(AKA Hey Jude.)
I don’t think you can buy The Beatles Again (aka Hey Jude), a vinyl collection of non-album tracks, as a distinct CD. It may have changed in recent years, but there was a long stretch when you also could not buy a distinct CD of Elvis Costello & The Attractions’ similar odds & sods collection, Taking Liberties. Soon, when all physical media are done away with, none of this will matter whatsoever and I’ll be grumpier than ever. Before this worse day comes, let me me bemoan the fact that not all the odds & sods collections of my youth are available as distinct packages in the digital age. I don’t like having those tracks split up as bonus tracks on various albums.
I’m pretty sure, meanwhile, that The Who’s Odds & Sods has always survived the digital age as a distinct product, right?
What odds & sods collections from the vinyl age do you most regret seeing broken up over the reissues of various original albums?
You can still get ‘The Beatles Again’. They just renamed it ‘Past Master Vol. 2’ and added bonus tracks.
No, that’s not it. First of all, it’s simply not it: not the same graphics, not anywhere near the same track order. Those albums came out in the vinyl age, so they’re not even “original” CDs. There’s no such thing as bonus tracks on an outtakes album. I’m not lashing at you, Bronzed Nordic God, but it angers me that this would be thought of as anywhere near a variation on The Beatles Again. I have a deep, personal connection with the vinyl album. I can accept seeing it in a different format, but it’s got to be a reflection of the original thing.
Again, my beef and passion is not directed at you. It’s not you, it’s me:) I feel ridiculously strongly about this subject. I don’t need my odds & sods repackaged across various reissues. I don’t need them repackaged in new odds & sods packages. Just give me the damn odds & sods package to buy again, in whatever new format. Younger people can buy the variations that have nothing to do with the original, but don’t rob me of my odds & sods collections.
They changed the feel of The Who’s Odds and Sods by adding a bunch of extra songs (at least the version I have).
But isn’t this what playlists are for?
I made this comment in a conversation just yesterday. They are releasing a box set of The Beatles USA albums for something like $120. iTunes has a digital version. Now who the heck is going to spend $120 for a digital version of the USA albums? I’d expect anyone inclined that way already bought the box sets of the first 4 USA albums and the 2nd four USA albums. Or the stereo or mono boxes the came out 4 years ago. If you have those digitally (or physically, then make your own playlists for the USA albums. Is the digital artwork worth $120? Is the “remastered especially for iTunes” label worth $120?
Who is the digital version of this for?!?!?
The digital versions are for the under 30 population that does not collect physical product at all. At $120 there are not many who are spending $$ on digital that would be in the market, but I guess it sells a few sets.
My 65 year old uncle travels between two houses (weekdays in the city, weekends in the burbs) and has money to burn. He buys tons of itunes music of things he has on CD or vinyl so that he can have them on his ipad streamed to a blutooth device.
I gave him a CD of my original music and he looked at it like it was a dead fish..um, can’t you just send me the link from iTunes and I’ll download it?.
There are tons of music buyers who are just not music collectors. they look at my wall of CDs and my wall of Vinyl and ask me why i dont just keep it all on my computer instead (of course I do that as well, and on the cloud)… my wife is one of them. I moved her 1993-1998 CD collection (era when she bought CDs) to the basement with the intent of mixing it into my collection (we have been married for 12 years after all) and she said, just sell them or donate them, I have the songs that I want on my ipod. Of course I will do no such thing
I understand people who want digital only in a general sense. I was specifically talking about who wants The Beatles USA Box Set digitally for $120. Don’t those people already have that music digitally and so creating the USA albums is a matter of making playlists? I’d guess your uncle has the Beatles digitally so even he wouldn’t want this set since he has all the tunes and just needs to create, for example, a Yesterday & Today playlist.
I don’t know man, I think it’s time to get over it. That album might have meant a lot to you, but not to the beatles. It would have meant something to a US record company person who is probably retired and forgot about that project long ago.
Odds and sods used to be carefully guarded and contained, either because the band didn’t want what they thought was inferior stuff exposed or because the record company wanted to make sure they had material for when the band had nothing new to put out.
Now that everything is gettable for free if you want it, they are dumping everything out in the open so they at least have a chance at making something off of stuff that will find its way online anyway. Like that Velvet Underground concert that surfaced a couple years ago and is now part of the WLWH repackaging. If they hadn’t done that, I would have hunted down a download of that off the mp3 blogs. Being an analogue native I’m happy to pay for it now that they made it available, but 20 years ago they probably woulnd’t have released it.
/end rambling comment
That’s disappointing to learn!
I don’t know how they justify charging as much for digital downloads as they do for the full product, but then again I guess I do understand. People don’t like to buy THINGS anymore; labels and artists still need to make money. Godspeed! My iPod is loaded with burns of my vinyl Beatles albums, including the vinyl Beatles Again, complete with its childhood pops and clicks.
I appreciate what you’re saying and know that it’s the proper response to what ails me, but I’m not sure if I’m capable of moving past the notion that once-key landmarks in record collecting are being done away with. As much as I claim this is my problem, my burden, I am realizing that it’s actually my concern for future generations that’s at the heart of it.
OK, you’re right, especially in the case of such slapdash US record label money grabs in their era. What would the mature Mr Moderator of 1969 have said when those original singles and b-sides were first thrown together in some new, unnecessary format?
Damn you and your good sense, Suburban kid!
Yeah, but maybe there’s an extra piano note or the fade is one second longer on the new USA boxed set. Beatles fans love their big differences!
I don’t know what’s available for downloads and I don’t care. I just don’t do it. I have an mp3 player, but I use it as a portable device. If I’m in the house I listen to records and cd’s. Itunes doesn’t need to know what music I own; it’s way too much of a marketing tool for me to give away for nothing. They’d know more about me than I know myself!
Mr. Mod, those USA Beatles albums will be re-released individually, including the one that’s the subject of your post. I’ll be getting Revolver, Yesterday & Hard Day’s Night myself, the ones that Capitol didn’t release in those US album box sets that came out in the mid-2000s.
As for other odds ‘n sods collections that missed the digital age, I also miss Taking Liberties, but the one I really miss is the Great Lost Kinks Album, which will probably never be reissued since 1. WB/Reprise released it w/o Ray’s consent 2. It featured liner notes by John Mendelson (sic!) which were rather critical of Ray & the Kinks circa 1973.
diskojoe, I, too, treasure my copy of TGLKA that I picked up in the late 80s cheap. Fortunately, most if not all (?) of the songs by now have appeared as bonus tracks on some of the multitude of Kinks reissues. But at the time it was, for me, an eye opener.
Mod, I totally agree. I used to listen to my Hey Jude (mine was, I guess, a later pressing?) lp a lot and loved the cover and the whole package. Later, it started to bug me that Can’t Buy Me Love and I Should Have Known Better were on it instead of, say, The Inner Light and You Know My Name (Look Up the Number) which would have made it a perfect collection of late-period non-lp a-sides and b-sides. But in recent years I’ve renewed my friendship with the album via a very well produced bootleg cd that retains the lp covers. But it is about to be legitimately issued on cd anyway, if it has not already.
They have indeed, and the additions are great but it does change the whole vibe.
I always quite enjoyed the Who’s Missing/Two’s Missing collections, which I still have, but which have been phased out.
Although it is a mixed bag to be sure, I always found the Stones Metamorphosis album to be very interesting and I was pleased when it was reissued intact.
Similarly, I am fond of the totally unnecessary Stones lp Made in the Shade, which has tracks from each of the Stones lps Sticky Fingers through It’s Only Rock and Roll, inclusive, but no rarities. But it was one of the only Stones lps we had in the house when I was a kid other than Hot Rocks.
This is heartening news, diskojoe! That Kinks collection always seemed to exist in that netherland between legitimate and bootleg release.
Those are some good not-quite-essential Stones collections! Is Sucking in the Seventies available on CD?
Not sure, these days. It was–I have a copy. But for all I know it has been phased out.
We have a copy @ the library where I work.
Also, here’s the Amazon link to the Hey Jude album:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GJ7ROYS/ref=s9_psimh_gw_p15_d23_i3?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1YZMSZ5PK3HM5QZ8EYPY&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1688200382&pf_rd_i=507846
Sucking in the 70’s was available on cd, but I don’t think anyone has released it since the initial release and it’s long out of print. But you should be able to find one real cheap.
I’m pretty sure R.E.M.’s odds and sods collection of the IRS years, Dead Letter Office is out of print. Notable for covers of the Velvet Underground, Pylon and Aerosmith. Also features a song that was in the movie Bachelor Party. Wore that cassette down to a hiss.
Ok, a little research would have revealed that album is still up at iTunes.
Speaking of The Beatles, did anyone have a copy of Something New. It featured a lot of songs from Hard Day’s Night plus Komm Gibb Mir Deine Hand
I’ve got that Beatles album!
What about the wonder that was Kink Kronikles? It’s apparently still available on CD. I heard She’s Got Everything in a coffeeshop last night, and it really brought me back to wearing out that double LP in the early 70s.
Bruce Springsteen has solved this problem by putting out an odds & sods collection as if it were just his next normal album. Cheeky.
The Kink Kronikles is still in print. It was my 3rd Kinks album in the late 70s & I would still highly recommend it to anyone who wants to start listening to them.
The original Changesonebowie and Changestwobowie.
I had an old cassette of these 2 back to back; Changesone was a well programmed “greatest hits” and Changestwo went deeper and weirder, when you wanted to get beyond the obvious. The re-released Changesbowie with the “Fame 90” remix and “Blue Jean” doesn’t work the same way at all.
My first thought was The Kink Kronikles discussed by Big Steve and Discojoe. That, plus the old Marble Arch label Kinks greatest hits served me well for years.
OUTSTANDING example of what’s wrong with the world! I’m pissed all over.
Yeah, I can just about live with the expansion of Changesonebowie to include later material but Fame 90 still fills me with rage. I think Changesone and Changestwo may have briefly been issued on CD in their proper form by RCA?
Absolutely! Even though all the “rarities” on there are now available elsewhere, I still love that collection, which was my introduction to a the Kinks “golden era” when the individual lps were hard to find, at least where I was.