LAist: CD Review Sort Of - Elvis Costello - This Year's Business Model

Sotto Voce Nyx

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:59:33 -0800

Damn, he was so cute back then...look at that HAIR! lol

Sotto Voce Nyx

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:58:00 -0800

Really the only reason to buy that (and I have loved this fellow since he was the very first "concert" I went to), is if your current remastered version #410 or whatever got munched in the cd player or something, then I could see spending the cash. Otherwise what is the point? If you can find someone who bought the thing, burn the extra tracks or as Heath says pay extra for those tracks you really need and download them. I stopped going to see Elvis when his (non scalped) ticket price reached $65 bucks. Sure it's worth 65 bucks to have him sing "All This Useless Beauty" in Italian and make me cry like a baby, but it's the principle of the thing. I mean I have to make up for actually purchasing NORTH.....arggghhhhh

HeathBiter

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:15:37 -0800

Elise - I like the burn party idea! ezfinn - good call on the Pavement reissues. They were definitely done right. I think the Elvis ones, for the most part, have been really good. I just don't like having to rebuy them every few years. taang - I used to make tapes with just the bonus tracks, listen to them a few times, then store 'em away. Depending on the record, I would or wouldn't keep listening once the original record was done. (This Year's Model is one that I did listen to all the way through) There are some great Deluxe Editions out there. The Ryko Bowie discs were great. The Patti Smith remasters... The Who reissues have been really good. Complete Live At Leeds? Hell yeah!

HeathBiter

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:04:13 -0800

Bob - Elvis took a page from the Bowie playbook and actually re-released his entire back catalog as single discs with ZERO bonus tracks last year. At that point, I think they were officially the fourth reissue of each album.

Elise Thompson

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:47:01 -0800

Now do we have 6 degrees of seperation where someone can actually forward this to Elvis?

Taaang

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 06:51:45 -0800

As if the act of buying a CD didn't make me feel old enough, the fact that I'm buying the same titles I once owned on LP really drives it home. It's a compulsion in a way, when you consider I haven't listened to the bonus tracks from the Ryko version I've owned since the 80's. Thanks for writing this piece.

Elise Thompson

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:20:21 -0800

A far cry from the guy who stormed off the stage of Saturday Night Live. Maybe he could re-issue that scene with previously unreleased angles. Let's have a burn party and just sit around burning our old albums and drinking absinthe all night. BTW, Thanks for putting "Nobody's Heroes" in my head - it will be stuck there all night now. Be-e-e-e what you a-a-a-a-are...

bobzilla77

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:24:54 -0800

What's really weird is, Bowie's been reissuing albums for the third of fourth time MINUS the bonus tracks from the last set of reissues! And it was one thing when CD technology was improving, and the remasters did sound considerably better than older generations. Today with everything mastered loud and super-compressed for the Ipod listener, I find new pressings often sound worse than the versions mastered in the 90s. Six pressings of TYM is pretty extreme though, and This Year's Model Redux got similar complaints a year ago. Surely a series of single-disc rarities sets or live shows would cost less and sell to the same people, without the stink of rehash?

ezfinn

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:31:47 -0800

The only reissues that have ever truly lived up to their billing for me, have been the Pavement records.