The last temptation with bonustracks

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The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by mestreech » Sun Nov 14, 2021 3:08 am

The last Temptation cd will be reissued with 4 live bonustracks on 20th november on the BAD REPUTATION label.
Bonustracks are :
11 No More Mister Nice Guy (Live Birmingham 1989)
12 Ballad Of Dwight Fry (Live Birmingham 1989)
13 Welcome To My Nightmare (Live Birmingham 1989)
14 Cold Ethyl (Live Cincinnati 1987)

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by SickThings » Sun Nov 14, 2021 3:35 pm

Well, that's really idiotic: using Trashes the World tracks (and Cincy) on The Last Temptation, which sounds nothing like that era.

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Babysquid » Sun Nov 14, 2021 4:07 pm

Hmmmm
Last edited by Babysquid on Sun Nov 14, 2021 4:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Babysquid » Sun Nov 14, 2021 4:08 pm

Babysquid wrote:
Sun Nov 14, 2021 4:07 pm
Yes I know but I don’t think the label has a particularly good reputation

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by concolz » Sun Nov 14, 2021 6:27 pm

How odd. The Bad Reputation label are also releasing an Eric McFadden homage album to Alice Cooper in November. Entitled Hail To Hell - An Acoustic Tribute To Alice Cooper, the track listing is certainly eclectic!

Welcome To My Nightmare
Is It My Body
Last Man On Earth
Laughing At Me
Crazy Little Child
Millie and Billie
Man With The Golden Gun
Billion Dollar Babies
I'm the Coolest
Former Lee Warmer
It's Me
Blue Turk
Desperado
Ballad of Dwight Fry


The front cover artwork is also a 'homage' to the WTMN album!https://badreputation.fr/epages/box2831 ... BAD2112003

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Saint&Sinner » Sun Nov 14, 2021 8:39 pm

This is idiotic, so we have a wealth of unused tracks and demos but this is what we get?
Does alice and his management team think that little of us? and i know someone will leap to their defense and say that its nothing to do with alice, blar blar blar.
But are you saying when alice/management get informed about this they don't think hmmmm maybe we could do better than this . Maybe we could talk about doing something better than this.
Nope they just cash the cheque and move on.
seriously how can anyone defend this nonsense.

We cant get legitimate reissues with actual worth (ie demos, outtakes, b-sides etc) but we get bonus tracks from a live album/dvd from a tour that has zero to do with that era. Absolute disgrace.

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Si » Sun Nov 14, 2021 9:01 pm

Saint&Sinner wrote:
Sun Nov 14, 2021 8:39 pm
This is idiotic, so we have a wealth of unused tracks and demos but this is what we get?
"We" don`t have anything extra. The original record company legally have them. And this reissue is simply yet another licensing deal. They likely haven't got a clue what may or may not be in the vaults and don`t have any access to them.
This is just another example of how Epic/Sony (or whatever name they are under now) will license the material out to anyone who asks for presumably a relatively low amount (low or it wouldn't be happening so often).
Saint&Sinner wrote:
Sun Nov 14, 2021 8:39 pm
Does alice and his management team think that little of us? and i know someone will leap to their defense and say that its nothing to do with alice, blar blar blar.
It's nothing to do with leaping to their defense. It's a simple fact, as you obviously know. I doubt they even know this is being released.
Saint&Sinner wrote:
Sun Nov 14, 2021 8:39 pm
But are you saying when alice/management get informed about this they don't think hmmmm maybe we could do better than this . Maybe we could talk about doing something better than this.
I VERY much doubt they are informed in advance at all.
Saint&Sinner wrote:
Sun Nov 14, 2021 8:39 pm
Nope they just cash the cheque and move on.
seriously how can anyone defend this nonsense.
You can`t defend the release. It's a simple cash in. A random company have paid for the rights to release another version of the album because they think they will make some money out of it, and picked a few random tracks from the same licensee as bonus tracks to fool the unwary. That is all there is to it. Alice and management have nothing to do with it at all. Will they make a few bucks? Probably, through automatic royalties etc, but it's unlikely to be very much.
Saint&Sinner wrote:
Sun Nov 14, 2021 8:39 pm
We cant get legitimate reissues with actual worth (ie demos, outtakes, b-sides etc) but we get bonus tracks from a live album/dvd from a tour that has zero to do with that era. Absolute disgrace.
I agree. It's a real shame there can't be a proper remaster/reissue campaign for ALL the albums. There are people who are trying to get things to happen, but in AC's case so many different hands are in the pot it's very hard to get everyone onboard and make it happen - and make it profitable which is the bottom line unfortunately.
I don't like it any more then you - and reissues like this really don`t help the case for it happening either.

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Saint&Sinner » Sun Nov 14, 2021 10:57 pm

Si,
while appreciate some of your points, it feels like there is no interest in the management/artist to do anything of interest (if you know better i bow to your knowledge on this front) but it seems to me like they are not interested. It baffles me how smaller bands with insanely smaller audience bases produce magnificent collectors reissues /box sets etc. etc. but a multi million selling artist like Alice doesn't have them.

I understand you are not condoning these opportunistic releases, its just a baffling strategy from all involved.

Another thing i am confused by is how long Alice signed over the masters for. i mean heystoopid is 30 years ago now. I'm just amazed they signed them over for longer than that.
As i am sure you can tell, it is a source of great frustration for me, so apologies for ranting, but man, how can we not get this sorted out by now.

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Saint&Sinner » Sun Nov 14, 2021 11:23 pm

I literally just had a look and apparently he sold all the rights to his stuff in 2018. so.....well ....that's that then.

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Daggers & Contracts » Sun Nov 14, 2021 11:48 pm

Well, will we get another package with the Graphic Novels? :devil:
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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Rock10 » Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:42 am

A lot of people love this album, but I think it is too lite. It should be heavier.

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Spiner202 » Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:45 am

While I agree that these bonus tracks make no sense, wouldn't it be most effective to put together an album of just unreleased tracks? If Trash/Hey Stoopid/TLT are all on Epic, couldn't someone presumably license all the unreleased tracks and demos from that era and put them on a CD, rather than us hoping they get added to reissues of the original albums?

As one of the younger people on this board, I've always appreciated reissues for making things available again; not for the bonus content. I'd have to imagine that nobody is going out to buy this reissue that already owns the album, and that it's more likely for anyone new to AC's catalogue to buy it. By contrast, a release of just unreleased/demo/bonus tracks would get bought by just about every hardcore AC fan.

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Si » Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:46 am

Saint&Sinner wrote:
Sun Nov 14, 2021 10:57 pm
Another thing i am confused by is how long Alice signed over the masters for. i mean heystoopid is 30 years ago now. I'm just amazed they signed them over for longer than that.
Here's the thing you are missing. They NEVER owned the masters. There was NO deal, to the best of my knowledge, that stated the rights returned to the band/Alice after x-number of years.
As far as I know Warner Brothers did and still do own the masters for the albums up to Dada, and then from then on the respective companies he was with (MCA/EPIC) own those masters (or whoever owns those companies now like Universal).
From 2000 and BP it's even more fractured with several different companies generally owning different albums, and it's only the last two or three recording Alive maybe have more control over (although I think I was told EarMusic owns those as well).

To the best of my knowledge (and I could be wrong) the only way Alice could get back the rights to everything would be to BUY it from all those record companies, and that probably isn't cost effective as the 70s catalogue is worth a bomb. Even just 'School's Out' I would have thought would cost a lot.
This is why Alice re-recorded the hits (Alice Does Alice) about 10 years plus back, so they could use those 'copy' recordings for films and TV and thus make more money from them, bypassing WBs. Several other artists have done similar things for the same reasons.

And when we say WB owns the 70s albums, it means they own EVERYTHING recorded while the band/Alice were signed to the company - including Demos (yes, that C-60 cassette they might have recorded a rough acoustic generation landslide demo on is still WB property) and live recordings. The masters of all of it *should* be in the Warners vaults somewhere if they still exist. Of course occasionally original tapes come up for auction, but technically they shouldn't as they are still owned by the record company who effectively paid to record them.

So no one from Alice's team can go down to a vault and search through all the tapes looking for stuff without the record companies agreeing. And if they agreed they would STILL have to pay Warner Brothers etc if they wanted to use any of it - and that isn't cheap.

Now as to the matter of smaller bands being able to do it, you have the reason right there. Apart from the fact they might have had a better deal (or even had a deal allowing them to keep their masters, which wasn't really an option in the 70s) - their back catalogue isn't worth nearly as much as Alice Coopers and that makes it more viable to license stuff to do reissues.

So what you have is a situation where the huge bands have the power to buy back their masters (like I think Bowie did) or have the selling power to make a profit with the reissues. Smaller bands can do it because of the more limited value of their back catalogue, and Alice is stuck right in the middle with a HUGELY valuable back catalogue but only a limited audience for reissues - especially when so many albums have now been reissued multiple times already via licensing.

Add to that the fact that for the most valuable albums (70s) there is reportedly very little releasable unheard material in the vaults anyway (and much of what's there is has been around on bootlegs for decades, making it less desirable). The best stuff has already come out on the box sets.
The Life and Crimes also contains a lot of the non-album stuff and film soundtrack stuff that was available at the time - and Brian Nelson said just licensing that was a nightmare to arrange.
There's certainly stuff from later albums that could be added as extras, and you can always throw the odd live recording in, although again much of the most interesting is probably already available (ie Glasgow 1982).

So in the end you are left with the packaging as being the main selling point for these releases, and personally I think THAT is possibly the #1 selling point anyway for any of these well done reissue projects. Hardcore fans WILL buy a nice package featuring an album they have, a live recording they probably have and a DVD/BR which is mostly on YouTube *IF* it has a nice booklet, replica singles, inflatable pencil and poster etc included in a nice box!
Look how fast the Old School set sold out!
I think that is the only way this will ever get done. As expensive (to guarantee everyone a profit) premium items made in limited numbers. And they *could* be wonderful items if done properly - but that is a big "if".

Sorry for going on a bit but that's how I see it. Anyone feel free to correct anything I may have wrong.

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Si » Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:54 am

Spiner202 wrote:
Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:45 am
If Trash/Hey Stoopid/TLT are all on Epic, couldn't someone presumably license all the unreleased tracks and demos from that era and put them on a CD, rather than us hoping they get added to reissues of the original albums?
Two things on this.

1) The people releasing these things have no idea what is actually in the vaults (and likely don`t really care) and they don't have access to go searching to see. I would imagine the list of tracks available to license only includes what has already been released. Even the owner likely doesn't know what is actually there in any detail.

2) A Cd of only unreleased tracks would probably have an extremely small sales market. So again your back to having to pay out too much out for too small a return. The reason rare tracks are added as bonus tracks to existing albums is simply to get US to buy the same thing multiple times. The record companies don't CARE about the historical significance of any of it. They just want to know how much someone will pay to use it. And the stuff they know is worth a lot - ie a perfect 'ABC In Concert' - they want a truckload of cash to use, which is why no one has ever repeated or released the full thing.

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Saint&Sinner » Mon Nov 15, 2021 1:29 am

The record companies don't CARE about the historical significance of any of it
completely agree, but then by arguing that point you re-enforce mine. If they added these bits onto reissues us idiots would all buy it, there by getting more sales.
The Cd/vinyl market is small these days so you should be playing to your audience with (exactly as you say) a high quality , moderate to high cost box set which has us fan boys drooling.

Also in regard to the rights on the masters etc i understand in the 70s no one knew or cared, but in the 80s people were much more savy especially someone like alice who was beholden to a record contract which constricted him in so many ways with warner. As mentioned alice sold a bunch if not all his rights in 2018 for a presumably large van load of money so this would indicate he did own them for a time or some of them.

I'm not sure about who owns demos and such as if they recorded them themselves (as you say, on their little C90 tape) I don't think it is owned by the record company. But again, different bands different deals.

If you look at for instance Danzig, he got the rights to his stuff and he collected all the rare/demos/bsides etc etc into one double album/book thingy and it was amazing. Im not saying alice needs to do something like that (as danzig reproduced the songs remixed them etc) but a collection per record company (the epic years, the MCA years etc) would make easy financial sense.

Just because a small band releases a juicy collectors box doesn't mean that they signed better deals, as a point of fact smaller bands tend to have terrible/worse record deals than big artists who have more bargaining power.

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Si » Mon Nov 15, 2021 9:52 am

Saint&Sinner wrote:
Mon Nov 15, 2021 1:29 am
Also in regard to the rights on the masters etc i understand in the 70s no one knew or cared, but in the 80s people were much more savy especially someone like alice who was beholden to a record contract which constricted him in so many ways with warner.
That would be 'Someone like Shep', not Alice, but I get your point. However I'm not sure how much choice they had in 1984/5 when he came out of his Warner contract. The last four albums had been flops after all. It took a friend at Epic Records to pull him back to the top with Trash with a huge advertising campaign and that only lasted for two albums as by the time The Last Temptation was ready Alice had effectively already left the label to follow that same friend to Hollywood Records - who never released anything for him.
Saint&Sinner wrote:
Mon Nov 15, 2021 1:29 am
As mentioned alice sold a bunch if not all his rights in 2018 for a presumably large van load of money so this would indicate he did own them for a time or some of them.
Do you have a source for that? If it's like other major artists recently I think that could be publishing (ie songwriting) rights that are being sold, not ownership of the master recordings - which he doesn't own so can`t sell.

Saint&Sinner wrote:
Mon Nov 15, 2021 1:29 am
I'm not sure about who owns demos and such as if they recorded them themselves (as you say, on their little C90 tape) I don't think it is owned by the record company. But again, different bands different deals.
They do. If you are signed to a record company it's normally for anything you create during that period. You used to get a substantial advance payment for an album and anything you recorded towards that album is part of the deal. That's why you see things like "appears courtesy of Warner Brothers Records" when an artist guests on someone else's work. You have to get permission from your record company to do guest appearances etc.
Saint&Sinner wrote:
Mon Nov 15, 2021 1:29 am
If you look at for instance Danzig, he got the rights to his stuff and he collected all the rare/demos/bsides etc etc into one double album/book thingy and it was amazing. Im not saying alice needs to do something like that (as danzig reproduced the songs remixed them etc) but a collection per record company (the epic years, the MCA years etc) would make easy financial sense.
Maybe, but I don't think it would make much tbh. Don't forget it isn't just a matter of slapping the material on a disc and putting it out. They have to find it, transfer it from the old tapes (which could be in any condition by now), mixing and mastering it all, getting permission from anyone involved in the recording that has a financial interest. All that also costs money and Alice himself is unlikely to be doing it himself. I honestly don't think even he has that much interest in old stuff in that way. It would take him away from touring and recording new material and all the other stuff he likes to do like charity golf tournaments and the Solid Rock stuff. I just don`t think sitting in a studio going over old tapes is his thing! Of course he would have no issue with someone ELSE doing it!
Saint&Sinner wrote:
Mon Nov 15, 2021 1:29 am
Just because a small band releases a juicy collectors box doesn't mean that they signed better deals, as a point of fact smaller bands tend to have terrible/worse record deals than big artists who have more bargaining power.
True, I think that situation is different with every artist. You have just as many small artists who don`t own anything as big ones. I just meant it *can* be easier for smaller artists as getting access to their catalogue *can* be cheaper for them to do. There are just as many small artists who back catalogue is long gone.

I think that in the end what it would require is someone who is both knowledgeable about what is out there and obsessive enough about it to go through what is often an immense amount of work to get something done. We had Brian Nelson, who spent *years* getting Lives and Crimes together and released, but he's sadly gone now. There *are* people behind the scenes trying to get things released, but they often hit brick walls (probably financial) which take a long time to get past, if they ever do.

For example a good contender for the deluxe treatment would be WTMN. You have several different mixes of the album (original/Quad/DVD-A), several pro-recorded concerts. a live video recording and the studio TV show plus various interesting TV appearances that could all make a magnificent set - but almost all of it is already out there and that cuts down the market for it, especially when it would be a premium priced item. But people would inevitably complain there wasn`t enough "new" material included. Would something like that sell (in a nice package)? absolutely!! But would it make enough money to make all the work worthwhile to a record company? That is what the companies have to be convinced by. And the further down the line you go the harder that would get for them to make a profit - especially for post-70s albums.

The bottom line is it's all down to money. The expense of doing something and the possibility of enough profit. If a company can be convinced of that, then it will happen.

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by mestreech » Mon Nov 15, 2021 11:40 am

But WB has already two early albums ready to be released with bonus (maybe demo but for sure live concert). But it was never released, very strange because everything was finished.
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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Ted Sallis » Mon Nov 15, 2021 6:07 pm

mestreech wrote:
Mon Nov 15, 2021 11:40 am
But WB has already two early albums ready to be released with bonus (maybe demo but for sure live concert). But it was never released, very strange because everything was finished.
Strange world the musicbizz
If I made my best educated guess, I'd say the reason the two albums haven't been released is because their perceived sales potential doesn't justify the expenditure. I could be completely wrong or their could be one or more other reasons in addition to this.

Ted

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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by Daggers & Contracts » Tue Nov 16, 2021 12:26 am

John Forgety (leader of CCR) signed away his rights to Fantasy Records for the ability to record & release their 60's/70's "Classic" material. He was so upset later that they wanted him to pay to play his CCR material "Live" when he went solo that he refused to do so. When I saw the "Eye of The Zombie" tour - no CCR. Still a fine show w/Bonnie Raitt opening.
I think he finally relented when he had a conversation w/Dylan.
He had a song on the "Centerfield" album called "Zanz Kant Danz" that was changed on later releases to "Vanz Kant Danz" because Saul Zaentz (former Fantasy Record company executive sued). This song was about a thieving pig (w/video) go figure!
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Re: The last temptation with bonustracks

Post by mestreech » Tue Nov 16, 2021 2:24 am

Ted Sallis wrote:
Mon Nov 15, 2021 6:07 pm
mestreech wrote:
Mon Nov 15, 2021 11:40 am
But WB has already two early albums ready to be released with bonus (maybe demo but for sure live concert). But it was never released, very strange because everything was finished.
Strange world the musicbizz
If I made my best educated guess, I'd say the reason the two albums haven't been released is because their perceived sales potential doesn't justify the expenditure. I could be completely wrong or their could be one or more other reasons in addition to this.

Ted
If a recordcompany can't make profit on two of the best Alice Cooperband albums with a live concert there must be something wrong with them.

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