Rarities

[Ichikoh]

To all Americans on "The SOS Board"

Happy 4th of July

Greetings,

Ichikoh

[regularjoe]

I've been doing working on a project along the lines of this thread.
What I've finished so far (for the SOS part of the project) are two albums that have the b-sides integrated into the album and extended versions of songs replacing the album versions. For SOS I've finished up 'It's Better to Travel' and 'Kaliedoscope World' (also have given the treatment to several other acts who started out in the 80's, I'm up to about 30 albums in the process already).

Tracklisting turned out as - (if I don't specify it's an alternate version in some way it's the album track....)

It's Better To Travel:

Theme To It's Better to Travel
Twilight World (mix I made 11:13)
After Hours
Blue Mood (slight edit of version on ANSS)
Fever
Surrender (ext - version of original release)
Wake Me When It's Over
Fooled By a Smile (ext version from ANSS)
Dirty Money
Who's to Blame?
Communion (mix I made 7:22)
It's Not Enough
Medley: Another Lost Weekend & Breakout ('92 mix)

Kaleidoscope World:

The Kaleidoscope Affair
You On My Mind (12'' Mix)
Where in the World (thought of using the bongo fury mix and decided to stick with the album version)
Forever Blue (mix I made 7:00)
The Windmills of Your Mind
Heart For Hire
Tainted
Taxi Town
Waiting Game (extended version)
Precious Words (mix I made 7:39)
Masquerade (mix I made 8:23)
Between Strangers
Coney Island Man

Nothing really radical just everything in one place, both of them fit on one cd (a lot of my other projects don't). I plan on doing Get In Touch With Yourself next.

Other 80's & 90's acts I've done this treatment on disks of include:
ABC (my 'How To Be a Millionaire' is a very radical re-edit of the album...it needed a lot of work),
Roxy Music & Bryan Ferry,
Pulp,
Depeche Mode,
Beth Orton,
Thomas Dolby (just finished a sweet long version of his cover of Joni Mitchell's 'Jungle Line' for my deluxe Golden Age of Wireless),
Tears for Fears (all 3 x 80's releases done) &
the Pet Shop Boys (their entire catalog is finished, I am most proud of three of these, 'Yes, No, Maybe' (my reworking of 'Yes'), 'Esperanto' ('Bilingual' remade) and 'Oh So Very' ('Very' re-made and re-modeled)).

[mister mister]

That's quite a labor of love, regularjoe.

I'm always amazed by the dedication and craftsmanship of voluntary efforts of true fans.

Any way to get a CD copy of those?

[regularjoe]

I'd love to help you with that Mr. Mr. but I am a guest here in a forum designed to appreciate the work of these two folks. I didn't make my post to troll for file sharing opportunities, trust me, I am proud of my work and would love the opinions of others on it but this isn't the way to that.

Your post brings to mind a thought, though. A lot of the really old mixes of their work is long out of print and not available via sites like Amazon mp3 and a fan who doesn't have the old b-sides and mixes is forced to troll ebay and hope for the best on a good winning bid. If you win something on vinyl you have to figure out how to translate it to mp3. I had no one to teach me how to do that when I learned ten years ago and it took me about a month of tries to get it right...not to mention about two years after that converting lp's and 12" singles to mp3's, all items that to this day I still don't see on cd or places like Amazon mp3.
Most of my old SOS singles I tracked down at record collector shows held in hotels in the early 1990's and it took me years to find everything that I was looking for.
That leaves files sharing and torrents I guess for a lot of folks.

Another act who had his start in the 1980's, Thomas Dolby, just released a new ep of three songs via a service called DiscRevolt. I doubt that SOS read even a fraction of the posts on these forums but it would be great if they could re-release some of their harder to find material via a service like this (I don't even know if they can do this based on who owns what in their back catalog as far as publishing rights are concerned). Here's what Mr. Dolby had to say about his experience with the new release from his blog:

"The EP’s only been out 24 hours, but the feedback has been overwhelming! There have been well over 1,000 sales already–DiscRevolt who are handling the downloads are very surprised themselves. In fact, that’s probably enough to get me in the UK Top 20 these days, though I don’t think they track independent sales like this. Just imagine though: enough fanatical Dolby fans to get a $3 EP into the charts. In the old days round about now I’d be getting a call from the BBC asking if I can do Top Of The Pops."

more about it may be read here:
http://blog.thomasdolby.com/?p=1144

I have since added a fanedit version (like the ones I posted earlier) of "Get In Touch With Yourself" to my resume of re-done albums. I think that this will be the last of the SOS ones I make as there aren't a lot of remixes and dubs out there from the later albums for me to work with to make new extended and alternate versions of the songs with. Wish there were, "Shapes & Patterns" and "Filth & Dreams" are my two favorites and I would love to re-work those two.