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?