[…continued from last post]

Of course, in 1986, no one knew publicly that Steve Strange had a heroin addiction. This accounts for numerous ill-conceived musical efforts in the broad spectrum of Rock and Pop music. Which is sad, of course. The sadder part was there’s no shortage of terrible albums where heroin can’t be blamed at all! Where it was down to chart chasing, bad judgement, second guessing, and artists who had simply lost touch with their creative powers.

In the decade following the “Strange Cruise” launch pad explosion, we simply didn’t hear much of Steve Strange. Meanwhile, the music industry wasn’t standing still. In 1982 the compact disc made its long-awaited [by me, anyway] debut. The first “Visage” album was out there even in Orlando, Florida, where I lived in to mid 80s. I bought the first copy I saw after the summer of 1985 when I had gotten my first CD player. Probably within the first year I was CD compliant. The highly desirable CD of “The Anvil” was reputed as well from this time but I never managed to find a copy. Ever.

Owing to that difficulty, I was excited when I saw in a catalog of CD imports that I bought many things from in the late 80s, that the “Fade To Grey: The Singles Collection” made it to the silver disc and I was on that one like white on rice. It was for a few years for me, the only way to experience the exquisite “The Damned Don’t Cry,” albeit in its 7″ edit only.

I had a policy of always looking in the “V” bins for Visage singles and any 12″singles I saw made their way into the Record Cell. I had kept every Visage 12″ I had bought new, but I managed to round up copies of “Mind Of A Toy” and the all-powerful “Visage” single. The latter’s 12″ remix was a stunner, hearing it possibly a decade after its release. Thanks to the catalogs I was supplementing my local buying with.

The odd thing was though, that to this day, I’ve never ever seen any copy, either 7″ or 12″, of “Fade To Grey” in a record store. The US Dance Mix EP with the mighty US John Luongo extended remix [my first extended remix – and a great one!] was everywhere at the time. Maybe the fact that even the 12″ A/B side were the straight LP mixes, convinced importers to pass that disc up? The single in both formats is still in my want list but to this day it’s not in my collection.

Speaking of singles, there was a flurry of Visage CD singles in the early 90s that I managed to find on the ground or in catalogs. There was an Old Gold CD-5 EP with all three 12″ extended remixes on the silver disc that I found in Canada. Then a German EP with the unique German-only 6:17 “Fade To Grey” extended re-edit, as well as the full length “Damned Don’t Cry” and the Dance Dub of “Beat Boy.” I got this one in both the jewel box and cardboard sleeve version! And finally there was a Post-Modern remix single of “Fade To Grey” that I bought anyway. I can’t remember how trancy this may have been, and I got the 12″ as well as the promo-only 2×12″ version for the collector’s sickness.

Then with the 1993 Bassheads remix reactivated, there was a new issue of “Fade To Grey: The Singles Collection” the following year, now re-titled “Fade To Grey: The Best Of Visage” which appended this 7″ remix as well as the digitally m.i.a. “Love Glove” 7″ mix on it, so naturally I had to buy one. Especially since it was a US CD and inexpensive.

Then, in 1997, the unthinkable happened and the long-sought after “The Anvil” album got a second released on CD from the obscure US reissue label, One Way Records. I bought one of these immediately and was graced with the lushly dark second Visage album finally on the silver disc to enjoy normally. It had been an agonizing dozen year wait from my perspective. And it wasn’t until the internet era that I ever saw evidence of the first German pressing from 1993, though always out of my budget at three figures in the aftermarket.

A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS

So in the 90s, the vast majority of the action on the Visage front was all about making inroads to the silver disc. Steve Strange himself had been silent ever since the 1986 “Strange Cruise” album. With but a single, obscure exception. It was in 1991 when viewing a record catalogue in the pre-internet era, that I saw a [gasp] Steve Strange solo single! I ordered it immediately, half expecting another singer using the same name on the actual disc. But no! The “Bolan-ESQ” single was absolutely our Steve singing a medley of T-Rex hits on the A-side with an all-new B-side called ‘The Best Is Yet To Come” which offered a moody, angular take on Synthpop that I was definitely down with. The project seemed to be down to just Steve and the producer and engineering team, Steven Robert Glen and Tim Jones. They all shared credit on the B-side.

The A-side was good fun. It was T-Rex? How could it not be? The B-side hit closer to the Visage marks with a track that avoided the pitfalls that had happened on some of “Beat Boy” and almost all of “Strange Cruise.” You could color me intrigued, but aside from the fact that I owned the 7″ [with a promo sticker on it] and almost no-one else did, I waited the rest of the decade for more Steve recordings to manifest to no avail. The promise held in this obscure single would go dormant for the rest of the decade. It would be not until the cusp of the new millennium that I’d once again hear about Steve Strange. And the news wasn’t auspicious.

Next: …The Damned Don’t Cry For Help