Japanese releases have always been fabulously exotic and collectable to me, with their disregard for replicating the exact same releases elsewhere and willingness to mix and match tracks into new combinations, such as 12″ mini-albums and so on. Plus of course the extra attention to detail with the quality of sleeve designs, inserts and packaging in general. Virgin released a series of ‘pic label’ releases by a few of my favourites such as John Foxx, The Human League, Japan, and, in the subject of this post, The Flying Lizards.
Hailing from late 1980, this 12″ compiles various tracks from all of the Flying Lizards singles up to that point and comes in a die-cut sleeve with an over-sized 6″ picture label on show (front only) – ‘Move On Up’ (Single edit) and Portugal from the A and B side respectively of the ‘Move On Up’ 7″ single, ‘All Guitars’ from the B side of the ‘Summertime Blues’ single, ‘Money’ (the longer, album version though) from the ‘Money’ single (which was available on 12″ in some territories) and ‘Tube’ from the B side of the ‘TV’ single.
Tracklisting is;
Side One:
- Move On Up (3′ 49″)
- Portugal (3′ 06″)
- All Guitars (2′ 40″)
Side Two:
- Money (6′ 17″)
- Tube (5′ 06″)
The label design is the same for both A and B sides, so although the original version of the photograph used features both David Cunningham and Deborah Lizard, sadly there is no Deborah Lizard to be found on this occasion. It also comes with a black and white one-sided lyric insert featuring a half-page bio in Japanese and the lyrics (in English) to ‘Move On Up’ and ‘Money’ and an obi strip on the outside.