as the UK was concerned for a brief point Friends and The Look were issued around 1983/4 when the label was being handled by Warner (WEA) as straight cd issues - no bonus tracks - but had been out of print for a long while. These issues commend a very high price on the collectors market.

In 1996 Sequel Records part of the big re-issue group Castle Copyrights issued all four of these albums on cd, with Big Fun and Three For Love being issued for the very first time with bonus tracks.

It wasn't long however before this set of re-issues themselves were deleted and following the formation of Sanctuary Records from Castle Copyrights and the issuing of new compilations including the nice various artists Soul Classic Soul and Solar Classic Disco two cd sets in late 1999, attention again was placed on revitalizing the Shalamar catalogue.

In 2002 the entire Shalamar album catalogue was re-issued from 1977's Uptown Festival to 1990's Wake Up with new liner notes featuring interviews with Jeffery and Howard and lots of chart related facts.
It was and is a great idea but this set of issues have some flaws for the serious fan.

The first thing is like many contemporary albums an attempt was made to make everything sound loud so the quiet ballad You Can Count On Me has the same average level as a track like Dead Giveaway on the 2002 The Look cd which it never did on vinyl.

 
They also seem to attempted to remove any hiss and pops from the original tapes - I'm not sure these tapes are the actual 'master tapes' so much as copies of - and this has left the high notes sounding brittle and liking any sense of space around instruments or vocals.

 
You can hear a filter on the high notes on the intro of You Can Count On Me being lifted electronically on the louder passages which is distracting.

 
On the 2 albums on one cd issue of Big Fun and Three for Love I was taken aback to see they had shortened several tracks for 12 seconds or sometimes longer compared with the 1996 cd and original vinyl albums and used much shorter edits of Right In The Socket and Full Of Fire with the first song losing over two minutes!

 
To give you an idea how this impacts on it if you took the two albums minus any bonus tracks, the 1996 issues would run for 80:56 minutes and the 2002 a mere 74:50
Nowhere in the notes of the 2002 cd does it mention this just proudly informing you of the bonus of The Second Time Around (edit) which was the 45 version (the lp version runs for 7:06) which how they got it all onto one cd!!! In so far as the first two albums go there are more bonus tracks - the edited singles versions - on the 1996 versions too.

Now my original 1996 Three For Love cd got lost in a move several years back and so I ordered up a complete set of the four 1996 cds used and was taken aback by the differences.
Now for The Second Time Around, I'm reunited with the cds that sound really like the vinyl albums I love.
Deja vu!

Vampire Knight DVD

At long last my Region 1 Series 1 dvd arrived from supamart in the usual mediamail bags they use. Compared with my duff racing certainty bootleg copy this is much much sharper from the first few minutes of the titles you can see the difference. I wrote a review of the series around the end of 2009 if I recall right and anyway the current edition (#76) of NEO magazine in England has a feature on it. The dubbing is pretty good - I know some moan about dubbing - but this is okay actually and less demanding than trying to read it all on screen. Inside the dvd is a sample manga from the first chapter of the Manga of Vampire Knight as published by Shoujo Beat in the States as a teaser for their Manga products.
In other news I'm quoted in the NEO forum poll comments printed in the magazine on where we buy anime from.

A Cellarful of Motown

On August 30th 2010 the forth instalment of UK Motown's 2 cd set series "A Cellar of Motown" was issued.
This series is notable for the issuing of recordings by artist deemed at Motown's infamous listening panel as not being good enough to be issued with an instant hit written all over them or versions not issued at the time.
Some of these have surfaced in the past as noisy 'test pressings' played from vinyl but the series uses the original tapes left in the vaults and so sounds that much better.