Forgive me if this has been covered already – I did have a look but couldn’t find a thread specifically dealing with this.
I find so weird that while so many other artists of Neil’s stature (and generation) have had really nicely put-together packages come out for the 20th, 25th, 40th, 50th anniversaries of an album’s release, the only album of Neil’s to have received that treatment is Hot August Night.
So I was wondering if anybody knows whether this is down to hesitancy on Neil’s part, or if it’s more due to the decisions of the powers that be at the relevant label(s) – which I guess would be Capitol now. I wondered if a decision was made that releases of this nature wouldn’t be financially viable for some reason.
I realise the 2008 fire possibly destroying source tapes could be a factor, but it still seems so strange, for example, not to have had a 25th anniversary edition of Beautiful Noise in 2001. A whole second disc could have been put together with stuff like the demo version of the title track we got with the “In My Lifetime” package, plus live versions of that material which definitely exist, plus any number of demos and out-takes which surely must exist.
If we are never going to have deluxe re-releases of studio albums, surely there could be something special released for next year’s 50th of anniversary of Hot August Night…?
Does anybody know if it’s true that all ten nights were recorded? If so, the potential for a bumper box set seems amazing!