The Pop Will Eat Itself Cure for Sanity is the PWEI album I know the least well. I've never owned a copy on cd and this picture disc, whilst lovely, sounds like shit. One of the (many) problems with picture discs is that they often come in very tight plastic sleeves, which leads to a lot of fat-handed tugging at the side of the record. The pops and clicks at the start of each side here are louder than I've ever heard, and I feel a bit bad for my record player for having to deal with them.
An early PWEI purchase was the live album At Weird's Bar and Grill - I'd actually been listening to it for a while before buying it, because a friend bought a copy that I saw in a record shop one day (I think just so I couldn't buy it) and I eventually bought it from him. That album features a lot of these songs, albeit in quite different live recordings - 88 Seconds and Counting, Axe of Men and Nightmare at 20,000 Feet are all songs I'm very familiar with from their live versions. (Side note: I eventually ended up with a turquoise t-shirt from that very live show that another friend found in a second hand shop. My other PWEI t-shirts have all been given away in recent years, but I plan to keep that one for a long time yet).
Other songs are of course staples of best-of albums (of which I have two) and singles or EPs from that era - Dance of the Mad Bastards, X, Y and Zee, 92F (in various mixes) and Touched By the Hand of Cicciolina (the latter was always one I enjoyed for how shamelessly upbeat the piano is). As it is, playing it now, it feels much more familiar than I expected; the songs well known but as different versions. There's a fair bit of dicking around that thankfully didn't make it onto the other albums - I can take or leave the intro or City Zen Radio 1990/2000 FM and Dr Nightmare's Medication Time. Psychosexual and Axe of Men have a level of darkness that hints at the style they'd find two albums later on the very industrial Dos Dedos Mis Amigos. In a lot of ways, it's the odd-one-out of that era, as the albums either side of it sound much more similar to each other than either does to this one.
The highlight of the album is probably 92F (The 3rd Degree) - there are many different versions of that song and I think this might be the finest. I don't know anything about the woman singing, but her voice is great - somehow strained and slightly raspy, but it works so well. Later in the album we get the Boilerhouse "The Birth" remix, which features Clint or Graham singing instead. It's still enjoyable, but I find myself longing for the female vocals instead.
I found this 12" picture disc on a very fruitful shopping trip to Reading, a city I can only assume was overflowing with Poppies records, as I got two other PWEI records that day, and left even more behind on the shelves. At £10 it's £4 more than it's ever sold for on Discogs, but I was very pleased to find it and add it to my PWEI collection. The picture disc is great and it's nice to have the legendary "Sample it, loop it, fuck it and eat it" in large letters on a record, even if it's been censored. I think I once saw the cd in a second hand shop (in Morecambe, a place I'm glad to have not thought about for many years) but it was in very poor condition, and I figured other chances would come around. They haven't, but I'm not sat here regretting not buying it - the Poppies were a great band at a very certain time, but I don't get as much out of them as I used to.
Format: 12" picture disc
Tracks: 19
Cost: £10 second hand
Bought: Reading
When: 27/12/02
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no
