Stiff Little
Fingers
The Albums 1991 – 1997
CAPTAIN OI!
Not their best albums, but
most come with extras.
Popular myth
has it that Stiff
Little Fingers’
best years were
behind them
when they reunited in 1991 to
make Flags & Emblems, nine
troubled years after their fourth
album. Popular myth isn’t always
wrong: Flags is a clumpy affair
and, as leader Jake Burns admits
in the sleeve notes, “it’s not our
greatest recorded moment”,
although it does feature Lee
Brilleaux, Rory Gallagher and, on
the John McCarthy tribute Beirut
Moon, newscaster Jon Snow. It
did, though, mark the beginning
of bassist Bruce Foxton’s 17
years (almost twice his tenure in
The Jam) with SLF.
Live, SLF were always
adrenaline-drenched, and Pure
Fingers, recorded at Glasgow’s
Barrowland, is a jet-propelled set
which includes Foxton’s Smithers-
Jones and a bonus version of Bob
Marley’s Johnny Was.
Fusing anger and melody, Get
A Life (“another troublesome
record,” sighs Burns) is the pick
of this bunch, and The Road To
Kingdom Come and Walk Away
would make any ‘best of’.
Tinderbox includes a supremely
daft version of Grandmaster
Flash & The Furious Five’s The
Message and it’s the only disc
here without extra tracks; Get
A Life is especially enhanced by
unplugged versions of three
older staples, and two demos
offer a vision of what Flags
& Emblems might have been.
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John AizlewoodTom Petty & The
Heartbreakers
The Best Of Everything
UMC/ISLAND
Career-spanning compilation,
available on two CDs, or
quadruple vinyl.
He might not
have possessed
Springsteen’s
stage patter or
Neil Young’s
political agenda, but when it
came to sheer tunefulness,
Tom Petty beat them both
hands-down. Proof, if it were
needed, of his melodic gifts
comes in the form of this
38-track retrospective.
Curated by the singer’s family
and closest musical associates,
it combines Heartbreakersclassics (American Girl,
Breakdown) and solo hits (Free
Fallin’, I Won’t Back Down) with
a few tracks recorded during his
sentimental reunion with first
band, Mudcrutch.
The seriously Petty-minded- having already gorged on last
year’s excellent An American
Treasure box set – will enjoy an
alternative version of the title
track and new sleeve notes by
long-time devotee Cameron
Crowe. For those who cherish
their dog-eared vinyl copies of
Damn The Torpedoes and
Southern Accents but who always
wanted Petty’s best songs all in
one place, this collection - remastered from the original
stereo tapes – ticks all the boxes.
The cherry on the cake is the
previously unreleased track For
Real. Over a sparse acoustic
backing, Mr Integrity explains the
rationale behind the tireless work
ethic which would sadly prove to
be his downfall, declaring: ‘I did it
for real/Would have done it for
free/I did it for me/Because it was
all that rang true.’
He might have left us far too
early, but Tom Petty was
a heartbreaker to the very end.
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Paul Moody
David Sylvian
Reissues UMC/VIRGIN DOMESTIC
Vinyl reissues of 80s solo
albums, with new artwork.
The most.
striking aspect
of these
reissues is
Sylvian’s
decision to ditch the original
artwork for these albums and
replace them with monochrome
photographic images which
celebrate the singer’s haunted
beauty. This might seem
solipsistic, but then it always did
seem that Sylvian’s music was
an attempt to transcribe his
alabaster looks into a totality of
lyrical and instrumental
reflection; akin to the definition
of Romantic poetry as ‘perfect
autobiography’.
In short, the boy can pull it off.
Only Talk Talk and the Blue Nile
over this period were making
comparable albums of such
exquisite emotion, delicacy
and depth.
Brilliant Trees (1984) takes up
where Japan left off, elaborately
funky but never grunty or
sweaty. Alchemy – An Index Of
Possibilities, like its predecessors,
features assistance from a range
of masters, including Holger
Czukay, Ryuichi Sakomoto, and
Robert Fripp who stars on theWhitesnake
Slide It In: The Ultimate Special Edition
RHINO/PARLOPHONEKnobs-on reissue of the fulcrum of
Whitesnake’s recording career.I
n the Whitesnake canon, sixth album
Slide It In is both the last harrumph of
the VW camper line-up, and a test drive
for the shiny new DeLorean that would
take MTV and the Stateside market by
storm – a journey that reached epic
fulfillment with Whitesnake’s next studio
record, the 1987 blockbuster.
For European fans, Slide It In peaks with
the old-style ’Snake tune Slow An’ Easy
(complete with risible lyrics, also evident
on the romping title track and, er, Spit It
Out) or the bluesy hard rock of Standing In
The Shadow, while showcasing unusually
arena-friendly rockers such as Love Ain’t No
Stranger, Guilty Of Love and All Or Nothing.
So that’s the back story. The plot twist is
that there were two versions of the album:
the lacklustre European one I’m moaning
about above, and the very different version
released in North America as the first
Whitesnake release by Geffen Records.
Label head David Geffen persuaded
Coverdale that he needed to go global – and
brought in John Kalodner, who hired Keith
Olsen (then best known for his work on the
soundtracks to Footloose, Flashdance and To p
Gun) to remix the album. But Olsen did
much more: he re-sequenced it; buried Jon
Lord’s keyboards in the mix and added new
textures by Bill Cuomo; replaced all the
bass lines; and, most significantly, layereda third set of guitar parts by ex-Thin Lizzy
hotshot John Sykes.
The six-CD 35th Anniversary Ultimate
Special Edition goes way further than
necessary, with remasters of both mixes
(resequenced again, confusingly) and
adding a pointless third with yet another
running order on CD3. Madness! It does,
though, include single-only bonus tracks
and makes it clear that Olsen’s original
re-boot made perfect sense – turning the
humdrum into a prototype for 1987 ,
which eventually went double-platinum.
The main bonus is the first-time release
of a live set – with Sykes – from Glasgow in
March ’84. It’s really rough-and-ready
compared to the studio work (with Cozy
Powell noticeably bombastic compared to
his predecessor Ian Paice), but will show
those who came to the band only after
1987 what a sea-change that was.
After that, two CDs of monitor mixes,
demos and miscellaneous piffle plus a DVD
(the 25th-anniversary release’s disc again,
although boosted by four songs from Jon
Lord’s final Whitesnake show) buys
significantly less bang for your buck.
A remaster of the 1984 Geffen version is all
that’s really essential today.
QQQQQQQQQQ For effort
QQQQQQQQQQ For content
Neil JeffriesREX
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CK92 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM