Best Soft Cell extended single (UK originals)

is there some sort of trick here?

"tainted love/where did our love go? (extended)"

Nearly all the extended versions have something unique about them that turns the song into something else -- "Bedsitter"'s demi-rap break, the astonishing opening for "What!" that just plain shimmers...

"insecure me"

i've got this burnin burnin yearnin feeling inside me, deep inside me, and it hurts soo badd

yeah, i figure in that 1982 section, it would be a really tough choice

Although the Memorabilia/Persuasion 1-2 punch is something. "Persuasion" is amazingly brutal (well, for Soft Cell)

Gotta be the 3-minute clarinet solo of Say hello, Wave Goodbye (their best song too, of course).

what an awesome idea for a poll!

Soft Cell were always the best of the 80's 12" single bands.. and the B-sides were always of the highest quality..

Ned is OTM re the camp-rap in Bedsitter, but for me the b-side Facility Girls clinches the deal as one of the finest songs in their discography.

Bedsitter/Facility Girls it is for me..

Tough choice...I loved 'Tainted Dub', but also 'So' (great porn soundtrack vibe)

Gotta be the 3-minute clarinet solo of Say hello, Wave Goodbye (their best song too, of course)

My thoughts on this song have been posted on the other Soft Cell thread. Everything here is a work of glory and beauty, but that one is quite simply transcendent.

insecure me extended is just about the best b side of that decade. criminal that it isn't better known. it wasn't a coincidence that they did it as an encore on that revival tour a few years back. wipes the floor with most of
NON STOP EROTIC CABARET.

"Like the song says..."

Oddly enough, "Insecure Me" was the very first song I ever heard from Soft Cell! I somehow bypassed "Tainted Love", but I was still way into disco in the early 80s, and when "Insecure Me" came onto the disco FM station (Yes, these still existed up until 1983 or so), I was on the wagon.

That said, still deciding, but right now...

extended Where The Heart Is (really gorgeous) + ITS A FUCKING MUGS GAME = roll saving throw for me.

I haven't heard too many of the 12" versions, but the mix of "Tainted Love" with "Where Did Our Love Go" is a cool one, so I went for that anyway.

I once heard a DJ in a Belgian nightclub run a perfect beat-mix of Peggy Lee's "Fever" over the bridge between "Tainted Love" and "Where Did Our Love Go". It worked very well indeed.

I'm going with "Bedsitter", which I barely even know in its 7" version.

looks like there's gonna be no clear winner out of this lot.. which is testament to the overal quality of their catalogue (although the later stuff does drop off a bit)

and everyone is correct about the 12" of Insecure Me, but i'm still going with Bedsitter/Facility Girls.

Voted for "Say hello..." but "Memorabilia" and "Soul inside" almost made it.
Great great stuff indeed.

the extended "You Only Live Twice" (from the Soul Inside 12") holds a very special place for me... one of the most memorable pictorial moments I've had ever on a road trip was when I first descended into the Salinas Valley (in California) going north on I-101. The sky was sunny but with large punctuated opaque fluffy clouds. The entire scenery was this green heavily polka-dotted valley, a sight I've yet to see matched or surpassed before my eyes. Descending into that while Soft Cell's cover of the Bond tune was playing was just one of those moments. It's one of my favorite Soft Cell recordings for that reason.

Also, re: Say Hello votes. Another excellent reason: "Fun City". So catchy and breezy.

how much of this stuff is in print on reissues?

the love for 'insecure me' here realy does gladden my heart. i think i'm right in saying that it was unreleased on CD until the proper full release of NON STOP ECSTATIC DANCING in '98 too.
they must have realised what a bollock they'd dropped letting THAT languish in the vaults, as it ended up on 'the very best of..' CD a few years back.

"how much of this stuff is in print on reissues?"

I think you can find most of this stuff added to the remastered cd versions or included on the "Twelve Inch Singles" boxset.

Yeah, except for the latter two singles, you can get all of this on the Twelve Inch Singles 3xCD... which is a really really nice thing to own.

Of course, that 3xCD adds (IMHO) a lot of newer crap remixes, but you can easily ignore that and get to the goods.

Yes re: the three CD comp. Hell I think I'll bring that with me into work tomorrow.

nice (and who cares about the last two - though I've actually got one of the Monoculture CDs!)

The Playgroup mix of Monoculture can sit quite nicely along with the work from the classic age, as indeed the parent album can too. However still torn between Say Hello and Memoribilia.

that 3xCD adds (IMHO) a lot of newer crap remixes

Most of those are from 1991 (and at least one is a Grid remix, so that's Dave Ball remixing himself), but funny thing about the one unique-to-that-collection 1999 remix that starts things off on the first disc: there's a recurring bit about 7 minutes in where Almond's voice is fed through a Vocoder, and in combination with the near schaffel beat this remix has, all of a sudden he sounds perfect for 2008 pop radio.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I look a mess and have a hangover

Went for "Where the Heart is / It's a Mugs Game".. stressing the latter.

After staring into space for at least five minutes, Bedsitter.

Unless I'm mistaken, everything through What/So is also on the deluxe Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.

Pretty much! There was a very recent 2-CD deluxe version of Non Stop Erotic Cabaret that didn't really add much that wasn't already on Twelve Inch Singles, except for "A Man Could Get Lost".

But back to the single deluxe NSEC... those are the 7" versions.. which are also great to have. I was stressin' the 12" versions for this poll, tho

I just want a pre-Some Bizzare comp... ones that have both versions of "Metro Mr. X", for example, and all that, plus maybe some early outtakes that never saw the day of light -- kinda like the Human League's Golden Hour Of The Future comp. I bet some of that would be really great.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Not that Tainted Love isn't brilliant, but I think all the people who actually listen to Soft Cell split the vote against it.

Yes.

ok, I didn't vote for Memorabilia, but I'm kinda happy it did very well here... especially given PERSUASION.

No result here would have been entirely wrong, including the one that prevailed, but 12-inch "Torch" wuz ROBBED! The hammily romantic dialogue! The outoftune perfect guest verse! The ahem ambitious sing-chorus-from-both-points-of-view-at-the-same-time segment!

B-side fab as well obv. "a nose with eyes" hee hee!

tell me everything there is to know about cindy ecstasy: a soft cell related info request

I listened to the 3CD set of 12"s yesterday and decided it might be the greatest artefact of its kind in popular music; I genuinely don't think any band really utilised the format in quite the same way, ie pop song becoming wide-eyed romantic epic as opposed to pop song becoming dancefloor workout. My one-choice-only desert-island disc would be either the extended SHWG or New Order's Lonesome Tonight; I really couldn't decide.

Apologies to those who've read it, but -- while trying to find out more about the synths they used -- I came across Mike Thorne's reminiscences of recording Tainted Love, which has links to pages about the first two albums and Torch (which I've not had a chance to read yet). Oh, and a few other albums you might have heard of ;)

But no, really. Soft Cell. What an incredible band.