REVIEW 3: PINK LADY PLATINUM BOX
In early June, the Pink Lady Platinum Box Set arrived at the house, and I wasted no time opening the box full of goodies. As you can see in the the picture above, the contents consisted of four CD’s: The Singles, Studio Recordings, Live Tracks and Disco Tracks, all of which were self-explanatory. The two DVD’s (Region 2) were from the popular TV song and dance show, Let’s Go Young and the Live at Budokan show from December 1978. Next was an oversized picture book with stills I had never seen before, interviews with Mie and Kei and some of the people behind the scenes with Pink Lady along with a full discography. Lastly, there’s a deck of playing cards with pics of the single releases on the backs. Quite a hefty package to say the least.
With my Region-free DVD player already hooked up to my home theater, I dove into the DVD’s first, excited to watch the videos, and I started with the Let’s Go Young disc. Despite all the hours of PL video footage I've seen and collected over the years (and trust me, I’ve collected a lot!), this was totally fresh and brand new to me as Mie and Kei sang their chart toppers before a live studio audience, plus some extra stuff as well. It was great to have seen the Ladies perform songs like "Zipangu", "Do Your Best", "Toast For Ladies" and "Lady-X", neither of which I had ever seen before along with a mondo cool version of "Stop in the Name of Love"---in English!! But when the girls sang "Chameleon Army", I saw something that floored me as the special effects gurus on the show applied some serious wizardy, making the girls' outfits change colors during the song! Needless to say, that made my jaw drop! Not bad for 1978!
The second DVD was one of the Budokan shows from December 1978 (there were two, on the 25th and 26th from what I've learned). The video of the concert was markedly different from the album version which had the girls alternating on solo versions of popular Hollywood show tunes that wasn't seen on this version, however, several years ago, a fellow fan sent me a VHS version of the show that did include the "Screen Lovers Medley". But that didn't take away from my appreciation of the Budokan video as Mie and Kei covered all their hits and several b-sides, interspered with several costume changes. All in all, both videos were enjoyable, especially since they included stuff I've never seen before. With both videos coming in at a combined 80 minutes, they represent barely a fraction of all of PL's television appearances during their salad days. I'm hoping there will be more videos to come, as I hope to eventually see remastered DVD versions of Pink Lady’s top concerts like Summer Fire ‘77, the Vegas Show, the Jumping Summer Carnival and the Farewell Concert.
From there, I tackled the CD’s. I started with Studio Recordings and it was quite a startling revelation. The first eight tracks from this disc consisted of songs that, as God Himself is my witness, I've never, EVER heard Mie and Kei sing before. All those songs had that definite bubbly sound and style of music that must've been done early in the Ladies' career, say 1976-77: Fun, perky, definite 70's j-pop sounding stuff. I was completely flabbergasted, still the songs were neat to listen to. The rest of the songs on this disc consisted of songs from the album "Two From The Star", including that nifty 9-minute long medley of commercial tunes, "Super Monkey", Mie and Kei's solo tracks from the "Pepper Keibu" album, "UFO" and "Lady-X", both of which sounded subtlely different from what I'm used to (I guess they were altenative versions) while the last track was also something I never heard before, a live track by the Ladies from the 8th Popular Song Contest from 1976 or ‘77, I’m not sure. Now maybe I've got a tin ear, but it sounded to me like Kei-chan did most of the heavy lifting on that song.
Next up was Live Tracks, and that too was enjoyable. The first seven tracks (including two medleys of '60's pop tunes) came from the Summer Fire '77 album, followed by four tracks ("UFO", "Wanted", "Southpaw" and "Monster") from the legendary '78 Jumping Summer Carnival. The next two tracks included a song I never heard before (that's happened a lot here! Heh!) were from a live set I wasn't familiar with, followed by "I Love How You Love Me" from JSC. The final five tracks ("Nagisa No Sindbad", "UFO", "Southpaw", "Tomei Ningen" and "Zipangu") I suspect may have come from PL's appearances on "Let's Go Young" as they just seem to have that, well, television sort of sound to them. After having burned all the live albums onto DVD and having to deal with the inevitable snap, crackle and pops that comes from three decades old vinyl, despite how hard I tried to eliminate it all, it was refreshig to hear a crystal clear version of songs from live sets. With Challenge Concert, Summer Fire and Bye-Bye Carnival soon to be released, I can't wait to get my hands on all of them and hear them all from start to finish in digital clarity. And I hope that the Vegas show and JSC will also be released eventually.
Lastly, we come to Disco Tracks. This was both interesting, and puzzling at the same time. At almost 69 minutes, it's the second longest CD in the box set after the Singles disc, and that's because it's front-loaded with five extended length songs which ran almost 30 minutes alone. It started out with a 6:30 version of "Pink Typhoon" (PL's send-off of The Village People's "In The Navy"), and that was followed by a SEVEN and a half minute version of the Disco scorching "Monday Mona Lisa Club", neither of which I ever heard before and thought were fabulous. The third track was the 12" version of "Kiss in the Dark", that I do have in my collection. Now, here's where the first round of puzzlement comes in, track four was a five minute long version of "Amenic", the bizarre b-side of "Last Pretender". As nutty as that was, track five was the same song, but was played backwards. That's right, friends----BACKWARDS!!! That was the damndest thing I ever heard. From there, tracks 6 through 14 were from the U.S. album, played in its entirety.
Part two of the puzzlement was track 15, that being the so-called U.S. version of "Nami Nori Pirates" with The Beach Boys singing background vocals. The last two tracks were the Japanese language versions of Leif Garrett's "I Was Made For Dancin'" and "KITD" from the "We Are Sexy" album. All things considered, it was decent, but if I were running the show, I would've axed both versions of "Amenic" and "Nami Nori Pirates" in favor of more tracks from "We Are Sexy". Still, it made for good listening. All in all, this was a great collection, well wrth adding to your collection if you’re a true Pink Lady fan. As I’ve said before, I’m hoping lots more goodies will be on the way!
