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Made in Shoreditch

I also contribute a weekly column to Made in Shoreditch magazine called 'Old East End/New East End', where I look at the relationship between the East End of old and new, looking at the changes and the stalwarts in landscape, residents and culture, focussing on one street or district each week. You can find it here.

Re-issues and Compilations

Monday 7 June 2010

The re-issue is a funny concept. Take an album that's already been released (in most cases some years previously), re-package it and re-sell it to the masses. Genarally, in fairness, the product we're being sold is a re-mastered (I'm using that prefix quite a bit here) version and thus our product is a better quality version of the original (sonically, at least). In fact, sometimes, we're given a fantastic product. The Beatles' re-masters, which were released last year, were a real success. Those great songs were given a spruce up by George Martin and came out great.



Other times, however we have to question why these records are being released. A quick trawl through the 'What's New?' section of Spotify will show you that Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet has been re-issued recently and gives us nothing different, really, from the original. Is this just a case of labels squeezing every last penny out of the name of one of their successful artists? Probably...

This brings me nicely on to the compilation. Queen have a new singles collection out, but hang on a minute... don't they have a Greatest Hits 1, 2 and 3 already? The Clash have many a compilation/live album due to the small print in their original contract tieing them to make more than the 6 albums they thought they were required to make and I wonder how many more cases like this are out there?


Now, I love The Clash and Queen respectively, but don't need to be marketed another album every year full of the tunes of theirs I already own.

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