Someday, I need to examine all of the various China Crisis live albums, of which I’m not exactly certain how many there are! I say that because one of them [from 2014] was titled “China Greatness” and yet now there’s a completely different project from the band with that exact title! It comes to us from the radical non-profit Scot label Last Night From Glasgow, where it really is all about the music! This time the package is a re-jigging of a selection of CC deep cut favorites and hits they’re known for as arranged by their keyboardist Jack Hymers in what’s called a “cinematic style.”
Sampling the wares on iTunes revealed that the work seems to be a massive remix project with extensive orchestration and new arrangements with certain of the original song elements from the master tape, such as percussion, synths, and vocals being reused throughout. The new mix is by the band’s long-time engineer Mark Pythian. Where many of the songs also appearing in what amounts to orchestral dub mixes sans vocals in the second half of the program.
China Crisis: China Greatness – UK – 2xCD [2024]
- Animals In Jungles
- Wishful Thinking
- Arizona Sky
- It’s Everything
- Christian
- King In A Catholic Style
- Papua
- It’s Never To Late
- When The Piper Calls
- Black Man Ray
- You Did Cut Me
- It’s Never Too Late For You And Me Mix
- Wishful Thinking Brecon Beacons Mix
- Papua Pacific Mix
- It’s Everything Everything Mix
- King Reprise Mix
- Christian WW1 Mix
- Arizona Sequential Mix
- Black Man Way Mix
- The Understudy Mix
The set appears in 2xLP sets in yellow or red vinyl [red’s sold out] for $42.00 as well as a double CD for $22.00 that has my name on it. But LNFG have also made a single LP edit of the full package, also in yellow and red vinyl, for $34.00 with a further single LP color variant to appear late June ’24 in possibly green or cream wax for $35.00. All of this color vinyl action is more than I can bear, so you’ll excuse me if I just try to get the CD. I still need to order the new Blow Monkeys album from LNFG so hopefully I can scrape some nickels together to make this happen soon. My music budget was nonexistent even before the big trip across the pond, so we’ll see. But for any other China Crisis fans out there [and who isn’t?] then feel free to DJ hit that button.
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Post-Punk Monk 
Thanks for the tip on this release. I have ordered it & got a 15% discount as a new customer, which paid for the postage. There seem to be some interesting releases, not bad for a label named after a line from an ABBA song!
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Roy Solomon – Glad to be of service. That was a line from ab ABBA® song?! Who knew?
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It’s from Super Trouper “I was sick and tired of everything, when I called you last night from Glasgow”. ABBA were massive in the UK, not so much in the US though.
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Roy Solomon – Oh ABBA had plenty big hits in the US, but by the time of “Super Trouper” I’d stopped listening to US top 40 radio for at least two years. I only know “Lay All Your Love On Me” from
that album from a Disconet DJ mix CD I used to have… and Information Society and Erasure covers in the Record Cell.
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“Super Trouper” was not a hit in the U.S.
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Big Mark – That surprises me to hear. ABBA ruled the mid-late 70s period. What happened in 1980 to make it otherwise? Any theories?
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ABBA was never as big in the US as they were elsewhere in the world, and their US chart success tapered off dramatically after 1978 as they hit new heights in Europe. In their later period they would have three or four major hits from each album in the UK, but the last three albums of their original run produced a grand total of four Top 40 hits in the US. Only one of those made the Top 10 (“The Winner Takes It All”), and of those other three, only “Does Your Mother Know” even made the Top 20.
This is generally attributed to the group’s unwillingness to tour the US extensively. A lot of those other songs have become well known in the US in later years because of the Mamma Mia musical and films and their labels continuing to flog compilation albums, but ABBA was old news in the US by the early 80s.
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Big Mark – Tagged as spam and trashed! Since rectified. So ABBAs hits dried up in the US at exactly the time I stopped listening to Top 40, eh? Who knew.
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Testing – two responses to this have disappeared.
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Why would they be, everything has to sound uniform and copycat in the US and they only cared about their own acts and don’t know of a world outside themselves or how it sounds.
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markgcjack33 – Well put! A record like “O Superman” could NEVER make number two in the US!! There are massive financial structures in place by The Business [and by that, I mean The Industry…] to prevent exactly that!
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My copy of the CD has now arrived in today’s post, so I will have to try and find time to give it a listen this afternoon. Great service, with the download link sent in an email- not that I use downloads.
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