From: Shadsfax Issue 25 (1999) 11–12
The Shadows
"The Shadows Complete"
EMI Australia 7243 4 96561 2 3 [5CD]
Released 1999
Volume 1: 1960–1963 Apache / Quatermasster’s Stores / Man Of Mystery / The Stranger / FBI / Midnight / The Frightened City / Kon-Tiki / 36–24–36 / The Savage / Peace Pipe / Stars Fell On Stockton / Wonderful Land (stereo version) / Guitar Tango / Dance On! / Foot Tapper (mono single version) / Atlantis / The Boys / Shindig / Nivram / Little ‘B’
Volume 2: 1963–1980 Geronimo / Theme For Young Lovers / The Rise And Fall Of Flingel Bunt / Rhythm And Greens / Genie With The Light Brown Lamp / Stingray / Don’t Make My Baby Blue / My Grandfather’s Clock / The War Lord / I Met A Girl / Maroc 7 / A Place In The Sun / Tales Of A Raggy Tramline / I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Cousin Arthur [sic] / Bombay Duck / Thunderbirds Theme (mono) / Slaughter On 10th Avenue / Please Mr Please (Bruce Welch) / Sacha (Hank Marvin) / Let Me Be The One / Theme From The Deer Hunter / Don’t Cry For Me Argentina
Volume 3: Let’s Rock Shadoogie / Chattanooga Choo-Choo / Temptation / Deep Purple / This Ole House / Pinball Wizard: See Me Feel Me / You’re The One That I Want/ Black Is Black / Alice In Sunderland / Round And Round (mono) / Ranka-Chank / The Lost City / The Rumble / Gonzales / Kinda Cool / Walk Don’t Run / In The Mood (mono) / Riders In The Sky (single version) / Shazam! / Memphis
Volume 4: Big Hits – Shadows Style Sleepwalk / Albatross / Maria Elena / Chariots Of Fire / Classical Gas / The Lonely Bull / Blue Star / Tonight / Stardust / Bright Eyes / Bridge Over Troubled Water / Goodbye Yellow Brick Road / God Only Knows (‘Abbey Road’ remix, mono) / Good Vibrations / Superstar / Trains And Boats And Planes / Friday On My Mind / Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James / Heart Of Glass / Winchester Cathedral
Volume 5: The 80s & 90s Chain Reaction / Flashdance … What A Feeling / Some People / Themes From Eastenders & Howards’ Way / Chi Mai / All I Ask Of You / The Music Of The Night / Memory / Candle In The Wind / Moonlight Shadow / Crockett’s Theme / Always On My Mind / The Lady In Red / One Moment In Time / A Whole New World (Hank Marvin) / The Phantom Of The Opera (Hank Marvin) / I Wanna Dance With Somebody
A handsome box this (though a bit on the flimsy side), housing five attractively finished discs. Each inlay has track-notes/ brief history (not always accurate) by the compiler of the set, Bruce Ward, with a good selection of fine b/w & colour pics. ‘Complete’ in this case means a straight 100 tracks, 96 of them by The Shads.
CD1 has an unbroken run of A-singles from Apache to Shindig, filled out with half a dozen B-sides, The Boys (a top-selling single in Austalia), and a couple of album tracks.
CD2 aims to cover the years 1963–1980, but would be better described as “More Of the 60s, with three or four stray tracks from the 70s”; the run of A-singles is picked up with Geronimo and takes in ten of the following dozen up to Maroc 7. Tales Of A Raggy Tramline is on the wrong disc.
CD3 lives up to its description, offering a varied menu of up-tempo numbers, while CD4 quietens things down a bit with gems like Sleepwalk and the exquisite Blue Star.
CD5 invents a Shadows for the 90s — and why not? I think the editor of your favourite fanzine is quite right to stress that Hank Marvin is still doing great things. The compiler here has produced a link between old and new by focusing on material from Lloyd Webber/ Rice released between 1983 and 1997.
Not a bad package overall. Nothing much out of the ordinary, of course, though the title I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Cousin Arthur is a new one on me!
A few gripes. In The Mood is the terrible mismastered mono version (no rhythm guitar); Theme For Young Lovers is the one with the initial double note; Ranka-Chank is in poor reprocessed stereo: why not the proper stereo take, as on ‘The Early Years’?
A final note of caution: it looks as if a minority of players will find the error rates on CD3 too high to cope with (half a dozen glitches). I must stress though that this is likely to be a very uncommon problem.
MC