The Vinyl Factory released some photos of the new Diamond in the Mind Vinyl! Take a good look at the pretties!!
At first glance, I really like the front cover, in all of it’s sparkly splendor. I did spy the photography included in the packaging – particularly the nighttime “spotlight” photo and the one of the two women on the railing, which look like Nick’s work. I must admit that when I saw the photo of the women, I chuckled. Branding, branding, branding. It still works!!
What I didn’t chuckle over, were the track listings. If you care to take a gander, you might notice a few things:
On the outer sleeve itself they list View to a Kill instead of A View to a Kill, they leave “The” off of Reflex, and instead of writing the full title to (Reach Up for the) Sunrise, they left it at Sunrise. Small things, really – and I might not have even noticed or cared had it not been for something they did to another song on one of the inner sleeves that I know will boil the blood of many detail-oriented Duranie out there: they mistakenly renamed Hungry Like The Wolf to be Hungry Like A Wolf.
Small errors? Yes, definitely…and perhaps most of them were intended. Let’s face it, even the band shortens the titles to their songs when writing about them or doing set lists, and quite frankly WE destroy them when we shorten them to mere acronyms. ITSISK, anyone???
As an aside: I remember being virtually spanked by my good pal “Moocher” on DDF (see…I can’t stop the acronyms!!) because I consistently shortened Red Carpet Massacre to RCM. His point was that the band titled the song (and album) for a reason – and that I was being rude by shortening it. To the band, the songs are like their children, and I was basically renaming their precious by only using their initials. How would I like that? Hmm…how do I sign my blogs again?
In any case, perhaps the titling was done purposefully, and in the scope of things I don’t necessarily think it s huge problem or should matter. Leaving “The” off of The Reflex probably won’t ruin anybody’s day. However… I think there’s a line in the sand when it comes to getting the title wrong. Hungry like A Wolf? Really?? Maybe Vinyl Factory doesn’t realize that to many a Duran fan, that sort of thing is akin to scratching nails down a chalkboard. Do they have any idea how many times a journalist has gotten the title wrong in articles? Interviews? Even on videos shows? Probably not. While I’m sure that to many it’s not a big deal, and perhaps they chalk it up to the same “artistic license” I mentioned before…the very fact that they weren’t consistent in their labeling (on the other covers and even on the albums themselves the title is correctly listed) tells me that it was an error.
I have to think that someone in Duran’s camp had to sign off on this at one point or another, and maybe they saw it and didn’t see it as a big deal, or maybe they didn’t see it at all because mistakes do happen…but as someone who has been a fan for a very long time and knows how fans react, I kind of think people will notice. We’re funny that way.
-R
