Just Another CD in the Wall

How many repackaged, reborn classics can you cheerfully consume?

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

For many years we have been filling the retirement coffers of old rock and rollers through an endless parade of remastered, remixed, and reformatted editions of their classic recordings. We are suckers for the anniversaries that seem to herald these repackaged rebirths: thirty, forty, some have reached fifty years and counting. The purchasing potential is limitless. And here we go coughing up again, all while it is money and not blood.

The latest wheeze (let’s keep up the respiratory metaphor) is the latest remix of The Beatles undeniable classic, Revolver. This is hot on the heels of Pink Floyd’s Animals. The latter somewhat delayed due to the eternal wranglings between Gilmour and Waters. ‘I am you and what I see is me’ — perhaps, they should learn the lesson of such lyrics.

Anyway I managed not to succumb to the siren calls of consumerism and held off on buying another Animals. I am quite happy with the one I’ve got, thank you. It sounds perfectly fine to my ears, albeit ears that are battered and abused through decades of misuse.

But this week I wasn’t lashed to the mast so tightly and they caught me. I was lulled by some of the reviews of the new Revolver remix, extolling the new lush sound quality… Hear Revolver as you have never heard it before and blah, blah, blah. Well, at least they didn’t get to me entirely. I was still loosely attached to my mast. I only opted for the one disc remix recording at just over a tenner. You can shell out a hundred quid for a five disc de luxe super-duper version with a million takes of each track etc. But as each take is presumably inferior to the final original version as recorded on the album, other than for a music historian/journalist, I fail to see the attraction. I don’t get it.

Well my calmed down, one disc edition arrived yesterday. I played it once. It sounded great. It’s Revolver, right? It sounded as good as the last cd edition I bought of the album a few years ago. In fact, it sounded exactly the same.

Sorry. Maybe it’s my ears that’s the problem. In any event, I’ve never claimed to be an audiophile. I like great sounding music. Sure. I have some reasonable equipment that does the business as…