Holly Johnson - Soulstream Deluxe Edition

Released on 26/09/2011
‘Soulstream’ is the third solo album by Holly Johnson, the former lead singer of Frankie Goes To Hollywood. This expanded 2 disc re-issue of 'Soulstream' includes a bonus disc collecting together and celebrating the many dance remixes that were commissioned to promote the album on the queercore dance floors of the time as well as other rarities. It also comes with an extensive 24 page booklet containing lyrics, period photos and an introduction by Holly himself. Originally released in 1999, it was recorded initially in Holly’s home studio with additional strings and brass added in Angel, CTS and Metropolis Studios where it was mastered by Ian Cooper. Originally released on his own ‘Pleasuredome’ record label, the album contains the singles ‘Hallelujah’, ‘Disco Heaven’ and a re-working of his hit song with Frankie Goes to Hollywood, ‘The Power Of Love’.

Another highlight is an update of his resolutelydefiant 1994 anthem ‘Legendary Children (All of Them Queer)’; recorded at a time of immense challenge in Holly’s life due to ill health, it remains one of the most life-affirming of his releases.

Rewind Festival 20th August 2011

Holly Johnson returned to the UK live circut for the first time in 10 years on Saturday 20th August 2011 at Henley-on-Thames to a audience of 40,000.
People of all ages witnessed one of the 80's greatest stars perform tracks from his Frankie Goes To Hollywood days as well as his solo catalogue. Kicking off with Welcome to the Pleasuredome Holly took to the stage at around 10pm to a great reception from the eager crowd who had started arriving from 12pm on the field to witness this event as well as other 80's mega stars. Holly also performed several other FGTH tracks the most suprising being Rage Hard which was out of the whole set maybe the the track the crowd least took to, as well as a number of solo hits from his Debut solo album Blast he performed a total of 8 songs and enjoyed a great interaction with the crowd throughout with Holly himself showing a large smill on more than 1 occassion and comentiing on his Facebook profile at how he felt at the audience participation on The Power of Love. Leaving the stage at the end of his performance Holly looked to his loyal Fans and teased....."MAYBE SEE YOU NEXT TIME"?
The full set list was:
Welcome to the PleasureDome
Rage Hard
Love Train
Heavens Here
Americanos
Two Tribes
The Power of Love
Relax
SEE YOU NEXT TIME HOLLY

NASHER - STAGE IT (pt 2)

Nasher returns to the internet 'airwaves' on Sunday 28th August for the second of his adventures on Stage it, the website where you can play a live gig to your fans from the comfort of your own home.
Nashers first venture into this form was a huge success with the planned 30 minute gig running for 2 hours, YES 2 HOURS.
Playing tracks from all 3 solo albums and maybe the chance of a Frankie cover in the line up aswell FGTH fans won't want to miss this. Th sho kicks off at 8pm BST but you are advised to register in advance at www.stage-it.com to avoid disapointment. SEE YOU THERE.

NASHER - STAGE IT

Monday 1st August sees Frankie Goes To Hollywoods Brian Nash take to a different stage, for the first time Nasher will be performing a LIVE streaming gig for the masses.
Hosted by www.stageit.com the show kicks off at 20.00 GMT and will last approx 30 minutes with the potential of an encore. Nasher will be performing tracks from the 3 albums released to date in his solo career, with maqybe some FGTH tracks and or songs from the post Frankie era of Low and Dr Jollys Salvation Circus being incorparated into the set.
Tickets for the show can be booked by registering at http://www.stageit.com/nasher/live_from_my_living_room/4086 for a charge of $5.
There are only 30 tickets available to this unique gig and they are on sale now.

PAUL RUTHERFORD - OH WORLD 2011 RE-ISSUE

An expanded 2CD reissue of the only solo album to date from Paul Rutherford, former Frankie Goes To Hollywood singer and icon of 80s pop. This lost classic was originally released in 1989 in Europe and America,however this is the first time the album has been available in the UK. Tracks Include much sought-after early remixes by the likes of Arthur Baker and David Morales. Lead track is the acid house anthem Get Real, which - like Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Relax - received an airplay ban from the BBC. Three tracks - including a beautiful cover of Chic's I Want Your Love - are co-written and produced by Martin Fry and Mark White a/k/a ABC, 17 bonus tracks include all the A-side mixes, B-sides, 12" remixes and promo-only tracks - many of which appear on CD for the first time. This reissue arrives at the height of a Frankie Goes To Hollywood revival with recent deluxe expansions of Welcome To The Pleasuredome (August 2010) and Liverpool (February 2011), a reissue of Paul's 90s work - The Cowboy Years via iTunes January 2011)[see post from 26 May 2011], and a duet between Paul and Claudia Brucken on her new album Combined (February 2011).
It is available to order now direct from Cherry Red.
The full track listing looks like this.....
DISC 1:
The Album:
01. Oh World
02. Deep At The Centre
03. Who Said It Was Easy
04. The Gospel Truth
05. Light
06. Get Real
07. Cracked Wide Open
08. I Want Your Love
09. Catch A Falling Star
10. Half The Picture
The A-Sides:
11. I Want Your Love
12. Oh World (Original 7" Mix)
The B-Sides:
13. Happy Face(Full Length)
14. Pushed Away
15. Seduction (Edit)

DISC 2:
The Remixes:
01. Get Real (Happy House Mix)
02. I Want Your Love (Extended Mix)
03. I Want Your L.U.R.V.E.
04. Oh World (Extended Mix)
05. Oh World (Instrumental)
The Vinyl Mixes:
06. Get Real (Hardcore)
07. Get Real (Sinister)
08. Get Real (Don't Let 'Em Dub You Down)
09. I Want Your Love (Arthur Baker Remix)
10. Oh World (Universal Mix)
11. Oh World (Delirium Dub)

80's REWIND FESTIVAL

Saturday August 20th 2011 sees one of the most recognisable and powerful voices from the eighties make his UK Festival debut, Holly Johnson will be making his Rewind Festival debut this year. As lead singer and lyricist of multi million selling sensations Frankie Goes to Hollywood, he enjoyed phenomenal commercial success during the 1980s with hits including "Two Tribes", "The Power of Love" and their controversial debut "Relax". All taken from the award winning L.P "Welcome to the PleasureDome", Following those up with their secnond album "Liverpool" which spawned the singles "Rage Hard" and "Warriors of the Wasteland". After Holly and the band split in 1987 and a lengthy court case against the record label ZTT, Holly went on to have an equally successful solo career, with platinum selling album "Blast" reaching the top of the charts in 1989. He followed this up in 1991 with "Dreams that money can't buy" featuring the singles "Where has love gone" and "Across the Universe". It was not until 1999 that Holly released his 3rd solo album "Soulstream" on which he recorded a new version of "The power of love" to mark the new millenium on his own label Pleasuredome.
A limited number of tickets for the festival are still available by going to www.rewindfestival.com. Holly performs on the Saturday along with other 80's icons including Bananarama, Howard Jones, Fiction Factory and many more.

BBC Radio Scotland - Edith Bowman Album Show: ZTT Records Special, 30.07.10

A Radio broadcast from last year on BBC Radio Scotland, Edith Bowman talks with official ZTT archivist Ian Peel about upcoming ZTT releases including Frankie Goes To Hollywood & Art of Noise, with snippets of rare tracks and talk of even rarer demos.
Copy and paste the link below into your web window to hear part of the show.
http://soundcloud.com/zttrecords/bbc-radio-scotland

MAKING TRACKS

Transmitting Tuesday 19 July 2011 on BBC Radio 4 at 13h30:

"Critic and cultural commentator Paul Morley returns to the Basing Street Studios," announces BBC Radio 4, "home to Island Records and then his own ZTT label. These were the very rooms in which everyone from Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens and Bob Marley through to Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the Art of Noise and Grace Jones recorded some of their most iconic albums."

"In the company of Island's Chris Blackwell and ZTT's Trevor Horn, as well as legendary engineer Tony Platt, Paul attempts to find out what it was about this particular space that led to some of the most memorable recordings of the 70s and 80s."

DREAMS THAT MONEY CAN'T BUY

29th August 2011 sees SFE records (Cherry Red) re-issue of the 2nd Holly Johnson solo album Dreams that money can't buy.
Originaly released in ???? the follow up to the number 1, million seller Blast was not as commercially succesful as it's predicessor, indeed neither were the 3 single taken from the album, Where has love gone, Across the Universe and The People want to dance. The album went in a different direction from the mainstream pop of Blast and had a heavier dance theme amongst it's tracks. Othe rthan the singles stand out tracks may include Boyfriend 65 which featured Holly's good friend Kirsty McColl on bcking vocals. There are also some rare tracks included on both discs of this 2CD release on disc 1 we are treated to the original album aswell as b-sides ands 12" mixes, but the intersting tracks for fans will be the previously unreleased Pete Lorimer mixes of Across the Universe & the track Natural (previously only available in Japan) on disc 2.
The 1 thing this release lacks is the exclusion of the DVD of videos as included in the Blast re-issue last year, the videos for the 1st two singles taken from this album are in particular highly sought after among Holly Johnson fans and would have made it complete along with a couple of other glaring track omissions in the form of F.R.O.7 the soundtrack to an animated movie about a secret agaent Frog and maybe even the pre Blast track Slay the Dragon recorded in 1986 (whilst Holly still fronted FGTH) for the Anti-Heroin Project.
THE FULL TRACK LISTING IS.....
Disc One - Original Album And Single B-Sides
1. Across The Universe
2. When The Party's Over
3. The People Want To Dance
4. I Need Your Love
5. Boyfriend 65
6. Where Has Love Gone?
7. Penny Arcade
8. Do It For Love
9. You're A Hit
10. The Great Love Story
11. Perfume [Aromatherapy Mix - 7" Edit]
12. Funky Paradise
13. The People Want To Dance [Apollo 440 Remix 7" Edit]
Disc Two - Remixes And Rarities
1. Where Has Love Gone? [The Search For Love Mix]
2. Where Has Love Gone? [Dreaming Mix]
3. Where Has Love Gone? [GTO Mix]
4. Across The Universe [Space A Go-Go Mix]
5. Across The Universe [Pete Lorimer 7" Remix]
6. Across The Universe [Pete Lorimer 12" Instrumental]
7. The People Want To Dance [Rave Hard! Mix]
8. The People Want To Dance [Raving Harder! Mix]
9. The People Want To Dance [Apollo 440 12" Mix]
10. The People Want To Dance [12" Dub Mix]
11. Americanos [Magimix Dub]
12. Atomic City [Enviro-Mental Instrumental]
13. Natural [Full Song Mix]
You can pre-order this album now at www.hmv.com and other online retailers

ZTT ELEMENTAL SERIES

With the release of the revisited Liverpool Deluxe Edition, Zang Tumb Tumms Elemental series hits Element 19. Well Doesn't it?
Infact the truth is there have been 20 Elements in this series so far, That is if you go by the Catalogue Numbers of each release to date, when infact there have benn only 17 physical releases! But how can that be?
Below is a list of all the titles released in the series upto this latest Frankie offering.....
01.(Element 00)Various Artists - The ZTT Box Set (Features FGTH)
02.(Element 01)808 State - 808:90
03.(Element 02)808 State - ex:el
04.(Element 03)808 State - Gorgeous
05.(Element 04)808 State - Don Solaris
06.(Element 05)The Buggles - Adventures in Modern Recording
07.(Element 06)Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Welcome To The PleasureDome
08.(Element 07)The Frames - Another Love Song
09.(Element 08)The Frames - Fitzcarraldo
10.(Element 09)The Frames - Dance The Devil
11.(Element 10)Art of Noise - Influence
12.(Element 11)Propaganda - A Secret Wish
13.(Element 12)Various Artists - The Art Of The 12" (Features FGTH)
14.(Element 13)Claudia Brucken - Combined (Features Paul Rutherford)
15.(Element 14)Shades of Rhythm - Extacy Edition
16.(Element 15)Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Liverpool WITHDRAWN
17.(Element 16)Art of Noise - Into Battle
18.(Element 17)?????
19.(Element 18)?????
20.(Element 19)Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Liverpool REVISED
So THE question has to be what are elemnts 17 & 18?
Of course this is not the first time in this series that ZTT have skipped a release and come back to it soon after, on the spine of the latest Frankie release is the teaser Coming next: Blue, Azura, Lemon and Orange.....which leaves us wondering at what the next Elemental Series release will be from thoses Puppet Masters at ZTT.

Liverpool Deluxe finally in the shops

So after months of no clear answers as to what would happen with this Elemental release, ZTT and FGTH finally get Liverpool Deluxe Edition into the shops
below is a review of the set that is in my opinion a true feeling of the album in its revised form.
For all the sprawl that was “Welcome To The Pleasuredome”, it was an impeccable sonic journey that would inevitably be tough to top. With “Liverpool”, Frankie Goes To Hollywood chose to make it a much briefer and more focused affair. Eight tracks deep, it was un-questionably a grower. Aside from “Warriors Of The Wasteland”, “Rage Hard” and to some extent “Kill The Pain”, it’s a mellower affair. There’s a cohesive quality about the album as a whole which makes it feel a bit like a concept album, without an intellectual concept. More of a sonic concept.

“Liverpool” opens rather mysteriously with a little build up to the sonic wallop that “Warriors Of The Wasteland” ultimately delivers. At the time, WOTW was a surprise with it’s very guitar oriented sound. “Rage Hard” carries on with it’s own powerful sonic palette, though with less of an emphasis on guitar. As the album moves along, each track mellows a bit more than the previous. By the time you get to the last track, “Is Anybody Out There?”, things have mellowed considerably. Perhaps that was the concept? Probably not the best way to structure a very anticipated album.

With hindsight it’s obvious why this album never was a hit. For fans of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, there was a lot of baggage that came with being so attached to “Welcome To The Pleasuredome”. “Liverpool” was structurally and sonically (at least seemingly so at the time) so different. Its heavy hitters were packed on the first half and the further you went into it, the mellower it got. It was a tough pill to swallow for teenage fans who had a pre-conceived notion of what a new FGTH album should sound like.

Having had years to digest this album though, it’s clear that it IS every bit the album that WTTPD was. For someone without such a strong opinion of what a FGTH album should sound like, there’s no reason not to give this one a good go. It really is an incredible album from beginning to end.

*this review is taken from http://www.excursionsinmusic.com/travel-guide/frankie-goes-to-hollywood-liverpool-1986/ and is completly independant from any thoughts of the blogger.

ELEMENT 17

Just what is Element 17, and do you believe? Is it Frankie and Frankie only? or is it just wishful thinking?

LOW (Nash & Boult) - Enter The Bigger Reality

There is a lost classic of an album sitting in the archives of Babylon Pink Recordings, by the band Low. Featuring Brian Nash (Frankie Goes To Hollywood) and Grant Boult (The Promise), originally recorded in 1992 when the band were signed to Swanyard Discs. The album was called ENTER THE BIGGER REALITY and was never released as the record company went out of buisness before they were able to get it pressed up and out into the shops.
The full track listing for the album reads like this.....
01. Tearing my soul apart
02. Love comes down
03. My foolish heart
04. England in the rain
05. Hold me
06. When U were mine
07. Melon
08. When love comes back in fashion
09. Life goes on
10. Sleep
11. Deep inside a bad dream
12. Godless times
13. New Heaven
Fans of Frankie Goes To Hollywood may like to note that several of the tracks were co-written with fellow Frankies Peter Gill & Mark O'Toole.
The track Tearing my soul apart was released as a single but failed to chart.
Help us to persuade the guys from LOW to get this album out to the masses by making it the next release on Babylon Pink Recordings schedule by going to the facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Low-Nash-Boult/174531902602862

Paul Rutherford's Butt? Cowboy - The Cowboy Years

Available to download now from iTunes is a mini album of sorts worth of thrack from Frankies Paul Rutherford, these tracks like much of Pauls post Frankie material are in colabaration with former ABC members Mark White & Martin Fry and from a period in Pauls life of deep personal meaning.
Paul has said in a previous interview that he has the words Butt? Cowboy tattoed on his 'BUTT' in homage to these track,
Track listing is:
1. Accident Waiting To Happen
2. Golden Boys
3. My House (Original)
4. No Show Without Punch (Alive, Alive Oh! mix)
5. No Show Without Punch (Original)
6. Prayer Wheel
7. Still The Pain Grows(Live)
8. Still The Pin Grows (The Cowboys' Doctor's Psychedelic Mix)

So whilst you are waiting for the release of Pauls debut solo album (Get Real) from thefriendly people at Cherry Red why not nip along to iTunes now and download these to see you through those warm and sticky summer nights to come, you can even download the Cowboy image at the top of this update for your iPod or to make a CD insert if thats more your thing.

Liverpool (Deluxe Edition) REVISED

After several months of uncertainty as to wheather this would actually see the light due to the withdrawl of the original planned release, Frankie Goes To Hollywoods follow up to the multi million selling Welcome To The Pleasuredome will hit the shops on June 20th 2011.

The story of Liverpool, the second Frankie Goes To Hollywood long player (released in the UK in November 1986), is not that of one city, or one place in time. It's the story of a journey around some odd and surprising corners of Europe. And the story of Liverpool, the deluxe edition, is a road movie retracing the band's steps in search of the tapes and memories that were left behind. For Frankie, the Liverpool story started off in Ireland, at Borris House in County Carlow in the summer of 1985. Tax exiles, they set about early song writing sessions and one of the first to be written – 'Warriors of the Wasteland' – set the tone for everything that followed.

Borris House was also a chance to wind down after the madness of 1985's world tour, Around the World in Mighty Ways, during which the band had morphed from pop stars to rock stars. And the music was going in the same direction, too. No one at the time felt uncomfortable with (or was probably even conscious of) what was to be the start of Liverpool's famous 'rock direction'. In the mid-80s, that's what bands did. They 'went rock'. They felt, perhaps mistakenly in hindsight, that they had to prove they could play live, and front up as well on The Tube (where they were forced to play live) as they could on Top of the Pops (where they were forced to mime). For Frankie, this transition resulted in a second (and last) powerful album that yielded more hit singles (Rage Hard and Warriors...) and hit the upper reaches of the charts in multiple territories.

24 years on, with the members of Frankie now scattered around the world, and the original spirit of the band scattered with it, there's more of a need than ever to retrace their steps, gather the tapes, transfer, analyse and reissue them in a format like this. Because that's when the real story starts: when the fans press play again.

Indeed, there's so much more to enjoy now, with eleven previously unreleased tracks and alternate mixes from the album sessions, beautifully expanded artwork and detailed notes featuring interviews with all five band members. This is the second part of the fascinating Frankie story (the first being Welcome To The Pleasuredome), presented as never before…and incorporating an element of the unknown.