Dressed To Sell (The Golden Age Of Singles)

If you walk into any record shop these days looking for the new single by a band, you’ll be lucky if you get presented with any choice beyond several versions of the song, most of which are completely unnecessary remixes, spread in various configurations across a series of five inch CD singles.

If you’re really lucky, you might get a poster included that’s been folded so many times to fit it into the five inch square jewel case that by the time you’ve opened it up the chances of it fulfilling its stated purpose of hanging on your wall are slimmer than getting a word in edgeways with Russell Brand.

If you’re really, really lucky you might get a series of postcards, or a set of faux Polaroid’s, or even a calendar that is inevitable so small that you can’t help but wonder if it was originally designed for distribution in Lilliput.

Occasionally you’ll get a vinyl release, but usually only in the case of up and coming indie bands that no-one has heard of yet, and quite probably never will (but for those few that do, the early fans can forever smugly ask “do you have the seven inch vinyl of so-and-so? No? Shame, I’ve got ten copies myself”).

Even then the packaging will undoubtedly be plain and uninspiring, more often than not just a standard cardboard sleeve with similar artwork to the CD release.

In the case of dance music twelve inch vinyl releases, the packaging is even blander, usually just a plain white card sleeve with a sticker advertising the artist and track name and very little else. True, it does the job, but there’s not the sense of excitement that we used to get in the latter years of the eighties when my favourite bands were putting out singles.

Back in the days before CDs appeared on the scene, a state of affairs that no doubt seems inconceivable to any of today’s music fans under the legal drinking age, there was much more creativity and imagination involved in the release of a new single, particularly in the rock music arena which I grew up in, where almost literally anything was possible.

The advent of a new single wasn’t just about what it would sound like, although pre-internet and MTV we would be eager awaiting getting our hands on new material, as the only chance we usually got to hear new music from a band would be if one of the local rock DJs managed to get hold of an advance promotional copy, it was also about what it would look like, and what it would come packaged with.

There were, of course, your fairly standard seven and twelve inch picture bags, but the record companies twigged early on that fans like myself were only too willing to shell out on multiple collectible versions of their favourite band’s singles, and so set their marketing departments the task of finding ways of feeding our addictions and filling their coffers.

The next step up from the bog standard picture bag was the gatefold sleeve, previously only the domain of rock albums like Iron Maiden’s Piece Of Mind with its gorgeous wraparound Derek Riggs artwork that the record companies knew would sell enough copies to justify the additional production expense.

Poison’s Nothin’ But A Good Time single came in a particularly eye-catching lime green gatefold sleeve adorned with dayglo pictures of the chicks-with-dicks themselves. Great song, garish cover, but this was the realm of the hair band and gimmicks like this did sell additional copies of the singles. I regularly bought all of the limited editions of many a rock band, not with thoughts that they may one day become valuable and provide me with a nice little nest egg (a good job too, as it turns out), but for the sheer joy of having all these unusual releases.

Poster bags were another popular format, which were understandably more common among the better looking bands, not only enticing us to buy additional copies of the single, but also giving us the means to plaster our walls with spandex-clad long-haired mascara-wearing men. Which was nice.

Picture discs offered a wide range of possibilities, and the various marketing departments didn’t disappoint, rising to the challenge of parting me from my hard earned on an ever-increasing basis.

There were of course the bog standard picture discs in seven or twelve inch format (or both occasionally) that would replicate the regular edition’s artwork, some of which were particularly effective.

Iron Maiden were one of my favourite bands in this medium, and luckily for me (and Steve Harris’s bank account) they produced picture discs of some variety for pretty much all of their eighties output, albums and singles alike.

My personal favourites were Derek Riggs’s awesome artwork for Aces High, which gave you the opportunity to have twelve inches of Maiden mascot Eddie’s grimacing face, topped off with a World War Two flying helmet, revolving forty five times a minute on your record player, and the Powerslave album, which faithfully recreated the detailed cover, one of my favourites.

London quartet Dogs D’Amour went one step further than this, combining the best of both worlds by having a gatefold sleeve into which the twelve inch pictures discs for their Satellite Kid and Trail Of Tears singles could be inserted. What made this stand out, however, was that each of the singles had a cartoon strip drawn by singer Tyla, who designed all of their covers, which when placed correctly into the gatefold sleeve enabled you to read the whole story.

In addition to the usual circular picture discs, there were a good number of shaped discs, which due to the limitations of the area available to actually score the grooves into the vinyl usually carried identical tracks to the seven inch release.

One of my favourite examples of the shaped picture disc was W.A.S.P.’s PMRC-baiting single Animal (Fuck Like A Beast), cut into the shape of the bloody buzz-saw codpiece modelled by Blackie Lawless on the cover of the regular twelve inch.

Another favourite, and for my money one of the most imaginative picture discs ever to be released, was Guns’n’Roses classic Paradise City. The vinyl itself came as an eleven-inch disc cut into the shape of a gun, which was cool enough anyway, but the icing on the cake was that it came complete with a snakeskin design cardboard sleeve in the shape of a holster. A bottle of Jack Daniels to the bright spark who thought that one up.

Though I wasn’t quite as keen on it as I was on picture discs, coloured vinyl occasionally tempted me to part with my cash. I had a myriad of coloured twelve inch records, including silver (Queensryche’s Silent Lucidity), gold (Ozzy’s So Tired), yellow and blue (the excellent Dan Reed Network’s two disc Rainbow Child release), white (somewhat predictably Whitesnake’s nineteen eighty-nine redux of Fool For Your Loving), red (Judas Priest’s Painkiller single) and even luminous green (I’m looking at you, Poison, for Your Mama Don’t Dance).

I was particularly enamoured, however, with a show of patriotism from Bon Jovi for their Lay Your Hands On Me release. Putting out no less than three seven inch coloured vinyls, in red, white and blue, I thought it was both a clever marketing ploy and a great addition to my stupidly large collection. As if three versions weren’t enough, though, they ensured that my wallet was thoroughly cleaned out by also releasing it on a shaped picture disc.

Black PVC sleeves were another reasonably popular ploy by the record companies to part me from my money. Maybe it was due to the inherent risqué factor of the shiny, sweaty material (after all I had trousers made from the same stuff), or perhaps just because my addiction to limited edition packaging was spiralling dangerously out of control, but I even picked up possibly the worst KISS single of all time, Crazy Crazy Nights, in a PVC sleeve.

The Cult went one step further by not only releasing their Sun King single in a twelve inch black PVC sleeve, but also affixing hologram sticker to the front which inevitably I thought was the coolest thing ever for several minutes after I bought it.

W.A.S.P. had to go just that little bit further again, of course, releasing their I Don’t Need No Doctor single in a special blood pack (a gimmick recycled by Slayer in nineteen ninety-one for their Seasons In The Abyss CD single), but my personal award for the most original and outrageous format of all time goes to Bay Area thrashers Vio-lence.

The band, known for their aggressive marketing, came up with the ultimate in offensive packaging, even managing to get the format banned from some record shops, when they decided to release their Eternal Nightmare single in a special ‘vomit pack’.

This was a clear plastic sleeve filled with vomit (actually vegetable soup and vinegar, but it still gave off enough of a vile aroma to induce the genuine article if you got too close, especially on hot days) into which the single could be inserted. Sadly for the band it did little to raise their profile, but it did guarantee them a place in the history of music marketing.

Sadly the days of interesting formats seem to have gone the way of 8-tracks, cassette singles and Michael Jackson’s career, but back at the height of my collecting frenzy I was happier than a pig in shit every time another limited edition came along.

I do wonder, though, if just as I mourn the loss of these wonderful curiosities, that as the record companies are finally embracing downloads we’ll soon be mourning the loss of the simple five-inch CD single.