Well, I had something of a buying frenzy this past summer on Bob Dylan stuff. I bought the following vinyl albums on ebay:
Live 1966
Biograph
the I'm Not There soundtrack
O excitement! And then look what Bob had to go and do next:
Tell Tale Signs: the Bootleg Series Vol 8
I had a feeling there would be something like this soon. He's gone back through all his unreleased stuff from the 60s through the 80s several times (Bootleg Series Vol 1-3, Biograph, No Direction Home), and on the last one he was really kinda scraping the bottom. So I wondered when we'd hear the treasure trove of unreleased music of his later career. Now we know: October 6. As a premium, they offered to the first 5000 to pre-order a cool-looking poster for his satellite radio show. I went ahead and placed my order as soon as I heard about it (vinyl, of course) to try and get the poster, since I knew I would be buying the album anyway. And then, as the good folks at Columbia Records like to do, there's also a $130 edition with a third disc of even more material, plus a little vinyl single deal, and a "special" deluxe hardcover book, 150 pages, of the covers of his singles from around the world. That's actually a pretty ridiculous thing to tempt people with. Single covers just aren't that impressive; record companies didn't put much time into designing them (especially in the 60s--you can look at the singles of the Beatles on
wikipedia, and I think the whole first wave of them in the US when they
got big had the same photograph on them with different titles), and now no one even cares what the single cover is because no one buys singles, they just go to radio stations. So this book, which adds a lot to the price of the "deluxe" edition just has page after page of poorly designed covers, basically just stock photos of Bob with the title of the song across the top, a lot of them the same. And since it's singles "from around the world" (oooh, how enchanting!), a lot of them appear to be written in gobbledygook. My point is, it seems like they're also running out of good ideas to tempt obsessive fans with. Some will buy this just to have the full collection, but no one I don't think will buy this to actually get enjoyment from the book. Something else all this has made me think of is that I remember a time when, when an album came out, it came out in one edition, and everyone had the same thing. Admittedly, I haven't purchased many albums by current artists lately (or by old ones), but a lot of the things I see now have a "regular" version and a "deluxe" or "special" version. The special one might have some "bonus" material, studio outtakes, remixes, or even added songs, or perhaps a DVD with some music videos, and better packaging. The record company differentiates among buyers, forces them to think about paying more for something else, but really the music world was better I think before they started doing this. When Bob was making Highway 61 Revisited, it came out all over the world in the same version: nine songs, one record, a few pretty pictures and a weird piece of writing on the back. But when Modern Times came out in 2006, there were 3 versions (as with this album): the regular CD, the vinyl, and the "Deluxe" CD--which admittedly I got. It's got a DVD with four music videos I haven't even watched, which I could no doubt find on youtube. (if you're wondering, i don't plan on ever buying a "deluxe" edition again). Frankly, I'm a little surprised he lets Columbia/Sony/whoever is in charge of his music to push him around like this. In interviews, he seems to be the type who places no added value on deluxe packages and that type of stuff, and who is concerned with giving his fans the best value. But columbia seems to be set on making as much money as they can from him--no surprise. He just shouldn't take it, I think. In other news, they've totally redesigned his website, and it looks really cool now, with this purplish color scheme. They've also created this feature called "dylan geo" which shows a globe with a marker for every place he's played a show, and users can add setlists, pictures, and reviews of concerts they were at. It goes all the way back to 1961 or so (can't check now--this computer can't really handle it). I do plan on joining and checking out the one Dylan concert I've been at--one of his Atlanta dates in April 2004. I shall close with this video I stumbled across on youtube, an entrancing Johnny Cash gospel song with some entrancing-isn't-quite-the-word lego animation.
