The Scorpions album “Moment of Glory” is all versions of their songs done with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
The Scorpions album “Acoustica” is mostly re-workings of their songs as acoustic versions.
The Golden Earring albums “The Naked Truth” and “Naked II” are re-workings of their songs as acoustic versions. Personally, I think these worked far, far better than the Scorpions acoustic attempt.
The Saxon album “Heavy Metal Thunder” contains re-recorded versions of a lot of their hits. I think most are better than the originals.
Blue Öyster Cult’s self-titled first album featured a song called “I’m on the Lamb But I Ain’t No Sheep”. Their second album, “Tyranny and Mutation”, featured a song called “The Red and the Black”. They are the same song, done in two different styles.
The Blue Öyster Cult album “Imaginos” contains re-worked versions of a couple of their songs, “Astronomy” and “Blue Öyster Cult”, the latter is actually a re-working of the song “Subhuman” from the “Secret Treaties” album.
BÖC also did acoustic or alternate versions of songs like “Fire of Unknown Origin”, “In Thee”, and the well-known “Don’t Fear the Reaper”. All can be found on various CD re-issues as bonus tracks.
Tangerine Dream’s Edgar Froese has seen fit to release much of his own and the band’s back catalog with new layers of digital synthesizers overdubbed. This really spoils what were originally seminal classics of analog synthesizer-based music. The T. Dream albums are still readily available in their original forms on the Virgin label, but some of Froese’s early solo works are almost impossible to find without the digital tampering.
The Police redid their 1980 hit “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” for their 1986 greatest hits album Every Breath You Take: The Singles, even retitling it “Don’t Stand So Close to Me '86.” Not quite the same thing, but Sting is also notorious for throwing in little snippets of past songs into newer ones – just a quote at the end of the song, etc.
Walter/Wendy Carlos did this as well, re-recording Switched on Bach in 1992 using newer synthesizer and digital recording technology. Frankly, it’s not as good as the original recording.
When Eric Clapton did his Unplugged segment/album for MTV, he had to do completely new arrangements for some of the songs, most notably “Layla”, for them to work as acoustic pieces. It wasn’t like he could just play the same power chords on a different instrument.
It’s a complicated story. Originally, there was no release of the Vangelis music as an album, only the one with an orchestra playing the music. I think there was some dispute and problems with the studio (I lost my liner notes, but I think he talks about it, and how he was inspired by Ridley Scott’s Director’s Cut release.)
Twenty years later, when it became possible for him to release a soundtrack, Vangelis decided to modify the music is it had appeared in the film, so the album isn’t quite the soundtrack.
Both might be called ‘reworkings’, although the first wasn’t done by the original artist.
There’s a later extended edition, and some bootleg versions based on what was in the released movie.
Yeah, that’s my recollection of it. The electronica version was released in 1994. All he says in the liner notes is that he wasn’t able to release it when the film came out.
I had a friend in college that had a bootleg cassette of it tho, and I dubbed off his. Great stoner music back in the day. It’s held up well, too, although I prefer Cliff Martinez’s Solaris these days.
Not quite. They didn’t re-do the song for the Greatest Hits album, although it certainly ended up on that compilation.
In 1986 the band was on the verge of splitting up, or at least in a moribund state after Sting’s solo career had taken off. They tried going back into the studio to develop a new album, but tensions within the band ran high. When they got back into the studio, Sting wanted them to try this re-vamp of DSSCTM. This was all they managed to record before the project broke up amidst acrimonious disputes, squabbles and bickering. It was released as a single in its own right and did moderately well, at least here in the UK. It was then included on the Greatest Hits album in place of the original version.
This one’s admittedly obscure, though one I personally love: The band Daniel Amos re-released their 1995 “Songs of the Heart” albuma few years later as a 3-CD “book set” that included the original (rock) album as well as a second disc with the songs re-recorded in an “acoustic cafe” style (and with a different track ordering). (I prefer the original, though.)
The Cure did acoustic rerecordings of their hits as a bonus disc on their Best of/Hits package a few years back. To my ears some of the redone versions are better than the original recordings.
There are artists who record a live version of a whole studio album. Recently, Lou Reed (with Berlin, 35 years after the first release) and Van Morrison (*Astral Weeks *, 41 years later) did it.
The remixed version of TB on Boxed has the segment with the drunken Mike and Viv walking down the hallway of the Manor while Mike plays the Sailors Hornpipe. This was cut from the original release. The remix version of Hergest Ridge was used for the CD release - the CDs of the other two used the original version.
While it is true that TB III and MB are very different from TB, TB II is structurally almost identical. The other two are versions only in the same sense that Amarok is a version of Ommadawn.
BTW there is also an Orchestral Hergest Ridge, never released. I have a chunk of it on a bootleg.
This is something that seems to happen a fair amount in the metal scene.
Novembre completely rerecorded their debut “Wish I Could Dream It Again?” as “Dreams d’Azur”. It might have even included some songs from their second album too, but I don’t recall off the top of my head. Some of the songs also had some rewriting and lyrical changes.
A more recent example would be Anathema’s “Hindsight” in which they took many of their songs, some with few changes, some with some significant reworking and lyrical changes, but all were done semi-acoustically.
In fact, the whole acoustic or semi-acoustic thing seems to be a common theme that many others have done as well. Of the top of my head, Pain of Salvation, The Gathering, and Ayreon have all done acoustic or semi-acoustic albums of their previous work.
Not exactly on topic, but there’s a lot of bands I’d love to hear do this. I think some bands have some fantastic records that are held back by production (generally due to low budget) but, thanks to the digital revolution in recording and mastering, I think theres some gems that could really get the recongition they deserve. Some examples of those would be Opeth’s Morningrise, Dark Suns’s Swanlike, and In Flames’s Lunar Strain.
Good call Blaster Master. I forgot to mention one of my favs:
Exodus released Let There Be Blood last year, which was a new recording of their entire first album. The production on Bonded By Blood wasn’t very good, and they decided to redo it with newer and better recording techniques. It sounds great!
In a sense, all live albums are reworkings of previous materials – the songs are generally played differently than on the record (or, at least until recently, when performers lip synch).
But one that is clearly a reworking is Procul Harum Live in Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. There was no orchestra for most of the original versions of the songs (IIRC, “A Salty Dog” did have strings in the original).