Vice Versa - "Music 4" (Neutron Records PX1092) 1979 + "Stilyagi" (Backstreet Backlash Records BBR003) 1980
Vice Versa's vinyl career stretched to two 7 inchers, the minimal synth classic "Music 4" EP, and the hard industrial disco stomper "Stilyagi/Eyes of Christ" single.(Different versions to those found on the "8 Aspects Of..." tape.)
No sign that they were to become New Pop darlings of the charts and the Music press, ABC,of "Lexicon Of Love" fame. I suppose they had to earn a living?
Tracklist:
| 1 | New Girls Neutrons |
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| 2 | Science Fact |
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| 3 | Riot Squad |
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| 4 | Camille |
| 5 | Stilyagi | |
| 6 | Eyes Of Christ |
DOWNLOAD the vinyl outings or Vice Versa HERE!
12 comments:
I liked the first ABC single Tears Are Not Enough - clearly an unpopular thing to say here!
This takes me back and other cliches I never thought would ever come out of my mouth - two absolute classic singles that should be part of any right minded music fan's vinyl/digital collection.
All four tracks on Music 4 are s*m*n*l but my personal favourite is Riot Squad - 1:40 of late seventies minimal synth perfection and genius rhyming couplets -
QUATERMASS - TEAR GAS - RIOT SQUAD - TV AD - that is poetry in my book.
'Camille' is a close second and it has just dawned on me how curiously it feels like The Orb's 'Little Fluffy Clouds released over a decade later.
Anyone new to the Sheffield 'sound' - they should definitely check out the Golden Hour of The Future early Human League compilation as well.
Well played sir.
Forgot to add - I forgot just how good the rhythm track on both Stilyagi and Eyes of Christ sound - they are way forward in the mix, quite unusual for the time - I would love to hear both tracks without the vocals - ah if only "instrumental" versions were a popular trope amongst the minimal wave progenitors of the late 70s and early 80s - the voice really does "fix" the space-time co-ordinates of music.
Corporate marketing whores - sell more product - release the backing tracks!
This is great means I can hera the music but don't have to spend close to £70 on the VOD box set - I mean great to re-issue all that stuff VOD but how can you turn a couple of records and a tape into a £70 box set full of pointless extra bits of crap....
Blank Frank
Careful, don't upset Mr VOD.He's already had a go at me, suggesting that having stuff that he's re-released on this site as something that "Really Sucks bad"?.....may I humbly suggest so is repackaging stuff that was originally largely Free for the Bourgeoisie to display on their coffee tables . Lovely as they are,its just another example of the middle and upper classes grabbing the underclass's last remaining possessions.....Football,theatre,education,Jobs,pop music, and now DIY music.
Dump the fucking rubbish,all you need is the original releases.
Man this takes me back. Haven't heard Music4 since the 'great record heist of 83' *sigh. Also caught Vice Versa on one of the Final Solution bills back in the day. Great act.
Thanks for posting
Whoops, should have read this before erm posting some VOD rip links in another comments section (feel free to delete it as the last thing I would want is to make Herr Maier feel that it 'really sucks bad'!)
Of course it ignores the fact that one of the main reasons VOD has a client base to buy their expensive products in the first place is exactly because of music blogs like DIEORDIY and No Longer Forgotten Music that introduced this music to a whole new generation. To be honest, I am astonished by Herr Maier having a go at this blog - and what is funny is as soon as my house sells, I was planning on getting some decks again and start buying vinyl and one of the first things I planned to do was get a VOD subscription - that is definitely not happening now! That's one less potential subscriber!.
Don't get me wrong, the VOD releases are beautiful and the label has both introduced me to many artists I never knew about and also reintroduced me to many my middle aged addled memory circuits had accidentally deleted all reference to. I always gave them the benefit of the doubt in terms of the spectacular commodification and repackaging of underground/oppositional/counter-cultural artifacts, but now I am starting to think - let a thousand VOD rips bloom!
I forgot to add:
Mit - that was really interesting to discover that Vice Versa played with Throbbing Gristle (I presume that is what you mean anyway) - obviously we must be talking 79/80 here. Makes you wonder if there is a great mixing desk quality live recording of them playing (unless that is what constitutes one of the live recordings on the VOD release, though as the Vice Versa footage on You Tube shows, many of the Sheffield bands were early uptakers of video and sound documentation anyway).
PS> My record heists were self-induced affairs involving copious trips to Record Exchange but even so, I too 'sigh' at the thought of it!
I guess VOD would argue that when in 200 years all the hard drives have been wiped that in a library somewhere will be these marvellous box sets documenting all the DIY releases. As archival releases they certainly serve a function as a listening experience that are not so good. Most bands especially those that were only in existence for a year or two are lucky if they have a good LP or maybe two in them and so a 4 or 6 LP box set is often just a vanity project collecting every last fart and blip and some rather sad artwork together and then charging £70 for it. It might have been better to produce a series of tightly focussed single LPs and then put the rest online as a resource.
Blank Frank
2the saucer people/
It wasn't a TG gig I am sure...maybe a Skidoo gig at ULU or something like that. Final Solution promoted so many gigs I was at, primarily because I was working at Bonaparte and then later Honky Tonk at the time and selling tix for their gigs I had a card that got me into all their gigs gratis. I am pretty certain that FS recorded a lot if not all of their shows thru the mixing desk as I certainly had copies of Echo and The Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes sets from their first London gigs supporting Joy Division and Essential Logic at the YMCA in Tottenham Ct Rd. (And yeah those tapes went in the heist *sighX2) I did the Record and Tape Exchange shuffle a few times myself too, incl. selling an autographed Art Pepper album...what was I thinking???
Blank Frank - I completely agree with all your points - the only thing that irks me is the fact that Herr VOD feels that blogs like this 'really sucks bad' when it happens that something posted here is also released on VOD. It is the notion that it is fine for blogs like this to contribute (however big or small) towards creating the conditions and audience for this relatively obscure music to be heard, but once a VOD reissue occurs, the music should be removed at once lest it damage 'potential sales'.
Not only does it ignore the fact that the only reason some people have any interest in buying VOD releases is because they first heard the music on blogs like this, but research has shown again and again that the very people who do download music for 'free' actually buy more CDs and vinyl than those that do not.
This "really sucks bad" attitude erroneously equates sharing digital representations of a release to a limited audience with no economic exchange whatsoever - with making pirated copies of the artifact and selling them as though they were the legitimate release and profiting from it. It also obliquely suggests that those who are not able to economically participate in the purchase of VOD releases should not even be allowed to hear a digital representation of it, even when it comes from the original tape/vinyl/cd source - this is cultural fascism in my book.
The map is not the territory - the menu is not the meal and the MP3 is not the expensive vinyl box-set!
Mit - thanks for the extra information, it clears a few things up for me - wow - 23 Skidoo and Vice Versa - that must have been one hell of a gig! I saw 23 Skidoo three or four times between 1983 and 1985 (including one god-awful gig at the Albany Theatre or Empire or whatever it was called - an all seated table affair around which sat these 'sophisticated' London artsy types and then there was us, a bunch of scruffy anarcho types who had hitched down from the north, - talk about audience extremes!
Yep, when I have that "what was I thinking" moment when it comes to all the vinyl I sold, I have to remind myself it was probably to avoid immanent homelessness or getting taken to the moors in the back of a boot and dumped!
Yes there is an irony that without blogs like this many vinyl re-issues would never have taken place anyway as it was via these channels that we all got to here about some very obscure or hard to find music. In a sense labels and distributors want it both ways as they are happy for an audience to be built up for a release by music being on a blog but then when they bring out their authorized version want the blog tracks to be taken down in case it harms sales – which as already pointed out it doesn’t in any case. Of course labels have made a financial investment so on one level you can understand them being nervous but it is hard to cry too much for them as if we take say a £10 LP bough through an online distributor then on average the distributor gets £5, the label gets £3 and the artist maybe £1-2 per copy, if they are lucky. If it is a compilation then the artist will get bunged a few free copies and told to be chuffed with that. So as usual the artist gets the smallest cut. On a box set if sold directly by mail order (and not through a distributor) a label could make even on a small run of 500 copies many thousands of pounds. Oh I hear them cry but what about our overheads, the box sets that don’t sell and we need to pay our bills – well yes but so do the artists.
Franco el Blanko
It's so absolutely great that I can rediscover the '80s electro scene' for myself here.
Thanks !!!
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