![]() It’s certainly interesting, you know when you see a familiar mannikin and one days it’s dressed in new clothes – not a whole new outfit just maybe the shirt – it’s a finer shirt, better made, nicer patterned but there was just something about that old shirt that you came to enjoy despite its imperfections well that’s sort of how it was the first few spins then just yesterday it all clicked when I shirted the tracklisting back to the 1982 order! To add to that Mike’s vocal is far more pronounced, the bass rises out of the mix and the backing vocals are enhanced to spike in the mix, and man that sax break splits the night! Wow! Sonically though ‘Beat’ sounds wonderful – the intro has a different vibe to original mix and there’s a scream at the start that’s been elongated and sounds higer in pitch which now rises rather than appears. Well not on the remix it doesn’t – that’s the first shock – ‘Oriental Beat’ now leads out and somehow that just doesn’t seem right. Would it bring back those same memories or sound out of place, would it diminish or refuel those emotions I felt back in 1982?Īs opening tracks go ‘Oriental Beat’… wait a minute? ‘Oriental Beat’ doesn’t open this album, that’s always been ‘Motorvatin” – that wonderful intro drums, bass, guitar, vocals. So there’s the history and the reasoning behind the ‘re(al)mix’ let’s get at it! I must admit first though that with the album being so important to me I was very apprehensive to listen and kept putting it off until I plucked up the courage. With the tapes mysteriously showing up in the Universal vault recently, the band was finally able to mix and re-sequence the album the way they wanted it to sound. Released before the band could remix or rerecord it, as the label had run out of money, and the master tapes had gone missing, the band has always considered the original mix of “ Oriental Beat” to be a “disaster”. His outings into producing were few and far between after Oriental Beat.Īccording to Hanoi Rocks’ manager Richard Bishop he “tried to mix the album to sound like Spandau Ballet”. To be fair to Pete he was really an engineer (later working on Def Leppard’s Hysteria album) who the same year worked as such on Kate Bush’s ‘The Dreaming’. But over the years reading different sources it was apparent that the band were less than happy with Pete Wooliscroft’s production. Bassist Sami Yaffa called it “the worst sounding album of our career” and Michael Monroe said that “the producer of the album didn’t have a clue what the band was about, and his mix of the album was horribly wrong”.Īt the time of course the songs carried any deficit in production, and let’s face it ,no one is going to talk down a record they just put out. Hanoi Rocks drummer Gyp Casino says of “ Oriental Beat” that: “Back in the days we gave heart, soul and a bit of pain to make this record something else” but the sound of the album, originally released in 1982, did not match their efforts at the time. Recorded in London, UK in 1981, for 200 pounds a day, “ Oriental Beat” was made during the height of the British punk + New Wave movement, when the band was hanging out with everyone from Phil Lynott to the Damned. This was the record that had me disappearing out of the bedroom window out onto the garage room and into the night, this was the album that had me visit my Uncle in London so that I could escape to exotic places like Camden and Fulham. They were the real deal, they were the outsiders, they were my rebellion and reason for being, they made me feel alive and still do to this day.Ģ023 sees the 40th Anniversary of one of their great records – their second album ‘Oriental Beat’ and whilst ,in my humble opinion, they surpassed it with subsequent releases – it was that album and the previous year’s ‘Bangkok Shocks, Saigon Shakes, Hanoi Rocks’ that completely changed my world as a teenager. ![]() ![]() But the Hanoi Rocks were the band I discovered all by myself, the band I became obsessed with, the bad I snuck out of home to see and the band I snuck into venues when I was under age to watch. ![]() I grew up loving bands like Thin Lizzy, New York Dolls, Aerosmith, ZZ Top, Blondie, Velvet Underground, The Stones and Queen as well as countless others as a music obsessed teen. If I was to list the bands that have been most influential in my life the Hanoi Rocks would be top of that list – there’s no question about that.
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