Flying Lizards, Fourth Wall

Anyway, of the three proper Flying Lizards albums (The Secret Dub Life of the Flying Lizards is actually a collection of dub tapes Cunningham was commissioned to make for Virgin in the late ’70s), guess which is the hardest to track down?

Flying Lizards never went out of print, is readily available on Japanese import, and while it might not be immediately available at the local Target or Wal-Mart, it doesn’t require much effort to find, and it’s not terribly expensive. Top Ten, despite only being released on CD in 1985 on a tiny French indie, is also really easy to find; I rustled up a copy the first time I looked for it. I think I paid about 40-50 bucks for it, which again isn’t bad.

Strangely, despite being reissued on Virgin Japan in 1999 (a major label in a big country), the CD edition of Fourth Wall is just about impossible to find. If it happens to pop up on eBay, it’ll typically go for between $100-150. . . again, if it pops up on eBay, which is itself a rare occurrence. When I was getting into the Flying Lizards, I was able to find most of the album on Limewire, but it was a mediocre vinyl rip, with lots of surface noise. Listenable, but not great. I already knew that the record was a classic, but I wanted to hear it how it was intended. (At least kinda: the Virgin Japan re-issue was unauthorized by David Cunningham, and he’s long planned to release a remixed version under both his own and Patti Paladin’s names, but no such issue is forthcoming, nor is the long-rumored Virgin Best-Of with unreleased tracks.)

It took me FOREVER to find Fourth Wall; even copies out of my price range were scarce. Then, one night I was bored and figured I’d try one more time. I checked a lot of the usual suspects—eBay, GEMM, MusicStack, Amazon, etc.—and then I happened to find a tiny record shop in Utah with a Yahoo storefront. . . who claimed to have a copy in stock.

A still shrink-wrapped copy.

On CD.

For 29 dollars, the retail price.

I immediately ordered it. Naturally, this was a late Friday night, so I spent the rest of the evening and the weekend fretting and expecting the order to be cancelled. Of course, it HAD to be an error; they wouldn’t have this incredibly rare album at all, and they wouldn’t have it for so cheap; and if by some fluke they DID have the album for that cheap, surely someone else would have ordered it by now. Or, maybe it was some sort of ill-advised scam to get money out of the fans of an obscure cult band.

On Monday, the order was confirmed, and I just about had a heart attack. After being elated for about a half hour, I began fretting for a week about the CD getting lost in the mail; an error involving receiving the wrong record by accident (which would mean that of course, the real CD would be unavailable); or actually getting the CD, but having it be damaged. . .

But then it came.

And it was perfect and pristine and everything I could have ever hoped for.

I ran to my stereo and put it on immediately. It was a wonderful record, and I finally had it. As soon as it’d spun down after its first-ever play, I immediately ripped it (and listened to it again), and put it safely on the shelf. Where it remains, and is one of the only CDs I won’t loan out.

Which is a shame, really, as it’s a great record everyone should hear.

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