Flashback: Teardrop Explodes Deluxe 3CD

Issued last month in the UK by Universal (but with no US release in sight), a three-CD edition of the Teardrops' classic 1980 debut does more than just stand the test of time - it literally stops time in its tracks. Check out the video, below.

By Ron Hart

English post-punk legends The Teardrop Explodes famously copped their strange handle off an obscure panel from a particularly odd issue of the Marvel superhero comic book Daredevil, which found DD teaming up with The Amazing Spider-Man while both are suffering through relationship issues with their respective girlfriends amidst becoming embroiled in a hero vs. hero battle with Sub-Mariner. 

How Daredevil No. 77 correlates with the acid-tested brilliance of the post-punk, new wave and psychedelia cross-section that the Teardrops - singer/bassist Julian Cope, then-guitarist Mick Finkler on guitar (who was replaced by Alan Gill), drummer Gary Dwyer and original keyboardist Paul Simpson - created in their short tenure together constitutes one of the great mysteries of rock ‘n' roll. Nevertheless, the group remains the mad geniuses of an era in UK jive that also spawned the likes of The Chameleons, Echo and the Bunnymen, Joy Division, A Certain Ratio, Gang of Four and Public Image Limited, not to mention U2 in Ireland and Orange Juice in Scotland. And somehow, the Teardrops managed to sound like the sum of all their parts, albeit rolled up in a sunshine pop joint hand-dipped in Piccadilly Square's most potent strain of liquid LSD.

Originally released in the fall of 1980, the group's enigmatic full-length debut Kilimanjaro fully lived up to the scrappy promise of their early singles on Zoo Records, the co-owner of which, David Balfe, had joined the band after Simpson left and whose keyboard prowess is featured all over this bona fide post-punk masterpiece. But while the album was a smash in the Teardrops' native Great Britain, spawning five singles including a Top 20 hit with "Treason" and saw the LP reach No. 24 on the UK album charts, they barely rose above underground cult status here in the United States. The band was cherished by an elite colony of in-the-know tastemakers and educated music fans [among them, the future editor of BLURT. - Ed.] thanks in part to the moderate airplay of Kilimanjaro's closing track "When I Dream" on progressive radio stations like WLIR in New York and KROQ in Los Angeles. But otherwise, they hardly registered a blip on the American mainstream, particularly in comparison to the wildfire success of rivals like Bono and the boys and Duran Duran, both of whom considered the Teardrops to be their stiffest competition across the pond.

However, in the three decades since the album's initial release, that elite cult colony of fans (both of the Teardrops and frontman-turned-solo artist Cope) has grown considerably in these parts. And while their popularity is certainly not enough to merit Universal's releasing it stateside, the mind-blowing 30^th anniversary of Kilimanjaro - at least for serious fans of the band - is undoubtedly worth every penny you might lose on that dollars-to-pounds exchange rate to purchase it as an import. Of course you get the original 11 tracks fully remastered and restored to their originally intended running order following some inexplicable shuffles on earlier reissues. But better yet, this generous deluxe version of the album also includes a second disc that compiles all of the Teardrops' early Zoo singles and the post-Kilimanjaro Top Ten hit "Reward", as well as their subsequent b-sides along with a variety of alternate and live tracks, including a nine-minute version of "Sleeping Gas" from a particularly wild December 1981 performance at Club Zoo in Liverpool that finds a clearly tripped out Julian barking like a dog, recommending a John Cale album to the audience in mid-song and doing what he called a "face solo". And, if that wasn't enough, hidden within this new set's gorgeous gatefold packaging that vividly restores the album's classic zebra cover is a third disc containing the group's BBC sessions with John Peel and Mike Read leading up to and following the release of Kilimanjaro, eleven tracks in all.

Add some intriguing liner notes from Cope, Balfe, Dwyer, veteran UK music mogul and close band friend David Bates (who was key in signing the Teardrops to Phonogram Records) and legendary British publicist Mick Houghton and you have yourself the only version of this already essential masterstroke of 1980 that you will ever need.