Given the position Real Gone finds itself in at the end of our fifth year online, it might seemed clichéd to say it, but ever year seems to get better and better. It’s been another brilliant year for discovering new music – particularly releases from underground and DIY bands, but also for discs from a couple of old favourites. Culled from hundreds of albums to grace our stereo this year, presented below is a quick look at ten of our favourite releases, as well as a round-up of the more notable of the rest.
Tag Archives: judas priest
The REAL GONE 2014 Advent Calendar
We don’t know about you, but here at Real Gone Towers there’s a feeling that this year has disappeared far, far too quickly.
It’s December already and that can mean only one thing: it’s time for our countdown to xmas!
For the next three (and a bit) weeks, we’ll be bringing you a selection of hopefully entertaining clips in the build up to the big event. A new clip will be added each day, so don’t forget to keep checking back!
EDITORIAL COMMENT: Incomplete (or rambling thoughts on collecting from an obsessive music fan)
Right up to the 1980s, things were fairly simple as a music fan. Your favourite bands released singles and albums and, as a loyal fan, you bought them knowing you’d kept to your end of the bargain. Sometimes singles weren’t part of albums and in that case you got something extra. Things started to change in the 1980s when the picture disc started to make regular appearances, thus meaning an occasional extra purchase. Labels like ZTT (run by business-minded Trevor Horn and Paul Morley) were quick to capitalise on marketing strategies – with bands like Frankie Goes To Hollywood, they made sure that different formats had different mixes and different edits. In the case of the fledgling cassette single, they even went an extra step by including unreleased bits and pieces from the cutting room floor, often to fans’ bemusement and eventual delight.
Not everyone was as keen to play the game. Towards the end of the decade, Morrissey – in a spiteful lyrical snide against his then record company’s repackaging of Smiths material – gave us the lyrical legend “reissue, reissue, repackage…re-evaluate the songs, extra track and a tacky badge”. Some bands stuck rigidly to the old model of single release followed by album…and then a couple more singles (often with something extra on the b-side, sure; but once that was done, you knew that was it, at least until the next outpouring of new material in a couple of years).
By the mid-90s, albums would occasionally appear as special editions. This usually involved a bonus disc containing a handful of extra songs (or in the case of The Beautiful South’s excellent ‘Carry On Up the Charts’ anthology, a whole disc of hard to find b-sides) or live material. Another easy choice for the consumer: you chose to buy either the standard release or fork out a few extra quid for that bonus disc – job done, everybody happy. Bon Jovi’s ‘Keep The Faith’ was among the first to mark a shifting tide towards fan-testing, record company greed when the special edition appeared months after the original album’s release. This staggered release ensured almost everyone had purchased ‘Keep The Faith’ already…but would they buy it again? Of course they would – if not everyone, then at least a good proportion of the die-hards would want that extra material. Why wouldn’t they? The floodgates were open.
The REAL GONE 2013 advent calendar
The countdown to Christmas has begun at Real Gone Towers. What better way to celebrate than with a few clips? Below, you’ll find a new link to open on each day leading up to the big event. It may involve a band you’ve read about here previously, it might not. It might be something classic, it might be something dubious…you won’t know until you click!
JUDAS PRIEST – Sad Wings Of Destiny
Judas Priest’s debut album, 1974’s ‘Rocka Rolla’ hints at a potentially very talented band, but is ultimately let down by some plodding arrangements and somewhat leaden production values. Everything about Priest’s second album, ‘Sad Wings of Destiny’ (issued by Gull Records in 1976) is in a completely different league, right down to the fantastic album artwork (‘Fallen Angels’ painted by Patrick Woodroffe).