Sold Date: December 14, 2020
Start Date: April 5, 2019
Final Price: £34.99 (GBP)
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Tracklisting -
Side 1 1. Sweetest Smile 2. The Way She Was Before 3. Better Letting Go 4. Too Many Times Side 2 5. Stormy Waters 6. Her Coat And No Knickers 7. Sleeper 8. Where The River Bends Side 3 9. The Unforgiven 10. Grievous Angel
11. Beneath The Radar Side 4 12. In A Heartbeat 13. Walk On Frozen Water 14. If You’re All Done Dying

Colin Vearncombe first stepped onto a stage as Black in January 1981 and a journey began. Over the course of the next decade, four Black albums and more than a dozen singles were released by three indepen- dent labels and two major record companies resulting in several million record sales. ‘Wonderful Life’ and ‘Sweetest Smile’ being amongst the highlights. By 1992 heʼd been to most of the places heʼd ever had a hankering to visit, endured the terrible highs and fabulous lows of fame and learned many things — largely about himself. Two of these self-realisations were that first; he had no desire to follow a path that was commercially interesting to a modern record label and second; he craved the creative freedom and control over his work that he could only obtain by owning his own label and copyrights. Nero Schwarz was formed for that exact purpose and has since released eight studio albums, four live albums and one collection of mainly unreleased re- cordings and now itʼs time to compile a record that represents some of the highlights of the journey — so far.
Tragically that journey ended on 26th January 2016. Colin never re- gained consciousness following a road traffic accident 16 days earlier. In tribute Volume 2 of the vinyl, brings another 8 tracks from the fans online poll and the 2LP 14track Hardback Edition completes the selec- tion that makes up the 2CD deluxe package.
The Hardback Book Edition features as extra 6 tracks and the conclu- sion of the interview plus extra notes from Colin before his untimely death. All 26 tracks from the Deluxe CD Edition have been spread across volumes 1 and 2 of the 2LP Hardback Book Editions, mixed up a bit and the side splits timed to accomodate the vinyl format.
Time to choose - Thirty years of songwriting means the choice of what to include (and what to leave out) was agonisingly hard. Too hard. We couldnʼt do it. We decided to let the fans choose instead, but with over 120 recordings to select from, we needed a shortlist. We asked for help from the die-hard supporters who had made up the studio audience for two live performances in London at the end of October
2010. Their shortlist wasnʼt exactly short. They suggested seventy different tracks. It was apparent that they were having as hard a time trying to pick their favourites as we were. It also became clear that while Colinʼs music is often stubbornly non-genre and is even some- times perceived as being anti-commercial, every single song in the catalogue is passionately loved by somebody, somewhere. Trying to select seventy minutes of music to represent a wide-ranging body of work was starting to look impossible. But we couldn’t give up so we chose the top 25 from that list, created an online poll and then asked everyone on the Blacklist (Colinʼs mailing list — no pun left unpunned) to vote for their favourites.
Thatʼs when the complaints started: ʻOh but you havenʼt included. . . thatʼs his best song ever!ʼ and ʻbut you canʼt leave off. . . I got mar- ried to that!ʼ and so on. All of which goes to prove that not only can you not please everyone all the time, you canʼt please anyone, ever. However, three weeks and thousands of votes later, some songs had naturally risen to the top of the list - including the Nero Schwarz-owned re-recordings of Wonderful Life and Sweetest Smile. The first disc in the CD compilation is the result. The top fifteen tracks as voted by the fans plus, as an added bonus, a brand-new re-mix of a song from Colins studio album, Water On Stone; Tomorrow is Another Night and a second disc of 10 further tracks.
Undoubtedly a fitting tribute to one of our best loved songwriters.