Back To The Future

THE REISSUES INDUSTRY: A special report by Chas De Whalley Part1:THE BIG PICTURE

When it comes to purchasing our pop pasts, we’ve never had it so good. Just about every heritage act most of us could ever name would seem to be out there in some form or another, waiting to be bagged up and taken home.

Go into any record shop on the High Street and they’re everywhere: racks and racks of reissues, many of them at prices which you simply can’t afford to ignore. All of them tempting the serious music fan towards bankruptcy.

From a true collectors’ point of view, of course, none of them are a match for the original vinyl on the original label. But what do you want, good grammar or good taste? Those of us who are more interested in the music than the matrix number can now routinely get our hands on more bonus tracks, rarer photographs, better sleevenotes and previously unseen movie footage than we could ever have dreamed of owning 15 or 20 years ago. And, if they’ve been remastered properly, the current crop of CD reissues certainly sound at least as good as they ever did on your Dansette – and probably a million times better.

“I’d be very disappointed if there was an artist once signed to one of our labels who didn’t have at least one CD currently available,” says EMI’s director of catalogue Steve Davis. You may dispute that and cite some forgotten …

by Chas De Whalley
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