San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Prince, Petty and other oldmusic made new
“Don’t Look Back” or “Get Back”: Who’s to say if there’s a preferable path. But 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 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.
But in the summer and fall of 2020, the recording industry has upped its efforts to push bigger fish. Thosewho 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, Tom Petty, Sade, Fleetwood Mac, the Staple Singers, Elvis Costello, Wilco, Lou Reed and Black Sabbath.
Quinn Bishop, owner and manager of Cactus Music in Houston, 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 of these sets come into the world at various price points for vinyl, CD or mixed sets.
A three-disc version of Prince’s 1987 masterpiece “Sign ‘O’ The Times” goes for about $30. The eight-disc version is $160. A 13-LP version will run $300. Similarly, Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers,” for
my money his best album, has been repackaged in editions ranging froma $20 CD to a $250 9-LP set.
True to Lou 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.
The presentation of recordedmusic has in a way reflected livemusic. A Rolling Stones concert in the ’80s cost $20. When I saw the band in San Antonio in 1994, the ticket was an exorbitant $50. Nosebleed tickets for a Stones show today might start at $50.
Similarly, catalogmusic has steered toward the prohibitively pricey. An album can still be had for a monthly streaming subscription or a $15 CD. But those wanting a different commitment to their artist of choice findmore options available.
With hismercurial creative streak and vast trove of recorded material, Elvis Costello has been a bellwether for the re-release of catalogmusic for years. Take his third album, “Armed Forces,” released in 1979. Fourteen years later it was re-released by Rykodisc with another eight songs. Then in 2002 it was reissued again by the Rhino label with 17 extra tunes. A 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 around $200.
Years ago, Howie Klein, a veteranmusic industry executive, said, “Catalog is the thing thatmatters.” 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.
“You’d be crazy to not dive into oldmusic,” 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 letmymusic 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 amongmy favorite buys this year. Among the extras are two discs that capture a live performance in Detroit
from1987. 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 forme. But the “vault tracks” provide a gold mine. The entrance is a
1979 take of “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man,” suggesting he was a patientman: 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.
TomPetty, “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 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. The $30 LP 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 twomore LPs of “outtakes/alternates/demos,” which offer insight into 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 super-deluxe 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 said 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 November 1999 show in Colorado. Want it all? Be prepared to fork out $150.
Lou Reed, “New
York”: Reed’s 1989 album leaped out ofmy 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’s and Mike Rathke’s guitars twist around each other rather thanmelting into a fuzzy orb. I haven’t found the extras as immersive as the Prince and Petty sets. The “works in progress” are intriguing for one play, but they’re primarily skeletal versions of the finished songs. The live album sounds good, but it’s just “New York” live without the crispness the studio affords.
Grandaddy, “The Sophtware Slump”: Not a concept album, but a tightly wound song cycle about obsolescence, technology and loneliness, this record by the California electronicrock band Grandaddy was a good 20 years ahead of its time. Its following has grown over the years. A new four-LP version includes the album, a bunch of extras and the real carrot: frontman Jason Lytle playing a newly recorded version of the album on piano with just a few minor accent sounds. (Disclosure: The band was kind enough to askme to write notes for the record.)
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 nastymusic 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 FromHome” find Ray and brother Dave Davies commenting on the songs in a documentary-type format.
PaulMcCartney, “Flaming Pie”: McCartney’s post-Beatles discography has its ups and downs, but the faithful have foundmuch to like over the past 50 years. “Flaming Pie” wasmet with a fairly ho-humresponse 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.
Iggy Pop, “The Bowie Years”: The Stooges sounded like a street gang. With David Bowie in 1977, Iggy Pop sounded more like the streetwalking cheetah he sang about: a rangy creature slinking about. Built around the two perfect albums theymade together (“Lust for Life” and “The Idiot”), this set has an OK disc of extras mostly from“The Idiot,” the OK live set “TV Eye” and then three other discs of live material that ranges from bright (a 1977 Cleveland show) to swampy (a 1977 London show).