Archive for August 6th, 2010
At What Price?
If there are any readers of The Second Disc from outside America, I’d like you to do us a favor. Go to iTunes or Amazon and download the bonus tracks included on the digital versions of the a-ha deluxe reissues. And enjoy them, please. Because American fans cannot.
Not long after the release of the Web-exclusive deluxe editions of Hunting High and Low and Scoundrel Days, a-ha’s official site announced that the digital editions of each title would include four additional bonus tracks, including some vinyl-only remixes and more unreleased demos. Graciously, the story said “Rhino.com (USA) will have both Deluxe Editions available digitally this week, complete with bonus tracks, which will be available a la carte.”
However, nearly a month after that promise, there’s been no movement. The reissues were only made available digitally this week through Rhino.com, but no bonus tracks are to be found. After inquiring with Rhino, they sent The Second Disc a message: “We hope to have these tracks available soon. Please stay tuned to www.rhino.com (and sign up for the newsletter on the front page of the site) for any developments.”
Fans of old and new music have to go through this a lot. The label will release an extra track or two with a digital version of a record as an incentive to buy the record instead of downloading. But for people willing to pay for physical copies, this is hard to deal with. The tracks are rarely able to be downloaded on their own, and no self-respecting fan would pay another $10 for one track if they’ve already bought the proper physical album for about the same price. This looks even more shortsighted on the catalogue side of things, where most fans invest in physical media entirely, and rightly feel a bit slighted if a few extra tracks are going to be available digitally. (We can see a storm brewing should the digital bonus tracks on the upcoming Apple Records reissues not be made available individually.)
We ask you, dear reader: how do you view the seemingly necessary evils that are digital bonus tracks? How would you alter their place in the music-buying process if you could?
A Sign of Good “Faith”
This week’s tease about the upcoming reissue of George Michael’s Faith helps prove that the ’80s, often thought to be an era of musical detritus, has its share of defining moments worth revisiting through catalogue titles.
Of course, as time marches on, labels will continue to revisit the ’80s for reissues and box sets, which will alternately confuse and delight listeners. Dozens of bands – Genesis, a-ha, Duran Duran, Michael Jackson, Tears for Fears, The Police, Bon Jovi and scores more – have been catalogued in the past decade, with plenty more to follow, without a doubt.
With this in mind, The Second Disc’s weekend thought-provoker is this: who’s an artist, or what’s an album, released between 1980 and 1989 that is well overdue for the reissue treatment? Is it Prince? Springsteen? The Smiths? Shout out your answers in the comments this weekend.
Back Tracks: The Buggles
Famed U.K. producer Trevor Horn has done so much in his lengthy career, but his next step looks to be a revisiting of one of his most discreetly influential projects: The Buggles.
Horn announced on his Web site that The Buggles – a synth-pop duo consisting of Horn and Geoff Downes – are returning in some capacity on September 28. The announcement may have been best time on August 1, a date which they will be forever identified with; on the beginning of that day in 1981, a music video they’d recorded, “Video Killed the Radio Star,” became the first clip ever played on MTV.
That prescient contribution to pop culture has made Horn and Downes permanent fixtures in the ’80s canon (and that doesn’t even count their respective work with The Art of Noise or Asia). But what about the music they crafted as The Buggles? Join Back Tracks for a look at those only two LPs the duo ever made – and one they did with another band nobody ever expected them to pair up with.
Friday Feature: “Footloose”
This week’s theatrical release of Step Up 3D proves that young people everywhere still embrace the notion of defying authority by shaking one’s ass on the dance floor. It’s nothing new, of course; ever since Columbia Pictures turned Twist Around the Clock onto a dance-crazy culture in 1961, dance pictures have become a generational touchstone. Whether they’re good, crowd-pleasing films (Saturday Night Fever (1977), Flashdance (1983)) or wildly silly affairs (The Forbidden Dance (1990), You Got Served (2004)), America has really embraced its dance films. This week’s Friday Feature spotlights one of those dance films that I hold in higher regard than most: Footloose, the 1984 film that feels like it should’ve been made two decades earlier.
Most filmgoers know the tale: a city kid (Kevin Bacon, in one of his early lead roles) moves to a hick town and clashes with the local government’s ban on dancing. Bacon challenges the local minister (John Lithgow), the staunchest opponent to dancing in the town, and woos his daughter (Lori Singer). It’s a lot of pseudo-Puritannical fluff, mostly, but the sparks in Bacon’s and Lithgow’s performances are evident, not to mention some humorous turns by Chris Penn (Sean’s brother) as Bacon’s ally who learns a move or two of his own and a barely-known Sarah Jessica Parker as another female lead.
I first saw Footloose in 2002, in advance of auditioning for a local youth theatre performance of the Broadway adaptation. Though I didn’t know it at the time, the TV station that aired the film cut a great deal out for time constraints, and it seemed like a very flat, by-the-numbers film. There’s a little more character development going on than one might think, however, particularly toward the end when Bacon and Lithgow force themselves to consider why they’re digging their heels so hard into the dancing issues at hand.
That isn’t to say that the film is a stunning depiction of small-town American trials. It often veers toward the ridiculous – nowhere is this more evident than the finale, where a group of teenagers go from wallflowers to moonwalkers in seconds flat. (The ending was shot twice, once with the main cast and once with a group of more experienced dancers, and edited together for the final cut.) No, Footloose probably was so successful because it was an MTV-ready flick: if you can believe it, seven of the nine tracks on the soundtrack became singles – and six of them became Top 40 hits.
You had a double dose of Kenny Loggins, well on his way to becoming the preeminent soundtrack man of the decade. Bonnie Tyler continued her successful partnership with Jim Steinman on “Holding Out for a Hero,” while the leaders of Heart and Loverboy performed one of the best love songs on an ’80s soundtrack. And then there was the ebullient “Let’s Hear It for the Boy,” which joined “Footloose” as a chart-topping single from the record and an Oscar-nominated song from the film. (As stated countless times before, that year was a busy playing field, with tunes like “Ghostbusters” and eventual winner “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” Purple Rain had won for Best Original Song Score, the last year that category existed.)
Hit the jump to check out the multiple releases of the soundtrack.
