no track listing yet...

Hell yeah! What a great album, and how cool will this be. I hope House Of Blue Light will follow. I could give a crap about the interview disc and I hope they don't charge a 3CD price, or at least offer a 2CD version, but we know how record companies think. I never bought the Knebworth '85 release which I think was only semi-official anyway, so that will be new to me.

Here are the details so far from deep-purple.net:

Perfect Strangers is due to get the Universal Remastered treatment this summer (first mooted back in 2009). It will likely be a 3 disc set, albeit not quite as exciting as we might have hoped.

CD1 will be the remaster. CD3 will be the old Interview Disc Polydor issued as a promo for the album. CD2 will be an odds and ends disc with some tracks from Knebworth (already released as a stand-alone package), the b-side and hopefully the instrumental out-takes which surfaced in Japan some years ago before being withdrawn. The idea of a remix has been dropped as nobody can find the tapes. That'll teach them not to let me archive stuff properly.

"Knebworth '85" was official, since it was on the "Connoisseur Collection" label, which was owned by original Deep Purple co-manager the late Tony Edwards.

What a great album. This is a no-brainer purchase for me. Suprised that there were ideas of a remix, I always thought this was a fantastic sounding record.

I second that! I will get this as soon as released. Played the heck out of this when first released. I wish they included the videos that went along for this album whcih included scenes playing soccer and all.

Rick A.

I'll buy also as long as the interview disc doesn't have ANY effect on the price. AND I MEAN ANY.

I'll get it if the interview disc is remastered, but not brickwalled.

I'm waiting for waveforms to tell me if I'll like it.

I'll get it as long as they don't re-record Ian Gillan's answers in the interview.

Alan

I'm not crazy about an interview disc...I would rather have a full live show from that tour. It was a great album and tour...saw them in NJ and it was a great show. I'll see what the official release looks like before I commit.

This is great news . I would only listen to an interview disc once , so it would be a waste to me . It would be nice if the Knebworth '85 recording was complete . The version released through the Deep Purple Appreciation Society on Connoissuer was missing a few parts , the liner notes said the tapes were damaged . The sound was a little rough from what I remember . I think I only had it a couple of weeks before trading it in . Any show from that tour would be great .

From the Deep-Purple.com website and Simon Robinson:



Perfect Strangers is getting the Universal Remastered treatment this summer. Roger Glover first talked about a special edition for the 25th Anniversary of the album back in 2009. Incredibly they were unable to find the multi-track tapes, which effectively means that a remix wasn’t possible. This is a shame as the very 80s production sound hasn’t worn well in places (some of us dared to say so at the time but such comments didn’t go down very well! I’m still off Ritchie’s Christmas card list…). Let’s hope it the tapes turn up somewhere and haven’t gone for good.
So what to include instead? CD1 will be the straight remaster (including the original non-album track Not Responsible – which was later fitted onto the picture disc vinyl edition). Given that this album was remastered for CD as recently as 1999 it’s not certain how much this will improve the audio.

CD2 is an odds and ends disc with some tracks from Knebworth (which is already released as a stand-alone package), the b-side Son Of Alerik and more from the instrumental jam out-takes (which is where Alerik originated). Fans with long memories will recall the announcement of a Japanese compilation called The Best of Deep Purple in the 80s, issued in 1991. To give this added value the Japanese asked for any extra tracks and Glover went back through the reference tapes and in particular a couple of the long instrumental jams which had taken place during the preparation for the album. He pulled two sections out which he felt stood up, and these were selected as the two bonus tracks. Promo tapes went out – with the new material on – but the tracks disappeared before the CD was pressed (Cosmic Jazz and RUIR I think were the titles – the latter turning out to be a typing error for RIJIR – from the initials of the band’s christian names). It was thought that not everyone in the band wanted this material out, hence it being pulled.
Again if you remember Knebworth coming out, this wasn’t complete as the BBC had already erased a couple of tracks from their recording. We managed to replace some from off-air recordings but Under The Gun had gone for good. So they’ve added a version of it here from the show in Paris (along with the audio off the slightly longer promo video studio version).

CD3 will be the old Interview Disc Polydor issued as a promo for the album back in late 1984. This was from exclusive interviews done by the late Phil Easton. There was an American interview disc as well but I don’t think this will be included.

It all highlights the difficulties of working with the band’s back-catalogue of this period; there are concert recordings of the era which would serve fans better as bonus material than recycling Knebworth but after so long I guess we’re reaching the stage where most fans have given up and got most of what they want on bootleg. Quite why just one track from Paris for example but not others?
The packaging follows along the same lines as the Rainbow remasters (part is shown here). I always really disliked the original album cover, a logo so contrived and ugly that it quickly vanished after the tour.

It’s fun to look back and recall the excitement of 1984/5 of course. Collectors searching all over for the interview discs (which were pressed in quite low numbers): The kudos of being able to get one of the advance album sales brochures carried by Polydor reps (which showed an early version of the cover): Nabbing the special stand-up box which stores displayed the 7″ version of the single in: And of course the eager discussions over the merits of the album itself amongst fans. And all of this more than a quarter of a century ago – just to make everyone feel their age!

This title can be pre-ordered at the DTBOnline Store

Is it me, or is this nothing special?

I'll get this but will wait for a used or promo. Just not enough of special bonus tracks and non-remixed Disc 1 has put me to this decision.

Rick A.

I don't want the album remixed that would probably suck, but the bonus tracks are fairly weak. Still, I don't have Knebworth so I'll get this if the price is reasonable. I hope "Son Of Alerik" is the full version.
I hope they also do the other Mercury albums (House Of Blue Light and Nobody's Perfect) and come up with better bonus tracks.
I wasn't expecting much in the way of bonuses much like the Rainbow remasters. I'll still get this.

I'm waiting for the price.

I knew I was going to pass on this from the get-go.
Perfect Strangers was one of the very first CDs I ever purchased back when CDs first came into existence!
Not Responsible has always been on the CD version of PS (I think was a "CD only bonus track" if memory serves...at least it was on my original (West German I think) pressing). I replaced the original CD with the 1999 remaster that also included the vinyl b-side Son of Alerik...and I already have the Knebworth 2CD set. No interest at all in the interview disc either.

Maybe if they had included a bonus live disc from a different show I would have been all over it but this looks just like a bunch of added fluff. I can live without a couple instrumentals and 1 live track from Paris.

Roqdawg

100% agreed...

No it's not just you - despite my being a big fan of this album I don't see anything about this release that makes me want to buy it. Unless the mastering is so great that everyone praises it to high heaven as the best sounding version of this ever I have no reason to buy it.

This isn't anything special, but I love the album and really, the 1999 remaster is so bland and void of any info, I'm getting this without hesitation. I might wait a while to see if I can get it cheaper, but I'm looking forward to it still.

Did this end up coming out? Was listening to some PS tracks today and was reminded of exciting it was back in 1984 when DP came back.

No-it is still planned for this year.

It's now next year. Still no word?