After 25 years Beggars Banquest finally released Gary Numan's Living Ornaments '80 on CD. Having already been treated by the label to the full live shows for Living Ornaments '79 and '81 (1981 was the Wembley farewell gigs) on fantastic 2 CD sets a few years back I for one was very eager to get hold of the 1980 show. I have to say that I am disappointed! Most Numan fans knew that the master tapes for the show had been lost and the only live tracks known to exist from this show were those that appeared on the original 1980 vinyl release (only ten tracks whereas the full show would be nineteen). This release was marketed by the label in a way that indicated the tapes had been found and the show included two tracks that had never been performed live before, or to date. The tapes found appear to be something a fan came across and can be describe as nothing more than bootleg quality. The label has cleaned the sound up as best as possible but for me, on a good system it's unlistenable! Basically the two CD set has the original ten vinyl album tracks re-mastered which do sound superb (Down In The Park and Tracks have to be heard on a great system) followed by nineteen 're-mastered' bootleg tape tracks. It's OK I supose as memorabilia, but for me nothing more. OK, moving on! Another re-mastered re-release recently has been Associates 'Affectionate Punch' CD. This is marked as the 25th anniversary edition with four bonus tracks. I am a big Associates and Billy Mackenzie fan but have to confess have not purchased this CD yet. Just wondered if anyone else has and what they thought? My initial concerns was that I felt more effort could have been put into this '25th Anniversary' edition. As fans of this band know, this (their first album) was released twice, first in 1980 which the CD re-release uses the cover art from, then again in 1982 which was a totally re-worked album by the band members (uses much more electronics). Surely anyone with any sense at the label should have sat down and thought, 'let's do the anniversary edition as a two CD set with both versions of the album included! That's all I will say for now on that one... (PS. It appears that there will be re-matastered re-releases of the Billy Mackenzie albums 'Wild and Lonely' and 'Outernational'; the latter being Billy's rare deleted solo work which has become highly collectable but will no doubt please the fans who could not afford the high original copy prices ;) ) Finally, Depeche Mode. New album out next month (October 17th), 'Playing With The Angel' with the new single 'Precious' due October 3rd. If you registered to the DM secret web site via the recent 'Singles Remixed' CD package then you would have received an email giving you the chance to get a free CD cover that will hold all three single CD releases for the new single. Album will be released in two formats here; as a standard 11 track CD and a deluxe version which includes a bonus DVD featuring an exclusive studio performance of Clean, the video for Precious, a photo gallery and a 5.1 mix of the album. CD singles will be: The single will be on 3 formats as follows: CDBong35 Precious - Album Version Precious - Sasha's Spooky Mix (Single Edit) LCDBong35 Precious - Sasha's Gargantuan Vocal Mix (Edit) Precious - Misc. Full Vocal Mix Free DVDBong35 Precious – Video Precious - Motor Remix Precious - Michael Mayer Ambient Mix OK, that's it for now I think,....sorry if I bored anyone! Oh, you can download the new single 'Precious' right now from the iTunes web site, cost me £0.79!
