From: Shadsfax Issue 48 (2005) 3
Cliff Richard, The Shadows, and Others
"Thank You Very Much"
EMI 7243 4 73356 2 4
Released 26 July 2004
As Shadsfaxers will already be familiar with the October 1993 CD of numbers from the 1978 reunion concerts at The London Palladium (coupled with the album ‘Green Light’), we can concentrate on what is new here. Peter Lewry and Nigel Goodall have been steadily working their way through a succession of remastered Cliff albums. Some of them appeared originally in the early 1990s in a series of “2 on 1s”, which were unattractively presented and often pretty poor in terms of sound quality. These fresh issues are skilfully annotated, and there are bonus tracks. The extra here for fans of the group is Let Me Be The One, unfortunately not in brilliant stereo like the rest, but “lifted directly from the mono video masters”. Such corner-cutting strikes me as entirely inappropriate from the self-styled greatest recording organisation in the world, the kind of trick bootleggers get up to (and have got up to in this particular case) in the absence of anything better. There seems no reason in principle why Let Me Be The One and the additional Cliff tracks could not have been brought into line with the rest of the programme. By the late 1970s after all, when the ‘Thank You’ LP first appeared, mono reproduction was a thing of the past on new vinyl product.
Also on the Palladium set list, but still unavailable on CD, were Walk Don’t Run, Little ‘B’, Wonderful Land and FBI: it would be good to have the first of these in particular. In addition, from group + singer, we still lack The Minute You’re Gone and Bachelor Boy. There is surely room one day for a CD (and/or DVD) taking in all the Cliff + Shadows programme, in stereo.
While we are about it, Hank Marvin completists will be interested in Peter and Nigel’s refurbished version of Cliff’s album ‘Tracks ’n Grooves’ (EMI 7243 473364 2 3), for the track Love, Truth and Emily Stone: as our learned editor remarked a few issues back, that can only be the maestro in the background.
MC