From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V9 #95 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Wednesday, October 13 2004 Volume 09 : Number 095 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Alloy: Radio Silence - Guitar version [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 15:57:22 +0300 From: Subject: Alloy: Radio Silence - Guitar version Hi Ian, your question about GAOW pricked my conscience as a couple of people have written to me off-list to ask about Radio Silence - Guitar version which is a related topic and I had promised to prepare a summary. For the common good I have written a short explanation which you might be interested in. I hope that this is all right and I'm sure that Thomas himself will comment if it isn't. The Golden Age of Wireless was originally recorded between August and December 1981. This was before Thomas had a deal with EMI and just after he did Foreigner 4. The recording of the album cost GBP11600 in 32 rented studio days. Four studios were used, Aosis, Ad Vision, Playground and Tapestry. It seems that most of the recording was done in late August and September and the mixing in November and December. At the same time as the mixing Thomas was coming up with new songs and recording those when time allowed. According to Thomas' memory the complete original album album was recorded in one studio in south London but this can't be right as the dates don't work out. 1981 Europe and the pirate twins 1981 Leipzig (originally recorded in October 1979) 1981 Urges 1981 Airwaves 1982 Commercial break-up 1982 Radio Silence (guitar version) 1982 Cloudburst at Shingle Street 1982 Flying North 1982 Weightless 1982 Windpower This was released in the UK and there were three singles. Capitol picked it up in the US and released it but although it got a couple of good reviews it didn't sell well. At the same time EMI said they would not release any more singles from the album so Thomas was to get some new material together. He went into the studio and recorded 'Science' and 'Submarines' and in the UK they released 'She Blinded Me With Science' as a single. Capitol heard those two songs and saw the video for 'Science' and felt that this was a lot more commercial than anything on the album so they put together a mini-LP, 'Blinded By Science' which had 12" versions instead of the other versions of five songs. At the time a mini-LP was eligible for the Billboard Charts but it was a promotional thing with rock-bottom prices. They paid Thomas a royalty and basically gave it away to get a chart position and more radio-play. It was actually the most successful mini-LP of all time because shortly after it this format was deemed not eligible for the album charts anymore and they stopped making them. The mini-LP had done very well and by this time the video 'She Blinded Me With Science' was getting played a lot on MTV and it was getting a lot of dance-club play and radio-play... they didn't want to just give away this mini-LP and not make any money on it so what they did was take 'Science' and 'Submarines' and repackage 'Golden Age Of Wireless' taking off 'Urges' and 'Leipzig', which were the oldest and replacing then with the new songs. Meanwhile, back in the UK, after 'Science' did really well they decided to go back to the album and release 'Radio Silence' by which time Thomas was heavily getting into programming and sampling stuff and I felt that the guitar version was way too "rockist" . It didn't seem right for for him to be releasing something like that at this stage of his career because he was so much more into programming and just couldn't relate to it. He decided to go back into the studio and do a sequenced version of 'Radio Silence'. On GAOW with Thomas standing on the stage with the telescope the version of Radio Silence is different from the Pulp-fiction GAOW. The original, and in my opinion best, version of RS was recorded very early. When science took off and the running order and cover for GAOW was changed for the re-release the label thought that RS was too 'rocky' and they wanted a cooler synthesiser sound so Thomas re-recorded it in the version that most people know. The original version survives on: GAOW LP: 1982 US (Harvest; ST-12203) (+CN) ["stage" ps] CS: 1982 US (Harvest; 4XT-12203) (+CN) ["stage" ps] [Cover shows Dolby on stage with arcane equipment from production of Brecht's GALILEO that was running at time of photo shoot] It is also on the Wireless Wonders promo LP and in a few other places. You can usually tell because the run-time is 4:32 rather than 3:47 for the 'modern version I have no way of making a MP3 from vinyl otherwise I would gladly send you one as this is no available anywhere anymore. Try and find a copy. It's a nice track. TD: All of that album I recorded in a basement studio in South London. We went somewhere else to mix it, to a different studio in North London, and by then I had written a couple of new songs including 'Windpower' but all of the things with the band on, like 'Commercial Break-up', the guitar version of 'Radio Silence' and so on, that were played live with a three piece band were originally done in this South London studio. The more sequenced ones like 'Flying North' and 'Windpower' were done at the time of mixing so I kept adding new songs in; I finished the album with 'Urges' and 'Leipzig' on it and released it in the UK where there were a couple of singles off it; 'Europa' and 'Radio Silence' then 'Airwaves', which were the three singles that came out and they each had a video. The US company, Capitol, picked it up and released it over here as well and it got some fairly good reviews; it had the same running order etc. but had a different cover which was the 'Europa' cover from the Galileo set, but aside from that the running order was the same. So they released it over here and it sold about ten copies but got a couple of quite good reviews in important places. While this was going on the record company in the UK, after three singles didn't want to release any more singles from the album so they said they I should start to do some more stuff; so I went into the studio and recorded 'Science' and 'Submarines' and in the UK they released ['She Blinded Me With Science'] as a single. Cheers! Jon ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V9 #95 **************************