#19: 50 Shades of Blue : Edwyn Collins (Demon Records, D1064 T, 1989)
There’s not much background to add, as it was mostly offered up last week with the look at Coffee Table Song and the release of the album, Hope and Despair.
In October 1989, a few months after the album had hit the shops, a second single was lifted from it. Last week, I included the Record Mirror review of the album, but I deliberately left out one key sentence, in which the author suggested that 50 Shades of Blue was ‘probably the most blatantly poppy record Edwyn has ever made’.
It offered one last try at drawing attention to the album some six months after it had been released, as well the opportunity to make available other songs that had been recorded in Köln but hadn’t yet seen the light of day.
mp3: Edwyn Collins – 50 Shades of Blue
Phil Thornalley gave the album version a slight remix, adding even more poptastic fairy dust to the production, but ultimately to no avail.
It was released on Demon Records, on 7″ and 12″ vinyl, and in a sign of the times, became the first CD single to which Edwyn’s name was attached.
Some of you may have picked up from an earlier part of this series that 50 Shades of Blue was actually a song from a few years back, with an acoustic version appearing as a b-side to My Beloved Girl, the second of the two singles that had been released on Elevation Records back in 1987.
The 7″, as well as being a remix, is also about 20 seconds shorter than the album version. The 12″, thanks to an extended outro, was about 40 seconds longer than the album version:-
mp3: Edwyn Collins – 50 Shades of Blue (extended version)
The 7″ carried an exclusive b-side, which turned out to be the song’s second appearance in such a guise:-
mp3: Edwyn Collins – If Ever You’re Ready
The original version had been the b-side to Don’t Shilly Shally, the debut solo single on Elevation Records. It had been revisited and re-recorded in Köln with the new version featuring Roddy Frame and Dennis Bovell on backing vocals. It was, however, not included on the vinyl edition of Hope and Despair, although it could be found on the CD edition.
Three more previously unreleased tracks were on the 12″ release:-
mp3: Edwyn Collins – Kindred Spirit
mp3: Edwyn Collins – Just Call Her Name
mp3: Edwyn Collins – Ain’t That Always The Way
The first is a country rock sort of song that must have just missed the cut for Hope and Despair. The second, to be quite frank, is not very good and was surely always going to exist only as a b-side, at best. The third is Edwyn’s own take on the song he had written a few years previously that had been Paul Quinn‘s ‘solo’ single on Swamplands Records; it’s a take I really like, but unsurprisingly, it doesn’t match the majesty of Paul’s version….and I’m sure Edwyn knew this from the outset, or he’d likely have included it on his debut album.
As for the CD single, it included Kindred Spirit and Just Call Her Name, but not Ain’t That Always The Way. In its place was Judas In Blue Jeans, but it was the very same version as had been the extra song on the b-side of the 12″ of Coffee Table Song. To quote the tagline of the late 70s comedy show Soap,
‘Confused? You Will Be’
And that brings an end to the 80s output of Edwyn Collins. With either his band or as a solo artist, eighteen singles and five albums all told, and more than likely most people could only have named Rip It Up in response to his name being mentioned.
The 90s would, eventually, change all that. Stay tuned.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 