I’m playing the Welcome to the Pleasuredome album again after thirty-nine years and it hasn’t stood up so well. This LP was bloated excess at the time and it hasn’t improved with age. A bad assemblage of useful pieces.
This should have been a 40-minute single LP and not a 64-minute double. It was never going to be easy to live up to that earthshattering series of singles — but I should not be thinking “yes, yes, get on with it.” Cut “Pleasuredome” down to a tight eight minutes. Record 2 is basically surplus, fold in the least worst tracks. Done.
Mostly it’s Paul Morley in Svengali mode running out of ideas. I’ve always been a big Morley fan, but he had his, ah, misses. You can tell everyone had hit the void by side four and they still only managed 64 minutes. What is this “Only Star In Heaven” shit, Holly.
The main problem is the title track. Frankie’s entire sound was instrument samples from the Fairlight. For this one, they went for thirteen minutes of lard with an acoustic guitar solo.
(The producer credit is Trevor Horn, but he apparently ran out of time and Stephen Lipson finished it.)
The LP version should have been replaced with the second 12″. The famous 12 XZTAS 7, twelve minutes of glory in that marvellous fruitbowl sleeve. I was so impressed when I saw it in the record shop. Here’s that 12″.
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