Virgin Prunes – ...If I Die, I Die

Unfortunately this is the best you’ll get as the original tapes were degraded from tape rot and had to be baked and then restored, so it’s not a repress.

dont buy overpriced copies reissues coming later this year
on vinyl and cd

If I Die, I Die was released only weeks before the Heresie box set. The two albums show very different faces of the Virgin Prunes – one that explored mythical worlds and another that showed their surrealistic interest in the creative power of insanity. They also highlight the ways in which the band enjoyed experimenting with different genres, sound forms and recording techniques. As Friday has commented recently, ‘The Virgin Prunes contained four different bands at the same time.’

The album was recorded at the Windmill Studios in Dublin in the summer of 1982 and produced by Wire’s Colin Newman. Rather than adopt an A/B format, the sides of the 1982 vinyl and album cover, which was designed by Steve Averill, were given brown and blue colours, signalling earth and sky respectively. The art work on each side of the sleeve was also inverted so that either side could be read as the front cover. Ursula Steiger’s photography captured, on the brown side, the band running through a forest like a nomadic tribe. On the blue side we then find them in different costumes, performing with fire and mannequins within a derelict building.

If I Die, I Die contains nine tracks. The brown side is evocative of distant mystical lands and brings to mind Iroquois culture. It features ‘Ulakanakulot’ (referring to ‘the imaginary land of the Kuli Bird from where the Beautifull People come’), ‘Decline and Fall’, ‘Sweethome Under White Clouds’ and ‘Bau-dachöng’ (meaning ‘secret inner wisdom’). The blue side showcases the slow and frenzied paces of their music, while highlighting the ways their highly visceral songs switch subjects and s from the ancient and historical, to the social tensions and dysfunctions of a late twentieth-century present. It features ‘Baby Turns Blue’ (which was a very successful Indie single), ‘Ballad of the Man’, ‘Walls of Jericho’, ‘Caucasian Walk’ and ‘Theme for Thought’, which includes spoken ages of Oscar Wilde’s poem ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol.’

on my copy the back cover is upside down. does anyone else have that?

Anyone by any chance is selling *just* the Cover and inner sleeve, send me a message!
I have just the record at the moment.
Thanks :)

Labels for sides A and B are swapped on my copy.

If anyone has just an inner sleeve they're looking to get rid of, let me know! Thanks.

This is still one of my favourite albums of all time.
I bought it on vinyl as a young teen when it was first released and it has travelled with me ever since. It's a little shabby now and I guess needs replacing with a new copy but the wear and tear offer memories that are irreplaceable

I saw them playing live a few months after its release and they played most of the album. I think it was £2.00 a ticket.
A bootleg of that very gig has been circulating on the internet for many years which was originally recorded by someone who I was at the gig with - he sneaked his Sony Walkman in to record it and hid it at the back of the table we were stood next to.
.
It's amazing to think that 'back in the day' if you got caught sneaking a camera or a tape recorder into a concert, you would be thrown out by security and quite possibly beaten up in the process.
However, one of the benefits of gigs-of-yore meant that people were usually more able to actually see the band/performer playing live, as opposed to struggling to see them over a sea of high-held mobile phones with dozens of attendees recording the concert to to YouTube to view later instead of enjoying the *live* moment.
Swings 'n' Roundabouts, I guess.
Happy days.

If anyone has just a jacket (+ insert if possible) for sale, send me a message.

a perfect record. Brilliant songs. Brilliant mastering.