Paul McCartney Off The Ground
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| Off The Ground – vinyl LP, British pressing. Note the white border, not a feature on the CD, |
Believe it or not, the vinyl edition of Paul McCartney’s LP, “Off The Ground” sells for a lot of money these days. Why? Because when this album was released in February 1993, most people had converted to the CD format, so the vinyl albums sales were in steady decline, and this album simply didn’t sell. It was probably not pressed in too many copies either. Now that CD is turning into an abandoned format, people are buying vinyl again, and this is a rare album, vinylwise.
At the time of writing this, only three copies of the UK pressing are for sale on ebay, a used one from a UK seller, priced at GBP 98.99, one from a US based seller at US $160.00, and finally a still sealed UK pressing from a seller in the Russian Federation, priced at US $399.00 or best offer.
Then there’s a Korean pressing in poor condition, but the seller is asking $99.99! Apart from those, three Spanish pressings of the album are on ebay, asking prices are EUR 19.95, US $49.75 and US $99.75.
Having made the switch to CDs myself, nonetheless I still did buy vinyl albums, and “Off The Ground” is one of the ones I bought.
And then I came across a 2CD version of “Off The Ground”, called “Off The Ground – The Complete Works”. I bought it, of course. It’s almost like a deluxe version of the album, and I believe it was only released this way in Japan, Germany and perhaps Holland.
Track Listing
DISC 1 (like the regular CD)
1. Off The Ground
2. Looking For Changes
3. Hope Of Deliverance
4. Mistress and Maid
5. I Owe It All To You
6. Biker Like An Icon
7. Peace In The Neighbourhood
8. Golden Earth Girl
9. The Lovers That Never Were
10. Get Out Of My Way
11. Winedark Open Sea
12. C’mon People
DISC 2 (Extra tracks from singles B-sides etc)
1. Long Leather Coat
2. Keep Coming Back To Love
3. Sweet Sweet Memories
4. Things We Said Today
5. Midnight Special
6. Style Style
7. I Can’t Imagine
8. Cosmically Conscious
9. Kicked Around No More
10. Big Boys Bickering
11. Down To The River
12. Soggy Noodle
Of course, the single “Hope of Deliverance” from this album turned out to be probably Paul’s final hit single, and it charted mainly in Europe. It went to number 83 in the USA, no. 18 in the UK singles charts, no. 3 in Germany, no. 1 in Spain and number one for a week on a general European chart. Here in Norway it peaked at no. 4. “Off The Ground – The Complete Works” can also be found on ebay these days, priced from EUR 69.99 and up.
Off The Ground as a regular CD was rereleased on CD in January 2014 on Hear Music, now also featuring a digital download card for those who want the audio files available to them.
Yes, The Complete Works was released in Holland, I have a copy.
I have seen the 2-disc version in Holland, for some reason I did not buy it. One of my mistakes.
This work was highly under rated. If you took the best off the two discs, you would have had a stellar album almost on par with his best efforts. (Kicked Around No More sounds like one of his best 70's songs.) Sometimes it seems he tried too hard to sound contemporary and it sounded contrived, not from the soul.
Yes, I have The Complete Works in slim box from Holland too.
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Shurely shome mishtake on the 'Paul's final hit single' unless you're talking of the US (and even there, it's not correct, if we mean Hot 100)
Some UK stats on follow-up singles:
C'mon People 41
Off The Ground 41
Young Boy 19
The World Tonight 23
Beautiful Night 25
No Other Baby 42
From A Lover To A Friend 45
Tropic Island Hum 23
Fine Line 20
Jenny Wren 22
Dance Tonight 26
And then there's a japanese resurgence (a big market) with 'New' hitting 4 and Queenie Eye also charting 42
The vunyl is rare and, Yes i have a copy