Frankie Goes To Hollywood aka FGTH

any fans?

the US mix of relax aka the NY mix and wrongly known as the sex mix (which was the original 16 min version but mistitled on the US mix which is 8 mins and completely different) is the perfect example of a twelve inch

and ZTT have been doing a great job of reissuing their stuff with loads of 12" mixes on cd for the first time and brand new unheard material being released for the first time, many of which hasn't even been on bootleg before

i'm hoping for slave to the rhythmn to come out. they recorded it with trevor horn before grace jones

welcome to the pleasuredome and all the surrounding singles and remixes were just amazing. by comparison liverpool was a dissapointment, but there were still a few great tunes. watching the wildlife was my favourite from that album

I liked FGTH's music a lot, but mainly for Trevor Horn's production (you could hear similar
musical notes in a lot of the stuff he produced at the time, such as Grace Jones, Art of
Noise and Propaganda).

And Yes.....

Mr Horn even managed to make the abysmal Dollar sound really good, on the track 'Give Me Back My Heart.'

I believe Trev could be one of the few people who could actually polish a turd, not that I've ever heard his collaborations with Robbie Williams (or wish to).

Pretty good bass player as well.

I always thought it was amusing that FGTH's first two videos, "Relax" (UK version: lotsa
implied gay sex) and "Two Tribes" (Cold War/anti-nuclear satire with unflattering
depictions of Reagan and Chernenko) were followed by a granny-friendly depiction
of the Nativity for "The Power of Love".

Annoyed the hell out of the hardcore Yes crowds though..."eff off Specky" was the cry at The Apollo in Glasgow

They must have been doing industrial-strength drugs to come up with that wheeze: "Aw man, Jon's quit...hey, let's get Trevor Horn to sing for us!" (OK, OK, I know that's not how it really happened).

Poor Trev must have been bricking it at the start of every show on that tour.

It was a wee bit like that...according to what I've read..lol. The album was actually pretty good

owner of a lonely heart was good. very ZTT/horn sounding

propaganda were another good ZTT band, there's a deluxe version of the remx album thats just out

Id just passed my driving test when Frankie burst onto the scene. I remember vividly hot summer nights cruiseing town listening to the 12" Welcome to the pleasure dome (single) great bassline.

Love love LOVE "Two Tribes" in particular. It just sums up the whole 80s East v West Cold War paranoia in their typically boombastic style.

"Rage Hard" was amazing too, but they seemed to be on the wane by then.

way way ahead of their time, their 12" remixes were great aswell, think I still have the power of love 12" picture disc somewhere, and have welcome to the pleasure dome on my ipod gym playlist, killer guitar riff in that.

i really like the alternative power of love version that was released whenever it was, 95 or something. they did some horrible ferry corsten remixes but stuck a slightly different alternate mix of the album version on the cd single that didn't have the spoken "hooded claw" intro

it was one of the tracks where the original demo ended up very similar to the released version, rather than the TH sounding singles

dont knock ferry corsten, he has created (or been part of) some of the greatest trance music ever..

'carte blanche' is one of the all time greats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron

Frankie Goes To Hollywood were a band I obsessed over in my youth, my favourite track by them was the International mix of relax that appeared as a b-side of the 12" of Welcome To The Pleasuredome.

quelle surprise, you appear to disagree, well i couldnt give a flying f... i know im right.

Trevor Horn was the master of the 12" mix with so many different versions coming out of Relax and Two Tribes - I'm sure I read somewhere that the multitute of mixes of TT was one reason it stayed at No 1 for so long and actually brought about a change in the chart rules to stop it happening again. I love the Carnage mix of TT with all the spoken warnings ("If your Grandmother or any other member of the family should die whilst in the shelter....") and the Rage Hard Young Person's Guide to the 12".

I used to love the cheerfully prententious sleeve-notes Paul Morley wrote for the
ZTT acts as well, like
"From these various pleasures make one continous pleasure".

relax and two tribes were my fav's..

I also love Love Train.. Hollly Johnson solo stuff wasnt too bad either

"Mine is the last voice you will ever hear...do not be alarmed!"

Yeah right, that's okay then, I'll just chill in that case.

The fact is that these were very scarey voice commands that were all very real at the time and could have been used for real. I bought the Two Tribes single and all the extra 12" versions too. They did terrify me a lot. It was a record very much of its time, hard to explain to anyone who wasn't about. To be 15 in that summer was to really have the cold war rammed home in brutal style. Two appallingly frightening nuclear war films had just been shown on TV in recent months, The Day After and also Threads. Cruise missiles were being delivered by the Americans into the UK amid huge protest at Greenham Common, and the old guard were still in control in the Kremlin. The slightest thing made you fear for world peace, such as the Korean jet shot down by the Soviet Union. The siren for the 4 minute warning was petrifying even on record. I always dreaded that I would be in school and hear it, without enough time to get home. If I had heard that sound for real I cannot imagine the fear. It turns out in a programme I watched about 2 years ago that we did infact come within a few minutes of an accidental nuclear exchange on 7th November 1983 that would have wiped the UK out and much of North America. It was bone chilling.

There are still plenty of those weapons out there to wipe us all out, even if the cold war hysteria no longer pervades the consciousness like it did in 1984. It could still happen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXx5Y2Fr2bk

patrick allen was the guy who did the voice overs for the original protect and survive videos. 20 of them made by the people behind charley says and crystal tips and alasdair. frankie sampled the original videos and also got him to record new voiceovers for the remixes

when the wind blows was another scary one for kids. created by raymond briggs who did the childrens favourite the snowman, turned into the cartoon with GMTV, i mean daybreak presenter aled jones singing the well known walking in the air song, it was a similarly styled cartoon that must have scared the bejesus out of small kids. also turned into a cartoon movie with mr happy roger waters from pink floyd taking over the second half of the album for a mini concept albums worth of material and david bowie and others providing more doom and gloom for the other tracks


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9aHT...eature=related

i like the welcome to the pleasuredome intro by geoffrey palmer from butterflies. gary taylor did intros to other mixes

http://i45.tinypic.com/i2vx92.jpg

http://i46.tinypic.com/25zmgt2.jpg


i was having a dig through the crates as i put some new needles on the turntables and i found these that were orphaned from the rest of the FGTH stuff. these were promos from the 93 era remixes. i forgot there was a single two tribes promo 12" as well as a double 12" promo. i was never that interested in any of the post frankie remixes so can't really remember what ones were finally released but there was a load of mixes on the promos that didn't get released in the end. most of them were little like the original. you had a remix that had the vocal on top of essentially another track altogether, and then instrumental versions of the remxies that had about zero percent original frankie on it

i think few people would have seen these before so took a couple of pics. the packaging was nice at least

Aye, our generation will always remember Protect and Survive and Threads. *shudder*

I loved FGTH too.