I will restrain myself from saying what I think about your comments. Flames is putting it kindly.
The planned new CD from Rhino is NOT a rehash of anything. It is the first and only single CD collection that puts together Gord's greatest hits. It uses the original recording (with the exception of The Circle Is Small). It will be remastered (including four songs not yet remastered). Maybe you don't want to buy it. That's fine. But a lot of us will. And there are probably a few hundred thousand people who don't have a Gord album at all, like two or three of the hits, and will be thrilled to have the choice of a single CD with ALL of the big songs. Perhaps that isn't you. Fine. And, for what it's worth, this CD will make a very nice gift item for those of us who like to give our friends good music but can't afford to buy all their friends a boxed set.
The only albums that can be described as "rehashes" are all the reissues of Gord's UA material. EMI has been doing that for years, and I would guess that Gord doesn't like it either. Those albums contain random tracks from the pre-1970 albums and I don't generally recommend them to people because they would have to duplicate tracks in order to get everything should they ever wish to. And for the most part, the albums themselves have little to recommend them, although the recent Singer/Songwriter CD is rather attractive.
But the new Complete Greatest Hits album is nothing like that. It has an excellent selection of songs from throughout his career, pulling together UA and WB tracks for the first time on a single CD (Songbook was the first time, as a boxed set).
As far as the Final Four, first of all it is Rhino that is doing the reissues, and not Reprise. They are part of the same AOL Time Warner enterprise yes, but Rhino is the part of the company that does catalog releases, and they do a fine job of it. If you think that your homemade CD-Rs, "mastered" off the LPs and perhaps "edited" by you, is anything like what Rhino will be releasing, then perhaps you will be satisfied with them. Most of the rest of us will buy the Rhino CDs the day they come out.
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Valerie Magee
Visit my GL web site at
gordonlightfoot.com