There's a few weeks to go until Legacy Recordings and Experience Hendrix LLC reprint the Jimi Hendrix catalogue. March 9 will see CD/DVD versions of four classic Hendrix albums as well as a new unreleased compilation, Valleys of Neptune, on store shelves. In preparation for the reissue, I've been acquainting myself with the ridiculously deep catalogue Hendrix left in his 27 short years on this Earth. And if music research could make me curl up and whimper, I'd have my arms around my knees by now.
In his lifetime, Hendrix put out three studio LPs (one of which was a double album), four non-LP singles (at least, if you're a U.K. listener - the track list for Are You Experienced omits some of those giant hits that the later U.S. version contains), a compilation (Smash Hits, the U.S. version of which was just reissued by Legacy as the first arm of the new catalogue project), a live album (Band of Gypsys) and an album side on another (a live release of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival - the other side was taken from Otis Redding's set). Meanwhile, something close to a dozen albums of Hendrix outtakes were put out between 1971 and 1995, (That's not even counting live records.)
While Experience Hendrix - the guitar god's estate, which has controlled Hendrix's master recordings since 1995 - has done a stellar job of streamlining the discography as much as possible (first through MCA/Universal and now through Sony/Legacy), the myriad of output can cause one to consider a too-rarely-considered question in the world of back catalogue music: how much is too much? Since the CD boom in the late '80s led labels to reissue, rediscover and repackage the best of major recording acts, even the most diligent and reserved of enthusiasts can get lost in the shuffle. And it's not just Hendrix. New Beatles fans endlessly find themselves considering the merits of anything Tony Sheridan had to do with. For all the dozens of times the Motown vaults birthed vintage material, there are probably another few dozen releases, stacked like boxes at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The list goes on.
So today, I pose the question to my fellow enthusiasts: how much vault content is too much? Many of us have found ourselves rebuying product more than once, and many of us will again. But at what point does one have to cool the jets for a minute, if only to acknowledge that which is already available for consumption?
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The artist that pops into my head first is Janis Joplin: if the vault excavations have revealed anything, it's that there doesn't appear to be very much worthwhile unheard material left--no outtakes/alternate versions from the "Kozmic Blues" album appear to exist other than the "Dear Landlord" cover that surfaced nearly two decades ago--and for every relevatory live recording that hits the market (the early 1967 BBATHC gig on "The Lost Tapes") another tape surfaces where she was, frankly, FUBAR (the Woodstock show).
I really don't expect to ever be blown away by any "new" Joplin again in my lifetime.
For some songs, I don't mind if there are fifteen takes released. This would have been "too much" years ago, but today, with our iTunes letting us randomly hear songs, it means we'll never know what version of a song we're going to hear. We may never hear the same version twice! Recorded songs now have a sort of fluidity (by virtue of there being many versions) that previously only live performances had. (I mean, in the sense that you never know quite how a live performance will go.)
My point is, songs are now more fluid than fixed. There may be one definitive album version that should be the version played when one is playing an album in sequence from start to finish, yes.
But many, many other versions can be available for random play, and the uncertainty of not knowing quite what you'll hear can be exciting.
It's the same reason why I may have a dozen remixes of a pop song. Too many to listen to in a row, sure. But on random, it is fun to have variations appear.
That said, every artist usually has productive periods, and problematic periods. I'd rather not hear material that was from a path wrongly taken.
Art is about creating a perfect expression, or coming as close to a perfect expression of something as possible.
So when an artist knows that they went totally astray, and that the listening experience of that material is therefore frustrating in its failure, I'm all for that material to be held back, or at least for it to be released with a clear disclaimer that it is "disowned" by the artist.
For me, vault product is essential if it's in the form of band demos, or backing tracks, or alternate takes/mixes, or wholly unreleased tracks. I could care less about live material, generally.
But the one thing that'll get me to get my wallet out to re-buy something yet again above all else is if the mastering is somehow improved. In the case of Hendrix, if the name "Vic Anesini" is in the mastering credits of this line of Legacy releases, I will ABSOLUTELY grab them again...extras be damned.