Concord Music Group gets Paul McCartney Back Catalogue (Pt. 3)

Continued from here:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=216808&page=38

 

Originally Posted by Sean Murdock View Post
I have similar compulsions myself -- non-chronological "best of"s drive me crazy -- but with this I wouldn't mind it so much. Honestly, a LOT of my favorite Macca is from the past 15 years, and if I was offered a bonus disc of Ram outtakes vs a bonus disc of Flaming Pie outtakes RIGHT NOW, I'd take the latter in a heartbeat. Heresy, I know, and don't worry -- I want it ALL.... I may even find myself buying McCartney II for the first time on CD!

Basically, I'll take whatever they're dishing out, and I would LOVE a guarantee from Paul or Concord that they will see this project through to the very end, with promises of at least 2-disc reissues of every single regular pop album in his catalog. We could be at the edge of a very exciting (and expensive) few years...


My reply to Sean;

His late 80s output through now barely made decent single LPs and you want 2 CD sets of everything? That's an awful lot of filler IMO. Don't get me wrong here. I'm a huge McCartney fan. I've bought every release starting with McCartney in 1970 when I was 10. But...there was a severe drop in quality starting with Press To Play and it has continued to this day. It has always irritated me that a lot of the b sides that weren't on his albums were to me anyway much better/stronger than what was on the actual albums; case in point all the CD singles from Off The Ground. I just don't see 2 CDs worth of good material to be had. You could flesh out the regular albums with the non LP b sides but that's already been done except in a few cases. You want live material he has plenty of live CDs to choose from. Put all the stray non LP tracks in a box set and call it a day. I doubt he has that much vault material if any that's going to blow us away. My 3 cents.

 

I'm a bit younger than you -- the first Paul album I bought new was London Town -- but we'll have to agree to disagree ... on SOME of what you said. For me, most of his ALBUMS from the 1970s and '80s were loaded with filler, while Flaming Pie, Chaos & Creation and Memory Almost Full are in my personal Top Ten, with a couple of them in my Top Five on any given day. I don't want live material -- not really interested after the '70s -- and I do think there's enough quality stuff to make up a bonus disc for each album. Not necessarily an 80-minute bonus disc, mind you, but at least a 30-40 minute CD for most of the albums, even the later ones.

And I'm only talking released b-sides, radio remixes, obscure bonus tracks and compilation contributions here. Where I agree with you is that I don't think a lot of the "vault" material will blow us away -- we were spared the release of "Boil Crisis" 3 or 4 times for a reason, you know! Where I think the "vault" can be great is in providing us demos, alternate versions, rough takes, rough mixes -- good stuff that got overcooked on the albums. That stuff, with the best of the best outtakes and unreleased songs, will hopefully make up the bulk of the purported box set(s).

 

I thought the Band On The Run deluxe set was nice and it made me buy the LP for the 5th time. I don't believe he or they can come up with a package like that for each new reissue. It would be great if they could but I doubt it. By the time they get around to all of it most of us old guys will be dead and so will McCartney. They, those Beatle guys are painstakingly slow with each release. I think we'll see deluxe treatments to a few select reissues and the rest will just be a straight release. How many different versions was there of Memory Almost Full? 3? I bought two of them so with that one just gather up the bonus stuff from all 3 and put them in one package. I think we're hoping for a lot and we'll probably get just enough to make us spend our money again. I hope I'm wrong and they put out everything.

 

I like Boil Crisis much more than a lot of the tracks he's put out in the past 30+ years or so.

 

I'm excited that vault material may be making an appearance. I think I'd rather have the choice hear it than it not be there just in case I don't like it.

 

Gotta side with Sean on this one: I'm 40 and the first Macca album I bought at the time of its release was Press To Play. Loved it then, love it now.

Going back through his older catalogue was an odd experience. The "perceived wisdom" was that it was all rubbish, and I certainly didn't agree with that, but I think I have a good understanding of what it is about Wings and 80's Macca that people didn't like. I myself find it hard to understand how anyone could, for example, rate Red Rose Speedway much above "weak to the point of embarrassing" and yet others love it.

For me, the run of albums from Press To Play onwards has been easily his most consistent work.

Most of this was recorded or mixed digitally and so there is less to be gained from the remastering process (no improving the transfer from tape to digital). But even so, Run Devil Run, Driving Rain, Chaos and MAF are all way too loud and I personally, would drop a small fortune immediately just to get them sounding like the recent BOTR remaster.

 

I've always liked Boil Crisis too. And it's just a Rude demo. I dig the way Paul explain its origins on Oobu Joobu.

 

I'm with you on this totally

I'm of the opinion that from 'Flaming Pie' onwards, every McCartney album has been excellent - 'Driving Rain', 'Chaos', 'Memory' and recently (one of his very best IMO) the gorgeous 'Electric Arguments'. I adore all of these. Hopefully he'll be releasing another one soon.

Let me take one small umbridge with you however:

I see similar opinions on here often.

The thing is we don't know.. none of US have any idea just what the hell's in McCartney's vault. All we know is via the various leaks that have taken place here and there since the 80's (and most of the 'leaked' material is from the 80's). cb70 here, has a great website, but essentially these 'leaks' and various heresay is all we have to cast judgement on his vault material.

What we DO know - is that Paul is a ridiculously prolific song writer, and I wouldn't be suprised if there are hundreds (slight exaggeration but you get my point) of various song fragments here and there down the ages of each of Pauls albums.

I remember hearing an interview with, I think, Paul Weller, back in the 90's. When Paul met up with him and Noel Gallagher to record a cover of 'Come Together' for some charity album, apparantly every morning McCartney would come in with a new song that he'd written the night before. They weren't all great apparantly, but by all accounts Weller and Gallagher were amazed that he would never be knocked back and would always proudly come in the following morning with another new song.

Stories like this lead me to believe that the McCartney vault has all kinds of interesting stuff, which - whilst may be rejects to him - would be GOLD to us.

 

Yes, and the song is listed on cb70's site: it's called Cello In the Ruins. I think it was considered for Flaming Pie during the Jeff Lynne's batch of sessionis.

 

Hopefully the vault material is good and we'll actually get to hear it. I'm not like the rest of you and have been bored to tears with every McCartney release starting with Press To Play. There have been a few good tracks here and there but I just can't seem to get into the later albums. I liked him better when he rocked i.e. Juniors Farm and Venus And Mars. His material for the last two decades just doesn't float my boat.

 

I'll grant you that -- we certainly DON'T know what's in Paul's vault, and we DO know that he's prolific as hell. But we've also heard Cold Cuts -- the "best" unreleased material from the 1970s to ALMOST get released -- and I never thought it was that great. "Waterspout" is the best thing on it, and it features some of the most cringe-worthy lyrics he's ever written. If his outtakes box is loaded with brilliant work, then it reflects even MORE poorly on his shakier albums.

That said, I'm sure there's more than enough strong material -- along with alternate takes and mixes of the good stuff he DID release -- to fill a nice box set or two. The supposed leaked tracklist of the first box set certainly had me salivating.

 

You didn't even like Memory Almost Full? Sound quality aside, it's the hardest he's rocked since the 1970s...

 

Sean, I agree. But remember that the newest track on this compilation dates back 1978. Cold Cuts was a sweet turned to sour idea. It kept hanging around for ages and nothing came. In 1990, we already had 2 of the songs released as b-sides.

The disc also did not feature alternate recordings, which to me are the crown's jewels of the archives. The alternate takes and different versions, ala Anthology. How many songs were presented to us in the Beatles anthology, for instance? Very few.

From 1978 onwards Paul certaily produced lots of leftovers. These are the ones I'd like to hear as well.

 

Claudio, I agree completely -- and let me re-state: I can't wait for a Macca "Anthology" box, and I'm sure I will love it. I'm just not expecting any stunning masterpieces to show up on it, as has happened in Bob Dylan's "Bootleg Series" releases.

 

Yeah, but I believe there are great songs from the 2000's that haven't been released, Sean. Two of them have always made me salivate: You're Still Here and Always Be There. Another one is Cello In The Ruins. I'm sure these are going to surprise listeners.

 

I love "Boil Crisis."

 

You'd be spectacularly surprised, then.

 

I agree with you on those three, and on the 2000's in general -- with fewer albums put out, there's a much greater chance for good-to-great songs to fall through the cracks, because Paul never stops recording, God love 'im!

 

You're expecting a raft of unreleased McCartney songs to turn up that are as good as (or BETTER than) anything he's ever released officially? Because that's what's happened (more than a few times) in Dylan's Bootleg Series. I'm skeptical, but I'd be thrilled to be wrong, and I'd be happy to admit it here.

 

Not impressed with the two versions I bought. It has been awhile so I'll throw one in the car and the other one in the home system and give both another listen today and let you know what I think. I may be pleasantly surprised.

 

Just occurred me that he recently taped over 20 demos with Geoff Emerick. I don't care if they are not brilliant (at least in the opinion of Jacknife Lee). Bring them on!

 

BTW the two versions of Memory Almost Full I have are the CD/DVD set with 16 songs, the pink digi-pak and the odd shaped one with all the foldouts, white cover with 2 disc 16 songs and an interview.