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So good I bought it twice

bitflipper

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Starship Krupa

Starship Krupa

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I've only ever unknowingly purchased one duplicate plug-in, Boz' Little Clipper. Pluginboutique even warned me that I already owned it and I plowed through anyway. I don't even remember what I was thinking, I was probably hot for whatever the BOGO was that month. I don't even use clippers. My tool for that job is a limiter.

There's a thing about buying duplicate discs, or books, or in my case, boxes of Pop Secret. Since I know I'm forgetful (I'm diagnosed ADHD), I hammer into my brain "I need to buy popcorn/the remastered Buggles CD/whatever." Then I buy it, and where the scheme breaks down is in remembering that I bought it.

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DeeringAmps

DeeringAmps

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1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

There's a thing about buying duplicate discs, or books, or in my case, boxes of Pop Secret. Since I know I'm forgetful (I'm diagnosed ADHD), I hammer into my brain "I need to buy popcorn/the remastered Buggles CD/whatever." Then I buy it, and where the scheme breaks down is in remembering that I bought it.

Unfortunately I resemble that remark...

t

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Fleer

Fleer

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2 hours ago, Magic Russ said:

I bought a second CD of Wilco's Sky Blue Sky once.  

Also I've had copies of Dark Side of the Moon on vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, and this obscure tape cartridge format I can't even google.

Don’t start me about version dupes. They get me every bleeding time. 

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bitflipper

bitflipper

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Gotta admit, I'm a sucker for remixes. Listening to a super-familiar record and hearing new things in it is a special joy.  (see Sgt Pepper)

Remasters, not so much. Listening to a a familiar record where all the life has been squeezed out of it, that is a special kind of disappointment. (see All Things Must Pass)

The toughest call, though, is a format change. Is it really worth it to buy a FLAC version when I already have it as a 256 kb/s MP3? Probably not. How about a 192 KHz  24-bit wav? Definitely not. I was born at night but it wasn't last night.

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Starship Krupa

Starship Krupa

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4 hours ago, husker said:

(Makes note to buy remastered  "Age of Plastic."  Elstree is a criminally underated song)

Oh, now you've gone and gotten me started.

Here in the US the entire record save "Video Killed the Radio Star" seems practically unknown. I think this is in contrast to how influential it was and is in Europe (without this record, Air's Moon Safari never arrives, nor does Daft Punk's Discovery, "Digital Love" is practically a direct tribute to "VKRS"). I got lucky and when it came out, apparently one of the programmers or dj's at the album rock station in Little Rock, AR fell in love with "Clean Clean," so I got treated regularly to that grimy bit of power chord-infused new wave. It was actually played more than "Video." I bought the single copy they had at the more adventurous record shop on the main street of Hot Springs, brought it home, listened to it once, hated it, then threw it on again, and then again and it took up residence on my turntable and in my head for days.

Gary Numan's Replicas put the next stake in my rock 'n' roll dirtbag status shortly thereafter. "Down in the Park" smacked me on the head, wherever that park was and whatever "death by numbers" was, they sounded way more interesting than the parade of Trans Ams and airhead girls with feathered hair that was the big weekend entertainment in Arkansas. "Down in the Park where the chant is 'death death death' 'til the Sun cries 'morning'" was way more cool/evil than whatever Ted Nugent was going on about.

Both records conjured up visions of a dystopian sci-fi future in different measures. The Age of Plastic was a wistful world of missed opportunities and regret about choices taken, from the viewpoint of an upper middle class man looking back, and Replicas sounded like what you'd get if one of the demi-humans on Diamond Dogs  had gone dumpster diving behind Kraftwerk's studio. Both of them had electric guitar power chords that sounded like they were being dispensed from a soft-serve ice cream machine in neat blobs.

"Elstree," and "Clean Clean" are my favorites on the album (I love them all, though). "Elstree" and "Clean Clean" both contain themes of desensitization to images and acts of war ("all the bullets just went over my head"). "Clean Clean" was my favorite at age 19, but the emotional landscape described in "Elstree" is more familiar at 60. The idea that whatever we have now, while it may be fine, still isn't what we had before we became aware of our limitations, when the future was wide open. Sadly, both the Essoldo and the Giocondo were gone before I learned what they were.

It just came this afternoon, and yeah, quite worth the $12 I paid for it on Amazon. The mix and levels don't sound much different, but they nuked a ton of tape noise, so everything just sounds clearer. It's a light-handed remaster like the Police box set, they didn't go crazy with the limiter, EQ or exciters. You really hear the horse gallop at the end of "Elstree" and the dog barking at the end of "Johnny on the Monorail." And not incidentally, what a motherbleeper of a bass player Horn was on this record. His playing on "Astroboy" reminds me of one of those Who songs where they solo the Entwistle track.

(Ha, I Googled "Essoldo" right after this and with the results, Google said "People also search for "Giocondo." Awesome.)

Edited by Starship Krupa
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user 905133

user 905133

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12 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Here in the US the entire record save "Video Killed the Radio Star" seems practically unknown. 

Record????  I thought it was a video!!!! (One that was played extensively on MTV for a while.)  :P 

Seriously though, it makes sense if the song didn't get radio play on an audio-only medium of communication (radio stations)--competition and all like that!!!  I mean, if I ran a radio station, why would I want to play a song that seemed to be saying radio is a dead medium, video is where its at?

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Starship Krupa

Starship Krupa

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1 hour ago, User 905133 said:

it makes sense if the song didn't get radio play on an audio-only medium of communication (radio stations)--competition and all like that!

It did get airplay, just not on the radio station I was listening to at the time. MTV was still years away. The single came out in 1979, the subsequent album in 1980.

The whims of program directors. It was what used to be called an "album rock" station, so they may have passed on a single-only release and then gone with the follow-up single when the album shipped. By the late 70's, I had stopped listening top 40 radio, something that has persisted. The downside is that I've missed out on some good things that the radio stations I was listening to deemed too "mainstream."

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