rockissue

~

Great Compact Discs

Featured here are both essays providing overviews of an artist's work, similar to the essays published 2020-2022, and pieces about reissues and discographies. As with the title of this page/ blog/ section, Great Compact Discs, the use of hype stickers as the visual component here is done with tongue firmly in cheek. Yes, many of these are great albums, and in some cases the specific C. D. reissues noted (or the hype stickers of which are pictured) are great as well. But these reissues also embody what is historical, after-the-fact, dead or dying. Moreoever, the record labels owned by multimedia conglomerates reissue albums time and again, ripping off customers. And, sadly, many commentators on music do not help with endless talk of forgotten "classics," sounding not terribly different from the hype stickers that proclaim any given album a masterpiece. That said, those of us who prefer music of the past, no matter how much we try to listen to new music, can have only one response to the pillaging of that past music: document reissues, providing transparency about what is available on them, and offer critiques of how the music in question has been presented and interpreted.

Great Compact Discs also refers to the Museum of Hype Stickers found here: additional hype stickers, obis, inserts, download cards, and other packaging accoutrements scanned at high resolution for your... amusement?

~

May 2024
'The Multi-Format Splendor of Stereolab'

December 2023
'A Discography Split in Two: The "Definitive" New Order'

August 2023
'Sun City Girls Discographical Dossier'

June 2023
'Amid Blue Öyster Cult's Fictions, Forsaken Godless Revolutions'

~

The Multi-Format Splendor of Stereolab

For most of us, recorded music comes to us online now, no matter how much we try to resist the streams and feeds and such. When we refer to playback media, instead of the actual devices storing the music (computers), we use brand names or shitty metaphors like "the cloud" and... streams. Artists no longer find their work restricted by the time constraints of playback formats: the gramophone seven-inch and 12-inch record, the cassette, the Compact Disc, decreasing the chances that such restraints could play a role in the creative process, positive or negative. That said, there are still the three basic formats. A single is more likely perceived to be one track, but might still exist somewhere out there with its old-fashioned B-side track. There is still the Extended Play (E. P.) fulfilling its old role as a half-album or long single, for when an artist is young and new—not ready to unleash a full album—or established artists want to release a set of music with less promotional fanfare. The artist does not need these things—abstractions, after all, if a release is digital-only. Or albums for that matter. Why not release music as it is finished, in whatever combination of tracks? In practice, the album still dominates, not only because artists sure would like you, the listener, to actually spend some money on their work, but also because artists want to measure themselves against their predecessors, and the album has long since become the dominant artifact of popular music. Artifact... but not point of reference necessarily, as that often remains the song.

Before Napster and Apple and the short-attention-span listening habits they engendered (eclecticism and bounty numbing us toward apathy and small-mindedness), we lived through a period in which multiple formats proliferated, even as one of them, the C. D., stifled its competition. We had singles and E. P.s—in fact, there were multiple C. D. versions of the same single, and unique versions of seven-inch 45s taking advantage of that format's charms, and 12-inch E. P singles, often featuring remixes, keeping alive that format's connection to dance music. Some E. P.s were actually albums or were called "mini-albums," a curious format especially prevalent in the Nineties. To be exact, if an E. P. could be either a slightly-extended single (four songs on a 45 instead of two, or extended versions of tracks on a 12-inch 45) or a half-album (likely six tracks) on a 12-inch 45, then would not the next step be something like a three-fourths-album? In practice, though, the mini-album is a full-length album, that is, released as a 12-inch, 33-and-one-third R. P. M. gramophone record but mostly experienced as just another C. D., but one which the band and record label and others involved in marketing the music did not want to present as a major release because it was not as long as albums were obscenely expected to be in the Nineties. In other words, a lot like an E. P., especially as some E. P.s, quote-unquote, were album-length. Regardless, the "mini" prefix was being used in a way that had lost all meaning.

The playing-around with formats seen in not only Indie music but also Hip Hop and Techno accompanied a contrary narrowing of options: again, the Compact Disc overwhelmed its competition after 1992; for many consumers, it had become the only practical choice. While obsessive fans sought out all the limited-edition curios that made effective use of the variety of formats available, many other listeners were left bemused, perhaps considering Napster for the first time; five or so years down the line, they were the ones selling off their entire collection of C. D.s after transferring their contents to software that is, circa 2024, more antiquated than the optical disc could ever dream of being. The extremes of collectoritis did not help here: imagine the absurdity of Record Store Day, but replace colored-vinyl rarities with, say, the MiniDisc format, which Autechre experimented with, or 3-inch Compact Discs you weren't even sure you could play.

The contrast between the later years of the Nineties and the early Aughts, on one end, and the span stretching from the mid-Eighties through the early Nineties, when vinyl, cassettes, and C. D.s competed for the mainstream's money, is important yet difficult to discern exactly. Then, the everyday consumer—at least conceivably—made a format choice every single time he bought something. Cassettes could be reserved for the car stereo, C. D.s for Classical and Jazz and other musics that benefited from the lack of surface noise. Vinyl increasingly became the reserve of a small coterie of hardcore fans and audiophiles. It did have its advantages: cheaper than the C. D., coming in superior packaging (seemingly everyone hated the C. D. "longbox"), and creating a feeling of continuity with the recent past.

Either way, this time before the C. D. era (let's call it the format-turnover era) was a period of change and uncertainty: cassettes began to outsell vinyl just in time for their proclaimed replacement, the C. D., to reach the market. In some cases, differences in format during these years also lead to differences in content, usually with a L. P. being shorter than the cassette or C. D. (such as with the Cure's Disintegration), but the assumption was that the content was uniform across the three formats. With the cassette being the highest-selling format, albums got longer, if not by much. By the mid-Nineties, with the C. D. dominant, albums could become 74, then 80, minutes: that is, a double album. The disease long-album-itis already inflicting itself upon popular music further discouraged new titles being made available on cassette or vinyl; the artist sometimes had to cut tracks from the vinyl to make it shorter, or add tracks to fill up four sides.

Variations became more common, as discussed in Rockissue piece on long albums in the C. D. era. At the same time, both the cassette and the C. D. could be singles or E. P.s as easily as they could be albums, without any differences in size (except, again, those ridiculous 3-inch C. D.s) or speeds. These formats even displaced the vinyl flexidisc. (The packaging of C. D.s may not have been as dingy and disposable as tapes, but they were supposed to be a high-class option. Why did they still feel tacky and cheap? No one ever denied tapes were tacky and cheap.) With the Compact Disc following on the cassette's heel in imposing a "sameness" on everything... endless stacks of silver discs... artists had to take some effort to make the design and formatting particularities of their records distinct and attention-grabbing while exploiting the possibilities of multiple formats.

Of all the great Nineties/ Compact Disc-era bands who strove to meet that challenge, Stereolab excelled. Reviewing their discography, one sees many of the larger developments discussed here transpire. Besides the expected albums, E. P.s, singles, and compilation appearances, there were split releases, variations on the mini-album (including several 10-inch releases), remix-specific projects, items only sold at the "merch table" at their gigs, bonus tracks on the Japanese C. D. versions of their albums, differences between vinyl and C. D. versions of an album—and of course ultimately compilations of this myriad non-album stuff, in their case the Switched On series as well as singles compilations Fab Four Suture and Oscillons in the Anti-Sun. About the only thing that did not seem to draw their particular attention is the cassette: they did not craft unique releases for that format. But even so they surpassed their contemporaries: many of their albums and even some singles and E. P.s were made available on cassette when most Rock bands and labels had left the format behind.

Stereolab were both, in my estimation, the greatest album artist in popular music during these years, with an impressive series of full-lengths stretching from Peng! in 1992 to Margerine Eclipse in 2004, but also crafty salesmen, every release showing attention to detail with regard to packaging, suggested most of all in that, in their native Britain, they nearly always released records on their own label, Duophonic. Any music artist who wants to be creative discographically speaking and actually turn a profit (no eight-tracks or LaserDiscs) is going to emphasize vinyl, due to the variety it offers. An Indie Rock band of the Nineties is especially going to favor vinyl, not only seeking the format's connection to the past but striving to maintain that connection for the future (leading of course to the vinyl revival of recent decades, for better or worse). Many minor Stereolab releases, intended for devoted fans, were vinyl-only. Who else could release a full-on album, The First of the Microbe Hunters [2000], just under 40 minutes in length (a double E. P. on vinyl, because... why not?), and call it a mini-album, even as they promoted it with a major tour opening for Sonic Youth? What other group had a 45 or E. P. of previously-unreleased material available for sale on virtually every tour? Yes, they had t-shirts like all the other bands, but they also made a visit to the merch table before or after a concert a cherished, even (dare we say it) wholesome, experience.

This "throwback" vinyl-centric mentality found in Nineties Indie Rock (driven as it was by disgust with the post-Nirvana "Alternative" moment) was in accord with Stereolab's cheeky appropriations of Fifties and Sixties designs, beaucoup references to past artists and others whom their audiences were likely to consider exotic or obscure, and a colorful, welcoming, non-Punk demeanor (despite the dour philosophical and sociopolitical musings found in their lyrics). No surprise, then, that they found fans among those who would otherwise find their complex music off-putting or their historical-minded, academic-like lyrics and designs to be excessively unemotive and pretentious.

Rarer Stereolab artifacts were not just beloved for their outward appearance. Several non-album, minor releases surpassed their major albums. The 1992 10-inch Low Fi is better than the full-length Peng! released earlier the same year, for example. The singles released 2005-2006 and collected on Fab Four Suture are certainly more immediate, and arguably superior overall, to the preceding full-length Margerine Eclipse. Plenty of listeners prefer the simplicity of another 10-inch, Music for the Amorphous Body Study Center, despite its limited palette, to the later albums where denser mixes and complex arrangements didn't always pay off, especially, again, Margerine Eclipse but also Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night, never a fan or critics' favorite and definitely the point at which the band's records began to feel more like "processed" studio concoctions. Most notable of all, several of the single-only tracks collected on the second Switched On collection, Refried Ectoplasm, especially ‘Lo Boo Oscillator’, ‘John Cage Bubblegum’, and ‘French Disko’, rank among their greatest songs.

On the other hand, the messiness of Stereolab's discography is distracting. The progression from 45 to E. P. to album that marked the discographies of many Punk and Indie bands entices the listener by way of the narrative at work: a band slowly finding its sound, translating that sound and their working methods to a studio setting, releasing the amount of material that feels right, taking on the world. See, for example, Mission of Burma from ‘Academy Fight Song’ to Signals, Calls, and Marches to Vs. Any movement away from this simple set-up requires attention on the listener's part not spent on music. Then there is the question of album length. If, in the late Eighties-early Nineties, long-album-itis left many listeners wishing for the old days of 40-minute slabs of vinyl, Stereolab had the opposite problem: double albums that rarely would have been better if shorter (Mars Audiac Quintet being an exception) but which, when listened-to on C. D., without the break provided by switching sides of a L. P. or cassette, can lead to later portions of the album being given short shrift. Meanwhile, a listener forced to figure out which rare releases have good songs, or which compilations include those songs, is an annoyed listener. This situation becomes dreadful when a band does not handle its reissues well. Despite effectively crafting the Switched On compilations throughout their career, giving their fans an easy way to hear most of their rarities, Stereolab's 2019 reissue campaign surprisingly drifted into problematic territory, as noted below, with alternate edits of tracks replacing originals, little to no explanation provided.

The Stereolab discography presented here (excluding for now some compilation appearances and a few other curios, to be added in time) hopefully clarifies while celebrating the multi-format bounty offered by their body of work. The pesky "mini-album" is given an especial emphasis. I am not sure if all of the differences between the reissues released since 2019 and the original versions have been noted; I have described the differences for those tracks with different timings. Other reissued tracks could be of the same length but still include elements not found in the originals. [Later this year, I hope to finish a companion to this piece, exploring the music found within all of these records, with the songs listed solely by release date instead of being arranged by release date within format sections.]

If a track is featured on any of the five Switched On compilations, a tag appears next to it: "Switched 1," "Switched 2," and so on. Those compilations are:
Switched On, 1992
Refried Ectoplasm (Switched On Volume 2), 1995
Aluminum Tunes (Switched On Volume 3), 1998
Electrically Processed (Switched On Volume 4), 2021
Pulse of the Early Brain (Switched On Volume 5), 2022

albums

Peng!
1992 L. P. and C. D.
‘Super Falling Star’
‘Orgiastic’
‘Peng! 33’
‘K-Stars’
‘Perversion’
‘You Little Shits’
‘The Seeming and the Meaning’
‘Mellotron’
‘Enivrez-Vous’
‘Stomach Worm’
‘Surrealchemist’

- Remastered 2018 for digital-only reissue.

~

Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements
1993 double L. P. and C. D.
‘Tone Burst’
‘Our Trinitone Blast’
‘Pack Yr Romantic Mind’
‘I'm Going Out of My Way’
‘Golden Ball’
‘Pause’
‘Jenny Ondioline’
‘Analogue Rock’
‘Crest’
‘Lock-Groove Lullaby’

- Reissued 2019 with a bonus disc featuring 13 previously-unreleased tracks: demos, alternate mixes, and out-takes.

- The 2019 reissue features extended versions of ‘Pause’ and ‘Analogue Rock’. The latter has a longer fade-out, a total of around 25 extra seconds. The former is only seven-eight seconds longer; the edit on the 1993 original came soon after the four-minute mark. As far as the lowly listener knows (the liner notes of all of the 2019 reissues make only brief, unclear references to these changes), these two tracks are the same recordings/ performances in both their 1993 and 2019 versions; the differences come only in the editing process.

~

Mars Audiac Quintet
1994 double L. P. and C. D.
‘Three-Dee Melodie’
‘Wow and Flutter’
‘Transona Five’
‘Des Étoiles Électroniques’
‘Ping Pong’
‘Anamorphose’
‘Three Longers Later’
‘Nihilist Assault Group’
‘International Colouring Contest’
‘The Stars Our Destination’
‘Transporté sans Bouger’
‘L'Enfer des Formes’
‘Outer Accelerator’
‘New Orthophony’
‘Fiery Yellow’

- Early pressings of the U. K. version of the C. D. included a second disc with two tracks: ‘Klang Tone’ Switched 3 and ‘Ulan Bator’ Switched 3.

- Reissued 2019 with a bonus disc featuring ‘Klang Tone’, an abridged version of ‘Ulan Bator’, and 10 previously-unreleased tracks: demos, alternate mixes, and out-takes.

- Seven tracks on the original album are presented in extended versions on the 2019 reissue: ‘Three-Dee Melodie’, ‘Transona Five’; ‘Des Étoiles Électroniques’; lsquo;Three Longers Later’; ‘International Colouring Contest’, ‘The Stars Our Destination’, ‘Fiery Yellow’. As with all of these 2019 edits, the original shorter versions are only available on the earlier issues. Thankfully, five of these edits are simple ‘Three-Dee Melodie’, ‘Des Étoiles Électroniques’, ‘International Colouring Contest’, and ‘Fiery Yellow’ have longer fade-outs, the differences at times being almost unnoticeable. The original ‘Three Longers Later’ and ‘The Stars Our Destination’, on the other hand, were both cut towards the beginning of the tracks: about 16 seconds of the former, about 35 seconds of the latter. ‘The Stars Our Destination’ also fades out later, making it overall about a minute longer. The change to ‘Transona Five’, in contrast, makes for a significant alteration of the listening experience. The 1994 original cut off suddenly at about five-minutes-and-thirty seconds into the track, leading directly to ‘Des Étoiles Électroniques’. The 2019 edit gives us (presumably) the full recording, as the performance gradually comes to an end past the six-minute mark. While the listener might prefer hearing the full track, the abrupt cut on the original album was a defining characteristic, a rare tactic in the sequencing of albums. The extended version could have been made available elsewhere (as with the longer ‘New Orthophony’ on Aluminum Tunes).

~

Emperor Tomato Ketchup
1996 L. P. (U. S. version)/ double L. P. (U. K. version) and C. D.
‘Metronomic Underground’
‘Cybele's Reverie’
‘Percolator’
‘Les Yper-Sound’
‘Spark Plug’
‘OLV 26’
‘The Noise of Carpet’
‘Tomorrow Is Already Here’
‘Emperor Tomato Ketchup’
‘Monstre Sacre’
‘Motoroller Scalatron’
‘Slow Fast Hazel’
‘Anonymous Collective’

- Reissued 2019 with a bonus disc featuring 15 previously-released tracks: demos, alternate mixes, and out-takes.

- The 2019 reissue features extended versions of ‘Percolator’, and ‘Slow Fast Hazel’: the fade-out is significantly longer on the former, while the latter track is only slightly longer, a minor portion in the last minute, edited out of the original, apparently having been restored. ‘Les Yper-Sound’ is also longer in its 2019 form, but in a confusing manner. The 2019 version includes a brief Mary Hansen vocal part not heard on the original at about three-minutes-and-twenty-seconds into the song and the concluding portion of the track is longer; however, it is longer at least in part because the original version has a portion in which the tape of the backing track, if not the whole recording, is sped up; this is quite noticeable, and is absent from the 2019 version. In other words, the 2019 version could be considered an alternate mix, not merely an unabridged version. In this case, then, there is material only available on the earlier issues, making for a change more significant in terms of content than the change to ‘Transona Five’, if not as significant in terms of the overall album.

~

Dots and Loops
1997 double L. P. and C. D.
‘Brakhage’
‘Miss Modular’
‘The Flower Called Nowhere’
‘Diagonols’
‘Prisoner of Mars’
‘Rainbo Conversation’
‘Refractions in the Plastic Pulse’
‘Parsec’
‘Ticker-Tape of the Unconscious’
‘Contronatura’

- Reissued 2019 with a bonus disc featuring 14 previously-unreleased tracks: demos, alternate mixes, and out-takes.

- The 2019 reissue features versions of ‘The Flower Called Nowhere’ and ‘Prisoner of Mars’ that are slightly extended (by roughly 20 seconds in both cases), both having longer fade-out portions. Note that, for these minor changes in timtings, I am only comparing C. D. versions of the albums. Others listening to the 2019 vinyl reissues have noted that ‘The Flower Called Nowhere’ is actually shorter on the 2019 vinyl compared to the 2019 C. D. or original issues of the album.

~

Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night
1999 double L. P. and C. D.
‘Fuses’
‘People Do It All the Time’
‘The Free Design’
‘Blips Drips and Strips’
‘Italian Shoes Continuum’
‘Infinity Girl’
‘The Spiracles’
‘Op Hop Detonation’
‘Puncture in the Radax Permutation’
‘Velvet Water’
‘Blue Milk’
‘Caleidoscopic Gaze’
‘Strobo Acceleration’
‘The Emergency Kisses’
‘Come and Play in the Milky Night’

- The C. D. versions originally included an abridged version of ‘Blue Milk’. The 2019 C. D. reissues includes the complete track and thus requiring the original album to take up the first disc and a portion of the bonus disc. The rest of the bonus disc features out-takes and demos.

- The 2019 reissues also featured extended versions of ‘Fuses’ and ‘Blips Drips and Strips’. Both are only slightly longer, and the changes, as with those on Dots and Loops border on being pointless. The portion of ‘Fuses’ not included on the original is roughly 20 seconds in length and comes at about one-minute-and-thirty-seconds into the track. The portion of ‘Blips Drips and Strips’ is roughly 25 seconds in length and comes at about three-minutes-and-forty-six seconds into the track.

~

Sound-Dust
2001 double L. P. and C. D.
‘Black Ants in Sound-Dust’
‘Space Myth’
‘Captain Easychord’
‘Baby Lulu’
‘The Black Arts’
‘Hallucinex’
‘Double Rocker’
‘Gus the Mynah Bird’
‘Naught More Terrific than Man’
‘Nothing to Do with Me’
‘Suggestion Diabolique’
‘Les Bons Bons des Raisins’

- The C. D. versions originally included an abridged version of ‘Gus the Mynah Bird’. The 2019 C. D. reissue includes the complete track. The bonus disc features demos.

~

Margerine Eclipse
2004 double L. P. and C. D.
‘Vonal Declosion’
‘Need to Be’
‘“...Sudden Stars”’
‘Cosmic Country Noir’
‘La Demeure’
‘Margerine Rock’
‘The Man with 100 Cells’
‘Harmonie Melodie’
‘Hillbilly Motorbike’
‘Feel and Triple’
‘Bop Scotch’
‘Dear Marge’

- Reissued 2019 with a bonus disc featuring the four tracks previously only available on the E. P. Instant 0 in the Universe [see below] and the three tracks of the ‘Rose, My Rocket Brainz!’ single [see below].

- The 2019 version of the album includes an extended version of ‘Vonal Declosion’ (featuring an additional concluding section); the extended version of ‘Hillbilly Motorbike’, previously only available on the Japanese edition of the album, on which it took the form of both the abridged ‘Hillbilly Motorbike’ and a separate track, ‘La Spirale’, appended to it; and an extended version of ‘Bop Scotch’ (roughly 30 seconds early in the track that had been edited out now included).

- The 2019 version of ‘Dear Marge’ is also different, but it is an alternate edit, meaning that it contains portions of a (presumably) longer version that the original did not, but it also does not contain portions that the earlier version did; it is overall shorter. The track overlaps with ‘Mass Riff’, from Instant 0, in that the concluding portion of both tracks is made out of the same recording. Since the 2019 version of ‘Mass Riff’ is longer, presumably the 2019 versions of these two tracks, combined, do contain all of the material that comprised the earlier versions of the tracks, but even close inspection of them leaves unanswered questions. To a greater extent than the other 2019 changes, this begs for official sources of information.

- See also the note for Instant 0 in the Universe for information about similar differences between the original versions of other tracks on that E. P. compared to the 2019 versions.

~

Chemical Chords
2008 double L. P. and C. D.
‘Neon Beanbag’
‘Three Women’
‘One Finger Symphony’
‘Chemical Chords’
‘The Ecstatic Static’
‘Valley Hi!’
‘Silver Sands’
‘Pop Molecule (Molecular Pop 1)’
‘Self Portrait with 'Electric Brain'’
‘Nous Vous Demandons Pardon’
‘Cellulose Sunshine’
‘Fractal Dream of a Thing’
‘Daisy Click Clack’
‘Vortical Phonotheque’

- Early pressings of the double L. P. included a 7-inch 45 with two additional tracks: ‘Spool of Collusion’ Switched 5 and ‘Foresnic Itch’ Switched 5

- Early pressings of the U. K. version of the C. D. included ‘Magne-Music’ Switched 5 and ‘The Nth Degree’ Switched 5.

~

Not Music
2010 double L. P. and C. D.
‘Everybody's Weird except Me’
‘Supah Jaianto’
‘So Is Cardboard Clouds’
‘Equivalences’
‘Leleklato Sugar’
‘Silver Sands (Emperor Machine Mix)’
‘Two Finger Symphony’
‘Delugeoisie’
‘Laserblast’
‘Sun Demon’
‘Aelita’
‘Pop Molecules (Molecular Pop 2)’
‘Neon Beanbag (Atlas Sound Mix)’

~

albums?

Low Fi
1992 10-inch L. P. and C. D.
‘Low Fi’ Switched 5
‘(Varoom!)’ Switched 5
‘Laisser-Faire’ Switched 5
‘Elektro (He Held the World in His Iron Grip)’ Switched 5

The version of ‘Elektro’ on Pulse of the Early Brain is significantly longer than the original, while the version there of ‘(Varoom!)’ is extended by about 20 seconds.

~

The Groop Played "Space Age Batchelor Pad Music"
1993 L. P. and C. D.
‘Avant Garde M.O.R.’
‘Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (Mellow)’
‘The Groop Play Chord X’
‘Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (Foamy)’
‘Ronco Symphony’
‘We're Not Adult Oriented’
‘U.H.F. - MFP’
‘We're Not Adult Oriented (Neu Wave Live)’

~

Music for the Amorphous Body Study Center
1995 10-inch L. P. and C. D.
‘Pop Quiz’ Switched 3
‘Extension Trip’ Switched 3
‘How to Play Your Internal Organs Overnight’ Switched 3
‘The Brush Descends the Length’ Switched 3
‘Melochord Seventy-Five’ Switched 3
‘Space Moment’ Switched 3
[untitled track] Switched 3

- The untitled track is combined with track 6 on Aluminum Tunes

~

Fluorescences
1996 L. P. and C. D.
‘Fluorescences’
‘Pinball’
‘You Used to Call Me Sadness’
‘Soop Groove #1’
7-inch 45 version of this release includes ‘Fluorescences‘ b/w ‘Pinball’
‘You Used to Call Me Sadness’ also released on a split single with Fuxa [see below]

- All four tracks included in Oscillons from the Anti-Sun

~

The First of the Microbe Hunters
2000 double E. P. and C. D.
‘Outer Bongolia’ Switched 4
‘Intervals’ Switched 4
‘Barock - Plastik’ Switched 4
‘Nomus et Phusis’ Switched 4
‘I Feel the Air (Of Another Planet)’ Switched 4
‘Household Names’ Switched 4
‘Retrograde Mirror Form’ Switched 4

- Versions of ‘Barock - Plastik’ and ‘Retrograde Mirror Form’ on Electrically Processed are slightly longer than the originals.

~

singles and E. P.s

Super 45
1991 10-inch E. P.
A:
The Light That Will Cease to Fail Switched 1
Au Grand Jour Switched 1
B:
Brittle Switched 1
Au Grand Jour' Switched 1
7-inch 45 version, released in the U. S., includes ‘The Light’ b/w ‘Au Grand Jour’

‘Super-Electric’ Switched 1
1991 10-inch E. P.
Additional A-side track: ‘High Expectation’ Switched 1
B-side tracks: ‘The Way Will Be Coming’ Switched 1; ‘Contact’ Switched 1

Stunning Debut Album
1991 7-inch 45
A:
‘Doubt’ Switched 1
B:
‘Changer’ Switched 1

‘Harmonium’ Switched 2
1992 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘Farfisa’ Switched 2

‘John Cage Bubblegum’ Switched 2
1993 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘Eloge d'Eros’ Switched 2

‘Lo Boob Oscillator’ Switched 2
1993 7-inch E. P.
B-side track: ‘Tempter’ Switched 2

‘Jenny Ondioline” [abridged version]
1993 7-inch 45, C. D., and 10-inch L. P.
B-side tracks: ‘Fruition’, ‘Golden Ball (Studio)’, ‘French Disco’ [longer than ‘Disko’]
All four tracks included in Oscillons from the Anti-Sun

‘French Disko’ [shorter than ‘Disco’] Switched 2
1993 7-inch 45 and C. D.
B-side track: ‘Jenny Ondioline (Version)” [included in Oscillons from the Anti-Sun]

‘Ping Pong’
1994 10-inch E. P. and C. D.
Additional A-side track: ‘Moogie Wonderland’
7-inch 45 version of this release includes ‘Ping Pong’ b/w ‘Moogie Wonderland’
B-side tracks: ‘Pain et Spectacles’; ‘Transona Five (Live)’
‘Ping Pong’ also on Mars Audiac Quintet [see above]
All four tracks included in Oscillons from the Anti-Sun

‘Wow and Flutter’
1994 10-inch L. P. and C. D.
Additional A-side track: ‘Heavy Denim’
7-inch 45 version of this release includes ‘Wow and Flutter’ b/w ‘Heavy Denim’
B-side tracks: ‘Nihilist Assault Group (Parts 3, 4, 5)’; ‘Narco Martenot’
‘Wow and Flutter’ also on Mars Audiac Quintet [see above]
All four tracks included in Oscillons from the Anti-Sun

‘Cybele's Reverie’ [single edit]
1996 10-inch L. P./ E. P. (A side: 45 R. P. M., B: 33-and-one-third R. P. M.) and C. D.
Additional A-side track: Les Yper-Yper Sound [longer version]
B-side (called "AA" here) tracks: Brigitte; Young Lungs
All four tracks included in Oscillons from the Anti-Sun

Laminations
1996 C. D.
‘Metronomic Underground (Wagon Christ Mix)’ Switched 3
‘Check and Double Check’ Switched 3
‘Cadriopo’ Switched 3 [also released on split single with Fugu; see below]
‘One Small Step’ Switched 3

‘Miss Modular’ [single edit]
1997 E. P. and C. D.
Additional A-side track: ‘Allures’
B-side tracks: ‘Off-On’; ‘Spinal Column’
All four tracks included in Oscillons from the Anti-Sun
Alternate edition of this single:
1998 L. P. (U. S. release) and C. D. (Japanese release)
Additional A-side tracks: ‘Miss Modular (Automator Mix)’; ‘Rainbo Conversation (Russell Simins Mix)’
B-side tracks: ‘Refractions in the Plastic Pulse (Feebate Mix)’; ‘Contronatura (Prelude to the Autumn of a Faun Mix)’ [see below]
C. D. version does not include ‘Rainbo Conversation (Russell Simins Mix)’
These remixes, except ‘Refractions in the Plastic Pulse (Feebate Mix)’ (as noted below, found on the fifth Switched On), are not found on any compilations.

‘Iron Man’ Switched 3
1997 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘The Incredible He Woman’ Switched 3

‘Refractions in the Plastic Pulse (Feebate Mix)’ Switched 5
1998 L. P.
B-side track: ‘Contronatura (Prelude to the Autumn of a Faun Mix)’
Both tracks included on the alternate versions of the ‘Miss Modular’ single [see above]

The In Sound
1998 7-inch E. P./45 (A side: 45 R. P. M., B: 33-and-one-third R. P. M.)
A:
‘Blue Milk’ Switched 3
B:
‘One Thousand Miles an Hour’ Switched 3
‘Aluminum Tune’ Switched 3
All three tracks retitled for inclusion on Aluminum Tunes (Switched On 3): ‘Munich Madness’, ‘1000 Miles an Hour’, and ‘Golden Atoms’, respectively

‘The Free Design’
1999 E. P. and C. D.
Additional A-side track: ‘Escape Pod (From the World of Medical Observations)’
7-inch 45 version of this release includes ‘The Free Design’ b/w ‘Escape Pod’
B-side tracks: ‘With Friends like These’; ‘Les Aimies des Mêmes’
‘The Free Design’ also on Cobra and Phases [see above]
All four tracks included in Oscillons from the Anti-Sun

The Underground Is Coming
1999 7-inch E. P.
A:
‘The Super-It’ Switched 4
‘Fried Monkey Eggs (Inst.)’ Switched 4
B:
‘Fried Monkey Eggs (Vocal)’ Switched 4
‘Monkey Jelly’ Switched 4

‘Captain Easychord’ [single edit]
2001 L. P. and C. D.
Additional A-side track: ‘Long Life Love’
B-side tracks: ‘Canned Candies’; ‘Moodles’
All four tracks included in Oscillons from the Anti-Sun

‘Free Witch and No-Bra Queen’ Switched 4
2001 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘Speck-Voice’ Switched 4

Instant 0 in the Universe
2003 triple 7-inch 45 and C. D.
‘“...Sudden Stars”’
‘Jaunty Monty and the Bubbles of Silence’
‘Good Is Me’
‘Microclimate’
‘Mass Riff’
‘Hillbilly Motorbike’ [untitled “hidden track” on vinyl release; not on C. D. version]
First and sixth tracks also included on Margerine Eclipse
Remaining four tracks included on bonus disc of 2019 reissue of Margerine Eclipse: ‘Mass Riff’ is extended significantly, while ‘Jaunty Monty and the Bubbles of Silence’ and ‘Microclimate’ are slightly extended, the former having a longer fade-out, and portions of the former being slightly longer. The shorter versions are thus only available on the original release.

‘Rose, My Rocket-Brain! (Rose, Le Cerveau Electronique de ma Fusée!)’
2004 7-inch E. P./45 (A side: 45 R. P. M., B: 33-and-one-third R. P. M.) and 3-inch C. D.
B-side tracks: ‘Banana Monster Ne Répond Plus’, ‘University Microfilms International’
All three tracks included on bonus disc of 2019 reissue of Margerine Eclipse.

‘Kybernetická Babiĉka Pt. 1’
2005 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘Kybernetická Babiĉka Pt. 2’
Both tracks included on Fab Four Suture

‘Plastic Mile’
2005 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘I was a Sunny Rainphrase’
Both tracks included on Fab Four Suture

‘Interlock’
2005 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘Visionary Road Maps’
Both tracks included on Fab Four Suture

‘Whisper Pitch’
2006 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘Widow Weirdo’
Both tracks included on Fab Four Suture

‘Excursions into "Oh, A-oh"’
2006 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘“Get a Short of the Refrigerator”’
Both tracks included on Fab Four Suture

‘Eye of the Volcano’
2006 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘Vodiak’
Both tracks included on Fab Four Suture

‘Solar Throw-Away’ Switched 4
2006 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘Jump Drive Shut-Out’ Switched 4
An alternate version of the A side, ‘Solar Throw Away (Original Version)’, is also included on Electrically Processed

‘Explosante Fixe’ Switched 4
2008 7-inch 45 and C. D.
B-side track: ‘L'Exotisme Intérieur’ Switched 4

split singles and E. P.s

Stereolab// Guitare Boy
‘XXXOOO’ Switched 5
1992 7-inch E. P. flexidisc—all tracks on single side
Additional tracks: ‘High Expectations (Demo Version)’ [Stereolab]; ‘Golden Bike’ [Guitare Boy]
‘High Expectations (Demo Version)’ not on any compilation

Huggy Bear// Darlin'// Colm// Stereolab
Shimmies in Super 8
1993 double 45
A:
‘Trafalgar Square’ [Huggy Bear]
‘Godziller’ [Huggy Bear]
‘More Music from Bells’ [Huggy Bear]
‘Snow White, Rose Red’ [Huggy Bear]
B:
‘Cindy So Loud’ [Darlin']
‘Darlin'’ [Darlin']
C:
‘Soundtrack’ [Colm]
D:
‘Revox!’ [Stereolab] Switched 2

Unrest// Stereolab
‘Where Are All Those Puerto Rican Boys?’ [Unrest]
1993 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘Mountain’ Switched 2

Stereolab// The Cat's Miaow
‘The Eclipse’ [Stereolab]
1995 7-inch E. P. flexidisc—all tracks on single side
Additional tracks: ‘Shoot the Moon’ [The Cat's Miaow], ‘Yes Sir! I Can Moogie’ [Stereolab] Switched 5
‘The Eclipse’ not on any compilation

Yo La Tengo// Stereolab
‘Evanescent Psychic Pez Drop’ [Yo La Tengo]
1995 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘The Long Hair of Death’ [Stereolab] Switched 3

Stereolab// Fuxa
‘You Used to Call Me Sadness’ [Stereolab] Switched 3
1996 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘Skyhigh’ [Fuxa]
‘You Used to Call Me Sadness’ also included on Fluorescences

Tortoise// Stereolab
‘Vaus [Tortoise]
1996 7-inch E. P.
B-side track: ‘Speedy Car’ [Stereolab] Switched 3

Faust// Stereolab// Foetus
Überschall 1996
1996 7-inch E. P.
A:
‘Right Between Yr Eyes’ [Faust]
‘Percolations’ [Stereolab] Switched 3
B:
‘Herds’ [Foetus]

Stereolab// Fugu
‘Cadriopo’ [Stereolab] Switched 3
1997 7-inch 45
B-side tracks: ‘F30’, ‘F24 (Instrumental)’ [Fugu]
‘Cadriopo’ also included on Laminations

Stereolab// Soi-Disant
‘Symbolic Logic of Now!’ [Stereolab] Switched 5
1998 7-inch 45
B-side track: ‘Glitterati (Cruise(r))’ [Soi-Disant]

collaborative works

Stereolab/ Nurse with Wound - Crumb Duck
1993 10-inch L. P.
‘Animal or Vegetable (A Wonderful Wooden Reason...)’ Switched 2
‘Exploding Head Movie’ Switched 2

Stereolab/ Nurse with Wound - Simple Headphone Mind
1997 L. P. and C. D.
‘Simple Headphone Mind’ Switched 5
‘Trippin' with the Birds’ Switched 5

Stereolab & Brigitte Fontaine - ‘Caliméro’ Switched 4
1999 7-inch 45 and C. D.
B-side track: [Monade] ‘Cache Cache’
Monade is Laetitia Sadiera's solo moniker, also making this a split release formally speaking

(some of the) compilation appearances and miscellaneous tracks

‘The Noise of Carpet’ was released as a single-track promo-only single in the U.S., so it is included in Oscillons from the Anti-Sun, though there does not seem to be any differences between the track as it is heard there and the Emperor Tomato Ketchup version. As already hinted above, a few other A-side tracks, because their single versions are the same as the album versions, are also duplicated on Oscillons: namely, ‘Ping Pong’ (and yet Oscillons also includes an alternate version of ‘Ping Pong’), ‘Wow and Flutter’, and ‘The Free Design’.

A split single with Spectrum was never relased, only available as white-label pressings. The track, ‘Tone Burst (Country)’, was released on Refried Ectoplasm. The other Stereolab track, ‘Tempter (Demo)’, has not been released.

Stereolab contributed a track, ‘One Note Samba/Surfboard’, to the various-artists compilation, Red Hot + Rio. An extended version of the track is on Aluminum Tunes

Stereolab contributed a track, ‘Variation One’ Switched 4, to the various-artists soundtrack album, Moog, released in 2004.

Stereolab contributed a track, ‘Dimension M2’ Switched 4, to the compilation, Disko Cabine, released in 2005.

Stereolab contributed a track, ‘ABC’ Switched 5, to the Godz tribute album Godz Is Not a Put On, released in 1996.

Stereolab contributed a track, ‘Blue Milch’ Switched 5, to a compilation comprised of Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra tracks remixed or otherwise reworked by various artists.

Refried Ectoplasm includes one previously-unreleased track: ‘Sadistic’.

Aluminum Tunes includes the following previously-unreleased tracks: ‘New Orthophony’ [extended version]; ‘Get Carter’; and ‘Seeperbold’.

Electrically Processed includes the following previously-unreleased tracks: ‘B.U.A.’; ‘Pandora's Box of Worms’; and ‘Heavy Denim Loop Pt. 2’.

Pulse of the Early Brain includes the following previously-unreleased tracks: ‘Robot Riot’; ‘Ronco Symphony (Demo)’; ‘Plastic Mile (Original Version)’; and ‘Cybele's Reverie (Live at the Hollywood Bowl)’. Another track, ‘Unity Purity Occasional’ had only been heard as part of a Charles Long sculpture/ installation of the same name.

~

A Discography Split in Two: The "Definitive" New Order

As austere and attractive as the box sets in New Order's Definitive Edition reissues series are, once the consumer peruses their track listings, disappointment abounds. The first and second of these, covering the band's debut album, Movement, and second, Power, Corruption and Lies, respectively, exclude contemporaneous tracks only released as singles. The bonus material, instead, mostly features previously-unreleased material. And yet, among this material, that perennially-abused consumer finds live versions, in some cases alternate studio versions, of single-only tracks. So why not include the singles themselves? Would they not make these reissues "definitive"?

The box for Power, Corruption and Lies is, in my opinion, especially important. That album solidified the band's signature Eighties sound and is arguably their one album that surpasses their singles. What does its Definitive Edition include as bonus material? Besides a fair amount of video documentation of live performances, of which all the box sets have plenty of options, we get "Writing Session Recordings" of a few single-only tracks, including the band's most famous single, ‘Blue Monday’, released the same year, and of which an additional instrumental version is also included. No ‘Blue Monday’ itself.

But the most peculiar example of a discography awkwardly split between albums and singles is that the Movement bonus disc includes an alternate 7-inch edit of the 1982 single ‘Temptation’. The inclusion of this track is the messiest scramble imaginable; why would it not be included on a collection of singles? Better yet, given that it is included here, again we ask: why not include the singles in "definitive" editions of the band's albums?

With the 2023 release of the third entry in the Definitive Edition series, for the band's third album Low-Life, we get further confirmation that tracks originally released as singles are not to be included in these boxes, complicated slightly by the fact that two tracks also released as singles were included on the album in question. Only "slightly"... because the album versions of these two tracks, ‘The Perfect Kiss’ and ‘Sub-Culture’, are different from their multiple single versions, and indeed these latter versions are excluded. The Low-Life super-deluxe includes the extended version of ‘Elegia’, an album track, but otherwise again the bonus second C. D. includes previously-unreleased material from the album sessions (the extended ‘Elegia’ had originally been included on a bonus fifth disc that came with a limited edition of the Retro box set and was subsequently included on the 2008 Low-Life deluxe edition).

This third "Definitive" box also complicates the situation more than "slightly".... A bifurcated discography may have made sense for New Order's early years, when one could argue that the singles are not on "definitive" editions of the albums because they are distinct from the albums, that is: early in the band's career, the singles were not included on the original versions of the albums. From 1985 onward, though, when the singles were at times included on albums, such an approach clearly does not fit. Besides, as already noted, material related to the single-only tracks have been included in the boxes; that is, no such clear bifurcation was intended. Whatever intentions were possessed by those putting these collections together might have been jumbled or abandoned in the process.

This situation: New Order's discography being sloppily handled, is not new, and it is especially frustrating because no other band coming from a Rock/ Indie backdrop thoroughly immersed themselves in the byways of dance music as much as they did. In terms of their discography, that means one over-riding thing: lots of versions of the same song, with 7-inch edits, 12-inch extended versions, and other edits and remixes all competing for space on compilations and reissues; a few songs were even re-recorded.

The apparent solution to this unfortunate situation is that a reissue of the 1987 compilation Substance was on its way, released later in 2023. After all, that release, in its various versions, arguably remains the best place to hear New Order's single-only songs, thus making it for many listeners the most important of the band's albums. An expanded seemed like a promising prospective and a sensible decision.

However, the new four-C. D. Substance reissue is not a "definitive edition," instead a simpler reissue of the original set with some bonus tracks and a live disc tacked on. Moreover, in many respects Substance has been complemented by later compilations, notably the Singles compilation, released in 2005 and re-released in 2016 with a revised track listing, and the aforementioned Retro box set, released in 2002. These two, combined with other scattered compilations, or the original singles themselves, have given consumers plenty of (overlapping, poorly organized) options to choose from.

Substance's selling point all these years is that it features the longer, superior 12-inch edits of 12 of the band's singles (plus, on the C. D. and cassette versions, their B-sides) including ‘True Faith’, newly released at the time and perhaps the other candidate besides ‘Blue Monday’ for the most popular and "classic" (meaning long-lasting, "standing the test of time") of the band's songs. Except... of course... sometimes it doesn't. It sported spiffy re-recorded versions of ‘Temptation’ and ‘Confusion’, the follow-up to ‘Blue Monday’; and the 12-inch versions of ‘Sub-Culture’, ‘Shellshock’, and (on the C. D. version) ‘The Perfect Kiss’ are abridged; that is, more discographical... "confusion"... of course.

A simple listing of the band's singles and other major non-album tracks, released from 1981 through 1987, helps clarify matters:

‘Ceremony’
in two versions, released March and September, respectively, 1981; the first version features only Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris taking a tentative step away from Joy Division; the second features Gillian Gilbert as well
‘Procession’/ ‘Everything's Gone Green’
a double A-side, released September 1981; the first song demoted to "B side" status by only being included on the second disc/ cassette of Substance, then elevated back to its previous status by being included on Singles
‘Temptation’, May 1982
‘Blue Monday’, March 1983
‘Confusion’, August 1983
‘Thieves like Us’, April 1984
‘The Perfect Kiss’, May 1985
also released on Low-Life
‘Sub-Culture’, October 1985
also released on Low-Life
‘Shellshock’, March 1986
also released on the various-artists Pretty in Pink: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
‘State of the Nation’, September 1986
also released on C. D. versions of Brotherhood
‘Bizarre Love Triangle’, November 1986
also released on Brotherhood
‘True Faith’, July 1987
‘Touched by the Hand of God’, December 1987
also released on the various-artists Salvation! Original Soundtrack

Retro, the box set that ideally would have complemented the Joy Division box set Heart and Soul (which included nearly all of that band's studio work), instead has long since been thrown into the particular dustbin reserved for annoying compilations that contain a smattering of rare and unique tracks of interest to obsessive fans but which otherwise seem absurdly pointless. It does include the 12-inch versions of ‘Temptation’ and ‘Confusion’, thus filling one major gap created by Substance, but otherwise anyone looking for a thorough collection of the band's major singles is bound to be disappointed: several of them are excluded entirely, for others the album version or an alternate mix is included.

New Order, Singles
Released 2005, revised 2016

Only a few years later, the double C. D. Singles, with its plain-jane title, held out the promise of restitution for the disappointment of Retro. It definitely was an improvement, but, considering that it exists in two different track listings, you can make safe bet that it also causes headaches for collectors and fans. Singles is supposed to feature the 7-inch versions of many of the above singles, to complement Substance with its 12-inch versions. This clear dividing line, though, quickly gets crossed on the 2005 version. On the first disc, the 7-inch versions of ‘Blue Monday’, ‘The Perfect Kiss’, ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’, and ‘True Faith’ are not included; rather, the 12-inch versions of ‘Blue Monday’ and ‘True Faith’ and the album versions of the other two. The second disc includes the 7-inch version of ‘Blue Monday 1988’, the first instance of many when the band not only re-recorded songs as they had done for Substance but also dated the new versions like so, as if they could come out with a new model every year. This choice is unfortunate but not surprising, as it was released commercially, unlike the 7-inch edit of the original ‘Blue Monday’, largely heard as a video clip. Also, ‘Confusion’ is represented by an edit of its "Rough Mix" version.

The 2016 reissue thankfully rectified most of these bizarre choices, including the 7-inch edit of ‘True Faith’, a 7-inch edit of ‘The Perfect Kiss’ originally released in foreign markets, a 7-inch edit of ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ originally released in Australia, and the promo-only 7-inch version of ‘Confusion’. The 12-inch ‘Blue Monday’ remains. Why were these 7-inch versions not on the 2005 release? Anyway, the 2016 version is better, but still not "best" (in the world of New Order compilations and reissues, there is no "best"). If only the 7-inch ‘Blue Monday’ had been included, the first disc easily could have been an excellent single source for the 7-inch versions of the 14 singles listed above.

In the end, we are left constructing a hypothetical New Order singles compilation. All this nit-picking fussiness may seem absurd, but the goal here is to make a cohesive listening experience, a selection of some of the band's best songs that would be as captivating—and addicting—as a great studio album, while also collecting all the myriad versions of certain songs that New Order made or commissioned. For now, to clarify discographical matters, first we would have albums of the original 7-inch versions and of the original 12-inch versions, then a disc of slightly-revised mixes of these basic versions and the more prominent of the many remixes. Other discs could then collect more remixes, rare edits, and other oddities. From this, listeners could then make their own playlists. Would this not be the ideal situation for listening online? Pay an annual fee, as one does at the Neil Young Archives for example, for access to an artist's complete discography (or at least studio recordings), and arrange the tracks yourself. Have record labels, or in rarer cases the artist themselves ever done a good job of organizing compilations? No. It is in fact an impossible task, best left to the individual listener.

The 7-inch-versions album would feature the original version of ‘Ceremony’, as it came out on both 7-inch and 12-inch, whereas the second version only came out on 12-inch. The 12-inch-versions album would exclude ‘Procession’ as it was not released as a 12-inch single (though it was made part of the U. S. release 1981-1982, called an E. P. but actually played at 33-and-1/3 R. P. M.) and there is not an appropriate alternate version to include as a stand-in for a 12-inch edit. The track listing is as such, with the particular version's appearances on recent C. D. reissues, either the compilations discussed here (Substance, Retro, or either version of Singles), other major collections, or the 2008 two-disc "Collector's Edition" reissues of the band's studio albums, noted. Also noted are instances wherein a track is only available via some recent digital reissues of original 12-inch singles.

‘Ceremony’
2005 and 2016 versions of Singles; Movement 2008 Collector's Edition; third disc of Substance 2023 reissue
‘Procession’
cassette and C. D. versions of Substance; Retro; 2005 and 2016 versions of Singles; Movement 2008 Collector's Edition
‘Everything's Gone Green’
2005 and 2016 versions of Singles
‘Temptation’
2005 and 2016 versions of Singles; Movement 2008 Collector's Edition
‘Blue Monday’
not readily available on disc; check You Tube
‘Confusion’
2016 version of Singles
‘Thieves like Us’
2005 and 2016 versions of Singles
‘The Perfect Kiss’
2016 version of Singles
‘Sub-Culture’
2005 and 2016 versions of Singles
‘Shellshock’
2005 and 2016 versions of Singles
‘State of the Nation’
2005 and 2016 versions of Singles
‘Bizarre Love Triangle’
2016 version of Singles
‘True Faith’
2016 version of Singles
‘Touched by the Hand of God’
Retro; 2005 and 2016 versions of Singles

The 12-inch-versions album:
‘Ceremony’
Substance; Retro; Movement 2008 Collector's Edition
‘Everything's Gone Green’
Substance; Retro; Movement 2008 Collector's Edition
‘Temptation’
third disc of Substance 2023 reissue; Retro; Movement 2008 Collector's Edition
‘Blue Monday’
Substance; Retro; 2005 and 2016 versions of Singles; Power, Corruption and Lies 2008 Collector's Edition
‘Confusion’
third disc of Substance 2023 reissue; Retro; Power, Corruption and Lies 2008 Collector's Edition
‘Thieves like Us’
Substance; Power, Corruption and Lies 2008 Collector's Edition
‘The Perfect Kiss’
L. P. editions of Substance; Substance 2023 reissue; Low-Life 2008 Collector's Edition
‘Sub-Culture’
Low-Life 2008 Collector's Edition
‘Shellshock’
available as a digital reissue of the original 12-inch and on an obscure compilation—see Wikipedia page
‘State of the Nation’
Substance
‘Bizarre Love Triangle’
Substance; Brotherhood 2008 Collector's Edition
‘True Faith’
Substance
‘Touched by the Hand of God’
Brotherhood 2008 Collector's Edition

As we see with these listings, the 7-inch versions are more accessible at the moment, solely because of the second, 2016 version of the Singles compilation. The decision to use abridged versions of some of the 12-inch versions on Substance can at least be said to have enhanced the appeal of the original vinyl releases or any reissues of them.

New Order, Movement
Originally released 1981; reissued 2008 (Discogs) and 2019 (Discogs)—these stickers from the 2008 deluxes

New Order, Power, Corruption and Lies
Originally released 1983; reissued 2008 (Discogs) and 2020 (Discogs)

New Order, Low-Life
Originally released 1985; reissued 2008 (Discogs) and 2023 (Discogs)

New Order, Brotherhood
Originally released 1986; reissued 2008 (Discogs)

The choice of versions to include in a third selection of versions of the same 14 songs gets more difficult. First of all, the 1987 versions of ‘Temptation’ and ‘Confusion’, as they became the only versions for many casual listeners wearing out their copies of Substance. We could then review what other versions are included on any edition of Substance, as well as Singles and Retro; then take a look at versions included on the second discs of the 2008 deluxe editions not yet considered; then, finally, review the singles as they were originally released to note rarer versions.

There is no other version of ‘Ceremony’ to include, unless one were to resort to the Joy Division version originally released on Heart and Soul. The same goes for ‘Procession’ and ‘Everything's Gone Green’; at this point, the band had not embraced the remixing techniques of Disco and House musics that would ultimately lead to a bewildering number of versions of their later hits. ‘The Beach’, an alternate version of ‘Blue Monday’ is mostly non-vocal. There is also apparently an abridged version of the original 12-inch mix included on one of the series of various-artists compilations The Best...Album in the World...Ever!. Another potential ‘Confusion’ is the Rough Mix, so titled because it represented what the band had completed before bringing Arthur Baker into the production process.

From ‘Confusion’ onward, the number of versions of the single-only tracks increases significantly, often quite annoyingly. Substance's aforementioned slightly-abridged 12-inch versions of ‘The Perfect Kiss’, ‘Sub-Culture’, and ‘Shellshock’ need to be noted, though ideally they would have never existed, having been made apparently only to fit the tracks within the 74 minutes that C. D.s were limited-to at the time. ‘Sub-Culture’'s ‘Dub-Vulture’, has two 7-inch edits plus a 12-inch. ‘The Perfect Kiss’ has its own alternately-titled "dub" version, ‘The Kiss of Death’, in both 7-inch and 12-inch edits, as do ‘State of the Nation’ (titled ‘Shame of the Nation‘) and ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ (‘Bizarre Dub Triangle’). ‘The Perfect Kiss’ also has a second 7-inch edit which is more directly an edit of the full-length 12-inch version. And there's the longer 12-inch version of ‘True Faith’, one of several remixes done for the band by Shep Pettibone, as well as ‘True Faith (True Dub)’. (Again, we are only discussing material released through 1987, thus ignoring the ‘True Faith-94’ release and a 1998 version of ‘Temptation’) There are also instrumental versions of several songs to consider.

‘Temptation’ [1987 version]
Substance
‘The Beach’
cassette and C. D. versions of Substance; Power, Corruption and Lies 2008 Collector's Edition
‘Confusion’ [1987 version]
Substance
‘Thieves like Us’ [instrumental]
cassette and C. D. versions of Substance; Power, Corruption and Lies 2008 Collector's Edition
‘The Perfect Kiss’ [12-inch version, abridged]
cassette and C. D. versions of Substance
‘Sub-Culture’ [12-inch version, abridged]
Substance
‘Shellshock’ [12-inch version, abridged]
Substance; Low-Life 2008 Collector's Edition
‘Shame of the Nation’ [12-inch version]
Low-Life 2008 Collector's Edition
‘Bizarre Dub Triangle’ [12-inch version]
third disc of Substance 2023 reissue
‘True Faith’ [longer, Shep Pettibone 12-inch remix]
Brotherhood 2008 Collector's Edition; third disc of Substance 2023 reissue
‘Touched by the Hand of God’ [Salvation soundtrack version]
available on the C. D. version of the soundtrack

Songs only released as B sides, such as ‘Mesh’ and ‘1963’, are not noted here, though these too tended to have 7-inch and 12-inch edits as well as alternate mixes. Some rare versions of the 14 songs in question are also being ignored for now—e. g. alternate 7-inch edits that differ by only a few seconds or extremely-obscure versions about which little information is available even at deep-dive resources like New Order Online and World in Motion.

‘Blue Monday’ [12-inch version, abridged]
The Best... Album In The World...Ever!
‘Confusion (Rough Mix)’
available as a digital reissue of the original 12-inch
‘Confusion (Rough Mix)’ [abridged]
2005 Singles
‘Confusion’ [instrumental]
Power, Corruption and Lies 2008 Collector's Edition
‘Confused Beats’
available as a digital reissue of the original 12-inch
‘Confusion Dub 1987’
third disc of Substance 2023 reissue
‘The Perfect Kiss’ [second 7-inch version]
‘The Perfect Kiss’ [instrumental]
‘The Kiss of Death’ [7-inch version]
‘The Kiss of Death’ [12-inch version]
available as a digital reissue of the original 12-inch
‘Perfect Pit’
third disc of Substance 2023 reissue; also digital reissue of the original 12-inch
‘Sub-Culture’ [second 7-inch version]
part of a various-artists 45 that came with an issue of Record Mirror
‘Dub-Vulture’ [first 7-inch version]
‘Dub-Vulture’ [second 7-inch version]
‘Dub-Vulture’ [12-inch version]
Low-Life 2008 Collector's Edition; third disc of Substance 2023 reissue
‘Shellcock’
third disc of Substance 2023 reissue
‘Shame of the Nation’ [7-inch version]
‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ [second 7-inch version]
‘Bizarre Dub Triangle’ [7-inch version]
‘True Faith’ [second 7-inch version]
‘True Faith (True Dub)’
third disc of Substance 2023 reissue
‘Touched by the Hand of Dub’ [12-inch version]
‘Touched by the Hand of Dub’ [7-inch version]
available on a Japanese C. D. version of the original 12-inch

If our initial task was to craft a single or double album's worth of New Order's singles that accomplishes the dual goal of being a cohesive listen and documenting the original releases in an organized fashion, we are now obviously only meeting the second goal. These many alternate versions, some of which are barely distinguishable from each other, would need to be mixed in with B-side tracks in addition to alternate versions of album tracks. This task is especially difficult if one keeps my chronological end point of 1987, as many of these variants are of seven songs: ‘Confusion’, ‘The Perfect Kiss’, ‘Sub-Culture’, ‘Shellshock’, ‘State of the Nation’, ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’, and ‘True Faith’, whereas we began with 14 A-side songs to work with.

With numerous new versions of these 14 songs having been released in the years since 1987, New Order's unique place in the history of Rock is readily apparent. Before them, differences among multiple versions of the same song tended to be minor, or at least considered unimportant. At times, such as in the case of the many remasters of recent decades, the differences seem to many listeners to be indecipherable, or alternately subject to intense debate on the question of their relevance. Granted, when songs got longer in the album era, we saw more 7-inch edits of album tracks. We then saw, with some artists, longer 12-inch edits, created for D. J.s, from the Disco years onward. Overall, though, the tendency has been to have a final, official version of a song, to be replayed time and again on listeners' stereo systems, the radio, and wherever else recorded music is heard. New Order brought forth the possibility of a Rock band making electronic music that could be subject to endless remixing, a hypothetical wherein every time one hears the song at a club or other public setting, one does not know which version is to be played—or, rather, if yet-another new version is being played.

The second facet of the band's story that makes it seem almost mythical is of course their origin as the remnant of Joy Division, three of the four members of that band carrying on after the suicide of singer Ian Curtis. Perhaps Bernard Sumner would have never become a singer and song composer if not for Curtis's death. In this sense, his transformation in the Eighties fulfills the promise of the Punk ideal: the amateur who does not fit social and business standards, but nonetheless charts his own particular course toward something like stardom. After all, when it comes to purposeful tunelessness, Sumner's vocal on Low-Life's ‘Love Vigilantes’ rivals any early-Smiths Morrissey. And maybe we shouldn't mention awful rhymes like: “Pretending not to see his gun/ I said let's go out and have some fun”—so very Punk? That said, ‘True Faith’ is, for me, the culmination of Sumner's, and the band's, transformation, final proof of its value. However fleeting the impressions made by its vague words, the song puts me in a mental space where I confront debilitating nostalgia and regret. Putting such thoughts into musical form, the song arrests them, crystallizes them—for a moment. That such an untrained singer, with his hearty, emotive vocal leaps foward from the mealy-mouthed performance heard on ‘Ceremony’, could compose such a crucial song, a song that, since I first heard it via its silly video clip airing on M. T. V., I would not want to live without... that is the pop dream made part of the waking world.

–Justin J. Kaw, December 2023

~

Sun City Girls Discographical Dossier

What more can be said at this point about Sun City Girls, more than 15 years since the death of drummer Charles Gocher in 2007 brought the band to an end? What more can I say? Given that I did long (very long!) "Correspondence" interviews with the other two-thirds of the band, the brothers Alan and Richard Bishop, in 2006 and 2011, respectively. The answer: probably a lot more about specific recordings, since there are so many of them (and presumably archival releases are still to come, not to mention albums by Alvarious B—Alan's solo moniker—and Sir Richard Bishop and other projects the two are involved in). The more obscure the better, I suppose, but that approach is not mine. When we want to listen to a great deal of music, across wide swaths of genre, origin, and taste, we may end up eschewing the obscure, no matter what treasures other enthusiasts insist await us, and opt instead for samplings, in this case the band's best albums, in addition to notes about larger facets of their body of work.

Torch of the Mystics, Torch of the Mystics, Torch of the Mystics... we may want to recite it more because countless casual listeners out there in Rock/ Indie land have likely listened to it 10 or 20 times as often as they have anything else put out by Sun City Girls. To be fair, while the earlier Grotto of Miracles already showed the band capable of making a great album (though one that in retrospect seems timid), Torch of the Mystics is "something else all together," the one "where everything came together," their peak, a masterpiece... some phrasing like that which makes the writer feel that he is is an A. I. idiot. But seriously, it is Rock Top Ten territory: Revolver, Low, Daydream Nation, whatever your drug of choice. Alan Bishop as a vocalist "comes into his own"—there goes that A. I. again!—his performances on ‘Space Prophet Dogon’ and ‘The Flower’ are marvels, his voice at this point in his life a force of nature. Let's just stop at this point lest more clichés surface. Meanwhile, from the opening track, ‘Blue Mamba’, onward, Richard Bishop established himself as arguably the finest guitarist working in Rock music at the time, both exploring distortion-as-timbre, "alternate" tunings, and electroacoustic effects as much as the Indie stars of the time (Sonic Youth, Fushitsusha, the Dead C) and having traditional "chops," not to mention an appreciation of varied folk and foreign techniques unmatched by his peers.

Sun City Girls, Torch of the Mystics
Originally released 1990; reissued 1993 (the booklet above is from this edition) and 2015

Speaking of which.... Several years after first hearing this album, walking into a Montréal subway station, I heard a street musician playing ‘The Shining Path’, sung by Alan on this album. At first, I strained to believe that this random person was a Sun City Girls fan. Of course (while he may have been) most likely he was playing the song because it is not a Sun City Girls original, but one of many instances of them covering, or nearly-completely rearranging, others' songs (disemboweling may better describe Alan's versions of songs like Bob Dylan's ‘Wanted Man’ on the 2017 Alvarius B triple album, With a Beaker on the Burner and an Otter in the Oven). At times, these covers are of folk songs, both traditional or otherwise; ‘The Shining Path’ is a cover of ‘Llorando se Fue’ by the Bolivian group Los Kjarkas.

The Bishop brothers, partially of Lebanese of descent, were introduced to Arabic music and instruments by their father's family during their Michigan childhood. In turn, in league with Gocher, they became deeply interested in Hinduism and Southeast Asian music, including Javanese and Balinese gamelan traditions. The result in the form of Sun City Girls music, when combined with a healthy dose of Southwestern flavors from their later childhood and early-Sun City Girls years in Phoenix (Surf Rock, Latin Rock, and, as already noted, traditional musics from South America) plus Gocher's Jazz-inspired drumming, is a heady mix of styles and compositional methods.

At times, their interpretations of "foreign" musics make sourpusses out of the prudish pseudo-liberal pseudo-intelligentsia whose sensitivities regarding the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities can too often contort into gauche essentializing and reification of our genealogical backgrounds, more K. K. K. than A. C. L. U. To be fair, there are times when Sun City Girls versions of "foreign" work may come off as mere imitations. The thing is, though... their imitations may be the only reason why listeners know about the originals. Only a decade or so after enjoying the band's 2002 album Flute and Mask, especially its extended vocal excursions, often quite theatrical, did I hear examples of Balinese music that actually seemed similar, especially the vocals, namely the album Music of Bali: Barong & Keris Dance, released by Interra Recordings, documenting performances in the village of Batubulan.

The first of three Sun City Girls Singles compilations released after the band's demise, You're Never Alone with a Cigarette, collects the tracks initially considered for a possible double-L. P. configuration of Torch of the Mystics. While a tracking order for this longer version of their classic album was set at the time, Alan has said to me that this sequencing could have changed by the time the proposed double L. P. would have been released. As is, the compilation stands up well enough as a cohesive album, enough to double the size of Torch, if not double the quality. Excluding the brief ‘Harmful Little Armful (For Will Shatter)’, which borders on being a content-less joke track, my 19-track version of a double Torch is as follows:

side A

Blue Mamba
Tarmac 23
Souvenirs from Jangare
Burial in the Sky
Sev Acher
Esoterica of Abyssynia

side B

Space Prophet Dogon
The Shining Path
Amazon One
The Flower
Radar 1941

side C

Plaster Cupids Falling from the Ceiling
The Beauty of Benghazi
Wild World of Animals
100 Pounds of Black Olives

side D

Papa Legba
The Vinegar Stroke
Cafe Batik
The Fine-Tuned Machines of Lemuria

Carnival Folklore Resurrection 7: Libyan Dream, commonly justly recommended as a easy way-in to the difficult Sun City Girls discography, a second selection after Torch, is just-eclectic-enough not to be dismissed as too cohesive to be a brilliant Sun City Girls album. In other words, a great Sun City Girls album is necessarily a little messy, jarring to the listener at times, not letting him get too comfortable. The album starts with a cover of the Amboy Dukes' ‘Journey to the Center of the Mind’, not only better than the original but arguably the epitome of the late-Eighties/ early-Nineties "low-fi" aesthetic. The album then forces the listener through some standard-Girls choppy territory, before heading into gentler terrain, notably a string of non-vocal tracks, from ‘The Vinegar Stroke’ to ‘Sangkala Suite’, that may be as close we can get to having something to offer those who demand boilerplate Sun City Girls, plus the sing-along favorite ‘Opium Den’, the closest the band came to anything that could be considered a hit—if they had deigned to do things like release singles from albums.

Supposedly Libyan Dream was released in 1993 as a cassette, but was "unlabeled and anonymously placed in street tape stands in markets throughout Southeast Asia," as stated at the band's official web site. If it really was completed that year, it can be seen as a culmination of early Sun City Girls music, not only because the band moved to Seattle around that time but also because they soon embarked on albums less Rock-oriented, including soundtrack recordings like Juggernaut. The band's first release on its own label, Abduction Records, Kaliflower, also came out in 1993. Like Libyan Dream, it is accessible by the band's standards, but in my own estimation not as essential as what would soon come.

We should note too, before we get ahead of ourselves, that the switch to Compact Discs released by Abduction brought an end to the band's diverse series, Cloaven Cassettes, released in the years, 1987-1990, and which form another world onto themselves, both a crucial part of the "Cassette Underground" of the Eighties-early Nineties and supplemental documentation of Sun City Girls taking their baby steps, with recordings stretching back to 1982, and performing live. Abduction's founding also indirectly marked the end of series of 7-inch 45 releases, mostly released 1990-1992, some of which (as documented on the aforementioned Sun City Girls Singles reissues) were as excellent as the band's best albums.

With the double-C. D. (later, triple L. P. as well) 330,003 Crossdressers from beyond the Rig Veda, Sun City Girls matched Torch of the Mystics not only in the consistent quality of the music included, but in that the selection of tracks effectively traverses between expected instrumental Rock and experiments in "ethnic" music more likely to feature vocals. Its first-fifth tracks, from ‘Civet's Tango’ to ‘Cruel and Thin’, comprise a brilliant run of songs, with wide disparities in mood, instrumentation, and cultural traditions being drawn upon; as on Torch, these "foreign" excursions offer Alan Bishop's singing at its wondrous, at times bewildering, best. Much of the rest of the album is as good, but looser as it proceeds from brief dips into gamelan music, to a few straight-ahead songs, but mostly to longer, experimental pieces; it may leave the listener unmoored, but pleasantly so. After all, it includes a thirty-four-minute live piece, ‘Ghost Ghat Tresspass/ Sussmeier’, with guest violinist Eyvind Kang that rightly takes it place in the exclusive canon of long-form Rock-based improvisation alongside the likes of Can's ‘Halleluwah’ or numerous versions of Frank Zappa's ‘Black Napkins’ (the half-hour take found in the box-set 40th-anniversary version of Zappa in New York comes to mind, as it also features a star turn from a violinst, Eddie Jobson).

The double-C. D. companion to Crossdressers, Dante's Disneyland Inferno, also released in 1996, sees the band, who usually recorded music in a variety of settings (embracing not only the moment of recording, but whatever particular devices were available) instead working closely with producer Scott Colburn, overdubbing and unafraid to strive for well-rehearsed, meticulously-crafted productions. Indeed, Dante's, apparently not including any live recordings and dominated by vocals and the acoustic guitar, is "cleaner," in terms of sonic fidelity, than any other Girls release. When it comes to its lyrics, though, the album is quite "dirty"—moreover, it is the definitive record, the shining exemplar, of the literary side of Sun City Girls' work. While plenty of Girls fans dislike Dante's, for me it was not only a sister release to Crossdressers, but compares favorably with the latter, so that they can be collectively considered the band's two-pronged masterpiece. Admittedly, Dante's, being just as long as Crossdressers, can also be exhausting.

The bigger reason why it is disliked or ignored is that plenty of Girls fans are quite squeamish about the band's explorations of the profane. As the linguist John McWhorter describes, our understanding of what is offensive in Western civilization has switched over roughly a half-millennium from religious concerns ("damn," "hell") to the scatological and sexual ("fuck," "shit") to the identity-based ("cunt," "nigger"). If this holds, then Sun City Girls can be said to blithely bypass temporal restraints, ensuring that time travelers from the past and future will stand back with mouths agape. Most prominently, we run into Alan's persona/ alter ego Uncle Jim, a recurring feature of Girls albums. Uncle Jim's sociopolitical rants, paired with songs like ‘Soft Fragile Eggshell Minds’, provide the clearest view of the band's overall philosophy. The references to Hindu gods and goddesses; time-jumping, time-oblivious cultural imperialism of the powerful and weak alike; cynical contrarianism morphing into free-for-all, unbridled creativity... these all point to the competition for limited resources that drives humanity to the unspeakable hatred and violence that are our only constant, the only thing we're good at—and good for. These themes continue to be explored in Alan's Alvarius B releases, as well as his band the Invisible Hands, based appropriately enough in Cairo, which in recent years has witnessed humans at their best-worst as much as any other. To be blunt, without listening to Dante's closely and repeatedly, you will miss this larger view of what Sun City Girls offer us. ‘Different Kind of Whore’, from Grotto of Miracles, sums up this perspective another way: “I don't get fucked by Spartan girls/ I get fucked by the world; I don't get fucked by male master spies/ I get fucked right between the eyes.”

On the other hand, Dante's offers moments of sublime beauty, most of all the track, ‘Charles Grocher Sr.’, a loving, if rather oblique, tribute to the drummer's father. It too offers another way of explaining the album's importance to the Sun City Girls worldview. The recited text that, in the track, is accompanied by a bed of clattering percussion, a plaintive organ drone, and a few electronic effects, focuses on reincarnation, summing up: "If you don't believe in the reincarnation of the soul, how do you know that we're not all dead already?" Death, here, can be our physical death, but also intellectual and artistic deaths taking place during our lives, caused by lack of creativity, failures of nerve. The notion of reincarnation, regardless of one's spiritual beliefs or lack thereof, suggests the radical potential of empathy. You can step outside yourself, even become your enemy: the narrator does so in ‘Soft Fragile Eggshell Minds’, taking on the perspective of a murderous, power-hungry villain, and thus understands his evil. And on that note... yes, collect field recordings from across the globe, create collages of them, and release them without proper documentation, as Alan and others would do with their Sublime Frequencies record label. Yes, engage in prank performances as the band famously did in 1994 at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall, sitting on stage telling stories in fake-yokel style; or, as documented in audiovideo, in 2004 at Seattle's Experience Music Project, turning a "high profile" gig into a free-form cacophonous freak show, Alan mockingly sporting an Osama Bin Laden t-shirt. Yes, make inauthentic, inappropriate music. The knowledge gained from such ventures proves necessary. You cannot survive without it.

The back covers of both of these 1996 double C. D.s noted that listeners could send a self-addressed stamped enveloped and receive in turn the lyric sheets for the albums. Alan still sent these out well into the new century, so when I finally gotten around to doing so, more than five years after the albums had come out, the following sheets arrived in the mail. Having the lyrics for at least some of the songs on these albums helps immensely in appreciating them.

Sun City Girls, when improvising with the standard Rock instrumentation of electric guitar, electric bass guitar, and a drum kit, are a source of numerous pleasures. Marc Masters, author of a broad overview of the band at Pitchfork, concurs, though I must discount his recommendation of Wah, which as a whole is an impressive performance but limited in its timbral palette and hampered by annoying distortion (this album, along Flute and Mask, was originally made available at the merch tables of the band's 2002 tour, a triumphant return to the road after not touring the States since '92). Oddly enough, writers on the band, including myself, have not noted how similar Sun City Girls are to, say, Derek Bailey. Often the band stay within what we could consider the idiom of Rock (again, instrumental Rock songs like those on Torch and Libyan are what is likely to come to mind when one immediately associates "Sun City Girls" with a sound or style of music), as compared to the non-idiomatic improvisation that Bailey defined as central to what is generally called Free Improvisation or Improvised Music. But at other times Sun City Girls definitely leave behind any expectations regarding how their instruments are to be played. Or, rather, they sometimes do so within a performance, exemplarily so on Dawn of the Devi, their follow-up to Torch. (Though unfortunately reissued on L. P., not C. D., in 2019, Dawn of the Devi has found its way to official streaming channels and so thankfully can be heard by the larger audience it deserves.) As with the work of Bailey or the Spontaneous Music Ensemble or later-day Improvised-Music leading lights like the Evan Parker/ Barry Guy/ Paul Lytton trio, in these moments the Bishop brothers and Charles Gocher seem to be a single mind at work on three different instruments. Almost entirely without vocals, Dawn of the Devi provides the best evidence in favor of Masters' claim that the Sun City Girls' improvised Rock is the "molten core of their musical earth." As both Alan and Richard wrote in my Sweet Pea interviews, improvisation has always been fundamental to their art. Other examples of the band jumping from (relatively) standard Rock-instrumental fare into improvised "non-idiomatic" territory are to be heard on the concert recording Carnival Folklore Resurrection 5: Severed Finger with a Wedding Ring

A few other albums that do not make my short list of the band's best, but come awfully close, must include the late-career highlight Djinn Funnel, one of the Girls albums that effectively combines their many streams into an integral whole; it is a raw, live-in-the-room recording but thankfully avoids being an experiment in amplifier-clipping extremes like another fan favorite, Valentines from Matahari. The first entry in the vault-clearing Carnival Folklore Resurrection series, entitled Cameo Demons and Their Manifestations sees the ethnomusicological explorations like those of Flute and Mask creep into relatively-abstract territory. The music on this album seeps into your conscious; initially what sounds brutally minimalist transforms itself in front of your heathen ears into documentation of some sort of imaginary tribal ritual. Another Carnival Folklore entry, the double-disc dual album, High Asia/ Lo-Pacific, is noteworthy. Soundscapes created by field recordings, musique concrète manipulation of such found sounds, and the band's collage-like archival tendencies (as heard on the sprawling three-disc Box of Chameleons) have been at least a minor feature of many Girls releases, going back to their self-titled first L. P. This electroacoustic side of their work became more prominent as their collection of field recordings grew; one hears this on Lo-Asia. Then came the band's "radio" works: the rest of the Carnival Folklore series was devoted to albums actually originally created for radio broadcast, namely Carnival Folklore Resurrection Radio, 98.6 Is Death, and Static from the Outside Set. In these years, Alan and others were releasing similar collage-like works on Sublime Frequencies.

The band's official final studio album, Funeral Mariachi, released posthumously in 2010, received rave reviews from critics and listeners who seemed not to know the band's music well. In fact, much of the album sounds more like an Alvarius B album, especially Baroque Primitiva; and several shorter pieces pass by to little effect. Nonetheless, it does feature a piece of stunning beauty and pathos, ‘Holy Ground’, broaching the elephant in the room, Gocher's death. If you want to win over a Sun City Girls skeptic (an N. P. R.-listening, do-gooder grandma, a grumpy anti-intellect, anti-art American everyman) then play them ‘Holy Ground’ followed by ‘Charles Grocher Sr.’, and shut them up quick.

–Justin J. Kaw, August 2023

~

Amid Blue Öyster Cult's Fictions, Forsaken Godless Revolutions

Blue Öyster Cult
Originally released 1972, reissued 2001 (Discogs) with four bonus tracks

Is there another "Classic Rock" band still befuddling listeners as much as Blue Öyster Cult? ("Classic Rock" here fitting a standard definition: the artists who were staples of F. M. radio, filled up arenas, and released album upon album of increasingly-refined music in the years, 1969-1982, trailing off after 1976.) The stories of countless such groups, even those quite obscure, are perennially regurgitated into stereotypical mush in the form of an endless trove of documentary films and glossy special issues of magazines. The Cult, on the other hand, seem like a... cult?—no, a secret society as much as a commercial musical operation. The band has its officiants and gate keepers among a small, aged cohort of devotees: An archivist, Bolle Gregmar, whose collection (a museum?) is largely out of the public eye; a devoted fan, John Schwartz, who wrote a Frequently-Asked Questions ("FAQ") text several years ago—in fact, a fine specimen of that briefly-flourishing, but hardly-missed, literary form—now preserved at the major Cult source of information in the present day, Hot Rails to Hull, a web site mostly serving as a gigography. The author of a book about the group, Martin Popoff, writes in his introduction that he hopes Gregmar will write his own book, deferring to the latter's deeper knowledge.

Let us put this another way—less esoteric? Blue Öyster Cult are not exactly Heavy Metal, Glam, Psychedelia, Punk, Progressive, or the groove-geared Rock of Z. Z. Top, Grand Funk Railroad, et al., but show traits of each. They are frequently placed in the Metal category, but that may be only because they were the first band to use the "Metal umlat" in their name or because they toured with Black Sabbath or because Eric Bloom wore a lot of leather on stage. (And the definition of Heavy Metal was very broad well into the Eighties.) Nonetheless the Cult's biggest hit, ‘(Don't Fear) The Reaper’, bridges the gap between Prog Rock and the A. O. R. mainstream of the late Seventies. Fittingly, in the ensuing years, there were times when they fit in best with the likes of Boston and Styx; not only that, they could beat those bands at their own game, especially on the underrated sixth studio album Mirrors. Or bore the influence of the post-Punk pop-Rock "New Wave", especially on ‘Burnin' for You’, the hit from the best of their later albums, their eighth, Fire of Unknown Origin. For those seeking to satiate any jonesing for vintage Seventies Rock, the Cult seem both to do it too well and to fail to fit the prescription for any defined genre. They are often forgotten, except for ‘Reaper’.

Blue Öyster Cult, Tyranny and Mutation
Originally released 1973, reissued 2001 (Discogs) with four bonus tracks

While Blue Öyster Cult are probably rarely grouped in with Progressive Rock, their Prog-like characteristics are helpful in appreciating their music. Contrary to the post-Bob Dylan Rock standard of a singer-songwriter singing his own songs, all five of Blue Öyster Cult's official members sang and composed; and several confidantes wrote lyrics: Sandy Pearlman, Richard Meltzer, Patti Smith, Helen Wheels. In other words, in the Cult's music, the lyricist is often not a member of the band, let alone the singer; and when a band member did write the lyrics, he did not necessarily take the lead on the finished track. The novice listener is forgiven for not knowing who's singing when. On the first-third albums, guitarist Eric Bloom sings more often than not, the others taking turns. (Bloom is the band's best singer, capable when he is not hewing too closely to Blues stylings of enacting surprisingly poignant moments, as in the song, ‘Veteran of the Psychic Wars’ from Fire of Unknown Origin.) Beginning with the fourth album, Agents of Fortune, there is more variety in the lead vocals; that album includes ‘Reaper’, written and sung by lead guitarist Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser. Granted, there are plenty of examples in Heavy Metal of the singer and lyricist not being one and the same, and the music being composed by varying teams of collaborators. But in Prog Rock this approach seems most prevalent. See, for example, post-Peter Gabriel Genesis. King Crimson, meanwhile, is perhaps the best example of a band having a separate lyricist as a quasi-member.

More generally, Blue Öyster Cult exemplify the Rock band. More precisely, they embody certain tendencies of Rock music that made collectively-named ensembles, as compared to ensembles backing a leader/ solo star, more important than in other genres. A few individuals who would not have made much of a mark on their own fruitfully collaborating as a singular entity; that entity not only sporting a logo, as the Cult did, but also an identity, a purpose. As Rock has declined commercially, crawling away from the mainstream, so too have bands diminished in significance, even within the presumably-welcoming confines of Indie, a change discussed at the Honest Broker ('The Bands Are Never Coming Back') and the Guardian ('Why Bands Are Disappearing'). What has always been rare are bands wherein multiple creative voices become manifest as one, without one of those voices crowding out the others (nevermind the band having been set up in the first place as an outlet for one composer). The band as an art project, instead of a career, is a trait that the Cult share with many Punk/ post-Punk artists, except that Rock bands coming of age in the Punk era were more likely to be led by a singer, or organize themselves around a split in compositional duties between the words and their accompaniment. Though some took on a Prog-collectivist approach: Wire, for example.

Blue Öyster Cult, Secret Treaties
Originally released 1974, reissued 2001 (Discogs) with four bonus tracks

When lyrics do not confirm the listener's arrogant presumption that he knows the person doing the singing—more precisely, that he knows what the singers means and that what the singers means is exactly what the singer thinks—when they are written by committee, so to speak, we can get past such personalized socio-politics and soak in the themes, moods, allusions, references. Blue Öyster Cult certainly offer a heady, rich brew of these. Though the band's direct connection to the budding New York Punk scene came via lyricist partners like Smith and Wheels, the lyrics do not overtly suggest similarities with Punk, but instead point back to the years of the band's long gestation process, 1967-1972, that is: when “turned on” “out front” youthful hippies, especially those who had missed out on the happier pre-1967 times, expected—no, demanded!—a revolution any day now. As the Cult sang in ‘R. U. Ready 2 Rock’: “I only live to be born again.”

Those years encompassed Blue Öyster Cult's beginnings as Soft White Underbelly, development of their Rock-band-as-art-project concept with their manager-mastermind Pearlman, and the recording and release of their self-titled debut album, which in its recording quality is significantly rawer than what was to come. While at times, as on fifth album Spectres' lead-off track and hit single, ‘Godzilla’, the Cult may harken back to the pre-hippie days, other common topics: motorcycle gangs, extraterrestrial life, alienated free-living cast-offs, fetishized sexuality, and conspiracy theories, definitely evoke the paranoia and social upheaval of those years. On top of that, throw in historical oddiments like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Mommie Dearest. Then add a healthy dose of fantastical themes, in some cases in collaboration with another lyricist: the novelist Michael Moorcock, most known in the Rock world for his work with Hawkwind. The end result is music that persistently triggers "heavy" thoughts, and what in the present day, for this listener at least, is the titilating feeling, perhaps only fleeting but strong nonetheless, that secrets are being revealed, forbidden subjects broached. Robertson Davies' novels evoke the same feeling, especially the Deptford Trilogy and What's Bred in the Bone. The cover of Agents of Fortune easily could have served as the cover of a Davies novel.

Blue Öyster Cult, Agents of Fortune
Originally released 1976, reissued 2001 (Discogs) with four bonus tracks

Spectres benefits most from the variation in lead vocals, with bassist Joe Bouchard and his brother, drummer Albert Bouchard, taking two star turns each, sequenced well alongside Bloom's and Roeser's lead vocals. Agents of Fortune, on the other hand, saw Albert sing three songs, two of them on the album's (relatively) lackluster side B; and with keyboardist-guitarist Allen Lanier taking a rare lead on ‘True Confessions’, the album overall does not achieve the balance between Bloom and Roeser that would become crucial to the band's later albums. Either way, a simple history may posit that these two albums witnessed the Cult going pop, a point suggested by the first-third albums comprising the band's "black-and-white" period, their (mostly) monochromatic covers reflecting their relatively-uniform "Rockist" sound. But this take on the band's history leaves out a lot. However more mainstream-oriented the music got, the lyrics in the late Seventies-early Eighties explored more speculative-fiction themes (horror, sci fi, and fantasy) than previously, making the band more “Prog” as well, whereas the criminal/ biker themes prevalent on the earlier albums fit in better with Metal and Punk. At the same time, while Agents of Fortune brought about new levels of commercial success, it also included more collaborations with Patti Smith, and it included what could easily have been a Punk anthem, its rousing opening track ‘This Ain't the Summer of Love’.

Except... Blue Öyster Cult work better as a link between the hippie and punk eras, soundtracking the disillusionment of those who invested too much in "mind-expanding" drugs, post-Psychedelic Rock, and the sexual revolution ("sex, drugs, and Rock-and-Roll," as the common phrase at the time went). Think of ‘This Ain't the Summer of Love’ as a theme song for 1967 and its mythical "summer of love," since any actual such season would have taken place in the winter of 1966, or maybe it was the summer—of 1964, if you were one of the Merry Pranksters. Except again... “love” is not the right word, it never was. Euphoria maybe. Really a drug-induced materialist Millenarianism transformed in the Seventies, in all those arenas and studios where the likes of Blue Öyster Cult played, into excess courting oblivion, justified by vague movements toward dissent and hints at alternate "lifestyles": in short, nonsense, at least compared to the music, which perseveres. So why not connect this turned-inward ("some get strong, some get strange") revolution to stories of schemers, cops and robbers, conspiracists, and otherworldly warriors? On one hand, showmanship and snake oil; on the other, a fun-house version of Roger Waters' Rock-music-as-fascism trope, offered up at the same time. Those cookie-cutter divisions between the hippies and the punks, or Heavy Metal and Punk, and so on, dissolve. "A veteran of a thousand psychic wars"—that sounds right after all. (Way back in 1973, in a Robert Christgau article on the band for Newsday [1, 2 and 3], the emphasis was on the "greasers" who liked heavier music, contrasted with the hippies, with the acknowledgement that the band members themselves were not greasers. Not dissimilar from the supposed divide, not too long ago, between townies and Indie-popster... gownies?)

Blue Öyster Cult, Spectres
Originally released 1977, reissued 2007 (Discogs) with four bonus tracks

There were drawbacks to the band's collectivist and concept-centric approach. Verbosity has never gelled well with song composing, and plenty of awkward stuffing of words into tight musical structures have led to justified critiques of the limitations of Blue Öyster Cult's melodicism (for a contemporaneous example, see the New York Dolls). But I say, keep listening. I find myself, especially on the first-third albums, enjoying the rhythms and textures of the recordings so much that the songs seem to pass without me registering the melody or over-arching structure of the song. That is, they groove on by; they sound too good to pay close attention—like how you don't starting counting measures dancing to Techno music, though you could.

As the original five-piece fell apart; collective decisions perhaps came to reflect social tensions rather than artistic goals. Allen Lanier's main contribution to Fire of Unknown Origin, the closing track ‘Don't Turn Your Back’, has always been a dud to my ears. Indeed, that album's predecessors, Cultösaurus Erectus and Mirrors, both also feature one track too many (‘Hungry Boys’ and ‘Dr. Music’, respectively); the contrast with the picture-perfect sequencings of Tyranny and Mutation and Secret Treaties, nowadays held up as the band's best works, is clear. ‘Hungry Boys’ was drummer Albert Bouchard's lone lead vocal on Erectus, perhaps hinting at Albert's greater interest in crafting what would later become the band's eleventh album, Imaginos, derived from Pearlman's series of poems of the same name. (That album, meant to flesh out Pearlman's elaborate conspiratorial view of modern history, was released in 1988 after years of planning and a belabored production involving an excess of session musicians.) Things got a little worse on Revölution by Night, after which a disenchanted Lanier left, and a lot worse—the worst by far—on Club Ninja. The former at least contains ‘Take Me Away’, one of the greatest songs ever about humans welcoming alien abduction.

Blue Öyster Cult, The Columbia Albums Collection
Released 2012 (Discogs)

The brief essays that Lenny Kaye, compiler of Nuggets and guitarist for Patti Smith among other roles, contributes to these C. D. reissues are fine case studies of how to write reissue liner notes when the reader knows you're a friend of the band. The prose gets a bit purple at times, but we still find revealing historical notes: “The band kept a folder full of Meltzer's and Pearlman's word associations in their rehearsal room, and would leaf through it, setting fragments to music.” Kaye too informs us that, around the time of Agents of Fortune, each member of the group had their own home-recording set-up, allowing them to work on their own songs with greater independence. As we have seen, this change led first to a creative surge then the slow dissolution of the band.

Kaye both describes the music and the lyrics effectively. Regarding the former: "They were was as much Motor City boogie (Amboy Dukes) and Rebel boogie (post-Allman Brothers) as English midland crunch" (referring of course to Black Sabbath). On the latter: “Their cycle gang imagery - enhanced by the biker bar in Hempstead that became their haven, Conry's - had a futuristic feel, a Mad Max sense of mutant apocalypse that fit well with the emergent genre called Heavy Metal, a term bastardized from the writings of William Burroughs.” He adds, “Where some bands attempted to rabble-rouse, BÖC's concerns were more scientific, each song an abstract tale rather than a personal, emotionally wrenching narrative.” A fitting conclusion: “Though scaled to the gargantuan, the Cult never bludgeoned; instead, their music has a filigree delicacy amidst the decibels, the rhythms twisting and shifting, the guitar lines entwining, the lyrics tending toward the mythic and scientifictional.” Kaye more recently wrote the notes for the box set, The Columbia Albums Collection, definitely solidifying his status as one of those aforementioned officiants and gate keepers, welcoming those who embrace the Cult's stories about those seeking newfound freedoms only to lose the freedom they already had.

–Justin J. Kaw, June 2023