I had thought about following up the ongoing Altered Images singles series with a look back at the 12″ versions of the 45s released by Soft Cell in the 80s. The snag however, being that I don’t own absolutely everything by them. Instead, I’ll use the next three days to offer those bits of plastic that I do own, starting with the first three singles taken from Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret:-
mp3 : Soft Cell – Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go
mp3 : Soft Cell – Tainted Dub
mp3 : Soft Cell – Bedsitter
mp3 : Soft Cell – Facility Girls
mp3 : Soft Cell – Say Hello, Wave Goodbye
mp3 : Soft Cell – Fun City
All three singles reached the Top 5 in the UK and all three 12″ versions expand and improve on the better-known 7″ or album versions. The b-sides are also in extended form.
Parts 2 and 3 will appear over the next two days.
Enjoy.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
You’re on fire, my friend. This is turning out to be a hell of a week. Long live the 12″!
Three cracking tunes here. Used to have the Tainted Love 12″, a fine example of what a 12″ should be.
Torch is my favourite 12 inch of theirs, I also have a Canadian only release of Say Hello 12″ which has the only issue of Tainted dub/where did our love go vocal on the b-side instead of Fun City
The Bedsitter 12 inch remix is #9 in my list of the 50 songs I collected for my 50th Birthday in 2013. I love Tainted Love in all its permutations, but Bedsitter really spoke to this 18 year old and its seedy, forbidden feel has held a special place in my heart ever since.
Shame there is no instrumental version of Say Hello – the only thing I need by them
I think I probably do have just about everything Soft Cell released, and it got played a lot in the 80s, though not so much now so this is a welcome posting JC. I got into them early thanks to my sister buying the Some Bizzare compilation album, so I already had A Man Can Get Lost/Memorabilia before Tainted Love. The Some Bizzare album also led me to discover and buy early releases by The The, Depeche Mode, Blancmange and B-Movie (who were my absolute favourites at the time).
I had read a bit about Soft Cell in music press like Billboard and my first taste was the “Metro Mr. X” flexidisc on the cover of Flexipop; a cheap way to sample a new band, even in America at the time. I’m just getting ready to write about Soft Cell in tomorrow’s blog. They were the new breed; Generation B of technopop.