Get back: Prince, Petty and other old music made new
“Don’t Look Back” or “Get Back.” Who’s to say if there’s a preferable path?
During this remarkable year, inclinations in our culture have been to transport to the past or think about the future while muddling through a problematic present. Certainly, there has been ample new music recorded and released this year. But with a touring industry shut down for eight months, the vitality of new music has been stifled to a degree. To look back, though, has been to topple into a wonderland of old music extracted from storage and put in slick new clothes.
On the micro level, record labels continue to rush old albums onto vinyl, a response to vinyl sales increasing over 15 consecutive years. During the first half of 2020, record sales doubled those of CDs for the first time since the 1980s. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, vinyl sales hit $232 million to the $130 million earned by CDs. Those a la carte reissues of albums by Talking Heads or Nina Simone — which retail in the $20$30 range — are like going down to the pond and catching bluegills or tommycocks.
But in the summer and fall of 2020, the recording industry has upped its efforts to push bigger fish. Those who ante up — from $100 to $500 — get newly pressed LPs, previously unreleased demos and alternate takes of known songs, live material, newly written reflections on old music by Prince, Elvis Presley, Tom Petty, Sade, Fleetwood Mac, the Staple Singers, Elvis Costello, Wilco, Lou Reed, Black Sabbath. The list is formidable. Those willing to spend get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing.
Quinn Bishop, owner and manager of Cactus Music, says, “A lot of these projects get teed up because people realized it’s not just the Beatles that can get people to spend $150-$200 on a set.”
That said, most, but not all, of these sets come into the world at various prices for vinyl, CD or mixed sets.
A three-disc version of Prince’s 1987 masterpiece “Sign o’ the Times” goes for about $30. The eightdisc version is $160. A 13-LP version will run you $300. Similarly, Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers,” for my money his best album, has been repackaged in editions ranging from a $20 CD to a $250 nine-LP set.
True to Reed’s uncompromising nature, a reissue of his beloved “New York” comes in one version for $90. That includes two LPs, three CDs and a DVD. Don’t want the DVD or the CDs? The ghost of Lou Reed doesn’t care what you want.
This approach to rereleasing music isn’t new. But it is part of an evolution in finding money in catalog. During the first LP era, anthologies were commonplace, but albums largely operated in a binary sphere: in print/out of print. The broader canvas — and cheaper production — afforded by the CD changed the manner in which old music was rereleased.
With his mercurial creative streak and vast trove of recorded material, Costello has been a bellwether for the rerelease of catalog music for years. Take his third album, “Armed Forces,” from 1979. Fourteen years later, it was rereleased by the Rykodisc label with another eight songs. Then in 2002, it was reissued again by the Rhino label with 17 extra tunes. The new $200 version includes all manner of 10-inch, 12-inch and 7-inch vinyl extras that cover some 47 additional tracks. The Udiscovermusic retail site will sell it to you for about $200, or should you need, in three easy payments of $67. For a recording 4 decades old, it continues to present moods for moderns every few years.
Years ago, I talked to Howie Klein, a veteran music-industry executive, and he told me, “Catalog is the thing that matters.” He mapped out a process using Depeche Mode as the model: Sign a band, release two or three records to a small but growing audience and then watch the catalog earn money when that band hits big on the third or fourth album. “I don’t understand why people don’t treat catalog like gold,” he said. His point was that when the fourth album sold 1 million copies, the first three would do so also with no marketing costs.
“You’d be crazy to not dive into old music,” Bishop says. “If you have a loyal, ardent fan base, it’s exciting and fun. You want to feed that base.”
What follows are some thoughts, joys and frustrations from one journey through the deep sea of old music made new this year. These titles barely scratch the surface of what’s out there. And I’ve limited them to sets that I’ve actually spent time listening to, and sets that augment the original recordings with some new bait. I’m confident the new six-LP “This Far,” collecting six Sade albums, sounds amazing. For now, though, I’m going to let my music budget rebuild before repurchasing albums I already own. Prince, “Sign o’ the
Times”: I had a clean LP of this brilliant, sprawling double album, so I opted for the $160 CD set. It’s among my favorite buys this year. Among the extras are two discs that capture a live performance in Detroit from 1987. The truism about the live album not capturing the energy of the show
holds here, but it’s my favorite authorized recording of Prince I’ve heard to date. A disc of “singles, mixes & edits remastered” will be the one that spins the least for me. But the “vault tracks” provide a goldmine. The entrance is a 1979 take of “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man,” suggesting he was a patient man: How else to explain such a diamond of a single sitting on ice for eight years? There are jams and funk workouts, familiar songs with added instrumentation and songs that suggest “Sign” could have been a triple album without sacrificing its flow and quality.
Tom Petty, “Wildflowers and All the
Rest”: Petty’s estate followed the Prince template for this set, offering a panoramic view of his
1994 album, “Wildflowers.” Originally planned as a double album, it was whittled down to 15 songs on release. “All the Rest” restores the full record, adds a concert version of the record, alternate versions of the songs and some home-recording demos. My inclination is to splurge for vinyl on the core record and get my extras digitally. So $160 gets all the songs on CD. The live set is spirited, and the alternate takes are intriguing for the way Petty would move a phrase around from song to song until it found a forever home. And I added a $30 LP, which sounds positively lovely, with texture in the keys and percussion I hadn’t really noticed previously. Wilco, “Summerteeth”: This one is both revelatory and frustrating. The $100 vinyl set includes Wilco’s experimental pop album on two LPs along with two more LPs of “outtakes/alternates/demos,” which offer insight into the creative process. “Pieholden Suite” really needed the horns to come alive. And I prefer a take on “My Darling” without all the vocals. A Byrds-y guitar workout on “Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway (again)” suggests a different direction the song could have taken. The carrot with this superdeluxe edition is “An Unmitigated Disaster,” a live radio broadcast from a Tower Records performance in March 1999. It’s a sloppy set with a sweet rough charm. “I don’t ever wanna sing this song live again,” frontman Jeff Tweedy says after playing one new song. Here’s the downside: Those who pay $100 for the vinyl get that live album. Those who pay $50 for the CD version don’t get “An Unmitigated Disaster” but do get two discs of a Nov. 1999 show in Colorado. Want it all? Be prepared to fork out $150. Admittedly, Boulder is on Spotify and “Unmitigated” is not. But when dealing with collectors, best to know your audience.
Lou Reed, “New York”: Reed’s 1989 album leapt out of my speakers when I dropped the needle on the newly pressed LP. For an album with such grimy thematic content, the brightness in the sound is nevertheless welcome, as Reed and Mike Rathke’s guitars twist around each other rather than melting into a fuzzy orb. I haven’t found the extras as immersive as those on the Prince and Petty sets. The “works in progress” are intriguing for one play, but they’re primarily skeletal versions of the finished songs that don’t hint at much workshedding. The live album sounds good, but it’s just “New York” live without the crispness the studio affords.
The Kinks, “Lola versus Powerman in the Moneygoround”: A great singles band, the Kinks became a top-shelf album band around 1967 and began stamping out brilliant albums for a few years. As these records celebrate their 50th anniversary, the band has been rolling out lovingly assembled reissues. Hopefully, this one will change the narrative about a much maligned record. Admittedly, Ray Davies’ fussing about a nasty music industry can at times be tedious, but with “Lola,” “This Time Tomorrow” and “Strangers,” this record is stacked with some of the Kinks’ best songs. Alternative takes abound — my favorites are not necessarily for the listener focused on a song experience: Versions of “Strangers” and “Long Way From Home” find
Ray and brother Dave Davies commenting on the songs in a documentary-type format. Paul McCartney, “Flaming Pie”: McCartney’s post-Beatles discography has its ups and downs, but the faithful among the faithful have found much to like over the past 50 years. “Flaming Pie” was met with a fairly ho-hum response upon its release. After a long layoff, I found it fairly fresh sounding, though the instrumental icing is piped on a little thick in places. A few acoustic studio tracks make me wish he’d do the Randy Newman thing and make solo “Songbook”-type series. “That’s the way to do an album,” he says after finishing an enchanting solo “Calico Skies.” Yes, yes, it is. I can’t speak to the printed contents of this set, as I was working off a stream. I assume they play a formidable role in its $259 price tag for five CDs and two
DVDs.