Y lo hacen con ediciones limitadas llenas de cosas y sorpresas varias. Gracias a Carlos me entero de ello. El propio Bob Stanley lo cuenta en The Guardian.
Primero pego el texto del club de fans y luego el de The Guardian:
TEXTO CLUB DE FANS
We've been holding back on this news for a while until we had all the info, but finally we can reveal the first bunch of Saint Etienne Deluxe editions:
FOXBASE ALPHA and, for the first time outside Japan, CONTINENTAL. They will be in the shops on May 18th, but we're hoping to have copies to sell at the Foxbase shows the previous week. They are 2cd sets, in shiny plastic wallets, with plenty of unseen photos and memorabilia from the period. As well as the relevant b-sides, and various alternate takes, each will include a clutch of unreleased songs.
On FOXBASE ALPHA we have SALLY SPACE (pretty good, but oddly entirely forgotten by all three of us), CHASE HQ (as premiered on Resonance FM a couple of weeks back), and THE RECKONING (full spy mode instrumental);
Continental premieres WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO (lost somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic according to this high-powered melancholic dancer), WE COULD HAVE IT ALL (celebrating the magic of teamwork) and the jagged electro love song UNDER HER SPELL.
FOXBASE ALPHA is also coming out in a gorgeous limited edition of 1,000 set - as seen in the Guardian! Thanks to the international piracy problem (we're not kidding) it will ship in July, but can be pre-ordered during May. We'll offer a link via the official Saint Etienne site first, and it will be available to international buyers. So what do you get? * a 6"tall model of a Subbuteo player in the classic green and white Saint Etienne strip * a reprint of the original album poster * 4 unique Foxbase badges (or pins) * a cd of the remastered double disc album. It all comes in a beautifully designed, vintage Etienne-green presentation box. It's truly lovely - we've seen one! Something for your children, and your children's children, to go gooey-eyed over, before they tear the box to bits and pull the player's head off.
Beyond FOXBASE ALPHA and CONTINENTAL are similarly through reissues of SO TOUGH and SOUND OF WATER.
More details as and when, but we've been rather shocked and surprised by how many forgotten relics are lurking in various cupboards and cellars.
And before all that, of course, is the FOXBASE ALPHA tour, with support from Lawrence (Felt/Denim) and his dynamite GO KART MOZART band. There are no tickets left for London, but still a few for the Glasgow and Sheffield shows. We
hoped to get Bizarre Inc out of retirement, but instead the London DJs are RICHARD X and AIR FRANCE: the Bloomsbury Ballroom will stay open until 1am, so bring pills and dancing wear. Maybe leotards.
DJs for Sheffield and Glasgow to be confirmed very soon.
It should be mindblowing. Rehearsals are looking and sounding great.
We are most excited. See you there.
Bob Pete and Sarah xxx
THE GUARDIAN
Gatefolds and grand pianos
Deluxe record editions
Bob Stanley
The Guardian, Friday 24 April 2009
One way for fans to get closer to the bands they love has always been to own the rarest, most collectible pieces of product. Early pressings, limited editions - these are central to record-collecting lore. Frequently, this unquenchable need for product defies logic: at a Beatles auction in the early 90s, an early "gold label" pressing of Please Please Me sold for more than the jacket worn by John Lennon on the cover of Rubber Soul.
Record companies have exploited this got/need mentality since the picture-disc boom in the late 70s, but recently pop stars have taken to creating super-deluxe editions of their latest albums, items which sit in the collector's psyche somewhere between a fresh-out-of-the studio acetate and the "handcrafted in meticulous detail" figurines advertised in the Mail on Sunday. A Tori Amos box set called A Piano falls into the latter category. The 12in box contains five CDs of songs which touch on self, religion, femininity, pain and love (with a searching spirit), and is topped with a frighteningly realistic, miniature grand piano. Of course it doesn't play because, lest we forget, it's a collectible and not a toy.
As a way to reactivate back catalogue, it's become almost a necessity to dress the CD properly. The humble jewel case - around since the early 1980s, so easily scratched and cracked - now looks as hip and desirable as a used videotape. Add a card slipcase, a booklet, maybe even a hardback book, and it starts to look more like an art object.
The best super-deluxers tend to come from artists most associated with collecting, or with their own strong aesthetic. DJ Shadow is the patron saint of crate-diggers; his Diminishing Returns Party Pak included some of his most desirable mix tapes (plus T-shirts), and was limited to 1,000 copies. Once it sold out, the mix tapes were immediately bootlegged, which only made the original more desirable. The Pet Shop Boys' catalogue has been a little variable in recent years, but their packaging only gets better. In their heyday, the Behaviour album came in a white fur box with a bonus 3in CD, which was fancy enough; the recent Yes album came as 11 separate 12-inch singles with a sturdy book and retailed at a staggering £300 - and there were 300 PSB diehards to guarantee it sold out to keep Neil Tennant in snuff for some time to come.
In times gone by, feeding the keenest fans was the domain of the bootlegger, who had an understanding of what they wanted that seemed beyond the ken of a marketing man. Last year, Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts I-IV was released in five different formats, ranging from free download to a $75 job with a Blu-ray disc and accompanying slideshow, to a vinyl/CD combo in a huge black box signed by Trent Reznor.
In a case of super-deluxe oneupmanship, NIN's drummer Josh Freese has now put out his Since 1972 album on 11 formats. $7 gets you a digital download; $50 and you'll receive a "Thank you" phone call from Josh for buying Since 1972. And, for the fan who has everything, including limitless funds, there's a $75,000 limited edition of one, for which Josh will write, record and release a five-song EP about you and your life story, and take a flying trapeze lesson with you, after which you get to "go back to Robin from NIN's place and his wife will make you raw lasagne". To prove that even the wealthiest fans can't get everything they want, there is a "no spooning" clause.
For the artist, these editions are a chance to escape years of titchy CD sleeve design, a return to the era of lavish gatefolds with lyric sheets and rice-paper inserts. Saint Etienne's Foxbase Alpha is being reissued next month, along with untold delights on a bonus disc. The brave new world of super-deluxe has afforded us the extra pleasure of attaching a giant Subbuteo player decked out in the 1970s Saint Etienne kit, packed in a vintage green box. The trick of designing these collectibles is to put yourself inside the mind of the fan, though the fact I'm a Subbuteo junkie may have swayed my judgment
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