Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Welcome to the singles poll

I completely and totally agree - presentation was a huge and important part of the whole Frankie experience and made those records feel that they were something more than "just another record"

While I do find myself often disagreeing with Paul Morley's opinions on bands or albums that I happen to rate quite highly and I often find myself actively annoyed by the manner in which he expresses his opinions, particularly when he suddenly crops up as a "talking head" on a TV show, I think he really nailed his role in the whole Frankie project.

"Welcome to the Pleasuredome (Fruitness Mix)"

checked various reissues/packages.
this version does not appear to have been given a recent dust down, and i dont think i have ever heard this one.

oh, and i had to vote for TT.

i love WTTPD in all its various forms, but TT is just insanely good in its full annihilation/Hibakusha forms.

Speaking of 'the voice over guy' here's an out-take from the Pleasuredome deluxe edition

http://open.spotify.com/track/5i9Zt5HcrZvxBK9BjVHySO

The Pleasuredome Fruitness Mix is on the Twelve Inches comp I think. Possibly slightly truncated, sacrilege no doubt. The Pleasurefix version is also excellent; more or less an instrumental of the album version.

Feel like voting Rage Hard for the "Young Person's Guide" version and cos it's not as overplayed (for me). Supposedly originally voiced by Joanna Lumley before she decided it was a little too fruity or something. I remember hearing the Two Tribes Hibakusha mix on Janice Long or something one night but not being able to track down a copy at the time.

The Pleasuredome Fruitness Mix is on the Twelve Inches comp I think

Is that the recent ZTT 12" compilation series, or on a dedicated FGTH 12" compilation (there have been a couple, but they were normally shitty modern remixesso avoided them !)

It's an early 00s FGTH comp. There are some remixes I think but you get the full 16 minute Relax, Hibakusha, Fruitness and other OGs, so...

ahh .. thats one i will have missed.
will keep an eye out - ta.
didn't think it was on the new reissues/compilation series.

Yeah, it used to be frighteningly rare or some such (xposts the Hibakusha one), now you can get it for a tenner or thereabouts.

(I do have one)

(What's a Hibakusha anyway?)

It's the Japanese term for those that survived the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima/Nagasaki.

ta

ok, I had never listened to the full 12" version of POL till now.

thankfully it's on the 2cd Sex Mix set, which I have it in the archive, and not paid much attention.
at the time, instead of the usual 12" I got the edition that had a gatefold sleeve, and some nice glossy xmas cards.

not knowing it at the time, the tracklisting was totally different to the usual 12" (doh ! ztt ! of course !).

http://www.discogs.com/Frankie-Goes-To-Hollywood-The-Power-Of-Love/release/6324244

now that I have heard the full 9 minute version, its clear that the opening 3 single run by this band was definitely one of the all time best.

as wonderful as the 2cd compilation Sex Mix is, they could have left off the sodding xmas crap ..

That gatefold POL has the "fix" versions and the full The World Is My Oyster rock out and so is totally worthwhile.

ooh totally ..
just was surprised yesterday by the 9 min version of POL as I had not heard it before (well, not knowingly as I had not paid much attention to the Sex Mix 2cd set, as I bought it and filed it thinking I had heard it all !)

that said, I still think that the annihilation mix of TT is one of the best 12" records ever ..

I wish the extended PoL didn't have that "funny" intro though.

agree totally, the chris barry crap detracts from the excellence.
I guess they (i.e. trevor et al) were flying high after the success of the voice overs of TT.
but the fact is, they do not suit POL at all.

oops : chris barry = chris barrie.

"I didn't want to do 12"s anymore. I was sick of them. I just wasn't in the mood. I mean when you've got a track like 'Relax' or 'Two Tribes' it's great, but when you've got a track like 'The Power of Love' to do a 12" of it's bloody awful. It's boring! Nobody really wants a 12" of it."

is that a holly quote ?

Trevor, I assume.

I assume the band didn't actually "do" anything for their versions.

The Pleasuredome Fruitness Mix is on the Twelve Inches comp I think. Possibly slightly truncated, sacrilege no doubt.

Yes, it's 12 minutes -- so if it is truncated, that would be surprising and kind of pointless.

Just did a little research on Wikipedia on this. There are apparently two long single versions of WttPD: "Fruitness" and "Real Altered," which is about nine-and-a-half minutes. Both include pretty long spoken word intros derived of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. Assuming that the "An Alternative To Reality" mix on the ZTT box is the same (they are about two seconds different in length),

I much prefer "Fruitness," which opens with a long intro featuring an actor dead seriously reading about things like the "sound of the chiseled strokes of the Dionysian world artists" while gauzy synth arpeggios and beats flitter in the background. It's both ridiculous and awesome and gives way to the crispest, most expensive-sounding mix of Frankie's career, weaving together their wildest dance and progressive sensibilities and a healthy dose of drama that doesn't let up for about seven or eight minutes.

I love it.

Nothing should surprise when it comes to ZTT related reissues. It is also on the 2CD version of a compilation called Frankie Say Greatest and that seems to be the full fruit bowl.

The voice actor is of course Geoffrey Palmer, probably best known as the dour conservative dad in the Carla Lane sitcom Butterflies.

Last reissue was the Inside the Pleasuredome box which gives a good impression of being comprehensive while actually not being, of course.

Trying to remember what mix it is where there's a long voice-over describing the design and production of a 12 mix etc. Or is that a Propaganda 12" I'm thinking of?

I remember my brother enthusiastically buying this album, and seeing the videos for "Relax" and "Two Tribes" on local video shows. I don't recall ever listening to the non-single songs on the album, it's a total blank, and we were certainly the only household I knew of with a copy of the album, even though "Relax" seemed to enjoy some level of popularity... in the US they were more of a novelty act, one in a long stream of British synth acts that managed to dent the charts. Certainly living in SoCal at the time and having 91X/KROQ championing that kind of stuff abetted our exposure to it, but a lot of of it felt sort of context-less and strange, I think this was even before the period where we were aware that issues of NME/Melody Maker were available (probably exclusively from Rhino Records in Claremont). Their role as provocateurs did come across to some extent; the cold war stuff in Two Tribes being sledgehammer obvious, the coded gay references less so, although yeah the general consensus of our peers was that anything from England with synthesizers = gay. But accusations of various kinds of music being gay (Michael Jackson, Motley Crue, etc.) were so common back then, it was just like the most convenient garden-variety insult at hand on the playground or in class. I do remember this album being a bone of contention with our heavy metal enthusiast cousin... at the time I had no idea who Trevor Horn was, what "shagging" meant (I thought it was a soccer reference), or why they were such a huge deal in the UK.

Trying to remember what mix it is where there's a long voice-over describing the design and production of a 12 mix etc. Or is that a Propaganda 12" I'm thinking of?

That would be Rage Hard (+) aka The Young Person's Guide To The 12".

Thanks.

xpost- wonder what a poll of the non-singles would throw up.

Lipson and Morley responsible for that more than Horn I think. It's obviously highly novelty but also brilliant and just check how it blooms into the widescreen disco of the main song. Surprised they didn't call it the Tubular Bellend Mix though.

Ah yeah, it goes into introducing all the instruments doesn't it. LOL. "Godlike bass guitar"

the cold war stuff in Two Tribes being sledgehammer obvious, the coded gay references less so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCpz3LAjxek

Yeah, but that version was never shown on MTV.

Yeah that never aired in the u.s.

barely here either come to that. 2 x late-night showings on The Tube iirc.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

hey The Power Of Love put up a fair fight.

About what I suspected, but I'm more surprised that Οὖτις was living in the Pomona Valley and shopping at Rhino Claremont around the same time I was.

I can't really listen to 'Welcome To The Pleasuredome' in any kind of edited form, it has to be the full-length version on the LP or nothing. The excess of it all is the whole point!

Also, I vastly prefer the original CD tracklisting of Welcome To The Pleasuredome to the vinyl edition, because it has the Annihilation mix of 'Two Tribes' and 'Happy Hi!' on it, and it gets rid of the awful cover of 'San Jose' too.

I can't really listen to 'Welcome To The Pleasuredome' in any kind of edited form, it /has/ to be the full-length version on the LP or nothing. The excess of it all is the whole point!

Pretty sure "Fruitness" is longer than the LP version. Treat yourself!

Trying to remember what mix it is where there's a long voice-over describing the design and production of a 12 mix etc. Or is that a Propaganda 12" I'm thinking of?

That would be Rage Hard (+) aka The Young Person's Guide To The 12".

Never heard this before...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Z50_TPDyo

Is that the Young Person's Guide? I should have advocated for it harder.

Listening to the early FGTH Peel Session stuff... amazing just how much was actually in place before Trevor Horn got his hands on the material, actually!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-AUwwSR-bg

"Welcome to the Pleasuredome (Fruitness Mix)"

for 70p i got the digital version and f*ck its good.

thank you for the nudge.

You're welcome!