Vinyl Albums - Comments by Neil Forbes

Vinyl Albums - Comments by Neil Forbes

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Member	Item		Review/Comment
Neil Forbes 8th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - British Motown Chartbusters Vol.2 (1968)	Took a quick look, yep! That's the one, all right! EMI Australia did not issue the entire Chartbusters series, though they did issue this volume. But, as I said other volumes were broken down and "rejigged" into other titles and only a few of the volumes made it to our shores "intact" but we never got anymore after Volume 8. There were a few EMI-issued Australian compilations put out since Chartbusters 8, but EMI Australia, pretty-much did its own thing when it came to Motown.
Neil Forbes 8th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Smokey Robinson And The Miracles - Smokey Robinson & The Miracles (1971)	There is one track that really should've been in this set, Doggone Right it should!
Neil Forbes 8th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - British Motown Chartbusters Vol.2 (1968)	You're lucky, RogerFoster. For some odd reason, Polygram in Australia only had Volumes 1 to 7 available here, the other 5 volumes were, seemingly, only available in Britain and Europe. I once saw the original EMI LP issue of Vol.8, and, from memory, the artwork depicted a solar eclipse. I was, until now, totally unaware of Volumes 9 to 12. As I'd said elsewhere, EMI in Australia didn't really make much effort in pushing the Motown product here. Because of this, there were so many albums EPs and singles we never saw or heard here in Australia. We've missed out on so much, whereas EMI in Britain just couldn't get enough of Motown, They'd issue nearly everything that came out of "Hitsville", 2648 West Grand Blvd, Detroit! And they'd put out compilation series like Chartbusters and other "best-of..." albums that'd make our small army of Motown fans here simply drool! We were sorely let down by EMI, and now I see Polygram in Australia has also been a dismal failure in not marketing the entire 12-volume Chartbusters series here.
Neil Forbes 8th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Marvin Gaye - That's The Way Love Is (1970)	While the bulk of this album is Stereo, the title track is only mono but a stereo mix exists, so why wasn't it used for the album? I did my own version of this on CD and was able to get the stereo mix from a Dutch 2-LP set, Motown Gold Vol.3.
Neil Forbes 8th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - British Motown Chartbusters Vol.2 (1968)	Some of these "Chartbusters" series LPs were issued locally and in their original 16-track form. I had seen an Australian issue of Vol.3, the rear cover had a roughly 1-inch-wide silver border around it, which is not on the British version(I have the original British LP as well as the CD reissue). Others had been "cut down". Motown Chartbusters Vol.5 had been reduced in tracks(4 tracks deleted) to create "Motown Giants" while Vol.6 had some deletions and one or two different tracks added, plus new cover artwork to become "It's Summer", issued on the Axis label.
Neil Forbes 8th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - The Rocky Horror Show (1974)	ODL? By mid-1973 Festival had eliminated the part of its catalogue prefixes that identified the label(except for the Dot label, which was still carrying ZK for singles, ZX for EPs and ZL for LPs).
Neil Forbes 8th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - British Motown Chartbusters Vol.2 (1968)	As I'd stated about another of these(Vol.1, I think), Polygram re-issued these on CD in the 1990s, I have Volumes 1 to 7 but never saw a any trace of Volume 8 on CD. For the most part it was only the front cover artwork that was replicated in the "booklet"(front cover). From Volume 3 onwards, the "British" tag was dropped and the rest of the series was simply Motown Chartbusters!
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Jimmy Ruffin - The Jimmy Ruffin Way (1967)	Decidedly not(more's the pity)! Motown put out some absolutely great stuff, bus sadly, EMI in Australia tended to ignore the greatest bulk of the output that the British division(parent) readily gobbled up! EMI in Britain couldn't get enough of Motown, especially for soul-mad buyers in the country's north. Yet here, only a handful of people bought the singles and albums, compared to Britain, so EMI Australia did not bother with most of the Motown output.
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Jimmy Ruffin - The Jimmy Ruffin Way (1967)	US Top Ten perhaps, not necessarily British Top 10, and certainly NOT Australian as comparatively barely a handful of Motown records got into our charts, let alone made #1!
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - A Collection Of 16 Big Hits (Vol. 5) (1967)	Ah, well then. All I can do here is plead the "Maxwell Smart" excuse - Missed it by tha-a-a-a-at much, Chief!
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Jimmy Ruffin - The Jimmy Ruffin Way (1967)	Jimmy... brother of Temptations sometimes lead vocalist, David Ruffin. Jimmy was on the Soul label in the US while David was on Gordy while with The Tempts and on Motown as a solo artist from 1969 onward. Jimmy and David did one LP together(to my knowledge, there might be one or two more duet LPs by this pair) in 1969, "I Am My Brother's Keeper" on the Soul label.
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - A Collection Of 16 Big Hits (Vol. 5) (1967)	Perhaps the Brit. Vol.1 of this series was a Britain/Europe-only release, the source company started their series and British EMI simply made the US Vol.1 into the British Vol.2, and so on down the line.(US Vol.2 = Brit Vol.3 etc.).
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Stevie Wonder - Looking Back (1977)	....which I have on cassette, and made into a CD! Cassettes are much easier to transfer to CD than LPs, no jumping tracks or skip-back.... skip-back.... skip-back.... skip-back....! As long as the cassette's mechanism "behaves itself", that is!
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Stevie Wonder - Looking Back (1977)	Likely wa-a-a-a-ay down in that deep, dark vault, RC! (ha-ha)
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Stevie Wonder - Looking Back (1977)	RC: *"NEWSFLASH!!!! I just found it the remastered mix"*....Where? Where?
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - 20 Explosive Hits (1970)	The Blue label could well have been a one-off, but I've seen several Columbia budget releases carrying the dark green colour with silver print. Again, it depended on the nature of the album and its contents, to some degree, that determined the label colour. The label design, devised by EMI in Britain, was a unifying tool to bring together the Columbia, HMV, Parlophone and Stateside labels, in much the same way the singles and EP design, with the iconic "45rpm" unified these labels, along with the Tamla-Motown label, but Tamla-Motown was not included in the unifying LP label design.
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Four Tops - Soul Spin (1970)	This wasn't a "Best-Of..." LP, the tracks were specially recorded for this album, so, unlikely to see any singles lifted from it(except for "Barbara's Boy", a single in the USA, likely, and in Euro markets).
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Stevie Wonder - Looking Back (1977)	*Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday*, you'll have that on the EMI-Columbia LP, 20 Explosive Hits"(the first in that series), RC.
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - "It's Trad, Dad!" (From The Columbia Picture) (1962)	For the life of me, I can't see "Recording First Published 1962" on the rear cover or the labels. That, in itself, is very unusual indeed! The label design is the same as that used by EMI Australia until roughly the end of 1968. And oh how tidy it looked without those ugly Australian "royalty stamp" trademarks spoiling it as they did on the Australian labels!
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Stevie Wonder - Looking Back (1977)	This is a "best-of..." album, a "bumper" issue, even! As I said, I have it under its original title, "Anthology" M9-804A3. There was a Polygram 2CD-set issued some 20 years ago(rough guess), titled "Essential Stevie Wonder" 530 047-2 which carries the entire version of Fingertips(Pts 1 & 2) clocking in at well over 5 minutes. This LP carries only the Pt.2 of that track. Where this LP is set out in chronological order, from his first record at age 12, up to 1972, which was the cut-off point for this collection under that original title, two years short of the original issue date. The 2CD set jumps around the years and may not include all the cuts that are in the 3LP set, but it's still worth having, even for the complete version of Fingertips on its own.
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - British Motown Chartbusters (1967)	I have this on a Polygram-issued CD, using original cover artwork for the front of the booklet but in other releases, only Vol.3 attempts to include some of the original artwork. I have Volumes 1 through 7 in CD reissue.
Neil Forbes 7th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Stevie Wonder - Looking Back (1977)	What, key, RC? Back door key! Ha-ha. And I note in the space of twelve or so hours, the site's had a makeover. Now it's "Add a review or add a comment about this album" in one instead of two separate options. So it's now click on "Add a review" or on "Add a comment" What else is there to surprise us? Hmmmm.....
Neil Forbes 6th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Stevie Wonder - Looking Back (1977)	I have the set under the "Anthology" title, it was part of a series of three-disc sets, another was the 10th Anniversary Anthology of The Temptations. There were 2-disc cut-down versions issued in Europe by the various divisions of EMI(Electrola, Bovema, Pathe-Marconi, etc.) which used the boxed photos of the inner sleeves(records 1 and 3) for their cover art.
Neil Forbes 6th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Deep Purple - Who Do We Think We Are! (1973)	the "Made In Gt. Britain" tag is still there, it's just been moved to the end of the copyright warning blurb around the bottom edge of the label and its font size and style reduced to match that of the c/right warning.
Neil Forbes 5th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album [no artist listed] - Benson & Hedges Celebration (1975)	Could be Iranian(B-side in Arabic to allow those who can't decipher English to read the title in their own script) but made in England as an export product.
Neil Forbes 5th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album The Beatles - Beatles For Sale (1964)	I have a stereo issue of this, yes, it's the British issue and, because of the labels on mine, which are the same as those put up by Roboleyton(second set), I figure my pressing may be of about 1969 or 1970 vintage(or later).
Neil Forbes 5th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - Original Golden Hits (1973)	I've got this one as well, but I think the label of my copy carries the same number as seen on the sleeve. Give me a minute or three and I'll fetch it out....... Okay, I found it and, I was wrong. Labels bear the same number on label as yours, US-96100 while cover has L-15183 affixed via sticker. Maybe Mod could include both numbers with a slash between them, if we ask him nicely. There is an American version of this album with 6 tracks per side.
Neil Forbes 5th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - Hitsville USA (1965)	Ah, we're both burning the midnight oil, RC!(no, we're not setting fire to Peter Garrett - ha-ha). If you can get hold of that set, go for it!
Neil Forbes 5th Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Various Artists - Hitsville USA (1965)	This and one other Tamla-Motown LP, I could ALMOST reconstruct my own versions of these LPs but I'm shy three tracks off this one, A6, B3 and B8.
Neil Forbes 3rd Oct 2015		Vinyl Album Chase - Chase (1971)	I'm logging out. Catch you all later!

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