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Music While You Work
Tuesday, March 20th, 2012 04:56 pmI have spent this afternoon listening to early Barclay James Harvest on my iPhone while I do other stuff. With some exceptions I tend to prefer their work after they left the Harvest label and moved to Polydor, but that’s not to say that it’s bad. Far from it: I like the use of orchestral backgrounds and songs like Galadriel and Mocking Bird are the better for the treatment, but by and large, I have a slight preference for their more ‘rocky’ mid-70s to mid 80s period, where they would finesse their sound through the late Wooly Wolstenholme’s keyboard work.
One thing this little trip down memory lane has done, though, is to highlight the variable quality of the ‘extras’ added to pad out the remastered CD releases, particularly where the original vinyl LP would have come it between 40 and 45 minutes.
Alternate takes of songs from other albums can be good; in some cases it’s just a matter of taste and you can tell that the ‘extra’ could have easily made the original release on another day, but for some nuance the band noted in their eventual choice that marked it for release. These alternate takes can be good value and are worth listening to.
I am less certain of the point of slapping demos on the CD, though. Not inevitably, but certainly frequently, these additions really are simply space fillers. There’s a very good reason why they never made the original cut – they weren’t finished! Of interest only to musical historians, I feel.
And having made that point, I am now listening to a previously unreleased alternate take of Medcine Man from …and Other Short Stories and finding its harder edge and different guitar solo rather more pleasing than the band’s original choice for release. The point is, it’s a finished take – not a demo.
One thing this little trip down memory lane has done, though, is to highlight the variable quality of the ‘extras’ added to pad out the remastered CD releases, particularly where the original vinyl LP would have come it between 40 and 45 minutes.
Alternate takes of songs from other albums can be good; in some cases it’s just a matter of taste and you can tell that the ‘extra’ could have easily made the original release on another day, but for some nuance the band noted in their eventual choice that marked it for release. These alternate takes can be good value and are worth listening to.
I am less certain of the point of slapping demos on the CD, though. Not inevitably, but certainly frequently, these additions really are simply space fillers. There’s a very good reason why they never made the original cut – they weren’t finished! Of interest only to musical historians, I feel.
And having made that point, I am now listening to a previously unreleased alternate take of Medcine Man from …and Other Short Stories and finding its harder edge and different guitar solo rather more pleasing than the band’s original choice for release. The point is, it’s a finished take – not a demo.