Hi everybody. Here are some answers for you all.
1. The Flame and the Flames are the same band. In South Africa they were the Flames and in the USA they became the Flame
2. Only the tapes to their South African records are lost. The tapes to their USA recordings are intact.
3. The CD currently on sale is an illegal needle-drop bootleg and should be avoided. A proper reissue is promised in future, very likely including most or all of the unreleased second USA album.
4. The Flame album is a surround recording intended to give a pleasing surround effect on a passive matrix system like Dynaco. Of course its totally compatible with stereo.
5. I made a far better needle-drop than the currrent illegal CD and had Tab Patterson (bless him) decode it into four channels for a DTS version. See his site about that. There is no clear instrumental separation but it sure sounds wonderful.
6. The promised reissue will have all surround coding intact. It is being prepared by the original engineer Steve Desper, one of the world's true audio genuises and an extremely kind and warm human being.
Thats all from Bas Mollenkramer, webmaster of the Flames website
www.the-flames.com