Well, my salute to the 80's is over, but I am already contemplating doing a 70's week early next year. It would include reviews of 70's hard rock artists plus maybe something on movies, TV and Saturday morning cartoons.
This week I hope to have these topics out.
Reviews:
Alice Cooper-Billion Dollar Babies
Venom-Black Metal
and
-Battle of the bands
-It came from the pages of Hit Parader (I actually know I will be writing about ahead of time for once)
-something about bands that only I seem to like
***Here is a question for you. Twisted Sister did an album called "Still Hungry" not that long ago and it was them re-recording the entire "Stay Hungry" album. I have not heard it so I can't comment on it, but other bands have done this at least for a few songs. My question has to do with the basic concept of re-recording your own material years later. Do you think that this is worth doing or is it pointless and bands are just doing it because they want to record, but they don't want to write anything new? Or does it depend on who the band is as to whether it's worthwhile or not?
I'm looking forward to your review of Billion Dollar Babies. That's probably my favorite Alice album. I like a lot of his other stuff but that album is great from start to finish.
ReplyDeleteI'll also be interested to read your review of Venom's Black Metal. A review of that album can go either way. I haven't listened to it in ages. I wonder how it holds up.
I like the idea of a band re-interpreting their own songs and re-recording them. After all, look at what many bands do to change the songs live. I don't write the same as I did five or ten years agoi, so I can understand it if a group wants to re-interpret a song they made decades ago.
ReplyDeleteUsually, of course, I don't like it. Some of the Dokken and Lynch Mob "re-makes" on Lynch Mob's REvolutions are pretty good. But otherwise, everything from the Police's "Don't Stand So Close to Me '86" to Chicago's late 80s version of "25 or 6 to 4" to Genesis' new version of "The Carpet Crawlers" for their greatest hits album leave almost everyone unimpressed.
So although I respect their right to re-record and like to see what they think about the song structure and expression now, I am happy that most bands I love have NOT done this.
-- david
I personally don't like when bands re-record their own songs. I think it is corrupting the credibility of their work. Like when Bon Jovi did the re-recordings of their greatest hits in acoustic, I don't think bands should tamper with history especially when it's their own.
ReplyDeletePersonally I don't like the re-recording of old songs from the back catalogue.
ReplyDeleteI've yet to hear one album where overall the re-recording is better.
I'm with Ben. I just makes no sense to me.
ReplyDeleteFred-I have not heard Black Metal in at least ten years, so I don't know what I will think of it yet.
ReplyDeleteDavid-I agree that in theory re-recording could be a good idea. Although it normally turns out that the bands do more damage by re-recording songs.
Jeff-Bands should have a good reason for attempting this.
Ben-I think that re-recording a whole album and showing some improvement is very hard to do.
Fuzz-The idea has some promise, but it doesn't seem to pan out too often.
I the one example I can think of where re-recording turned out well was a best of album I have by German metal band Grave Digger. They re-recorded three songs from the debut just for this best of album. The re-recordings were done about 15 years after the original. When these guys started out they were a very average, standard style metal band. They broke up in the late 80's and they reformed in the early 90's only now they were a power metal band with a much heavier approach. The re-recordings refelected the band's later style and made previously ordinary songs sound pretty good. However, they seem to an exception rather than the rule.