www.musicweek.com PRODUCTREISSUES STEVE WINWOOD • THE RAMONES • DEMIS ROUSSOS • HEAVEN 17
STEVE WINWOOD • Arc Of A Diver (Universal 5339903)
Famous at 17, when his remarkably mature blue-eyed soul vocals fronted
The Spencer Davis Group's chart- toppers Keep On Running and Somebody Help Me, Steve Winwood went on to further success with Traffic and Blind Faith before launching his solo career with an eponymous 1977 album. That was very well received - but subsequent solo set Arc Of A Diver was to prove even more successful and remains one of his best-loved albums. Newly remastered and released in a deluxe 2-CD edition, it is truly a solo album, with Winwood producing, engineering, mixing, writing the songs, playing all the instruments and providing all the vocals. A true tour-de-force which updated his sound considerably with synths and other electronic effects, it houses the haunting single While You See A
Chance and the fabulous Night Train, a funky, muscular sub-disco workout that fills more than seven minutes, and includes some excellent guitar work. The bonus disc includes a trio of hard to find variations plus a 56-minute Radio Two documentary on Winwood presented by Kate Thornton.
VARIOUS • The Ramones Heard Them Here First (Ace CDCHD 1344)
Throughout a career in which the majority of their material was original, The
Ramones were fond of putting their own unique twist on songs by others, invariably making them sound as though they were written in the band's own idiomatic style. They weren't - and to prove it, this new CD anthologises, in the order in which The Ramones recorded them, 24 tracks they covered in the version that they first heard them. There is no denying - on the
evidence here - that The Ramones chose well and wide in their adaptations. Starting with Chris Montez's Let's Dance and ending with Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World, highlights here include The Seeds' garage classic Can't Seem To Make You Mine, The Troggs' protopunk anthem I Can't Control Myself, The Ronettes' sublime Baby I Love You - which The Ramones loved so much they got its original producer Phil Spector to produce their slightly atypical cover - and Motorhead's R.A.M.O.N.E.S, a headbanging trIbute to Joey, Dee Dee and the boys which they liked so much they just had to record. It is an exercise in excellence only compounded by the accompanying booklet, which includes extensive liner notes and illustrations.
DEMIS ROUSSOS • On The Greek Side Of My Mind (RPM RETRO 915)
Demis Roussos was still a member of Greece's legendary prog rock
band Aphrodite's Child when this, his first solo album, was recorded in 1971 - and it owes far more to those roots than it does to his subsequent career as an MOR man mountain in a kaftan. A well-crafted concept album, On The Greek Side Of My Mind starts rather shakily with the bizarre title track, which combines Gregorian style chanting, the lapping sea and a heavily-accented and rather pretentious narration from Roussos. Happily things look up thereafter, with a collection of serviceable songs, some less prog rock than others - Good Days Have Gone is upbeat and commercial while the synth-heavy We Shall Dance has a lilting presence - all naturally decorated by Roussos' distinctive vocals.
HEAVEN 17 • The Luxury Gap (Virgin CDVX 2253)
Released in remastered form in
2006, and packaged with Penthouse & Pavement in a 2011 twofer, Heaven 17's second album, The Luxury Gap, is given a further, definitive makeover to tie-in with their upcoming The Luxury Gap tour at which it will be performed in full. Heaven 17's most successful (number four, 1982) and critically
acclaimed album, it houses their highest charting single, the number two hit Temptation (feat. Carol Kenyon) plus Come Live With Me, Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry and Let Me Go. Its new three-disc collector’s edition - in the same style clamshell box that graced the previously upgraded Penthouse & Pavement - includes the original album on CD1, a collection of 12-inch mixes and B-sides on CD2 and a DVD featuring promotional videos and highlights of a 2009 Hanover tour date at which they were accompanied by a 90-piece orchestra.
14.09.12 Music Week 59
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