Boo Radleys - Giant Steps Poll

http://www.booradleys.co.uk/giant_steps/fans.htm

Blimey, some names on that page!

(not just me and nick, I mean)

Butterfly McQueen was my choice - it's the homeopathic essence of the album distilled into one song. That said, it's nothing without the following Rodney King as mentioned upthread by Louis. Still it's a great song. Even when I was 16 I knew that the opening bars, "Sha-la-la-la, sha-la-la-la... Finally an okay calm has washed right over me/Poverty and cops with guns have lost their reality" was a stylistic tribute to another band, but I've never been able to put my finger on it. Is it George Harrison? The Moody Blues? Something very seventies melodic about it...

Has anyone got the recent Giant Steps 3CD reissue on Cherry Red?

Aside from the track listing (original album plus contemporaneous EPs, b-sides & remixes) information on this is a little vague. Is the album remastered? What is the packaging/artwork like? Anyone know??

info here:

1990s Reissue Thread!

Thanks!

Is the album remastered?

no but didn't need to be. this whole reissue is all about the B-sides, those songs needed to be collected in one place.

So, does this actually exist? Who's got one?

no but didn't need to be.

I agree, it sounds fantastic. The original CD is pretty quiet by today's standard, so I was more concerned about brickwalling due to an (unnecessary) increase in loudness.

I already bought a lot of the bonus material at the time, so I guess I'm most interested in the packaging and liner notes. As Mark said, anyone actually got one?

just found out my boss actually owns this album.

I saw the Wake Up deluxe edition in HMV, it's mmm....

Well it's a 'foldover' rather than a 2cm wide 'box', and it was £20.

Wouldn't get a WakeUp deluxe anyway, but I wouldn't go £20 for a Giant Steps deluxe that I had all the tracks of.

Thanks for the update Mark. Amazon lists it as £10.99, which seems much more reasonable! You can get them direct from Cherry Red for about 15 quid too ...

So neither album has been remastered nor had the volume raised?

Found a place with a copy of the original (are there any others?) rpressing on vinyl for $17.98. Should I go for it?

pressing*

Um yes! It is 2 discs, after all, so that's not a bad deal.

Sure! I just wasn't sure what a mint copy of this album on vinyl generally goes for.

Ha, I've had "Barney (...And Me)" running through my head most of the day...

A mint copy of the vinyl is around £30.

(Funnily enough, I got a white label of Lazarus last week, 50p)

(the 12" single, I should have said)

If you had to shave 20 minutes off this, what songs would you cut? I want to pla it at Devon Record Club on Tuesday, but need to lop it down to about 45 minutes. 50 would do. We've got license to edit track listings for once - normally we can't pick albums over an odour long at all.

i would definitely cut both songs with parentheses in the title

Yeah? Crazy. I was actually thinking I'd just drop the ones that got no votes!

well that seems silly and arbitrary

Cut: Thinking of Ways, Spun Around, Best Lose The Fear, The White Noise Revisited

Agree that Spun Around and Best Lose The Fear could go. Maybe Take The Time Around and Leaves & Sand? There's no way Thinking of Ways should go, it's probably my favourite song after Lazarus.

Maybe Leaves & Sand, definitely not Take The Time Around.

"Leaves & Sand" is the best song, cutting it would be crazy!

So I think we're all agreed there should be no cutting of this album. I mean the ones I mentioned are all great, this album is a masterpiece. I'm no help at all here.

Drop side 4, the album works as a complete unit without it.

oh, and,

"You asked Martin Carr this question? You actually asked Martin Carr this question?"

I couldn't cut any of this, but if I had to: Barney & Me, Wish I Was Skinny (both are nice songs, but a bit normal-setting for this album). I couldn't cut Spun Around or Best Lose The Fear (you cray!) or White Noise for that matter.

But "Skinny" is an ear-relax-bath after "Upon Ninth and Fairchild"! "Barney" is an album closer! (if you only have one disc, that is..)

As I say, side 4 seemed the 'extra tracks' side to me.

If you want to present 'Giant Steps' as a conceptual whole, each side works in isolation is my theory.

I've only had it on tape and CD, so the whole "sides" thing doesn't work for me. There's loads of great stuff on the last side. Those last few songs are lovely!

One thing I've always not liked about the Boos is their choice of A-sides always represented their most strait-laced face, like an acquiescence that something has to be simple/a ditty in order to sell. Wishing and Barney are both the most fairly straightforward sonically compared to the rest of the album.

For some reason I can't reply to this thread.

Not at any length, anyway.

Anyway, I did indeed ask Martin Carr this question. And then made a joke about him pinching the title from John Coltrane, which he didn't seem to take too well!

I've always thought the second half dragged, apart from Lazarus. Which may jsut be because it's quite long as an album.

You can't drop Wish I Was Skinny; that opening trio, hard rock to doomy dub to bright pop, is key to setting the tone of the rest for the album.

Yeah, I did once ask him if "The White Noise Revisited" was influenced by "Dia 36" by Os Mutantes, he did reply that he'd never heard it before but he could see how someone might think so, in a way, but that there's nothing new under the sun etc.

With reasonably good grace, to be fair..

And I tell you what:

I was listening to a Move b-side, "This time tomorrow" and thinking it was a bit like a boos' acoustic version of "Spaniard" or some such....

And then it hit me, it's the same tune as "Lazarus" as well!

I always thought The White Noise Revisited sounded a lot like The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill.

I seem to remember reading somewhere the band all hated I Hang Suspended. I think all four of the singles were just great choices, they should have all been hits.

They hated the video.

i really want to help with editing this down but i really can't pick any song to cut. maybe if i listened to it i would. there is a reason why this is a double album.

would love a link to the interview when you have it sick.

Run My Way Runway is pretty much filler isn't it?

I didn't play this in the end, it didn't seem right lopping stuff out of it.

xp - I like it

probably wise.

No Run My Runaway is lovely...!

But I love songs about air flight. It is one of the best of those though... Love the vocal effect which is kind of spot on in that "taking off, can't hear anything properly" way.