16 October 2020 UK pressing. This is the concert that has the version of In Your Eyes that BG plays. Been looking for it ever since it got added to the playlist here. This is the first time a stand alone audio only release of this concert has been issued. So far it's primo.
For reasons unknown to me I never got the original Wildflowers LP or CD. I may take a flyer on the smaller 2 LP set. Glad to hear it's sounding good on your end.
I did and for some reason I never opened it. I paid $12.95 for it when it came out in 1994. The price sticker was still on it. I sold it last year for $700 unopened with the sticker still on it. A lady bought it for her husband as a Father's Day gift. She was happy and her husband was really happy. Needless to say, I was happy and lucky for whatever reason that I never opened it. It would still be worth about $500 open and in NM condition. It is just one of those releases.
I got the Studio Album Box Set Volume 2 with it in it and opened it and played the 2014 copy of Wildflowers in it. It was nice, a tad better than the CD version I have and I was OK with no longer having the original 1st press. It helped pay for more vinyl anyway.
This set is flipping tits ! So far. I went and read the reviews of the 3 LP set of this and everyone is raving about it. I just checked the runouts and this is the same pressing that I got in my box set. No corners cut, everyone gets the same version. This does not always happen. Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering did the remastering. He and Grundman Mastering are who is doing the best work these days. There is also Miles at Abbey Road who is doing the Beatles and a bunch of other bands.
Anyway, get this, the three LP set. This is one of those great, great releases. Especially if you don't own any version. After I finish the main album, I'm going to play the Concert stuff next. The demos and stuff like that don't really interest me that much. Knowing that the quality is what it is, I can buy another one and not worry about opening it up to make sure it is all good. I now seem to physically have more Tom Petty music than any other band, including Floyd, the Stones, Beatles, ABB, Todd and The Who. I guess that I really like TP
For reasons unknown to me I never got the original Wildflowers LP or CD. I may take a flyer on the smaller 2 LP set. Glad to hear it's sounding good on your end.
30 Oct 2020 50th Anniversary international released on gold vinyl. Had high hopes for this. Nope nothing special, kind of lackluster mastering and pressed in noise and glitches. I generally try and stay away from colored vinyl and stay with black vinyl. Lesson relearned. Going back.
Weird that Google doesn't come up with a decent image of the inside of the gatefold
Discogs to the rescue ...
This is such a great album. Subtle or not so subtle snark with some great hooky riffs. It is actually better than I remember. Haven't listened to it in prolly 15 or more years. A commentary about an emigration trend to Australia. That echoed my interests in Australia as well back then, but that was based on its rise and new prominence in the surfing world back then. This was actually mentioned in the song Australia. Great waves and shark nets.
'Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)' is the seventh studio album by The Kinks, released in October 1969. Kinks frontman Ray Davies constructed the concept album as the soundtrack to a Granada Television play and developed the storyline with novelist Julian Mitchell; however, the television programme was cancelled and never produced. The rough plot revolved around Arthur Morgan, a carpet-layer, who was based on Ray Davies' brother-in-law Arthur Anning.
'Arthur...' was met with almost unanimous acclaim upon release. It received generous coverage in the US rock press, with articles running in underground magazines such as Fusion and The Village Voice. It garnered back-to-back reviews by Mike Daly and Greil Marcus in Rolling Stone magazine's lead section; Daly rated it as "the Kinks' finest hour", and Marcus went so far as to call it "the best British album of 1969". Reviews in the UK were also positive. Although it received a mixed review in New Musical Express, Disc & Music Echo praised the album's musical integrity, and Melody Maker called it "Ray Davies' finest hour... beautifully British to the core".
The album, although not very successful commercially, was a return to the charts in the US for The Kinks. The album itself reached number 50 on the Record World charts, and number 105 on Billboard, their highest position since 1965. It failed to chart in Britain.