Bob Seger Reissue News

I was rocking Mongrel this weekend. People give me miles of shit when I say I like Seger. Fuckin tired of it.

meet different people

Met enough people tbh

srsly if seger let someone like light in the attic release this comp (or something similar), dude would have instant cred with a lot of people who have written him off.

Thanks to Myonga for putting this together. I DL'ed it awhile back and love the hell out of it. Get outta Denver, baby!

^^^ surely someone here has connections with LITA to push this excellent suggestion through ?

[i agree, if they can sort out a reissue by a bloke who pressed up a handful of copies of his debut lp then got abducted by aliens, then they should be able to get this one on the shelf]

however, from this thread and other places, it seems that the block on such a thing happening is bob himself who is in denial as to the excellence of his earlier material.

ok.
who here wrote the letter to mojo re bob getting some love from the magazine ?

lol i tweeted at light in the attic about this today, got this response: "That's awesome! Pretty sure those vaults are locked up damn tight..." wheels (not) in motion!

however, from this thread and other places, it seems that the block on such a thing happening is bob himself who is in denial as to the excellence of his earlier material.

― mark e, Monday, May 16, 2011 9:49 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark

i've also heard that he just has bad feelings from the many labels that ripped him off early in his career (no royalties and suchlike) and doesn't want to delve into the legal complications sorting out rights might entail. it may have nothing to do with his assessment of the early singles' quality. that said, this doesn't explain why mongrel and other such albums are out of print as well (even though he allowed CD reissues of these once upon a time).

But what legal issues would there be now? The biggest issue is that all his early Hideout singles were snapped up by Cameo-Parkway, and are now owned by Abkco. They let a few of the songs out on the Cameo box, and even licensed "Sock It To Me, Santa!" out to Little Steven for an Underground Garage X-mas album. Seger's first albums were on Capitol, whom he would return to in 75 and remain. He and Punch Andrews formed Palladium Records in '72, which released his next three albums. They were distributed by Reprise. I have heard WEA has been a stumbling block, but OTOH Capitol has officially reissued the first Palladium set (Smokin OP'S) and material from the last one (Seven) popped up on that Early Seger album.

I wonder how the folks at Capitol feel about this. One of their major artists--whose catalogue has been quite lucrative over the years--is sitting on 6 albums of material barely exploited in the digital realm. Given the proper attention, a reissue campaign of this stuff is about as close as you can get to a license to print money in these waning days of the industry.

And that's not counting the unreleased stuff. There was a piece on Seger's tour recently in Rolling Stone, and he mentioned that he'd been digging in his vault, finding numerous qualitiy unissued or incomplete tracks that he planned to tinker with (ala Springsteen's The Promise or the Stones new Exile... songs) and put on his upcoming album.

I wonder how the folks at Capitol feel about this. One of their major artists--whose catalogue has been quite lucrative over the years--is sitting on 6 albums of material barely exploited in the digital realm. Given the proper attention, a reissue campaign of this stuff is about as close as you can get to a license to print money in these waning days of the industry.

Capitols catalogue is currently owned by EMI isn't it ?
if so then there is a good chance that one of Cherry Reds reissue labels will have a chance to get those albums out as they seem to be scouring the Capitol/EMI archives for all sorts of decent stuff at the moment and releasing them via their multitude of sub-labels.
It seems that EMI have moved away from reissuing albums themselves, but give permission to others to do the hard work.
(isn't this the lucrative part of the current EMI business model ?)

i'm sure that if seger were so inclined he could get any legal roadblocks removed -- dude is pretty wealthy, i assume. so i don't know, maybe a groundswell of interest would lead him to think it wouldn't be a terrible idea. i mean, if mojo magazine suddenly calls out for their release he might pay attention?

I was thinking something more along the lines of the Beatles reissue series (which EMI--or I guess Apple--oversaw).

BTW, ICYDK Live Bullet & Nine Tonight are getting remastered, expanded & (in the case of the latter I assume) restored in August. Amazon's also hawking "Exclusive Remasters" of The Distance, Like A Rock & The Fire Inside.

I remember looking forward to Live Bullet and being disappointed when I finally had it in my mitts. Started good with "Nutbush" and then only above average rock with a couple more great moments and too much stuff like "Jody Girl" -- ick.

In some ways Live Bullet is most valuable as the only way you can get versions of the old stuff ("Lookin' Back" "Turn The Page") on legit cd. Seger comes off as super-charismatic on it.

If I had a back catalogue like the cd MVB sent out I would exploit the living hell out of it. That shit is incredible. "Like a Rock" and the risky business shit song suck. Yes I'm drunk.

the risky business shit song suck

Ha! It's Friday late afternoon-evening in the USA. Excellent!

I kind of want to hear the rest of Live Bullet because of how eerie "Turn The Page" always sounded: not much crowd noise, that perfectly-placed feedback, the road-weariness of Seger's voice exponentially transcending any cliches, and probably the least-pretentious use of a mellotron in popular music.

I haven't listened to it in years, but I seem to recall how distant the crowd sounded on all of Live Bullet. It's funny because during one of the songs Bob's banterin' about how there are a couple of tape machines in the back of the hall and if you cheer loud enough you just might hear yourself on an album, but when you actually hear the cheers they come off like a bunch of detail-less white noise compared to how clean the actual music was recorded. Maybe it's mixed weird or something?

I think a lot of engineers/artists wrestled with how much to mike the crowd on live albums. Live At Leeds had a single mike pointed at the audience, while Kiss' Alive likely had many more than that, and the crowd noise on Rush's All The World's A Stage nearly overwhelms the music. Bob had a relatively large group at that time, and miking the crowd might have meant the difference between 8- and 16-track, the latter of which would have cost a lot more.

Kiss Alive was goosed and rerecorded, wasn't it?

Eddie Kramer has said that the only live element on the record was the drums. But he's also said the only live element was Ace Frehley's guitar. Gene Simmons said some mistakes were fixed, but that the label didn't have the budget for them to substantially re-record large sections (which seems plausible, as Kiss hadn't sold much, and Casablanca was at death's door). Whatever was overdubbed, it seems the crowd noise was largely left alone (but still way huge in the mix).

man, that comp really took off, didn't it?

"back in 72" (the song) really rocks. been in my head all week.

So, I'm curious, last year a fan-made compilation of your early stuff, "Never Mind the Bullets, Here's Early Bob Seger" made it all the way to 111 on the Pazz and Jop poll that Village Voice does.
Wow.

And that was something that wasn't even released commercially, you know, beating out records by Tom Petty and stuff...
I didn't know that.

I was curious if you had any plans or ideas about maybe reissuing some of that early stuff. This was real early stuff, and I was wondering if you had any plans to put that out commercially.
Well, if you're talking the pre-Capitol stuff, I have no control over it. You remember the name Alan Klein? He owns that, and it's difficult to get with Mr. Klein :laughter:, so it's completely out of my hands. On the other hand, I have a lot of spare songs that I've done down through the years that I do want to see the light of day, and all the way back to the early '70s, and even some '60s, and like, for instance, I think on the Live Record, we put out one that I did at Pontiac's Silverdome, which was about eight months after "Live Bullet," and it was an Albert King song called "Feel Like Breakin Up Somebody's Home." And we used to do a lot of R & B back then, and there's another Albert King song that I can't find, "Don't Burn Down the Bridge, You Just might Wanna Come Back," and I have so much old stuff, and I do want it to see the light of day, someday.

http://blogs.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/arts-a-entertainment/pop-noise/30989-bob-seger-interview-still-the-same-part-i

note that he doesn't say anything about the early capitol albums. i get the feeling he just wants them to go away. oh well.

*shakes fist* Alan Klein!

also that almost counts as Bob-props to Myonga, no? :D

Allen Klein: dead, and still pissing artists off.

can we dig him up just to shoot him in the face

this is kind of awesome, at least now he knows that we care.

I wish he had said "Omg this changes everything. I was going to record a new album but now I'm
going to dedicate my life to releasing all of my old material."

haha, "Wow" indeed.

& Allen Klein, so villainous! unknown to me bit from wiki re: him and jodorowsky!

Witnessing the commercial success of hard-core pornographic films, such as Deep Throat and The Devil In Miss Jones, which broke through to the mainstream, Klein saw similar potential in Pauline Réage's bestseller The Story Of O, but Jodorowsky walked out on the deal.

Ray Davies had a great line about Klein: "I never signed a piece of paper with Klein, but I'm sure he can pull one out of a drawer."

haha. it's funny, in that sam cooke bio from a few years back, klein comes across as this really passionate, devoted guy who has cooke's back at all times.

iirc, Christgau was pretty critical of Guralnick for essentially taking Klein's statements at face value. But Klein did get insane money for Cooke (and Bobby Darin) out of crooked record labels.

yeah i imagine klein was the lesser of two evils for dudes like cooke and darin. maybe guralnick got taken for a ride by klein, i don't know, but it was interesting to hear klein's side of the story for once.

a facebook friend of mine who's a veteran of the late 60s/early 70s detroit scene recently posted an "east side story" utube and commented that seger hates his old stuff and has never wanted it released. i find this credible, not only considering the source but seger's comments upthread feel evasive.

blaming allan klein is a convenient dodge. "the devil won't let me" not the first (or last time) a great musician fails to appreciate his own best work

I wonder if Seger even knows that Abkco finally reissued some of those songs?

a facebook friend of mine who's a veteran of the late 60s/early 70s detroit scene recently posted an "east side story" utube and commented that seger hates his old stuff and has never wanted it released. i find this credible, not only considering the source but seger's comments upthread feel evasive.

Except he still does "Heavy Music" in concert.

Also, if the Rolling fucking Stones can't even wrest control of their 60s catalog from Klein's cold, dead hands, I doubt Seger has much of a shot.

Except he still does "Heavy Music" in concert.

He didn't when I saw him in '07 - it was a straight Greatest Hits of the '70s and '80s show, with maybe three songs from Face the Promise thrown in.

i think klein has the pre-capitol singles, probably not those early LPs though no?

i think seger is dodging the question.

come on guys who needs bullshit like 'ramblin gamblin man' when we have 'like a rock'?

What not to do.

rock and roll never forgives.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/2df575b37804dc2a193737a338cb2dbe/tumblr_mgfuzk5fv81qg4f0do1_500.jpg

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/79-year-old-coma-bob-seger/

That's awesome.