Official Reprise Press Release with some slight new info...

[face of glass]

Originally Posted by JazmenFlowers

this is likely true, but we are in a separate class from the general public. this collection is necessary at this point. it does it's job as far as a "greatest hits" goes. those who bought Enchanted will buy this for the live stuff and the DVD. those who didn't buy Enchanted will buy this for the great collection of hits and the DVD.

Yeah, the thing is that the DVD could have been released separately though. But then there wouldn't have been a large enough market left for the CD. As Brian J. pointed out, the way Crystal Visions is now coming out is a common industry practice these days.

I'm just questioning the need for this very best of CD since Timespace already exists. Street Angel and TISL, in spite of containing many tracks that range from good to great, haven't really given Stevie any classics. So I can't really see that the CD adds anything of real significance to the public. And us Chiffonheads have been shortchanged too - there's ANOTHER live version of Rhiannon, most probably own the Deep Dish track already and everyone's got a live version of Rock And Roll and the Melbourne tracks via their bootlegs. While it's better that the live tracks will now be commercially available, there was an opportunity for an entire live album that's now been missed.

In short, a very best of/greatest hits package usually should give something extra for the casual fan and maybe something new for the hardcores (such as new tracks or outtakes), both of which the CD of Crystal Visions fails to do. Yeah, we'll get to exercise our completism and I probably would buy it anyway if it was just the CD that was going to be released. I'm that much of an anal completist anyway.

And of course it's a way to bring Stevie's body of work back to the public eye again and gather as much attention for it as possible - the CD of Crystal Visions should do fulfill its job there. That's the only good point I see for its release though.

I don't think that's necessarily true. remastering is more than just "pumping up the volume" -

True, it should all about going back to the original tapes, cleaning up whatever anomalies there are (but not via noise reduction!) and then trying to make those sound as close to the original as possible with new clarity. And since even we have better A/D converters on our computers than whatever the remastering guys of the record companies had back in the '80s, it's good enough of a reason to put out remasters of stuff that has been released on CDs before.

But not if the new remasters are done according to the Loudness War ideology that is so prevalent these days. I'm not going to start explaining much about how it ruins the dynamics of the original recordings and all that schpiel (I wouldn't have the vocabulary or all the knowledge for it anyway), a good YouTube link will do in this case. I'd just like to add that if an album is remastered according to the standards of the Loudness War, then a CD pressing of the same album that was released in the '80s is actually the better alternative because it sounds more like the originally released recordings.

Loudness War has just been getting more frantic because the record companies think that people want overcompressed loud-sounding stuff for their iPODs and because most new releases go that route anyway. All I'm asking is: why the hell should reissues of past recordings go that route too? Why should they compete in volume with most of the current new music? It's still going to sound like it's come from another era so most teenagers will turn their backs on it anyway, although some, bless their hearts, will always be drawn in.

I hope that this won't happen with Crystal Visions though. We'll see.