Tag: Box set

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love (revisited): Lowest of the Low “Shakespeare my butt…”

(I started my Vinyl Love posts pretty much right after the launch of this blog to share photos of my growing vinyl collection. Over time, the photos have improved and the explanations have grown. And looking back at a handful of the original posts in this series, I found myself wanting to re-do some of them so that the posts are more worthy of those great albums. So that’s what I’ll be doing every once in a while, including today…)

Lowest of the Low 'Shakespeare my butt' on vinyl

Artist: Lowest of the Low
Album Title: Shakespeare my butt…
Year released: 1991
Year reissued: 2018
Details: Black vinyl, 2 x LP, part of a five album box set, autographed and limited to 300 copies (box set includes booklet, lyrics sheets, poster, and stickers)

Box set cover

Box set inside cover autographs

Box set 'Shakespeare my butt' stuff

'Shakespeare my butt' Rosy & grey lyrics sheet

Box set booklet Sneaky's

Box set booklet band story

Box set booklet 'Shakespeare my butt' memorabilia

Box set booklet 'Shakespeare my butt' lyrics page

'Shakespeare my butt' Henry lyrics

'Shakespeare my butt' inside gatefold

'Shakespeare my butt' insert 2

'Shakespeare my butt' insert band members

'Shakespeare my butt' insert 1

'Shakespeare my butt' back cover

'Shakespeare my butt' on the turntable

The skinny: Just two days ago, I wrapped up a countdown of my ten favourite albums of 1991 with this very album landing at the number one spot. I feel that this gives me an opportunity to do one of these Vinyl Love revisits for “Shakespeare my butt…”, something I’ve been looking forward to doing for a while. As I mentioned at the top of this post, I started doing these revisits to do a better job with some of my favourite albums that I did early on but in the case of this one, it’s more because I actually updated the vinyl version I had in my collection. I finally decided to pull the trigger on the “Shakespeare my box” vinyl box set with some money that I received for Christmas but this meant I had an extra copy of the Low’s debut record. I shipped my old one to my younger brother and this here’s my new one, the first album in a five album set (the other four will follow in the coming weeks). And yeah, they really did a great job with this box set. The fact that each one was signed and included stickers and reproductions of handwritten lyric sheets is really just a bonus tacked on to the 24-page booklet, the band’s first four albums, and a bonus disc of rarities.

Standout track: “Henry needs a new pair of shoes”

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Lush “Topolino”

(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: Lush
Album Title: Topolino
Year released: 1996
Year reissued: 2016
Details: yellow vinyl, disc five in limited Origami box set, Record Store Day 2016 release, limited to 2000

The skinny: “Topolino” is the final piece in “Origami”, the five disc box set of Lush LPs that 4AD put out on Record Store Day 2016. And truth be told, of the five records I’ve posted about over the past five weeks, this one is the least likely to hit my turntable on a regular basis. Perhaps a dour way to end the series but even this record has its merits. If you paid attention to the photos of last week’s subject, “Lovelife“, you might notice that the artwork of this week’s record looks eerily similar. The explanation is a simple one. “Topolino” was a compilation of b-sides recorded during the “Lovelife” sessions and as it turned out, it was the final full-length release by the group. Chris Acland, the band’s drummer, died two month’s after its release and Lush disbanded, save for a short-lived reunion almost a decade later… but that’s a story for another time.

Standout track: “Shake baby shake”

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Lush “Lovelife”

(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: Lush
Album Title: Lovelife
Year released: 1996
Year reissued: 2016
Details: pink vinyl, disc four in limited Origami box set, Record Store Day 2016 release, limited to 2000

The skinny: As I mentioned last week, Lush’s third studio album, “Lovelife”, was their Britpop album. Don’t look down your nose at them though. Everyone was doing it at the time. I didn’t mind the change in sound at all because I had gotten caught up in the hype of the scene, just as much as did many of my friends. Still, had you not followed their progression as closely as I did, you might not have recognized this as at all the same band that had us dreaming colours on “Gala” and “Spooky“. Sure, there was some ethereal sounds on “Lovelife” but the guitar driven pop had been amped up and Mike Berenyi’s vocals were without a doubt more obvious here than on any of their previous work. And yeah, she definitely does hold her own in a duet with Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker on the tune below. 4AD’s choice of pink for this fourth disc in the ‘Origami’ box set does not just match the colour palette of the album artwork but also feels in line the with the decidedly bubblegum tone of its sound.

Standout track: “Ciao!”