Pickwick discussion

[Michael Hagerty]

since the video above shows a post monkees michael nesmith. Im surprised pickwick never reissued any of the monkees albums and left out a song or two.

It didn't happen because RCA distributed Colgems...and they had Camden in-house for budget releases. RCA did suspend Camden and do a deal with Pickwick in 1973, but by then Columbia Pictures (which owned Colgems) had bought Bell Records (which became Arista), so the catalog wasn't available to RCA and Pickwick. By the time the Monkees revival hit in the 80s, baby boomers wanted more, not less and Rhino was making a business out of doing reissues the right way.

 

[Bobberman]

It didn't happen because RCA distributed Colgems...and they had Camden in-house for budget releases. RCA did suspend Camden and do a deal with Pickwick in 1973, but by then Columbia Pictures (which owned Colgems) had bought Bell Records (which became Arista), so the catalog wasn't available to RCA and Pickwick. By the time the Monkees revival hit in the 80s, baby boomers wanted more, not less and Rhino was making a business out of doing reissues the right way.

Thanks for reminding me i completely forgot just how big columbia pictures colpix and colgems labels really were. Thanks for refreshing my memory my friend.

 

[Michael Hagerty]

Thanks for reminding me i completely forgot just how big columbia pictures colpix and colgems labels really were. Thanks for refreshing my memory my friend.

They were really pretty small. Colpix was before my time, but Colgems really had The Monkees and some soundtrack albums...that's about it. 20 artists released 51 singles over a four-year timespan and The Monkees had the only hits. There were 28 albums during that time, half of those soundtracks, 10 of the remainder from The Monkees (I'm counting "HEAD" as both). Being distributed by RCA made them seem bigger.

Even after acquiring Bell, it wasn't much of a record company...that really didn't happen until Clive Davis came along in '75 and re-made it into Arista...which, were it not for Barry Manilow, Melissa Manchester and Eric Carmen, would have gotten off to a slow start.

 

[dostros]

I had a real pleasant surprise yesterday when I was going through my vinyl doubles - albums where I have 2 or more copies (one usually in worse condition than the other). I was going to take the inferior copies off the shelves to lighten the weight. When it came to Elton John's "Friends" album (a soundtrack froman obscure movie), I played my eons-old original copy and it was horribly scratchy, and yet the opening song reminded me how great some of this record is. The title tune and "People Can I Put You On" are among my favourites from Elton. But I had another copy that I had picked up recently. It sounded fine when I put it on, but my heart sank when I saw the Pickwick label on the jacket. Skimming the titles, I was sure one of my favourite tunes would be missing. But no, ALL THE SONGS WERE THERE! Even the orchestral interpolations that go in one ear and out the other. Every track was identical. It seemed to be a 1977 release, while the original "Friends" was 1971, I believe.

 

[JeffM]

This could be fun...

"Elvis Sings Hits From His Movies".

I'm still looking for the hits.

The "s" in "hits" may have been slightly misplaced. Actually, all those Elvis re-issues were originally on RCA's own Camden budget label. Pickwick licensed them "as is" when RCA decided to drop the Camden line; about all they changed was the cover art on some of them. After Elvis died, RCA decided they should be making those re-issue bucks themselves again; pulled back those masters and left Pickwick with a cold stew of "Living Strings" re-issues and such. This reminds me that immediately after Elvis's death, the manager at the local Woolworth's took a ballpoint pen and changed the price tags on all the Pickwick Presleys from $1.98 to $7.98; presumably pocketing the difference himself. Not making this up!!

 

[TallPaulInKy]

Dave mentioned. The Sandpipers Come Saturday Morning . I have both albums and strange as it may seem on A&M the album had a black and white back cover, and on the budget Pickwick reissue was a full color cover...with a neat biography of the group.

 

[dostros]

Lou Reed got his start at Pickwick, how about that?

Singer-songwriter Lou Reed once worked as a staff songwriter for Pickwick Records, and gained experience in their small recording studio. Several of Pickwick's soundalike albums from 1964 to 1965 feature Reed as an uncredited session musician. Two of his songs, "Cycle Annie" (credited to The Beachnuts) and "You're Driving Me Insane" (as The Roughnecks), both appeared on the Soundsville! compilation in 1965. "The Ostrich" and "Sneaky Pete", two earlier songs by Reed, united him with John Cale, leading to their founding the Velvet Underground.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickwick_Records

 

[Actorman]

Even after acquiring Bell, it wasn't much of a record company...

Bell was small, but it was pretty successful during its brief heyday. The Partridge Family, David Cassidy, Tony Orlando & Dawn and The 5th Dimension sold millions of records. Not to mention the one-off million sellers like Vicki Lawrence's "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," Terry Jacks' "Seasons In The Sun" and Barry Manilow's "Mandy."

 

[TallPaulInKy]

WE CUT CORNERS SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO

You know with the number of albums and various labels that Pickwick has butchered, and I mean that in a nice way. You could start your own web site. But honestly Pickwick was always one of my favorite labels (and I have a few) because they back in the day they provided name artists and good songs for a reasonable price. Yes I did not like losiong a song or two, but at least I had the rest of the album and rarely paid much more than a dollar for it. These things were always on sale, and I think the list price was $1.98.

 

[TallPaulInKy]

This could be fun...

"Elvis Sings Hits From His Movies".

I'm still looking for the hits.

This was a pickwick reissue from the RCA Camden label. RCA apparently got tired of running its own budget (that's what these $2 list priced albums were called) and licensed Pickwick to do it. As for your Elvis album, the songs were pulled from the movie soundtrack albums. Here is the source info. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Sings_Hits_from_His_Movies,_Volume_1
The movies were hits, but few of the songs were.

 

[TallPaulInKy]

OK, The Sandpipers Come Saturday Morning --

On A&M:

Side 1: Santo Domingo / The Long and Winding Road / Free to Carry On / A Song of Joy 4:22/ Where There's a Heartache / He's Got the Whole World in His Hands

Side 2: The Drifter / The Sound of Love / Autumn Afternoon / Come Saturday Morning / The Wonder of You / Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

And the Pickwick version:

Side 1: The Drifter / Where There's A Heartache / Free To Carry On / Come Saturday Morning / A Song Of Joy

Side 2: The Long And Winding Road / Autumn Afternoon / The Sound Of Love / The Wonder Of You

See the differences?


-- Dave

Yes Dave, but you failed to mention the positive. Pickwick did a better package as far as the sleeve is concerned...
I have both pressings and the original A&M has a cheaply looking black and white back cover. I say cheaply looking because it is basically just a listing of songs. http://eil.com/Gallery/437990b.jpg
However the Pickwick reissue, uses a full color back cover and has the songs and a nice biography of the group. You can't read it but here is the back cover. http://i.ebayimg.com/t/THE-SANDPIPE...==/$(KGrHqV,!oEF!QRgiRBtBQIu!RMz3Q~~60_35.JPG

Very nicely done.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Sandpipers were kind of a strange act....quite often their songs would appear on other albums -- such as the CSM album containing "The Wonder of You" which of course was the title song of a previous album.

I thought Come Saturday Morning was the second-best album they ever did. Certainly it had a bona-fide hit single in the title track, so it was kind of surprising that A&M didn't do more to package it nicely. I always wondered too why they reverted to using a picture of a girl on their next album A Gift Of Song (which I think is their best) when they'd had good results with a group picture on the previous album. It'd be fun if someone who used to work in marketing at A&M would register here. (Maybe somebody would but they're afraid of getting grilled mercilessly about Carpenters album covers!)

 

[Michael Hagerty]

Bell was small, but it was pretty successful during its brief heyday. The Partridge Family, David Cassidy, Tony Orlando & Dawn and The 5th Dimension sold millions of records. Not to mention the one-off million sellers like Vicki Lawrence's "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," Terry Jacks' "Seasons In The Sun" and Barry Manilow's "Mandy."

Well, they sold millions of singles. It took Clive and Arista to move albums and make the real money.

 

[Dave]

There's also the Sergio Mendes Ye-Me-Le, released as Masquerade (I believe issued as a double album w/ Crystal Illusions) also sporting the typical sleazy cover...

Some Motown LP's have also been reissued via. Pickwick, that way, and w/ 12 songs, reduced to 9...


-- Dave

 

[Harry]

This is what my Pickwick YE-ME-LE looks like. I seem to recall picking it up in a cheap bin as a sort of fresher vinyl. I don't recall it sounding bad, but I haven't listened to it in a lot of years.

Harry

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Wow, that is probably one of the ugliest album covers I've seen in all my born days! I wonder why, in some cases Pickwick would use the real cover (like they did on Crystal Illusions) and on other LPs make these monstrosities?

The original's A&M cover was cool in its own way -- but that cover and the title probably didn't do a lot to help sales. I, as a fan, thought the title was really cool but I can see where it wouldn't have brought many newcomers.

The worst part of this Pickwick LP is, they picked the wrong song to leave out ("Moanin'") .... should have been "Where Are You Coming From."

 

[Michael Hagerty]

Hideous!

 

[Dave]

Hey, yeh! --That thar wuz whut I was talkin' 'bout!

Now what are those people in the background doing, besides not wanting to part of it?


-- Dave

 

[Harry]

Hey, yeh! --That thar wuz whut I was talkin' 'bout!

Now what are those people in the background doing, besides not wanting to part of it?


-- Dave

Well, there's three people pictured. "Ye" must be the clown-figure, "Me" is the guy with the mustache, and "Le" is the blonde lady. Yeah, that's it...

Harry

 

[A&Mguyfromwayback]

I think I just figured it out - nine tracks. They could only license nine tracks per album, perhaps to keep it as a separate package in some odd way, perhaps because they just negotiated a certain bulk price to license a bunch of records with nine tracks again. The Sandpipers album had 12 songs, three were cut; Ye-Me-Le had ten, one was cut; and Crystal Illusions only had nine anyway, so there you go. Does that follow with other Pickwick albums?

 

[Mike Blakesley]

That could be it. I never thought of it that way. I'm kind of surprised that a label would allow three songs from an album to be cut....you'd think artistic integrity would come into play. But, by the time those were licensed they probably figured they'd wrung all possible sales out of them anyway so it wouldn't matter so much.

There was another Pickwick album I had, Tales of Mystery and Imagination by The Alan Parsons Project. It only had 7 tracks, although one of them was split into a four-or-five part "suite" but it must have been counted as one song for licensing. That album was complete on Pickwick, so the "maximum of nine tracks" theory holds water on that one too.

 

[Dave]

Newsflash to those who hold the Originals, most sacred--this just in:

Ray Stevens' 1,837-Seconds of Humor, reissued as Rock 'N' Roll Show omits two songs, "The Rockin' Boppin' Waltz" and "Further More"...!

Just a note for those playing Ray at your next social gathering, in case your guests are wondering why they didn't hear those tracks, when you put that one on... (So don't show them the cover, either...!)


-- Dave

 

[ShallowMemory]

I saw a copy of Equinox that had, I think, only eight of the ten tracks on it!

The reason they do this is so that A&M gets more profits from licensing the back catalog, but does not give away the whole album, making buyers seek out the complete album on the original label. I'm sure the sound quality on Pickwick is third rate also--probably a multi-generation dub of the LP cutting master!

The small number of A&M sourced titles from Pickwick in the UK were from memory complete and a number of the tapes were decent using Cro2 tape even.

 

[jfiedler17]

There was another Pickwick album I had, Tales of Mystery and Imagination by The Alan Parsons Project. It only had 7 tracks, although one of them was split into a four-or-five part "suite" but it must have been counted as one song for licensing. That album was complete on Pickwick, so the "maximum of nine tracks" theory holds water on that one too.

Yeah, the 20th Century Fox original similarly has 7 tracks ("The Fall of the House of Usher" consists of five parts, but it's all listed as one track). That's one album that's really seen a weird and bizarre release history, though. For some reason I've never read any info on, all subsequent vinyl pressings of the album after the original release ditched the original cover and used an alternate cover that's horribly cartoonish-looking and almost looks like something Pickwick would do, even though these were still official (i.e. 20th Century or Polygram) re-releases. When the album was released on CD in 1987, they changed the front cover artwork yet again to a variation on the original 1976 cover (with a picture of a knight superimposed over a drawing of a mummy added to the top half of the cover), which was better-looking than the previous alternate cover, but at the same time, the album itself was changed significantly, Parsons & Co. having gone back and added new instrumental parts, sonic textures, drum sounds, etc. to make the album sound more contemporary. Universal finally issued a double-disc Deluxe Edition of the album back in '07 or so that includes both the original 1976 masters and the 1987 re-do, but retains the 1987 artwork, making the Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs edition of the album the only version of it on CD that actually preserves the original '76 artwork. Go figure.

BTW, I agree that the Pickwick reissue of Ye-Me-Le has got to be one of the ugliest album covers I've ever seen in my life. I recently picked up the 5th Dimension's Living Together, Growing Together, which has got a really hideous album cover itself and certainly couldn't have helped the group's waning popularity at the time, but even that one doesn't come close to approaching the sheer grotesqueness - and, might I add, scariness - of that Pickwick Ye-Me-Le cover. Yikes!

 

[Rudy]

The small number of A&M sourced titles from Pickwick in the UK were from memory complete and a number of the tapes were decent using Cro2 tape even.

I wonder if their "standards" in terms of content and packaging were different in the UK vs. the US...