Culture Club- Colour By Numbers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_by_Numbers

On eof the best pop albums of the 1980's, in my opinion, and easily Culture Club's best album. Anyone else agree? The remaster sounds excellent.

 

A great pop album through & through. At the time of its release, I wasn't much of a fan of Culture Club. But someone wasn't aware of that and gave me "Colour By Numbers" as a Christmas present. Once I played it, I grew to really like it.

There's really not a bad cut on it, and some of the songs, such as "Victims" and "Black Money" have a lot more depth than the frothy pop that CC was famous for. Helen Terry's backing vocals are sensational, and the arrangements and playing are excellent throughout. Surprisingly, the weakest link IMO is Boy George's vocals. They aren't bad at all, but his voice doesn't quite achieve the level of soul singing skill that he was aiming for.

I don't have the remaster, but the old CD sounds fine. The LP sounded great as well. This was a well-engineered album.

 

The remaster is worth it for the bonus track "Colour By Numbers" which was a B-Side and really should've been on the album.

 

"Victims" is one of the greatest pop songs of all time. should be a standard. Sinatra should have sung it and maybe someone like Michael Buble will.

And what black hole did Helen Terry fall into? she should have had her own career. what a voice.

this is a solid album and their finest hour for me.

 

There's a nice interview with Helen here

http://web.swedevice.com/sistergeorge/morestuff/helenterry.asp

 

thanks for that, a great read. I was lucky enough to see them a few times with her.

 

CC gave us a few classic albums, IMO.

 

I don't have the remaster, but the CDV 2285 Virgin release is great.

 

Cool band, cool album.

 

I really like "Victims".....

The Boy George visual and style is worn out and hurts the perceptions of the music.

 

Am I the only one who thinks of The Wedding Singer when this band is brought up? "Do you really want to hurt me..."

 

Dunno, but that's from a different album...

 

Yeah, pretty much. It's the only full CC album I own. I have hits collections for songs from the other albums, as none of them work in their entirety. "CBN" is a pretty complete work, though.

I have the remaster - haven't compared it to other versions, but it's a must-have for the bonus tracks if nothing else...

 

Church and Miss Me is a pretty nice 1-2 punch of faux Motown/faux Philly. Karma never did it for me. Will have to grab a remaster and check out the bonus cuts.

 

I have the original on vinyl as well as the 45 with Colour By Numbers on the flip. Over all it is my favorite CC album as my favorite track by them is "It's A Miracle". That music video just stuck in my mind from day one. I always thought it odd that "Colour By Numbers" was never on the album that had the same title.

 

Colour By Numbers is one of their finest albums. I love most of the stuff on it. Waking Up With The House On Fire was almost as good and From Luxury To Heartache suffered as much as George was suffering at that time, altho it had its moments. Dont Mind If I Do was great and had a lot of stuff I really like. Im very fond of a lot of George's solo stuff too.
Might just play this now!

Steve

 

great album - one of my faves. really too bad that they couldnt stay in the game a bit longer.

 

i'm gonna join you mate. Been on a Jam kick and it's got my adrenaline racing a bit, so nice to mellow out with this one...

also, I saw them at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic New Jersey right before this album was released and they performed basically the entire album. I was in the third row with a friend with a tape recorder and had all these songs well before the album streeted and I still listen to that concert from time to time. I was close enough to see the glitter on his sneakers and he seemed in great spirits. it was a smaller room right before they EXPLODED. i was happy to see them in their prime so close with so much great music to hear.

 

Definitely my favorite album by CC. "Church Of The Poison Mind" is one of their best singles IMHO. It reached #10 on the Hot 100, though I always thought that it should have charted higher. I think there were two reasons why it didn't go higher on the US charts. One reason was that it had been released in the UK six months ahead of the "Colour By Numbers" album as a stand alone single. The other reason was that since "Karma Chameleon" was so huge overseas while many US stations were playing "Church", and playing "Karma Chameleon" right off of the album, CBS was forced to pull the plug on that single and rush release "Karma" as a single.

 

The commonly-available US LP of this one sounds very good.

 

Yes it does. I think the US LP was mastered at Sterling Sound IIRC, I don't know who mastered it for the US, but next to the Sterling machine stamp there is a star etched into the runout groove.

Though vinyl pressings of "Colour By Numbers" are easy to come by, it's actually not so easy to find US copies that have the larger Epic logo on the label with the small Virgin logo at the nine o' clock position. Most copies have the newer design with the Virgin logo moved to the top of the label and a much smaller Epic logo moved to the nine o' clock position on the label.

 

Mine looks like the second (common) pressing. It does have the star on Side B.

 

I was a huge Culture Club fan at the time. Personally I thought Kissing To Be Clever was their best. This was during an era when there was little listenable music to be found in the New Releases bin and Culture Club was a total breath of fresh air. I loved the songs on Colour by Numbers but I think the band started to have problems about halfway thru recording. They somewhat messed up the original version of Church of the Poison Mind they were playing in concert with that Lettermen bridge, and they turned It's America, a political song into It's A Miracle.

I thought Boy George was a great poet and melodicist, unfortunately fame got to his head and he became a lush. When the drummer stopped fooling around with him he stopped taking music seriously, imo. So the first record was great, the 2nd coulda been better, the 3rd was ok and then after that he sucked.

 

oh and there was an EP with the song Colour By Numbers on it back then also.

 

+1

Simply their best effort.