Worst/most unnecessary reissues

Don't get me started on any gospel CD that doesn't have liner notes by Opal Nations -- it's a TRAVESTY, I tell you, especially when you get lured into thinking something's from the '40s and it's really much more recent and sucks (like a Troggs reunion album masquerading as an old one, grrrrrrr).

I'm skeptical of all these dual-disc reissues. I don't own any yet and don't relish the idea of bringing one home and finding it incompatible with my equipment.

The recent trend of the just-months-after-the-original-release-reissue thing is silly - The Massacre etc.

Roadrunner Records have been doing this for the best part of a decade now.

I had a copy of "Therapy" years ago and sold it on a while later, having failed to locate its joys. I look forward to hearing it again.

I always knew there was other, pre-"Cool Snap" gubbins, because it's mentioned on the wee bit of paper inside "Cool Snap" but only ever managed to find "Nerve Pylon". And then gave that away. "CS" remains one of my favourite records from that time, it's a record which anticipates some of the spikier end of indie which came a few years later (and I know Phil Wilson was a big Lines fan).

if you like Cool Snap, you'll love the single that came just before, On the Air. It's similar but a bit more raw. There's a discography here:

http://www.torchsongonline.com/thelinesdiscography.html

as Rico Conning of the Lines has worked with William Orbit through the years...even on the Madonna stuff! Same Rico who worked with Depeche Mode, Front 242, Renegade Soundwave etc.

....why?

>>

That track is on Killed By Death #2 - if you want a version without the glitch. I hadn't noticed it on my copy of Expelled but my CD player is getting old and cranky so it's possible it is on there and I assumed it was the CD player.

Similar treatment has recently hit Maximum Joy (whose entire oeuvre could've fit a single disc).

I wanted to be excited about the Essential Logic reissue, but unfortunately it was about five years too late to capture my interest. I'd already spent a fair amount of bucks in the '90s to hoover up all that stuff off of eBay.

http://www.cherryred.co.uk/lemon/artists/index.htm

I guess there has to be a market for Faster Pussycat remix albums!

(Seriosly, though. The Kershenbaum remixes are FAR better than the original versions of songs 1 - 5 on the album, from the title track to "Hold Back The Rain". Everything else is the same on all versions of the album.)

Everyone ripped me for likeing Ben Folds Five "Whatever and Ever Bibbity Blah..." re-release (as seen here iBen Folds Five - Whatever and Ever Amen Reissue). But I will stand by it.

5. shouldn't there be like a 10 year minimum for this shit?

-- miccio (anthonyisrigh...), April 24th, 2005.

4. this record is only EIGHT fucking years old! it isn't as if this is the white album.

wtf is WRONG w/ the rekkid companies?!?

-- Eisbär (llamasfu...), April 24th, 2005.

3. Also. The re-release of this record ISN'T the cause of YOUR favourite record not being re-released. Get the fuck over it.

-- edward o (edwardo...), April 24th, 2005.

2. Ben Folds apologists make me embarrassed for them.

-- Sarah S. (ssmyth...), January 2nd, 2006.

1. oh great - please let them reissue this so i can step over the bodies of those men wallowing in self-pity over their inability to interact with love interests.

-- blackmail.is.my.life (blackmail.is.my.lif...), April 24th, 2005.

-- Alex in NYC (vassife...), April 8th, 2006.

otm!

-- vartman (bl...), April 8th, 2006.

that was more because TVT were in the hole and had to auction off the rights to release it

MIKE JOYCE duh

Vote #2

meanwhile, the IRS years languish in low fidelity.

I don't know if this counts as a reissue, but in terms of repackaging a record in a bizarre and virtually useless fashion, this takes the cake:

http://eil.com/newgallery/The-Killers-7-Inch-Box-Set-344717.jpg

elvis costello can go fuck himself

I might be wrong, but wasn't this more a case of "weirdly, this album has actually been out of print for a short time!" The sort of thing where it made perfect sense to "re-issue" it in the sense of getting it back into stores...but for purposes of hyping it, getting it reviewed, etc, it was a lot more pointless.

The Dinosaur Jr. reissues on Merge are lame, too. Extra tracks/demos just have to be floating around. Instead we get lame fucking videos that you can watch on VH1's The Alternative.

While rubbish like Fleetwood Mac and Yes get the grand reissue treatment, classics are left w/ poor audio fidelity:

The Pretenders - The Pretenders
New Order - all back catalogue
Gang Of Four - Songs Of The Free (deleted in UK as well I believe)

These are all WEA-related albums (GOF was WEA in US), so why can't Rhino reissue these instead of the hated Mac and Yes?

xxp - yeah, the merge dino reissues have inexplicable/dumb add-ons, but at least the remasters of the actual albums sound good

dlp9001...
Agreed. Kiln House was great, atmospheric stuff too. Seriously...it's the two Americans in the band that ruined them. I'm American, too, so that wasn't a jab or anything. Just fact.

Speaking of Tusk, the Camper Van Beethoven covers of that album are pretty interesting, if you haven't heard them yet.

I don't neccessarily like the orphaning, but they sound a lot better than the Rykodisc ones. (I own the Ryko of "Ziggy Stardust" and if the audio channels are switched I will not buy the remaster)

The 1993 MCA version not only replaces the cover art with some truly awful artwork, but combines the US and UK releases, adhering to neither original running order. Bad move.

Even worse, the entire Bjork collection is being remastered/reissued on the dreaded DualDiscs. No album released after 1994 should be in need of a remaster, unless there's some really obvious fuckup.

I never liked Depeche Mode enough to own their albums. But the deluxe reissues are triggering a Pavlovian response, combined with Simon Reynolds mentioning he was surprised at how he likes them better than he remembered.

Universal has a lot of weird Deluxe Editions -- Gin Blossoms, Elton John, Melissa Etheridge, Grease. What's next, Xanadu?

Via Pfork:

Less than a year after the release of their debut album Manners, Passion Pit are giving it the deluxe reissue treatment. Out April 13 on Frenchkiss/Columbia, the new Manners will feature three bonus tracks and new artwork. The bonus tracks: "stripped down" takes on "Moth's Wings" and "Sleepyhead" and a cover of the Cranberries' "Dreams", which the band has been playing live.

http://pitchfork.com/news/38203-passion-pit-reissue-debut-album

The recent single CD issue of Big Star's 'Radio City' has the first second of 'September Gurls' indexed as part of the previous track. Fuck.

And Julian Cope's 'Jehovahkill' has the worst remastering of all time. Never mind compression, it's been amplified to the point where it's distorted throughout. Utterly terrible.

Do they still make Dual Discs? I hope not. I could never figure out a way to burn them to my computer.

Dual Discs seem to be universally loathed, so I doubt they make them anymore. The only ones I have are the Talking Heads reissues and I could always get the CD side to work in both of the Macs in my house (though not in my car). I can sympathize though, I was nervous the first time I shoved those thick discs into the drive...

I was browsing and came across the Deluxe Edition of Joe Jackson's Night And Day. I like the slick Nu-Yorican vibe to it, but only really like about three songs.

I was coming here to post about this Deluxe Edition--they included the 5 songs from the contemporaneous, never-on-CD Mike's Murder soundtrack (yay!) but left out all the instrumental tracks so they could slap on 5 cuts from the easy-to-find-on-CD Live 1980-1986 album.

xxxxpost - And that's gotta be at least the THIRD Big Star CD reissue! Too bad you didn't get one of the two-fers instead... :(

And because I have to complain about this somewhere, some whining about the otherwise exemplary Who reissues of the '90s:

- Too much double dipping - Following up the fab single-disc reissues of The Who Sell Out, Tommy, Live at Leeds and Who's Next with 2-disc Deluxe Editions that aren't extra-fab enough for me to want to spend another $25 or $30 on each.

- As thorough as they were in filling these things up with rarities, there are still 13 previously released tracks (mostly b-sides) that didn't show up on any of the reissues or the 30 Years of Maximum R&B box set:

Baby Don't You Do It (Live)
Bargain (Live) [from the "Who's Missing" comp]
Circles (Instant Party) [Rerecorded version]
Dogs, Part 2
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Goin' Down (Live) [from the "Two's Missing" comp]
Here for More
I'm a Boy (Early Version)
My Wife (Live) [from the "Two's Missing" comp]
Someone's Coming
Substitute [the original single is only available on any of a million redundant Greatest Hits comps)
Waspman
When I Was a Boy

And if you don't have the box set, you're missing out on these, too. Even the better Greatest Hits comps won't get you all of these:

Anyway Anyhow Anywhere
Call Me Lightning
Dogs
Happy Jack
Heaven and Hell
I'm a Boy
Join Together
The Last Time
Let's See Action
Magic Bus
Pictures of Lily
Relay
The Seeker

What they should have done was release a remastered Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy collection and added the rest of the missing tracks. But they didn't. Bastards.

the who catalogue is kind of a mess. as far as I can tell some of the best editions of things were released on cd in Japan only. the live at leeds deluxe edition sounds awful too. although, I think the new Sell Out deluxe is supposed to be good?

as annoying as it is that elvis costello reissues his catalogue every year, it did seem like he kept going a better and better job of it (until the Hip-O versions anyway). The Rykos were great and then the Rhinos came out and retained almost all of the Ryko bonus tracks PLUS more. The new deluxe editions aren't necessary to me since the bonus discs are live only (don't care) but I can see people wanting them, I guess.

Bowie's catalogue also a mess. I have a feeling Bowie might kick the bucket soon so maybe something good will come out after he dies (not to be morbid).

waht

- As thorough as they were in filling these things up with rarities, there are still 13 previously released tracks (mostly b-sides) that didn't show up on any of the reissues or the 30 Years of Maximum R&B box set:

Baby Don't You Do It (Live)
Bargain (Live) [from the "Who's Missing" comp]

These are on the fan-club-only 2CD View From A Backstage Pass live compilation (at thewho.com...for fifty goddamn dollars)

Dogs, Part 2

This is on the 2CD Tommy Deluxe Edition.

My Wife (Live) [from the "Two's Missing" comp]

Also on View From A Backstage Pass.

Someone's Coming

This was on the 1995 reissue of The Who Sell Out (can't remember if it's on the 2009 2CD reissue)

^ "Someone's Coming" - Whoops, you're right.

Did the recent reissues of RIO include those aforementioned Kershenbaum remixes? I don't think i've ever heard of those.

A tad spurious seeing as it's not a reissue as such just a dvd of an old Vhs, but i'll just moan a little more about it anyway; the DVD of blur StarShaped which as has been documented elsewhere many times is *literally* unlistenable. I mean with all the renwed interest around them and the new documentary movie you'd think it could have been issued again with decent sound.

is the sound worse than the VHS, or is just that the source sound (crappy handheld cameras) was rubbish to begin with?

"xxxxpost - And that's gotta be at least the THIRD Big Star CD reissue! Too bad you didn't get one of the two-fers instead... :("

Or did a decade ago and wondered why the latest one was so pish?

The 25th anniversary edition of "Thriller" was pretty much pointless. The version with the Quincy Jones interview and E.T. album track on it was a lot more interesting for those of us who reckon that music from 1982 should also sound like music from 1982.

just absolutely no shame in the jazz reissue biz, so dumb, I thought Verve was remotely serious

https://i.imgur.com/CWvdfIa.png

this is tangential to the subject of the thread, but can anyone recommend a good article about the rise of functional 'music to exercise/study/sleep/whatever to' playlists becoming a major way that people consume music, and the effects on the industry? (maybe tying it in to the longer history of 'functional' music, muzak etc?)

Those WFH albums seem to be digital only at least, was loling thinking of someone proudly buying a vinyl record of that.

Workin' (From Home) With The Miles Davis Quintet

Verve's jazz reissues even on CD were often pretty wack. They did do some back in the late 90s like this one.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41RVDG70VGL.jpg

Now on some of these releases where they got all hipster Photoshop/Illustrator 1998, they would bend fonts and put them on backgrounds where often trying to read the liner notes was a near impossibility.

They would also often times use weird die cut cases that pretty much guaranteed that the record would fall out of print.

The music is not wack, that should be said. I own this one. At the time most of RRK's records of that era had not yet come out on CD.

I revisit that second Blackbeard record frequently, so weird/great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztVpsVEzo6U

Oh bum, wrong thread :(