Tuesday 5 August 2014

The Men They Couldn't Hang - Gold Rush 12"

This was their 4th single released on Mercury records, and is in response to a request in the comments from Radomir in Croatia in a previous TMTCH posting.

The comment said the b-side 'Ghosts Of Cable Street' is a different version to the album, and as so often with singles I found all three tracks on this single are. So here they are for you to try.

First up is the a-side 'Gold Rush' which is one minute longer than the album version, made up mainly of an instrumental (for me I prefer the shorter album version). The b-side 'Ghosts of Cable Street' is a political number (as many of TMTCH tracks were) concerning The Battle of Cable Street in 1936 (Check out the link for the history, if your interested). This is the pick of the tracks in my opinion (it's a little faster and 30 seconds longer than the album) and has a little more punch than the album version. Last up is a live favorite from their first album, but again a different version, you have to love any version of this one.

So leave a comment and tell us what you think of these three and if you know the originals, are these an improvement or not.

Band: The Men They Couldn't Hang
Label: Mercury
Year: 1983
Tracks:
1. Gold Rush
2. The Ghosts Of Cable Street
3. Walkin' Talkin'

Ripped from glorious scratched vinyl

If you like this post, it looks like their second classic album, ' How Green Is My Valley' which also includes the alternate version of 'Gold Rush' and 'Ghosts Of Cable Street' is no longer available, so your have to settle for their best album, their debut 'Night Of A Thousand Candles', buy it here:
Night of a Thousand Candles

6 comments:

Longy said...

Cheers Gary. Its wierd, I'm just about to rip The Colours by these lot. Spooky!

Punkzer0 said...

Cheers Longy, your find these spooky occurrences all the time now. I don't think i have Colours so looking forward to it.

Rupert Cook said...

I saw a whole lynch mob of their records in a charity shop the other week. In fact their stuff regularly turns up in charity shops. Just how many records did they make, there seems to be hundreds out there?

I loved their Green Fields Of France single but then I went no further with them. I think I only liked their sound for a few months and then rediscovered it in the Pogues a few years later. By then though I'd pretty much forgotten them.

Punkzer0 said...

Hi Rupert, in my humble opinion their first 4-5 singles and 1st two albums are defo worth having.

Green Fields, Ironmasters, Greenback Dollar, Gold Rush, and Shirt of Blue are all excellent, I don't think you would be disappointed with them. Like you I have found a fair few more at charity shops, and have tried a couple, which are OK but one to to the standard of the first 5.

Anonymous said...

Glad to see your copy is as wrecked as mine lol Signs of true love and devotion of good tunes ;)

Punkzer0 said...

Yout not wrong there anon