Imagine my surprise when I suddenly saw this single at a record fair recently. (Yes, a real record fair! We haven't had one of those in a long time either...) Obviously I bought this single. And obviously I never saw it before - nor did I ever think this track was released as a single, for some reason. It's great to have this now.
My collection: 7" single no. 6428
Found: Record fair, Den Haag, 7 August 2021
Cost: 3 euro
Tracks: 'Bold as brass' / 'The woman who loves you'
'I hope I never' was taken from Split Enz's 1980 album 'True colours'. The single version is 40 seconds shorter than the album version. Like many of their records at the time, this single was released as a laser etched disc, although it was a limited edition; I've got a later, non-etched copy.
I recently found out that Puck's brother is also a follower of this blog. All you other readers will not know him, so here's a short introduction: he likes early eighties music as long as it's not 'commercial'. That notion is in itself a curious one, since every artist is in the music business to sell records after all. When they don't succeed, it's usually not by design and a cause for a lot of frustration.
There aren't that many records around that were laser etched. A&M Records introduced the laser etched records with Split Enz's 1980 album, 'True colours'. They hoped that laser-etching would lead to economical protection from unauthorized copying of its products. Subsequently, the singles 'I hope I never' and 'History never repeats' were also released on laser etched vinyl.
The band Split Enz formed in 1971 at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1971. The original line-up consisted of Phil Judd, Tim Finn, Mike Chunn, Robert Gillies and Noel Crombie. Originally named 'Split Ends', they replaced the last three letters of their name with 'nz', which is the anagram for New Zealand. When Phil Judd left the band in 1977, he was replaced by Tim's brother Neil Finn, and they entered their more commercially successful new wave period.
