Last year had been a very busy year. The blog had gotten cobwebs and 2023 seemed to be the year where the supremely estimable reissue label Rubellan Remasters have managed to issue eleven LPs, in at least two different color vinyl pressings [save for the 3xLP tricolored “Boingo Alive”] while having only two of the silver discs to catch my eye. Can you forgive me for now just mentioning that almost a year after the goddesslike Cristina disc, there was finally further Monk-bait last December with a pair of Vivabeat releases. The first ever CD release of their debut album, “Party In The War Zone” as well as a compilation LP that covered that initial period and beyond. First up on the dais today is the silver disc, of course.

Vivabeat: Party In The War Zone – US – CD [2023]

1. Working For William
2. From The Bop
3. To The Heart
4. Not Dead Anymore
5. Popgirl
6. Man From China
7. Wild World
8. Enemy Fire
9. I Know Your Room
10. Jet Set
11. The House Is Burning (But There’s No One Home)
12. Tents
13. Angry Red Planet
14. The Good Life
15. What We Talk About (When We Talk About Love)
16. The Power Of Love
17. Man From China (Alternate Version)
18. On Patrol
19. Shine
20. Blue Guitars

I recall seeing the very orange Vivabeat album back in the day, but I never managed to see a video or hear them on college radio, so I passed on the record. I hadn’t even read any reviews of it. <flash forward 37 years> I finally bought a copy of the LP in 2017, since buying such records has been a reflex action by me for at least 30 years. Something I’ve heard of but not heard from the New Wave era is an automatic purchase for me now. But naturally, I have not had the free time to play it in the last seven years. The sad story of my life.

I had been planning to buy a copy of the single “Man From China” to get the sole non-LP B-side associated with the album, “On Patrol,” and craft my own CD [in my copious free time], but now that’s more than moot seeing as how Rubellan have worked hand-in-hand with the band to make this a party to remember. The full album has been appended with another ten tracks; many of them previously unreleased, for maximum impact. It seems the band continued to exist until 1986 in its initial form, even though their sole album and single were issued on Charisma Records in 1979.

The band had a single silver disc, out in 2001 called “The Good Life 1978-1986” and two of the bonus tracks here were from that disc: “The House Is Burning [But There’s No One Home],” and “Tents.” The remainder of the bonus tracks in bold above were all new to the ear. The cover art has obviously been reconfigured to be less orange; which had been a sticking issue with the band for 44 years, but no longer. I finally sampled the single “Man From China” on iTunes and heard a left field mixture of pulse gated Farfisa organ drone with …Moroderesque sequencing and an appealing hybrid vigor like little else I could name. So my buying instincts in 2017 were duly sound, as confirmed below from band member Mick Muhlfriedel’s Soundcloud.

As mentioned up front, there’s two completely different Vivabeat packages from Rubellan for discerning aesthetes with the LP only having half of its tunes in common with the CD. The LP is on a blue and purple swirl LP with 300 pressed for your listening pleasure.

Vivabeat: The House Is Burning – The Best Of Vivabeat 1979-1986 – US – blue + purple LP [2023]

1. Man From China
2. Working For William
3. The House Is Burning (But There’s No One Home)
4. Tents
5. From The Bop
6. Gray, Gray, Gray
7. Blue Guitars
8. Angry Red Planet
9. What We Talk About (When We Talk About Love)
10. Henry James
11. Glisser le Rat
12. The Last White Man

The titles that aren’t on the CD version were later tracks from the “Good Life” CD we mentioned earlier, with the song titles in bold being previously unreleased. If some of the songs look familiar from the “Good Life” CD of 2001, these are different recordings with original vocalist Terrence Robay; remixed in 2023 by the producer Earl Mankey. Clem Burke of Blondie even played drums on the new version of “Blue Guitars” for extra New Wave goodness. If you’re all in on Vivabeat, then this is your lucky day since both formats have a hefty 25 tracks between them.

The CD is $15.99 and the LP is $26.99 and if you need it all, the ComboPAK™is a perfectly logical $42.98. Once I get back from my vacation and I can see the music sale amortization of my Record Cell continuing, I’d like to convert some of that cash yet to come into a nice, big fat Rubellan Remasters order where I catch up on the last year [or more] of releases that I’ve held off on for one reason or another. But that’s me. If these call out to you then DJ hit that button!

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