ep // Crackers International
We've probably all been there. You're working away
on something and your boss comes in asking to check up on progress;
you hand over what you've produced so far, pretty proud of the state
it's in and your boss flicks through it, looking slightly awkward.
Then he tells you it's not quite good enough, not quite up to your
usual standard and, somewhat uncomfortably, suggests you scrap most
of what you've delivered so far and start again.
Such was the case with the songs that Vince
Clarke and Andy Bell were working on in
1988 in the wake of scoring a number one album success with Erasure's
The Innocents. Daniel Miller came into
the studio they were working in and politely advised the duo that
the songs they'd crafted just weren't up to the mark. Miller has
advised that it was one of the few times he's ever had to do this
with an artist on his Mute label, but we should
be thankful that he did: the result of that forced re-writing became
the Crackers International EP, a release that narrowly
missed being the UK Christmas number one single that year by a whisker,
and which included one of Erasure's best-loved tracks in 'Stop!'
The EP was produced by Erasure and its tracks were mixed by Mark
Saunders, with the exception of the 'fade ending' version 'Stop!'
which was mixed by Phil Legg and 'She Won't Be Home' which was mixed
by Legg only.
'Stop!' remains a classic Erasure track, a relatively
simple song (there's only one verse and not that many lyrics overall)
cloaked by a busy, complex Vince Clarke backing track filled with
analogue-sounding noises that would appear in muted variations on
the duo's next album, Wild! (which would see them working
with Saunders again) and in much more maximalist effect on its follow-up,
1991's watershed LP Chorus. Stylistically, mostly because
of its introduction (a descending synth sound that wobbles from
one channel to the other before merging in with the squelchy layers
of synth that dominate the low-end) and its lack of a second verse,
'Stop!' shares the same approach to 'Chorus', the lead single from
that 1991 LP, only 'Stop!' is a far more joyous affair. Sonically,
there's a lot going on here - lots of layers, a thudding beat and
a chiming middle-eight which Vince would play on an over-sized MIDI
xylophone on the Wild! tour. Meanwhile Andy's vocal is
defiant, but actually doesn't make a lot of sense if you ask me.
Who cares: it's a favourite among us fans and it ever will be thus.
Just watch the assembled fans at an Erasure gig stretching out a
single hand, palm at a right angle, traffic cop style, every time
Andy sings the title of the song.
Three versions of 'Stop!' appear across the various
formats of the Crackers International EP - a 'cold ending'
version on the CD, limited CD and 12" formats and a 'fade ending'
on the two-track 7" and 7" EP. An extended Mark Saunders
mix adorns the limited 12" and CD formats, which reveals many
of the sounds - including the ricocheting percussion sound that
opens his mix - buried beneath the layers on the snappy three-minute
single versions. The video, directed by the late Peter
'Sleazy' Christopherson, featured lots of revolving
road signs and Vince manically plugging patch cables into a modular
synth.
The EP also contains three other very strong songs
in 'The Hardest Part', 'Knocking On Your Door' (both of which received
live airings on the tours for The Innocents and Wild!)
and the band's (to date) only Christmas song, 'She Won't Be Home'.
'The Hardest Part' is a towering ballad that slowly builds up over
the course of the song, with a massive bass line, Latin-y percussion
and a quite lovely mood. Andy's vocal straddles the empathetic and
mournful, giving this song a graceful melancholic sound, which Mark
Saunders stretches out even further on his remix on the 12"
and CD.
'Knocking On Your Door' is high-energy electronic
pop with a solid beat and hyperactive horn sounds. It has an angsty
melodrama (with handclaps!) which completely suits Andy's on-stage
persona when performed live, though only this studio version ends
with the sound of breaking glass. Superb 12" and remix versions
of this (again by Mark Saunders) also appears over on the other
formats, both of which extend the drama even further. 'She Won't
Be Home' takes the vibe of 'Oh L'Amour' and turns it into a strained
Christmas track which drapes Andy's misanthropic vocal with festive
echo while tinkly bells jingle in the background. Vince even finds
the time to throw in some Spector-esque dramatic percussion and
some seasonal brass (nothing screams Christmas like Phil Spector
and brass sounds). It's a bit too cheerless to have ever found its
way to a Christmas compilation, but if you ever want to get depressed
during the holidays 'She Won't Be Home' is the song for you. I always
think that this is what happened after 'Hideaway', just with a girl
supplanted into the lead role.
The limited 12" and CD also include a rendition
of 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen' with Andy adopting his finest choir-boy
vocal and Vince providing a back-drop of ghostly sounds like the
fog descending on Ebenezer Scrooge as he makes his way home to meet
the ghost of Jacob Marley. Spooky stuff.
The wintery sleeve to Crackers International
- crafted by ME Company - lists out various international ways of
wishing someone a merry Christmas, but, as this is my penultimate
review before Christmas 2011 I'll keep it simple: happy Christmas
everyone.
The
Erasure X-Mas Gift
Here is one of those baffling curiosities which
may or may not a genuine release. This 7" was purportedly a
Erasure promo 7" mailed out to various media
contacts by Mute Records at the Christmas of 1988
and bears the words 'Merry Christmas Vince & Andy' on the rear
of the sleeve. The label of the 7" allows the sender to put
their name under the printed text 'This is a X-mas gift from'. The
7" contains the two overtly festive songs available on the
various Crackers International formats - 'God Rest Ye
Merry Gentlemen' and 'She Won't Be Home', with running times that
are about 10 seconds shorter than they should be.
A number of things don't add up about this 7",
leading me to conclude that this is probably a bootleg rather than
a genuine Erasure promo. For a start, 'She Won't Be Home' is titled
'Lonely Christmas' on the label, and attributed to Vince rather
than the correct Clarke / Bell songwriting credit. Second, no-one
spells Xmas 'X-Mas'. Third, there's no reference to Mute at all
anywhere on the record, no copyright, and no publishing details
at all. Finally, the run-out groove is machine-printed rather than
hand-etched like all Mute releases were at the time. As for the
sleeve, which adds Victorian decoupage-style angels to the centre
of the sleeve for The Circus, it is presented in a sort
of washed out salmon colour for no apparent reason. The Erasure
Information Service site doesn't list this at all, despite normally
being quite good at including details on promos.
At the time of writing, Discogs had one copy of
this left for a staggering GBP50, a pretty steep price if this really
is just a bootleg.
Footnote - since writing this, Vince wrote
this to me on Twitter when I posed the question about whether this
was a genuine release or a bootleg: 'Not sure? It looks nice though?'
So there you go, still as mysterious as before.
7":
A. Stop! (Fade Ending)
AA. Knocking On Your Door
ep 7":
A1. Stop! (Fade Ending)
A2. The Hardest Part
B1. Knocking On Your Door
B2. She Won't Be Home
12"/cd:
A1. / 1. Stop! (Cold Ending)
A2. / 2. The Hardest Part (12" Mix)
B1. / 3. Knocking On Your Door (12" Mix)
B2. / 4. She Won't Be Home
l12"/lcd:
1. / A. Stop! (12" Remix)
2. / B1. Knocking On Your Door (12" Remix)
3. / B2. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Note: the limited CD was released in envelope
pack complete with address label and Christmas card
lcd (mispressing, available via Erasure Information
Service):
1. Stop! (Cold Ending)
2. Knocking On Your Door
3. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
7" ('The Erasure X-Mas Gift'):
A. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
B. Lonely Christmas (aka She Won't Be Home)
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