The Respond box available again! From Ian S!

Due to many demands, Ian S. took time to reupload the whole pack for you. The Box is unavailable since a very very long time and you can't buy it... So here it is, according to our "no legal material available" here... Also thanx to Flavio who did it first and who does something for us almost every day. Cheers, the cap!

Paul Weller created Respond Records during the last phase of The Jam. In his mind the idea of a "new motown" promoting young artists and bands for a contemporary soul label. The project had a big step forward during the early days of The Style Council, with chart singles by Tracie, interesting records by The Questions, the late Vaughan Toulouse etc. It was almost an authomatic rule for every Weller/TSC fan, like me, to buy all the Respond stuff together with the Style Council stuff, also because Weller and Talbot were personally involved in the writing/production and playing, Weller wrote 'officially' many songs for Tracie and sometimes played guitar as "Jake Fluckery".. But he lost interest a couple of years later and the "new motown" closed.

In the late 90s the Japanese label "Trattoria" (funny choice for a name, means "cheap restaurant" in italian) reissued on CD -for the first and only time- almost all the Respond production, including some bonus never-heard-before tracks added at the end of the original albums. Those CDs are out of print and Trattoria is no more too. I started hunting for those CDs only recently and been lucky to find some cheap copies on ebay (it's not so easy, sometimes they rise at ridiculous high prices there, beware). The good people at splinters helped me to complete the collection, sending me the missing CDrs.

Personally I can't stand anymore a great part on this sound, so 80s and plastic, but there are some real gems inside... like Tracie's "I love you when you sleep" written by Elvis Costello, "Nothing happens here but you". "Spring summer autumn" and "Far from the hurting kind" to name 3 of many written by Paul Weller, or Questions' "Tear soup", "Tuesday sunshine" and "Someone's got yo lose" (with Steve White), the early Big Sound Authority and A-Craze.

So here 'tis, the full Respond/Trattoria "box" for all the Splinters/Cornershop readers. If you want to know more about it check MySpaceRespondRecords

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