Side 1 of a cassette compilation featuring The Teardrop Explodes, recorded 30th August 1993. With apologies to blureu for taking nearly a year to get to it...!
It's been a long while since Julian Cope and The Teardrop Explodes have featured here, so what better way to counter what's so far proving to be a rather cold, wet and miserable June in the UK (well, this part anyway).
As I told in my previous post, I was already deeply committed to Julian Cope's music...and yet, by the summer of 1993 I still hadn't bought a copy of the 'lost' third album, Everybody Wants To Shag....The Teardrop Explodes, which had come out a few years previously.
I was also trying to stoke the fires of passion for the Arch Drude in my then-girlfriend and, being a penniless student and all that, not for her flowers, romantic dinners and ad-hoc trips away, oh no. What could profess my affection more than a C90 cassette featuring 26 songs by The Teardrop Explodes? Hmmm, on reflection, it's no wonder we split up the following summer....
So, another three quarters of an hour of Cope & co. brilliance, originally culled from vinyl copies of Kilimanjaro and Wilder, a secondhand bargain purchase of You
Disappear From View on 12" from Plastic Wax Records in Bristol and, opening this selection, Count To Ten And Run For Cover from the 12" single on loan from my friend Stuart.
Mirroring the previous cassette side, the big hit (Reward) is dispatched by track two, but there's no let up in quality for the remainder of the compilation. Imagining this as a double vinyl album, I think this works well as two distinct sides, with Poppies getting the second side (or phase, as Julian was wont to use) off to an equally strong start.
Several songs on the You
Disappear From View 12" were remixed by Chris Hughes and Ross Cullum, including a lovely string-laden version of Suffocate, arranged by Nicky Holland. Suffocate and Ouch Monkeys (and Soft Enough For You on phase 3) all differ from the versions that eventually appeared on Everybody Wants To Shag....The Teardrop Explodes, Hughes exercising more restraint and less bombast than on his later work on Tears For Fears' Songs From The Big Chair.
Things have been a little quiet on the Julian Cope front of late, with only a 'new' Queen Elizabeth CD emerging recently and no word of gigs since the previous tour was curtailed by illness and the COVID lockdown in 2020.
After completing this post, I popped over to Head Heritage as I regularly do and was delighted to see that Julian's just released #6 in his Cope's Notes booklet/CD series, this time focusing on his 1992 magnum opus, Jehovahkill. Always an essential purchase as far as I'm concerned, this one includes 13 demos and unreleased outtakes which I'm looking forward to hearing.
Head Heritage has also made the Jehovahkill T-shirt available again. I originally bought one from the merch stand when Julian was touring the album but it's been lost a long time, so I added it to the shopping cart. It's what all the hippest pagans are wearing, I hear.
Phase One
1) Count To Ten And Run For Cover (Single Version By Clive Langer & Alan Winstanley) (1982)2) Reward (Single Version By Clive Langer & Alan Winstanley) (1980)
3) Seven Views Of Jerusalem (Album Version By Clive Langer & Colin Fairley) (1981)
4) Brave Boys Keep Their Promises (Album Version By Bill Drummond & David Balfe) (1980)
5) Like Leila Khaled Said (Album Version By Clive Langer & Colin Fairley) (1981)
6) Suffocate (Baroque Version By Chris Hughes & Ross Cullum) (1982)
7) The Great Dominions (Album Version By Clive Langer & Colin Fairley) (1981)
Phase Two
8) Poppies In The Field (Album Version By Clive Langer & Alan Winstanley) (1980)9) Treason (It's Just A Story) (Remixed Version By Hugh Jones) (1981)
10) Ouch Monkeys (Remix By Chris Hughes & Ross Cullum) (1983)
11) The Thief Of Baghdad (Album Version By Bill Drummond & David Balfe) (1980)
12) Pure Joy (Album Version By Clive Langer & Colin Fairley) (1981)
13) .....And The Fighting Takes Over (Album Version By Clive Langer & Colin Fairley) (1981)
1980: Kilimanjaro: 2, 4, 8, 11
1981: Treason EP: 9
1981: Wilder: 3, 5, 7, 12, 13
1983: You Disappear From View EP: 6, 10 1990: Count To Ten And Run For Cover EP: 1
Thanks!!
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