A Material Reissue Coming from Hip-o Select

Every now and then one wonders what Hip-o Select has to offer outside of the Motown and Verve canon. Not that the volumes of catalogue gold coming from the fine producers and compilers devoted to those genres are overkill – quite the opposite – but it would be nice to see other acts in the Universal roster receive the Select treatment.

That’s what makes the news of a reissue from short-lived power-pop band Material Issue such a delight. The Chicago band only released a small handful of LPs, EPs and singles before lead singer Jim Ellison took his own life in 1996. And despite several singles in the upper reaches of the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts and a power-pop festival posthumously named for their debut album, the band are still arguably not given the acclaim they deserve.

Hip-o Select will attempt to rectify this in April with a 20th anniversary reissue of the album. In addition to remastering the 14-track LP, eight bonus tracks will be included. Six of them appeared on a promotional-only album (the other tracks from that disc, which do not appear on this reissue, are an acoustic take on “Diane” and a live version of “Valerie Loves Me”), one (“Sixteen Tambourines”) ended up on a college-radio sampler and another (“The Girl with the Saddest Eyes”) looks to have been previously unreleased.

All in all, it looks like a pretty worthwhile set, and it will be available on April 5. (No pre-order link is live from Select just yet, but we can credit our friends at Slicing Up Eyeballs with the track list, viewable after the jump.)

Material Issue, International Pop Overthrow: 20th Anniversary Edition (Hip-o Select, 2011)

Valerie Loves Me
Diane
Renee Remains the Same
This Letter
Out Right Now
Crazy
Chance of a Lifetime
International Pop Overthrow
Very First Lie
Trouble
There Was a Few
This Far Before
A Very Good Idea
Li’l Christine
Cowboy Song
Blockbuster
Echo Beach
She’s Goin’ Through My Head
The Boxer (Live)
The Girl Who Never Falls in Love
Sixteen Tambourines
The Girl with the Saddest Eyes

Tracks 1-14 from Mercury LP 848 155-1, 1991
Track 15 from “Diane” CD single – Mercury 868 165-2, 1991
Track 16 from Blockbuster EP – Mercury PRO 924-1, 1991
Track 19 from “Diane” 7″ single – Mercury MER 349, 1991
Tracks 17-18 and 20 from Eleven Supersonic Hit Explosions (Mercury SACD 390, 1991)
Track 21 from CMJ Certain Damage compilation (exact volume unknown), 1988
Track 22 previously unreleased

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Material Issue

Mike Duquette

Mike Duquette (Founder) was fascinated with catalog music ever since he was a teenager. A 2009 graduate of Seton Hall University with a B.A. in journalism, Mike paired his profession with his passion through The Second Disc, one of the first sites to focus on all reissue labels great and small. His passion for reissues turned into a career, having written at and worked for all three major catalogue music labels and contributing to Allmusic, Billboard, Discogs, City Pages and Ultimate Classic Rock. He's penned liner notes for Verve, Chess, Mondo and Soul Music Records.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Mike lives in Astoria, Queens with his wife, a cat named Ravioli, twin daughters and a large yet tasteful collection of music.

0 thoughts on “A Material Reissue Coming from Hip-o Select”

Marc
February 14, 2011 at 3:13 pm

Wow! I am so excited! I bought this when it first came out (saw a video for “Valerie Loves Me”) and still play it regularly. Anything by this band is a good time.

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A Material Reissue Coming from Hip-o Select

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