There’s a growing market nowadays in revisiting your old material.
For the U2s and Taylor Swifts of the universe, the commercial aspects are to the fore. An efficient way to make more millions without the hassle of chancing you hand with new material. Superior recording facilities available from when you were starting off. Alerting newer fans to the hidden reservoirs in your back catalogue you can monetise. Maybe that’s overly cynical, but probably not.
But there are more benign reasons for tracks existing in multiple formats and we cover most of them off in this episode.
Sessions for the John Peel Show allowed artists to experiment in the Maida Vale studios with new material and a studio test run without the commitment to a record company of a finished product. Sometimes the version from the Peel Sessions remains the definitive version (looking at you here, Slits sessions, ‘Blindness’ by The Fall and ‘Dreams Never End’ by New Order). Arab Strap and Pavement Maida Vale session versions are featured here.
There are some very lo-fi demos here which nonetheless exhibit an amateur charm and are well worth hearing by The Cure, Blondie and Nick Drake. Modest Mouse and Afghan Whigs, meanwhile, have donated first drafts of more highly finished versions which appeared later on the same album. Julie Doiron continues the fine tradition of singing your song for a foreign demographic (The Beatles’ early German versions are always amusing) with the Spanish rendition of ‘Belleza Aumentada’.
Sometimes an artist reshapes old songs into new directions. The dubby, woozy version of ‘Where Is My Mind?’ is a legitimate and intriguing interpretation of the author’s own song. On the same album you can find a 15-minute version of the 2-minute song ‘Planet of Sound’, which is well worth a quarter of an hour of your time. Grandaddy do the same thing by re-recording the whole of the Sophtware Slump on a piano. On other occasions an artist can’t seem to quite decide which is the canonical version – see St Vincent’s ‘Slow Disco’ and Red House Painters’ ‘Mistress’.
Whatever the reason, it’s always good to listen to familiar friends and realise that these songs weren’t always the way they turned out. Art, like life, is provisional. Deep stuff!
Tracklist:
First big Peel thing, Arab Strap
The world at large, Modest Mouse
Belleza aumentada, Julie Doiron
Where is my mind, Frank Black
Slow disco, St Vincent
I’ll try anything once, The Strokes
10.15 Saturday night (organ home version), The Cure
Mistress, Red House Painters
If I were going, Afghan Whigs
Here, Pavement
I’m waiting for the man, Lou Reed
Once I had a love, Blondie
Jed’s other poem (Beautiful ground), Grandaddy
Way to blue, Nick Drake