Customer Reviews

Double Shot: New Wave

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Back in 1999 and 2000 K-Tel teamed up with EMI-Capitol and released a series of these 'Double Shot' compilations, limiting the releases to only 24 tracks over 2 discs of material. 'Double Shot: New Wave' is one of better new wave releases in my collection, simply because it branches out beyond the typical hits of the decade and includes a number of gems and rarities.

This release does feature a number of overused tracks. "Walking On Sunshine" by Katrina And The Waves, "One Way Or Another" by Blondie, "Eyes Without A Face" by Billy Idol, and "Ghost Town" by The Specials are some of the tracks which often feature too much on other compilations of this kind. That's not to say that these aren't worthy of inclusion, but do we really want them yet again? For example, The Specials' "Ghost Town" was not a hit in the U.S. but a #1 record in the U.K., and it seems to be popping up everywhere! I suppose the collection had to include some of these more known hits in order to draw people in to getting this release. Additionally, considering this is a 1999 release many more compilations have since followed with these similar songs. Perhaps these tracks were a bit more unique then.

On the other hand, featured are a number of rarities and gems from this era which are often hard to find on CD. "Too Much Pressure" by The Selector, "Tell That Girl To Shut Up" by Holly & The Italians, "Open Your Eyes" by Lords Of The New Church, "Fetish" by Vicious Pink, "The Late Mistake" by Comateens, "Starry Eyes" by The Records, and "Send My Heart" by The Adventures are all essential tracks, in my opinion, and enough reason to purchase this 'Double Shot' compilation. "Fetish" by Vicious Pink is the full 6:20 song, not an edit. I don't believe that this track can be found on any other compilation. How often do you find Comateens on CD or available for purchase? Even Amazon doesn't even have any Comateens music available for sale. When searching this is what shows up! "The Late Mistake" is one of the band's forgotten brilliant recordings and gets a much-deserved spot here.

I bought this 2-CD collection earlier in the decade for a cheap price, not knowing many of the songs on the release. I knew a few of them, but this was before I really started discovering new wave music. I must say that over 5 or 6 years of listening to these discs that I've grown to like nearly every track on this set, even re-discovering songs that I originally ignored or didn't care for. "Open Your Eyes" by Lords Of The New Church is now one of my favourite songs on this release, after I originally ignored it since my purchase. "Send My Heart" by The Adventures is a hidden gem that should have been a hit.

The release also benefits from not using some of the most typical hits by some of the featured artists. Instead of using "Hungry Like The Wolf" or "Rio" by Duran Duran we get another hit by the band with "New Moon On Monday". Instead of "She Blinded Me With Science" we get "Hyperactive" by Thomas Dolby. Instead of "Always Something There To Remind Me" we get "Promises, Promises" by Naked Eyes. "Gold" replaces the overused "True" by Spandau Ballet. Yes, that band did have many more hits than "True" ... well, at least outside the U.S. And even now "Gold" is finding it's way on too many compilations.

For a 1999 release, the sound quality is good. The tracks have obviously been given an upgrade from their original releases, but the remastering is not amazing. No mastering credits are given either. Some tracks sound better than others, but that's probably due to production. For example, "Lawnchairs" by Our Daughter's Wedding sounds amazing, yet "Send My Heart" by The Adventures sounds particularly lifeless. Motors' hit, "Airport", which I re-discovered on this collection, sounds flat in comparison to recent, punchy remastered versions of the track that I've come across. It's a shame that this release did not come out a few years later when Capitol was finally at the top of the game with their 24-bit remastering technology, which is still used today. Nonetheless, none of these tracks sound bad, so it's still worth purchasing for the rarities even if you are picky about sound quality.

Buy this now out of print title before it's gone! Now if only Capitol could pull some more rarities from their vaults and issue additional compilations like these!

Fun New Wave comp with quite a few more obscure songs, which to me is not a bad thing. Worth it for the song "Lawnchairs" alone. "Lawnchairs" is also on the out of print Rhino cd "New Wave Dance Hits Of The '80s: Just Can't Get Enough" which being Rhino is probably slightly better sound but it gets a fortune on the secondhand market....

I am still discovering stuff to this day and this was one of them. The main reason I bought this cd was because it had Viscious Pink, which is impossible to find on cd these days. This cd happens to have the full length version of "Fetish", which I had on 12-inch. Now I have a digital copy, which is worth the price of the cd, especially if you like 80's new wave. It's not Expose and Cyndi Lauper, but mostly bands that actually played their own instruments rather than get "produced" for the 13 and under crowd.

I bought this CD( s ) a few years ago at a discount store for about $6.00, mainly because I absolutely loved Talk Talk's " It's my life" and saw this as a very cheap alternative to buying an actual Talk Talk album for that one song( which was a mistake because every song on the "It's my life" full length album is worth it's weight in gold; now that I own it and have realised what I was missing out on ).

You'll find a couple decent 80's hits scattered about ( "Eyes without a face", "Walking on sunshine", "It's my life" ) but these and the other few familiar songs found here can be found on countless other 80's compialations that will certainly offer more quality than what you get here. Most of the songs( and bands that sing them ) I had never heard of--and for good reason, as they are probably the silliest, most cheesy cookie cutter songs that I have ever heard. No wonder my generation seems to dismiss 80's music as unlistenable fluff; they must have sadly gotten their hands on this pathetic compialition, which is sad because there is so much substance to this genre that gets overlooked because of CD's like this.

All in all, This CD gets 1 star for the few recognizable hit songs and 1 star for the fact that after a few listens, " Mexican Radio", "Send my heart", and "Gold" grew on me enough for me to not regret spending my 6 bucks instead on, say, several months' supply of chewing gum. Don't be fooled by the cheap price of a double CD with a lot of songs. It's mostly all filler that's even worse than the cover art for this CD. If you got far enough to find this in your search criteria, you've probably already unearthed many quality compialitions, this just doesn't happen to be one of them.