The Misterons Rowla/Cherry Jam

[purlieu]

Listening to this really reminds me that I find the use of the two original tracks really odd. 'Cherry Pie' is a rich, fully fleshed out track that feels like an album track, while 'Rowla' always felt more like a jam around it, and perfectly suited to a b-side. Not complaining too much: I owned the Pearl's Girl single for a couple of years before I got the album and thus 'Cherry Pie' is lodged in my earliest music memories, but it always strikes me as strange.

[Billy Goat]

Please forgive me if my memory is a bit fuzzy over 20 years since Second Toughest came out but, I'm sure back in the day I remember hearing/reading somewhere that they had a lot of disagreements about what tracks to use for the album because they did different things with similar 'stems' of tracks. Cherry Pie and Rowla always have been the epitome of this for me. I always think that Rick's version is Cherry Pie and Darren's version is Rowla. Have I totally made this up?? Does anyone remember any interviews etc about this sort of thing?
I would love to know more about the creative process from that time (and now). It's always felt to me that Rick is the main music man with Karl's vocals and guitar and ideas and Darren steered/polished their 'club' sound in the early days. Were Karl and Darren more involved than this? I'm not belittling anyone as I doubt Underworld would have 'worked' without any one of them. I would just love to know more about how they created such similar yet different tracks as Cherry Pie and Rowla!
My only other question is why oh why was the extended version of Rowla not on the STITI Remaster?

[joethelion]

As far as disagreements about tracks... I thought that was during the 'Beaucoup Fish' era
(but I could be mis-remembering as well)

...and as to why the extended version of Rowla was missing from the deluxe edition - simply, madness. The omissions on that release are pretty annoying.

Originally Posted by Billy Goat

Please forgive me if my memory is a bit fuzzy over 20 years since Second Toughest came out but, I'm sure back in the day I remember hearing/reading somewhere that they had a lot of disagreements about what tracks to use for the album because they did different things with similar 'stems' of tracks. Cherry Pie and Rowla always have been the epitome of this for me. I always think that Rick's version is Cherry Pie and Darren's version is Rowla. Have I totally made this up?? Does anyone remember any interviews etc about this sort of thing?
I would love to know more about the creative process from that time (and now). It's always felt to me that Rick is the main music man with Karl's vocals and guitar and ideas and Darren steered/polished their 'club' sound in the early days. Were Karl and Darren more involved than this? I'm not belittling anyone as I doubt Underworld would have 'worked' without any one of them. I would just love to know more about how they created such similar yet different tracks as Cherry Pie and Rowla!
My only other question is why oh why was the extended version of Rowla not on the STITI Remaster?

[WhiteNoise]

Always confused by the entry in their Wikipedia page on disagreement over tracks during the Beaucoup Fish era:

"a large number of mixes of the album tracks seemed to surface on singles, magazine promotional CDs and similar ephemeral formats perhaps indicating the number of revisions the tracks had gone through to get to the point where they were acceptable to all three"

There's a ton of third party remixes, but there's not that many alternate mixes out there, right? Discounting short edits & extended mixes, there's...

Moaner (Relentless Legs)
King of Snake (Barking Mix)
King of Snake (Rick's Bungalow Mix)
King of Snake (An Early Mix)
Bruce Lee (Dobropet)
Push Upstairs (The Large Unit)

Am I missing something? Dubnobass era had twice that number of alternate versions on the various Cowgirl, Dark & Long, Dirty, and Skyscraper singles.

[purlieu]

Yeah, Beaucoup Fish was the point where it seemed like they stopped doing that, rather than did more of it. From the deluxe version, it seems like The Large Unit is an earlier version of Push Upstairs. And the Barking Mix of King of Snake seems like it was made for the video.

[khouri]

I’ve always wondered about Push Downstairs. Like, presumably they had to choose between that and Please Help Me, and someone somewhere said something to the effect of “Push Downstairs is better” which is one of the few times in this band’s history where they’ve been wildly wrong, and I want to believe there was a debate about that.

[WhiteNoise]

I heard a rumor that the album was meant to end on Please Help Me at one point, but it was replaced by Moaner since it was a single?

[holden]

It's funny because Beaucoup Fish was my first deep dive into Underworld, save some singles before. So, I considered the album to be perfectly sequenced, without angst. Hearing two versions of Push in those days suggested that this was the big single and, though odd for an album, it made sense for a band remix. Later, I'd hear the other versions and suspect that it really doesn't belong on the record. "Please help me" and especially " Cappe ffuno" really work. But hey, I'm not in the band, so...


But then, I remember the radio show about the making of the record ( the one where Bono talks and "Mofo" plays, the early version of "Cups"...), And I figured, this is how the band operates. Multiple versions to get to the one we know and love. I trust them. I still do. Yes, we've had our disappointments, but the hit-to-miss ratio is still really high!

[joethelion]

I mean, BF could have been (and probably should have been) a double cd.

I'm very much in the same situation as Holden, at first - I thought BF was perfect but with time, and the ability to hear the other stuff, I do see how it could have been improved.

Whenever I listen to the album on my iPod, I almost always swap out "Push Upstairs" for either the Darren Price Mix, or the 'Full Length of It' version, and 'Bruce Lee, Dobropet' either ends the album, or I place it after 'Skym' (but still include the album version of 'Bruce Lee'). [edit] oh, and of course, "Please Help Me" gets slotted in - I put it in after 'Kittens'

As far as alternate mixes / versions...
• I mean - on the promo, the sample at the end of KOS is over the intro beats of 'Winjer'

• On the "XFM Pirate Radio" dj set, 'Cups' has a considerable amount of added resonance and I don't think it transitions into "Pins" at all (but I think the repeated "Underworld" sample is just to 'watermark' the song, b/c it was a debut broadcast)

• I do think you have to consider the different edits of tracks too... I mean, just with "Push" you've got:
[info taken from -1's post]

push downstairs (album) 06:03 v, cd, cs, md
push upstairs (album) 04:34 v, cd, cs, md
push upstairs (darren price remix) 06:47 v, cd
push upstairs (the full length of it) 06:07 v, cd
push upstairs (the large unit) 05:38 v, cd
push upstairs (radio edit) 04:00 cd

plus the demo off the recent box set. I'd also point out, that it (along with 'King of Snake') went through some pretty significant changes (when played live) between '98 and '00.

[dubman]

Originally Posted by purlieu

Listening to this really reminds me that I find the use of the two original tracks really odd. 'Cherry Pie' is a rich, fully fleshed out track that feels like an album track, while 'Rowla' always felt more like a jam around it, and perfectly suited to a b-side. Not complaining too much: I owned the Pearl's Girl single for a couple of years before I got the album and thus 'Cherry Pie' is lodged in my earliest music memories, but it always strikes me as strange.

I feel the opposite these days. When I first heard Cherry Pie I also thought THIS was where the real track is. It felt suffused with all the things that made Underworld bracing, and while Rowla was more than fine in its own right, I didn't respect its confidence and restraint as much.


Now CP feels stuffed, vaguely insecure and over-complicated by half. The live version of Rowla (with less CP) comes through on everything the studio version implies, and I think that's more exciting.