Yes this double album re-packages several classic Terry Edwards ep's into one double album and thankfully adds a few things I don’t already have. In addition to the material on the last re-issue of Plays, Salutes & Executes ep's I've got on The Scapegoats album 681 at The Southbank this double album adds the Remembering The Cure EP that was unreleased at the time and three extra punk covers to help make this a must have for all you Terry Edwards completists out there.
Side one of the double album is the original plays ep of covers of The Jesus & Mary Chain that starts with the hard bop version of Never Understand with the feedback from the original now on what sounds like scraped violins against the brass and tambourine attack it's still one of the finest covers you'll hear of this song.
Everything's Alright When You're Down makes it feel quite upbeat with some lush trumpet in place of the guitars making it perfect for cocktail hour in a way the Jesus & Mary Chain rarely are.
The Hardest Walk has some fabulous bass sax underneath the alto and trumpet leads that help make this version rather dancey and it still sounds just as good as it did the first time John Peel played it back in 1991.
Break Me Down has a darkly noir feel to it as the brass section plays the central riff and the Tambourine taps out the time signature, I've loved this version for ages.
Side two is the Salutes EP of Fall covers that opens with Totally Wired played as a dark ska tune with wonderfully whispered vocals that have an air of menace about them against the upbeat music that obviously sounds better if you are indeed Totally Wired.
Bingomasters Breakout starts off nice and slow before becoming a top-notch dance floor ska classic for everyone to skank on down too with some great piano from Seamus Beaghen.
The Dice Man is a fine ska punk instrumental to go mental on the dance floor too. Container Drivers flies along at a great pace and Terry and his band bring out the inner skank you never knew was part of the original, that seems to want to cross Dave Brubeck style piano with Cannonball Adderley style post-bop, while making a ska tune it's brilliantly mad and works a treat.
Side 3 is Executes, the Miles Davis covers EP and some bonus songs, from the opening brawl with Eighty-One this is as full on harder than hell bop madness with frantic drumming.
Four is played as fast as they can make it like Albert Ayler's speed jazz freak outs but with a drum machine programmed by Terry Edwards with Stephen Irvine really anchoring things down I just love this version.
Seven Steps To Heaven is also played at a ferocious pace and yet still sounds almost like a theme tune for the first half before it truly goes bonkers just brilliant.
They slow things down somewhat on Half Nelson with a great bass sax solo it is mournfully beautiful.
The first of the rare tunes is a version of The Clash's Version City that turns it into a drum and bass heavy sax led dance floor filler at a decidedly freaky club night, I'm sure a good few Clash fans might miss this is actually a Clash cover and that's all to the tunes benefit especially when the keyboard madness takes over.
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Then it's time for the Terry Edwards String Quartets version of New Rose that makes The Damned's classic into a very cool goth classical number that just needs a good operatic voice to sing the lyrics but is almost worth getting the double album for alone.
We then get a totally bonkers strings and glam band version of Bodies by The Sex Pistols that makes it sound like T-Rex on a jazz glam vibe, it's a hell of a mash up that goes full on speed metal for the last minute.
We finally get the first original tune on the album with the title track the wonderfully sardonic Stop Trying To Sell Me Back My Past that you will probably need to hear a few times to get all the songs it references while letting us know we should all be happy moving forwards and not going on an impossible mission to curate all our musical histories.
Side 4 is Remembering The Cure and opens with the calypso funk of Friday I'm In Love that's just a great upbeat slice of pop magic with some brilliant backing vocals that could have been nicked form an old doo wop record. This feels like it should have been a summer party hit especially when you see the MTV ready video for it.
In Between Days turns it into a jazz goth classic instrumental that revolves around a magisterial trumpet part.
Killing An Arab sounds like an Augustus Pablo dub tune with a disembodied voice coming in every once in a while to intone "I'm Dead" this has an air of dread about it that a song of this title ought to have while being a properly deep dub tune.
The album closes with the second Terry Edwards original on the album Show Me A Sane Man & I'll Cure Him For You that sounds like it should have been on a Giorno Poetry systems album all babbling voices and weird noises and twin vocals that sounds like it's made at about the same time as Terry recorded Whose Bagging The Iraqi's.
Available on Record Shop day 29.8.20. Find out more at https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/terry-edwards/stop-trying-to-sell-me-back-my-past https://www.facebook.com/mrterryedwards
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