I said I wouldn't comment further but you drew me back in. My opinion: if I were to have "lucked" into all the music from this set, I would not be jumping in to discuss price points as I don't think I'd have a leg to stand on. I'd shut up and talk about the music. And this is really it for me.
Here's my recent playlist: Paul McCartney -- Off the Ground (and Down to the River) 1. Off the Ground 2. Soggy Noodle 3. Hope of Deliverance 4. Down to the River 5. Mistress and Maid 6. I can't Imagine 7. Cosmically Conscious/Down to the River (reprise) 8. Biker Like an Icon 9. Golden Earth Girl 10. The Lovers That Never Were (Emerick version) 11. Kicked Around No More 12. Winedark Open Sea 13. C'mon People/Cosmically Conscious (reprise) Finally, an OTG that works for me.
Yeah wanting to "drive people to streaming" doesn't jibe. The downloads are at CD quality which makes me think this was strongly considered as a disc. Perhaps they got push back or elected to release the band version demos as a last minute decision (or even the Elvis-Paul tracks). They traded one for the other and figured fans should get more offically unreleased stuff in the set to add more value or figured most fans wouldn't want to have the b-sides. Who knows? My guess is that they already designed the artwork for four discs and substituted one set of previously unreleased versions vs. b-sides. They didn't want to redesign the holders be ause it was too expensive and knew they would be criticized if they didn't offer everything. Hence, downloads. I really like all the demos and wish that Paul and Elvis would do an album together including those two songs.
Since the discussion has moved towards "Off The Ground", I want to bring up a few opinions of the songs. Particularly "Peace In The Neighbourhood" and "The Lovers That Never Were". "Peace In The Neighbourhood", which seems to get dumped off of a lot of people's revised track listings. I for one happen to enjoy the song a lot; Enough to keep it in my own revised playlist of Off The Ground. I heard it today while I was shuffling through my Beatles playlist and I really enjoyed listening to it. I've heard it three times within the last 30 days according to last.fm and I never get tired of the song. Now on the other hand, "The Lovers That Never Were" is a song I'd dump off my revised Off The Ground album. Even though it was the first song I heard off of the album, I liked it, but that was until I decided to listen to the whole album a few months later and I ended up liking all the songs on the album better except for "Get Out Of My Way" and "Biker Like An Icon" respectively. I never did like the production of it compared to the other songs and I really didn't find a version I liked better until the 1988 demo. It's my 10th favorite on Off The Ground and I'd boot it off along with "Mistress & Maid" and the other two songs from the album I mentioned before.
After "mastering" my playlist (i.e., running it through Toast to level match the volumes and tighten the segues) and thinking about it a bit, I came up with "Twenty Fine Fingers" as a title. I needed a quickie cover for iTunes, and one of the highest-quality images of them together online featured both of them playing guitar -- featuring the twenty fine fingers that first bashed out those demos on acoustics. Here's the art: https://s1.postimg.org/8y98fbpmn/Mc_Mac_20_FF.jpg I don't know why I can't figure out how to directly post images. I wish the forum still allowed it. I'd happily pay a few bucks a month to bring that function back...
Basically you want the link with the ".jpg" ending. Your above link LOOKS like it has that, but it leads elsewhere. On that page the second "share" option has it: I'll happily take a few bucks a month from you for this tutorial.
Don t think you ll have any problem with that. As I said you can DL stuff illegaly anyway you like. It s your justification for it I object to. There will always be people who enjoy a free ride that s a fact of life. Luckily enough most people are more on the honest side though and pay for their goods. So if you wan t to keep on stealing stuff please go ahead. But please don t blame it on anyone else's greed but your own. One can-using your logic-claim that the banks charge to much and make to much profit. So why not rob the bank. It don t take a genius to find places were one can DL stuff without paying for it. But in all honesty-it takes the opposite to enter a place like this and bragg about it. Or at least a troll. But as the saying goes-to each their own.
Having got OTG-TCWs in the past few months I agree. I think the second disc is better than the actual album.
Long Leather Coat might be the only non-album track I've heard. Thanks for reminding me about the 'political' lyrics. They put me right off, especially in 'Looking For Changes'. Strikes me as Paul trying too hard to make a statement. I know he cares about these issues, I do too, but the lyrics seem too forced. Was he trying to emulate John here? I know he's mentioned attempts to write political/campaign songs in the past and not being good at them (true). Didn't he swear in Big Boys Bickering just for the attention? I'm glad the Anthology project forced him to work to a higher standard.
Is that second one a reprise? The Complete Works is just the B-sides from the OtG, C'P, HoD and BLaI singles. That's why there are 2 random unplugged tracks in the middle of Complete Works. Oddly enough, it was a lot cheaper for me to buy the album and all the CD singles than to buy The Complete Works.
I looked at buying them seperatley, but one of the singles seemed to be commanding a high price so it worked out cheaper to buy TCWs which I got from Discogs for about £50. I still got one of the C'P singles for the Deliverance mixes missing from TCWs but that was well cheap.
I just can't understand why the Emerick mix of 'Lovers' wasn't on the actual album at the time. It's great. It's kind of what I was hoping the 'band' demos on disc 3 were going to be like, instead of the watered-down remakes they are.
Listening to all these demos like Back on My Feet and The Lovers that Never Were makes me frustrated at how great they are but how I still can't abide the FITD album. The production of those albums from 83-93 just kill the songs for me.
Thanks for the feedback. If you don't like banks, then don't use them. Mine only charges a small yearly fee for my pass, so that's fine. As I said, I've bought basically all of Paul's stuff, but enough is enough.
