Box sets for obsessive music fans
Reissues, ‘new’ songs by Beatles, Dylan and more for holidays
George Harrison counts off a song he’s working on with the other Beatles. “One, two, three ... no, no.”
“Long Long Long” halts, and then the Beatles nudge it back into movement again. Harrison’s guitar is more percussively strummed than during the version that appeared on “The Beatles” — better known as The White Album. On this take, his guitar stands in for Ringo Starr’s drums, which would take on a much larger role in the song’s final version. Harrison’s playing in this outtake is a reminder of just how large a shadow the Everly Brothers cast on rock ’n’ roll. Harrison sings gently about love — but more a spiritual than a physical love. It’s some deep stuff. Then the whole song comes undone with some gibberish and laughter. The spell is broken.
On the recently released White Album deluxe set, the song is listed as “Take 44,” which underscores just how much work can go into a song or album that we love. We eat the hamburger. But we don’t consider what happens to the meat before being grilled and placed on a bun. Everything’s a process, people.
We’ve been moving toward a weird place in the distribution and consumption of popular music for years now. Among the biggest and buzziest albums of 2018 is “Invasion of Privacy” by rapper Cardi B. It was “released” in April, though not through any traditional means. The album
flowed into existence as a purely digital entity. A CD and an LP will be released in the coming weeks, nearly seven months after the album found its way into the world.
But older music remains a vital relic for those who still prefer trading money for a physical product that they play on some sort of sound system. And this fall — timed for the holiday season — the quantity of “new” old music is robust. The Beatles’ White Album is among the offerings, showing up in multiple formats. One puts the band’s perfectly imperfect double album into a gently expanded version that includes the Esher demos, which offer sketches of the songs that would ultimately appear on the record 50 years ago. A much larger, longer, more expensive version offers way more meat, with alternative takes that sometimes are interrupted by laughter.
A friend recently sent me a clip of another Harrison song from the album, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” In it, Giles Martin — son of Beatles producer George Martin — narrates the song’s evolution from a home demo Harrison made to something the band expanded in the studio with Eric Clapton joining on guitar to the final version that Beatles fans know.
“I think that video just cost me $100,” my friend wrote.
It’s sweet that he thought that. The set will run closer to $140. Well, unless he meant the simple album plus Esher demos on vinyl, which does retail at about $100.
Here’s a brief guide to just a few of the offerings on the table for those who believe streaming is for fishermen. In all cases, I’d remind that most music fans prefer the hamburger to the back story of the hamburger. But in some cases, the odds and ends add more than just context. They come with great songs.
The White Album, The Beatles
Look, I realize the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” from 1967 is considered a high watermark for the album as an artistic canvas, but it’s not even one of my five favorite Beatles albums. It’s too tidy for a group of guys who professed to love Little Richard. The White Album, however, is a traffic jam of ideas in which the drivers all leave their cars and start fighting. It’s probably terrible to be engaged in the scrum, but as an observer it’s strangely sublime. The Esher demos are the biggest carrot here, and they offer an intriguing look at the album before its skull really hardened, which feels valuable. The Beatles often found such perfection in their music, so the stray hairs from their most mussy-headed album are pretty interesting to me. I can’t say I’d go back to the outtakes often, but for those who feel studious, there’s some intriguing glee in tracking the progress of some of the songs. “The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society,” The Kinks
Most of what needs to be said about this reissue is stated in the accompanying story on page G7. The Kinks in 1968 operated outside most trends of the age and came up with a melancholy masterpiece about wanting to pump the brakes on time and “progress.” The reissue options include a double disc that includes the aptly named “Time Song,” which feels like a message from the future about Brexit, as well as some valuable outtakes and demos. The fancyschmantzy super-deluxe set includes mono and stereo versions of the LP, some 45s of the albums singles (which made no headway in the States) as well as BBC radio sessions, and the other odds and ends. “Village Green” remains kind of a cult touchstone, so it’s a bit much for an introduction, but I will say getting to know this album will prompt more curiosity about it.
“Songs for Judy,” Neil Young
Apologies for a tangential detour, but years ago I visited the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Calif. The site contained his boyhood home, and on a table inside the home was the former president’s childhood accordion, from which he’d squeeze songs for a disapproving father. So for all the feathers ruffled by Neil Young singing “even Richard Nixon has got soul,” just imagine a balding child with a 5 o’clock shadow playing an accordion to a disinterested audience of family. It’s not Otis Redding soul, but I guess it’s soul just the same. That line is on “Campaigner,” which is as cryptic and weird as many of Young’s other songs, which is why they’re mysterious and intriguing decades later. This set was pulled from a series of solo acoustic shows in 1976, including two songs — “Love Is a Rose” and “After the Gold Rush” — performed in Houston. Young has been pouring a steady stream of concert recordings into the market, and I’ll welcome all of them.
“Mingus: Jazz in Detroit,” Charles Mingus
The past few years have been a boon for fans of ’60s and ’70s jazz: A mood-changing pair of albums by a rarely recorded Bill Evans Trio surfaced, as did a Thelonious Monk soundtrack, live stuff by Wes Montgomery and Grant Green. And a studio session from John Coltrane. It turns out the freezer was never emptied. If the applause sounds scant on this unearthed Mingus set, well, consider it was recorded in a photo gallery just six years before his death, at a time when landmark works by the composer and bassist had slowed to a trickle. Forget all that, though. Mingus and his band play with a coiled urgency throughout. Pianist Don Pullen is the biggest name in the ensemble, and he plays like his fingers are on fire throughout (particularly on a fiery, nearly half-hour “Pithecanthropus Erectus”), but trumpeter Joe Gardner and saxophonist John Stubblefield bring a live-wire sound to Mingus’ compositions. This set finds Mingus winding up with verve before he wound down. With the rarities and outtakes sets, treasure can be a matter of taste. This chest is gold.
“I Can See My House From Here,” The Glands
This is the most obscure of the old stuff dug up here, but the Glands were one of those bands whose sway will be felt way more years from now than during the group’s short lifespan. The Athens, Ga., band made two albums between 1997 and 2000, both bearing a distinctive and outsider approach to indie rock: as weird as they were melodic. Eccentric frontman Ross Shapiro died two years ago, but a new set pairs the two albums with unreleased recordings to suggest he was a man ahead of his time. Each of the albums will be made available individually for those who wish to sample. But this set is one of those music relics like the Modern Lovers’ album that will circulate for years and years.
“More Blood, More Tracks,” Bob Dylan
This damned thing … . So Dylan’s career-spanning label, Columbia, has for nearly 30 years been digging around his ample vaults for unreleased music to feed hungry obsessives who have been bootlegging his stuff for as long as he’s been braying into microphones.
Vol. 14 of “The Bootleg Series” focuses on “Blood on the Tracks,” his 1975 “IT’S NOT A DIVORCE ALBUM” album. Which is a divorce album, whether it’s based on his life or some Chekhov stuff. The album as released was widely regarded as a “return to form” — rockcrit shorthand for liking an album after not liking its predecessors — even though Dylan’s “New Morning” a few years earlier was also a masterpiece. The released version was cobbled together from two main recording sessions. The new “More Blood, More Tracks” comes in a single-disc, raw-boned edition that plays like a shadow-creature version of the original. There’s also the sixdisc version for the affluent fan who wants to hear 12 versions of “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.”
I was content with the single disc, the shifty and mumbling sibling of the actual album. Then the New Yorker’s brilliant and insightful Alex Ross wrote about the bootlegged version made from a test pressing sent to a few critics in 1974. That is the “Blood on the Tracks” he considers definitive, and it includes only two takes on the single disc “More Blood, More Tracks.” The bigger set contains all the pieces to reassemble that test pressing. But that requires a C-note and some initiative. More blood and more tracks, yes, but also more work.