The new in the old
Reissues compensate for too few good, new CDs
Audiophiles rejoice, ’tis fall! Just as the TV networks prepare for another season of non-stop entertainment (Survivor V, a.k.a. A Reason to Live) and the studios unveil the year’s last big batch of blockbusters in a final Oscar bid, the record companies have also awakened from their traditional summer slumber.
For instance, EMI has already fired a preliminary barrage with the release of Coldplay’s latest, and it only gets better from there with… um… exciting… new… stuff… such as....
OK. Fuck it. The industry still appears to be in bit of a slump.
Not that a true audiophile cares anyway (the standard cut-off point for any collector’s point of reference usually begins from the year they first developed a covetous interest in their eldest sibling’s stack of wax and dates retroactively from there). And thankfully – as the world is nowhere near being completely converted from analogue to digital – there is still stuff in the vaults, but the botch jobs on first generation CDs guarantee a neverending parade of reissues.
Keeping that in mind, we’ll bookend our latest instalment of reissue reviews with two eras of artists in the rock snob lexicon, beginning with the complete and remastered Replacements Twin/Tone catalogue on Restless (Stink EP, Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, Hootenanny and Let It Be).
Before Paul Westberberg believed his own ink (all that nice-sounding nonsense about being a "bard of basements and bars") and started dishing out boooooring, de facto solo albums under the ’Mats moniker (Pleased To Meet Me, All Shook Down), this was the shit.
During the hardcore punk firestorm of the ’80s (Black Flag, etc.), Westerberg and Co. were unrivaled for creating a pure pop heart within the beautiful mess of their defiantly sloppy and snotty songs (perhaps the one exception would be their fellow Minnesotans, Hüsker Dü, but they were basically prog-rockers who couldn’t play, so never mind).
Now, provided you’re not a newbie to this stuff (in which case you should turn off the Blink-182, and buy all four immediately), the question here is: should you bother replacing the original CD issues for these remasters?
In terms of packaging, there are no additional liner notes or bonus tracks. The sole cosmetic improvement comes by way of the inclusion of the original back cover art (hardly worth the price, unless you absolutely need a photo of a 12-year-old Tommy Stinson off their debut EP).
As far as the mix goes, yes it’s much cleaner and crisper, but part of the underdog charm the first time around with these guys was the way they sounded so wonderfully crappy.
Forget Stink, it’s a write-off – a teenage mangling of the Dead Boys. Kids were doing it then and they’re doing it now. Spend your ducats on the much needed support of your favourite band of local punks instead – teen spirit pretty much smells the same, anyway. Hootenanny and Let it Be are inarguably classics, but by then it was their quieter side that shined. No need to bump up the levels for the plaintive piano-bar punk of "Androgynous" or the haunting, feedback-seared cry of obsession that is "Answering Machine."
Sorry Ma... however, is a different story. It’s the bridge between adolescent rage and post-high school – a newly minted adult disillusionment. Westerberg’s resentment on "Kick your Door Down" doesn’t sound the least bit dated when he sings, " I got my radio playing/ And it don’t sound like me." This one’s worth a reinvestment for the benefit of an increase in sheer volume alone. Anything this angry has to be played at the maximum setting.
Finally, if you’ve only just discovered Johnny Cash because of his Soundgarden cover off the second disc (Unchained) in the American Recordings’ trilogy, you’ve got some catching up to do. Undoubtedly, if you dug that, then material from the Sun years has already found its way into your paws (right?). But what about his lost period – when the hippie revolution temporarily rendered Cash’s God-fearing vision of America uncool. The bulk of Cash’s career as a less-than-hip icon for Ma and Pa America was spent on Columbia and a whole whack of that material is finally getting a digital overhaul (Johnny Cash at Madison Square Garden, Silver, Songs of Our Soul and Johnny Cash Sings the Ballads of the True West).
What can we say? Owning those titles alone should keep anyone happy for a long, long time. Then, as now, Cash covered all the bases (the difference being that then he didn’t need the help of Danzig, Nick Cave or U2 covers to boost his appeal for a younger demographic). Love, God, murder – he sang about it all and made you believe he had lived every story he told – from the man on the gallows to the sinner swept by salvation.
However, you could save yourself some time and money and just pick up the Love/God/Murder (um, didn’t I just say that?) box set and, in the process, get the neato sticky tattoos included there.
Either way you want to go about it, one thing’s for sure: you can never have enough Cash. Ba-dump. |
