Cassette vs Record Historical Prices?

Kim Wilde? Now that's an album I'd need to hear, as only two of her songs ever got any noticeable airplay here, 'stateside ("Kids In America", "Keep Me Hanging On") which, for some bands, is the most I've ever really seen from them... with both appearing on the same album (Quarterflash) making a "Best Of..." or "Greatest Hits" wholly unnecessary!

Now, as for Phil Oakley and "Don't You Want Me?"... I'm betting it was more of a "product of pressure" by the producers, much like "Cum & Feel The Noize!" by Quiet Riot.

 

Kim Wilde has obviously had far more chart success in the UK with 12 top 20 singles

A couple you might not have heard



and from seven years later a number three single



As for the album track that never gets played on the radio it is probably a bit more risque than Samatha Fox's "Touch Me".
A great Synthwave track from before the term was invented.



A great shame that Let's Rock Southampton where she was going to be one of the acts this year has been postponed until 2021 and she is the one act that can't make the new date. I have seen her a couple of times already and was looking forward to seeing her again.

As for Quiet Riot I had never heard of them. According to Wikipedia their biggest success in the UK was their "Condition Critical" album reaching No.71 in the album charts.

Everyone here in their fifties knows Cum On feel The Noize though as it was a Number 1 single for British Glam Rock band Slade back in 1973 (when I was still in Junior School)



Oh dear. that's the rest of my evening gone

 

After The Fire... When I finally got a hold of that album be ATF, the title of 1980-F intrigued me... and I'm glad I got it. As for Quiet Riot and Def Leppard, they were basically building-blocks set on the foundation of the "L.A. Sound" started by Van Halen in the late-'70s... a style that Eddie--whom himself was an artist--wanted to get away from and move towards stuff like Peter Gabriel was making.

Not-bad... In fact, I rather like "You Came"! And "Take me Tonight" has a beautiful air of intrigue & danger to it. As for the original by Slade, as Slade played it... it's "weak" compared to to Kevin Dubrow's "scream until you're hoarse [in protest]" performance with his band's accompaniment.

And I have to admit: Seeing the thumbnail for "Cambodia" reminded me of an album by a "Minneapolis sound" band that oddly came into my local suburban independent charity resale shop: I never heard of them beforehand, but when I finally got chance to listen to they full collection, the only song that appealed to me was "True Ecstasy" from their ironically "failed" second & final album... not their big hit "Everybody Dance".


I should also say that I wasn't fortunate enough in the day to have parents willing to subscribe to basic cable, so a lot of stuff that would've been seen on MTV flew under my radar... but I did see a few odd pieces on a 1/2-hr. music video show on local UHF in the afternoon, including what was probably Rick Springfield's last hit...


...and Samantha Fox's cover of a Dusty Springfield classic!:



Not to mention a few obscurities:

 

A very successful and good album of that type is Jeff Waynés "War of the Worlds".With Ricard Burton providing naration between tracks it really does tell the story from beginning to end. Recently it has been done as a touring production.

A similar album, which I am less familiar with is The Whos "Tommy" although I love the film (especially the Baked Beans scene) and have seen a Stageshow of it.


I've just had a chance to listen to the tracks you posted above:

Ta Mara sounds as if it could of been on a Sade album (or as an instrumental as demo tracks on a 1990 keyboards).



I'm not sure if I had heard the Rick Springfield track before. It reminds me of Bryan Adams.

The Freez track was big in the clubs here when it came out

I do remember "Just Buggin"

Believe it or not they played this on the radio a couple of weeks ago in their comedy corner slot



Still funny, and clever how it references popular tracks of the day like 19.

The Samantha Fox track is one of here weakest. It has that SAW (Stock, Aitkin and Waterman) sound that dominated the end of the 80s until everyone was fed up with them. Pete Waterman himself has said that if they made a mistake it was making things look too easy. Their "Hit Factory" churned out similar sounding tracks in the same way Sony was churning out similar looking Walkman model back then.

Samantha Fox was famous before she reached the charts, posing topless on Page 3 of the UKs most popular newspaper most weeks to brighten up men's day

Her biggest hit was her first reaching Number One in many European countries.



Some of the follow ups were good as well



I have seen her twice. The first time was back in 1985 when she came to a local car dealer to unveil the new Peugeot 309. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peugeot_309
Not surprisingly several hundred young men turned up for the event. I don't think any of us were interested in, or could have afforded the car (although my Father later bought one).

The next time was a few years ago when she played at Lets Rock. Unfortunately she turned up late and made a complete hash of trying to do Touch Me as a slow ballad. To be fair to her it might have been when her Partner/Manager was ill or had just died.

Going down a Sam Fox Rabbit hole on Youtube I just found



a performance I would have liked to have seen.
In the 1980s this would have been front page news in the UK.

Finally, I didn't realise Sam has had moderate success as a songwriter for groups like All Saints and has even been in a Bollywood film.

 

I have a copy of the multi-artist co-lab done of Tommy with the London Symphony Orchestra... and watched the live multi-artist presentation of Tommy on television in the day. I suppose if my brother didn't become such a grand fan of The Who in his college days, I probably would've just lumped them in with all the other artists I regularly heard on my local Classic Rock radio. Speaking of which, I recall how in a series of clever television promos for a local FM-radio Rock station, there was a middle-aged woman singing & playing "Smooth Operator"... on an accordion, while inserting the name of the on-air personality being promoted:



Talk about "sucking-out the 'cool'"...!

Rick Springfield sounding like Brian Adams... well, that tracks. Especially in the perspective that around the same time Gary Busey rose to fame, after playing Buddy Holly, William Devane came along.

As for Freez and AEIOU, the vid I posted seems rare because this is the only edit of the song I ever found... and heard in the day--by same manner of presentation.

Paul Hardcastle's "19"... Boy, there's memory! Around the same time, Bruce Springsteen did a cover of Edwin Star's "War" that had a very-moving opening & ending:



And to be fair, I had heard before her first album of--as Benny Hill once put it (in joke)--the "sweet little bird with a large, lovely pear"... via a spread in a copy of Knave my brother got a hold of, I believe. It was a memorable issue, as it included an interview with the director of Beverly Hills Cop, and a spread of the notorious Tracy Lords--while she was still underage! And she's songwriter, too? Well, that certainly put perspective on songwriter Paul Stanley's memoir of once sleeping with her! Makes one wonder what music they could've made together.... And I guess a girl like her could've been used to promote/introduce the Yugo here in the 'States, with result to much of the same effect on the crowd!

Waterman... Didn't he once brag he could "Make a music star out of a tea boy!"... then go-on to produce Rick Ashley?

And if you want to talk about slow-ballad hash-ups of more lively songs, get a 45-rpm copy of "Mad About You" by Belinda Carlisle (of Go-Go's fame) and play it at 33-1/3. adjust the pitch slightly, and it sounds like slow ballad version being sung by Cher with a head cold!

Along the same note, and speaking of performances I wish I could've seen, there was a nationwide tour of "Man of La Mancha" during my late high-school days that starred Raul Julia and Sheena Easton--yes, that Sheena Easton! I would've loved to have seen her as Dulcinea! But, unfortunately, she suffered a cold/flu when it came to my area, and that performance was cancelled.

Page-3, huh? Well, the Sun and World we get here sure don't look like that. But then, our television companies & news agencies also don't braggedly promote themselves as "mirroring the globe", either.

 

Wikipedia reckons Sabrina's biggest hit was mainly due to the video

As my late Mother would always say when someone appeared on TV "You can tell she's a mammal".

In the UK the joke was always that RiCk Astley was a Kylie single played at 33RPM. Either that or Kylie was A Rick LP track played at 45RPM.
Here is talking about it !


I have seen Belinda so many times I have lost count.
She is one of the regulars on the UK Retro Concert circuit and always puts on a good, very professional set.
To save reposting old photos have a look at this old thread.
http://www.stereo2go.com/forums/threads/retro-concerts-and-festivals.1404/
Due to Covid there will be no updates this year (unless I post the ones from 2016 which included Tiffany)

 

I've heard of Sabrina, thanks to the Disco Club Facebook forum I'm member to... and having seen her other performance of her, I imagine she would've probably knocked Madonna out of place if she got some decent airplay here in America. But then, we were going through the "porn-rock" backlash at the time, and female acts as racy as Vanity 6 and The Mary Jane Girls weren't pursued anymore.

 

Back to the original subject I recently found this advert in a 1991 newspaper.


According to the Bank of England you can double those prices to get 2023 ones.
£23 for a CD ! It makes the LP or cassette at £15 seem like a bargain.

 

A 1995 advert for compilation CDs and cassettes. By then LPs had disappeared from the adverts. Less than ten years later similar compilation CDs were being given away free with the Sunday Newspapers.

 

1999 and this was a deal thought advertising in a National Newspaper. Now you could find some of the same CDs in a Charity Shop two for £1.

 

1989 and you certainly paid a premium for CDs.
Incidentally the NOW series has just celebrated its 40th Anniversary and is up to Now 116.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/NOW-Thats-What-Call-Music/dp/B0CKZ7LY3Q/ref=sr_1_2
CDs are cheaper now than they were 34 years and 100 editions ago !
I suspect I would prefer Now 16 though.

 

From the 1986 Littlewoods catalogue. Rather than paying monthly for a streaming service you could buy your music using easy weekly repayments and after 20 weeks keep it for life. As you can see cassettes and records are the same price while CDs are much more expensive.

 

Friday 8th November 1991 and retailers think you should be getting ready for Christmas.
They will even provide the wrapping for free.