Lloyd Cole

One of the great era-defining pop marketing innovations of the 1980's for me is the 12" Mix

Now in the digital age - it's amazing how many of these extended mixes have been forgotten and remain hidden away on a slab of dusty vinyl somewhere. Artistically they usually held very little merit - as the artists themselves were rarely involved and most considered them a vulgar bastardisation of their original art. Which means that when albums get reissued in their deluxe 21st Century editions, the lost 12" mixes sometimes don't get a look in.

But artistic preciousness aside, as a listener I absolutely loved them, and surely that was the point?

This chap has an amazing blog which concentrates almost exclusively on high quality vinyl rips of 80's 12" mixes and is a veritable treasure trove

http://burningthegrounddjpault.wordpress.com

However - be warned there is a LOT of Sheena Easton and Olivia Newton John involved over there so steel yourself.

But I digress - I know that Lloyd Cole is planning a companion volume to the Clearing Out The Ashtrays boxset
http://shop.lloydcole.com/products/cleaning-out-the-ashtrays
that concentrates on the Commotions period, but I bet he doesn't include the 12" mixes of the Easy Pieces singles.

It'd be a real shame as Brand New Friend and Lost Weekend both have great extended versions. Up until a few months back I didn't even know there was an extended version of the "flop" third single Cut Me Down, as I only owned the Double 7" edition, but I picked this up on 12" at a record fair for a couple of quid and lo - there it is!

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions - Cut Me Down (12" extended remix)

It's a text book example. Instruments dropped out on the extended intro, then the main part of the song, followed by a dubby interlude (just put some delay on the drums - that'll do..) and then a longer outro.

Despite the fact it didn't fare too well in the charts, I adore this song and Cole still plays it live in his "Folk Singer" Set (if you've not seen him play live in the past few years then I can't recommend the following CD more. It's excellent)

http://shop.lloydcole.com/products/the-whelan

I had to laugh when I saw him in Buxton last year as he explained that the beauty of doing acoustic versions of the old songs is that he can leave out the crap middle 8 if he sees fit and no one says anything. Hence you could say the version he plays these days is the artistically enhanced shortened mix..

Lloyd Cole - Cut Me Down (Acoustic - Live At The Whelan)

Hopefully I'll post up a few more of my favourite 80's 12" mixes in the future.

New York, New York

A quick blog for my chum Steve at Domino Rally who is off to New York soon, making me insanely jealous in the process. As a coping mechanism I decided I could do worse than posting a couple of my favourite New York Songs..

Lloyd Cole - New York City Sunshine

One from his last album and probably up there with the best of anything he's written post Commotions. There are a couple of obligatory Cole-isms, cheesy lines about junkies and being "turned on" but the sentiment is pure - if you're in love and in New York you really don't mind the fact it is freezing cold and you can no longer feel your face

Craig Armstrong - Wake Up In New York

I was going to use the word cinematic but that applies to almost everything Craig Armstrong does. This one though is made all the more special by Evan Dando, the man who could sing the theme tune to Postman Pat and make it sound achingly cool. And when Evan sings about meeting you at the drugstore you can imagine he's there to pick up his methadone script standing in line behind Lloyd Cole who is buying Preparation H.

I'm off to Lisbon myself at Easter and I was slightly surprised to not find a single song about Lisbon in 160gb of mp3's on my hard drive...are there any out there or is Lisbon just not worthy of a song? The closest I got was Portugal by The Fall, but that's not even a good Fall song.