Some of my favourite artists “recently” have been releasing alternative versions of their albums just after the originals release.
St. Vincent released a piano version of MASSEDUCTION called MassEducation.
Mac Richter released Voices 2 just after than Voices.
Both of these are better than the originals IMHO.
Can you think of any more?- they have to be released JUST AFTER the originals or I will flounce the f@ck outta here!!!
Placebo have just announced a “re:created” version of their debut. I always rather liked their take at low-rent Jane’s Addiction, and they were great live, but the production was a bit tinny.
I doubt they’re going to be giving it a radical overhaul (going acoustic?), but it could benefit from a bit of extra oomph.
Bye, @foxnose….
*BURSTS INTO TEARS*
Sorry, but when have we (I) ever stayed on topic?
Never mind all that, I’m trying to imagine what a high-rent Jane’s Addiction would sound like.
I much prefer Let it Be Naked – the reordered version without Phil Spector’s choirs and strings.
Me too.
I prefer to remain fully clothed throughout…
I think the track selection is better, but there is some sort of digital noise reduction in the mastering, doesn’t sound great, lack of Dynamic Range
But if you have a vinyl version (I have) which includes the EP it goes for big bucks these days
LiB Naked has a very dry sound to my ears, like the life has been sucked out of it. Apart from possibly the choir on Long and Winding Road, I really don’t mind the Spector production.
The Giles Martin remix is his best. Blissful.
Whilst unfaithful to the OP request, there are few bands as avid at recycling as the Levellers who have released many of their songs in multiple formats: normal band, acoustic, acoustic augmented(“collective”), with a string section and, viz Hope Street, a bevy of different guest vocalists.
That’d be a lot of reggae with the dub version issued also.
LKJ in dub
Burning Spear Marcus Garvey / Garvey’s Ghost etc.
Sinead O’connors reggae album and dub version sold together.
See also:
Massive Attack: Protection/No Protection (Sept 94/Feb ’95)
Primal Scream: Vanishing Point/Echo Dek (July/Oct ’97)
Are those close enough to pull you back from flouncing, fn?
YES! Thank you!
Conor Oberst released the acoustic Ruminations in 2016. A year later, many of those songs were rejigged with a full band treatment on Salutations
That’s the one I thought of, RD. Good example.
Both great
The Thorns (Matthew Sweet, Pete Droge, Shawn Mullins) did a very good album that was, sadly, overproduced and over-orchestrated. Happily, my special edition has an extra ‘live in the studio’ disc with just three voices and guitars. It’s ace.
On the other hand….. Lucinda Williams released a bluesy and earthier version of Sweet Old World, cunningly entitled This Sweet Old World. It heralded her current fallow period and was as pointless as it was musically inferior to the original. As for Ryan Adams’s anniversary re-recording of Heartbreaker, it was as self-destructive as anything he’s done in his private life.
Neither of these were issued shortly after the original and both were inferior, but hey, I’d like to think I’ve echoed the spirit of the OP. Bye @foxnose.
The Silver Seas brought out two versions (red and blue) of Chateau Revenge. The blue one was acoustic versions of the songs, apart from the ones that weren’t.
That’s the one that was on the tip of my tongue all morning. Thanks, I can now get on with some work!
Unless I decide to ask a technical question about hifi or caravans and you will be dragged back in just when you thought you’d got out…
Gosh, there are SO many albums I can think of that could really do with an alternative version – one with decent tunes, decently played.
Would that be Trigger’s record? Change the tune, then change the lyrics, then change the vocals, until…
Prefab Sprout’s “Steve McQueen Acoustic” and Martin Stephenson’s “Bolivia” both have interesting moments, but neither is as good as the original.
https://daintees.bandcamp.com/album/bolivia-acoustic
Jeff Tweedy released Live is the King fairly soon after Love is the King.
Brian Eno released an alternative version of FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE, with most (but not all) of the voices taken off. That was also in short order from the original. In between he also put out some different versions of a couple of songs on there.
ENO also revised My Squelchy Life into Nerve Net, although the original was pulled from the market before many people got their hands on it. I can’t remember the time between those two.
Can I have Prince first using a drum machine on “sign O the Times”, please? I’m perfectly happy with human percussion players.
Is three years’ gap allowed?
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/18/oumou-sangare-acoustic-review-unplugged-mogoya
John Coltrane issued two different recordings of Ascension; his 38-40 minute long free-jazz album issued in 1966. Not long after its release, Coltrane decided that he preferred the other take recorded at the session, and the LP was re-cut, but issued in the same sleeve. To tell the releases apart, the second one had “Edition II” scratched into the run-out groove.
Then there’s the follow-up album Meditations. He initially recorded it as a quartet, before re-recording it a couple of months later with the line-up expanded by the addition Pharoah Sanders on tenor and a second drummer. The second version was the released one, but the quartet version did see release posthumously as First Meditations.
Similarly, two decades later, ZTT issued slightly different versions of the Propaganda and Seal albums, having carried on fettling after the first pressings.
Ooh! New word for me. But as I’m nearing my dotage will I be able to make it stick..?
Back in the early seventies the name we came up with for our folk band was the Gratterfolk Molehill Fettlers.
Great name no gigs.
@fentonsteve
I’ve recently joined a Propaganda “fan” group thingy on Facebook. I am already regretting it. Turns out there an awful lot of remixes, reissues, reimaginings out there. Who knew, it being ZTT and all.
I don’t think you can improve on the original first album.
I can only imagine…
Exhibit A: Grace Jones – Slave to the Rhythm. I have the 7″, 12″, LP and CD. They’re all completely different. Why?
Well, just because…
Kim Richey did an acoustic version of the superb “Glimmer” album.
One of the desert blues fellas did an acoustic version of an electric album last year (ish). It wasn’t Tinariwen, it was Mdou Moctar. Funeral for Justice was electric, Tears of Injustice was acoustic.
Coldplay have released their album 10 times now. I’m here all week.
Didn’t Macca put out ‘McCartney III: Reimagined’ amidst the slew of coloured vinyl, special editions etc? Would that count?
Imagine if that had happened in the Golden Age?
Of course, it never could because hot on the heels of Help! was Rubber Soul et al, not forgetting the 45s either side. And thank God for that… and what about the taking songs off LPs for 45s long after the LP’s release date.
Strewth, they’d still have been releasing 45s off the White Album in the dire!
The Golden Age… I know the drill, you know the drill… it went thatta way.
There was a golden age? Why haven’t you mentioned this before?
Too busy comparing the relative strengths of Combat Rock and Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg, I’d imagine.
Exhibit A: Beatles albums different in Mono vs. Stereo, noticeably so.
Exhibit B: Beatles albums different in US vs. UK
Exhibit C: Stones albums even more so than Beatles
Exhibit D: Kinks Village Green Preservation Society being released in several different mixes, track orders, covers, even with some tracks sneaking out in different countries (all great, btw.)
– there’s probably loads more from the golden age. In the case of (D) it continued to be messed with in subsequent reissues until we basically got everything on a triple CD.
Funny how the Golden Age doesn’t apply to cinema, books, television, mime, pottery, cars, papier mache sculpting (you get the drift). No no and thrice no – just pop music 🙄
Unless I’m reading this wrongly* there was certainly a Golden Age of Hollywood.
* it’s quite probable.
There’s a Golden Age to everything really, but no one gets blamed for not living through it.
Ironically, The Golden Age of Rock ‘n’ Roll was recorded in 1974…
Back in 2010 Lloyd Cole re recorded acoustic versions of 12 of his songs in 12 hours with two other people. I have a signed copy, it’s really good. It was only available from his website but it isn’t even listed on there anymore.
New Order: Music Complete swiftly followed up by Complete Music.
I really liked the companion albums released in the early 80s, usually released to fill the yawning chasm of the huge 12 month gap between proper albums coming out:
Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing – Soft Cell
Love & Dancing – League Unlimited Orchestra
Spotlight – Madonna
Mike Oldfield bought out about 20 versions of Tubular Bells but none of them as good as the original.
All he needed to do was overdub the out of tune below with in tune ones.
*below*??? Bells.
There’s nothing below Bells, imho – maybe Black &White?
Correct. This had crossed my mind too.
I love the bells as they are. There’s an audible sniff half way through a little guitar part and I love that too. Leave it alone.
Dexys Midnight Runners brought out the snappily-titled Too Rye Ay As It Should Have Sounded a couple of so years ago.
And, there are 2 versions of Dexy’s first single, as Dance Stance slowed and became Burn it Down as track 1, side 1 for SftYSR.
Robyn Hitchcock sometimes does this, Groovy Decay / Groovy Decoy being a good example. The 2 versions of the album were also later combined as Gravy Deco.
Shawn Colvin released a re-recording of her debut Steady On for its 30th anniversary.
It’s fine but hardly essential.
Lucinda Williams’s reworking of Sweet Old World, mentioned above, is very enjoyable.
I discovered The Grateful Dead’s Anthem of the Sun in the 1970s remix and still prefer it to the original.
There was a “raw mix” version of the MC5’s “Back in the USA” album that was promoted as better, until people decided that they liked the original Jon Landau production after all. (see also Iggy Pop’s remixed “Raw Power”).
Belgian rockers turned techno artists released ‘any minute now’ in 2004 and then followed it up in 2005 with ‘nite versions.’ This was in effect a remix version of the any minute now album and a hello of a lot better (in my opinion). I saw them live around this time when they would do a live gig and then come back on to do a DJ set under their alter ego 2 many DJs. Absolute carnage.