Love and Rockets - Love and Rockets / Swing! (1989)
Audio CD - Beggars Banquet BEGA 2035 CD
Original Recording Remastered with extra disc and bonus tracks
Remastered 2002
Total time - 127:20
Disc 1 - Love and Rockets plus bonus tracks
Disc 2 - Swing! plus bonus tracks
Track listing:
2002 reissue
Disc one (total time - 58:48)
1. "**** (Jungle Law)" – 4:32
2. "No Big Deal" – 4:56
3. "The Purest Blue" – 3:43
4. "Motorcycle" – 3:31
5. "I Feel Speed" – 3:24
6. "Bound for Hell" – 6:01
7. "The Teardrop Collector" – 4:09
8. "So Alive" – 4:16
9. "Rock and Roll Babylon" – 3:22
10. "No Words No More" – 3:50
11. "Bike" – 3:54
12. "Bikedance" – 7:07
13. "No Big Deal (Remix)" – 7:11
14. "Dreamtime" – 8:41
Disc two
1. "Wake Up!" – 3:58
2. "Cuckoo Land" – 2:48
3. "The Early Worm" – 2:13
4. "1000 Watts of Your Love" – 2:48
5. "Bad Monkey" – 4:20
6. "Intro" (Radio Session) – 0:58
7. "1000 Watts of Your Love" (Radio Session) – 3:08
8. "No Words No More" (Radio Session) – 4:11
9. "Interview" (Radio Session) – 34:19
Personnel:
Daniel Ash — guitar, saxophone, and vocals
David J — bass and vocals
Kevin Haskins — drums and synthesizers
Love and Rockets is the fourth album by the British band Love and Rockets, released in 1989 on Beggar's Banquet.
Love and Rockets dismissed Earth, Sun, Moon's folk sound in favor of a stronger rock & roll sound. Hints of the band's former psychedelic and gothic rock sound remained. Like Lennon and McCartney before them, chief songwriters Daniel Ash and David J had begun concentrating strictly on their own material (rather than writing together) on Earth, Sun, Moon. By the time of Love and Rockets, their creative partnership had clearly all but dried up, as the album lurches back and forth between Ash's tech-savvy modern pop and J's bluesier, grittier experiments.
The album featured Love and Rockets' biggest hit, the Ash-penned "So Alive". The song was a surprising #3 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, and stayed at #1 for five weeks on the US Mainstream Rock chart. Because of the popularity of the single in the US, Love and Rockets became the band's best-selling album in America.
After the release of the album, the band embarked on a long worldwide tour. Afterwards, instead of recording a new album and a follow-up single to "So Alive", J and Ash both focused on their solo careers, continuing in the directions represented on this album. They each released two solo albums in the break (with drummer Kevin Haskins working primarily with Ash) before returning as a band to record Hot Trip to Heaven in 1994.
In 2002, the album was remastered and expanded into a double album. The bonus tracks featured a single remix, three b-sides, all five songs from the aborted Swing! EP, and a radio session. The Swing! project was to be an outlet for some of the band's stranger output, but the material was never released, except for "Bad Monkey", which ended up on the Glittering Darkness EP in 1996.
"The Purest Blue" is a radical reworking of "Waiting for the Flood" from Earth, Sun, Moon, and "**** (Jungle Law)" was later reworked as "Bad Monkey", recorded as part of the Swing! project. At the end of the So Alive track Ash says "that's the dirty version."
Contents
(above from Wikipedia)
Review from All Music Guide:
As the band's breakthrough record in the U.S., riding high on the left-field success of the slinky T. Rex homage "So Alive," this album still divides the band's fans to the present. Charges of sell-out are incredibly curious, because aside from "So Alive," absolutely nothing here sounds like it would have gotten anywhere on the airwaves. While Ash and David J were clearly dividing their songwriting efforts, resulting in a rather schizophrenic album, what they were writing and performing were some of the best songs of their collected careers. David J gets to indulge rock roll and blues traditionalism on a number of his tracks, beginning with the opening " (Jungle Law)," a radical reworking of the old "Signifying Monkey" standard with compressed production and an almost industrial beat from Haskins. Another redone oldie is "Bound for Hell," a tale of the Devil driving a train to down below; David J runs his vocals through crackly distortion, playing harmonica while Ash plays a huge, thrashy guitar line. Perhaps his best number is his most atypical: "Rock and Roll Babylon," a barbed study of fame with Ash's sax and a string quartet fleshing out the sound beautifully. Ash's songs do some roots revisiting as well, in their own ways. "No Big Deal" and especially "Motorcycle" show that the man's been listening to some Jesus and Mary Chain, but his wonderful vocal purr marks them as his own songs. An unexpected addition to everything is "The Purest Blue," a radical reworking of Earth Sun Moon's "Waiting for the Flood" which leaves almost nothing of the original. [A two-disc version of Love and Rockets, released in 2002, added "Motorcycle" remixes, several B-sides, and the contents of a radio show to the original program.]
- Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
Original release (total time - 68:40)
1. "**** (Jungle Law)" – 4:32
2. "No Big Deal" – 4:56
3. "The Purest Blue" – 3:43
4. "Motorcycle" – 3:31
5. "I Feel Speed" – 3:24
6. "Bound for Hell" – 6:01
7. "The Teardrop Collector" – 4:09
8. "So Alive" – 4:16
9. "Rock and Roll Babylon" – 3:22
10. "No Words No More" – 3:50
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