majestikc wrote:
IceCreamMan wrote:
A nunmber of tracks from the album is old material .... just never released before ...seems a clever idea if you have all these songs lieing around. 1 or 2 tracks were previously recorded as demo tracks back in 76 for Gene Simmons (he of Kiss fame)
u dont fix what aint broken ......
now , please climb up on that stake ?
Seems like a crappy idea if the songs were never good enough to use in the first place, surely in ALL this time since VHIII (15yrs ?) they've come up with some new better stuff. I guess if they've used up all there old demos and songs that weren't good enough to use back then that this will be the last VH album ever.
There's all kinds of reasons why songs don't make it onto albums. EG they might not fit into the overall mood or flow. Remember that when Van Halen started they had to reduce whatever list of candidate, maybe even recorded songs down to about 40 minutes because that's what you got on a vinyl long player. In Van Halen's case, with the lead singer changing, they may have abandoned some songs that were suited to DLR when Sammy Hagar came on board.
Reusing previously recorded or written songs is not without precedent. Led Zeppelin did it, and one of their best selling albums. The album
Houses Of The Holy had no song by that name, but the album that followed,
Physical Graffiti, did. Several other tracks on that album were outtakes from previous recording sessions or were re-recorded. Richard Thompson (I haven't mentioned him this week) basically recorded a whole album twice - the first recording was never released, Thompson had no rights to those recordings but he did own the rights to the songs and could make fresh recordings of them.
I don't think it's a big deal. Songs come when they come, not when an album is due, and they may pile up for all sorts of reasons. Or exist as fragments. I read recently that Yes in the 70s would make records basically be recording short snippets in the studio which their engineer would stitch together into tracks - then they'd learn to play the songs as assembled! Michael Jackson, Prince (if we're allowed to call him that) and Paul McCarteney have all kinds of riffs and rhythm tracks and half-finished lyrics that they save for later use.
