The First Wish

The 1983 LP Wildest Wish to Fly closed Rupert Hine's early-'80s solo output. The album took another step toward more conventional pop songs…

Mojo magazine is celebrating the re-release of Pink Floyd's catalog with its own series of Floyd albums covered in their entirety by contemporary artists. First comes Return to the Dark Side of the Moon, the classic 1973 Floyd album re-imagined here by bands like Gallops, the Oscillation, Our Broken Garden and the Pineapple Thief. The album is available on CD, packaged together with Wish You Were Here Again, a remake of 1975's Wish You Were Here featuring new versions of select tunes from the album by various contemporary acts (Beak>, The Orb).

This vocal quartet originally started life as an extension of jazz band the Hi-Lo’s. From that prominent '50s band came Don Shelton, who decided to form Singers Unlimited after the Hi-Lo’s broke up in 1964. After retreating to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked on a series of television commercials, he enlisted fellow Hi-Lo’s veteran Gene Puerling of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to join him in the city in 1967. The group was formed along with Len Dresslar and Bonnie Herman, with the express intention of recording commercials in the doo wop/vocal group idiom. Shelton’s connections in the industry ensured the group was able to exploit the market successfully, and lucrative work rolled in. However, the 30-second snatches of songs hardly satisfied their artistic ambitions, and when they found themselves with studio time left over after one session, they recorded a take on the Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill." Through visiting jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, the demo of the a cappella recording was passed to MPS Records in Germany.

The Magnetic Fields’ Quickies will be released on Nonesuch Records on May 29, 2020 (digitally on May 15). The five 7" vinyl box set features twenty-eight new short songs by Stephin Merritt, ranging in length from thirteen seconds to two minutes and thirty-five seconds.