Most music fans can probably be forgiven, at this point, for being doubting Thomases at the alleged demise of the major-label music industry. After all, wasn’t last year supposed to be the final hurrah for any kind of box-set bonanza? Wasn’t the death knell for the super-album event already rung last year, and the year before, and the year before that?
The truth of the matter is far less dramatic: as every year piles up, there is just more and more product for the music biz to package up in heat-shrinked plastic wrap for us, the music consumer. And don’t let those dire sales figures mislead you — music has become a 24-hour soundtrack to our civilized existence. Smart phones, iPods, what-have-you: they are just more ways for us to be listening to music in more places at more times than ever before. If that means that there are no multi-platinum guarantees anymore for mainstay artists, it also means that new artists are promoting their shiny new wares in an ever more crowded marketplace.
A good analogy for the reissue business is the end of the 1999 film Being John Malkovich, wherein an elderly group seeks out a way, every generation, to enter a younger portal, thus living forever. Substitute the group of old codgers in this analogy with, say, old codgers like the Rolling Stones and Neil Young (both of whom are midway through a multi-year CD remaster campaign of their back catalogue) — the challenge for the old guard, then, is to find access to this younger portal. Whether with Rock Band or movie soundtracks, older artists are clinging on to dear life with a tenacity not seen in previous pop-music generations. As rock and roll enters its (ulp!) seventh decade, the backlog has started to pile up. We see this not only in lavish remastered reissues of albums that have been released a million times before, but with the remastering of albums that are not that old to begin with.
In fact, the culture of remastering and reissuing has become so commonplace as part of the music-buying experience that a new CD hasn’t really succeeded until it has had an official victory lap reissue as a “deluxe edition,” replete with bonus tracks. If this seems like a desperate move on the record industry to dredge the last drop of capital out of, say, the most recent releases by acts like Bat For Lashes and Lady GaGa (both of whom have recently hit the shops with two-disc reissues of albums that are less than a year old), it can also be seen as a windfall for music fans, as we are courted by musicians with a continuous opening of the vaults, an audio fire sale with no end in sight.
Can you even remember a time when artists would release albums with no enticing trinkets attached? If you are a fan of older music, it is no longer a matter of “I wonder if they will ever remaster this classic record?” — now it’s more like, “Wow, 10 of my favorite artists are remastering their entire catalogues with bonus tracks and slamming sound — what furniture can I sell to buy them all?” If you are a dedicated music fan, start thinking about a pre-holiday yard sale. (Just remember to hang on to your CD shelves.)
Back on the Autobahn
If there is one act in recorded music history most deserving of a digital audio makeover, it would have to be German synth pioneers Kraftwerk. Behold this year’s line of factory showroom reissues: starting with their seminal 1974 ode to smooth driving and human automation, AUTOBAHN ($18.98), cruising through the is-it-irony pan-Euro optimism of 1977′s TRANS-EUROPA EXPRESS ($18.98), and eventually landing at the austerity of 2003′s TOUR DE FRANCE ($18.98), these eight remaster jobs are wunderbar ear candy. There are no bonus tracks, but there is a level of audio clarity that really does a massive service to these wide-open tracks, thanks to the remaster job done by the band itself at their own Kling Klang studio. Allow yourself to submerge into the luxuriant synthetic bath of European decadence that is Trans-Europe Express‘s “Hall Of Mirrors,” or the frictionless forward motion that is the seemingly endless title track on Autobahn, and you are listening to Exhibit A of why remasters exist in the first place.
In many cases, remasters exist because an artist wrested control of master tapes and was given permission to give fans the deluxe versions of albums that they always deserved. Robert Fripp’s mad prog creation King Crimson is finally getting the rollout it deserves, now that Fripp has shifted the KC oeuvre to his own Discipline Global Mobile, and away from the cold dead grasp of EG Records. The initial trio of releases, double-disc (or triple, if you include the DVD included in the ultra-special editions) editions of IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING ($24.98), LIZARD ($24.98), and RED ($24.98), is a phenomenal start. The Court job is itself a revelation: in addition to a competent remaster and the expected bonus tracks (BBC sessions, studio outtakes, live tracks) is a remix of the album overseen by Fripp himself that is literally jaw-dropping in its widescreen lush richness. Even the most die-hard Crimhead will be bowled over by the layers of sonic phantasmagoria brought out into the light in this new edition — the album closing title track has never sounded this mellotron-tastic and vibrant.
Odd fellows
Another mellotron-laden 1969 long-player getting the deluxe treatment this winter is David Bowie’s SPACE ODDITY ($24.98). Initially a flop of a record attached to what was seen at the time to be a novelty hit for the erstwhile David Jones, the album is one of rock’s earliest reissue successes, as it only landed on the charts when it was re-released in 1972 in the wake of Ziggy Stardust. The album proper is a schizo affair fitting of an artist who would soon be known for his multiple personalities: if the title track is prog space folk, the rest runs the gamut from string-laden balladry (“Letter to Hermione”) to epic sci-fi rock (the nearly 10-minute “Cygnet Committee”) to “Hey Jude”–esque hippie shakedowns (“Memory of a Free Festival”). The latter song was split up as A and B sides of a single with a backing band that would eventually become known as the Spiders from Mars, containing the legendary fretwork of master guitarist Mick Ronson. The bonus disc of this new reissue contains those two tracks, as well as a trove of other rarities, including enough BBC sessions that weren’t included on 2000′s Bowie at the Beeb to make you wonder just how much material Bowie is sitting on in his seemingly endless vaults. The gem of the unreleased material is the original version of the Aladdin Sane dream-popper “The Prettiest Star,” recorded years earlier with a very young Marc Bolan moonlighting from his day job in T.Rex to work with his glam-rock rival.
We’re going to guess that Vince Clarke and Andy Bell wore out many a Bowie and T.Rex album on their way to becoming synthpop superstars with Erasure. The reissue of their pinnacle LP, 1988′s THE INNOCENTS ($47.49) is one of the most extravagantly exhausting deluxe jobs ever, comprising not just the album in a pristine master (mega-smashes like “Chains of Love” and “A Little Respect” have never sounded quite this theatrically 3-D) and the expected b-sides, BBC sessions, and live tracks, but an additional DVD with an entire concert as well as a cornucopia of promotional videos andTop of the Pops appearances. A similarly exhaustive treatment is given to the first two long-players by goth warlords Bauhaus, with the release of the “Omnibus Editions” of 1980′s IN THE FLAT FIELD ($24.98) and 1981′s MASK ($29.98). For anyone convinced that the band’s sole contribution to the lexicon of rock resides in the pick-slide-with-delay Halloween-y-ness of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” these two weighty audio tomes stand as a correction. Tight and frenetic grooves fight with desperate, emotionally fraught vocals, colliding in track after track of explosive new wave kicks. “Into the chasm, gaping, we,” intones Peter Murphy in his superhuman bellow in Field‘s powerhouse title track, and it’s an apt if stagey metaphor for the act of digging into the dark delights of these sets, whether the early singles, here finally grouped with their respective albums, or the collection of demos and rarities. The gem here is the release (as a bonus disc with Mask) of the 1981 live set This Is for When, a blazing concert that once collected massive sums for its excruciatingly rare vinyl form, now polished up and proffered to the masses.
Remastered and revisited
In a sense, that is what remastering and reissuing is all about, right? A repurposing of a set of songs that once may have been the dominion only of an underground and rabid fan base, now made more conveniently accessible for a more general audience. Which in part is what makes the recent re-release of Jawbox’s classic 1994 album ForYOUR OWN SPECIAL SWEETHEART ($12) all the more interesting. This DC post-hardcore troop were the toast of the Dischord indie scene until they jumped ship for the big bucks and bigger production values of major label Atlantic Records. The resulting record is a rare example of an indie group making the absolute most of that grab for the brass ring, as the band’s penchant for chiming dissonance is harnessed in pure rock finesse and a shiny new sense of harmony and song craft. The record was not much of a commercial success, and it has been out of print for years. Luckily for us, the band got back the rights to the master tapes, and it now is back in print on . . . Dischord, with tons of bonus tracks, a tough and tight remaster by Bob Weston (who also, along with Steve Albini, did a bang-up job on the recent remaster for Touch & Go stalwarts The Jesus Lizard), and a refurbished album cover that omits the blurry blow-up doll on the original. Epic tracks like the album’s lead single “Savory” stand out as some of the best indie rock (or “rock,” period) of the ’90s.
This kind of reassessment is ultimately the point of remasters: keeping records alive long enough that they can continue to impact the music of future decades. Whether you think that this is a marvelous smorgasbord for the music consumer or a crass cash-in by artists who don’t have the dignity just to let it go, newer generations of music fans, as a result of music reissues, are far more musically literate and more cognizant of the nooks and crannies of rock’s storied underground than previous generations ever could have been. Album reissues are essentially rock culture’s way of curating the past — one generation’s cult band flop album is a later one’s seminal work of influential brilliance, right? And with that past catching up to us at a rapid pace, what with our accelerating culture, perhaps it’s only a matter of time until every album is essentially a deluxe remastered edition from the moment it’s released. Until then, though, the past will always be filled with pay dirt waiting to be mined for buried gems ripe for reappraisal. Let’s hope we never have to stop digging.
TYCOBRAHE WAH PARAPEDAL | Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath on “Paranoid” | Iommi’s wah took on a bizarre edge with this beyond-obscure artifact, and that gave his “Paranoid” solo a baby-thrown-down-a-well feel that has made it the stuff of legend.
FOXX TONE MACHINE | John Wetton of King Crimson on “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic Pt. 1” | The perfect foil to the pinned-down anal-retentiveness of Robert Fripp, future Asia frontman John Wetton’s contribution to this early-’70s prog powerhouse owes a lot to this rare hunk of fuzzy metal and the Jurassic sludge it produces when engaged.
DALLAS ARBITER FUZZ FACE & ROGER MEYER OCTAVIA | Jimi Hendrix on “Purple Haze” | The guitar tone on both the verse and the solo break of “PH” were groundbreaking: the Fuzz Face created a sound previously unheard on the radio of the day, and the Octavia helped transform the tune’s lead break into sheer bloody lunacy.
INTERFAX HARMONIC PERCOLATOR | Steve Albini of Shellac on “Mama Gina” | Albini’s shrill, trebly bird squawk of a guitar tone is memorable without effects, but when run through the sine-wave insanity of this rare piece of transistor history, it becomes a synapse-frying jolt.
ELECTRO-HARMONIX ELECTRIC MISTRESS | Keith Levene of Public Image Limited on “Careering” | The Mistress was the sound of late-’70s/early-’80s postpunk. Its off-kilter filtered chorus is key to Levene’s eerie shimmer, which inverted the norm of the guitar as the beefy riff-generator.
THE ECHOPLEX | Brian May of Queen on “Brighton Rock” | So many of rock’s greats in the ’70s mastered the Echoplex, but how many could run two or three in series like Mr. May to reach the dizzying heights of the guitar-army breakdown of “Brighton Rock”? For a brief time, Echoplexes threatened to make the rest of the band obsolete.
HEIL SOUND TALK BOX | Peter Frampton on “Show Me the Way” | It must have seemed like the future of rock, as singer and guitarist were merged into one bizarre instrument. The thing was also prominent on Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion,” the James Gang’s “Rocky Mountain Way,” and, uh, Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer,” but it was Frampton’s Talk Box solo on Frampton Comes Alive that really got the Bics flicked.
ELECTRO HARMONIX BIG MUFF π | David Gilmour of Pink Floyd on “Brain Damage” | Decades later, the nascent early-’90s “grunge” scene would popularize and normalize this particular brand of sustain-rich distortion, but prior to its resuscitation, E-H’s Big Muff was the go-to pedal for stadium rockers when they were looking for just the right tone for that dramatically creamy lead, like the emotional climax of “Dark Side.”
DAN ARMSTRONG ORANGE SQUEEZER | Jeff “Skunk” Baxter on Steely Dan’s “My Old School” | Even polished sesh dudes know when to use a well-placed effect, and that certainly includes the Dan. As any major dude will tell you, nothing makes a solo pop while still flowing off the press frictionlessly clean like a good compressor — and Skunk’s effortless frippery here is made a gazillion times greasier by this little orange box.
