First off, let me be straightforward. I love capitalism. I love a variety of goods, I love free options, I love the fact that I can buy books and music and beer and tacos. Capitalism is good. It is not a perfect good, and much bad, indeed evil, has been done in the name of capitalism. And I have no stomach for people who talk about a revolution or who maintain that Marxism or communism are the solution, because they are not. I've lived and spent enough time in enough places where there is serious poverty, where capitalism has failed or fallen short, and what people always want is not less capitalism, but better capitalism. But I'll echo the old line about democracy, which I'm sure is Churchill's because Churchill said all the cool shit, and maintain that capitalism is flawed and imperfect and problematic and better than every other option.
That preface is by way of saying, the trend I'm about to bitch about is one I could completely avoid by not buying into it. Free will and all that.
I still buy cd's, which makes me an anachronism. And the latest attempt to sucker serious music fans is the reissuing of great old albums with supposed remastering and a few new songs. This seems especially common among a particular genre, notably post-punk, proto-indie music. Pavement did it a few years back with the reissue of Slanted and Enchanted, one of the ten greatest albums in the history of albums. In addition to the original, with all of the supposed aural enhancements, came a whole slew of rarities, B-sides, demos, live songs and the like. A formula was born. If the album was essential to its devotees, a version costing twice as much with extra stuff -- even if the fans have some or all of that same extra stuff in different configurations -- becomes doubly essential. Especially if the generation of diehard fans now has a lot more disposable income than it did some fifteen years ago.
Now my favorite band of all time, the Replacements, is in the reissue business, having released the first four or five albums with the expected extras and audio enhancements that may or may not be a step up. And of course like Pavlov, I salivated as soon as they rang that bell and immediately bought two of the reissues, Let It Be (the greatest album of all time) and The Replacements Stink, their second album, which pretty much captures the transition from punk to postpunk in one fifteen or so minute burst. And they are great. And I'll buy the others. And I'll fall in love with the Replacements all over again, and with Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville all over again.
But this still seems like a pretty cynical manipulation of the truest fans of a band. The only out I'm giving both the labels (Rhino has taken over the 'Mats catalog, for example) and the bands is that a lot of these bands never became rich. I have no problem with the Replacements making a little more money off of their music given the incalculable amount of joy I have gotten from them. Still, I wish there were some sort of code on each album so that I get a free download of the inevitable re-rerelease of Let It Be in 2018. Sucker me once, shame on me, after all, but . . .
