The U.K. 80s Singles & Albums Chart General Discussion Thread.

I think there’s a cheaper version of this. Without the fancy lights.

 

In Ireland there was an import tax on non-domestic releases which lasted until the early 90s. The likes of Virgin and HMV were able to keep their prices reasonable due to bulk buying but the regular shops like Golden Discs & the indie outlets were pricier especially for CD albums, CD singles and indie 12"s. The latter were routinely £5.99 (I paid that for The House Of Love, My Bloody Valentine, The Wedding Present 12"s in the late '80s) while Virgin knocked them out for £3.99 or £4.49.

There was serious price gouging on CDs here for quite a while. Double CD compilations (Now 10 onwards) were north of £20 unless I could make the trip to Dublin and buy them from HMV or Virgin.

 

I remember buying True Blue on tape for £6 in Dublin during the summer of 1986. Not sure if it was "reduced" for being a chart title, but it was almost £1 more than back home. Think it was upstairs in Golden Discs, though my memory is hazy about that trip. I just remember it absolutely chucked it down every single day.

EG.

 

Summers of 1985 and to a lesser extent 1986 were quite wet here. Chart albums like True Blue were fine pricewise. A lot of the major labels like Warners and CBS had Irish subsidiaries so there would be a pressing here (particularly for singles). The indie stuff was a different story. The Wedding Present's George Best cost me £9.99 on vinyl in Freebird in 1987.

 

I seem to remember it was about that price in Rita’s Cabin in Coronation Street. Deidre Barlow was complaining about the price when she bought it for Tracy’s birthday.

 

Rita contemplates how many copies of The Smiths' Shakespeare's Sister to order, after Elsie rings from Portugal to say she's on the pic sleeve. Mavis dithers over the sherbet lemons.
[
Shakespeare's Sister #26 1985

 

I notice Cherry Red have Toyah Anthem. 2 cd and 1 dvd coming out in September.
I was never a huge fan of her albums, but her singles were solid and her performances on tv always stuck with me.
The dvd comes with lots of TOTP performances and other uk tv stuff.
She went off the boil pretty quickly but her run from 81/85 was decent.

 

Cherry Red have been very quiet lately. They used to release stuff all the time.

Not really a Toyah fan apart from those first few singles, but this seems like a good reissue for her fans.

The SDE is £124!

 

I’m more of a Toyah fan than of Cherry Red.
While the product they put out contains decent extras etc the remasters are often not that great. Example the Visage 2nd album they remastered compared to the Rubellan one is like night and day difference.
Also i remember getting the Howard Jones box set with the picture disk vinyl and also the white vinyl for Howard Jones Humans Lib, the picture disk was the worst crackle fest i have ever heard on Vinyl, and the white vinyl had a clear defect on side 2 track one very loud pops and clear damage, they flat out refused to replace it, i purchased another copy and the same fault in same spot, i had many conversations with them and they said no.
They do not really have any customer service, but they do push out decent rare things from the 80s.

 

Yeah, it’s kind of them or nothing!

They’ve always been hit and miss, but I think they’ve gotten better over the years. The 2 CD set of Sheena Easton’s A Private Heaven was nicely done, and I really like the 2CD/1 DVD editions of Kim Wilde’s first 3 albums.

But that’s just a few titles. I’m sure there’s still a lot they do that don’t pass muster…

 

I agree with what many of you have written about Toyah´s music. I was exposed to her performance of "I Want to Be Free" on The Kenny Everett Television Show, which I now thankfully have on DVD-R. I found the performance slightly bizarre - like watching Kate Bush´s wilder, crazier sister. The song was fun, though. Not really a great composition, but... Fun. I ended up buying a compilation CD. I don´t think I need much more than that, to be honest.

However, she did put in quite a few guest appearances on the late, not very lamented show "Never Mind the Buzzcocks". I think this show was puerile and judgemental about a lot of music, but it was fun at times, and they did have lots of guest stars who turned out to be more fun than you would have expected. From the charming - Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, Tom Robinson and several others - to the wild ones, like Suzi Quatro. (I loved her before her three appearances on the show, loved her even more after them.)

And Toyah was much the same. Crazy, loopy, kooky - call her what you will, but she seemed utterly charming.

By the way, look her up on Discogs. She has three entries - one for the band Toyah, one for Toyah and one for Toyah Wilcox. Not easy to make sense of at a glance.

 

I may give Anthem a listen on Spotify.

 

I gave Anthem a listen.

I think it’s fair to class Toyah as a singles artist.

I doubt I’ll be purchasing the 2 CD/1 DVD set

 

I like Toyah and like her music enough to get single disc editions of her albums, plus the Solo boxset as it was only £40 for about 8 discs or something...and I wanted to support her work.

Got a Collectors Choice reissue of Anthem and that's all I need.

EG.

 

Thunder In The Mountains was great.

 

So that's why Tracyluv turned out like that.

 

Have you watched Toyah and Robert Fripp's Sunday lunch podcasts, Jarleboy?

 

I know that this thread is about the UK 80's Singles & Albums Charts, but "99 Luftballons" was a number 1 hit here in the Netherlands. I prefer the German version over the English version.

 

I wonder how many German language hits there have been in the UK? In the 90s or 00s, there was a superb band called Klee who should have had success here, but I expect the language thing went against them too.

EG.

 

Autobahn by Kraftwerk and Da Da Da by Trio are the only ones I can think of. There are probably more. Actually Falco had a couple didn't he.

German speaking acts like Peter Schilling, Udo Lindenberg and Opus put out records in English to try and crack the market here, successfully in the case of the latter.

 

I have the first two albums on vinyl and both albums are very good I have "Irgendwie, Irgendwo, Irgendwann" on an mixtape that I made. I've never heard "Feuer & Flamme"

 

Yes I have the Peter Schilling album from '84 as a reissue which includes both versions (German and UK). I do feel it works better in its original language.

EG.

 

You need to correct that error immediately.

 

Peter Schilling "Major Tom (Völlig Losgelöst ...) was a huge hit in Europe and I believe also in the US.

 

I like to recommend Paul's playlists too It's worth listening to