Rockwriter wrote:Call me crazy, but I'm going to let this actually come out before I try to judge it, LOL. I can see both sides of this one since just about every band I interview nowadays is in the same boat. There's just no outlet for new music from a "classic" band. Radio doesn't play it, companies don't want to sign it, and the brutal truth is that MOST fans don't want to hear it anyway. We here are the few, not the many. The bread and butter Styx fan is the casual fan that goes to a concert and may not even know who is or is not in the band, and a release like this - with the titles of recognizable hits on the sleeve - can do well at the merchandise table, without some company taking a giant bite out of the band's ass. It makes absolute sense on that level.
Now, that said, KISS, Journey and Foreigner all did a great job on their re-records, and when I'm in the mood to listen to those old songs, I still pull out the versions I've been listening to for the last thirty years. I'd imagine this will be the same. Those old records are imprinted in my DNA and it's hard to get past that. Still, I'd much rather see the band doing this than doing nothing at all, and in practical terms this is a good companion piece to the fall tour, since it's heavy on songs from TGI and Po8. It'll be a great point-of-purchase souvenir of those shows for a lot of fans, I think.
I know we'd all rather have a new album, and I bet the band members would rather make a new record, too. But they've obviously accepted that this is the way things are right now for bands of that era, and perhaps we should, too.
Sterling
So Sterling, do you really think that radio will play these re-recorded versions? They didn't for Journey (though they did play their new songs) and I haven't heard any other bands redone versions either.
To me, as an artist, I would MUCH rather move forward than backwards in my career, especially if I had the writing chops of Shaw and Gowan. Granted, Rock radio won't play it, redone or new stuff. They WILL play the old stuff. Okay, so be it. Then why re-record old stuff?
The band should just say- "It costs us as much to record new stuff as old. Let's do new stuff just to keep us interested and for the fans that want new stuff".
Just my opinion.