I've usually built a post around featuring a song, and had a video or audio file link embedded in the post. I'm doing just a "normal" post today, though, because I've been listening to a lot of Real Life. I hadn't exactly forgotten about Real Life, of course, but I also hadn't thought about them in many months if not even a couple of years now until accidentally stumbling across a "Send Me An Angel" YouTube video. I've spent a fair bit of time reacquainting myself with them. Or him, I should say; for a number of years now, Real Life is just David Sterry, the vocalist, sometime guitar player, main songwriter and general front man for the group from the beginning. He's still on friendly terms with at least a couple former bandmates, at least to hear him talk about it, but he's the only one still doing it.
As I said in my last post, the original output of the band is somewhat limited. And sadly, much of what they've done over the years is now out of print and difficult, if not impossible, to still find. This was true even when I was attempting to run down their stuff in the late 80s. Depending on how you count it, Real Life have had six albums of original output, starting in 1983 and the most recent in 2020, which isn't a lot. But they've also had a number of other tracks released here and there as exclusives on various compilations of previously released material, and honestly, those compilations have been more readily available for a long time anyway.
The original Real Life release was Heart Land in 1983. It has ten tracks. It wasn't available for a long time, but you can now get it pretty easily as a streaming or mp3 album from Amazon, and you can listen to it on YouTube readily enough. I couldn't get it in 1988-90 or so when I was looking, but most of the tracks on it are available on the two compilations that were available at that time. Four tracks are not, three of which are definitely worth getting. Three other tracks are on the compilations, but not in the exact mix or version that you got on the Heart Land album. This was especially noticeable on the two songs that were hits; "Send Me an Angel" and "Catch Me I'm Falling". The latter was just a shorter album version than the compilation version which otherwise sounded very similar, but the "Send Me an Angel" version was more different. The 1983 version wasn't available for quite some time.
Flame was the next release. Although it never even got a CD release (at least in America) at all that I can see, it did, apparently, get an vinyl and cassette release. I never saw it, though. There's nothing on this album that isn't available on compilations, except for the song "Take My Breath Away" (no relation to the Berlin song of the same name) and I think the album version of "Let's Fall in Love" might be a bit different than the compilation version, but not substantially so. There are also ten tracks on this one.
Down Comes the Hammer was next, and while not exactly a compilation, it had a lot of pre-released material on it. Out of nine tracks, only three were new. I never saw this released anywhere either, and it never got a CD release or a digital release of any kind, but everything on it is now available somewhere else at least, although one or two tracks (like "Night After Night") will have to be bought on a used CD. Some of the versions on this are alternate versions; the "Send Me an Angel" track is the "Master Mix" EP version, for instance, a label exclusive remix EP. Since both Master Mix and Down Comes the Hammer aren't available easily, that's dicey, but in general, I find alternate versions less compelling than actual different songs.
When I was looking for Real Life stuff in the late 80s, it was the two compilations released in 1989 that I found available. Other than the 1983 version of "Send Me an Angel" (which could be found on various movie soundtracks, I'll note) and four other Heart Land songs and one Flame song, between the two compilations you could get everything on those first three albums already, sometimes in multiple versions (like for "Bleeding Babies") and the '89 version of "Send Me An Angel" was quite a bit better than the 1983 version anyway (in my opinion, of course.)
Curiously, the first of those compilations, "Send Me an Angel '89" has gone out of print, and then been re-released again as Send Me an Angel: Best Of. In doing so, nine of the ten tracks (and the track order) is completely unchanged, but "Night After Night" has been replaced with a radio version of "Let's Fall in Love." This makes "Night After Night" unavailable in any digital format, and "Let's Fall in Love" available in two versions. While this was probably a smarter move for an actual Best Of compilation, it's a little unfortunate because now one song isn't available, and the other is available in two similar (although obviously not identical) versions. Given that both of the compilation CDs are only ten tracks each, they probably should have gone with a longer tracklist that has some bonus tracks or alternate versions or something. From the entirety of the 80s, there are only six tracks that aren't available on one of these two ten track compilations. We've got two versions each of "Send Me An Angel" and "Let's Fall in Love." It wouldn't have killed them to bump the track count up to 15 on each of those, given us a the original album versions of "Send Me an Angel," "Let's Fall in Love" and "Catch Me I'm Falling" as well as the other six missing songs, and maybe a single-release b-side or remix to round it out.
Both of these compilations are still readily available, at least in the re-released state for the first one, on Amazon as CDs or as mp3s/streaming. They're both available on YouTube, and I believe also on Spotify and iTunes.
Lifetime was released in 1990. Also ten tracks. It has the minor dance hits "God Tonight" and "Kiss the Ground" as well as some non-hit excellent tracks (in my opinion.) It's also mostly been readily available and in print since its release, at least in digital/streaming if not CD form.
Happy was released in 1997. It has ten tracks, but every release of it that I've ever seen includes two bonus alternate version tracks. It has been out of print for some time and is difficult to find; luckily for me I've had a CD version of it since sometime in the late 90s. It's a more grungy, 90s sounding album, so it's not my favorite, but it does have a few standout tracks.
Imperfection was released in 2003 on the American great synthpop indie-label A Different Drum. That label is now defunct, and the album is, as near as I can tell, completely unavailable. You can't even find bootleg YouTube uploads of most of the tracks on it. It's just completely AWOL. I didn't pick this one up, more's the pity, because now I don't know how I even could if I wanted to. While the album itself had 11 tracks, it had a bonus disc 2 with 11 additional remixes and alternate versions. Mostly of tracks from the actual Imperfection album itself, but there was also a remix of "God Tonight."
In 2009 Real Life released 80s Synth Essentials which is difficult to find on CD, but you can buy as mp3 or hear streaming easily enough. It's mostly an album of cover songs, done solely by Dave Sterry (his band was down to just him at the time) and released on Cleopatra Records. Apparently, when Cleopatra proposed it to him, which they sought him out to do so, the only thing that they asked was that he pick songs that weren't too obscure, and that he not do something so radical with them that they weren't recognizable. In general, I'd suggest that the covers have a bit of a light touch. Sterry said that there were a few other tracks that he'd liked to have done, but couldn't make versions of them that sounded good, either because the vocal range was too wonky, or something else, including (unidentifed) tracks by Alphaville, The Cars, and Iggy Pop. This CD has 15 tracks, but only 12 of them are covers. There's a new version of "Send Me an Angel", although it's not remarkably different than the '89 version, as well as two 1983 versions; the 1983 album version and 12" version, tacked on as extras for the fans.
Finally, in 2020 Real Life released Sirens, the most recent release. It only has six tracks, but one track is really five songs in one, so it follows the very traditional ten-song format that most of the Real Life albums have done. I just got it recently, so I'm not yet ready to comment on it other than so far I found only one song to be kind of a dud. Not a bad ratio. I'm going to break up the long track into it's constituent songs and have them as mp3s on my phone in that format rather than all jammed together. My Amazon mp3 download has one title for the entire track, but discogs gives subtitles for each of the constituent songs: "Sirens (Sirens - Siren's Song - Hole in My Sole - Out in the Solar System - Melt)"
The complete and total unavailability of anything from Happy or Imperfections is of course disappointing, as is the somewhat difficult availability of a few tracks from the 80s. Then again, sometimes the post-80s output of a band that's pretty iconic to the 80s is often not seen as nearly as essential. I got Happy fairly early, and while there's nothing wrong with it, I often feel kinda "meh" about it. So much so, that I didn't buy Imperfections when I had the chance to get it easily, which I now kind of wish that I had. But with only one or two exceptions, all of their 80s output is now pretty readily available, and I include Lifetime in that even though it was released in 1990, because culturally it's still very much an 80s album. If you really want to track down "Night After Night" pretty much the only one to track down that might be a little difficult.
I'll note that for whatever reason the album version of "Catch Me I'm Falling" on the version of Heart Land that's available now is not actually quite the same version as available on the original album, which seems (I believe) to be identical to the original 7" version of the song. If extremely similar alternate versions are your thing, you'll have to track down the out of print original album release, or the original single. And by original, I mean the Wheately label single released in Australia; everyone else got the 4 minute version instead of the 3 and a half minute version, for some reason. But the original American release had the three and a half minute version; the current version, however, does not. The original original version, if you can find it, is a fair bit different and worth checking out. You'll probably have to get an Aussie import, though, or play a bootleg YouTube copy or something.
EDIT: I see, actually, that Imperfections is available on bandcamp. I'll pick it up later today, and then see what else is kicking around on that account. Looks like a double album version of Happy is there too, with loads of remixes, from what was once the bonus disc 2 remix album Happier.
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