From: Shadsfax Issue 28 (2000) 6–7
Cliff Richard & The Shadows
"Do You Want To Dance"
Magic Records (France) 5270942 [2CD]
Released 2000
CD1 Lucky Lips / The Next Time / Summer Holiday / Dancing Shoes / When The Girl In Your Arms / The Young Ones [without strings] / We Say Yeah / Do You Wanna [given as ‘Want To’] Dance* / I’m Lookin’ Out The Window / Tea For Two / Evergreen Tree* / A Girl Like You / Bachelor Boy / It’ll Be Me* Bonus tracks: Got A Funny Feeling / Mumblin’ Mosie* / I Live For You / ‘D’ In Love / Without You
CD2 Further bonus tracks: So I’ve Been Told* / When My Dreamboat Comes Home* / Spanish Harlem* / I’ll See You In My Dreams* / All I Do Is Dream Of You* / Les Girls [The Shadows] / Big News* / You Don’t Know* / Some Of These Days* / I’m Walkin’ The Blues* / La mer* / Boum* / J’attendrai* / C’est si bon* / Don’t Talk To Him* / Say You’re Mine* / It’s All In The Game / Your Eyes Tell On You*
* = mono tracks
The brew for the five Magic Records Shadows CDs issued so far has been simple but effective: take a French LP from the 60s and mix in some bonus tracks, chiefly from the highly distinctive EPs of the period in question. Here the principle is taken a bit further, by adding to the original fourteen-track “Do You Want To Dance” material from no less than 9 EPs: high class colour reproductions of these adorn an inside leaf of the attractively presented flip-over pack.
What a pity that they are not captioned with the appropriate catalogue numbers. Anyway, all thirty-six of the tracks on the nine EPs are to be found in the present collection, since between them they actually took in all but one (Evergreen Tree) of the tracks on the LP. The solitary Shads number by the way was featured on “Summer Holiday”, ESDF 1468/ ESRF 1437. While general presentation is hard to fault, this issue is not exempt at times from the problems that afflict many Cliff CDs, notably excessive echo or ringing, and a grainy, ill-focused sound.
To take one example of the latter here, the vocal reproduction on All I Do Is Dream Of You does not compare at all favourably with the much cleaner sound on the 1989 CD “The EP Collection”. Another niggle: what is to be gained by having numbers like Evergreen Tree and Big News in mono? In fact,the total of nineteen mono tracks strikes me as needlessly high, given that in many cases much richer and crisper stereo versions are readily available.
Four tracks are claimed as “CD firsts”, I’ll See You In My Dreams, All I Do Is Dream Of You, Some Of These Days and Say You’re Mine. The claim is not true for the second, which appeared on the UK “The EP Collection” referred to above, and also on “The Love Album” (Singapore 1997). On the other hand, don’t we have a first here on (legitimate) CD for Your Eyes Tell On You?
MC