Entertainment For Lively Minds
Deluxe Editions of Dreadful Albums
I was in HMV recently and noticed that there is now a "Deluxe Edition" of Born Again by Black Sabbath.
Born Again. That ginger-vinyled stepchild of the Sabbath back catalogue that made long term fans throw in their denim towels. Ian Gillan on vocals. Songs called Stonehenge and Disturbing the Priest. It's the only Black Sabbath album that will make you say "Jesus Christ" when you hear it.
As I stood there, wondering who on earth would want a 2-CD version of this old clunker, a thought struck me. Perhaps we live in the age of the "Deluxe Edition". Now that just about everything has not only been released on CD, but has also been remastered and sometimes remastered again, perhaps everything will be released as a Deluxe Edition, and we'll soon be able to buy "Immersion Editions" of Dirty Work, Dylan and the Dead and those 80s Neil Young albums that he pretends he never released. Well, maybe not them.
So what's the worst album you've seen get the double-CD and fancy packaging treatment?
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I was appalled to see this get the full monty treatment
I mean, quite apart from your opinion of the music, it's a greatest hits album.
Mamma Mia!
Is that photoshopped?
Sadly not
When albums such as this get the full Deluxe treatment, it means the bottom of the barrel is but a distant memory and we are fast approaching the Earth's core.
What, like this?
Regardless of how we feel
about the music itself, it seems pointless and counter-productive to make a Deluxe Edition out of any greatest hits album. IMHO, of course.
Maybe...
the problem is merely that the rest of the world doesn't share our own personal taste.
As Duke Ellington said, "If YOU like it, it's good."
Or in Jerry Lee Lewis' words, "You need our records, and we need your money."
Fair point
But then again, Duke Ellington never heard Ian Gillan singing "Do we mind disturbing the priest? / Not at all, not at all, not in the least".
Come on, it's genius!
Good life is contradiction because of the crucifixion
If you're ready and have the need, I will take your soul and plant my seed
Aahhhh, ahhhh, ah ha ha ha haaa!
You can stick your Crescendo in Blue.
Now where's my Tygers of Pan Tang box set?
agreed
What's not to like about the dynamics and generally Sabbiness about this? Corking riff, too. It would've been better sung by Ozzy, but it's miles better than any of the latter's post Sabs output.
Brace yourselves:
Big bloody jessies. Go back to your "Orange Juice" records.
It's Rubbish!
Everything about Born Again was just plain wrong - from Gillan's pantomime vocals, to Steve "Krusher" Joule's cover (the worst cover of any Sabbath album, and man is there serious competition for THAT particular accolade). Then they pissed off their fans by encoring with Smoke on the Water at Reading AND had the misfortune to go out on tour with a Stonehenge stage set just as This is Spinal Tap was released.
It's a dreadful record that's been in more second hand record shops than The Best of Bread or ELO's Discovery.
well...
All this is true. But "Disturbing the priest" remains a good track IMHO. And given the choice between a demonic baby and Bill Ward's chequered underpants, give me the rug-rat.
Trashed...
...is the only song I think I ever played twice when I owned that record. Mind, even that's not a great song.
Gillan races cars while drunk.
It is, I have to say, an appallingly bad record.
Coming straight after the Dio albums, it was even worse.
Now where's my Tygers of Pan Tang box set?
At the house of a man currently doing a CELTA course.
If not,try a Chemists in East Anglia.
My pet hate is...
... albums that were a solid 'good', 3 or 4 out of 5 release, getting re-issued 10/15 years later to rapturous maximum score ratings. Simply because some people still like it now does not mean it has become a perfect album. Like, 'if I still remember it now after all these years, hell, it must be great!'. NO!
Pitchfork are particularly guilty of this, but I think this rage of believing things were SO much better in the good old days makes reveiwers get those ol' rose-tinted specs on.
I'm not so sure.
The flip side of that is an album that got, say, 4/5 back in the day but which now sounds terribly dated, of its time and rather ordinary. Whether it's good, bad or in between, your assessment of a record - rather like your opinion on anything else - doesn't have to be frozen at one point in time.
I think it's perfectly possible for an album to seem way out or too under-stated today and find, 10 years on, that it's actually very good.
Similarly, of course, the re-appraisal can be re-appraised and an album can go from good - bad - good again! It's like when Mao Tse Tung was asked if he thought the French Revolution had been a success and he opined that it's still too early to tell. I suspect we've usually got too little perspective on things to really put them in context.
I see your point
and I think this can certainly be the case for some albums. But often I think it's just the rush of nostalgia that is bumping up the review and if it was to be reviewed by someone who was not aware of it at the time - had no connection to it at all - then they might give it slightly harder time.
Unfortunately I've tried to find decent examples from the Pitchfork website to back up my arguement but it seems glitchy and is not letting me get anywhere, so... err... there you go!
A pedant writes...
...sorry Mark JF - it was Zhou Enlai
An even-more-pedant writes
Sorry, but wasn't it recently revealed to have been a mistranslation, in that he was actually referring to the events in Paris in 1968?
We live in interesting times...
Careful Moose
Last time that quote was posted I commented and got a telling off for doing so. Apparently I spoiled the joke, but for the life of me I couldn't see what it was.
I'm not averse to spoiling jokes.
I don't get laughs - nobody gets laughs.
A favourite of the massive
Paul Young's The Secret of Association is available as a 2-disc deluxe thingie.
And so is Paul Rutherford's Oh World. Oh Yes.
Buck Fizz: The Ultimate Anthology
Not deluxe but certainly dreadful.
Saw this in a local record shop a few yeas ago. Record shop now gone. Wonder why.
Amazon description:
The Ultimate Anthology is the first Fizz collection to encompass hits from their entire career through RCA, Polydor and WEA, and the second disc features many rare and unreleased tracks.
Who did
Stone 'enge first? Spinal Tap or the Sabbath?
Sabs, I think
A recent issue of mojo said that they played a dreadful set at Reading involving a mini-Stonehenge stage prop, and that this was a direct lift in This Is Spinal Tap.
Yup
Sabbath played Reading in 83, This is Spinal Tap was released in 84.
I was at that Reading gig
It wasn't *that* bad. Or so my sixteen year old self thought.
Mind you who wouldn't have been in a good mood if they'd spent the day watching Ten Years After, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul? Oh, and Suzy Quatro.
So was I
I was 17, down the front, and loved it.
I was there too and only 14
Anyone younger?
Wasn't the story about the Sabs Stonehenge stage props that they were actually life size, and therefore they couldn't get them into the venues they had booked on the Born Again tour?
And before the Sabs
and the Tap (as absolutely no one called them), there was the mighty Ten Years After with Stonedhenge from 1969.