Tubeway Army & Gary Numan • 78/79
Vinyl 180 VIN180LP027
Four 33-RPM 180 g LPs
When I was a kid, my dad was a partner in a company that supplied pubs and clubs with pool tables, arcade games, and juke boxes. One of the perks I enjoyed (in addition to numerous hours playing arcade games for free: tremble at the feet of my Gorf prowess!) was getting free singles as they rotated off of jukeboxes. I can’t remember the actual single in question, but I do remember it coming home in an unrelated picture sleeve of this zombie-looking guy with bleached white hair. Intrigued, I asked my dad for a copy of the single to which the sleeve belonged. A few days later, he brought a copy home. I listened to it and loved it. The single was, of course, Are “Friends” Electric by post-punk synth band Tubeway Army, fronted by Gary Numan.
I’ve been a fan ever since but back in those days I could rarely afford to buy LPs, so until recently most of my copies of the early Numan records were used. Vinyl 180 reissued remastered versions of Tubeway Army’s Replicas (the album from which Are “Friends” Electric was taken) and Numan’s first solo album, The Pleasure Principle. In the summer of 2010 Vinyl 180 released 78/79, a boxed set containing these two albums plus Tubeway Army’s eponymously-titled debut and a disc of demos (which was released in 1984 as The Plan). Like the original issue, Tubeway Army is pressed on blue vinyl and features the original cover.
The packaging, then, is first rate. Sonically, these records are pretty good (considering their vintage and the genre), and they sound about as good as they’re going to. In other words, they’re not audiophile spectaculars by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve heard worse. Enthusiastically recommend for it’s musical content and pretty good sound quality, there’s just one catch: although Replicas and The Pleasure Principle are generally available, the boxed set is a very limited edition of only 500 copies. If you’re even remotely interested in this, grab a copy while you still can...