--On Sunday, June 4, 2000 5:09 PM -0700 Vince Foley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Here is a list of all the official compilation Madness
> albums released...it�s a sad sight to see that these
> CDs vastly outweigh the amount of other �actual�
> studio albums. I have decided to deliberately leave
> out 2 Live compilations (Universal and Madstock
> Madness) and the 1983 US compilation �Madness�.
Well... Leaving out the '83 US compilation makes sense because it was
mostly material from _7_ and _The Rise and Fall_, neither of which ever saw
the light of day on a US label.
At least some of the collections were reasonably useful--at the time,
_Complete_ and _Utter_ were nice early-career and late-career
retrospectives, and were the only ways to get certain singles on LP.
(Especially true outside the US, where the wonderful "Sun and the Rain" was
a non-LP single.)
_Divine_ (first incarnation) was a nice way to make all the singles
available, and--since it was not developed as an LP--to fill up a CD with
Madness material.
_It's_ and _It's Too_ were pretty much useless, both originally and in the
new incarnations (although they had a few b-sides that didn't make it to CD
until later). The second (_Heavy Heavy Hits_) release of _Divine_ was even
more useless.
_The Business_ was a great concept, and would have been a great production
if they had managed not to have so much talking over the darn tracks! (A
few of the more obscure b-sides, like the Costello version of
"Tomorrow's...", would have made it even sweeter.)
_Total Madness_ was--as far as I know--a US-only release, and actually made
a good bit of sense. At that time, there was NO Madness material available
on CD over here. Now that the three Geffen albums are on CD in the US,
it's a little less useful since the only track from the first two albums is
"One Step Beyond..."
If it weren't for a relatively cheap price, _The Lot_ would be the biggest
ripoff of them all. The new art doesn't add much, the computer videos are
a pain to play, the packaging makes it hard to get the CDs in and out
easily, and so on. I rarely move it from its shelf, and will do so
virtually never if I get around to picking up the six individual remastered
albums.
The _Divine_ reissue doesn't seem particularly useful either-especially
since it's not the complete set of singles (missing "Drip Fed Fred").
So: _Complete_, _Utter_, and the first _Divine_ all get thumbs up.
_The Business_ and _Total_ get greeted with indifference.
and a big thumbs down for _Heavy Heavy_, _Divine_(2000), _The Lot_, and
both editions of _It's_ and _It's Too_.
Dave
* The Minstrel in the Gallery http://pobox.com/~scocca/ *
* Dave Scocca ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) "Heteroskedastic" *
* "Lovestruck! I've fallen for a lamppost, giving her my *
* utmost, spilling out my deepest feelings..." --Madness *
-
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