Category: Vinyl

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: The Smiths
Album Title: Meat is murder
Year released: 1985
Year reissued: 2011
Details: Remastered, part of box set that includes booklet and poster

The skinny: If you missed last week’s post for this series, I’ll once again forewarn you that I am in the midst of a Smiths bender. This here’s the second post in a series that will take me through the entire “Complete” box set that Rhino Records UK put out a number of years ago. “Meat is murder” is the second proper full length by the Manchester quartet and was their highest charting record in the UK. As I mentioned last week, all the records in the set follow the original track listing so you won’t find “How soon is now” here. However, the album did see Morrissey climb up on the vegetarian soapbox with the title track and also a belt out a few other humdinging tracks, like the one below.

Standout track: “That joke isn’t funny anymore”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: The Smiths
Album Title: The Smiths
Year released: 1984
Year reissued: 2011
Details: Remastered, part of box set that includes booklet and poster

The skinny: To those of you who are not a fan of The Smiths, I apologize in advance and suggest you stay away from these pages for the next bunch of weekends. On the other hand, fans of the iconic post-punk and indie rock trailblazers can ready yourselves for a multiple week, multiple installment focus on The Smiths “Complete” box set I purchased a few years back. Rhino Records UK was responsible for this collection of all the band’s LP (in some cases, double LP) releases, remastered and repressed on heavyweight vinyl. It’s definitely a centrepiece in my collection. Today, I’m starting at the beginning with The Smiths’ self-titled debut. Their sound was fully realized from the beginning, sounding so different from everything else popular at the time. From Johnny Marr’s virtuoso jangle guitar to Morrissey’s sardonic lyrics and maudlin delivery. This pressing, like all the others in this set, follows the original track listing and so doesn’t include hit single, “This charming man”, that was added to later editions.

Standout track: “Hand in glove”