Browsing the HMV.com pre-orders section, I spotted this:-
The 20th* anniversary of White Ladder is released on Feb 14th, which will make a nice present for someone. If Mrs F is reading this**, hint, hint.
White double vinyl (for the first time), double CD (or quadruple vinyl) for the box including B-sides, demos and a book.
(*) 22nd anniversary if you bought it directly from him at a gig in Dingwalls, as I did.
(**) she isn’t.
SteveT says
Time for a reappraisal. I played this album to death at the time and bought several other of his albums before he seemed to fall off the radar.
I doubt I can find the albums I own as long since consigned to the garage but I might give this one a punt when it comes out.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Ruddy heck, where did those years go? I bought this when it was recently out – my copy says 1998 on the back, which doesn’t chime with a 20th anniversary, but there you go – but I had NO IDEA it was that far back anyway; seems like last year or the one before.
Where is he now? Always expected him to do more good things, but somehow lost his signal on the radar screen, as Steve seems to have done too.
retropath2 says
He actually improved for a while, tho’ I too lost contact about a decade ago. His band with Neil MacColl was terrific, especially when Neil and Katherine Williams were the support. (Jings, that was Life In Slow Motion, in 2005. Terrific album. I see I have Mutineers from 2014, but can’t recall a damn thing about it.)
Tiggerlion says
It’s funny how time slips away differently for different things. White Ladder does seem like 20 years ago but it’s nearly 40 years since London Calling was released. Fuck me!
Twang says
I loved this album but I saw him in concert and the drummer did craaaaazzzzy gurning and clowning about which was intolerable and I left early and haven’t listened to him since. Life is hard.
retropath2 says
That drummer’s long gone. Was that not anyway just to take attention from Gray’s toydogonacardashboard wobbly head?
(@ posts and 2 turds, eh, Twang? 😉
fentonsteve says
And playing bass and guitar for DG provided a much-needed boost for the chaps from The Fat Lady Sings.
Twang says
Yes I’m grumpy at the moment. Everything is going to shit in the world – it’s getting me down. I generally dislike turd dropping posts in the middle of a love in but I can see the pleasure some get, like farting in a lift or picking a scab. I’ll try to get over it.
minibreakfast says
Never heard this album (bar the overplayed singles) despite seeing it on a weekly basis in the charity shops.
fentonsteve says
It’s well worth 99p.
Lemonhope says
I heard his Sell Sell Sell album before White Ladder and as much as I enjoyed SSS, WL was such a leap it was obvious it just needed a hit single and it would be big. Didn’t quite expect it to become as big as it did (the stats are quite something and surprising, too*)
I found his subsequent releases were each worse than the last and lost interest, but I enjoyed this track, ‘The Sapling’ (2019)
Lemonhope says
* White Ladder spent almost three consecutive years in the UK top 100, charting between May 2000 and March 2003. Its total charting time as of 2015 is 175 weeks, making it one of the longest-charting albums in UK chart history. It was massively successful in Ireland, where it spent six consecutive weeks at number one on the Irish Albums Chart and had sold 350,000 copies by 2002. It is currently the biggest selling album of all time in Ireland.[2] White Ladder was the fifth best-selling album of the 2000s in the UK, selling 2.9 million copies.[3] White Ladder has sold over 3 million copies in the UK,[4] making it the tenth best-selling album of the 21st century[5] and the 26th best-selling album of all time.[6] The album has also sold over 7 million copies worldwide.[2]
Moose the Mooche says
…and yet unlike Rumours, Dark Side of the Moon and other whopping big albums, nobody’s listening to it now.
fentonsteve says
Give it time…
minibreakfast says
See also White On Blonde, Scissor Sisters debut, Jagged Little Pill, No Angel.
fentonsteve says
White On Blonde is another vinly denier.
minibreakfast says
It did come out on vinyl, and will set you back a fair bit to buy one now: https://www.discogs.com/Texas-White-On-Blonde/release/2599233
(If you can find one. None currently for sale on the Cogs.)
fentonsteve says
25th anniversary SDE in 2022, maybe?
Lemonhope says
I would imagine that of the 3,020,000 who bought it, 20, 000 play it once a year [after hearing Babylon on the radio] and the other 3 million have forgotten that they bought it*
*I suspect that the same people bought The Man Who, Talk On Corners, Life For Rent, Hopes And Fears, etc [all in the top 50, btw]
fentonsteve says
Trivia I find amazing: Hopes and Fears sold more than The Joshua Tree.
minibreakfast says
That’s definitely one I bought at the time but have since donated.
Arthur Cowslip says
“Hopes and Fears”?? I don’t even know what that is!
Arthur Cowslip says
Just looked it up…. and now wish I hadn’t…..
minibreakfast says
Not keen, eh?
Geddit?! KEANE!
*guffaws with laughter, trips over pumpkin, passes out*
fentonsteve says
I bought the debut following his appearance on Later… and Flesh because Neill MacColl is on it. I didn’t bother with Sell, Sell Sell.
I then saw him supporting The Fat Lady Sings* one week, and Maria McKee the next, at Dingwalls. I was blown away by the new songs and bought White Ladder out of his suitcase at the lip of the stage. It was even better than I hoped.
I remember he did a lovely version of R.E.M.’s Everybody Hurts at the McKee gig. I also remember standing next to Clare Grogan at the bar. What a night!
(*) Dates suggest this can’t have been the same gig, as TFLS spilt 5 years before White Ladder came out. It might have been a Nick Kelly solo show.
Hamlet says
Yes, I bought this when it came out, and no: I haven’t played it for ages. This Year’s Love is a cracker, though, and Babylon’s still a great radio song.
Mind you, I genuinely can’t think of many albums I’ve bought in the last twenty years that I play regularly. Coles Corner by Richard Hawley is a great late-night album that gets an airing… after that, I’m struggling.
dai says
Never liked his voice.
SteveT says
He had an album called Lost Songs that for me was even better.
Lemonhope says
Lost Songs was the one album that bucked the trend of diminishing returns, although it didn’t really count as a ‘new’ album so I didn’t mention it [also assumed that no-one else would know what I was talking about] But yes, I loved that at the time, it’s similar in concept to Prefab Sprout’s Protest Songs.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Yes, I liked that one too – it sits alongside White Ladder on my shelves, whereas the later albums are ‘somewhere in the pile’ because they are rarely called upon to rotate.
There’s another retrospective of his that covers his earlier EPs/singles – anyone got that – is it worth picking up? The dodgers have it for about £4 at the mo’.
Lemonhope says
Yeah I’ve got that one also. It’s not bad. Not as good as Lost Songs, but better than his studio albums that followed White Ladder*
*from memory (it’s been a while since I’ve played it so just had a gander at the track list on Spotify)
minibreakfast says
Babble on.
*head wobble*
Moose the Mooche says
Wah Lerder.
*further wobbleage*
nicktf says
This one provokes a memory in me of being in a clothes shop in Weston Super Mare of all places and hearing a deconstructed tune that was naggingly familiar. I remember kicking it around in my head for the walk home until bingo! – “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye”.
Bought the album on the strength of that, didn’t like Babylon, but thought the rest was OK. Still dig out the SHWG/In to the Mystic cover from time to time, though.
Arthur Cowslip says
I really don’t mean this in a sniffy way, but I’m surprised to find so many people praising him on here. I had filed him as “boring, bland. MOR” as soon as I heard that big hit single he had! Maybe I was a bit hasty.
KDH says
I remember walking in to HMV in Grafton Street back in the day and hearing “Please Forgive Me” – I thought it was tremendous, like a (then) modern day “Everybody’s Talkin’”.
Can’t stand his deconstruction of “Say Hello…”, mind.
fentonsteve says
I’ve just had a thought… will the vinyl have the hidden track before Please Forgive Me?
Perhaps a 13″ pressing with a band around the lead-in groove?
Lemonhope says
Oh yeah, I’d forgotten all about that. That was weird the way you accessed it, wasn’t it something like press play, then immediately press the back (track skip) button?
Mike_H says
Perhaps they could do something similar to Kamasi Washington’s “Heaven and Earth” 3-CD set, where the third “Inbetween” disc (The Choice) is hidden in the middle of the triple gatefold and you have to open up the perforations on the cardboard to access it.
SteveT says
Just looked at the tracklisting. It is not massively impressive.
Original album plus 7 tracks not on the album plus 5 demos. 3 demos of songs on original
album and 2 demos of the new songs not on the album.
If it comes down to the price of a single album I might be tempted but at £ 22 no thank you.