Love Both!
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I bought one of those new a couple of months ago. Was about the price of any other CD. The mailer was kind of stupid. Supposedly it was remastered, etc. I A-B-ed it and could hear no difference from the original. Massive Attack were/are masters of marketing.
But Blue Lines is totally classic. I remember lifting the original promo cassette from my editor’s desk bitd. He had no idea. Played it hundreds of times in the car.
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Due to the generally bad influence on me of Adrian Sherwood and On-U Sound, I got totally obsessed with Blue Lines all over again earlier this year, or last year - whenever Horace Andy’s Midnight Rocker came out. Not only did I spring for the supposed 2012 mix/master along with silly collector’s mailer, but I picked up Ian Bourland’s chronicle of the making of the album.
Lots of interesting detail, somewhere between mythologizing it more than ever and stripping the whole Bristol scene bare.
Then, as I was trying to bring some order to my long buried magazines, I found the July 1998 MOJO, which has a decent cover story on Massive Attack as their third album, Mezzanine, was about to hit the shops and also a pretty decent little history of the Bristol scene since the days of Rip, Rig & Panic. Recommended if you want to straighten out a thing or two, although Bristol sounds anything but straight. You can search around fir it, but here’s one for sale.
As I recall, the first I ever actually heard Massive Attack was as simply Massive on this great compilation of music at the time:
However, there was so much hype about them it’s difficult to sure when I merely first heard of them.
I think it’s clear what I think of the comparison between Blue Lines and Screamadelica!
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Whatever the outcome. What were the records Massive attqck listening to round that time? Wally? Helen zanzibar. Quite mad, given the time line.
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If I had to choose, Blue Lines but Massive Attack are overrated and a singles band for me, plus 3-D’s rapping gets on my wick.
Screamadelica hasn’t aged well and doesn’t really hang together as a piece of work for me. Vanishing Point takes those ideas further and is a far superior album as a result.
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