10-5-11
The Flying Lizards
Finally found an LP for the 2nd Virgin Records Flying Lizards album, “Fourth Wall”!
LP FLYING LIZARDS, THE (1979) VIRGIN CAN V 2150
1979 10 TRKS Canadian vers. (cover variant, songs are the same)
LP FLYING LIZARDS, THE (1979) VIRGIN US VA 13137
1979 10 TRKS
CDx2 FLYING LIZARDS, THE (1979) / FOURTH WALL RPM UK RETRO D883
1979/81 31 TRKS (’10 issue)
LP FOURTH WALL VIRGIN JPN VIP-6979
1981 12 TRKS with insert, promo
7″ HANDS 2 TAKE (PS) VIRGIN UK VS 392
1981 2 TRKS with pic sleeve
7″ MONEY (PS) VIRGIN UK VS 276
1979 2 TRKS with pic sleeve
CD SECRET DUB LIFE OF THE FLYING LIZARDS MISTER E US MRE 02
1995 11 TRKS (’03 issue) (2 x bonus tracks)
7″ SUMMERTIME BLUES (PS) VIRGIN UK VS 230
1978 2 TRKS with pic sleeve
CD TOP TEN STATIK UK CDST 20
1985 11 TRKS David Cunningham
7″ TV / TUBE VIRGIN US VA 67006
1979 2 TRKS no pic sleeve
I remember some people being really excited by the prospect of an LP from The Flying Lizards, but I was never particularly impressed with their alterna-hit “Money”. There were definitely things on their debut LP that were more interesting to me.
Probably the oddest aspect to The Flying Lizards was that David Cunningham’s friend Michael Nyman appears! Trainspotters take note: Robert Fripp is on “Fourth Wall”!
In 2010, RPM Records in England took care of the majority of Flying Lizards fans by issuing a 2CD set that was both of their Virgin albums and a bunch of non-LP singles. Of course, I had a Japanese CD of the Flying Lizards debut album already.
And before the advent of the 2CD set, Caroline Distribution in the US was offering up both Virgin albums for downloading! Ah, ha! I found ‘test pressing’ CD-R’s of both albums for sale in a used CD store in L.A.! No cover art, but – nice, clean transfers.
…and my memory leads me to “Top Ten”, where Mr. Cunningham returns to the kooky-kover-version formula. I only found out about the final Flying Lizards effort by reading about it on-line (so it’s gotta be true!). A used copy turned up in San Francisco. No, it’s not really a new Flying Lizards album, but…it’s mono dub reggae tracks remixed by David Cunningham – into stereo.
There’s also a few music videos clips by The Flying Lizards in my digital collection – “Money”, “TV” (both 1979) and “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” (1985). But it took finding an actual physical original copy of the 2nd album for me to begin to feel good about my own Flying Lizards collection.
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