well, there's every chance that i should (perhaps) be writing of some other matter today (with today being the day it is published, look you see), but no. this is a subject that's been a part of my life, if you will close to my heart, for just north of 50% of my life to date. so yes, with more images than i can write of, but of course this all concerns Medazzaland off of Duran Duran. which indeed i have had speaks about before, but hey, i do repeat myself from time to time to time.
it's not like i don't play this album on a fairly frequent basis. whereas i have quite a lot of tapes, or discs should you prefer to be correct, there are some albums which i go back to a lot. this is certainly one of them. most recently it is has had a lot of play on my stereo because i have a new copy of it. weirdly it was so that quite late last year (2022) the album finally had a proper release in the UK (and Europe, and other parts of the world), some 25 years after it was recorded and, in some places, released.
a brief(ish) history, then. the nineties were a strange, peculiar time for Duran Duran. unexpectedly, early on in the decade, they reached Rio levels of heights again, be it in the charts or people's hearts, with the frankly brilliant Ordinary World single. the album which followed (of name either eponymous, self titled, untitled or, commonly, Wedding Album) was also excellent. and then they did a covers album which was called Thank You that got (harshly and unfairly) slated, and then came recording this album that i am speaking of.
the image above is off of the Out Of My Mind video, which i think was the first "taste" of new material from the band. it featured on the soundtrack for The Saint, which wasn't a bad film at all. i can recall seeing just a snippet of the video, specifically part of it which the above featured, and said to myself that Simon le Bon was wearing possibly the greatest shirt ever made. should, in unlikely circumstances, i be required to pinpoint the start of my infatuation with this album, this is it.
not much went well with the journey to get Medazzaland to the point of release. biggest issue was, perhaps, John Taylor quitting shortly after recording sessions began. which meant yeah, Duran Duran was now either just 40% of the original (to 1985) line up, or 66% of Arcadia plus that Warren dude who joined Duran in 86. also 0% Taylor presence, whereas "prime" Duran Duran was 60% Taylor.
going full tilt Spinal Tap is what happened next, then. a decision was apparently taken to simply erase most of what John Taylor had recorded and press on. some accounts, mostly from Warren Cuccurullo and there's no reason to doubt the veritas of it, say that they pressed on with material not even intended for Duran Duran, but rather a Warren and Nick side project. with two singles not producing much in sales, label EMI released the album in the USA and Japan only, where it didn't do well, so didn't release it anywhere else. they rather chose to tear up Duran's contract, gave them full ownership of the master tapes and rights to Medazzaland, and told them to f*** off.
presented above are the two (2) different versions of the compact disc, then. to the left is the most recent (2022) release, to the right is the USA version. which i paid HMV £18 for. by no means is this too clear in the above image (sorry), but the covers are different. for a start, look at the image of Warren, diagonally below that of Simon. and top right for that matter. the text is weirdly the same but different. and also absent is 'Duran Duran' crossed out in the bottom right. more on that just now, and a bit later on with other artwork oddities.
since the band haven't really spoken too much about the record - yet, importantly, have never denied it exists - it's really, really difficult to tell of they either went "f*** it let's just go full tilt with whatever" or went with a quite deliberate quest to subvert. i would suspect the former soon became the latter. every clue to this is there in the original artwork, with the band name crossed out. as in, it is us but it isn't us sort of thing. who knows, perhaps one of their biggest influences, noted this and recalled it when seeking out ideas for the artwork for The Next Day.
no, then, they didn't just take old, unused compact disc stock and shove it in new packaging. the disc surfaces are quite different. original version is the one at the bottom; i would like to think that the new version is pink as a homage to the pink CD case the original release came in.
a second single, in some parts of the world, turned up in advance of the album. which was Electric Barbarella, a nod to the well famous origins of the band name. perhaps this is just me being a weirdo or whatever, but i immediately found this compelling. the strange, weird and furious passion for an emotionless (and clearly sexual) relationship expressed in the song resonated with me quite possibly more than it should have. plus, that video for it. nice to see the boys could still get banned off of MTV when trying to push boundaries, so to speak.
timing was a big issue with this album, making it all the more subversive in ways likely not intended. making it quite and perfectly clear that there's never been a whisper of a word that the song was in any way about her, well. had the song Electric Barbarella been released at the time intended in the UK, its release would have been around the time well known Durannie Princess Diana died. ever eager to get the wrong story to press, no doubt dodgy newspapers (you know which one in particular) would have gone wild with the "princess of my dreams" line.
aside from that possible connotation, there's the song Michael You've Got A Lot To Answer For. this was a lyric off of Simon for his friend, Michael Hutchence. sadly it was only a short while, i think a few weeks, after the record was released that he died, giving the song an entirely different possible meaning. one certainly not intended, or even thought possible.
for another (poorly pictured, sorry) comparison between the original release and (at time of writing) most recent release, the booklet is more or less the same. just the quality of paper used on the new version is better, or at the least heavier. some sort of polaroid art (and Nick Rhodes i am looking at you here) adorns the new inner cover. curiously on the new print it is virtually impossible to read, or work out, what the song titles are. hard to believe this is anything but deliberate.
yeah, far too many pictures uploaded here for this, so here's a look at the back cover for both to date versions of it. once again slight differences exist, yet the most striking is the uber subversion on the go.
certainly, yes, indeed, that is the celebrated Rio album art cover they have vandalised, or some may well say desecrated. quite a straightforward way to say "don't expect what you had before here", really. what interests me the most is how they have tackled the "mid price" sticker what came on some CDs, apparently adding to it. seems to me to be something about the singer? but by far the biggest difference is that on the new version (to the left) "accept" is crossed out, "expect" is not. on the original (to the right) both are. other writing looks different too. i am sure this means something, even if it's that they lost the original artwork and had a bash at recreating it. lads, you could have photocopied my version.
just why do i love this album so much? actually not sure "love" is correct. what it does do, in unequivocal terms, is strike a chord with me. this it does on some levels i am aware of, some that i pretend i am not aware of, and others than i know to be true but cannot quite understand why. obviously and of course the record is not about moi, but yet i feel at times it reflects my life up to that point, and over the years it feels as though it was a map i followed. whether i should have or not. how very bizarre and strange that it should be a virtually discarded Duran Duran album which affected me so.
my understanding is that another version of this album is due, possibly this year. one of them "special edition" things, likely containing a few extra tracks. of what they might be, well, there's Saint Or Sinner off of the Out Of My Mind single, and Ball & Chain off of the Japan only version. but who knows what other bits of tape Nick and Simon and, indeed, Warren have from the sessions. maybe even John kept some bits to throw into another variation.just so there's no doubt, of course i shall purchase it. even if it is exactly the same as either of these releases.
by the by, or as an aside (or what have you) the album they did after this one, Pop Trash, was not quite so good, but still rather unfairly overlooked. for a start there's one truly amazing number on it, the single Someone Else Not Me, which makes it worth checking out alone.
right, that's that for this. no of course there's no proper review of the actual album i tend not to do things like that. but i shall be listening to it again, and again, so long as i have time left.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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