Epic Blunders: How One Label Botched Two Of The Greatest Records Of Our Time!!

If you think about it, Epic Records was responsible for bringing U.S. rock fans some of the biggest bands of the '70s: Cheap Trick, Boston, Heart, Molly Hatchet, and Ted Nugent, for example.

In the '80s, they also brought us innovative releases by Adam & The Ants, Culture Club, OMD, Altered Images, Angel City and Living Colour, to name just a few.

For that, they deserve to be commended because, quite frankly, no other U.S. label seemed willing to release albums by Canada's Platinum Blonde, Australia's Mi-Sex or Britain's Lene Lovich, among others.

Thanks to such efforts, those of us who were musically adventurous came to regard any release with the "Epic" logo as worthy of our time, but, having said that, the label deserves a severe kick in the shins for fucking up two of the most important albums of that time period, The Clash's self-titled debut album and XTC's English Settlement.

What the label did to those albums smacks of contempt for their audience, if not the artists, themselves.

For starters, The Clash was not released in the U.S. until two years after its initial UK release. During that time, the album had been available as an import and sold over 100,000 copies in the U.S. This is notable for the fact that import releases usually sold for prices that were twice as high as a normal domestic release.

One would think that if kids were willing to pay $17.99 or more for an album, that the prudent thing to do would be to release it immediately to capitalize on the obvious interest, but, then again, why ruin a good thing for the UK branch, who were raking in twice the money for import copies?

When Epic did finally get around to releasing The Clash in the States, they chose to completely obliterate the original track listing by omitting five tracks from the UK version, including the album's pivotal masterpiece "White Riot".

This, my friends, would be like Warner Brothers releasing Never Mind The Bollocks, but removing the popular studio version of "Anarchy In The UK" in the process.

Mind you, "White Riot" is still included on the album, but, for some inexplicable reason, Epic included an earlier demo version of the track instead of the version the band had chosen for the album.

To add further insult to injury, the label chose not to even release the track as a single despite its Top 40 success in the UK.

Granted, they did replace those five original cuts with a bevy of singles that the band had released in the wake of the album's UK release, including "I Fought The Law", "Clash City Rockers" and "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais".

Hilariously, the label had no problem including "I'm So Bored with The USA" from the original UK album.

For the US release of XTC's note-perfect fifth album English Settlement, the label once again removed five tracks from the UK version, replacing them with...well...absolutely nothing.

Why would they do this, you ask?

Because they're cheap fucking bastards, that's why.

The UK version of XTC's amazing tour de force was released as a double album, but the US office knew that would either require a higher list price for consumers or a lower royalty rate for the band.

Also, it wasn't bad enough that they removed "Knuckle Down", "Fly On The Wall", "Down In The Cockpit", "Leisure", and "Yacht Dance", but they also completely obliterated the sequencing for the album, tacking "Snowman" onto the end of Side One and relegating "everything else" to Side Two in no particular order.

Hence, the album has a nice, cohesive feel for the first four cuts - "Runaways", "Ball and Chain", "Senses Working Overtime", and "Jason & The Argonauts" - which is, ironically enough, the same running order as the UK release, but then Side Two completely ruins the flow that the band had intended.

Keep in mind that XTC, much like Revolver/Rubber Soul-era Beatles, were hitting their stride as a studio band with few peers and part of that was due to their masterful use of sequencing to create a musical ebb and flow that was integral to the overall listening experience.

That might be hard to appreciate in these days of streaming individual tracks, but, back then, it was tantamount to putting a smile on the Mona Lisa or adding bass to White Blood Cells (which Redd Kross bassist Jeff McDonald did, as a matter of fact).

At the end of the day, just because you can alter or edit someone's art doesn't mean you should.