I believe a North-East chain. I have considered using them before but have never pulled the trigger. Almost did this time but their price was still $40 or more over. in the 3 I used UDisvover, the items came on time and in perfect condition. I don’t remember ever having to contact customer service so have no clue if those criticisms are true.
I must be feeling particularly contradictory today, but... I kind of enjoy The Other Me. I would say the low point is the The Man / Sweetest Little Show/ Average Person triumvirate...
I like "The Man." It has a good tune that carries through the song. The other two… man, when you listen to the demo it's very clear that George Martin sucked the life out of those by keeping Paul on them. The tempo is too slow and the performance falls flat. Of the three LPs that he produced – including Broad Street – those two are the nadir… I even put them slightly below the over-Martin-indulgent "Eleanor's Dream."
I have always enjoyed "The Other Me". What brings the album to a screeching halt for me has always been "Hey Hey' and Tug of Peace"
I like The Man as well, reminds me of the Isley Brothers, well the synth or guitar does, but I also like Eleanor’s Dream.
Ever more examples of the property of Paul's solo catalog to have something that suits every taste...
"Eleanor's Dream" is fine on the vinyl, and stretches a bit too long on the CD. The film is even longer and gets to be overly indulgent. But what I find about "Eleanor's Dream" is that it isn't really in keeping with what else what Paul was working on in the period, and doesn't punctuate the way The Family Way was. It sounds more like George Martin doing the orchestration with Paul's help instead of Paul getting George Martin's help on a score. With the others, it's more like George Martin encouraging Paul to be a bit more lush with the arrangements of some earlier bits, like "Wanderlust" getting that fuller horn section or "Ballroom Dancing" getting to be used towards a bigger stage piece. Still, I do prefer "Eleanor's Dream" over "Sweetest Little Show"/"Average Person". Those demos to me underscore how George Martin changed the way Paul worked: in the 70s, it was get the ideas down as quickly as possible and pick the best ones. In the early 80s, it was get perfect songs. It's not until the late 80s and early 90s that Paul is getting a bunch of song ideas down and then developing them as he wants, with the best making the LP. And all because Press to Play, even revisiting the material with different musicians, still wasn't working fully by the time that the record company wanted it done. Flaming Pie is unique in that it has a long period of time for Paul to work on song ideas as he needs, not under pressure to make an album, and that helps because he's allowed to think about the songs more and really find the best way to get it done without having to fill the sound picture with everything under the sun (as the Press to Play illustrations demonstrate he was doing in 1986).
For me, the more acoustic 'Flaming Pie' tracks were the standouts. "Little Willow", "Calico Skies", "Somedays" were simply beautiful. While I liked the tight band from 'Off The Ground', it was nice to hear a more subtle Paul performing his tunes without too much embellishment. Of the 'Flaming Pie' songs he did layer on tracks, the best in my mind was "Beautiful Night" because it just had the right feel. This is probably because Ringo was on the kit and Martin added a lovely score. On the tracks where Paul tried to drum himself (such as "Flaming Pie", "If You Wanna", "The World Tonight", etc.), he gives a steady beat but it's pretty rudimentary and lifeless drumming. For those types of songs, I have to fall back on the 'Off The Ground' tracks because they all had a great "feel" to them that the 'one-man-Macca-band' can't recreate. Songs like "Peace In The Neighborhood", "Get Out Of My Way", "Sweet Memories", etc. I think Paul's strength is writing beautiful melodies and either playing them acoustically with sparse arrangements or having session musicians (drums, guitar, keyboard) assist him in getting the "feel" or "groove" down.
Before I order one of these: do the bigger boxes (like this 5 disc set) tend to go up in value or do we think it will be cheaper down the road? Of course I want to hear this stuff sooner than later but I'm willing to hold off.
They tend to drop a bit or hold steady until they go out of print and run out of stock at which point the prices shoot way up. That being said, with FP either they are having huge distribution issues or the production run seems to have been very limited, as lots of places seem to be running out quickly... So...
Thanks MPL for bringing up my Archive numbering thread. To all viewers of this thread -- please take a look at your collections and reply to that thread if you have any numbers higher than those listed. I'm especially interested to see how high FITD goes. Will this confirm our suspicions that each subsequent release is a smaller run?
UDiscover is essentially Universal’s online store. I ordered through them (I mean, their European site) the 1971/73 Box set and it all went fine. But I did it only because Amazon did not offer the BBB and I wanted it sooo bad anyway. Amazon charges parcels on shipping, and it’s usually less expensive. My Amazon.it FP order says it’ll be delivered on Aug. 4th. Price went down to 16o € so far, before going “out of stock”. I’m wondering if the possible delay on the american orders could be related to the Covid situation, which I understand is still hard out there, while it seems to be finally under control (well, at least we hope so) here in Europe.
