Rick James
Fire It Up

SITE PRE-SALE DATE: 3/12/2010
SITE SHIP DATE: 3/26/2010

Finally. Fire It Up, Rick James’ third album for Motown, is available on a U.S. CD for the first time.

Featuring the singles “Love Gun” and “Come Into My Life,” Fire It Up is an underrated classic – Garden Of Love, also available on CD for the first time, is another; both were begging for the Motown/Hip-oSelect.com treatment. Digitally mastered for the first time, this reissue also includes for the first time the bonus 10-minute version of “Love Gun,” a promotional-only 12-inch mix. Featured in the unique, foldout booklet is the full lyric reprint as seen in the original LP inner sleeve.

Fire It Up followed the smash hit albums Come Get It and Bustin’ Out in October 1979, as Rick was honing on the disco punk-funk sound that would ultimately prove enormously popular. It was defined, as Michael Veal writes in the reissue’s liner notes, “by the funk-icon cover shot and the rowdy chants on the first two tracks, which James used to get the crowds worked up in concert. But as a whole, it was a more diverse affair… showing off James’s superb ballad singing skills.”

Fire It Up, a Top 5 R&B/Soul and a Top 40 Pop album, was Rick’s first that he produced his own – the template for his worldwide breakthrough to come, one of the “missing” RJ CDs that’s finally getting its due.

No track listing is posted.

Rick James
Garden of Love

Track Listing:

1. Big Time
2. Don’t Give Up On Love
3. Island Lady
4. Gettin’ It On (In The Sunshine)
5. Summer Love
6. Mary-Go-Round
7. Gettin’ It On (In The Sunshine) Reprise
8. Big Time Extended M+M Mix (previously unreleased bonus track)
9. Gypsy Girl Rick’s demo (previously unreleased bonus track)

SITE PRE-SALE DATE: 3/12/2010
SITE SHIP DATE: 3/26/2010

Garden Of Love, the often overlooked fourth album from Rick James, is now, 30 years after it was first released, on CD for the first time ever.

Now available at http://www.hip-oselect.com, it’s digitally mastered for the first time and, also for the first time, includes two bonus tracks: an 11-plus-minute extended version of “Big Time,” an unreleased “M+M” mix John Morales had planned to deliver back in the day, and “Gypsy Girl,” a demo version of the song “Teardrops,” recorded during the Garden sessions, that was ultimately revamped for the Rick’s album Throwdown. An additional bonus for fans is a newly discovered extra minute of the album’s brief, original closing track.

Garden Of Love was one of those different Rick James albums. Despite its up-tempo opening track, it was a mellow affair, released in the summer of 1980, after a successful tour with Prince as his opening act, on the heels of Fire It Up (also on CD for the first time here) and two albums with his backing band, the Stone City band. “James had made his name with rowdy disco-funk tracks like ‘You And I,’ but he was actually a much more versatile songwriter than most people realized,” writes Michael Veal in the reissue’s brand new liner notes. “On Garden Of Love, he attempted to move away from his ‘King of Punk-Funk’ image and create an album of relaxed, laid-back songs inspired by the Caribbean islands on which the songs were written.” Both the album and its single “Big Time” hit the R&B Top 20 but their chart performances were considered a disappointment to Rick and to Motown, resulting in Rick regrouping in Buffalo for the Street Songs album.

Since then, disappointment has given way to a deeper appreciation of Garden Of Love. “It is one of the great Motown concept albums,” writes Veal, “a quintessential summertime jam, James’s hidden masterpiece, and a solid testament to his vision and versatility.”

Hurray! Now I'm hoping for a general release soon!

Meanwhile, "Come Get It" sadly gets no re-master and is only available as a cheap $6.99 reissue, similar to Kool & The Gang's "Ladie's Night", which has a cheap generic cover to boot.

Tracklist for Fire It Up now posted on the pre-order page...it's the LP plus the "Love Gun" extended remix from the 12" promo single. They also fixed an error in the Garden of Love copy ("Teardrops" was from the album Throwin' Down, not Throwdown. Accuracy always counts to music geeks...

Rick James did a song called "Love Gun?"

Hah!

Aw, bang bang!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U42r3bqiaiM[/youtube]

Alan