Sealed W Germany Tears for Fears "The Hurting"

Last week, I was looking through Amazon.com and I spotted a used cd that says it was printed in germany. Naturally, I picked it up. It arrived today sealed. From the looks of it, its never been played. And it sounds much better than the remaster.
How many discs that are this old are still sealed collecting dust in a warehouse somewhere?

 

My personal guess would be more than we could count and more than we'll ever see. Before National Record Mart went out of business, you could do no better than trolling thru their low price racks where you'd find any number of out of print still sealed rarities dating back to the 80's. Must have spent hundreds there and "had I known then.....blah blah blah" it would have been thousands. So, to get back on track, who picked up the warehouse stock when they went under? We're talking inventory from hundreds of stores nationwide and they didn't just fall off the face of the earth.

 

Is the centre ring transparent or is it silver with the red Mercury Records "orbital" motif?

 

I've found a few original pressings sealed over the past year or so. They are very rare, but they turn up ever so often.

 

It has the orbital

 

Wow - a sealed one of these must be pretty rare!

You probably already know this but at some point in the late 80s / early 90s, the plant used by Polygram in W. Germany changed from manufacturing fully aluminium-spluttered polycarbonate discs to using polycarbonate discs with clear inner rings. The printed CD labels that were designed utilising the area around the centre-hole (such as those Mercury discs) look pretty stupid on the clear inner-ring pressings......

Hmmm, I seem to have out-nerded myself . It must be time for bed.....

 

In case anybody on here has listened to a fair number of different CD editions of The Hurting, I'm wondering which version you consider the best?

I love this album, though I've held off on buying it. I'm told some of the pressings sound pretty lousy.

 

From the pressings I've listened to it wont compete with Songs From the Big Chair no matter what you listen to. CD or vinyl, it always sounds like a copy of a copy of a copy of a tape. The German and US atomics sound exactly the same to me. They're easy on the ears, though. The remaster is not a total disaster, as long as you don't crank it too loud. It provides the expected punch, bass and exaggerated highs you'd expect from a remaster - some of it's good, some not.

To get the best sounding Hurting, buy the original UK 12" vinyl pressings of Change, Mad World, Pale Shelter (the best sounding, and there are two different recordings on vinyl - both are great - I prefer the Mike Howlett version, which was used on the lp) and Suffer the Children. Not all of the album tracks are on these pressings, but the sound will more than satisfy, I promise.

 

I recently got a CD from Amazon's Marketplace, listed as "Like New," and it came sealed. But I emailed the seller and he confirmed it had been re-sealed.

So are you certain the shrinkwrap was original?

 

The original W. German CD of Big Chair is still the best sounding one. For some reason, every CD master of this album has the left and right channels reversed compared to all the vinyl LPs I've heard. The Hurting has never sounded that good on any of the CDs so far.The W. German CD has a lot of tape hiss. Both CD originalS were packaged and sold in clear plastic bubble packs with the booklets separate and above the jewel case, in the US.

 

Does anybody know how the 1989 Japanese edition sounds?

23PD-116

 

Same here. You never know. Very rare, but some places I have been too, have some discs that from the mid-80s, despite selling a lot of current material. These are usually obscure titles or something they bought way too much, but I found an INXS target at this store in a longbox (in rough shape, CD perfect) two years ago! They had later versions, just lots of messy inventory.

 

I found a late '80s Japanese edition for sale on eBay, about a month ago. It was a decent price, so I decided to bite. The things sounds awesome!

I will be peeling the paint off the wall to the tune of "Suffer the Children" for the forseeable future.