Shrimper Dan wrote:
I'd love to see a really good set of unreleased songs. As cool as it would be to see remasters of all Jimmy's albums with bonus tracks, I hate the idea of having to buy all of those CDs again. 'Boats, Beaches, Bars and Ballads' is a great set, but it is more like an extension to SYKBH. Most of us probably bought it early on in our Parrothead careers before we explored the individual albums. I have hope that in the near future we may see a set of alternate takes, unreleased tracks etc... catering to the die hard fans. Keep your fins crossed.
As I previously mentioned I own very little of Buffett's early albums on CD. Yes, it would be a bitch for those that have already purchased them to have to buy them again but I look at it this way, I already own them on vinyl so I'd be repurchasing them again anyway. I already own duplicate copies of R.E.M.'s back catalog on CD so having to do the same for Buffett wouldn't be a huge leap. The worst example I've seen of this is the Elvis Costello collection, I have no idea how many times all of his albums have been reissued but it's at least up to 2-3 times by now.
In regards to the Buffett box, it was among my first Buffett purchases on CD. Since I already owned the majority of that material on vinyl I felt it was a good way of covering the bases at the time. I also held out hope that his albums would receive the reissue treatment somewhere down the road (despite all of the obstacles, I still hold out hope) so I didn't go out and buy the CD versions right away.
I would love to see an updated box that includes some true rarities, outtakes, previously unreleased live cuts, etc. but feel Buffett is too much of a quality control freak for that to happen or we would have seen stuff like 15 Year Old Girlfriend on the first collection. Just look at nearly any box set by most any artist and they seem to be full of the hard to find stuff but not Buffett. While I enjoy his box set and find it a worthy addition to my CD collection he definitely played it safe content-wise.