INXS - Classicking or Dudding?

Ddid some poking around and Universal, which controls the catalog outside the states, has stated they will put out a deluxe 25th anniversary version of Kick for next year and a career-spanning boxset for 2012 as well. So I'll stick with my 2002 Kick release and look toward picking up Shabooh, Swing and Listen (if they aren't brickwalled, as f. hazel pointed out).

Dude I got "The Swing" for a buck! I think it is one of those CDs that is supposed to be so expensive. I am so happy. It has aged well, goes well with r & b.

Anyone get the Kick 25 megabox? I would love to see the dvd once, but it's super silly expensive. Same with the 2-disc version; I'm sure it'd be fun to hear some of the single remixes, but I think the 2011 remastered album will do me just fine.

Wish they'd just done the career retrospective box set instead. I haven't seen any further news on that front so I hope it's not scuppered.

inxs reminds me of middle school in just the worst way

Years ago I had to see John Mayer, back when he was just breaking, and my thoughts mid-show were that he sounded like something that would have been played at my junior prom. And then he covered "Never Tear Us Apart," which was my junior prom theme.

I heard the title track of LLT last Saturday. Such a gas.

INXS calls it quits onstage in Australia after 35 years — and 15 without Michael Hutchence

Some discussion here already: Classic or Dud: INXS - Kick

I actually meant to revive this thread the other day, but didn't realize I'd clicked on the wrong one until I'd already posted.

I remember it well. #originalsin we did in one take. The band seemed to not play as well as I knew they could as I'd seen them live. So i went out and played with them. Drummer Jon Farris got so excited that he broke the bass drum head on our 1st pass. That became THE TAKE https://t.co/naoGdjJNM1

— Nile Rodgers (@nilerodgers) June 20, 2022

this week, out of nowhere, I've been revisiting the Australian Dekadance cassette-only compilation of extended mixes from The Swing (there was a US 12" with tracks from Shabooh Shoobah; this is different). I listened obsessively to it around 1985 but lost the cassette and fell in love with The Cure shortly after, so haven't heard it in any form for 37 years. Aside from the great extended mixes from my favourite era of them, I had forgotten the quite brilliant musique concrète sound collages between some of the tracks, most notably before the "bonus" cover of "Jackson". I've tried but I can't find it on YouTube so I can't share it here. A recent vinyl reissue omitted the sound collages altogether, presumably some clearance issues for the movie dialogue etc. Anyway - very little point to this post I guess. It's not often I've had an absolutely clean break from a piece of music I once loved, for this length of time.
https://rarerecords.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/INXS-Dekadance.jpg

'mediate' is one of the most unintentionally hilarious songs i have ever heard

Yes they slid from “endearingly pretentious” to “obnoxiously pretentious” pretty quickly around 1987

I'm not even sure what that means.

INXS never had pretenses. They recorded brittle electrofunk, a lot of which worked.

And those Kick and X singles fucking rule.

lol “Mediate” always makes me roll my eyes
its kinda cute now
but at the time was like ughh what is this beat poetry lol it was v forced

also kinda dovetails into Max Q stuff that followed in 1989

I always thought it was a goof, and never thought of it as a stand-alone song.

was max q... pretty good? like i remember way of the world being lyrically trite, but also the fact that it was an (aus) chart single makes the heavy-handed lyrics seem kinda - subversive? and having ollie olsen in the charts was pretty cool.

it is cool! but cool to me now as an adult with a bit more context. at the time as a early teen w limited tastes i thought it was weird & dumb lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgRWJP1Ktww

I remember always being a little disappointed when the radio or MTV only played “Need You Tonight,” without the segue.

Nice revive, made me look out my copy of the Dekadance cassette, here is a rip if anyone wants it - https://fromsmash.com/6EabD4Gybu-bt

Mystify was some real time-travelling, a specific time and place where someone and something like Hutchence and INXS could, with the help of some solid home run songs, thrive in their own specific spot. It's tempting to what-if: if what happened didn't happen, could that hot hand have continued post-1992 into some sort of U2-arena level something? (assuming that Andrew Farriss, nine albums in, was ready to write their Achtung Baby). I saw INXS on the Kick tour - they were OK. I wish I could say more, but all these years later it's so much them I remember, but the era when a band like them could be around and sound great on the radio.

Have you seen the restored "Live Baby Live"? They went back to the original 35mm. It is glorious

Bits of "Welcome to Wherever You Are" sound like the retrenched album they might have made *after* an experimental detour, though fwiw Eno is credited with mixing this one from the next album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3jl7FItnP4

Alfred the diff between “endearingly” and “obnoxiously” is “don’t know any better” vs “should know better”. To me.

Ha never would have guessed Eno was involved on "I'm Only Looking", but I suppose it's only mixing. The synth washes do sound like him but everyone's did by 1993

Have you seen the restored "Live Baby Live"? They went back to the original 35mm. It is glorious

Didn't know about this. (and apparently I do have to see it)

Meant to say "it's not so much them I remember, but the era when a band like them could be around" earlier

Video Rockers in Balboa: “Too Freaky”
By GINA ARNOLD Nov. 20, 1987 12 AM PT
Ellie Trapp, 13, of Newport Beach was in school Wednesday afternoon when she heard the news that INXS, an Australian rock band, was shooting a video on the Balboa Peninsula.

“And so,” she recounted later that day, standing outside the Balboa Inn, “I ran out to the pay phone at recess and called my dad. He left work and picked me up and drove me over here.”

“Now,” said Anja Breton, also 13, “we’re missing social studies and P.E.”

Ellie’s arms and pants had been signed by various band members after much pestering by her. “Just think,” she said. “INXS could have been filming anywhere on earth , and they’re here in Newport Beach.

“It’s too freaky! I can’t believe it!”

Ellie and Anja were the first of INXS’s fans to arrive on the scene. Dozens more followed as the shooting--for “Devil Inside,” the band’s newest single and video--continued well into the night.

The night before, Tuesday, shooting in a local bar had lasted until 4 a.m. The band was somewhat more under the gun Wednesday, having to be in Toronto for a concert the following night.

The shooting moved into a pinball parlor where a gigantic, loud, smoke-spewing machine (“actually a mosquito fogger,” a technician said, “without any insecticide in it”) was being used to turn the parlor into a dank mystery spot. It is there that video watchers will see INXS encountering all kinds of subcultures and sociopaths who, according to the song’s lyrics, “have the devil inside.”

Hanging around picturesquely, those “subcultures” (actually professional extras) turned the peninsula from “white-bread bunny beach heaven,” as one observer described it, to something wholly other and far tougher.

Several said they didn’t mind having to miss the U2 concert in Los Angeles that night. “Are you kidding?” one said. “INXS beat out U2 any day! That U2 is just a bunch of sloppy dudes. Bono needs a bath.”

Inside the parlor, everything was nearing readiness for lights-camera-action. Director Joel Schumacher (“The Lost Boys”) was about 10 minutes behind schedule . . . and losing his marbles. “After this is over,” he said, “will somebody buy me a T-shirt that says, ‘Too Old for Video’?” When the shot was delayed yet again, he pleaded, to no one in particular, “Come on--make an old man happy.”

One person who was extremely happy was Ellie Trapp, who had managed to wiggle her way into the parlor and alongside singer Michael Hutchence, and who had persuaded a passer-by to take pictures of them hugging (much to Hutchence’s girlfriend’s annoyance.)

“Don’t you wish you were part of my generation?” Ellie asked everyone who wasn’t.

From: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-11-20-ca-15339-story.html