I didn't pick up the LP of "Very" when it was released in 1993 as I only bought compact discs back then. Fast forward about ten years and the band's official website was selling off some old stock they had lying around so I decided to pick up a copy of "Very" on vinyl to fill the hole in my collection. More recently I acquired the 2018 remastered release which is pressed on 180g vinyl and sounds great.
Sometime in the late nineties I found the picture disc shown in the photo at a record shop that was closing down and got it for a bargain price. Despite being featured in the retrospective book "Catalogue", this isn't a legitimate release and like most bootlegs, it doesn't sound all that great.
The Colombian version with the unique sleeve was an eBay purchase from about 2004 and turned into a major headache when I realised the seller only accepted payment in Colombian pesos via Western Union. Until recently I wasn't really clear on why this version had a different sleeve, but the BBC documentary "Imagine: Then and Now" helped me come up with a theory.
When looking at the European LP of "Very" Chris says, "We don't like this. It looks like an inner sleeve doesn't it?" To which Neil replies, "You know why? It is an inner sleeve". As the inner of the final LP is the same as the photo used on the Colombian version, I think Neil and Chris simply decided to swap the designs of the inner and outer sleeve. However, the branch of EMI in Colombia either didn't get the memo or they figured they were so remote they could do whatever they wanted.
The music on these records is some of the most commercial the boys have ever released as chart hits like "Go West", "Can You Forgive Her?" and "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing" testify. Yet there's no album filler here and this is one of those classic albums that justifies use of the trope "every song could be a single". If you really want me to nit pick I would say that the production on "One and One Make Five" never convinced me, I'm not keen on the song "One in a million" and "Young Offender" sounds very muddled in places. We didn't know it at the time, but this was one of pop music's last great hurrahs before Britpop came along to ruin the party. 4/5
