The discography of Baltimora, in the form of Russian bootleg CDs

Not familiar with the song Tarzan Boy? Where the hell have you been? Really though, Tarzan Boy was a great Italo-disco song that made a surprising amount of impact on American pop charts; not enough to Milli Vanilli levels, which could have potentially exposed that Jimmy McShane was not the main vocalist on that song (although actually being able to speak English certainly would've helped to cover it up), but enough to stay in the hearts and minds of people in the mid-80s. It even showed up in that one really bad Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie where the Turtles went to Japan, and Seth MacFarlane loved it enough to reference it in A Million Ways To Die In The West.

Tarzan Boy was the most famous song by Italo-disco project Baltimora, which was spearheaded by producer Maurizio Bassi with Irish singer Jimmy McShane playing visual performance, as well as background vocals and occasionally songwriting. The surprise success of Tarzan Boy pushed sales of their album Living In The Background to push Bassi to doing a rare feat for Italo-disco: a second album. The resulting album, Survivor In Love, failed to approximate Tarzan Boy's success, but I can't fault Bassi for trying. (Jimmy's actual singing voice shows up to solo on the title track to this album for a couple seconds, if you're curious.)

While Living In The Background was given an official CD release by EMI in Italy, Survivor In Love wasn't given one, as far as I can tell. "What are these CDs then", you may ask? Russian bootlegs, of course! These albums were released through ESonCD, which is an amazing unofficial distributor of Italo-disco albums onto CD; the albums of Max-Him, Wish Key and Video Kids were also re-released through ESonCD, for example.

Although I can't tell if they are actually 24-bit mastered from vinyl copies, Living In The Background seems to be sourced from the EMI CD, since the bonus tracks match up, and Survivor In Love sounds nice, with no noticeable audio dropouts or glitches. It provides a cheap way to obtain these albums digitally, and I will strongly recommend them to anyone interested in Baltimora or Italo-disco in general. The only complaint I have is that my copy of Living In The Background seems to have heavily stripped down liner notes from prior issues of this album: whereas earlier copies had full lyric booklets, my copy only has the first two pages, presumably an unfortunately cheap way to save on production costs.

The tracklisting for Living In The Background is as follows:

1. Tarzan Boy (6:12 extended version, not the 3:50 single version)

2. Pull The Wires

3. Living In The Background

4. Woody Boogie

5. Chinese Restaurant

6. Running For Your Love

7. Tarzan Boy (Summer Version)

8. The Jukebox Boy

9. Up With Baltimora

10. Tarzan Boy (Remix 1993)

11. Jungle Life (Dub)

12. Tarzan Boy (Extended Remix 1993)

The tracklisting for Survivor In Love is as follows:

1. Key Key Karimba

2. Global Love (feat. Linda Wesley)

3. Jimmy's Guitar

4. Come On Strike

5. Set Me Free

6. Survivor In Love

7. Call Me In The Heart Of The Night

8. Eye To Eye

9. Global Love (Mix Version)

NOTE: As a CD-collecting alternative, you can buy a compilation from EMI called The World Of Baltimora, which looks complete at first glance, but the tracks are rearranged out of order, it only has the 3:50 single version of Tarzan Boy, and it's missing Eye To Eye from Survivor In Love, as well as the bonus tracks on Living past Jukebox Boy. If you don't think you'll miss those, go for it, I guess.

P4F - Hustle & Bustle: The Bootleg CD Edition

Of course Al Festa isn't the only Italo-disco producer I'm a fan of, but him directing this Italo-disco group's video for Winner led me to discovering them. The group in question is P4F, also known as Propaganda For Frankie according to the cover of their first single, which is a medley/cover of both Propaganda's song P: Machinery and Frankie Goes To Hollywood's song Relax. (I imagine litigation forced them to shorten that clever name.)

This project was spearheaded by Italo-disco producer Claudio Cecchetto, and most of the tracks on it are covers of pre-existing, obscure Italo-disco songs, when they aren't taking bits from Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Duran Duran or Chic. Cecchetto himself wrote some of these songs, such as the cover of Via Verdi's Diamond (while mostly stripped down of some of the original's bells and whistles, it keeps the female background vocals directly from the original), while he had seemingly nothing to do with the Roncuccy & Crazy song Winner, which is also covered here.

While it's certainly not uncommon for European pop or dance producers to reuse their compositions for newer projects (Al did this a few times, German producer Frank Farian reused a Boney M. song for Milli Vanilli, and Italian-French producer Romano Musumarra has done it several times with songs he originally did in the late 80s), it's odd to see a project predominantly based around this practice.

This album, like 99% of Italo-disco records, was issued mainly on vinyl throughout Europe, the sole exception being an official French CD through Polygram which is apparently expensive as hell. This CD of that album is not that version; rather, it is an apparent bootleg of the German vinyl through ZYX Records, which oddly credits the release through their heavy metal sublabel ZYX Metallic. The origin of the bootleg is completely unknown to me, but Discogs credits it as Russian, which makes sense to me. While these bootleggers were nice enough to add an additional B-side as a bonus track to this CD release, the track White Storm (In The Jungle) was removed, and Diamond has a noticeable audio dropout from a glitch in ripping the vinyl.

I have to give this bootleg some credit, though... it has more songs than the French CD has (the French CD also drops White Storm), and it's actually pressed onto an actual CD. I have to give points for that. However, I have to take points off for the faulty ripping of Diamond. The album itself is pretty good for late 80s Italo-disco, so if you're into stuff from that era, this is a good collection of it.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1. Notorious (Duran Duran) Medley with Le Freak (Chic)

2. Diamond (Via Verdi)

3. P. Machinery (Propaganda) Medley with Relax (Frankie Goes To Hollywood)

4. Mister X (original)

5. Winner (Roncuccy & Crazy)

6. Hustle & Bustle (original)

7. Love War (original)

8. Deejay (original theme for Radio DeeJay)

Comparison of the CD's disc label with the label on the German vinyl released through ZYX. Way too close for comfort.

4 Plugs digipak

Oh digipaks, how I love thee. Oh 4 Plugs, how I love thee as well. 4 Plugs is a unique beast in Mad's discography; neither the melodic punk of Park and albums before it, nor the digital hardcore which was beginning to show on Digidogheadlock, it represents Mad beginning towards a musical direction which they ended up not sticking with, and created one unique and heavy bass-dominated hardcore melodic rap punk record. (Okay, Digidogheadlock is a little close, but not by too much.)

It may have been the heavy dominance of Takeshi's bass, both performance-wise and in the mix, that caused guitarist ISHIG∀KI to end up leaving Mad in October of 1996 to play in Ends, the new project from Soft Ballet vocalist Ryoichi Endo. An unfortunate turn of events, but it still got a really great album out of 4 Plugs.

In any case, this entry is really more about this special digipak edition. Tak Mad made a post about stickers enclosed in the digipak edition, which notified me of this edition's existence and sent me looking for it, but my copy did not have any of those stickers, unfortunately. Thankfully, it did have an obi, which not a lot of other digipak copies on Yahoo Auctions had. There was one small cost, that the spine of the digipak itself was a bit faded, but at least the obi covers that right up.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1. Possess In Loop

2. Crack

3. Kami-Uta

4. Rust Off System

5. Walk!

6. Normal Life

7. Another Plug

8. S.H.Ō.D.O.K.U.

9. A･S･M･I･A･S･B

10. PGM On

11. Don't Suss Me Out

12. Destruction At The Door

13. O･U･T

AA= #3

This particular album by AA= was the first to be released by Speedstar Records, a sublabel of Victor Entertainment which released Mad's albums from Digidogheadlock onward, so in a sense, Takeshi is returning to a label which was once home to him. This is also the first AA= release packaged in a typical jewel case, which the single for The Klock and #, the first half of AA='s recent split album, were also released in.

The limited edition of this album has the patch on the front cover thrown in as a bonus, but the limited edition's obi has much more writing on it than the regular's, while a "LIMITED PACKAGE!" sticker adorns the front. I actually bought the standard edition in a lot and purchased the patch separately, so I kinda schlubbed it out a bit, but the patch is still mine!

In the liner notes, Takayoshi Shirakawa, who was the main vocalist on AA='s first two albums, is only credited as "team member" separate from the rest of the band. The reason for this is, while Shirakawa's vocals are prominent on the first real track Working Class, the rest of the album is dominated by Takeshi's much higher vocals. The album also has a bit of a lighter sound than the first two albums, which may have been caused by the label switch, but I doubt that was the main factor. In any case, I would highly recommend this album as well.

It also contains the AA= version of "We're Not Alone", a song Takeshi recorded for his AA= AiD charity in the wake of the devastating 2011 tsunami in Japan. This version omits contributions from guest musicians on the main version of the song, which includes a pretty neat guitar solo. This version can be heard here.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1. #3 Intro

2. Working Class

3. Distortion

4. posi-JUMPER

5. sTEP COde

6. Dry your tears

7. coLors

8. Sunshine glow

9. People Power

10. Dreamer

11. We're not alone (AA= Ver.)

12. #3 Outro

AA= #2

This is the second album released by AA=, Takeshi Ueda's solo project after the disbanding of The Mad Capsule Markets. It is a stylistic continuation of the heavily electronic punk featured on the first album, but with the lyrics moving away from the more environmentally conscious themes present on #1. This is the last AA= album I have that directly credits Takayoshi Shirakawa as a vocalist: #3 merely credits him as a "team member" separately from the rest of the band, despite his vocals still being present on some tracks.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1. prologue {2+2=4}

2. 2010 DIGItoTALism

3. INDUSTRIAL

4. BASS JUNKEES

5. GREED...

6. meVIR

7. BPMaster

8. 4 leaf clover

9. TEKNOT

10. F

11. FREEZE

12. epilogue {sonata no.8}

There isn't much else to say here that wasn't covered in my entry for #1 regarding packaging. As you can see, it's the same kind of eco-tray pushing the disc against the tray by a thick tab that's a little bit of a pain to lift up. This time, the liner notes fold out to be a poster with the lyrics on the other side of the paper. Allow me to get on my soapbox a little on this, though: I really hate when this happens. It isn't as bad in this case as jewel cased ones, where the album art itself is a piece of this poster, but it just makes you wish it could've been an additional insert so you could pin it up on the wall without losing any information. /rant

As for my recommendation, if you liked the sound of #1, you'll like this as well. That's about it, really.

AA= #1

I found a lot on Yahoo Auctions of AA='s first three albums, as well as the CD single for The Klock, and I jumped on it like a barbarian. For those who don't know, AA= is the solo project of Takeshi Ueda, who was the bassist/main songwriter for The Mad Capsule Markets, which he formed after Mad disbanded. (Kyono, the vocalist of Mad, also started his own solo project called Wagdug Futuristic Unity, but I haven't gotten any of the Wagdug albums just yet.)

AA= expands on the digital hardcore sound that Mad was doing by the time of their final album, CiSTm K0nFLiqT..., but from Takeshi's perspective. (Wagdug's first full album Hakai is a similar expansion from Kyono's, which makes the albums ripe for direct comparison.) The lines are blurred even further between punk rock and electronica, and vocals from both Takeshi and main vocalist Takayoshi Shirakawa are coated with a smattering of Auto-Tune to give it a distinctly robotic flavor. This album is utterly fantastic for fans of Mad to have something new to latch onto, as are the AA= albums that follow.

NOTE: Despite the DVD being advertised as region-free, it is actually locked to Region 2.

 This digipak album is released through Commons Music Group, designed to accommodate Takeshi's environmentalism through the AA= project (the liner notes even have a QC code to support the World Wildlife Foundation); the CD and DVD are held in soft cardboard spindle-less disc trays to crack down on the use of plastic.

However, I can't say I like this particular design (I really don't like any disc trays that don't have spindles, one of my few exceptions being the one designed for the DVD of Wall-E) because of one major issue I have with it: there's a tab pushing the edge of the disc against the tray, that you have to pull up to get the disc out. It's not an absolute chore to get them out, like the deluxe edition for The Amazing Spider-Man 2's soundtrack's "inserts" are, but it does make you fear that the disc is scratching. #2 has the same kind of disc tray, and AA= did not go back to regular jewel cases until #3 was released through Speedstar instead.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1. 4Legs Good, 2Legs Bad

2. I Hate Human

3. Peace!!!

4. Freedom

5. Loser

6. Roots

7. All Animals Are Equal

8. <Electrik-Zweep>

9. Electrik

10. People Kill People

11. Starry Night

12. New Hello

13. R.I.P.

DVD-1. Peace!!! PV

DVD-2. Loser PV

DVD-3. Freedom PV

Walk! single

My issues are OVER! For the moment at least... When I was originally planning to do this article, my computer's keyboard's motherboard had pretty much shit the bed: ruthless spurts of endless E's which made writing a few of those last few articles an absolute chore, the R key was beginning to fail on me, and ALL of the number keys (except 5 and 6) were basically gone, no matter how hard I jammed down on them.

To top it off, apparently the specific keyboard model that MY laptop used was the only model of that type of laptop that was stupidly expensive, so replacing the keyboard was something of an impossibility. I managed to find a good replacement laptop online that I'll transfer my files to, but at the moment it's a matter of waiting for the thing to come in. So for now, I'll be using library computers to get these entries done. But enough about my drama, on with the program!

I'm finally back, and to start this new wave of Mad Music Corner posts, I'll pick up where I originally left off: the snap-pack CD single for Walk! from Mad's album 4 Plugs. Well, the "Japan Mix" of Walk! to be more specific. What is the "Japan Mix", you may ask? It's the same song, but with the verses redone in Japanese instead of English, and ISHIG∀KI threw in a small guitar solo. It's not intrusive at all, it just makes you wonder why it couldn't have been on the 4 Plugs version.

Also included on this disc: a re-recorded version of Humanity from their debut album of the same name that sounds very nice. (When I added this to Rare Mad, I placed it after the Gichi/Marionette/Dirty Trick EP, since they were all Humanity re-recordings.) Invitation's censored reissue of Humanity came out a couple months after this single, and I haven't checked my copy of that disc, but I doubt this re-recording is on there at all.

I should also note that this was the last release that came in an 8cm/3in snap-pack longbox case. Every single that followed came in more conventional maxi jewel cases, even ones that did have smaller CDs in them. (The single for Kami-Uta came in a conventional maxi case, but the CD was one that would have fit in a snap-pack. Later mini-CDs came in adorable downsized maxi cases.)

And of course, the tracklisting is as follows:

1. Walk! (Japan Mix)

2. Humanity (re-recorded)

NOTE: This is the last post I will be able to do for a while set against that neat white table backdrop with good lighting. I'm currently several states away from that particular table freezer and lighting setup, and I originally had done an alternate photo shoot for this single on the new location until I realized I could still access these original pictures. Get used to the new location by checking out the alternate shoot here, here, here and here.