33 at 45 pt 2

I went a little further into my 'collection' (I hate that word) and found a few more bits and pieces, some of which I had referred to in the previous post but I can't be fucked doing a rewrite for something so mundane and not worth reading. You read right, NOT WORTH READING. The weirdest thing about this text, on the back of Elvis Costello's (twenty, count 'em, twenty-track) Get Happy, is the insane smallness of it, which is appropriate but insanely appropriately insane. 

I don't quite get the bit about 'people who've never bought a record made before 1967' but I assume it's tech talk - was there a change in practice after 1967 or is it about the kind of records, conceptually speaking, that were being made after 1967? Should probably investigate, there's probably someone much more nerdy than I somewhere on the internet who has a theory. 

(* update: not exactly but there is this discussion from which I learnt apparently there is a double album version of Get Happy with all sides playing at 45rpm and that the Imperial Bedroom album which came a couple of LPs later is apparently longer than Get Happy ffs!). 

Here's an interesting thing re: Utopia (phase II - the pop Utopia not the prog Utopia). My copy of what I believe is actually the second Utopia album to be called Utopia has this sticker on the front:

Note firstly it is not a 5-track EP but a 5-track LP (looking at the Wikipedia page I gather it was described as an EP in most territories and indeed in the UK and Europe the five tracks were pressed on a 7" 33rpm disc - !!!). But it's weirder than that. It's actually, once you get inside the cover, Side 3 of the album: you'd have to assume, the five tracks that no-one thought were good enough to go on the real album, so they're 'bonus tracks' for a limited time only. But the inner sleeve designs suggest this is a legit side 3, if it wasn't for the sticker on the front, you'd just think, yeah this is how it always was and always will be.

BUT it is stranger than that. Because flip that baby over (as the maternal and child health nurse says) and:

All the same tracks, on Side 4 as well. So I guess if you particularly love Utopia and particularly love side 3, you're in luck because it will wear out half as fast as the main (side 1 & 2) part of the LP, as long as you assiduously flip the extra disc when you're playing that side. Maybe I should compare side 3 & 4, maybe they're whole different versions or completely different songs with the same title or something. I mean it's kind of a waste of space, isn't it, but then again, it's not a waste of vinyl to press something into the vinyl... personally if I was in charge I'd be like 'let's turn the kids on to other things Utopia have done, by sticking a half-LP 'best of' on there' but I think they'd actually just signed to a new label so there probably wasn't much of a back catalogue. They could have given Todd a day in the studio to make a Mr Partridge style dub album... but oh yeah, Todd hates mixing. Damn it!!!

OK so I've milked that one, let's get back to Rip Rig and Panic just to finish off. Here are some selected labels, just in case you were in slack-jawed awe at the notion that those discs went at 45:

Wow they totally do. As you can see (? actually maybe you can't, but it is) my copy of I am Cold is a Japanese pressing, and I did that near-impossible thing of using the google translate camera to try and get some sense out of the text on the insert. I was surprised to glean that there is a whole 'user's guide to understanding who the fuck Rip Rig and Panic are' in there, explaining the group members' origins and the scene they came from. There's something in there about David Bowie being 'chesterish' which is a bit exciting and I also love that 'ring music is ringing now'. Anyway, I didn't get too much from this and all it really did was confuse me, all I can say with reasonable certainty is that nowhere does anyone say 'the reason the group chose to release their albums as two 12" 45s is...'

But also there is an ad for the God album on the insert of I Am Cold which describes it, in translation obviously, as '30 cm 45 rotation two sheets', which I get more out of than I really should. Note that below, the track which is somehow translated as 'Knee Dive in Sit' is actually called 'Knee Deep in Shit'. 

Bye! See ya later