Here’s my lovely Cocteau Twins box set of the first four albums, remastered and pressed on heavy vinyl in new sleeves and a sumptuous Vaughan Oliver-designed box. What a birthday present! One of only 700, but sorry, purist collectors, I had to take the discs out of the cellophane and play them. And they sound wonderful. Who can blame me for sinking back into 80s nostalgia when it’s as good as this? I bought it, by the way, from the fabulous Diverse Records in Newport.
It reminds me of the earlier Cocteaus box set of CD singles. When it was released in 1990 or 1991 I neither had a CD player nor much money. I was sorely tempted but decided against it. It was deleted the same day. A short while later my friend John called me to say he’d seen it in a record shop in, I think, Birmingham for £30. It seemed a lot and I still didn’t have a CD player so I said no only to regret it for years later. Until one Christmas morning when Mrs. M, entirely unexpectedly, presented me with a little red box that brought tears to my eyes. It’s the US version, which wasn’t only released for one day, but is still pretty rare.
