there's really, really no point in pretending otherwise - this is another post celebrating the legendary, the infamous, the brilliant and the (very) metal Bad News. quite a surprise to find (yet) another reissue of their album, look you see. if i have the mathematics of it all correct this will be the 4th time it has turned up in a compact disc form. first there was the as is lp, then a "deluxe", then (i think) as part of a ludicrously overpriced and badly put together box set, and now here we are.
yes, i have purchased nearly all of them. it was the box set i gave a miss, for it simply wasn't worth the near £100 price. especially not when the only item of true interest (and some value), the previously unreleased (and poorly recorded) live bits, got a separate release. from what i recall this latest one came in at slightly north of £16 but still well south of £20, and was an automatic purchase when it turned out the main inclusion was all of their second album, Bootleg, in its entirety. never before has this been put out on compact disc; how nice of them to have done so for its 35th (!!!!) anniversary.
i keep reading reports on how the compact disc is "dying", how sales are falling, the kids these days do all that "streaming" stuff, which is incredibly convenient but loses the tactile sense of holding a record. yet someone thought it made commercial sense (for it cannot have been done just to please me) to put this one out in that format again. and blessed be they for doing so. sure, at this stage (and perhaps this shows little or no limited decay) i can recite the whole of it, the works of Bad News, from memory, but nothing beats listening to them. so yes, then, it remains very good (and very metal) indeed.
of course the bits in-between the songs, where they are shouting and (frequently to the point of exclusively) swearing at each other, remain the true gold. when it came to Bootleg, essentially bits (so it is believed to be) recorded but not used for the first album, it's basically 90% them shouting and swearing, with the odd song (AIDS, HM Farmer and kind of Bad Dreams as well as Cashing In On Christmas) appearing almost by accident. Vim, Spider, Den and Colin shouting and swearing shall forever be ludicrously funny.
unfortunately no, i am not going to link to every (mistake imaginable) post i have made on the subject of Bad News. but, go on then, a few. here you go, from a random search, read if you like all about the first deluxe edition, the bit dodgy fancy video (disc) release of the Bad News films, and the more recent release of two poorly recorded, badly presented live performances which has a stack of extras inexplicably not listed on the packaging.
sure, it's been a brief while since i last played them (probably when i got the live one), but my word this has remained just as funny and entertaining as when i first got the record. that was on vinyl, and i believe off of a branch of John Menzies. do they even have shops any more? probably not.
needless to say, if a great deal of shouting and swearing is not really your thing, is is absolutely a compact disc set to avoid. for all and everyone else, well, even if like me you own loads of copies, there is space for this one, celebrating the Frilly Pink years of their career.
many thanks indeed to whatever record label executive, or who(m)ever it was that gave the go ahead for this most excellent release!
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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