Raise Your Can Of Beer On High
Posted on | February 20, 2007 at 7:30 am | Comments Off
There is justice in the world. Or something like justice. Maybe “justice lite”. I don’t know. At any rate, it made my little heart go pitty-patter to see that the second and third current top selling CDs at CD Universe (as of this writing) are the Spectres and Some Enchanted Evening remasters/reissues. It’s amazing and delightful for me to see that Blue Öyster Cult is enjoying a resurgence in popularity after all this time (for some of their classic albums at least). I hope Columbia does the rest of the catalog they haven’t done yet. Since these latest ones are proving to be popular, I’m sure they will. Although they better not wait as long as they did between these and the first batch of ressiues of the first four studio albums, which was like over five years ago. (But why did they never remaster the first live album, On Your Feet Or On Your Knees?? Live album Some Enchanted Evening not only has a whole slew of additional tracks/performances, but also includes a DVD with a video concert of the Cult in their prime performing many of the songs. I’d love to see something similar for the earlier live album.)
I haven’t actually received or listened to these two latest reissues yet, but I did order them. The original CD releases of the BÖC albums were pretty poor sonically, so I’m looking forward to hearing these. The remasters of the first four did improve on the sound quite a bit. Although who really cares about sound quality any more in this MP3 Age? I’m also looking forward to the bonus tracks, but I’m sure they’re nothing special. The only bonus track I thought was really essential from the first four was the original version of Fire Of Unknown Origin that appeared on the Agents Of Fortune reissue. I liked that better than the completely different version that appeared on the album of the same name.
I ordered the discs online because my local Best Buy didn’t have them. (Surprisingly, Wal-Mart had SEE, but it was more expensive than buying it online.) Best Buy used to have a pretty good stock, but since my local store moved across the street into a bigger building, they suddenly have a really crappy selection of music, DVDs, and videogames. Oh well, I even had BB coupons which I guess will now go unused. I also had to order the Nintendo DS video game Castlevania: Portrait Of Ruin online, since none of my local stores have it. What’s up with that? It’s one of the best reviewed games of the year, and the previous DS and GBA games in the series were really good and fun. I guess since it’s not part of a licensed franchise or a first-party Nintendo game, it doesn’t get any shelf space. What a shame. No wonder retail stores are dying. Why shop with your feet when you can shop with your fingers?
Latre.