Artists with confusing discographies

I have trouble trying to figure out the discographies of James Brown and The Kinks (on cd)

 

Not to mention the fact that his tracks often have names like '4 Bit 9d Api+e+6', or 'Nqz12 Fs Del', or 'UT1 - Dot', or 'Midi Pipe1c Sds3time Cube/Klonedrm', or don't have any name but instead have a picture for a title. For a while back in the mid-nineties I foolishly tried to be a completist. Now I just enjoy what I find, knowing that it'll only ever be a random slice from his digital midden.

 

Brian Eno has a confusing discography.

 

Secret Chiefs 3

They tend to give all of their different sounding projects their own names, yet include them together on the same album.

 

Anybody who released music back dating back to the 40s and 50s. This thanks to the concept of an "album" still being defined, format "was" between shellac, vinyl, 12", 10", and 7"...

 

John Lee Hooker and Lightnin' Hopkins

 

Grateful Dead

 

I don't see how some of these qualify as "confusing" - large maybe and titles maybe difficult to get hold of but "confusing means exactly that - the same album with different titles, incomplete or non-existent recording or lineup info on records, records that may or may not even exist.

 

I don't find Wilson's discography to be all that difficult to understand. It's huge, but it's generally well-curated. Sure, it's a bit difficult to keep track of all the Bass Communion remixes and collaborations, but that's not all that significant a part of the discography.

 

I don't know that he does it anymore, but for a while he had a habit of adding real drums to an album when it was reissued or changing the mix significantly as technology improved. That's what I found confusing.

 

I think he only did that on Up the Downstair and a couple songs on The Sky Moves Sideways. I don't think he really changed the mixes significantly.

 

Apparently he did it on the Stars Die comp as discussed in another recent thread.

 

Traffic. Their first album was released as "Mr. Fantasy" in the UK and "Heaven is in Your Mind" in the US, and there were fairly significant differences. Both are still in print, and both have bonus tracks now. After living with only a compilation plus Canteen & Low Spark for quite a long time, I've started collecting the rest of their output and haven't yet decided which way to go on this one.

 

The original version of Stars Die simply had remixes of the two tracks in question ("Up the Downstair" and "Fadeaway"), while subsequent re-releases had the same versions as the 2005 Up the Downstair.

 

Well, when you realise the Wailers were a trio, and that all three released material under their own names or as 'the Wailers', and that their names were often spelt differently (Bonnie Wailer, Peter Touch), that the material was released on all kinds of labels and often with different names on different releases (in Jamaica, copyright meant nothing and, if you could steal someone's stampers, you could issue the tracks), that a lot of crucial releases have white labels with handwritten titles, sold personally by Bob, Bunny and Peter, that b-sides didn't match a-sides, that they might even be by different artists, that songs have dub mixes, dubplate versions, DJ toasts, etc., that master tapes frequently don't exist or have spent fourty years mouldering in basements, that studio logs were never taken...

Yeah. It's tough.

 

Pete Townshend's solo career is somewhat confusing IMO. I actually just bought the last two "main" studio albums I didn't own by him, White City is supposed to arrive today I guess and Psycoderelict is supposed to arrive tomorrow. But with Pete's solo albums you have "Who Came First", which he released while The Who were really rolling, and it's kinda confusing at first to know if it is a solo album or a Who album. Then you have "Rough Mix", which is a colaboraiton with Ronnie Lane, so it isn't exactly a true solo album, and the "Iron Man" album is the same. Plus there is all those "Scoop" albums and the "Lifehouse Chronicles" set. So it is a bit confusing. Plus it had been hard to find some of the albums at a reasonable price until the last couple years. And the "Lifehouse Chronicles" box goes for a mint, really wish that would get a re-release.

I know there are many other artists whose albums are a mess, but for as few albums as Townshend has released solo it is tricky at first to figure out what's what. Plus I forgot to mention his Meher Baba tribute albums, so one has to do some research to know which albums one wants to get by Townshend solo.

 

That's what makes it really confusing, I'd say. These indie albums that are impossible to find and that repeat tracks from one to the next... and are they worth tracking down? Well, that's debatable.

 

Very surprised no one has yet mentioned Rolling Stones wild cross-atlantic discography at Decca / London.
Good luck if you're a newbie! Also lots and lots of b-sides, bonus tracks etc.

David Bowie's discography outside his albums, are a jungle in bonus tracks, b-sides, live tracks, different mixes, remixes etc.

 

Great point. I know there are some songs on those Meher Baba albums I'd probably like, but as you said trying to find a the CDs for a handfull of songs just isn't worth it, at least not right now.

 

Tito Puente. He has over 100 albums, but a lot of his music was originally released on singles. His recordings, from the late 1940s onward, have been reissued on many LPs and CDs, but never with consistent, organized session information, such as recording dates and musician personnel. It is not until he began recording for Concord in the mid-1980s that consistent information was included on the album covers.

If you hear a Tito Puente song, and like it, and want to know the year it was recorded, or even the decade, and want to know who is playing that very hot saxophone solo on it, you can't find out. The album covers rarely give that information, and the printed and online discography information is inconsistent at best. You have to undertake an investigation of many sources to come even somewhat close to knowing, but then you can't be sure. Some of the online sources which seem to have the most information are written in Spanish only.

For example, I shared my love for a particular recording of "Caravan" by Tito Puente on another online board. That started an extended discussion of whether that track was recorded in the late 1940s, or the mid-1950s, and whether or not it had originally been released under a different song title or not.

 

I see "confusing" as being artists with large discographies that are spread over multiple labels and decades. This causes issues when labels go out of business or take specific items out of print. You also have issues with artists who recorded prior to the 1950s, before the concept of albums became common, so there can be dozens of compilations of singles, few of which are complete. It's even worse when material goes into the public domain and anyone can press their own discs, with or without proper track information.

 

The demo version of Baba O'Reilly on one of them that's like 10 minutes long, with no vocals and more variations on the initial Lowrey organ opening, is the only thing I found of lasting interest on the Baba records. I recorded it and sold the records off. It's probably been released elsewhere.

 

John Zorn and Bill Laswell ...... for the sheer volume of releases and collaborations.

Just typing those names freaks me out.

 

Has anyone mentioned R. Stevie Moore, with his 400+ albums?

 

At least with Zorn most of it is on his own label. With Laswell, it's spread all over the place on dozens of labels.