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Different versions of same album

Started by holyzombiejesus, May 17, 2021, 04:21:35 PM

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the science eel

Quote from: Video Game Fan 2000 on May 17, 2021, 04:38:36 PM
The Fall's Perverted by Language is a different album than it used to be - some copies start with 4 tracks that were never on the original album and a few songs are, bizarrely, shortened to have Mark's spoken word rants editted out.

The best bit of 'Garden', too! ('this entails explosive devices being wired up under every window sill...'). I was so fucked off my CD version didn't have it. I'm not even sure the track is shorter without - the band just play on without any vocal.

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: non capisco on May 19, 2021, 07:09:03 PM
Oh man I get such a Proustian rush off Check Your Head and Paul's Boutique. Those lads and Prince were such obsessions for me at various stages in my adolescence, the Beasties especially were a gateway to a lot of other amazing music as well. Yauch dying was one of the few times I've cried at a celebrity shuffling off.

Same. When I heard a Sly and the Family Stone comp it blew my mind how many bits I recognised just from those albums. The one time I saw them live their main support act Jon Spencer Blues Explosion led me down a whole load of other rabbit holes - Royal Trux and the like. I owe so much to those two albums. And Ill Communication. Not so much the others, unfortunately.

kngen

Bad Brains - Rock for Light - probably in my top 10 albums of all time - was remixed by original producer Ric Ocasek, really badly, with weird panned guitars and smothered in reverb, and they fucked with the track order for some reason, too, for its eventual long-overdue re-release. Thankfully, I have an original (although it's not fared well over the years) but whenever I wanted to listen to it at a mate's house (or nowadays on Spotify), it's the remixed abortion that I have to endure. Nightmare.

I recently found out that, before Ric Ocasek died, he went out of his way to make sure that his wife and mother of his children, the woman who discovered his dead body, got nothing from his estate. Prick Ocasek, that's what I call him. Yeah, I said it.[nb]Still like The Cars, though.[/nb]

McChesney Duntz

Quote from: the science eel on May 19, 2021, 09:47:42 PM
The best bit of 'Garden', too! ('this entails explosive devices being wired up under every window sill...'). I was so fucked off my CD version didn't have it. I'm not even sure the track is shorter without - the band just play on without any vocal.

I wonder if those bits never made it onto the master tape - there are certainly plenty of times something was added in the midst of production that never got onto the tape proper and could therefore never be replicated (the live radio at the end of "I Am The Walrus," of course, and some of the effects at the end of the vinyl version of the Dukes of Stratosphear's "Mole From The Ministry"). But this is the Fall we're talking about here, whose sourcing for CD has often been highly dodgy in various ways, and the original of that particular bit is easy to find (it was part of his appearance on Greenwich Sound Radio), so it could conceivably have been reinserted if they wanted to. I don't know. Glad I never got that particular CD issue, then. My German Line import will serve me just fine...

Video Game Fan 2000

Quote from: kngen on May 19, 2021, 10:00:52 PM
Bad Brains - Rock for Light - probably in my top 10 albums of all time - was remixed by original producer Ric Ocasek, really badly, with weird panned guitars and smothered in reverb, and they fucked with the track order for some reason, too, for its eventual long-overdue re-release. Thankfully, I have an original (although it's not fared well over the years) but whenever I wanted to listen to it at a mate's house (or nowadays on Spotify), it's the remixed abortion that I have to endure. Nightmare.

Wasn't this record either sped up or slowed down for the CD version? Its pretty funny - there are times where HR sounds normal then suddenly it swoops up until the same Loony Toons pitch as the rest of the record.

Rizla

Check out these dunces -
Split Enz 1975 debut, Mental Notes was an Australia/NZ-only release.   

Phil Manzanera invited the band to london to re-record the album, which they did with a different band line-up and track listing.
The album was released worldwide in 1976 with the same title but modified artwork accommodating the change in personnel and hairstyles,

but with a completely different title and cover in the antipodes.


They kept up the foolishness when they tried to give their 1980 album a different title for each territory in its aboriginal language

but the record company told them to knock it off after they got as far as the australia and NZ versions

What a bunch of flamin' galahs.


famethrowa

What about Back In The DHSS? I must have got hold of some kind of re-release, so the absolute first thing I heard from this amazing band was some plinky plonky Noddy theme tune Zappa nonsense.

Noodle Lizard

Not that I think we have many fans here (past or present), but a few years ago Cradle of Filth released the long-known-about "first attempt" at Dusk ... And Her Embrace, widely-considered one of their best albums. On account of some convoluted label disputes (as well as half the band leaving), it was never released in its original form and was instead re-recorded entirely with the new members, with a few significant differences.

The official version is far superior overall - significantly better production, instrumentation and the changing of some of the more embarrassing lyrics. There are some bits from the original, though, that I wish they'd kept. Some of the timing and vocal deliveries fit a lot better - not to the point where I think entire versions of the songs win out, but to the point where a clever melding of the two might create an "Ultimate Version". Also, omitting Nocturnal Supremacy entirely is a ghastly decision as it's one of the best songs from that era, but it did turn up as a bonus track in various forms throughout the years.

Anyway, that's the one I'm most familiar with.

markburgle

First Clash album US version has 4 songs removed and replaced with 5 single A/B sides.

Bowie's Young Americans was originally called The Gouster, and didn't have Win, Across the Universe and a couple others

phantom_power

And The Man Who Sold The World was called The Metrobolist but I don't think the content was different. Diamond Dogs started out as bits of an abandoned 1984 musical, though all that is a different topic - working versions of albums

Pauline Walnuts

Wasn't the 'The Metrobolist' more of a marketing thing for the last re-issue?

NoSleep

#71
Raw Power by Iggy & The Stooges remixed by Iggy several years back and is probably the loudest CD ever made. I prefer the remix in some respects.

The Doors remixed their entire catalogue and released them on the 40th anniversary of the band. I like the original mixes much better than these.

Pere Ubu's New Picnic Time features a track entitled Jehovah's Kingdom Come; all subsequent releases of the album after the initial release feature a version of the song with the word "Jehovah" excised. Still a great album.

John Fahey (mentioned earlier in the thread for one of his albums) re-recorded several of his albums. The improved technical quality and performances are appreciated, but there's something about the warts and all original releases that have to be heard (I think being ahead of their time adds some important fire).

Are You Experienced by Hendrix has a different track order in the US version compared to the UK version. Several albums get rejigged in this way on the way to the US, for example Ian Dury's New Boots And Panties had the single "Sex and Drugs And Rock and Roll" added for its release over there; and Robert Wyatt's compilation of his Rough Trade singles, Nothing Can Stop Us, had "Shipbuilding" added to it.

phantom_power

Quote from: OnlyRegisteredSoICanRead on May 20, 2021, 09:30:17 AM
Wasn't the 'The Metrobolist' more of a marketing thing for the last re-issue?

No I think it was the original title but was changed at the last minute, along with the artwork, because it was fucking stupid

phantom_power

Quote from: NoSleep on May 20, 2021, 09:37:28 AM

Pere Ubu's New Picnic Time features a track entitled Jehovah's Kingdom Come; all subsequent releases of the album after the initial release feature a version of the song with the word "Jehovah" excised. Still a great album.


That reminds me of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Eno & Byrne that had Qu'Ran removed after initial pressings due to religious objections

NoSleep

I think the only person who objected to the original in Pere Ubu's case was David Thomas.

Pancake

Quote from: non capisco on May 19, 2021, 07:09:03 PM
Ooh, you're not wrong, the released version is tons better. They still sneaked in a tiny bit of Hendrix at the end on that one as well.

Oh man I get such a Proustian rush off Check Your Head and Paul's Boutique. Those lads and Prince were such obsessions for me at various stages in my adolescence, the Beasties especially were a gateway to a lot of other amazing music as well. Yauch dying was one of the few times I've cried at a celebrity shuffling off.

Aye, I'm not usually prone to this sort of sentimentality but if I'm ever in NYC I'm taking a pilgrimage to the park they named after him

famethrowa

Quote from: NoSleep on May 20, 2021, 09:37:28 AM
.

Pere Ubu's New Picnic Time features a track entitled Jehovah's Kingdom Come; all subsequent releases of the album after the initial release feature a version of the song with the word "Jehovah" excised. Still a great album.


I don't think it ought to be blasphemy, just saying Jehovah?

sevendaughters

was going to say N*E*R*D but I was reminded that Don Cab side project Thee Speaking Canaries did a high and low fidelity version of their album Songs for the Terrestrially Challenged. One was CD and one was cassette, recorded separately but back to back. but they're both on bandcamp now and you can hear the difference. prefer the hi-fi version but think the actual performance is better rather than the recording.

phantom_power

Aren't there different versions of Rilo Kiley's Execution of All Things?

Who was the modern band that re-recorded their debut album and gave it a new parenthetical addendum?

sevendaughters

does No Protection count? also what about that boring piano version of that boring record St Vincent did?

phantom_power

No Protection is an album in its own right, just made up of remixes of Protection. A bit like Blissed Out by The Beloved or In Dub by Renegade Soundwave, or countless other remix albums

NoSleep

Quote from: famethrowa on May 20, 2021, 11:43:43 AM
I don't think it ought to be blasphemy, just saying Jehovah?

Back in the day people were afraid to speak the word, coming up with the word "Tetragrammaton" (the four letter name) to say in its stead. Not sure if any of that has anything to do with David Thomas' editing of the song.

scarecrow

When was that changed?

Am I right in saying that David Thomas was a Jehova's Witness at the time, but isn't anymore?

DukeDeMondo

Two albums leapt into my mind when I first saw the thread title. I don't think either of them have been mentioned yet.

The first is Life Of Pablo by Kanye West, which appeared on Tidal in the wee hours of February 14th 2016 (if memory serves) only to disappear again a couple hours later. When it came back it was slightly different, and between then and the release of the "final" version four months later, it underwent any number of alterations, some more significant than others. By June 14th, "Wolves" had been thoroughly "fixed," a few other things had been remixed or reshuffled or slipped in under the skin, some things that had originally served as preludes or codas to longer pieces now stood alone, and the album ended with "Saint Pablo," a brilliant track that debuted well after Life Of Pablo, and as a consequence it seems to occupy a slightly different space to everything else, seems to be situated at a certain height, far enough removed to be able to comment not only on the stuff that precedes it on Life Of Pablo, but also, in strange harmony with the deceptively slight "I Love Kanye," on its position within the wider context of Kanye's discography, referencing College Dropout here, recalling Yeezus or even MBDTF over there.  It brought to an exhilarating close the prolonged, very public bit of morphing and malfunctioning and mutating that went on before Life Of Pablo found its ultimate form – creative indecision and fried intuition rendered as visible and thrilling and tangibly transformative as the datamoshing spectacularised in the video for "Welcome To Heartbreak" from a few albums before.

The other album that comes to mind is Don't Stand Me Down by Dexy's Midnight Runners. Whilst there is a wee bit of revisionism at work in the idea that DSMD was met with blanket hostility from the off – it wasn't ripped titless by everyone, the Wikipedia page cites a contemporaneous Melody Maker article in which Colin Irwin calls it "the most challenging, absorbing, moving, uplifting and ultimately triumphant album of the year" and there were others who said similar things or similar enough – it is nonetheless true that it didn't do very well commercially, not that it was ever really expected to, and that, whilst it did have its champions, the wider narrative did point towards a pretentious, arse-headed, senseless, tuneless, boring hodgepodge of fuck nothing. It was only in the wake of the 1997 reissue on Creation Records, which incorporated a couple extra tracks, included extensive liner notes from Kevin Rowland, credited the writers of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves Of London" for the part they played in "One Of Those Things," listed "Knowledge of Beauty" under its original title of "My National Pride" and "Listen To This" as "I Love You (Listen To This)," and had a different image on the cover (one that rather pointedly excluded Helen O'Hara) that a widespread revaluation got under way, by the end of which everyone had seemingly come to the conclusion that Don't Stand Me Down wasn't just the best Dexy's Midnight Runners album (I don't believe it's the best Dexy's Midnight Runners album), but one of the very best albums of the 1980s (I do believe it's one of the very best albums of the 1980s).

The most significant thing about the 1997 version, for me, is that it includes "Reminisce (Part One)," because its inclusion marks an explicit return to Brendan Behan. I feel like Behan functioned throughout the ...Soul Rebels era as a sort of spirit guide. Sort of Jaga in a balaclava. Sean Campbell, in his brilliant book on Second Generation Irish musicians in England, which I only got round to reading very recently, talks about how Behan "served as a key icon of Irish affinity in Dexy's oeuvre," and I think that's entirely true. Copies of Behan's Borstal Boy are on evidence in early promotional materials, he's one of the Irish intellectuals whose names are chanted in the chorus of "Dance Stance" – and chanted again in the superior, fiercer, re-titled version that opens ...Soul Rebels, where it's prefaced by the sound of Johnny Rotten, another Irish intellectual, ripping through a burst of radio static – and he's there in the unambiguous declaration of support for the "Irish Republican Army" that appeared in tour programs from around that time.

Come the second record, which marks a retreat from that gritted-knuckled confrontational sort of Irishness, even though it is far more "Irish" in its sound than is the debut, Behan seems to have been replaced by another figure of modern Irish mythology, and that figure, to my mind, is Van Morrison, someone who largely represented a far less troublesome (pun maybe halfways intended), airier, more benign sort of Irishness, and whose influence is felt profoundly throughout. He's there in the language used, he's there in the very notion of "Celtic Soul," he's there in the appeals to authenticity (an authenticity paradoxically twinned with a turn towards excess theatricality), he's there in the nascent mewling of the paranoia that would eventually swallow all but the heel of Rowland's left foot, he's there in the brief monologues and dialogues that would, again, come to dominate Rowland's output in time, and he's there in the stirring of a very specific sort of nostalgia fringed by a very vague sort of Irishness that it never properly fixes upon. Most obviously he's there in the cover of "Jackie Wilson Said."

Don't Stand Me Down is the most overtly "topical" of the three albums, it's by far the most explicitly "Irish" thematically, but "Reminisce (Part One)," which is all about Kevin wandering Dublin in the summer of 1980 "searching for the spirit of Brendan Behan" is absent from the original version, even though "Reminisce (Part Two)" is not. I think it might have something to do with the fact that, between Too-Rye-Ay and Don't Stand Me Down, Behan had pretty much been claimed by The Pogues, whose debut album included both a version of Behan's "The Auld Triangle" and Shane MacGowan's own "Streams of Whiskey," which imagines a paralytic dreamtime romp with a Behan envisioned as a fevered manifestation of some sort of Banjaxed Old Blarneyed Beyond. Maybe the famously abstemious Kevin Rowland, who hated The Pogues for reinforcing - so he believed - the derogatory and demeaning notion of the Plastered Paddy that infested the British imagination and that a song like "Dance Stance" was supposed to have stomped to nothing but feathers, felt Behan was tainted by association. I dunno.   

Whatever the reason, the song wasn't included on the original album, was added to the "Second Edition" in 1997, then removed again come the third iteration of the thing, 2002's "Director's Cut." This third run at the record largely undoes the Creation version – he was right the first thhhhhhyyyyyymmmmme after all, mostly –  removing the two tracks that were added to that release and revising the cover yet again (Helen's back where she belongs). What it adds is the fucking brilliant "Kevin Rowland's 13th Time," which now opens the album, and so doing alters the countenance of the whole enterprise in some strange way ("I thought a little joke might be a good idea, just to sort of, I dunno, kick off the proceedings as it were... you ever hear the one about the, you know, the middle class idiots who sort of spend all their time analysing their own emotions and writing bullshit poetry, you know, that we're supposed to read? I mean as if we're fucking interested? You like that one, yeah? It's a true story, that one.") even though the rest unfolds exactly as it did in 1985. The only hangovers from the Creation version are the updated writing credits on "One Of Those Things," the liner notes (now bolstered by further meditations from Rowland, that we're supposed to read, I mean as if we're fucking interested), and the changes to the titles of what had been "Listen To This" and "Knowledge of Beauty" once upon a Kenilworth Road riot.

I've heard and read various things that Kevin Rowland has said over the years about why "My National Pride" wasn't called "My National Pride" on the original release. It was called "My National Pride" the whole way through the album's production, he says. It was only at the very last minute, when the artwork was being finalised, that his nerves took to the baiters and he opted to call it something less charged instead. I've never been entirely sure what it was that ripped the nerves from beneath him. What he was scared of? Could be one of any number of things, I suppose. Or any number of any number of things.  The blistering anti-Irish sentiment running rampant at the time might have influenced his decision some, but it was nothing new, that, even if it was running thicker and deeper at that time than had been the case before. Still, he wasn't racing around the pressing plants bellowing new words into every copy of the album as it fell from the guts of non-being, the lyrics were still about everything they'd been about back when that song still had the title that it used to have, and not just that song, every fucking song. Still it was all "Bel-FAHHST, Bel-FAHHHST," still his "national pride" was a "personal pride," still he stood insisting till the end "here is a prohhtest a prohhtest TEST-TIH!"
Maybe it was the unsavoury ideological weight that any appeal to Nationalism at that time, or any time, must shoulder. Or maybe it was the thought that this expression of "National Pride" might provide further ammunition for the swiftly-swelling numbers of Rowland-Refusers who found his "Irishness" inherently fucking ludicrous, something that probably wasn't helped by the dungarees and the straw and the bare footed braying at the Thatcher from the thatching. Maybe he thought it would scan as the hollow affectations of a clueless Plastic.

But then how to explain the video? Unless those are the very things that do explain the video.

Who the fuck knows? In any case, despite the fact that the original version is probably the one that's most frequently heard today, if only because it's the only version on Spotify, the "Director's Cut" is probably the definitive take, partly because of what it sounds like, partly because of what it feels like, and partly because of what it reads like. Rowland's notes, for both the Second Edition and the Director's Cut, were the rare notes worth reading, and they allowed for the thing to be understood in ways that it maybe hadn't been understood before, and maybe wouldn't have been otherwise. Although, well, if it takes all that, like.

And it doesn't end there. Other versions are to be found, they're various, yeah various, strolling about the Old Roads, squinting at the bracken. There exists on YouTube a version of the album called Don't Stand Me Down Revisited, for example, produced by someone calling themselves Friendly Ghost. I wouldn't call it a "fan edit," as such, for the person who made it admits in the description that, whilst they respect the record immensely, they don't really like it very much, and they don't really agree with what is now the critical consensus. What they've decided to do is to create an alternate version that feels as immediate and infectious and disciplined as Too-Rye-Ay (not that the original album was undisciplined or anything near, but it did feel undisciplined at times). Like the "Director's Cut," it opens with "Kevin Rowland's 13th Time," but then unlike the "Director's Cut" it progresses at a ferocious pelt, performing radical surgeries upon the likes of "The Occasional Flicker" and "This Is What She's Like" (the latter cut from twelve minutes and thirteen seconds to little over three) and expanding to pull "Reminisce (Part One)" and even "Because Of You" in out from out thonner. It falls apart in the middle, "Reminisce (Part One)" fades out a few seconds too soon for no discernible reason, one of a succession of arsed-up landings, and "Because of You" doesn't work in this context at all, but for a lot of the rest of the time it's actually pretty fucking revelatory. Virtually every other track starts with a thunderous Kev-Clap that makes everything feel like fucking "Like A Rolling Stone" for a second, and it is undeniably the case that, when the hooks are foregrounded so forcefully, when the more meandering dilly-dallying (or the more patience-testing fucking about, the less charitable might say) is trimmed to next to nothing the spoken word bits that count really do count, and the stuff that always sounded like it would make for a brilliant fucking three minute pop song now has made for a brilliant fucking three minute pop song. It's one of the more delightful fan edits of anything I've ever come across.

Give it a go if you like, for in the morning it might be nothing but the rice and the rumours of rice.

non capisco


jenna appleseed


holyzombiejesus

Agree, really great post, thanks. If I wasn't about to go to sleep, I'd be playing the records now.

SpiderChrist

Cracking post, Duke. Was unaware of the 1997 version (I've got the original vinyl and the Director's Cut CD) so will be hunting that down.

FWIW, Don't Stand Me Down might not be the best Dexys album, but it is my favourite Dexys album.

DukeDeMondo

#88
Ah Jesus, thank you very much, folks, that was so lovely of you all to say. Thank you. If you're a fan of the album, or even if you're not - perhaps especially if you're not - it'd be interested to know how that "Revisited" number on YouTube plays out for you. I've downloaded the audio for I think when it works it really does fucking rattle along tremendously, and the stuff that it buggers up - rendering certain bits nonsensical by cutting the stuff leading up to them, fading out too soon after the "Ken Livingstone is a folk hero" on "Reminisce (Part One)," including "Because Of You," and so on - is easy enough to fix if you have even the most rudimentary grasp of Audacity and if you have the original tracks about you. Which on YouTube you do. It makes for a thumping old shower-time shoutalong, if you feel like a version of the album that you can shout along to in the shower is something you deserve to have access to.

holyzombiejesus