FRI., DECEMBER 07, 2007
In This Feature
Magazine Archives:
2007 Rewind: The Year in Reissues
by Michaelangelo Matos
By now the narrative has been repeated so often it's hardened into place: the pop music industry was song- and singles-driven until the 1960s, when the full-length album became the medium of choice. Then along came the Internet, and boom — the song is king again. Sure, that's reductive, but it's also largely correct, even with a site like eMusic, which emphasizes the album over the individual track.
It's far less remarked upon, but a similar narrative arc applies to the reissues business as well. Sure, major labels have always held plenty in store, and best-ofs and anthologies were a staple part of the pop and rock album business from the '60s forward. But labels dedicated to reissues tended to be independently run. Take two of the prototypes of the modern reissue label, London's Ace and Los Angeles's Rhino. Both began in the '70s; both licensed masters from majors and indies alike, chose and sequenced their track listings carefully, solicited historically aware annotation and connected a lot of dots previously known mostly to catalogue-number-hoarding fanatics. Both helped make the Great Big Story of pop music that much easier to grasp. In the '90s, the majors caught on: Rhino was purchased by Warner Bros. and became the ever-expanding conglomerate's reissue arm, while Universal started Hip-O to serve the same purpose. But as running an indie became easier — and as the ground shifted under the industry — a lot more small-stakes entrepreneurs began repackaging old favorites and obscurities in new packages.
Take Light in the Attic, the Seattle label founded early in the '00s by Matt Sullivan, which enjoyed its highest-profile year yet. Mostly that's due to the pair of Betty Davis reissues, but the real prize is Summer Records Anthology 1974-1988, the sequel to 2006's Jamaica to Toronto: Soul, Funk & Reggae 1967-1974. Both sets track the musical output of the Ontario city's Kingston ex-pats, and Summer Records is especially enlightening: heavy on dub mixing (whether the tracks feature vocals or not) and bringing us relatively up to date with a couple digital dancehall tracks at the end. The prize is Johnny Osbourne and Bunny Brown's "Love Makes the World Go Round," a heart-stoppingly austere cut on which Osbourne and Browne's ethereal falsettos seem to bob tantalizingly in the distance.
Another indie specializing in the past is Acute, run by New York DJ Dan Selzer, whose big old-is-the-new-new hit was Hungry Beat, which collects the singles and EPs of Scottish indie heroes Fire Engines, who never officially released an album. (The 2005 compilation Codex Teenage Premonition, not on eMusic, is mostly demos and live stuff.) If you love jittery guitar and value enthusiasm over skill, songs like "Candyskin" and "Discord" deserve your time.
Of course, a label needn't be dedicated entirely to the past to dive purposefully into it. Take Brooklyn's Barbès Records, which issues an eclectic array of new work from new artists like Slavic Soul Party, Hazmat Modine and Las Rubias del Norte. But their most striking release of 2007 came from old Peru. The Roots of Chicha, subtitled "Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru," mines a decades-old variation on the ever-popular Colombian pop style, dusted with wah-wah guitars and Moog synthesizers. While the frisson between old and new is plenty ear-whetting, it's the tunes you'll come back for. (My favorite: "Si Me Quieres," by Los Hijos del Sol.)
An older hand at this sort of thing is Greensleeves, a British label specializing in up-to-the-minute Jamaican reggae and its offshoots. This year Greensleeves celebrated its 30th anniversary with a number of new packages. The two best are Culture's Two Sevens Clash: 30th Anniversary Edition, which adds five remixes and dubs to what may have been roots reggae's zenith, and the 30-song From Dubplate to Download: The Best of Greensleeves Records, which is precisely what it says it is, and precisely as good as you might hope. If you want to go deeper, try the volumes of the 12" Rulers series dedicated to Henry "Junjo" Lawes and Gussie Clarke.
Sterns has nearly as illustrious history as Greensleeves'. As with the reggae label, Sterns began in London (in 1983) as the offshoot of a record shop that had been selling African music since the mid-'50s. It too had a banner 2007. Authenticité — The Syliphone Years, which covers 1965-1980, is an all-peaks-all-the-time overview of Guinea's Syliphone label. There are four cuts from the label's biggest stars, Bembeya Jazz National (see Richard Gehr's superb overview for more), but it's the many tracks that have never been reissued that are the real prize. Hottest of all is Pivi et les Baladins' "Samba," from 1972, whose screaming guitars, smoking beats, flailing horns and unhinged energy can drop the jaw of even the staunchest world-music atheist.
So, in a different way, can Tabu Ley Rochereau's The Voice of Lightness. Subtitled "Congo Classics 1961-1977," this is two-and-a-half hours of music so subtle and quick and absolutely gorgeous at every turn it can be a little dumbfounding. Put it on expecting a history lesson and you'll get one, even without liner notes: the evolution of the Congolese rumba from airy, jazzy lilt (try "Pesa Le Tout," whose two-and-a-half-minute dance coda — or sebene — features guitar-and-horns interplay so measured it becomes ecstatic) to, by the late '70s, a tougher but still transported sound. The final track, "Likambo Ya Mokando," tells the tale. Over nine minutes and 40 seconds, it runs through three different parts: an old-school rumba — sure-footed, sustaining, just fine; a modified (subtle, swaggering) James Brown groove, with Rochereau, usually the sweetest of singers, speak-sings his lines in a masculine tenor, dodging and punching the beat between swaggering horns; and finally a sharper-stepping variation on the opening rumba. Even in the face of quality competition, this is easily eMusic's finest 2007 reissue.
It's far less remarked upon, but a similar narrative arc applies to the reissues business as well. Sure, major labels have always held plenty in store, and best-ofs and anthologies were a staple part of the pop and rock album business from the '60s forward. But labels dedicated to reissues tended to be independently run. Take two of the prototypes of the modern reissue label, London's Ace and Los Angeles's Rhino. Both began in the '70s; both licensed masters from majors and indies alike, chose and sequenced their track listings carefully, solicited historically aware annotation and connected a lot of dots previously known mostly to catalogue-number-hoarding fanatics. Both helped make the Great Big Story of pop music that much easier to grasp. In the '90s, the majors caught on: Rhino was purchased by Warner Bros. and became the ever-expanding conglomerate's reissue arm, while Universal started Hip-O to serve the same purpose. But as running an indie became easier — and as the ground shifted under the industry — a lot more small-stakes entrepreneurs began repackaging old favorites and obscurities in new packages.
Take Light in the Attic, the Seattle label founded early in the '00s by Matt Sullivan, which enjoyed its highest-profile year yet. Mostly that's due to the pair of Betty Davis reissues, but the real prize is Summer Records Anthology 1974-1988, the sequel to 2006's Jamaica to Toronto: Soul, Funk & Reggae 1967-1974. Both sets track the musical output of the Ontario city's Kingston ex-pats, and Summer Records is especially enlightening: heavy on dub mixing (whether the tracks feature vocals or not) and bringing us relatively up to date with a couple digital dancehall tracks at the end. The prize is Johnny Osbourne and Bunny Brown's "Love Makes the World Go Round," a heart-stoppingly austere cut on which Osbourne and Browne's ethereal falsettos seem to bob tantalizingly in the distance.
Another indie specializing in the past is Acute, run by New York DJ Dan Selzer, whose big old-is-the-new-new hit was Hungry Beat, which collects the singles and EPs of Scottish indie heroes Fire Engines, who never officially released an album. (The 2005 compilation Codex Teenage Premonition, not on eMusic, is mostly demos and live stuff.) If you love jittery guitar and value enthusiasm over skill, songs like "Candyskin" and "Discord" deserve your time.
Of course, a label needn't be dedicated entirely to the past to dive purposefully into it. Take Brooklyn's Barbès Records, which issues an eclectic array of new work from new artists like Slavic Soul Party, Hazmat Modine and Las Rubias del Norte. But their most striking release of 2007 came from old Peru. The Roots of Chicha, subtitled "Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru," mines a decades-old variation on the ever-popular Colombian pop style, dusted with wah-wah guitars and Moog synthesizers. While the frisson between old and new is plenty ear-whetting, it's the tunes you'll come back for. (My favorite: "Si Me Quieres," by Los Hijos del Sol.)
An older hand at this sort of thing is Greensleeves, a British label specializing in up-to-the-minute Jamaican reggae and its offshoots. This year Greensleeves celebrated its 30th anniversary with a number of new packages. The two best are Culture's Two Sevens Clash: 30th Anniversary Edition, which adds five remixes and dubs to what may have been roots reggae's zenith, and the 30-song From Dubplate to Download: The Best of Greensleeves Records, which is precisely what it says it is, and precisely as good as you might hope. If you want to go deeper, try the volumes of the 12" Rulers series dedicated to Henry "Junjo" Lawes and Gussie Clarke.
Sterns has nearly as illustrious history as Greensleeves'. As with the reggae label, Sterns began in London (in 1983) as the offshoot of a record shop that had been selling African music since the mid-'50s. It too had a banner 2007. Authenticité — The Syliphone Years, which covers 1965-1980, is an all-peaks-all-the-time overview of Guinea's Syliphone label. There are four cuts from the label's biggest stars, Bembeya Jazz National (see Richard Gehr's superb overview for more), but it's the many tracks that have never been reissued that are the real prize. Hottest of all is Pivi et les Baladins' "Samba," from 1972, whose screaming guitars, smoking beats, flailing horns and unhinged energy can drop the jaw of even the staunchest world-music atheist.
So, in a different way, can Tabu Ley Rochereau's The Voice of Lightness. Subtitled "Congo Classics 1961-1977," this is two-and-a-half hours of music so subtle and quick and absolutely gorgeous at every turn it can be a little dumbfounding. Put it on expecting a history lesson and you'll get one, even without liner notes: the evolution of the Congolese rumba from airy, jazzy lilt (try "Pesa Le Tout," whose two-and-a-half-minute dance coda — or sebene — features guitar-and-horns interplay so measured it becomes ecstatic) to, by the late '70s, a tougher but still transported sound. The final track, "Likambo Ya Mokando," tells the tale. Over nine minutes and 40 seconds, it runs through three different parts: an old-school rumba — sure-footed, sustaining, just fine; a modified (subtle, swaggering) James Brown groove, with Rochereau, usually the sweetest of singers, speak-sings his lines in a masculine tenor, dodging and punching the beat between swaggering horns; and finally a sharper-stepping variation on the opening rumba. Even in the face of quality competition, this is easily eMusic's finest 2007 reissue.
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