When Artists 'Remake' Their Own Stuff?

[Tanis]

Musicians, writers, painters, developers, etc.

I was thinking about this while listening to Manowar's latest remake of their classic "Kings of Metal" album.

I L-O-V-E the original, and the remake isn't that bad.
But they also remade their 'The Lord Of Steel' album, which was a horrible mess of 'why did you do this' to an otherwise great album?

Guess I'm just asking of thoughts on this kind of stuff, and what are some good/bad/meh stuff ya'll know of.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Well, for music it can make a whole lot of sense in re-recording a song if the original mix/production is poor or just very out dated. This is pretty prevalent in heavy metal. As an example, the death metal band Suffocation had quite a sub-par production on their second album. To remedy this, they have since re-recorded the album one song at a time and placed it at the end of all their albums since so that it gets the sound justice it deserves. That's but one of many examples. For something like that, I'm in full support of it.

Then there's something like what Manowar is doing. Re-recording an old classic album for no particular reason than to squeeze out some more money from people. That, obviously, I do not support and think is a waste of time.

 

[Queen Michael]

Peter LeMarc made a CD of his old songs, remaking them in a minimalist version. What he did was basically take old songs of his that he now felt were overproduced and stripped them down to their essence, making sure to include only the instruments that were needed to make the songs work and nothing else. The new version of "Drivved"[footnote]"Driftwood"[/footnote] was so heartbreakingly sad that I almost couldn't bear listening to it, and I mean that in a good way. Every song on that album was darn good.