Either after the second time I saw the film, or sometime shortly after that, when the film was gone but the soundtrack was still selling, I asked about these items, what would happen to them when they came down, when they were going to come down, how much would it cost to reserve one so I could buy it when it did come down, and made such a pest of myself that whoever I was bugging just took one down and gave it to me. (Of course, I was probably carrying an armful of records to buy, so it was more of a customer reward than a brush-off.)
It immediately went up on my bedroom wall and stayed there until we moved (more or less). It had staple holes on its corners which I probably made worse with push pins. I must still have it, but I don’t know offhand where it is.
Sometime in the last 15 years, much like happened with the double-sided posters, someone on eBay sold me a pile of these in uncirculated condition. The seller called them “slicks,” but they aren’t really — a slick is technically an album cover printed on thin paper to be pasted onto a cardboard album sleeve, and this is the front of the album cover printed on thin cardboard. I tend to refer to this thing as a slick, though, so if I ever mention a Times Square promo slick, this is what I’m talking about. (If I’m wrong and “slick” is the appropriate word for all promotional album cover art, let me know.)
RSO took the movie poster art design — the collage of the photos of Trini and Robin with Robin’s right shoulder erased — and made it a watercolor painting. The logo is aligned with itself, and the text is typewriter lettering against strips of black. If you’re familiar with the American edition of the soundtrack album, you may have noticed the one big difference here: no Tim Curry. The button with the image of Johnny — floating in space on the double-sided poster, affixed to Nicky’s lapel on the movie poster — is here nowhere to be seen.
The most significant change though, as far as I’m concerned: Robin’s eyes are now green, as they should be, and not blue. Trini’s are now brown.
color, 12″ x 12″ (work); 1080 px (W) x 1076 px (H), 96 dpi, 759 kb (image)
1980
inscription:
The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
A Robert Stigwood Production
TIMES SQUARE™
Featuring Music Of:
SUZI QUATRO, THE PRETENDERS, ROXY MUSIC,
GARY NUMAN, MARCY LEVY & ROBIN GIBB, TALKING HEADS, JOE JACKSON,
XTC, THE RAMONES, ROBIN JOHNSON & TRINI ALVARADO,
THE RUTS, D.L. BYRON, LOU REED, DESMOND CHILD & ROUGE,
GARLAND JEFFREYS, THE CURE, PATTI SMITH GROUP, DAVID JOHANSEN.
Just found your site….your dedication is indeed admirable. Recently I’ve been looking up things on Times Square movie….all because of losing a bid on Ebay for a CD of the soundtrack, which i believe could possibly be a home-made bootleg disc..?? Or was there really a very-rare & limited European-issued CD few years ago…??
Anyway, I do have the double-vinyls somewhere in my study.
I do recall the movie and its soundtrack with much fondness. I’m a Malaysian and back in 1980 in my high school days, Times Square soundtrack cassette made a big impression on me while the rest of the population in Malaysia were besotted with ABBA or The Bee Gees. I was already a Gary Numan/ Tubeway army fan then but I must say Suzi Quatro’s ‘Rock Hard’ was a great opener.
I am now an Australian resident and spending a lot of my time digging up & seeking bits of my 80s past….only recently I bought ‘Urgh, A music war’ DVD….cheers!
There has never been an official CD release of the Times Square soundtrack, even if the eBay sellers believe what they have to be authentic. I’ve seen a few auctions of that CD claiming it was an “Official Fan Club” release, which I thought was funny since as far as I know my old Yahoo group was the closest thing there ever was to a fan club. And although we were working on it at one time, we never got around to producing a CD.
I’m pretty sure that even the vinyl edition was never re-pressed after 1980. The eBay CDs turn up all the time so if you really want one you just have to wait. I have one of them and it’s not bad, but they cranked up the treble to make it sound more like a digital recording which results in it sounding a little shrill.
Look up Urgh sometime; as I understand it nearly every time it was shown or broadcast, different songs were edited in and out, so there’s no real definitive version!