"Castle Unlock Fall Archive"
Record Collector (album) ??DEC92
Collection/A Part of America/Slates

Castle have done themselves and the world a huge favour by securing the rights to several long-lost Fall titles from the band's much-lauded early 80s era.

Although CD reissues for "Totale's Turns (It's Now Or Never)", "Grotesque (After The Gramme)", "Perverted By Language", and "Slates", are long overdue, it's the reappearance of the U.S.-only "A Part Of America Therein, 1981" which will particularly excite collectors. This album, recorded live during the group's 1981 U.S. tour, originally appeared on the small Cottage label and has been one of the trickier Fall titles to locate in recent years. As a bonus, Castle/Dojo plan to couple it with the masterful "Slates" 10", recorded for Rough Trade a year later.

As well as the aforementioned Rough Trade trilogy, which will appear under the Castle Classics imprint, there will be a compilation culled from these newly licensed titles to make up a "Fall Collection" disc.

Castle/Dojo are still negotiating the rights to the band's early Step Forward material, and if successful, hope to reissue the first two albums adding material from the appropriate singles, namely the "Bingo-Master's Breakout", "It's The New Thing", "Rowche Rumble" and "Fiery Jack" 45s. Still due of course, is Strange Fruit's long-awaited selection of Fall highlights recorded for John Peel's radio show.

In the wake of this activity, perhaps some diligent company might like to liberate those two other hard-to-find archive titles -- the "Live At The Acklam Hall, 1980" cassette-only release, and the New Zealand Flying Nun label's "Fall In A Hole" LP+12" set.

Dojo also tell us they're also planning a Tenpole Tudor "Best Of" set, more Beggar's Banquet-era Lurkers material and a vinyl/CD reissue for the Plasmatics "New Hope For The Wretched". And The Early Years titles for the Move and Procol Harum previously mentioned in this column, and both containing rare non-LP material, are due shortly.