Confessions of a Fanboy

Welcome to the Buyer’s Remorse column for 2007. I called my shot and named my Top 10 Albums of the Year, and already I’m pissed about all the great records I didn’t get to mention. Fortunately there’s an easy remedy for that. In no particular order (unless otherwise noted), here are a few of the albums that got away, or just missed the Top 10.

First, I want to talk about a few of the re-issues or compilations that were listed. I’m not above naming one of these type packages in my Top 10 list, but there does seem something fundamentally unfair about it so I tend to weight things in my mind against them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t great, and here are a few of them from the past year I really loved.

• Joe Satriani – Surfing With the Alien (20th Anniversary Edition): This re-release made me feel so very, very old. I wrote a pretty thorough review of this deluxe edition for BC Magazine when it was released this summer as part of my 7 Days of Satriani series.

• Traveling Wilburys – The Traveling Wilburys Collection: What the fuck happened to this world that an album that combined the talents of George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne could sit out-of-print for almost 20 years? The record industry wonders why people won’t buy CDs, yet they wouldn’t put this out for sale? Fortunately, the Traveling Wilburys are back in stores and we are all the better for it. “Handle With Care” is a classic.
• U2 – The Joshua Tree (20th Anniversary Edition): Damn if I haven’t been meaning to write up something full and proper about this release for the past month! I was so excited about the album being remastered and the bevy of bonus material being packaged with it, and yet I’ve just had no time to collect my thoughts on it. Here are a few quick hitters:
  • The Remastering: Very, very well done. Most of the time, remastering is little more than an excuse to compress the original recording to hell and back and give the bass a big boost. That might make the record sound more modern, and therefore better to listeners of my generation, but it’s a fraudulent thing to do to a record. The Edge supervised the remastering of The Joshua Tree, and I was shocked and refreshed at how faithful it is to the original record. The new version is an upgrade without destroying what was great about the music as it was originally recorded.

  • The Bonus CD: There are some nice ditties on here, several of which had never before been released. These rarities are nice and I’ll listen to them from time to time, but the decision not to make a double album was the correct one.
  • The Bonus DVD: The documentary is a bit daft and embarrassing. As charismatic as Bono can be, there’s no question he can be a real twat when the camera is rolling. The concert is nice, but there are some disappointments there, too. I hate the way it’s filmed with so many extreme closeups on Bono’s head. I’m not complaining about the film showing Bono a lot; that’s standard treatment for the frontman. I’m referring to the annoying way they frame him. I hate it. I also wish they’d mixed the sound in Dolby Digital or DTS, which they didn’t.
  • Overall: The super deluxe package is lovely, but pricey. I love it and wouldn’t hesitate to spend the money on it again. Budget-conscious listeners should still buy the remastered version.
• Elliott Smith — New Moon: Let me politely, preemptively tell Mark Saleski to shut his fuckin’ hole while I talk about this one. Now that we’ve dispensed with that…

  New Moon is the second posthumous release of material from the late singer/songwriter, and in some ways it’s a better listen than the first, From a Basement On the Hill. Let me try to explain…

  From a Basement On the Hill was an album Smith was working on at the time of his death. He’d intended it as a double album – only one CD’s worth of material was released. Not only that, but Smith had been all over the map musically and mentally during these sessions. One thing is clear: what was released was not the album Elliott had intended. Instead, two very nice people released their best guess as to what Smith might have done. The music on that album is generally extraordinary and I love it. I’m not knocking Basement, I’m just pointing out the problems with it.

  New Moon, by contrast, is simply a collection of rarities and previously unreleased music that was sitting around in Smith’s vaults. No attempt was made to cobble this into a cohesive record, and it’s not. There are some great, great songs on here that would have been fabulous additions to any of the records for which they might have originally been intended. There are also some lesser moments and it’s obvious why they were cut. Highlights for me include “Go By,” “Angel in the Snow,” “Talking to Mary,” “Looking Over My Shoulder,” and “Going Nowhere.”

Fuckin’ hell, I’ve been going on for quite awhile and I still didn’t get to all the albums that almost made the Top 10 but weren’t some sort of re-issue or compilation. I guess that means we’ll need a third installment. To be continued…

Filed under: Tags: Bob Dylan, Elliott Smith, George Harrison, Joe Satriani, Tom Petty, U2