Customer Reviews

British Invasion

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On this CD, a word of caution...these are not original recordings but remakes, they are not the hits of the radio you remember. It would be nice if they bothered to mention it. It's rather obvious once you listen to the tracks. There are many CD's out there with the ORIGINAL recordings, I would go for those. The price isn't that much different. I am a record collector, so I am speaking from experience.

One of my favorite songs and videos from 1983 was "Come Dancing" by the Kinks. I really loved the different kinds of instruments used in that particular song. I recently heard it again on the radio during a retrospective salute to the music of the 1980's. I decided to try and find a CD that had "Come Dancing" along with some other '80's hits from my youth. I discovered the album "British Invasion" and purchased it right away. To my delight, the album had all original recordings of those wonderful songs that reminded me of how I used to be a huge MTV fan. The album was full of memories for me!! Besides "Come Dancing," it has such standard early MTV artists like Duran Duran(Hungry Like the Wolf), Billy Idol(Eyes Without a Face),and Eurythmics(Sweet Dreams.) This a great album and I was really surprised at the low price. You get twelve great songs for under $10!! The best part is that all the songs are all the original recordings. Just like I remember them.

Like so many other MP3 oldies collections flooding the market, this one is populated almost entirely by remakes. A few make a reasonable pass at the original tone, style and arrangement, but many more are appallingly mediocre imitations. In some cases it's difficult to tell whether the original artists are even involved in the re-recording, such as a deep-voiced remake of "I'm Henry the VIII, I Am" which may or may not have Peter Noone singing. In other cases the credits are honest enough to credit "Sweet's Brian Connolly" rather than The Sweet, "The Glitter Band" rather than Gary Glitter, and Denny Laine rather than The Moody Blues.

The differences from the originals are usually quite easy to spot, such as the stomping modern production of "Sunshine Superman," the cheesy organ introducing "United We Stand," and the tired vocal on "Magic." Ironically, the album's most-difficult-to-license artist, the Beatles, appear to be presented in their original pre-Capitol recordings with Tony Sheridan. Another oddity of this collection is that it stretches well past the original mid-60s British Invasion to remakes of `70s and `80s hits by the Sweet, Level 42 and Maxine Nightingale. You're better off finding a collection of original recordings, such as Hip-O's Gold: British Invasion or Rhino's out-of-print nine-volume series The British Invasion: History of British Rock, and treating yourself to the real thing. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

I noticed that some folks are reviewing a different album here. These are indeed the original 80's songs and artists for the 80's British Invasion collection with the British flag pumps on the cover (Culture Club, Billy Idol, Duran Duran, The Kinks, etc.). It's a bit confusing, I think, because the British Invasion usually refers to the music of the 60's (The Hollies, etc.). The real problem, however, is in the CD mixing...which is frankly horrible sounding and extremely high on treble. It almost hurts the ears to listen to this, they've pushed the treble so high. Awful. I checked this out from my local library as I was mildly interested in a few songs (I had the 45 of the Flock of Seagulls hit "I Ran" as a kid), but you'd be better to search out these songs somewhere else.