Visage: Beat Boy Supplement – US – CD-R [2019]

1. The Cage: Do What You Wanna Do [Long Ver.] 7:29
2. The Cage: Do What You Wanna Do [Dub Ver.] 6:19
3. The Cage: The Slammer 7:29
4. Visage: Love Glove [7″ mix] 4:03
5. Visage: Pleasure Boys [Razormaid Mix] 5:38
6. Visage: Love Glove [Razormaid Mix] 8:39
7. Visage: Beat Boy [7″ mix] 3:29
8. Visage: Love Glove [Inst.] 3:23
9. Visage: Beat Boy [Dub] 3:49

We alluded to the need for this CD at the end of the posting on the “Beat Boy Special Cassette Remix” posting a short while ago. And in the timeline of 2019, I didn’t waste any time on starting a second CD of material. Truth be told, if I had more than one printable, archival CD at the time, I would have made that disc a 2xCD edition, but since I was digitizing the cassette for its owner, he got the one archival CD left in my stash; and I made this disc in a simple cardboard sleeve on a standard CD-R for him. With that precedent established, and a REVO number assigned, it was going to stay this way moving forward.

In the time that it took for Visage to leave their management after “The Anvil” and get really thinking about the infamous third album, there were several side projects that the band’s drummer kept busy with. The first of these that bore fruit was the Nona Hendryx single “Do What You Wanna Do.” It was there that he linked up with Steve Barnacle who played bass on the project and he became the only person besides Steve Strange to carry on with Visage going forward through their next 30+ years of incarnations! This was some tough machine funk that pointed the way forward from the already tough “Pleasure Boys” single. The three sides were comfortably in the Visage wheelhouse by that point, albeit with a very different singer. We’ve only recently obtained this single and have written about is earlier. Giving this single a home on this compilation made all the sense in the world to me.

One day I should gag and buy the OST LP to the Randal Kleiser film “Summer Lovers,” from whence the song originally came, to get the short version of the track. For canonical sake. Following the single by The Cage [Featuring Nona Hendryx] came the actually rare [to me] 7″ version of “Love Glove.” The LPs and CDs I have of “Beat Boy” all sport the long version on the UK 12″ and I did not have the UK 7″ single of this. But I did remember that the 1993 DLX RM of “Fade To Grey: The Singles Collection” did have two bonus tracks. One of them was the 7″ mix of “Love Glove,” So that went straight in there.

Many years ago my friend JT send me a DVD with all of his Visage rips [just in case] and when reviewing all of the mixes and cuts on it, I noticed that he had remix of “Pleasure Boys” that was very different with a radical re-edit of the track from the familiar 12″ single. On that record, the 7″ was edited from the 12″ mix, which went on vamping for another three minutes, instrumentally. What JT had sent me was much more different. I later found out that Razormaid had mixed the track and that this mix was just that. This definitely needed to sit next to the tracks from The Cage!

A couple of years ago, I managed to buy the 2nd Razormaid EP for a song and it had a magnificent remix of “Love Glove” that put the band’s own Long Version as on the UK 12″ to shame. This great remix now had a new home. I also had a mint copy of the “Beat Boy” UK 7″ which I played once and both of the sides would be compiled onto this disc now. The final loose track I had was the instrumental version of “Love Glove” which was a bonus track on the UK 12″ of that single. A record I bought when it came out in 1984.

There are a few more Visage rarities from this era that will bring me back to this one in future years. I guarantee it. Such as the “Pleasure Boys” white label promo 12″ single. It had the 6:58 Dance Mix on the A-side but a 6:14 Instrumental Mix on its B-side. Then there’s the thought of compiling a Visage BSOG with all of the loose mixes and sides in a big thick, digital brick. I feel winded just thinking about it.

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