Blur Catalogue Currently Being Remastered At Abbey Road

Off the top of my head, "Stop me if you think..." on Strangeways also has the breaking-up distortion. Same with "London" on World Won't Listen. Maybe Cemetry Gates...I can't remember now. It just seemed to pop-up in places everywhere. It's frustrating because the albums sound really great in parts, and then you get these distorted bits.

 

...anyway, back to Blur. It was that "much louder" quote that got me. Albums like The Great Escape are not going to be helped by getting louder, it's pretty squashed and loud to begin with.

 

Great to see that someone praises The Great Escape which almost always seems to get a bum rap.

I can't agree with you on the B-sides though. Some of the stuff they have there is easily among the best stuff they did. "Young & Lovely", "Threadneedle Street", "Theme from an Imaginary Film", "Ultranol", "Tame" and "Black Book" are all superlative songs.

 

Vinyl set is currently $154 at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Blur-Vinyl-Boxed-Limited-Edition/dp/B007SAKY42/ref=zg_bs_387647011_21

 

Hey - thanks for the promo!

Vinyl is $144 at amazon.ca.

 

I should add that I'd be getting the deluxe editions of the albums. They are two disc editions which include the original album and b-sides.

 

It's easy to understand why the Parklife b-sides were a bit on the flimsy side - think of the amount of album tracks on Modern Life Is Rubbish and the vast quanitity of b-sides that came with it, then they immediately got working on Parklife, a 16-track album of their best material to date. The fact their are still 3 or 4 excellent b-sides from that album is a testament to how prolific they were, even if the remainder was made of of novelty things like 'Got Yer!', 'Beard', 'Red Necks', 'Anniversary Waltz' and 'Alex's Song', all of which unfairly got them a reputation as being a 'crap b-sides band' for a while.

 

Does anyone know how limited the box is?

 

I don't think "Alex's Song" is novelty or crap. It's only the silly production choice they made that makes it seem that way. It'll be really interesting to listen to the demo on the box set.

 

Yeah, sorry, I glossed over that in my initial answer. The bsides aren't the question, if you'd end up getting them anyway.

As I said, I can't really speak to the four exclusive CDs. There are the three DVDs, not to mention the book & 7", which I think will definitely be worth having. Two concerts - one complete, one near - plus a bunch of other video stuff.

I guess it comes down to the money, in a way. If you end up buying all seven deluxe editions, as far as I can tell you end up paying a decent proportion of the boxset cost. So, the question is, do you want to spend a bit more money all in one hit to get it all, or is getting most of the stuff over time for a bit less a more reasonable way of doing it? If you think you'd end up getting all seven, my personal suggestion is that the box offers better value overall - seven extra discs! - but that may be a bit much for a casual fan.

Let us know what you choose! As I've said (err, repeatedly!), I'm really looking forward to these, so it's great to see others are too...

 

I agree with bonjo that there are a couple of tracks on Louder Than Bombs that have issues, but the four original studio LPs in the Smiths box set sound as good as or better than the Rough Trade originals, in my opinion.

 

My crowd (at the time) and I would not agree - "Red Necks" was always a celebrated song; it's hilarious. As was "Got Yer!" - "who brought that bleedin' goose in here?"

"Beard" is a great departure. Admittedly, I was the only one in my group that really liked "Supa Shoppa", maybe because unlike the other b-sides it could have actually fit in with "Parklife" and wasn't different enough.

"Theme From An Imaginary Film" is the only b-side from this era that I really could do without. Different strokes and all that. It's just always felt like it's trying too hard or something, I guess.

Agree to that!

 

I am just going to buy the 2xcd sets...the extra tracks in the box mainly appear to be demos or live tracks, so not too fussed. (Especially if the demos are as poor as the one on the recent Kravitz reissue)

 

I ordered The Smiths Super Deluxe, The Beach Boys Smile Box and Serge Gainsbourg Melody Nelson box from Amazon Canada.

All great prices and delivered fine but was hit with a customs fee on all three. They use UPS / DHL by default for large sets so getting caught is inevitable.

Still worked out cheaper than Amazon UK.

 

Just so everyone knows, the 2CDs are on Bestbuy.com for $13.99 compared to Amazon's $21.99.

 

I was curious about this as well.

 

I don't believe that a limitation has been mentioned. As far as I know it's only limited by how many production runs are merited by the demand. I would think that they would want to cover everyone in one big run, but if they get caught out by big demand, I would think that they would do another big run.

I doubt that we'll see so many produced that you can expect to see discounts though.

 

Months ahead of release day, I pre-ordered the U2 Achtung Baby deluxe box from Amazon.ca at a great price, and on release day, got an e-mail saying they were sold out and out of stock. Several weeks later, they were back in stock and shipped my copy, but, by that time I had already ordered from somewhere else. I was able to return the more expensive copy and get the benefit of Amazon.ca's super cheap price, but that experience left me leery of trying to score what seem to be too-good-to-be-true deals from Amazon.ca in the future.

 

Bingo. This has happened to me frequently & is maddening.

Amazon.ca is the poor sister of the amazon chain & is notorious for not having significant pre-orders in stock on the release date. If one pre-orders from amazon.ca they should be keenly aware that there is a 50/50 chance that amazon.ca will not have the item on release date.

 

I'm willing to put up with the potential of a wait, in exchange for the awesome pricing that Amazon.ca sometimes offers on boxes. I wouldn't have the Stones vinyl boxes without them!

 

How is that 'too good to be true'? You rec'd the set for the cheapest price around....sounds like they held up their part of the deal. Yes it took a couple of weeks but you can't say something is too good to be true if you rec'd the item for the cheap price.

 

You may never get them though, as happened with The Smiths set, and end up missing out completely as it sells out elsewhere.

 

I think Rhino still has (very expensive) Smiths boxes available

 

I had to wait several weeks not knowing whether Amazon.ca would ever ship the limited box set I ordered. In the meantime, I ordered it from another source, because it was limited, and I didn't want to miss out on it altogether. Then I had to return one of the sets and wait for a refund, during which time I was out nearly double the money that the set cost. The money I ultimately saved wasn't worth that hassle to me. Your mileage may vary.

 

Sounds like you were impatient to me and jumped the gun buying it elsewhere. As if anything U2 does is truly so limited you wouldn't get it...they are way too big of a band to have to worry a box set for their best album would be sold out in a day.