Stone Roses – The Singles Collection - Review

10th August sees the 20th anniversary re-release of, ‘The Stone Roses’, possibly the finest British debut album ever, but before that particular event, the re-issues of ‘Elephant Stone’, ‘Made of Stone’, ‘She Bangs The Drums’, ‘Fool’s Gold’ and ‘One Love’ are here to rinse your wallets of just a little more cash.

Throughout the 90’s, Silvertone Records managed to milk it a number of times with albums like ‘Turns Into Stone’ and ‘The Complete Stone Roses’, so seeing ‘Sony’ on the back of these releases got my cynical mind wondering about what happened?

After doing a little bit of research it seems that Silvertone records were distributed by the Zomba Label Group, who were later bought out by Sony BMG in the mid-90’s, and I presume Silvertone are now well and truly defunct anyway.

‘Why are you telling us this?’ you may be asking.
Well I’ll tell you, The Stone Roses may have been one of the most important British bands of their generation but are these re-issues strictly necessary? And mores to the point do Sony believe they owe it to a new generation to have the band heard again?

I believe the answer to that particular question is ‘do they buggery’.

It looks like Sony are mainly in it for the money, but then again, what do I expect from a corporate giant whose only real goal is profit. 
 
Here we have a bunch of limited 7”s that all fit neatly into a collectable box, and along with the three different releases of the debut album coming out. ‘Super Deluxe’ 12” album folders’, ‘John Squire Artwork’, ‘48 Page bound book’, ‘3x180gsm heavyweight vinyl’, etc, etc.

This has got to be aimed at the older, more affluent, record buying market that actually remember the band first time around?
I can’t imagine a spotty teenager, who has never actually paid for an album, forking out £25 for a bunch of 7”s when he gets all of his music in terrible 128k/bps quality from torrent sites, can you?
 
Ok, so the kids can have their bad quality MP3 release on iTunes (with ‘Unheard tracks’ on each single) and Ian Brown did go back into the studio to re-master the album with producer, John Leckie, so it seems there must have been some blessing for the re-issue from the original members of the band, but you get my point.

 
Maybe I’m just a bit pissed off because I feel compelled to pre-order the collector’s edition of the debut album for £80 when the original has been sat in my collection for the best part of 20 years. 
 
Still, I don’t need to tell you how great the Stone Roses were and how amazing this music still sounds.

5 out of 5

 

Bu Tim Forrester