“why would you buy a ‘best of?’ No sane person would, so record companies screw with your head”

If you’re a music fan and you actually buy legal CDs, record companies want to make you buy the same stuff over and over again. See, they exist on sales of their old stuff, their ‘back catalogue’. The reason is a combination of economics and marketing. If EMI doesn’t have a new Robbie Williams album out, they hope you’ll buy some old Queen. Catalogue sales are constant and relatively predictable compared to the new release segment, which is very volatile.

The problem is, once you’ve bought every David Bowie album, even the crap ones, what else can they sell you? And if you’re a kid who’s going to blow your allowance on some toons, how to make the old stuff seem as exciting as the new? The industry’s answer is to add a few new bells and whistles to what you’ve already bought and hope you’ll pony up the bread for the new bits.

Twenty years ago, when CDs were new and people bought anything and everything to fulfil their digital lust, most catalogue CDs were minimal efforts. Record companies used whatever nasty source tapes they had lying around for mastering. It didn’t matter if the CD sounded like mud – it was digital mud! Also, 20 years ago, even though CDs had a theoretical capacity of 75 or 80 minutes, the major replication plants around the world wouldn’t handle any disc over 60 minutes long, claiming quality control problems if they went longer.

Once they worked the entire catalogue, someone figured out they could reissue this stuff with decent sound and fill out the disc with some extras – alternate mixes, B sides of singles, live versions, whatever. Then some Einstein came up with the idea of Ultimate Editions – an entire second disc filled with whatever was taking up space in the vault. If you loved the album, you bought it again.

And then there are the compilations. If you already own all the regular albums or downloaded the hits (legally or otherwise), why would you buy a ‘best of’? No sane person would, so record companies screw with your head by not putting the regular versions of songs you want on them – there’s always an alternate mix or a live version of the one song you really want. (Check out the nine-disc Paul Simon box set from a couple of years back that somehow had the demo of Slip Slidin’ Away but not the ‘real’ version.)

Let’s say you’re an Oasis fan. You own every album, some of the singles and maybe even (gasp!) some bootlegs of outtakes or concerts. How are they gonna get you to buy what you already bought? Well, hold the presses and Stop the Clocks. You can get a deluxe edition with a DVD! What’s on the DVD? An electronic press kit, videos for two songs from a concert at Knebworth, a trailer and a bunch of still photos. What Oasis collection would be complete without this essential ephemera?
The problem is, as an overview of Oasis, the collection is shite. Two discs seem generous until you see they contain only 18 songs totalling 87 minutes. No Roll With It, Stand By Me, Stop Crying Your Heart Out. Not even Fuckin’ in the Bushes. Sony is betting your bottom dollar that a year or two from now they can get you to buy an ‘Ultimate’ or ‘Essential’ collection that has those songs (and maybe even the Wibbling Rivalry EP).

And who is going to buy U2’s 18 Singles? Doesn’t everyone already own Best of 1980-1990 and Best of 1990-2000? Well, the 18 singles include 16 actual hits and two new hopefuls. Some executive is praying you will buy 16 songs you already own in order to get two new songs. But what are they gonna do if no one buys this and everyone just goes to iTunes and pays $1.98 for just the two new songs? (Oh wait, no iTunes if you’re in HK. We get MOOV. Looks like shit in Firefox and they don’t even bother to offer English language pages.) Oh yes, of course, there’s a ‘special’ edition that adds a DVD with 10 live songs from a concert last year.

The Doors, remember them? Someone’s going all out to make sure you do. In retrospect, you could make so many jokes about them if Oliver Stone hadn’t beaten you to it. Jim Morrison got drunk, got fat, grew a bad beard, exposed himself on stage, wrote pretentious poetry. Okay, there’s also some really great music... which their label has been relentlessly pimping for the 35 years since Morrison died in a bathtub (or faked his death and went to live in a sanitarium in Switzerland, partying with JFK and Elvis).

You can buy The Greatest Hits. Or you can buy The Best of The Doors. Or you can get Legacy: The Absolute Best. If that’s not enough, there’s a four-disc boxed set. Then in 1999 they released a seven-disc boxed set of the Complete Studio Recordings – all six studio albums plus a seventh disc of rarities, sparklingly remastered for HDCD. Finished, right? Wrong. Now there’s a 12-disc boxed set, Perception: six CDs plus six DVDs featuring different rarities and a 5.1 surround mix. Kids, this isn’t funny anymore.

If you want to buy something old that’s also new, I’m going to be surprisingly conventional and recommend you get Love, the new album by the Beatles. Now I would have thought I was completely burnt out on the Beatles. Some of my favorite tracks are on my iPod but I don’t think I’ve ever played them because I don’t need to. I know every note of every song by heart and basically never need to hear them again; it’s all permanently imprinted in my brain.

I’m not gonna detail the story behind this album. Look on Wikipedia if you care. The point is, this album shouldn’t have worked. It should have sucked hard. But it does work – it works for someone like me who knows these songs to death and I think it’ll work for people who are hearing these songs for the first time. It sounds like they actually spent some time, got creative and cared about the results. In fact, the only bad thing about this is that by next year, we are going to be deluged with mushed up hits collections and when they get to Celine Dion I may have to start using hard drugs again. And dat’s da name o’ dat tune!