Gazza wrote on Apr 14
th, 2022 at 9:56am:
andrews27 wrote on Apr 10
th, 2022 at 11:05am:
If they're not going to put out an actual new album while they're alive, they better keep those Eagle Rock releases coming like they're Grateful Dead Dick's Picks. Two a year.
IMO, this is the sort of thing they should have been doing for at least the last decade. Springsteen puts out an archive release mixed by Bob Clearmountain every
month (when he's not touring - from 2014-2017, every ESB show got released a couple of weeks later, although I wouldnt expect the Stones to do
that). Other artists release old shows regularly - even dead ones like Bowie!
the archives releases are a very limited market - however, so are the expanded studio reissues, which require a lot more actual work. May as well open the floodgates before those of us who care about these things all croak. There are probably about a thousand shows since the early 70's sitting in their vaults gathering dust - and the longer they do, the condition of the tapes are more likely to become unusable.
We couldn't even get the complete Roundhouse show out of them.
I'm not religiously following the Springsteen releases, but my impression is that these are chiefly digital-only offerings without packaging and distribution costs. Wouldn't that reduce production costs for the RS? But I suspect that releases in physical packages are an ego boost for a certain age of rocker.
For all the disservice Clearmountain's brickwalled re-releases are doing the fans, he ought to be working for free. There are no less than three fan-made unbrickwalled conversions of Tattoo You on Demonoid. They went up within days of the re-release, which demonstrates a certain consensus in dissatisfaction. Again, I blame an older rocker's concern with being competitive in the marketplace, and not with the archival demands of the core purchasers.