Earlier there was a thread on music that’s no longer available. How about a thread on albums that are available and are either much better or significantly worse than in the original vinyl format? I’m talking the disk contents, as we can all agree that cover art doesn’t scale down from 12" to 5" so well.
Best:
** The Ramones** - All The Stuff (And More)- Vols. I & II
The Ramones played 'em short and fast. Consequently their first 4 albums clock in around 30 minutes each. Sire realizes CDs can hold 74 minutes, so they package 2 albums on one disk. Next they throw in 4-5 bonus tracks. Then they price it the same as a regular CD! Dang! I get Rocket to Russia, the best punk-power-pop album ever released, along with ** Road to Ruin**, another great LP, and I Want You Around and Slug, all for a mere $11.99!! And the first four albums were Ramones strongest material, not cut-out bin filler.
Worst: The Beatles 1962-1966 AKA The Red Album
The early Beatles played 'em short, short enought that this double LP greatest hits package runs a mere 66 minutes. As we all know, that easily fits on one CD. So what do the greedy bastards at Capitol do? Release it as a double CD and charge $22.99. When the media called them on it, they offered the lame excuse “The fans are used to it being a double album, so we released it as a double CD to preserve the experience”. Yeah, I was also used to having to flip the LP over every 15 minutes - why don’t you release it on 4 disks to complete my experience? I’m sure the fact that you could jack up the price $5-7 never crossed your minds. A rip-off I refuse to buy.
Worst (runner-up): The Kinks - One for the Road
This double LP live set clocked in around 80 minutes, just a tad longer than a single disk. So Arista opts to release a single disk, and just drops a few songs to shorten the set.
Remastered by none other than Rick Ocasek! Rick Ocasek! Rick Ocasek from The Cars, man! Aren’t you down with the punk music scene?
Neither was he. That skee-ball wouldn’t know DCHC if it planted a Doc upside his funny lookin’ head. HR now sounds like one of the Chipmunks and Dr. Know’s guitar is practically mixed out. Worse, it’s nearly impossible to find the original version, so I’ve been stuck with that shitty release for over ten years.
I’d like to nominate The Electric Light Orchestra’s Out of the Blue for both honors.
The good:
A 2-lp set on 1 disc. Being a big ELO fan, I’ve collected many different versions of the original albums and was happy to see CBS/Jet/Sony (or whoever the hell is the current owner of the catalog) chose NOT to release it as a double.
The bad:
NO LINER INFO AT ALL!! No lyrics, no band credits, no nothing!! I can understand not having the poster or spaceship cut-out, but c’mon! At least the CD-issue of Sgt. Pepper… had replicas of the cut-outs found in first pressings of that album. Sony(?) is re-issuing the ELO catalog digitally remastered w/extra tracks and hopefully OOTB will get a better look.
Greatest Reissues
[li]Anything by Frank Zappa[/li][li]Anything by the Beatles[/li][li]All of Yoko Ono’s CD’s (with Bonus tracks)[/li][li]Anything by Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, and Jimi Hendrix[/li]Worst reissues
The CD version of Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane. It wasn’t even remastered.
Best issue: The Phantom of the Opera CD. The original 2CD set was issued with no tracks, just one long version. Over 70% were returned with notes to the effect of “What is this shit?” The CDS were recalled, and the untrakced highlights single CD were also recalled with very few getting on the market. Great cause I have both untracked versions, and they are very valuable. Also the CD from the new JCS video, cause the originals released in England contained a freaking computer program (no music). An e-friend bought one and asked me if I wanted it. Most were recalled and destroyed, and when the story got out, people were begging for them!
Worst reissue: The Broadway version of Jesus Christ Superstar, which was only released in Japan at a horrendous price. There’s been talk of a domestic release forever, but nothing has come of it. Worst not released: The Sarah Brightman version of Song & Dance. The LP is worth a fortune, yet nobody has reissued it on CD.
Best: #1 Record/Radio City, Big Star. Two essential LPs that had been out of print and unavailable for years, together on a single disc at a single-disc price.
A close second for me would be Can’t Stand the Rezillos: The (Almost) Complete Rezillos. Sure, it leaves off two tracks from Mission Accomplished . . . But the Beat Goes On, but otherwise it’s pretty much everything they did on one disc (and again at a single-disc price).
Right now, other than some bad greatest hits compilations, I can’t think of a worst.
I really enjoyed the Lemonheads’ CD “Lovey”. So when “It’s a Shame About Ray” was released, I bought it immediately. And I liked it. Then, six months later, they decide to re-release it with the “Mrs. Robinson” bonus track. Way to go, guys! Why not re-released it with a bonus track called, “Screw you if you helped support the band when this CD first came out, suckers!”?
Of course, now, in the days of MP3s, I now have the “Mrs. RObinson” track. But at the time I felt this was a cheap and insulting tactic.
Columbia has often been a horror-story with reissues. Just a few instances:
–the first CD reissue of Miles Davis’s Miles Ahead infamously substituted alternative takes for many of the cuts.
–the Essential Bob Wills compilation again substitutes alternative takes for several of the best-known tracks
–the reissue of Ellington’s Such Sweet Thunder is very nicely done, with tons of alternative takes & previously unissued material…but they goofed & put the wrong take of “Up and Down” on the disc
–notoriously, a planned 3-disc set of Bill Monroe got chopped down to two discs…the solution settled on was to include only the alternative takes of 16 famous tracks. After some protest Columbia eventually issued the proper versions of the tracks as 16 Gems
Other sins of record companies:
Wayne Shorter’s The Soothsayer (Blue Note): the entire album is afflicted with buzzing distortion during peaks. It doesn’t make the disc unplayable, but nowhere on the packaging is this serious flaw mentioned (& normally Blue Note is scrupulous about warnings to listeners about audio flaws).
Just about any reissue of discs that doesn’t bother to ensure the proper speed of the original recordings. Blue Note’s 2-vol set of Thelonious Monk has alternative takes in different keys, for instance (at least on my version–SURELY they’ve remastered it again, properly???). One Savoy issue of Parker’s “Koko” includes a wobble of a tone during the solo.
Favourite reissues? Too many to name–I’m always grateful for earlier music being returned to circulation. I’m especially fond of the reissued disc of all Bartok’s recordings of his own music, including the trio with Bartok, Benny Goodman & Szigeti.
The original Blue Oyster Cult and Janis Joplin CD’s (on Columbia) had awful sound quality. Luckily ther reissued them with excelent digital remastering and bonus tracks.
Also, the Mercury Living Presence series of classical records is now available on CD. So is the Vanguard Classics version of Igor Stravinsky’s * L’ Histore du Soldat*, with all dialogue in French, as it was originally intended.
Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads was rereleased a few years back in a “special new edition,” or something like that. The first edition, on LP and CD, had about 10 songs and was a full (for vinyl) 45 minutes long. The rerelease, besides being remastered, fills the entire CD, 74 minutes or so, with a bunch of songs which are great in the film yet got omitted from the album. It is, without a doubt, fabulous. As good as it is, I always wondered why they didn’t realease a double album in the first place. No matter now, thank you very much.
As for the worst CD reissues, there have been a lot of them where the sound is quieter than on the original vinyl. Too many to name, really, but it really sucks when you have one of those discs in your changer and a new, loud disc next. Painful. Especially with headphones on.
Rhino usually does a really good job with reissues. Their newest Ramones (the first four albums) and Elvis Costello (My Aim Is True, Spike, and All This Useless Beauty, all 2 CD sets at single-CD prices, with more to come) are well worth your dollar. You generally can’t go wrong with them, except for a few cheesy Various Artists comps.
Worst reissues, in general, are done by Motown. They’ve gotten a little better, but mostly their reissues are ploys to make more money off the same old songs reshuffled than to give the fans what they want.
Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band - originally a two-record set which Warner/Reprise put on one disc with a complete booklets with lyrics, photos and artwork by Beefheart which was not included with the original album and the list price was (at that time) the same for a conventional single CD.
Radio Birdman - Radios Appear and Living Eyes. Both records, as well as being beefed up soundwise about 1000%, particularly the latter, which had previously been mastered from something equivalent to a cassette, had bonus tracks, and excellent new packaging.
The Ramones - New issues of their first few records with great sound and bonus tracks. Leave Home has an entire live album tacked on to it! {I just noticed that woodstockbirdybird mentioned these, but they’re worth repeating}.
They’re really expensive, but the German label Bear Family have a few amazing looking Johnny Cash box sets, complete with tonnes of rarities and excellent booklets. I’d particularly recommend the Man In Black 1963-69 6CD set.
For good value, there’s lots of 2-on-1 deals that actually work well as longplay CDs. Gram Parsons has two of these - one with both his solo records, and another with the two Flying Burrito Brothers discs. A strangely disappointing one is the Captain BeefheartClear Spot/Spotlight Kid twofer, which I always find hard to make through, for some reason. I say ‘strangely’, because I love both these records separately.
As for worst, any of those CDs released in the late 80’s/early 90’s that looked/sounded terrible, as if they knew they would sucker us in a few years later to buy the same records looking and sounding like they should have in the first place. The Pink Floyd catalogue comes to mind as a particularly annoying example (which I boycotted), along with the Velvet Underground (which I had to buy).
I just purchased a reissue remaster of The Band’s “Rock of Ages”. Beautiful sound, terrific song selection and great additional tracks that couldn’t be fit on the original LP. A definite must-buy!
The best I’ve seen were these Iron Maiden reissues put out by Castle Records around 1995. All the bonus tracks were on a separate disk, one of them including the entire Maiden Japan live EP, all for the price of a single disk.
Whatever version it is I have of Pink Floyd’s The Wall is quite a disappointment. Drab, incomplete liner notes, no artwork on the actual CDs, and worst of all, “Comfortably Numb” was mastered at too high of levels so there is very very obvious clipping at the start of the song. I can deal with most other things, but that to me is inexcusable.