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Left me wanting more

J. Brady | PAWLEYS ISLAND, SC United States | 09/08/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Disc one : The demos range from sometimes confident and promising to mostly awkward and amatuerish. Let's face it, that's why they are demos. They weed out the bad songs. And early Culture Club demos are a decidedly mixed bag. The early hits are then well represented, with some b-sides and choice album cuts thrown in. The song Victims is heard first in a recorded rehearsal that begins shakey and ends in a ridiculously campy argument between the band members, with the actual song - still a gorgeous, tender ballad - ending the disc.

Disc two : Starts promising, includes the song "Colour By Numbers", so good it should have been an A-side, not a B-side, or at very least the title track to their incredibly sucessful second album. The third Culture Club album is represented by one song ( another great ballad, Mistake Number 3) and the fourth is ignored altogether.And then all of a sudden we find ourselves inexplicably in the middle of Boy George's solo career, with a few new remixes and some previously unreleased material, rounded out with the more accesible tracks from his under-rated and misunderstood solo album Cheapness and Beauty.

Disc three: We begin where we last left the still solo George, with a campy, hard rock cover of these Boots Were Made For Walking. If nothing else I can assure you it sounds better than KMFDM's recent ham-fisted version of that same song. A few new Culture Club songs follow, some good, some just OK, then a few more demos ( again, some really good , especially the ballad Grand Scheme of Things , and some are OK - experimental or just half baked ). The remixes are what makes this disc really good. Strange Voodoo , If I Were U , and an updated, electro/techno Church of the Poison Mind are the highlights.

CD four: My favourite disc , it was remixed by Richie Stevens ( who also had a hand in the Gorillaz vs Spacemonkeys "Laika Come Home", a brilliant dub reggae / chill out / groove remix cd - he was one of the "Spacemonkeys" ). Dub reggae and electronic sounds are crafted expertly onto Culture Club and Boy George songs old and new ( in fact I think the "Scary Newman" remix of Cold Shoulder, on the 2000 Culture Club album Don't Mind If I Do far surpasses the original , and should have been a single.) There are again a few demos that close out the disc, the best being a song called Armageddon, which happens to be my favourite song in the entire box set. My one and only complaint about this set is its presentation and packaging, it is the one thing that keeps this from a four star rating. My main gripe is that the discs tend to want to fall out of the book unless the book itself is left flat on its side. Indeed , I have had to purchase ANOTHER copy of this very expensive boxed set because the first and third discs fell out of the box and were lost forever in a nightclub when I was playing a few songs from the set. Sure, it was ultimately my own fault, I should have had each disc in a seperate slip case, but I wanted to show some people the book. Which brings me to my other complaint on the book. It has absolutely nothing interesting in the way of liner notes, other than the odd quips and rambling anecdotes from ( who else ) Boy George, a few words from the band members ( and by a few I mean literally less than a dozen)and production credits on the songs ( using hard to follow symbols, no less. ) I wanted more information on the demos, i.e. when they were recorded? are they group efforts or George's work alone? I wanted more vintage photos. There are FAR TOO MANY photos of George, and his boyfriend, and his entourage ( OK!! WE GET IT !! YOU HANG OUT WITH THE Beautiful People ) And to top it off, despite it being called very simply CULTURE CLUB, roughly half the material is Boy George's solo work. If I'd wanted a box set of his songs, I'd surely buy one. I am a fan, after all. But this is a Culture Club box set. And I do love it. I certainly paid enough for it. ( The both of them, actually .) I'd maybe have done it a little differently. The botom line is that most fans who are willing to pay for a box set already have most of these songs. There is maybe one full disc of demos that are good and one full disc of new remixes that are previously unavailable. The remainder is either readily available or is of little or no merit or interest.

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