From: Shadsfax Issue 42 (2003) 7–8
The Shadows
"The Essential"
EMI 07243 581882 2 6
Released March 2003
Apache/ Man Of Mystery/ The Frightened City/ Guitar Tango/ Kon-Tiki/ Foot Tapper/ Genie With The Light Brown Lamp/ The War Lord [mono] / A Place In The Sun/ Atlantis/ Wonderful Land [usual mock stereo version] / FBI/ The Savage/ Geronimo/ Shindig/ Stingray/ Theme For Young Lovers [lead guitar left channel] / The Rise And Fall Of Flingel Bunt/ Maroc 7/ Dance On!
‘Originally released as “The Shadows 20 Golden Greats”’ it says on the back cover. In fact, this is a replica of the 49mins 12secs CD from 1986 in different clothing, and in the mid-price range. With the introduction of a “50 Golden Greats”, “20 Golden” thus becomes the poor relation and is disappearing from the scene. Apart from the new artwork, there is a page offering a sketchy (or rather very sketchy) account of the group’s career.
Echoing Hank Marvin’s recent concert-routine of people messing up his name, he here at one point assumes the guise of “Marcin”. We are also told that The Drifters “released a few singles by themselves”: how many is a “few” in the mind of this annotator, I wonder? Shortly after, a bit of gibberish: “… in the USA they changed their name …” Apache is accorded “six weeks” at the top (no mention of what of the many charts of the time is referred to here). The Argentina hit was in December not November 1978.
So whoever proof-read this little lot (if anybody did) has not done a good job. There is more. The co-composer of Guitar Tango is listed as “Lifermann”. No composer credits at all are offered for Stingray. Worse still, for The Frightened City we are served up with: “(???Composer)”! This presumably reflects a stage when somebody on the marketing side was sketching out the contents with some of the data not to hand. That nobody picked this up subsequently is simply disgraceful. This is after all a proper EMI release, not one of the many wretched bootlegs which habitually get up to tricks of this kind.
If you already have the “20 Golden” CD or a comparable selection, and you are not a completist, you don’t need this disc: the rather blotchy front cover pic is no asset either.
MC