Reissue Theory: A Huey Two-Fer

For whatever reason, your loyal reissue reporter has been listening to a lot of Huey Lewis and The News. No, it’s not a Patrick Bateman thing. It’s just that The News – that pub-rock ensemble that powered a lot of mid-’80s radio – are just crazy listenable. They really bridged a gap between straight-up blues-rock and synth-driven pop, creating a style that really holds up some 25 years or so later.

It’s a style that’s kind of underrepresented on CD, though. Sports was expanded in 1999 with live cuts and session outtakes, and a few compilations (most recently Capitol’s Greatest Hits & Videos (2006)), but all the other LPs of theirs have been released only once on CD. All of them could use a remastering and expansion, but their first two albums – their 1980 self-titled debut and 1982’s Picture This – could use a revisiting on CD. Best of all, the pair of them could both fit onto a CD with a handful of bonus cuts (both of those LPs were in fact released on a single disc as an import, but wouldn’t it be nice to see them get a nice treatment Stateside?).

With that in mind, hit the jump for a Reissue Theory look at Huey and The News’ first two LPs. Hope you love it like you say you do!

Prince Week Day 4: The Reissue Conundrum

Talking about Prince on a blog devoted to back catalogue music usually results in three considerations: 1) Prince really should allow remasters/reissues of his astounding discography, 2) Prince won’t ever allow remasters/reissues of said discography and 3) why the heck not?

As many of his fellow contemporaries (Madonna, Michael Jackson, Rick James, etc.) and other luminaries (The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, even The Beatles) have enjoyed remastering and rediscovery on compact disc, Prince has not. Even more disturbing is that he may never – and worse yet, no one quire understands why.

Some artists have their reasons for being reluctant to mine their own back catalogue: they don’t want to revisit that particular time in their lives, they feel the work hasn’t held up over time, they have a particular enmity with the label that controls said recordings and so on. Prince seems to suffer from all of those afflictions at one time or another. He consistently discusses looking forward instead of back and his decade-old conversion to the Jehovah’s Witness faith has curtailed his tolerance of those somewhat raunchy early LPs. Then there’s his ongoing hatred of Warner Bros., which at its apex drove him to unpronounceable madness.

Does Prince have the wrong idea about reissues? Is he waiting for something? How would such reissues even work? Let’s speculate after the jump.