Category: Small objects of desire

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Wire – ‘Third Day’ CD EP (Pink Flag, PF1, 2000)

This small object of desire was initially available for sale from the merch stall upon the occasion of Wire’s second ‘reactivation’ (their third coming, I suppose) – a concert at the Royal Festival Hall [RFH], London on 26th February 2000. By that time, despite their absence after having reverted to the three-piece format of WIR and it having come to an end in the first few years of the ’90s, the band’s critical stock had risen, no doubt thanks to obvious Britpop admirers such as Elastica, Blur, et al, through the mid to latter half of that decade, but also along with the good work that Wire Mail Order [WMO] had been doing in curating the recorded legacy meantime. The vibe meant that selling out a venue as large as the Royal Festival Hall was possible in order to welcome back Wire on returning, once again. (Such a venue and audience was not necessarily a good thing, in my experience, but more of that later…)

Wire - 'Third Day' CD EP front cover design
^ Wire – ‘Third Day’ CD EP front cover design

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Heaven 17 – ‘Endless’ UK Boxed Cassette (Virgin, TCVB 2383, 1986)

The first compilation/remix album by Heaven 17 (though by no means the last), ‘Endless’ is quite a curio on cassette format for a number of reasons. First off, this limited edition boxed version – packaged up in an elegant, black linen box with gold print, not a million miles away from the format that Factory Records had adopted for their cassette releases of their mid-eighties period (and which now prove very collectable indeed).

Heaven 17 'Endless' boxed edition cassette - front
^ Heaven 17 ‘Endless’ boxed edition cassette – front

Secondly, of course, some good old version craziness in the music to be found on the cassette. Apart from the ‘endless’ segue concept that is responsible for many changes to be found in the music, headline news is that the cassette edition came with four extra tracks compared to the CD version and amongst these is a 5’05” mix of ‘Play To Win’ that I had never come across anywhere else. (It has since finally been released on the ‘Play To Win (The Virgin Years)’ boxed set, I believe, though I don’t have this set.) It resembles the longer ‘BEF Disco Mix’ from the original 12″ single release, but edited down a good deal. (I tried out a digital recreation of it, hence why I know how much editing down it has had – no simple early fade out or the like, oh no – someone went to town with some enthusiasm all the way through the track!) Continue reading “Heaven 17 – ‘Endless’ UK Boxed Cassette (Virgin, TCVB 2383, 1986)”

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Bauhaus – ‘4AD’ UK Mini-Album (4AD, BAD 312, 1983)

Having worked away steadily and with increasing pressure since 1979, Bauhaus finally arrived into the upper ends of the UK charts with the double impact of the ‘Ziggy Stardust’ single (top 20) and ‘The Sky’s Gone Out’ album (top 5) in late 1982. The early months of 1983 would see two more singles and further success, a major tour and then the belated release of ‘Burning From The Inside’ following the band’s implosion in the summer of 1983 and split. It all seemed premature and left a void, such that the pent up demand for their work would see numerous digs into the archive over the next couple of years and beyond – undead, the maschine rolled on, starting with this ‘4AD’ mini-album in September of 1983…

Bauhaus - '4AD' UK Mini-Album front cover design
^ Bauhaus – ‘4AD’ UK Mini-Album front cover design

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