Wednesday 6 April 2005

What's in a word?

Late last week, ex-Happy Monday Bez was quite ecstatic because yet another Happy Mondays greatest hits album was being released on Monday and he was hoping the proceeds would lift him out of his bankruptcy.

So, Monday came and much to the surprise of probably everyone except those at London Records, "Greatest Hits" appeared on the shelves in shops across the land.

What's so odd about this? Well, given that the Mondays haven't released anything of any importance in over a decade, the decision to weave together a new collection of hits, mixes and misses seemed to be a strange idea for the record label.

Suffice it to say, the released that appeared on the shelves this past Monday was actually the same desperately released "Greatest Hits" that London released in 1999. Need more proof? Well, there's the 1999 copyright. How about the dead giveaway? NO RINGTONE ADS!

I'm torn between what is the most interesting element here. Either this reissue trying to be pawned off as a new release or the fact that it was reissued in the first place.

The Mondays played a gig with the Farm a couple of weeks back in Brixton and Bez was on some reality show months ago. The timing just doesn't seem to correlate with anything. It's almost like London were cleaning out their warehouse and decided it was high time to get rid of a load of Mondays Greatest Hits albums. Not even at budget price!

To add insult to injury, the original Mondays best of disc "Loads" (along with the bonus disc of mixes entitled "Loads More") was a much better deal than this recent (I'm talking 6 years ago here) release.

At least those of us that bought "Greatest Hits" six years ago don't have to fork out again for what could have been a disc "with new mixes" or "previously unreleased tracks" or "something new worth forking out for".

My money's safe this week.

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