Ten Again

Posted on MSNBC courtesy of Billboard, is this article talking about a March 24th re-release of Pearl Jam’s first album, Ten. Now...I loves me some Pearl Jam, and they’ve made a respectable amount of money from me - two concerts, all the studio albums, both “official” live albums, the B-sides double set, and four of the bootleg live sets - but they’re getting a little bit goofy with the gimmicks.

There will be four - count ‘em, four! - versions of the Ten re-release, although the article doesn’t really make it clear what comprises each of the four different versions. They say all four versions come with a remastered version of the original album and a remixed version of the original album, with the remixed disc containing six previously unreleased tracks. Then there’s something called the “Legacy” version, which adds a DVD of the band’s appearance on MTV Unplugged in 1992. And there’s also the “Super Deluxe” version, said to contain two CDs, a DVD, and four - again, count ‘em, four! - vinyl records, and two replica items: a cassette containing remastered versions of the three songs Ed added vocals to and sent back to the band when they auditioned him (“Alive,” “Once,” and “Footsteps”), and a replica of Ed’s notebook from the Ten days.

Here’s what the Super Deluxe version looks like, when you follow the links on their website:



Yikes. That whole gob will set you back a solid $140 United States dollars. But hey - they’ll ship it to you for free!

I’m not at all a fan of buying things more than once. I’d probably buy a single-CD package containing just the remixed version of the album, because the only real problem with Ten (apart from the fact that it contains “Oceans” instead of either “Yellow Ledbetter” or “State Of Love And Trust”) is that it’s way over-produced. The guy who did the mix on the new version is the guy who produced the four albums that followed Ten, and I’d be willing to lay out ten to fifteen bucks just on the off chance that the new mix gives Ten the kind of raw, urgent sound that showed up on Vs. and Vitalogy. I might even throw down for the DVD, especially if it doubles as a CD (they can do that, right?) - but $140 for a doorstop-sized aural orgy and a couple of (admittedly cool) collectibles, when I don’t even own a record player? I seriously doubt it. Halve that price and make it a doorbuster special next year on the day after Thanksgiving, and I might get up early.

Looking at that picture is pretty tempting, though...