Fragile

Too much money for one hit song on entire cd.

Not only are the listeners treated to the original hit album from 1984 remastered, but with bonus tracks TOO (such as "Like I Will's Tokyo Mix!) The sound quality is excellent and the packaging is exquisite housed within a hardcover spined mini-book with new essay and full lyrics!While SOME fans argue that "some of the extra mixes are from vinyl sources and are not remastered," which COULD BE THE CASE, however, years have passed and to simply HAVE these "extra" mixes is a gift in itself! In other words, "Don't sock a gift horse in the mouth."For updates and additional information, check out the "Tabu Records Reborn for 2013" Facebook page/website.

So great to see a classic album get the deluxe treatment. The remastering is exquisite, and while the 6+ minute album version of "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On" is fun, having the radio edit as a bonus track is great. The long-unavailable Tokyo Mix for "Like I Will" is a treat ("put a little soy sauce on it!"). A great debut with even better albums to follow.

The regular album tracks sound good and the packaging is nice, but all the bonus material on these new 2013 Tabu re-issues (with the exception of the first Alexander O'Neal album) sound bad. Most were taken from vinyl and were restored horribly. I don't understand why they would spend so much time and effort on the packaging and advertising campaign, but not take the time to do quality restoration of the bonus material. This Cherrelle album is probably the very worst. I think they used some of the same horrible 12'' recordings from a previous compilation (see my review of that album here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RF0UJ4XPZXCLG/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm). Do not waste your money if you already have the original CD because the bonus material is not worth the money. I had very high hopes for these re-issues, but ended up very disappointed.Some additional notes on my review: My poor review of the bonus material is not strictly because the bonus material is from vinyl. I am actually a huge vinyl collector and vinyl can sound very good when recorded and mastered correctly. I also understand that in many cases the master tapes for the 7'' and 12'' versions are no longer available and vinyl is the best source available. The problem here is that the vinyl recordings are not that good. It sounds like:1. most of the records used were not in mint condition. The first step in getting a good vinyl recording is using a good clean (unplayed or barely played) copy of the record. Most of these titles are not that rare and it would not have been hard to find mint copies to use for these re-issues. I personally have mint or sealed copies of many of these titles in my collection. There are many collectors like myself who would have gladly offered assistance in finding mint copies to use for these re-issues.2. It is hard to tell for certain, but considering the vinyl copies used were not that good, I highly doubt they used an audiophile grade turntable or pickup cartridge to do these recordings. Using a high quality turntable, cartridge, and phono stage (pre-amp) is essential to getting good vinyl recordings. A DJ or mid-grade consumer cartridge, stylus, and pre-amp will not due.3. The worst part about these recordings is that it sounds like they used a "one size fits all" filter/plugin setting over most of the recordings. Filters or other restoration tools are generally used in vinyl recordings to remove pops/clicks and reduce surface noise. If you do not have the filters calibrated correctly for each record or set the gain too high, you will end up with digital artifacts or other unwanted audible side effects. You can actually kill a good vinyl recording with bad post mastering. As mentioned in one of my other reviews, the filters are so aggressive on some of these recordings that they actually cut off the tip of the kick drums (filter confused the tip of the kick as an unwanted pop or click in the record and removed it). Other recordings just have a thin or tinny sound because the filter is pulling out some of the subharmonics when attempting to remove the surface noise. It takes someone with extensive experience in recording and remastering vinyl to produce quality vinyl remasters and these recordings are just not good.Bottom line, I wish Tabu would have put more time and effort into the bonus material. I assume that is why most people are buying these. It is a shame because the packaging is beautiful and these are such classic albums. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis had some of the best sounding production ever and I wish these re-issues fully captured that.In defense of The Demon Music Group (makers of these re-issues), they may not have done these recordings. These may be the recordings they were given from Universal (owners of most of the Tabu catalog). I say this because some of the recordings are identical to the ones used on the recent "Icon" collections issued by Universal. You can see my review of those collections separately (they sound horrible). I hope the Demon Music Group will see some of these negative reviews and decide to use better recordings for future releases.

This is a very good collection of hits by Cherrelle; my favorite song on this CD is "I'll wait for you".

Good music from the 80s... But not enough for your music. Honest the cd cost too much for the little music I got.. should have being under $14.00

A true classic solid R&B album! Just hit after hit! Cherrelle is awesome!

This is a great record.

Brilliant came perfect.

love all this music and times which were my time in the 70/s and 80/sjust takes you right back to being young

great

This review is for:  Fragile (Tabu Expanded Edition) The hotly anticipated TABU reissue campaign gets underway with the first batch of releases including Cherrelle's 1984 album "Fragile". I'm probably similar to a lot of people looking to buy this album having bought the vinyl album and 12" singles back in the day, I'm hoping to be able to replace those in glorious CD sound quality. Some of the new editions are double CDs, but this one is a single CD, so unfortunately the mix I most wanted (the 12" instrumental mix of "I Didn't Mean To Turn You On") is not here, but hopefully it will appear on the TABU box set planned for later in the year. Although this is only one disc, they have crammed it to capacity with a running time of 79:58, so they've utilised the space to its fullest.The first thing to say here is that the packaging is a lovely high quality hardback book complete with lyrics and photographs of the original record labels. I usually prefer jewel cases, but this is rather nice. The album is (mostly) produced by the legendary Jam & Lewis (Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis), so if you haven't heard the album, expect a similar sound to SOS band and Janet Jackson's "Control" album (with a similar mix of uptempo dance workouts and sumptuous ballads). The production values are high as you would expect and the album stands up well 29 years later (Ouch! Really?!).The cover doesn't say it, but the bonus track of "Fragile... Handle With Care" is the full 12" version at over 12 minutes. Nice!As with all of these reissues, the most important thing is the sound quality of the CD. Do these *jams sound good coming out of the speakers or not? (*I say jams because that is what they were called then. Although that should have only been for the cool black Americans in the clubs of Minneapolis, not for little white boys like me sitting in their bedroom with headphones on listening to their jams in their P-jams). The album itself sounds great. What we have to bear in mind is that vinyl can be very forgiving and CD is less so. This is why there are often those disclaimers saying "the compact disc can reveal limitations of the source tape". Vinyl can often disguise things which the CD doesn't. It also depends on whether the recording comes from a digital or analogue source. Also, we are talking here about tapes that are so old we're lucky if they play at all. They get stuck together over time. The main album sounds perfect. In some cases the tapes simply no longer exist at all though. So, vinyl is the only option. Some of the bonus tracks do appear to be ripped from vinyl, but you have to listen really closely to discover that. I'm realistic, I'm happy to accept this. As long as there are no obvious pops or clicks, because they can be cleaned up using software. The odd subtle crackle is acceptable and that is what we have here. So for me, all things considered, this is fine because the tracks sound better than vinyl. Obviously I would prefer only 100% perfect sound quality, but it's just not realistic to expect in all cases. I'm fussy and this easily passes my quality control. I also consider that this could very easily have been a straightforward reissue of the original album with no bonus tracks, so I am grateful to have them included here. We're lucky anyone has revisited these albums at all. "Fragile" wasn't exactly a big seller at the time (it reached number 86 in America and didn't chart at all in the UK). I have a huge list of things I want that have never had a CD release, so I'm happy to have this at all. Also, this is a UK exclusive, so we should think ourselves lucky. The Americans have to import these reissues if they want them.There has been a clear attempt here to bring what was a fairly poor selling album at the time back with a quality reissue with thoughtful packaging and additional bonus tracks.Thumbs up from me.I should add here that my notes regarding the vinyl sources are specific to this CD. They are pretty good. Some others in the Tabu reissue range are not so good and the " Alexander O'Neal (Tabu Expanded Edition) " is a good example. Fragile (Tabu Expanded Edition)Alexander O'Neal (Tabu Expanded Edition)

Son premier et, comme souvent, son meilleur album. A posséder pour « fragile,...»,«I didn't Mean To turn you on» et «When you look in my eyes». le restant c'est du remplissage...