This kind of quries seem to crop up on ILM kinda regularly, like once or twice every year. Particularly round Xmas, right?

Well I recently bought a somewhat weirdish The Sweet compilation—that didn’t even have those sort of disclaimers anywhere!

only people with no knowledge of music buy these generic crap!

only people with no knowledge of music buy these generic crap!

— postie23 (heavydoo...), December 23rd, 2006.

While I’m sure these CDs do, to a certain degree, prey upon people’s lack of musical knowledge, I was curious to know if anyone around here had either bought one by mistake, or just said “hey, for that little money, how bad it could be?”

It is hard to believe that there is that much money in making this kind of material these days. They still have to pay to re-record the music and then press it up.

I hear a lot of stuff on those Good Times Oldies stations that I would swear are re-recordings. Maybe they’re just remixed for better sound.

Wasn’t there a fake Specials “Greatest Hits” like this released a month or two ago?

xpost—I assume there’s some reason for it, like the people who do it don’t have rights to the original masters or something but own the songs? Also, you could easily bang out an entire disc like that in a day with pro musicians.

xpost—I assume there’s some reason for it, like the people who do it don’t have rights to the original masters or something but own the songs?

That’s pretty much it right there. A lot of older artists will rerecord an old hit so that they have a master that is cheap to license. I’m assuming that’s what the bulk of these discs are comprised of. There are also a lot of live shows that are no longer owned by the artists’ original label—I’ve seen more than a couple of live James Brown discs in the aforementioned bargain bins.

buncha these things showed up on Rhapsody recently w/titles like ROCK MASTERS and CHOICE CUTS. I listened (briefly) to mediocre Flaming Groovies (re-recorded “Shake Some Action”) and just godawful Mitch Ryder (live “Rock & Roll”). caveat emptor muthafucka.

fans of old-school country are used to variations on this scam, tho some re-recorded honky tonk (cf. Ernest Tubb) ain’t bad.

I did once make the mistake of getting a Sam & Dave “best of” that turned out to be re-recorded—and I wouldn’t even be surprised if it wasn’t both of them, considering the falling out they had.

Didn’t one of them die, like, twenty years ago or something?

Some of these re-recordings can be kinda cool... I have a version of Astrud Gilberto’s “Girl from Ipanema” where the vocals are pretty much the same as in the original, but it has a steady four-to-the-floor beat and some disco strings. I think it’s great!

I’ve got a Hank Williams one of these that’s a transcript of a radio show! It’s rad!

I have a Kool & the Gang best-of like this. It’s not even that great of a tracklist. “Jungle Boogie” is the only pre-JT Taylor song. Having that stoopid “Reggae Dancing” song, but not “Hollywood Swinging” = high crime.

I bought that Flamin’ Groovies one by accident once. The store took it back though.