Re: Frustrating things record companies did to albums you want

The idea for this thread came from bemoaning the high cost of recent prince box sets on monk’s site.

I know that today we couldstream anything we want... but what about when you want to own the thing? Like we had to do in the golden days of yore (ie ‘79-‘81).

Some things that always frustrated me:

-when I bought an album, I wanted the tracks to be the versions I heard on MTV or the radio. Why did my version of Duran’s ‘Rio’ lp have to have an extended intro to Hungry like the Wolf? I didn’t want that! I wanted the single version we all knew!! Why did my version of Speak and Spell by Depeche Mode have a goofy extended version of ‘just can’t get enough’? I wanted the familiar version! I’ll buy the 12” if I want goofy extended-ness!

-I hated when ‘greatest hits’ albums would add an extra new track or two. If I have all the albums and non-lp singles, I shouldn’t need to buy your stupid greatest hits album. My friend bought the Foreigner greatest hits album. They used a live version of Hot Blooded that no one knew. Nobody wanted that!!! Nobody asked for that!! Give him the hit version everyone knows!!

-With someone like Prince, give us an option to buy the non-lp b-sides and unreleased tracks...and THAT’S IT! Don’t make us buy an additional seven cd’s of live stuff, alternate takes etc etc. It’s killing us, Prince estate!

-I’m tired and I don’t even want to get started about the version of ‘everything she wants’ that ended up on their ‘make it big’ album. NOTHING like the single version, which I really liked.

-I’m sadly convinced that I’ll go to my grave knowing that the best, kindest, most generous ‘package’ any band ever...ever...ever released was the spartan ‘singles going steady’ by Buzzcocks.

...look, I know the world’s a mess right now. Use this thread to complain about something that is really important!

...and even some EMI CD reissues of "Singles Going Steady" added bonus tracks that messed up the perfection of the original!

Well, with the reality of labels and artists from differing countries/markets it meant that there might not even be a "definitive" version of an album you wanted. In many cases, there are nothing but versions of compromises out there to actually buy! The most extreme case of not getting the "hit single version" of a track after dutifully buying the album that I can point to was Soul II Soul's "Back To Life!" The hit single version, with Caron Wheeler singing on it to music was only on the single. The LP had an a cappella version for our edification. GREAT if we wanted to remix a track. Not so great for listening.

I bought the US "Speak + Spell" immediately on release over here, so it was a few years later until I even heard the 7" mix of "Just Can't Get Enough" when MTV chanced to play the viddy. That stupid "Schizo mix" is forever imprinted as the "real version" due to my first exposure to it. Which also points out the futility of a "definitive version."

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2020 10:40AM by Post-Punk Monk.

I don't mind the odd new single at the end to entice radio stations to promote the sale of the record. I would throw out Squeeze's "Singles going Steady", Echo and the Bunnymen's "Songs to Learn and Sing" and XTC's "Waxworks" Some Singles 1977-1982" as three other examples of ace greatest hits collections that got it right. I prefer the chronological sequencing too, although Madness' "Complete Madness" is an example of a band whose greatest hits collection isn't chronological and still worked for me.

The problem is in the CD era bands (and labels) feet like they needed to fill up all 80 minutes of the CD and created these sprawling messes, for their regular albums as wells their compilations. Many of these early hits collections on LP have either been replaced on CD with bloated messes that don't cohere. "ChangesBowie" is the only CD "hits" collection that improved on the LP for me.

For sure the two versions of the song My Ever Changing Moods. In late high school and early college I loved the full band version of that song, had never even heard the piano version. When I started collecting CD versions of my albums I stumbled across the Cafe Bleu import at a Borders. Get home, plop it in and imagine the disappointment. With time I really do like both versions now but that day in my apartment was definitely a WTF moment before WTF was even a thing!

> "ChangesBowie" is the only CD "hits" collection that improved on the LP for me.

I respectfully disagree. Nothing wrong with the seven songs that Rykodisc appended to the original Changesonebowie; all of them are legitimately great hits. But then the label blew it by replacing "Fame" with "Fame '90." I'll take the original over the remix any day of the week, and twice on Saturdays.

When I bought the extensive Bowie hits collection NOTHING HAS CHANGED, I realized that the hit version of "I'm Afraid of Americans" was one of its many remixes, not the version included on this compilation.

That's just the beginning of the transgressions on Nothing Has Changed. The edit of "Young Americans" is nothing short of butchery.

Grant McLennan’s “Horsebreaker Star” was butchered for US release by a genius exec at Atlantic (with whom Beggars Banquet had a licensing deal at the time).

Mr. cheesecloth-for-ears passed on Grant’s prior “Fireboy,” but, under pressure from Beggars to release “Horsebreaker” with Atlantic’s clout behind it, he acquiesced.

First, six tracks were chopped to slim it from a double CD down to a single. And then, when Grant was over and played a solo gig in NYC to set up the release, he played ‘Lighting Fires,’ the UK and AU single from “Fireboy.” Mr. Atlantic smelled a hit (even though he’d passed on it previously). Despite the two records having *completely* different feels, he insisted ‘Lighting Fires’ be added to “Horsebreaker Star” and be the first track they’d take to radio.

It was conspicuously shoehorned onto the record, but of course he was too focused on Seven Mary Three or Hootie or Jewel to ever make good on putting the muscle behind Grant that he deserved.

I think this is the most I've ever read about HORSEBREAKER STAR. I will have to look at my CD to see which version I own!

I checked my copies of NOTHING HAS CHANGED & YOUNG AMERICANS, and realized that the version of "Young Americans" on the former is two minutes shorter, as well as being remixed by Tony Visconti in 2007. Looking over NOTHING HAS CHANGED, it has a lot of alternate single mixes/edits.

Instead of reissuing the Chrome Box (which was all the Chrome albums plus two LPs of assorted stuff), Cleopatra condensed it down to three CDs and replaced some of the songs with live tracks from a show in Italy that sounds like it was recorded with a Walkman in someone's pocket. At the time when I bought this, I figured this was the best I was going to find on CD. Then all the albums were reissued and now I just saw a nine CD box set was released a couple of years ago.

MCA chopped the Chameleons’ “Script of the Bridge” down from 12 tracks to 8 (and resequenced it) for North American release, seemingly so they could market it at a $6.98 SRLP.

Thomas Dolby's first album was subject to a lot of label meddling. The original UK release of The Golden Age of Wireless included nine songs, one of which was an instrumental called "The Wreck of the Fairchild." For its first stateside release, Capitol removed that instrumental, added both sides of Dolby's first single, "Leipzig" and "Urges," replaced the British LP's version of "Airwaves" with a shortened single edit, and replaced the synthesizer version of "Radio Silence" with a more guitar-centric version. Capitol also replaced the comic-book cover with one showing Dolby on a stage, apparently in the midst of a theatre production.

Then "She Blinded Me with Science" became a hit, and Dolby's Blinded By Science EP became a big seller in the States. Capitol couldn't be satisfied with that, though: the label reissued Wireless with "Leipzig" and "Urges" excised in favor of "She Blinded Me with Science" and its B-side, "One of Our Submarines," and for whatever reason, a truncated edit of "Windpower" replacing the original. They wrapped this version in the comic-book cover. EMI also reissued the album (with the comic-book cover) on the other side of the Atlantic, reversing Capitol's changes to "Windpower" and "Airwaves" but swapping the guitar-driven version of "Radio Silence" back for the synth rendition. This UK configuration eventually became the CD version on both sides of the Atlantic.

The 2009 reissue combines the various versions. It has the comic-book cover, too. (Personally, I miss seeing the stage cover. That's the one I associate with this album -- the version that's an Eighties classic.)

The Thomas Dolby is a good example. They messed with that album so much that he should’ve posed in a lab coat surrounded by butchered baby dolls on the cover.

I really like BOTH versions of ‘radio silence’, and thus own two copies of that album (slight edge to the guitar driven version of radio silence ... that thing is positively propulsive).

Joan Jett’s ‘I love rock n roll’ album is another.... some versions have ‘little drummer boy’, others have ‘oh woe is me’

Bip Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Thomas Dolby is a good example. They messed
> with that album so much that he should’ve posed in
> a lab coat surrounded by butchered baby dolls on
> the cover.

Like Dolby in a lab coat would have been any stretch at all! It wasn't until I got a UK LP of it in 2003 to finally hear "Wreck of the Fairchild" that I heard the segued version of the album, which has tracks mixed together. I couldn't believe that the 2009 DLX RM finally got the original album down with bonus trax. That had a DVD of "Live Wireless" concert as well. Last year, BMG reissued a new single disc edition that had the original album and 5 bonus tracks, missing the "Therapy/Growth" B-side and "Urban Tribal." And the three demos tacked onto the end. It's called "remastered" so I'm betting without Dolby involvement [he was hands on with his excellent sounding remasters of the late 'oughts] this might be brickwalled into oblivion.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

...Of course there's the edit/overdub on "Kick Out The Jams," MOTH...er...um...brothers and sisters.