Customer Reviews

To Beat Or Not to Beat / Long Time Gone

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I never even knew Paul Collins & The Beat continued on after their second album, "The Kids Are The Same". What a revelation to find that even more of their fantastic, underrated power pop was preserved on tape and that they had released more music than I ever knew. I'm not going to bore you with verbiose reviews of every track on this CD. I'm simply going to tell you that if you dig power pop, GET THIS CD!!!

This 2-on-1 CD features 1983's To Beat or Not to Beat and 1985's Long Time Gone. These two E.P.'s are brought together with several bonus tracks. Compared to the songs on the 2-on-1 "The Beat" and "The Kids Are the Same" compilation, which includes tracks from 1979 and 1982, the music of the Paul Collins' Beat improved hugely, finding a perfect combination of power chords and melodic hooks. This is some of the best unheard 80s power pop out there. My only real issue with this release is that the mastering is very uneven--I'm not quite sure what sources they used for this material, but the dynamics of the audio are all over the place: often shrill, other times flat and dull. Not sure if that's just the way these tracks sounded when recorded way back then, or if this was just a bad mastering job.

Track list:


All Over The World / Dance Dance / Making You Mine / Burning Desire / Give Me The Drugs / Always Got You On My Mind / Broken Hearted / Long Time Gone / Working On A Good Thing / Find Somebody Else / Standing In The Rain / Good Times / Too Young / Please Stay / Girl From NYC (live)

This is crap. No wonder I never heard of these guys and one listen will tell why they never went anywhere