The story of how I got into Pop Will Eat Itself is a long one, and I can't be bothered to tell it now so I'll save it for another day. The key point of that story is that Pop Will Eat Itself were a pretty exciting band to discover as a teenager. They'd long broken up by the time I heard them, but it was great fun stumbling across their records in second hand stores in the early 2000's.
This record is a prime example of that. Two days after Christmas in 2002 I decided to head into Reading for the day to see what the record shops had to offer. I went on the Yellow Pages website and noted down the addresses of each shop in town (remember, it was 2002) and jumped on a train. I came home with a nice stack of records (including one of my all-time best finds, Manic Compression by Quicksand), three of them by Pop Will Eat Itself. In one record shop, upstairs in the old shopping centre to the west of town, I found this 12" single and the picture-disc of The Pop Will Eat Itself Cure For Sanity. Whilst I'm largely uninterested in remixes, there were was no way I wasn't buying this record. Look at that cover! It's possibly one of my all-time sleeves. It's not one that comes to mind when I think of great record covers (it's no Spiderland), but it's still awesome. One day I'll get round to framing the poster that came with it.
The film poster style of the sleeve certainly adds to it's charm, in more ways than it just being a novel idea. The title of the song is a reference to Total Recall ("Get the girl, kill the bad guys and save the entire planet!"), which is fun in itself. The reason it's even more amusing now is that the singer, Clint Mansell, has gone on to have a huge career in composing film scores. I've recently bought two of his scores on vinyl and, ever since seeing Requiem For a Dream many years ago, I've struggled to believe that the man singing here also composed Lux Aeterna, a piece of music who'll have definitely heard even if you don't think you have. It's really quite incredible.
Anyway, Get the Girl! Kill the Baddies! was amongst the first few PWEI songs I heard (on the budget compilation Wise Up Suckers!) and it's a classic in their discography. None of these remixes adds a great deal in my opinion (especially when the line "Yeah, you motherfuckers" gets changed to "Yeah, you brothers and sisters" for the radio edit), but this record was always more about that awesome sleeve. They always joked that they sold more t-shirts than records and, given the strength of the artwork, I can believe it.
Format: 12", 20x20" poster
Tracks: 4
Cost: £3 second hand
Bought: Second hand store, Reading
When: 27/12/02
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
