Saturday Deluxe / 7 November 2015

Ladies and Gentlemen…. The Beatles!

Universal’s Beatles 1 video collection is finally out. Yay! I’m sure some of you unnecessarily cancelled your Amazon UK orders after the mini-fiasco of last week, but as predicted by yours truly, there was never any issue in the first place. Oh well. But I’ve love to hear what everybody thinks about the new sets.

I’ll be honest, I don’t have the physical product yet (I know..) although I’ve had some promo discs for a while. The plan was to create an SDEtv video to show off ALL the different formats. Universal had agreed to send SDE EVERY edition of 1, but unfortunately the stock hadn’t arrived yesterday, so will hope to do this video for you early next week.

Read more about The Beatles 1 video collection here.

Dylan disappointment for fans

Of course Bob Dylan‘s The Cutting Edge Bootleg Series Vol 12 was also released yesterday. Some of you who’ve ordered the expensive 18CD version have been in touch to say that you aren’t getting your sets until 20 November, despite promises of day-of-release delivery. That’s pretty disappointing. If you are paying a premium, then you rightly expect a premium service. Apparently the Dylan team seem surprised that a limited edition of 5000 sold a lot of copies pre-release. Oh well, at least you can listen to your high res audio over the weekend… wrong! You won’t get that until Monday 9th. Not everyone has been affected, but these emails were sent out yesterday, the day of release, to those that have been.

Read more about The Cutting Edge here.

SDE ChartWatch

The brand new UK charts were announced yesterday. SDE takes a look at the movers and shakers with regards to reissues and box sets.

Impressive performance from RCA/Legacy Recordings Elvis set If I Can Dream which debuts at the top of the UK album charts. I will admit to not having heard this ‘reimagining’ which sets Elvis vocals to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, although it doesn’t really appeal to me personally. There is even a duet with Michael Bublé on Fever. I have to say, if you asked me where I stand on Michael Bublé the answer would be “his windpipe” (apologies to Steve Coogan).

Elvis’ gain (he’s now had no. 1 albums in five different decades) is Rod Stewart‘s loss. His 29th studio album Another Country fails to match the achievement of 2013’s Time and doesn’t enter at no.1.  Rod has to make do with the number two position. A little consolation is that one of my favourite Rod archival releases, the 4CD Storyteller collection re-enters the physical chart at number 17, no doubt due to some in-store promotion I’m unaware of.

Everyone loves a greatest hits and Erasure‘s Always – The Very Best Of enters the physical chart at no. 4 and just squeezes into the top ten of the combined chart with a number nine placing. The generously priced, remix-heavy three-CD set no doubt helped with this success.

Rhino’s reissue of Van Morrison‘s Astral Weeks is the 34th best selling physical release last week. The set is a modest expanded CD but very aggressive pricing by Amazon UK probably helped the high-ish placing

The new Jam box set, the six-CD live anthology Fire and Skill stops just short of the top 50 at no. 51 after a week in the ‘shops’ but that’s decent enough for a set that was over £60. Even the limited edition vinyl Live at Newcastle City Hall 1980 enters at no. 71 on physical sales and that is only available from Universal’s Udiscover store. Would love to know actual sales numbers for this (a few hundred?) but that’s not available, since the Official Chart Company treat that as client-confidential information, unless the client (i.e. the label) wants to reveal it.

Alanis Morissette‘s Jagged Little Pill is hiding at the back of the class, lurking at number 78 on sales. Pretty disappointing for such a big selling album, although I don’t know about you but it feels rather under-promoted, even if Alanis and producer Glen Ballard have sat down to create a ‘spotify landmark edition’ (“the real story of Jagged Little Pill“) to celebrate the reissue. This is definitely worth a listen.

XTC‘s Oranges and Lemons was always a niche reissue but still sneaks into top 100 on physical sales, although Wet Wet Wet‘s Picture This set always sounded like a mis-step and this has possibly being confirmed by a woeful placing as the 100th best selling music release last week. Should’ve reissued the one everyone wants, Popped In Souled Out!