(Taken and reedited from my own original Amazon review)

This CD comprises 16 tracks taken from BBC radio shows such as The Peel Session, Richard Skinner Session and The Kid Jensen Session and are presented in the order in which they originally were aired.

While this is a great collection, 8 of these tracks were already previously released and still easily obtained from the Volume 2 Radio Days CD. So if you already own that CD (which I do), then you are really only getting 8 songs instead of 16. This is unfortunate as both CD's have tracks exclusive to themselves. So if you are a completist, then you really want to have both CD's as Radio Days has 4 songs that BBC Radio Sessions doesn't have.

The unfortunate side of all of this is that there are still a handful of tracks that have yet to see the light of day on an officially released CD such as "Moles", "Marilyn Dreams", "Scare Some Life Into Me" and "Film Music" which can be found on the unofficial and crappy sounding bootleg Nightmares In Wax CD if you can find a copy.

While I appreciate the release of this CD and getting 8 tracks I wouldn't have otherwise, I feel that there might have been a better way to introduce the rest of the BBC sessions while including some otherwise forgotten tracks making this more of a worthwhile purchase instead of a semi-redundant one.

(Taken and reedited from my own original Amazon review)

Some versions of this CD were pressed with a major error.

The correct track listing for songs 7 and 8 are for the track "Get Some" (vocal and instrumental respectively). Unfortunately, the mispressing replaced the tracks "Get Some" with the songs "All Night" (vocal and instrumental respectively) by Trinere. Neither version of "Get Some" is not to be found at all on the mispressed CD.

This really bums me out as "Get Some" was the main reason I bought this CD. Not saying that the other tracks are not worth the minimal amount of money I spent on this CD, but it's obviously not complete and it's very misleading about the tracklisting.

(Taken and reedited from my own original Amazon review)

It's about time "Forever Running" has been released on CD including bonus songs that were not on the original album but on various singles.

Interestingly enough though, the morons at Warner music decided to change the original title to "The Platinum Collection" from it's original title "Forever Running" and change the cover as well for reasons only they know. Maybe they were trying to fool people into thinking this was a best of compilation since it does contain classic songs like "Remembrance Day" and "Nowhere Girl". Unfortunately, both of these songs were completely rerecorded for this album and are totally watered down and completely ruined in comparisons to the versions that were first released as singles.

This album is probably the only proper album B-Movie ever released as all of their other releases have been collections of singles and/or radio sessions. But those releases are far stronger and more raw than the overly slick production and cheesy 80's cash-in sound of this album. Songs like "My Ship Of Dreams" aka "Amnesia" (on BBC Radio Sessions), "Remembrance Day" (on Remembrance Days), "Nowhere Girl" (differing versions found on both Remembrance Days and BBC Radio Sessions) and Polar Opposites (on Radio Days and BBC Radio Sessions) were far more catchy and raw on their original releases than on this one. In fact, the version of "Nowhere Girl" that was heavily rotated by radio stations back in the 80's like KROQ has never been properly released on any of their CD's. It can only be found on it's original 12" and a crappy quality bootleg called "Nightmares In Wax" (which is a small collection of unreleased vinyl only tracks).

While the overall sound quality of this release is great and it's a full CD clocking in at over 79 minutes of music, it is a shame that the overall packaging is completely lacking. As I noted before, the cover art has been completely changed as well as the title and the cover booklet is devoid of any worthwhile information or lyrics other than the song credits. At least all of their earlier CD releases contain liner notes while the "BBC Radio Sessions" release even includes a pretty complete discography along with photos. The one redeeming quality of this CD is that it includes 6 bonus songs, but even these bonus songs are incomplete to their original vinyl release counterparts. In fact, the track listing has slightly been altered from it's original vinyl release opening with the song "Letter From Afar" which was released as a single only and not included on the original release.

If you are a B-Movie fan or completist, the low price of this release is definitely worthy of purchasing. But for those that are new to B-Movie, I highly recommend all of their previous releases before purchasing this one, unless you really dig over the top production that ruined many great bands of the 80's.

(Taken and reedited from my own original Amazon review)

This is an odd compilation with an inappropriate and misleading title. While this is called the EP Collection Volumes 1 & 2, this is sadly not the case at all. In fact, this collection is missing quite a few songs from their actual respective EP Ereleases and instead replaces them with common album tracks instead leaving this far from a complete EP collection at all.

I have recently compiled every single and EP from their initial Escapable EP to the Shining Road Double Single onto CD-R's and still had a little room to spare on the first disc. The following is what I compiled in complete and chronological order and what should have been released if this were to have been a real EP Collection. Songs with the asterisk are the songs that are missing from their EP Collection.

My Compilation:
Disc 1
01. Inescapable
02. Give
03. Dada 331
*04. Inescapable II (Inescapable EP)
*05. Untitled (Gigantic 2 compilation)
06. I Hope
07. E.G. Shining
08. Cha Cha Escueta
09. Adoration
10. Brigher
11. Tomorrow's Tears
12. Casa Blanca
*13. Sixth Of May (Wings Of Joy CD)
14. Dreamless
15. Starblood Remix (hidden on the official release)
*16. Fuse (Self-Non-Self CD)
*17. Self-Non-Self (Wings Of Joy Bonus 12")

Disc 2
01. Adrift
*02. Everywhere (common track on Forever)
03. Underwater
*04. The Puppet (Forever UK Bonus CD)
*05. Shine Like Stars (Forever German/UK Bonus CD)
*06. At Sea (Forever German Bonus CD)
07. Slide (hidden on the official release)
*08. Wings Of Joy (Forever German Bonus CD)
*09. Trumpet Song (Forever German Bonus CD)
*10. Jewel (Robert Smith Remix)(Jewel CD-Single)
*11. Leave Her To Heaven I (Jewel German CD-Single)
*12. Leave Her To Heaven II (Jewel German CD-Single)
*13. Clear (Ring Tailed Snorter Mix) (Jewel CD-Single)
*14. Cloudless (Thais Mix) (Jewel CD-Single)
15. Shining Road
16. Lilies
17. September
*18. Green Song 7 (Shining Road CD-Single)
*19. Shining Road (Brauer Mix)(Shining Road CD-Single)
20. Lilies (Flood Mix)
*21. Don't Close Your Eyes (Shining Road CD-Single)
*22. Organ Song (Shining Road CD-Single)

Now looking at that, you are missing 5 songs from disc 1 and a whopping 15 songs from disc 2. And that's considering that I was including album songs that were originally on the EPs/singles which could have been removed to make room for more of the senseless Forever Remixes that add nothing to the songs anyways. In fact, some of the best songs like Leave Her To Heaven I & II and the awesome Robert Smith remix of Jewel were completely ignored. Granted, some of the missing songs probably should be left missing, but my aim was to have a complete EP/singles collection unlike the one offered to us. Oddly enough, there are two hidden tracks tacked on to the last song on disc 2 of the official release which contains the songs Slide and Starblood(Remix). Unfortunately you have to wade through 5 minutes of silence before you get to them. I've never understood nor cared for this "hidden" track gimmick.

All in all, this isn't a bad way to get a lot of hard to find and expensive EP/singles tracks and to also get a good best of collection of Cranes songs. Unfortunately, some of the missing songs are extremely hard/rare to find and often times very expensive if found. I just wish they would have put together something that was more in line with what they were claiming to offer.

(Taken and reedited from my own original Amazon review)

The music on this CD is definitely worthy of purchasing but be very aware of the quality of the music when purchasing this CD.

It's very apparent that all of the tracks were recorded straight from vinyl, the quality of the vinyl varies greatly with some tracks much worse than others. The track Monkey On Juice was recorded while the record was being turned and you can get a good laugh at it "revving" up.

Another goof is that track 15 is listed as "Hold Yourself Down" but is actually called "Spinning Round (Crash Mix). "Hold Yourself Down" is actually track 16 but the title of that song is "Regenerate" which I have never heard of before and it doesn't seem to exist on any RLYL single that I've ever heard of.

My other gripe is about the constant skipping on quite a few of the songs at the end such as: Jipp (Instrumental), Cut Down, Burning Fever, Pushed Me, Crawling Mantra, Hang Man, All The Same and Shout At The Sky. That's every song from tracks 19-26. What a complete waste. It's possible that I might have a defective disc, but I highly doubt it considering all the other problems.

Another thing is that you are still missing 3 singles songs: "Russia" (on Hollow Eyes 12"), "Paint Your Wagon" and "More Jipp" (both on Paint Your Wagon 7"). Instead, you get a short version of "Hollow Eyes" and what sounds like the album versions of "Feel A Piece", "Walking On Your Hands" and "Which Side". These songs might have been on the singles, but why not include the other rare singles songs that haven't yet been released on CD.

I take that back, the album "Talk About The Weather" has just been re-released, complete of course with the full album and all of the singles that predate it including "Russia". Funny enough though, it has been noted by other reviewers on the internet that it has the same "mastering" complaints that seem evident on this and other Cherry Red releases (Anagram, which is the label this is released, I believe is a subsidiary of Cherry Red).

Also, be aware that there are 2 versions of "Beating My Head", the 7" and the version found on the "This Today" EP. You get the funky 7" version with the saxophone solo (which I quite like actually). The other version (minus the saxophone and a harder guitar sound) can be found on the best of compilation CD "Generation".

It's no wonder that this CD is now out of print as it should never have been released in such a degenerate form to begin with. It's a shame that companies like Cherry Red are even allowed to unscrupulously put out such shoddy quality products, but they do this on a very regular basis as they've made it a habit to purchase the rights to a lot of European bands that were on labels that went out of business and sold those rights. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that they hardly ever (if at all) acquire the tape masters for any of these recordings. This is why they use vinyl as their recording source. Unfortunately they seem either completely ignorant or just plain lazy in the fact that you can actually remove a lot of vinyl imperfections using computers with decent enough audio editing software.

The only upside to buying this CD is that if you can get it for under $20, you are getting some hard to find and often semi-expensive singles for a moderate price. But just be aware that some of those more expensive vinyl singles might actually sound far superior to this CD!