THE NEXT DELUXE/REMASTERED ALBUM FROM PAUL
-
wingsoverkc:
I always thought Paul's album selections were pretty bizarre at times. For example, Red Rose Speedway should have had Live and Let Die, HI HI HI, and Oh Woman Oh Why;
Oh Woman Oh Why was a Ram era track that had been released as the flipside to Another Day in February 1971 so there was no way Paul was going to issue it again a couple of years later on RRS. According to Denny Laine it was Paul's drug taking during the 1970's that made him so indecisive when it came to knowing what tracks to put out on the albums and what tracks to leave off.
-
wingsoverkc:
Okay BJ, a couple of thoughts on your last comment. I always thought Paul's album selections were pretty bizarre at times. For example, Red Rose Speedway should have had Live and Let Die, HI HI HI, and Oh Woman Oh Why; Venus and Mars should have added Soily and Juniors Farm; London Town would have sold another two million lps' if Mull of Kintyre and Girl's School were included; and finally, the addition of Goodnight Tonight and Daytime Nighttime Suffering would have made Back To The Egg a #1 album. IMO, Chaos and Creation has SEVERAL subpar tracks; I mean, English Tea, A Certain Softness, Friends To Go, and Jenny Wren are ALWAYS skipped. Always. And sorry, but I ****ing LOVE the Red Rose Speedway Medley. Always have. Always will. Now to be fair, your comments are always a welcomed sight; I enjoy them immensely! I agree to disagree politely though!!
I happen to love all those "Chaos" tracks you skip, haha, but I also love that medley. I could do without "When The Night" and "Loup," though. Dating back to the Beatles days, Paul had this belief, much of the time, that albums and singles should be separate things. As the "Past Masters" sets prove, most of their best known songs were never on the official British albums. And then Paul carried that into his solo career throughout the '70s. And as Kestrel notes, he would never place a previously released B-side onto a subsequent album. Just wasn't his thing. I think Paul actually focuses a lot on the sequence of songs on his albums, but the problem can be that he will put lesser songs on the album just because he thinks it makes the album flow better thematically or musically. I mean, there's a certain logic to Side 2 of "Pipes Of Peace," but they're just not really good songs aside from "Through Our Love."
-
favoritething:
wingsoverkc:
Okay BJ, a couple of thoughts on your last comment. I always thought Paul's album selections were pretty bizarre at times. For example, Red Rose Speedway should have had Live and Let Die, HI HI HI, and Oh Woman Oh Why; Venus and Mars should have added Soily and Juniors Farm; London Town would have sold another two million lps' if Mull of Kintyre and Girl's School were included; and finally, the addition of Goodnight Tonight and Daytime Nighttime Suffering would have made Back To The Egg a #1 album. IMO, Chaos and Creation has SEVERAL subpar tracks; I mean, English Tea, A Certain Softness, Friends To Go, and Jenny Wren are ALWAYS skipped. Always. And sorry, but I ****ing LOVE the Red Rose Speedway Medley. Always have. Always will. Now to be fair, your comments are always a welcomed sight; I enjoy them immensely! I agree to disagree politely though!!
I happen to love all those "Chaos" tracks you skip, haha, but I also love that medley. I could do without "When The Night" and "Loup," though. Dating back to the Beatles days, Paul had this belief, much of the time, that albums and singles should be separate things. As the "Past Masters" sets prove, most of their best known songs were never on the official British albums. And then Paul carried that into his solo career throughout the '70s. And as Kestrel notes, he would never place a previously released B-side onto a subsequent album. Just wasn't his thing. I think Paul actually focuses a lot on the sequence of songs on his albums, but the problem can be that he will put lesser songs on the album just because he thinks it makes the album flow better thematically or musically. I mean, there's a certain logic to Side 2 of "Pipes Of Peace," but they're just not really good songs aside from "Through Our Love."
______________________________________________________________ Great points Wingsoverke and Favoritething. You are absolutely right favoritething regarding the Beatles keeping albums and singles separate. The Beatles felt it was like "double dipping" if their fans bought the singles (A & B sides) and then put them on subsequent albums. This was during the time when singles were just as big as albums. Think about it...it was very honorable for the Beatles at the time. They could have just milked albums but they had too much concern for the fans. Arguably, nothing like this ever happened in the music "business" again. Where I think Paul made a big mistake is that by the 70's (especially the last half) music buying habits in the US had totally changed. A large percentage of "album' buyers didn't even buy singles. Paul or I guess no one around him realized how much the music buying habits had so drastically changed. The other factor was that the Beatles were the biggest group in the world in the 60's. They could do practically anything they wanted and it hardly affected their success. I agree with Wingsoverke, that it was crazy for Paul not to include his A and B Side Singles especially on London Town and Back to the Egg. As a Beatle and Paul fan, I bought albums. I wanted those songs on both albums and they would have sold significantly more if he had inlcluded them. Sometimes being stubborn can really hurt you from a sales point of view. Again, the 60's and 70's were totally different from the way music consumers bought product. From the latter 60's and into the 70's it became an "album" world musically. I'm speaking from my experience in the US. Not sure if England had changes as drastically as the US from a buyer's habit point of view.
-
Nancy R:
As a solo recording artist, Paul's first screw-up was not releasing Maybe I'm Amazed as a single. It would have been a #1 hit and sold at least a million copies. He's been consistently bad at making certain song choices ever since.
_____________________________________________________________ Nancy, You're absolutely correct. It was a big mistake but Paul was fortunate. Once his Solo career really took off (the BOTR, Venus & Mars, Speed of Sound albums) Paul was able to correct his mistake by having Maybe I'm Amazed as his 1st single on his live album...Wings Over America. Because it was such a great song, MIA help propel Wings Over America into a huge selling album. Even if your Paul McCartney, music tastes change and your popularity goes up and down. Because Paul's popularity in the late 70's was starting to wane, his decision not to include the concurring singles on London Town and Back to the Egg as Wingsoverke said was a big mistake. The sales he lost by not including those singles (A & B sides) on those 2 albums he never got back. We've had discussion on other thread about the late Wings' World Tour that never was after Paul got busted in Japan. Part of Paul's decision to break up Wings was because (from what I read) Linda was totally tired of touring which makes sense because of their growing family. I wonder if Paul/Wings had continue to tour in the US and Europe (even after Japan bust) if a "live album (with songs from Egg and London Town plus the "singles" that weren't on the album and a few more Beatle songs to boot) would have sold nearly as well as Wings Over America. Well it never happened so the mistake of not including those singles on the original final 2 Wings' albums was a big blunder considering the albums would have no doubt sold significantly better. As I mentioned previously, by the mid to late 70's a large percentage of "album" buyers stopped buying singles. They were separate markets to a significant degree. As it turned out, he never made those "sales" up with a subsequent "live" album.
-
How in the hell did WOA only peak at #8 in the U.K.?! (Of course it was #1 in the U.S. and certified Platinum!) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_over_America
-
Due to the perceived poor sales of the FITD deluxe box , can anyone see the price coming down anytime soon ?
-
LetMeRollIt89:
Anybody here buy the Flowers in the Dirt Best Buy CDs with the single promo? Did you get your promo single yet? I ordered mine the morning of release and keep getting backorder notifications. I feel like this is going to take a long time!
I got an email earlier this week that said the same thing, but it said it should ship out by tomorrow, the 14th.
-
Also , has there been any sort of explanation yet for the download content ?! - why not just an extra cd ? Makes no sense at all ....
-
It was so nice to see one of the latest Reviews of FITD hit the Internet. Just google PM. The Review is from the National Review written by Kyle Smith. It is called...Paul McCartney's Neglected "Masterpiece" with a subtitle of "FITD, newly rereleased, is Paul at his mature best. In describing FITD as "neglected and Paul at his "mature best" I would surely agree. Putting FITD as a "masterpiece" is a bit of stretch in my opinion but that is certainly just my opinion and up for debate. It was very nice to finally read a review where the writer actually had listened to the complete album. I'm so tired of the Critics who are obvious anti-Paul that just repeat the same cliche's about Paul. You get the feeling that they never give the songs from the album they are reviewing any chance at all because of their bias. Mr. Smith covers most of the "neglected" songs in detail including Distractions, We Got Married, Put It There, This One, Figure of Eight, That Day is Done and Don't Be Careless Love. I do like a lot of Paul's Post Wings songs and albums because of the maturity in the lyrics as the writer details about FITD. The writer should have pointed out that "Careless" was jointly written by Paul and Elvis however, especially after quoting some of the lyrics. Again, great article to read for Macca fans. As I said about FITD, neglected and very good album for sure. Masterpiece...a stretch in my opinion but it could have been with a little tweaking.
-
Here is the link to the article BJ was talking about: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446683/paul-mccartney-flowers-dirt-genius The author also neglected to point out that That Day Is Done was primarily written by Costello and was about his grandmother.
-
Nancy R:
Here is the link to the article BJ was talking about: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446683/paul-mccartney-flowers-dirt-genius The author also neglected to point out that That Day Is Done was primarily written by Costello and was about his grandmother.
__________________________________________________ Thanks Nancy for the link. Actually in the sentence before the "That Day is Done" lyric quote, the writer does say that the song was co-written by Elvis Costello. Before talking about "That Day is Done" however he does talk about "Don't Be Careless Love" and there he totally doesn't mention that it was also cowritten with Elvis. That should have been done. Speaking about the collaboration, this is where the People Magazine article entitled "A Complete Guide To Every Song Written By PM and EC is so informative. Nancy if you could also put the link to the People Magazine article here that would much appreciative. It would be very interesting to many on this site. I would do it but I'm an "old dog still trying to learn new tricks" when it come to technology. As you look down the information given on each song in People Magazine, it does give a lot of data about each song and the way Elvis and Paul worked on it. I found the particulars on "That Day is Done" to be fascinating. Nancy is absolutely right. It was about Elvis's Grandmother and it was the unhappy sequel to Veronica. According to the People Magazine writer, in its early form (That Day is Done) was less a song than a collection of images and potent emotions. In describing the song Elvis said, "Quite often when you are writing a song that is about something personal, what it means to you can sometimes get in the way of what it can possibly mean to someone else. It needed a release." It was McCartney that provided the piece with some structure and a chorus, the song's resolute title sung in triplicate. Elvis describes the style of the song to Paul's Let It Be to that extent. That's just part of the section on "That Day is Done". I found it fascinating. The lyrics as Nancy indicated are mostly Elvis if not all. But what Elvis describes shows the melodic genius of Macca. Paul isn't always the best lyricist but his ability to shape a song melodically is unbelievable. That Day is Done is a great example of true collaboration. No surprise that Elvis was fine with Paul taking "That Day Was Done" for FITD. And it was no surprise that Elvis took Veronica for his own album, Spike.
-
I know it says it was co-written, but it doesn't give the credit mostly to EC or say that it was about/for his grandmother! That was my point, that Paul didn't have as much to do with that particular song.
-
Don't you know how to Google and then copy and paste a link? Will have to teach you when I see you at AROTR! Do you use a laptop or an iPad? I use both, but mostly my iPad. http://people.com/music/paul-mccartney-elvis-costello-song-collaboration-guide/
-
Haha, thanks, Nancy, and thanks to BJ for pointing it out. Pretty cool article. Most of it is info compiled from other sources (and it's in that glib, fawning tone that can make People annoying to read), but still it's a nice bit of research, and more in-depth than I would expect from People.
-
Nancy R:
Don't you know how to Google and then copy and paste a link? Will have to teach you when I see you at AROTR! Do you use a laptop or an iPad? I use both, but mostly my iPad. http://people.com/music/paul-mccartney-elvis-costello-song-collaboration-guide/
____________________________________________________________ Nancy, Thanks for the People Magazine article. As I said, I think fans here will really like it. I agree with favorite thing...I was surprised it was in People too. I have a laptop and google all the time to get information. I use it for just about everything...as a Dictionary, Thesaurus, Map, Encyclopedia etc. etc. I'm 68 and not the best when it comes to technology however. I personally know a few friends my age who don't even own a computer so I've come a long way. I will definitely bring my laptop to AROTR so you can show me.
-
Nancy R:
I know it says it was co-written, but it doesn't give the credit mostly to EC or say that it was about/for his grandmother! That was my point, that Paul didn't have as much to do with that particular song.
___________________________________________________ Nancy, Please excuse me...I thought you might have missed the line where it did acknowledge that the song was cowritten by Elvis. I do agree that the writer should have emphasized that the lyrics came from Elvis with his grandmother being the inspiration. But we'll have to agree to disagree with your last comment about Paul not having much to do with "That Day is Done". It's like trying to say who was more important Burt Bacharach or Hal David. The lyrics or the music. Same analogy can be made about Elton John and Bernie Taupin. What is more important...the lyrics or the music. At the end of the day with popular music, they are equal in my opinion. Just as this article says (and points that Elvis Costello has publicly stated) Paul had a lot to do with the melody of the song...the song's structure, the chorus, the song's title being sung in triplicate etc. Yes, the lyrics and basic story were Elvis's so he was at least 50% but the song didn't become the gospel oriented song without Paul doing significant things to the music. I have read Elvis statements in the past that have confirmed what the article said. I think if Paul had little to do with the song except adding/changing a word or two in the lyrics, Elvis would have taken it for his own Album...Spike.
-
favoritething:
wingsoverkc:
Okay BJ, a couple of thoughts on your last comment. I always thought Paul's album selections were pretty bizarre at times. For example, Red Rose Speedway should have had Live and Let Die, HI HI HI, and Oh Woman Oh Why; Venus and Mars should have added Soily and Juniors Farm; London Town would have sold another two million lps' if Mull of Kintyre and Girl's School were included; and finally, the addition of Goodnight Tonight and Daytime Nighttime Suffering would have made Back To The Egg a #1 album. IMO, Chaos and Creation has SEVERAL subpar tracks; I mean, English Tea, A Certain Softness, Friends To Go, and Jenny Wren are ALWAYS skipped. Always. And sorry, but I ****ing LOVE the Red Rose Speedway Medley. Always have. Always will. Now to be fair, your comments are always a welcomed sight; I enjoy them immensely! I agree to disagree politely though!!
I happen to love all those "Chaos" tracks you skip, haha, but I also love that medley. I could do without "When The Night" and "Loup," though. Dating back to the Beatles days, Paul had this belief, much of the time, that albums and singles should be separate things. As the "Past Masters" sets prove, most of their best known songs were never on the official British albums. And then Paul carried that into his solo career throughout the '70s. And as Kestrel notes, he would never place a previously released B-side onto a subsequent album. Just wasn't his thing. I think Paul actually focuses a lot on the sequence of songs on his albums, but the problem can be that he will put lesser songs on the album just because he thinks it makes the album flow better thematically or musically. I mean, there's a certain logic to Side 2 of "Pipes Of Peace," but they're just not really good songs aside from "Through Our Love."
________________________________________________________ Favoritething The points you make in the last paragraph...relative to how Paul sometimes focuses more on the flow of the album when choosing the final track listing is "excellent" and something that fans or critics (including me) don't keep in mind. As more reviews are coming out on the newly remastered FITD, I have noticed several people in the comment sections stating that "Motor of Love" is one of their favorite songs on the album. For me, it'n not that Motor of Love is a bad song. The melody of the song is actually beautiful in my opinion and I like the Beachboy kind of harmonies. I just don't like the production and the way it goes on too long (over 6 minutes). But that doesn't take away from the fact that some fans really like the song. Like quite a few other Paul songs, I would have liked to hear Paul do a simpler version (without all the production) live on one of his tours or even his "unplugged" concert in 1993 I believe. I think Motor of Love is an example, as you state above, where the theme or flow of the song influenced Paul's decision to include it. It's a lot easier to Monday quarterback (which I am doing) but I I think FITD already had enough ballads. Distractions, Put It There and That Day is Done are all pretty much ballads. The album needed another rock oriented track so that is why I would have leaned to something like "Flying to My Home". Motor of Love is also the kind of Paul song that many "rock critics" love to pounce on and they surely did. The "flow, sequencing or theme of the album" might have also played a big decision of the inclusion of "Ou Est Le Soleil" as the last track as well. That one I don't understand at all relative to making the final cut considering several stronger tracks were available. Does anyone here like that song. As the writer from Blog Critics basically said...how could Paul not include "The Lovers That Never Were" or "Back on My Feet" on FITD.
-
Hey, BJ, I don't consider "Ou Est Le Soleil?" to be part of the album. Maybe fans are split on this point, but it's not on the LP, so I tend to think it was just added to the CD as a bonus track, as was common in those days. I think it's fine as a curiosity, but the fact that they put it out as a single later was quite a gamble that did not pay off. I agree that "Flying To My Home" is way better than many of the album tracks, and it would sound great as the final track, but it seems that there was a conscious decision not to have too many straight-ahead rocking songs on this album, for whatever reason. They were determined to have Paul sound "modern" as much as possible. Kudos for being as tech savvy as you are, and I'm sure there's a lot you can do. My 85-year-old Mom is getting pretty good!
-
I like Ou Est. The video is very cute, that's probably one reason. I think it was originally released as a 12" single and had a couple of dance mixes too. I also remember it being one of the last songs played on the PA at Paul's 1990 shows, just before the movie started. Probably another reason I like it.
-
thenightfish:
I like Ou Est. The video is very cute, that's probably one reason. I think it was originally released as a 12" single and had a couple of dance mixes too. I also remember it being one of the last songs played on the PA at Paul's 1990 shows, just before the movie started. Probably another reason I like it.
_________________________________________________________ thenightfish, Always great to get other opinions on Paul songs especially the more obscure ones. I was at the 1990 show in Philadelphia. Don't remember hearing "Ou Est Le Soleil" before the show. Because it was so long ago, I get confused. I remember one tour where they had a movie (basically an environmental movie) before the show. Was that the tour promoting Off the Ground. Then there was the tour where Paul had a "pre-show" with "live performers" coming out doing different things. It was kind of weird but pretty neat and totally different. Was that the tour promoting Flowers in the Dirt.