Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Welcome to the singles poll

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!