Spiritual People

All right, let's finish up our series comparing the US releases of Speech albums to the versions released in Japan with a look at the two versions of Spiritual People. As mentioned before, this is when it gets a little tricky, because the US version was released two years later and rearranges the track listing quite a bit. In this case, the US version has three songs that did not appear on the original and is missing six songs that appear on the Japanese version, so these are pretty substantial differences. I believe there are also small differences on many of the songs, and the title track is mixed completely different for each album.

This is the US track listing. The three songs in bold do not appear on the Japanese version, all three are classics and would later appear on Peechy (two of them are bonus tracks) in Japan:
1. Brought To You By (Music & Life)
2. Spiritual People
3. The Simple Love Of Life
4. A Traveler
5. Cruisin' In My Super Beetle
6. It's A Challenge For Me
7. Livin' In The Real World
8. Brother Speech
9. Jungle Man
10. Y-O
11. Ghetto Fabulous
12. Burning Rage Inside
13. Always In Love
14. Late For My Own Funeral

Missing from the US release are the songs "So Much Folly" (simply a great song), "The Temporary (Woe Is Me)" (another fantastic song), "Nothin New But You" (another great song, also found on Down South Produckshuns), "Poverty" (yet another great song, detect a trend here?), "Our Image" (appears on the US version of Hoopla), and Redemption Song (from the US Hoopla). There are also five skits on the Japan version, if skits are your thing. So basically, the Japanese version of this album has four classic Speech songs that are not available in the US, plus a better mix of the title song "Spiritual People" in my opinion, and two bonus songs that come from the US Hoopla. You can't go wrong with either one, but fans really should make room for both on their shelf or in their iPod- or, pick up the Japanese version of Spiritual People along with Peechy, and you will be set.

For simplification, here is the Japanese track listing, and again, the bolded songs/skits are not found on the US version:
1. An Agenda (skit)
2. So Much Folly
3. Living in the Real World
4. Late For My Own Funeral
5. Ghetto Fabulous
6. The Temporary (Woe is Me)
7. A Glass of Water (Skit)
8. Y-O
9. A Traveler
10. People Everyday (skit)
11. Brother Speech
12. Warm & Snugly (skit)
13. Jungle Man
14. Turn the Record Over (Skit)
15. Love of Life
16. Burning Rage Inside
17. Always In Love
18. Nothin' New But You (also on Down South Produckshuns)
19. Spiritual People
20. Poverty
21. Our Image (from the US version of Hoopla)
22. Redemption Song (from the US version of Hoopla)

From here on out, the US fans really get hosed as we will not see a true US release of a Speech album until the compilation The Vagabond in 2005. Luckily, Peechy and Down South Produckshuns could be easily found for those of us who looked for them....

Whew, that was kind of a chore sorting these two out!