A hefty box of merch from their last ever show awaits Soft Cell fans
As you may have seen from Taffy’s recent comment on yesterday’s post, Soft Cell will be playing their last ever show at the London O2 arena on September 30th, 2018. There still seem to be a few tickets left for those who just found out. They are preparing to drop the fans a huge box of rare goodies but that’s due next week, as we discussed yesterday. After the upcoming O2 show there will be any number of packages that allow the Soft Cell fan who might not have the resources to fly to London to experience the show at home. Primary of these is what we’ll call The Grande, as pictured above.
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye: The O2 London Ltd Edition Collectors Boxset
- 2CD Album
- DVD
- BluRay
- 4LP Heavyweight Colored Vinyl
- Super Deluxe Photobook
- Signed Named Certificate
- Square 12 x 12 Inch Art Print
- 4 x A6 Postcards
- Square 12 x 12 Inch Lyric / Music Sheet of ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye
- Laminate with Download Code
- Exclusive 7″ Vinyl of ‘A Man Could Get Lost’ and ‘Bleak Is My Favourite Cliche’ live from Leeds Warehouse session
- Show Program
That’s a ridiculous spread of merch at a price to match: $317.99 [?] at the band’s webstore. But this is the 21st century and not everyone’s drowning in cash. At a third the cost, the options are getting closer to my budget.
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye: The O2 London Super Deluxe Photobook
- Deluxe Hardback Show Photobook
- 2CD Album
- BluRay
- DVD
- Signed Named Certificate
That’s a little kinder to the pocketbook at $101.99 from the Soft Cell webstore. If you still have to have Marc and David dedicate the book to you, it’s included with this digital disc friendly package. None of that heavy vinyl or ephemera to weigh you down! But my funds are depleted from the L.A. trip and Atlanta and Simple Minds beckon in about five weeks. So I would be still bargain hunting if I were to dive in.
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye: The O2 London 2CD + DVD & BluRay Double Pack
That one hits my comfort zone. The main thing for these far away concerts that I’m interested in is getting the DVD [or Blu-Ray if you’re of that persuasion] so I can see what it was like. Having the soundtrack on CD is also convenient, but DLs are also thoughtfully included for your personal devices.
- Say Hello, Wave Goodbye: The O2 London 2CD (w/ Download)
- Say Hello, Wave Goodbye: The O2 London DVD & BluRay Double Pack (w/ Download)
The price is nice at $38.99 and the first 1000 orders come in a special slipcase. Below that level one can buy just the CDs/video discs for $25.99 each, but the deal for both at $38.99 is more than fair. Just the DL versions on audio and video for the discless among us are the best deal yet: $12.99 each, but you know I can’t go there. There are also record and t-shirt combos for those inclined, but that wouldn’t be me either. I haven’t had any Soft Cell vinyl in 33 years and I’m not starting now! There has to be time to manufacture all of this goodness, so the shipments will occur next year on May 25th, 2019. If you’re going to go out with a bang, I say you’d be crazy not to document it, and Soft Cell have duly committed to this.
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Post-Punk Monk 
strange you should bring the subject of merch up as i was going to mention this on yesterdays post ! I too have preorder the box from Lexer Music because the first orders were being shipped with a poster of Mutant Moments…great got in there. Then came all the subsequent emails about t shirts, posters, tea towels, fridge magnets, hairnets [ oh right , the last 2 weren’t included]. I succumbed to a set of 3 lithos , 2 t shirts and one ‘club remixes 2018 picture disc’ [ much to my hate of the medium]. Then came more and more and even more emails about merch and then this live box set just really takes the p. This is really milking that cash-cow to the point of overkill – i won’t buy any more merch, vinyl cd from this campaign, however collectable somebody claims it to be…enough is enough. Rant over……
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ps….thank you Monk for giving me a medium to vent my frustration[ no pun-intended]….much appreciated
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nick – If any band I love wants close to $100 for a single release from me, they’d better stop there. There’s no way I would ever spend more than a c-note on a single release, no matter how elaborate. $50-$70 is the sweet spot for me. I only bought the Roxy Music debut SDLX RM when they had a flash sale for half price. If you look at my “Music Purchased” tab it’s almost a mirror image of the elimination of the middle class with most titles either dirt cheap or $25-$80. The happy medium is being squeezed out in all levels of society as those at the top stick in their fangs, and suck frantically as if there were to tomorrow.
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i sometimes wonder about the obsessive collectors,
and what their limits are.i actually don’t have a permanent
job. i work contracts, but that hasn’t stopped me yet for certain items.
no matter what the cost is (i think $500 is my upper limit).
also, when things are on auction, prices can get out of
hand, i remember getting into a bidding war on ebay
for the japanese ultravox collection lasedisc, and won
it for $400+ at the time.
i do budget the items that i want, and also, i buy about 20-30
used items for every ‘new’ one that i get, to balance
things out.
i spent $200+ for the abc deluxe lexicon box from awhile ago,
and who knows how much for the recent kraftwerk live
catalog boxset for starters. there was a cabaret voltaire
boxset, and a new order music complete boxset,
a few simple minds boxsets (live and studio),
and 3 super deluxe underworld boxsets
just to a name a few.
honestly, price should never be a factor when its well done,
rare, or near complete compilation. i think the 4 cd boxsets
of tears for fears – the hurting and songs from the big chair
were excellent references.
if somethings overpriced, like the human league anthology,
i just wait for it to come up discounted or used. but i do
get it in the end.
if its something limited, its a gamble to get it quickly
before it sells out, like the slipcase version of the 3
blancmange boxsets, or just wait it out and get the
regular versions for much cheaper.
ultimately your desire for a product shouldn’t be
dependent on the price, if you really want something,
you will figure out a way to get it.
later
-1
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negative1ne – You pose what should be a thread on this blog. What are your limits of cost as a collector. Look for this one day! I am basically a cheapskate, but I have my hot button issues. I have not bought myself several John Foxx ltd. ed. items that I really wanted because they were more than I felt comfortable paying… and then my wife bought them for me as gifts!!! Yes, I am that lucky! I used to work in software development from ’88-’01 and earned pretty good money. But music was sold for a lot less back then. Music releases were seen as a mass market item that thousands of people were buying and the notion of squeezing the fans hard in the pre-Napster world barely existed. I would have had the cash to pay $100+ for a single item. We had this thread in the very early days of the blog that you might have seen.
Now, I earn about 80% of what my wage was…almost 20 years ago. I buy a lot of music, but most of is it much cheaper, or much more expensive that what I bought in the 80s-90s. Back then, a domestic CD was $14. An import could be $18-35, with Japanese CDs at the higher end. Back then, if a title I wanted came out and I saw it in a catalog, it was an easy matter to just order it. Used CDs were $8-10 for current items with older things being a few dollars less, maybe. Post 2001, the game has dramatically shifted. Once people were able to take music for free [this never appealed to me], the notion of selling 10,000-50,000 copies of a release was no longer valid. Sales plummeted and they had to figure out a way to squeeze the fans for exponentially more money to hit the same bottom line. That was when heavily curated boxes became necessary to be able to sell 500 copies of a title for $100,000 @ $200/copy instead of 5000 copies of the same title for $100,000 at $20/copy. So now they vacuum up all of the loose ends [we hope] and put it down in a boxed set of god with no errors [pray really hard for that] and if you can get one of these for <$100 it's a freaking miracle!
There have been a lot of these that I have blogged about. I don't think any of them sucked. Lots of them like the “Keychains + Snowstorms” actually represent value to me as a music fan. 10 discs of rarities for about $120 is more than acceptable to me; it’s just that I’m not a big enough Soft Cell fan to output that kind of cash. Especially when I factor in all of my music-related travel. If I go out of town for a gig that means driving distance. I have only flown to see gigs a handful of times in the 90s when I could. I did slap down for a plane ticket to see Bryan Ferry host a panel discussion in Chicago a few years back, but that was the exception. Driving a nearby city for a gig means a minimum of $200/day for food/gas/lodging. Maybe $50-100 for merch if it’s a band I really like. Record shopping in other cities is almost the reason to travel for me. Throw in $100-200 for good stores you know and love. My L.A. trip I saved up $800 for, which took me four months. Prior to that, I saved up for the Atlanta trip to see Graham Parker. That was a low budget overnight trip with no “fine dining” or record shopping [about $200] because we were in Atlanta the month prior to see OMD which was a more expensive trip. Serious merch and record shopping that time.
I hate the whole “twitch and buy this RIGHT NOW FLASH SALE” aspect of music purchasing now. Get it now or not at all. I generally lived my life saving up for things I wanted if they were “expensive.” Now with artificially created demand stoked by the flames of the internet, many is the time that something pops up [I’m talking about you, Shriekback limited editions] and I just don’t have the cash in a 2-3 week period of availability on a moment’s notice. Money’s too tight for that. In part for all of the music related travel that we do. I actually began budgeting $20 per paycheck to spend any damn way I saw fit to do a year or two back as discretionary. Sometimes I save this up over a month or two to buy something that I want. Price can’t help but be a factor since my money is limited.
Bands I like that put out nice sets for <$80 might get my cash. At $80-150 it's not very likely to happen. At $200+ in their dreams! I was waiting years for the “Roxy Music” DLX RM. I expected an $80 box and got a $150 box. Was it well done? Yes! It’s a fantastic effort, but I only bought it when a flash sale cut the price to $80 for a few days. And I had to flinch and put it on credit card since I would have had no time to save for it, the old fashioned way – which I prefer. When bands put out nice basic CD [no vinyl/souvenirs] editions like the new Ultravox “Extended” for $16.99 or the 3xCD “Metamatic” for £14.99 [~$20] it’s a gift that I respect – how can I not buy the titles? Pledge Music bundles with WLP and tea towels? I don’t care. I just want the music. At the end of the day, what I want is the music on CD, well mastered and correctly curated. If they sell other stuff to the fans to make their bottom line, fine.
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I need to always remember that potentially I can get more enjoyment from a £2.50 charity shop purchase than an expensive deluxe edition box set that will take up a lot of space and maybe only be played every now and then. I’m not a completist, which is a relief really.
Having said that I have the Soft Cell box on order because I love them and looking at the contents I know I will listen to it enough’s to justify purchase. I just hope it’s well mastered…
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Wow $400 for the Ultravox laser disc.
My late brother, for a couple of years, owned a used record store. I gave him all my stuff i didn’t want and he gave me credit. After a while of sitting on this credit he mentioned that he now had a connection with Japanese laser discs, so I cashed in my credit for these things. After my credit was liquidated he let me buy them at cost. So yeah, that’s how I scored my copy of that one (and about ten others)/ That was a great little set up until he closed the shop and then it was AB-CD (if anyone remembers them) for the Japanese laser discs.
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Tim – I had a vendor in L.A. who sent me the quarterly catalog produced in Japan with every laserdisc in print with a tiny 3/4″ square image in monotone [usually green or brown ink]. I just told them what I wanted and they got it for me. Nine times out of ten. I got the Ultravox LDs in their second pressings in late 80s for about $40 each. My prize was the Visage laserdisc. Still my favorite New Romantic object.
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Rob didn’t get a huge discount on that stuff and I had to wait ages for some of it but the real thing was having a dependable connection/pipeline to the source. Prior to that I tried for a couple of Japanese LD via vendors in Goldmine and it was often oh yeah we had a couple and sold them, don’t know not sure when we’re going to get more. Do you want to wait or do you want your money back?
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Tim – The dealer I had [can’t remember their moniker] said you subscribe to the LD Quarterly catalog [$20/copy] and we will order anything in it. About 90% fulfillment since the catalogs were all LDs currently “in print’ in Japan.
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To be fair, there probably IS no tomorrow …
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nick – Ouch! I had no idea that the merch had become an avalanche over time. That’s exploitative. Picture discs are particularly egregious ways to bilk the faithful.
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And so it continues in cinemas all over the world….aarrgghh! http://www.softcell.co.uk/cinema-screenings/
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Nick – A final tour would have cost a lot – but many more fans would have been a part of it. They are definitely maximizing the potential earnings from a single show. Next step: pay-per-view live web streaming for just £5.99! You heard it here first.
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I’m due to attend this gig, however following some health issues I’m set for an urgent op 11 days before, wish me luck for recovering enough to attend!
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SimonH – Yikes! That will be touch and go, I’m sure. All the best for a swift recovery! You probably have a small bundle tied up in those tickets! In America the tickets would not be the issue. Moreso the cost of the procedure!
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Thank you! Hopefully I’ll make it, saw them last time round and they were great.
Very true re the cost of the op, apparently it would be around £12000 privately, which is scary.
Thankfully I was assessed as urgent so the wait hasn’t been too long.
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This was an extraordinary night!
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SimonH – So glad to hear that it lived up to the expectations!
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In case anyone’s interested here’s my review:
https://soundblab.com/reviews/gigs/20986-soft-cell-the-o2-london
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SimonH – Of course, we’re all interested! Thanks so much for sharing your impressions of what sounded like a brilliant night. Wow, they even got Mari Wilson to guest! Such attention to detail. Did she duet on “Torch?” Please tell me that they did not skip that one!
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It’s strange, I kind of expected a duet on Torch, but no it was on Last
Chance from the Cruelty Without Beauty album, it did work well though. The backdrop at that point was a huge vintage image of Mari. Only Soft Cell could do a stadium gig like this, apparently there were critical tweets from people who just wanted to hear Tainted Love and wondered what all the other ‘dirges’ were for…:)
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Forgot to mention – the icing on the cake were the two DJs on before SC, can you believe they filled a stadium with stuff ranging from the Normal, to Sparks via the Cramps! It was a treat.
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SimonH – Excellent taste!
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Also forgot to mention brass was courtesy of Gary Barnacle…
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