Niedziela 5 Lut 2006, 12:07

What Paul McCartney did with Let It Be, you know, remixing and reordering the tracks to make it the way he intended it to be… it's a bit silly. You can't change history like that. The album's clearly a classic the way the world listened to it up until that point. But i understand the appeal… what if… I always had the feeling that Duran Duran's Seven And The Ragged Tiger had too many layers of sound and production, in a way the same critique McCartney had on the original version of Let It Be.

Well. Duran Duran are not The Beatles, but their first two albums are classic in their own way. And so is Notorious, and the Arcadia record. Seven is the odd duck in this series, so what would the album have sounded like if they hadn't re-recorded it three (or four?) times.

There's this very rare demo version of a song called Seven And The Ragged Tiger, which later turned into The Seventh Stranger. The band (Nick Rhodes in that case) called it a hoax, but it kind of reveals to me what the album could have been like… more guitar orientated, beatlesque… quite amazing.

So, what this post is all about, is to rearrange the album in a way that it makes it imagineable what it could have, or should have, sound like. To be honest, i hate that record. Some of the worst songs ever are on that record. I Take The Dice for instance. Blegh! My ideal track-listing would be something like this:

1 The Reflex (original album version)
2 New Moon On Monday (original album version)
3 Faith In This Colour (ITSISK b-side)
4 Secret Oktober (UotS b-side)
5 Of Crime And Passion
6 Union Of The Snake
7 Is There Something I Should Know? (in absence of anything better really)
8 Tiger Tiger (Ian Little mix - b-side of NMOM - far, far superior to the album version)
9 The Seventh Stranger

So what do you think? Blasphemy?

Duran duran
Seven And The Ragged TigerThe ReflexNew Moon On MondayFaith In This ColourSecret OktoberOf Crime And PassionUnion Of The SnakeIs There Something I Should KnowTiger TigerThe Seventh Stranger