Revenge b/w Girl - 1983

 

"Revenge is sweet, sweet as a rose"...and all that.  The Gents' fourth single release, released in February 1983 and regarded by many as the band's best single.  It certainly has a lot of production thrown at it and to be perfectly honest hearing it even all these years later and despite have heard it a million times live, it still gives me a shiver to remember what good records the Gents used to make.  The b-side, Girl, is another fine, evocative and underrated song, one of those you might choose for your funeral.  Wonder what Martin'll think of that!

     The initial copies of Revenge came with a lyric sheet insert (very good for framing) and you can tell if you've got an original copy of the record with your lyric sheet, because the picture sleeves with the lyric sheet insert feature a tone-dropped version of the red/black photo on the reverse, and later pressings omitting the lyric sheet had a restored resolution version of the photograph (which incidentally was taken in Rishworth Street car park in Wakefield, which in 1971 my dad designed (he's a retired architect!).  All fascinating stuff.

     Another thing you might be interested in is that starting a tradition continued with the next single, Shout!, the clever red rose imagery used for the artwork very suspiciously turned up in 1984 on a Eurythmics single called, wait for it...Revenge and it also featured a red rose in Annie Lennox's hand on the promo video for that song., hmm...

     ...and talking of promo videos, wouldn't Revenge have made a wonderful video, something with the mood of Ultravox's Vienna promo maybe...

     The revengeful red rose theme was quite coolly and consciously continued with cross-references on several subsequent Gents releases, ie the covers of Shout!, New Direction Give it to Me, the How it all Began LP and Friday on my Mind and also in a short middle section on the 12" version of Friday on my Mind, which repeats those opening notes of Revenge.