yes, so once again it's the anniversary for me (and others) of seeing The Stone Roses at Heaton Park. way back in 2012, look you see. making it thirteen years on, at least at the time of writing this. if, and it's a slightly big if, i have the mathematics all correct there.
long ago was it i had exhausted anything possible to say on the subject of the actual gig, of course, and within the last couple of years i had suggested that i would not be doing any more obligatory posts in celebration of it. so here we, of course, are.
a slight change this time, as a chance encounter with a new friend (at the Holly Johnson gig) led to a conversation about the ostensible debut album off of The Stone Roses. yes, i have indeed got some (a few) of my copies of the eponymous record out (so to speak) to showcase, if not show off, here.
to avoid being here all day (which assumes you haven't left already) i have kind of limited this to just copies of (effectively) the same album which are (somewhat) different. oh goodness me, yes, i have quite a few more of it tucked away. when Liam Gallagher said that he bought four (4) copies of the record because it was brilliant i thought nice one man, and also amateur.
beginning at the (very) beginning seems wise, then. although i am told (no i haven't checked, i rather have conversations than just google stuff) that one of these is a sort of pre-beginning edition, if that is even a thing. so, here we are, The Stone Roses as a single disc release in three (3) variations. one of which is rather bad.........
well, yes, strictly speaking there are four (4) copies there, with the (a) vinyl edition being used as an impromptu backdrop. indeed there are some that will argue the "only way" one should play this album, or any, is in record format (not all records are made of vinyl, but i don't have that much of an issue with people calling records vinyls). this is probably true if (like Jimmy Page, one of the most vocal for this view) you have staggering high end (and expensive) equipment, not the players you can get off of the shelves. failing that (assuming you don't have Mr Page's resources) a decent brand CD player and some quality speakers will deliver optimal sound, thanks. no, also i did not dig out my "special edition" DVD of the album, sorry.
purely and in its simplistic brilliance it is the original, as intended 11 (eleven) track version of the album where the astonishing genius of it all is. the modern world may not understand this, but once it was so that careful consideration and planning went into the running order of songs on an album. now of course it is (alas) so that they all just get shot out (or "dropped") on streaming services in whatever order you like, chances are it will all just be in a "shuffle mix" or what have you anyway.
if you noticed that (in the pic before the one directly above) the lettering seemed "darker" on one of the copies of it (the bottom one), well, that's the American edition. quite the monstrosity it is, too, with it featuring thirteen tracks. someone down the record label decided that shoving Elephant Stone in between She Bangs The Drums and Waterfall was a good idea, when it isn't. totes breaks the vibe created, man. also having Fools Gold at the end disrupts the magnificent coda of I Am The Resurrection, being the symbolic, significant and revelatory bookend to the opening, I Wanna Be Adored.
more specific to the image (directly) above (well above the paragraph prior to this) you will note that one of the copies has a white back. spine too, as the pic below will show. at first i assumed this was some homemade bootleg, or pirate, when i saw it down the market. yet i felt compelled to purchase it anyway, "just in case". i threw images of it out onto the internet to see if any fellow acolytes had ever seen this. what came back to me was news that this was not rare as such, but still a quite nifty find, as it was (is) a "pre-release" version of it, whatever that means. nice that it lists the band and what they do, but i am reasonably sure i have seen "standard" versions with the same on. i probably do have one like that in a box somewhere.
for the conversation about the album which (vaguely) suggested this article, well. we were all in a pub prior to the Holly Johnson gig and were, of course, discussing music. vibes, man. someone mentioned that they didn't particularly care for The Stone Roses. when it was (not by me) pointed out that i was quite the fan, it went very the English way of doing things, with profuse (and entirely unnecessary) apologies being offered and a pledge to go and play the album again. to be fair one of the dearest friends that i have ever had (doubt he reads this, but on the off chance, hello Ro) dismissed them at the time as being "tree hugging hippie crap" before such a term was popular, and i doubt his view has changed.
on, then, to the "special edition" releases of the album. surprisingly there has only been (up to now) just the two (2) such reissues of this, with them being the 10th anniversary edition and the 20th anniversary edition. i was surprised (and disappointed) that 2019 brought no 30th anniversary edition, but by then i think they thought people would not buy more copies (ahem) and besides the fall out from the most recent of splits around then probably put paid to any conversations about it.
some would argue that the definitive, perfect, best (or what have you) release, at least as far as this format is concerned, is the 2019 20th anniversary edition. this, it is claimed, is the only release where the album has been "properly mastered for compact disc", whatever that (exactly) means. well, kind of. rather famously all of the band were invited to the "remastering", but only Ian Brown turned up. so, if anything, it sounds "like it should on compact disc for the first time" according to Ian Brown. in the booklet you get some class stories from Ian and Mani, with Reni chipping in an odd, abstract thing that either makes sense to someone in particular or no one at all. sadly, alas, John Squire gave no input.
certainly the 2009 edition of the album sounds really good, but then all copies of it do to my ears. the trick is, of course, to make sure you play it at the correct volume. what irks me about this edition is, as you can see above, they go and shove Fools Gold on the end of the album again. quite a shame, they could have just put it on the second disc which features a whole load of supposedly "lost" (yet had been freely available on the internet for years) demos. ahead of writing this i did indeed play the demos again. sound quality is smart, and it's sort of interesting to hear the songs with a more "flowery tree hugging hippie" feel to them.
a further thing on the 2009 set is a DVD (so far as i am aware they have not ventured into blu ray video) which contains (yet again) the celebrated Blackpool Live film. you get the era related promo videos too, but if we are entirely honest only Fools Gold and One Love are "proper" ones that stand up. yes, the one for Waterfall is quite class, but it's just a compilation off of Blackpool Live.
oh. now that i have gone done dug it out, wouldn't you know the DVD what comes with The Stone Roses as a 20th anniversary set (which is also called the "Legacy Edition") is just disc one off of the previously mentioned DVD. somehow i had forgotten it was a two (2) disc set.
my memory was somewhat off, then, as i thought this DVD had one of them fancy DVD audio versions of the actual album on it. rather like the Definitely Maybe DVD off of Oasis, and yes, something on them in a little while. still, this set (albeit second hand) seems to go really cheap online these days. totes worth it for disc two alone. on it you get most of the "Complete Stone Roses" video (minus the hideous voiceover that had), including the celebrated "amateurs, amateurs" performance of Made Of Stone.
my stereo of choice is a quite decent, mid if not top range Sony "ghetto blaster", resplendent with a tape deck as well as CD player. just the standard FM/AM(MW) radio, mind, as it was made all before this new fangled "DAB" was the norm. if you are wondering what the point of this declaration is it's purely to clarify how i judge "sound quality". by no means does this allow me to differentiate between the variations that much, but to be fair the 2009 copy does seems to have marginally better, or crisp (hello, Faye) sound in comparison.
you can, as a kind of (quasi) early conclusion, indeed purchase a "bad" copy of The Stone Roses off of The Stone Roses. as exceptional as the song is, the versions (or variations) which tag Fools Gold on the end simply distract from the overall, overwhelming experience of the record as was intended. but no, generally if not strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a poor experience of the album. go and get as many copies of it as you can if you wish to live my kind of life.
you can, as a kind of (quasi) early conclusion, indeed purchase a "bad" copy of The Stone Roses off of The Stone Roses. as exceptional as the song is, the versions (or variations) which tag Fools Gold on the end simply distract from the overall, overwhelming experience of the record as was intended. but no, generally if not strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a poor experience of the album. go and get as many copies of it as you can if you wish to live my kind of life.
no idea at all why, exactly, they have ceased to "milk" this album. just because (so far as is known) every recording from the time has been released doesn't mean they can't package it and send it out to the shops (or more like online things) again. assuming my dream release, Christmas With The Stone Roses By The Stone Roses (if Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand can do Christmas records so can they) is now never ever going to happen then i would like at least one (1) more "greatest hits" or "best of set", if just to get Beautiful Thing on CD. yes, i have the limited edition vinyl and two purchased (!) downloads, but still, would be nice to have a disc of it. they hoyed a (one track) CD single of All For One out.
what of Second Coming? of the many copies i have of it (but not as many as this one) there's only three differences, and even then not much. on top of the standard release i have a "limited edition numbered tour edition" off of Australia, which is literally a slipcase (numbered) over the release, and then a two disc set what came with Crimson Tonight, a four (4) track live EP, showcasing not the best four songs off of the Second Coming album. doubtful any "special editions" of that album will ever come out, i suspect. beyond a general lack of interest in the record (fairly or not) any "unused" recordings most probably got recycled by Squire for The Seahorses (infamously an anagram of "he hates roses"), and then Ian Brown took Can't See Me with him for his solo career.
right, that's very much "it" for The Stone Roses in this post. well, kind of. something related to it is a bit of a related post i gone done years ago, and a fairly easy to guess at resurgence in interest in it.
briefly i did wonder why a post i did on a guide to Heaton Park from 13 (or so) years ago was all of a sudden getting 200 - 300 hits a day, and then i remembered. oh, yes, that's right, Oasis are playing there. well, if people are pirating (or linking) to whatever i put on that post, nice one, hope it helps.
i am indeed not going to be at any of the imminent Oasis shows, a reunion which always seemed best described as inevitable when The Stone Roses was felt to be improbable. cost of tickets and the ludicrous costs of getting to and from the gigs or staying overnight ruled it out. there was a temptation to write a "humorous" yet ultimately cynical thing about all of this, not unlike my post concerning the frustrations i and several million others had about trying to get tickets. you know what, though, i would rather express the sincere wish that the overwhelming majority get beyond their wildest hopes from it all; that they are left with an impact and memories akin to mine of The Stone Roses at Heaton Park.
who is and who isn't, who is and who isn't
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