21st Century Boys

Typical of the major record label...there we were with our website, playing gigs and selling CDs , all on our own with no-one to help us, and of course they think - hello somethings happening here - let’s get in on it!

Actually the people working at EMI then (in the "exploitation of catalogue department") were all fans of the band and they worked really hard to package the CD beautifully and I gave them my full co-operation.

This fills in a lot of the blanks missing from the CD releases - most of the early singles were only released on vinyl and they are all here, with the single rather than album mixes. Not only does it have lots of the rare and hard to get now singles but all the b sides too.

Package starts with the "video trailer mix" ...the sound from this is from when we filmed outside the famous Abbey Road studios, the night we played the legendary gig there... it was the sound recorder talking as we crossed the famous Zebra crossing!

The CD closes with the 2000 remix by Westbam. It has a massive beat - although not really much of the original track in it! So many people ask me if they can remix Sputnik stuff and I'm always wary because they so often turn out sounding like some one else - yet I'm always hoping someone will add something to our original sounding rock and roll that we could use live too.....

Great to hear all those b-sides in order (most were just recorded at home!). Great packaging too... the inside poster bag has lots of really great pictures from the sputnik archive.