It's sad that he never caught on bigger in the US, as I think that given the opportunity and exposure, he would have had the potential to write more and better songs for an American (and world) audience. But, due to his only marginal success in the US, he stuck to his German language only material, and pretty much isolated himself to a European audience. Just my opinion.
When I first started collecting the tracks from this album, I spent an age trying to find the "original" mixes. After a time, stupid as I was, I finally realized that the "mixes" on the album were actually the originals, and there weren't any more other than the ones that I put on the remix disc. Silly that he should name the album tracks as mixes. It was a tad confusing. If I am completely wrong on this, let me know...
Unfortunate that he died so young. I wasn't really into his later work, so it didn't impact me that much. I was surprised, though. It can be jolting when anyone, especially a star, dies before their time.
Although it looks a little dull, I like how the remix cover turned out with the chrome signature. I love photoshop layer styles....
Not the best quality on the tracks, here. I was able to put both albums and their covers in a zip less than 200Mb. Sorry...
I was a HUGE Falco fan back in the day. I have his first album, "Einzelhaft," mainly for "Der Kommissar." His original version of that is SO MUCH BETTER than the bit hit that After the Fire had with it. Well, his IS the original!
ReplyDeleteI don't understand a single word of that album, but I still love it. And it's so sad that he died young, especially as he was working on new music and was expected to have a big comeback.
Probably won't get this since I already have pretty much what I need - but in my opinion, the best two versions to have of RMA (and there are quite a few) are the 8:20 "Salieri" mix (which was on the original US LP), and the 4:02 "Canadian" version (no idea why it's called that), which is basically an edit of the Salieri (ie, no German lyrics, but the English history factoids.)
ReplyDeleteIt should also be noted that, not to diss Falco, the main reason these records are good is more the Bolland brothers than him. The next album, Emotional, was really their (and his) masterpiece. Not a bad track on that one.
Kamikaze Capa, The Kiss of Kathleen Turner.....yer damn right, Emotional is a fine album that was lost in the mid 80's when all the bands that peaked in the first half of the decade were crashing.
DeleteI remember when Rock Me Amadeus beat Madonna's Crazy For You to No. 1 in the UK, great day. Massive drums on the Salieri Mix IIRC.
ReplyDeleteSeveral other groups at the time named their songs "remix" on the albums, if they were longer than the standard radio versions. It was actually clever marketing at the time!
ReplyDeleteFalco was an under-appreciated genius and Jeanny was an underappreciated song! It was actually a 4-part single release over several years, telling the story of Jeanny, who was apparently kidnapped or murdered. Each version was a completely different song based on the same melody!
GREAT STUFF