Sophisticated Boom

Curated by frontman Pete Burns and drummer/keyboard player Steve Coy, the set comprises eight albums, three of which (Fan The Flame (Part 1), Nukleopatra and Fragile) receive their UK debut release via this set (with new cover art).The first four albums issued in the 1980s all feature here as two-CD sets, except 1985’s Stock Aitken Waterman produced Youthquake (which spawned the mega-hit You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) – which is a three-disc package. So this box delivers the original album track listings for each long-player, plus plenty of rarities, live recordings, alternate mixes and instrumental versions. In fact, it also contains 12 previously unreleased remixes and tracks from the band’s vaults. 1987 greatest hits album Rip It Up is also present and correct (as a two-CD set).

A British dance-pop group which found fame thanks to the antics of androgynous frontman Pete Burns, Dead or Alive formed in Liverpool in 1980. Burns first surfaced three years prior in the Mystery Girls, later heading the proto-goth rockers Nightmares in Wax; he founded Dead or Alive with keyboardist Marty Healey, guitarist Mitch, bassist Sue James, and drummer Joe Musker, debuting in 1980 with the Ian Broudie-produced Doors soundalike "I'm Falling." "Number Eleven" followed, but just as the group was gaining momentum, they were swept aside by the emergence of the New Romantic movement, with Burns subsequently charging that fellow androgyne Boy George of Culture Club had merely stolen his outrageous image.

29 track compilation of the glorious tracks made by the New York trio for Leiber and Stoller's Red Bird label, including all the big hits like 'Leader of the Pack', 'Give him a great Big Kiss' and 'Past Present Future'