Fantasy Deluxe #1: Human’s Lib

As outlined in A Love Deluxe, the past year or so has seen me become just a little bit addicted to creating “fantasy” deluxe editions. You take an album, and use whatever extra material is available (B-sides, Single Edits, 12″ Remixes, Demos, Out-takes, non-album 45s) to piece together a multi-disc celebration of it. 

Well we have to begin somewhere, so why not at the very start of my own musical journey? The second LP I ever bought, in March 1984, and still one of my All-Time Top 5 albums.

Human’s Lib by Howard Jones.

By now, anyone reading this blog will be familiar with my thoughts on the music itself (three of its singles are also featured as part of my Personal Top 40 Chart Number One rundown). This is instead a look at how the 4-disc Super Deluxe Edition (pictured above) was compiled.

The first thing to do is establish how many versions of the main album there have been (original, reissue, deluxe, etc), how many of them to draw upon, and then set about acquiring any that you don’t already have! Without getting too technical and audiophile about it, some versions will sound considerably louder or more compressed than others depending on vintage; all of that can be very subjective and down to personal preference. For myself, I much prefer the earlier, “flatter” sound of CDs mastered and manufactured in the 1980s and early 1990s. I discovered this to my cost, of course, having jettisoned most of my original CDs whenever a new “remaster” appeared on the scene. The majority still exist out there, albeit on the second-hand and collectors market, so all is not lost.

Back to Human’s Lib. There are three or four main editions/masterings. The one from the 1980s (which was still in print up until a few years ago), a quite snazzy reissue on his own dTox label from 2010 (brighter but not at the expense of the album’s unique feel), and then as part of a recent Cherry Red deluxe/boxset. For the purposes of this project, I decided to ignore the Cherry Red version and stick with the others, leaving two discs’ worth of space for extra material that would be more interesting.

This meant I would need to buy the original/early CD (again!) to recreate Disc 1 of my deluxe. Tempted by what actually turned out to be erroneous information on the disc label itself – which suggested the running time of What Is Love? was the shorter single/vinyl LP mix rather than the longer extended version which appears on all other CDs of Human’s Lib – I opted for a beautiful “Target” edition (above). It still had the longer mix of What Is Love?, but looks and sounds wonderful. The shorter mix can be found on Howard’s 1993 Best Of, so that would be substituted in, and wouldn’t sound out of place as it shared the same era of mastering.

China Dance, always track 11 on the Compact Disc format, is removed and placed among the B-sides. Thus the original configuration and track times as are per the 1984 vinyl.

CD1

01 CONDITIONING 4.32
02 WHAT IS LOVE? 3.45
03 PEARL IN THE SHELL 4.03
04 HIDE AND SEEK 5.34
05 HUNT THE SELF 3.42
06 NEW SONG 4.15
07 DON’T ALWAYS LOOK AT THE RAIN 4.13
08 EQUALITY 4.26
09 NATURAL 4.25
10 HUMAN’S LIB 4.03

So far, so fairly straightforward. Disc 2 ought to have been a simple case of using the dTox remaster by Robbie Bronnieman, but the CD has indexing issues, i.e. some of the tracks have not been separated at quite the exact point they need to be. A split-second or so of songs either side will be heard if you listen to them any other way than in gapless sequence. It was never addressed by Howard’s team at the time of release, but I now had the chance to put the problem right while creating the second disc of this set. A bit of re-editing and pasting in Audacity, and an error-free 2010 remastered version of Human’s Lib was finished.

CD2

01 CONDITIONING 4.32
02 WHAT IS LOVE? 6.33
03 PEARL IN THE SHELL 4.03
04 HIDE AND SEEK 5.34
05 HUNT THE SELF 3.42
06 NEW SONG 4.15
07 DON’T ALWAYS LOOK AT THE RAIN 4.13
08 EQUALITY 4.26
09 NATURAL 4.25
10 HUMAN’S LIB 4.03
11 CHINA DANCE 3.49

China Dance stays this time, as it’s been remastered in line with the full album, and means we have a corrected facsimile of the official version, to go with a unique recreation of the LP on CD one. We’re halfway there, but really the work has barely begun. Now for the bonus stuff. Fun time!

If we consider the Human’s Lib era to begin with debut single New Song (September 1983) and conclude with the release of mini-compilation The 12″ Album (November 1984) – as I do – then the pool of extra material will include the B-sides for all four singles from Human’s Lib, plus the special versions from The 12″ Album. The other then-still-exclusive track from that set, Always Asking Questions – a song considered for Human’s Lib but dropped late in the day – can finally find its home with the other non-LP cuts.

Howard recording the Human’s Lib album, Winter 1983. Picture from issue 4 of RISK magazine.

Meanwhile, a trio of early recordings made it onto the bonus disc of 2003’s Very Best Of, one of the rare occasions post-1993 that Howard worked again with WEA/Warners, following several years of struggles over ownership of his catalogue.

The only tracks from this period which I omitted were the 7″ versions of Like To Get To Know You Well and its flipside Bounce Right Back. Simply because those form part of the Dream Into Action era, by virtue of their inclusion on the original WEA compact disc, and the dTox reissue.

CD3 SINGLES & BONUS TRACKS [Edits, Remixes, B-Sides]

01 HIDE AND SEEK 4.49  (7″ SINGLE VERSION)
02 WHAT IS LOVE? 6.36 (EXTENDED MIX FROM “THE 12″ ALBUM”)
03 NEW SONG 5.22 (NEW VERSION FROM “THE 12″ ALBUM”)
04 PEARL IN THE SHELL 6.44 (FROM “THE 12″ ALBUM”)
05 LIKE TO GET TO KNOW YOU WELL 7.40 FULL INTERNATIONAL REMIX
06 CHANGE THE MAN 4.29 (SINGLE B-SIDE)
07 IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER 3.36 (SINGLE B-SIDE)
08 TAO TE CHING 3.51 (SINGLE B-SIDE)
09 LAW OF THE JUNGLE 3.18 (SINGLE B-SIDE)
10 WHAT CAN I SAY? 5.07 (DEMO RECORDING)
11 DON’T PUT THESE CURSES ON ME 3.38 (DEMO RECORDING)
12 MODERN MAN 4.13 (DEMO RECORDING)

Track 1 is from the 1993 Best Of, the mix of track 5 comes from the bonus disc of the Human’s Lib/Dream Into Action “Tour Edition” dTox boxset. Tracks 6-12 are all from CD2 of 2003’s aforementioned The Very Best Of.

November 1984, and things are looking up.

For the last disc in the set, I rounded up the mixes featured on the dTox bonus discs (official 12″ versions of New Song and Hide & Seek, rare/promo mixes of Pearl In The Shell and Conditioning), an extended mix of Bounce Right Back (from the 12″ single of Like To Get To Know You Well), and a couple of tracks remaining from the 12″Album; Always Asking Questions and Total Conditioning. The latter required a subtle edit, as it originally segued out of another track. Its coda revisits many of the other songs from Human’s Lib in a sort of mash-up, so putting it as the last track on CD4 kind of brings everything full circle.

CD4 THE REMIXES [Edits, Remixes, B-Sides #2]

01 NEW SONG 5.34 (EXTENDED MIX)
02 CONDITIONING 4.07 (ORIGINAL 1983 VERSION)
03 HIDE AND SEEK 8.33 (LONG VERSION)
04 ALWAYS ASKING QUESTIONS 4.28
05 PEARL IN THE SHELL 8.56 (U.S. PROMO 12″ MIX)
06 BOUNCE RIGHT BACK 7.29 (CAUSE + EFFECT MIX)
07 NEW SONG 6.31 (ALTERNATIVE EXTENDED MIX)
08 TOTAL CONDITIONING 6.58

For the front artwork, I decided to keep the iconic Steg painting in black and white and not do anything too drastic. The DVD-style cases that I use as a design template necessitated some minor tweaks to the thin border around the edge, and I inserted the “Super Deluxe Edition” text in a matching font and size. Same for the spine, using a cropped section of Howard from Steg’s cover to use at the top (over time, I found that I preferred this approach to just text and colour backgrounds for the spines).

The rear background image is from the What Is Love? video shoot, made darker so as to allow white text tracklistings to be possible. I think it was also used on the cover of an early RISK magazine.

And with that, we are done.

Or are we?

Not only does the official Human’s Lib “Super Deluxe Edition” on Cherry Red Records (long sold out, even at the asking price of nearly £100) contain even more demo recordings, formative ideas and alternate mixes – yet not, weirdly, the short version of What Is Love? – that could reasonably form an extra disc on my own fantasy deluxe, but the same label have also now issued a five disc (yes, FIVE DISC!) boxset of radio sessions and live broadcasts from the earlier part of his career.

Howard Jones At The BBC covers 1983 to 1987, and again features enough from the period covered by my fantasy set to provide plenty more material; a pair of David “Kid” Jensen Radio One sessions from just before New Song hit big in late 1983, alongside two concerts from 1984 (Friars in Aylesbury from April, The Royal Albert Hall later in December).

To include all of this could take the total number of discs to 8. But nobody in their right mind would think of creating something that big. Would they?