Torr gives us the lowdown on the Cure reissues. Much as I would love to have the extra songs here, it is a bit galling for those of us who actually bought the old 12"s and cassettes when they came out, to have the ability to upgrade the songs onto digital format, and pay for stuff we already own. I've done it before, thinking that reissues of "Grace" and "London Calling" would be minor things, off one offs, but they're doing it to every album ever now. And generally, they're doing shoddy fan-fucking in the process. They're throwing together loveless assortments of songs to shift units, and nobody seems to mind.

By the time I got to the frankly excrable late-night pissing around in the studio of Jeff Buckley doing half-arsed blues covers and barking - barking like a Howling Blind LemonDog Blues Traveller - through barely listenable songs (way to go Columbia! Protect The Legacy!), I couldn't wait to turn the piece of crap off. They collected up 70 or so minutes of leftover rubbish - in the case of The Clash, an ancient 90 minute cassette tape with spool damage, and it seems more than one drop out and chew - and put it onto CD. Stuff often remains unreleased for a reason, and if you really must put this crap out, the fanatics dream that degrades the original memory by showing not only how good they were, but how awful they could be, stiuck out cheap, and not at £16.99 for a double CD in a fancy box with a rubbish DVD that pleases no one. (The Manics reissue is a case in point, the seond disc gave us an album we already had, and some demos, when there were dozens of demos and live shows in the vaults that nobody has heard).

Why not put all the rare stuff onto a box set, so the fans don't feel ripped off?
The fans always know what is there, and they treated the legacy with respect, not with the eyes of hawks aiming to extort gold from the pockets of the punters.

Jeff Buckley is the White Tupac.

"Glorify the past when the future dries up"...
- posted by Mark @ 2:42 pm