At 12:07 AM 5/19/2004 -0500, Sager, Greg wrote:
>>As for the Ramones' TOO TOUGH TO DIE... I'm 99% sure that it came out in
>>October 1984.  I know I had it in my Best of '84 article for my high
>>school's paper.  A quick sampling of Ramones discographies on the Internet
>>has turned up half with October '84, half with January '85, so I'm wondering
>>if this was one of those multiple-country-release-dates deals.
>
>I'm going by AMG's listing for both albums. They list *Walking in the Shadow
>...* as a 1984 release, and *Too Tough To Die* as a January 1985 release.
>AFAIK, AMG uses U.S. release dates.

I'd hesitate to use AMG as a definitive source for release dates.  It's generally right, or within a shade of right, but I've seen a number of mistakes too.  Given the startling amount of data they've gathered, it's a greater wonder that there aren't more mistakes than there are, and they've done a lot of clean-up over the last eighteen months on a number of things.

sources for October '84, including the official Ramones site:
http://www.ramones-discography.com/ramones_discography/ramones_album_studio/studios.htm#too
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Backstage/2916/ramones/songs/1too.html
http://www.redshift.com/~jpeoples/studio.htm
http://www.officialramones.com/site/records/covers.html
http://www.softshoe-slim.com/lists/r/ramones.html

The latter even links to a Christgau review of TOO TOUGH TO DIE in (natch) the Village Voice dtd. October 1984:
http://www.officialramones.com/site/records/reviews/tootough.html

Also at Christgau's site at:
http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?id=1521&name=Ramones


In fairness, here's some sources that say '85, including Joey Ramone's official site:
http://www.american-buddha.com/ramones.bib.htm#TOO TOUGH TO DIE
http://www.joeyramone.com/ramones_discography.html#tootough

And as for a different subject: Stewart has said it before, but THE GOLDEN AGE OF WIRELESS truly deserves the "deluxe reissue" treatment -- there ought to be a remastered version available with *every* song that has appeared on the three iterations of the album, along with the longer takes of key songs from the BLINDED BY SCIENCE EP (like the cassette and remastered CD of Talking Heads' SPEAKING IN TONGUES, they're not remixes with grafted-on dance beats and gratuitous tape loops, but simply the complete takes of the songs before they were scrunched down to fit the time limitations of the LP format).  Seems like an ideal double-CD reissue package to me.

later,

Miles