Red Mosquito

Do you think they’ve stopped releasing new material from the vault because of a self-imposed commitment to having to play every song live? It strikes me as really strange that a band once known for its vast amount of side material now releases practically nothing official. Not even the Xmas singles. What happened?

Hypnos wrote:Do you think they’ve stopped releasing new material from the vault because of a self-imposed commitment to having to play every song live? It strikes me as really strange that a band once known for its vast amount of side material now releases practically nothing official. Not even the Xmas singles. What happened?

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They probably realize they can't do this forever and are holding on to material to release after they've called it quits.

oasisfan35 wrote:

Hypnos wrote:Do you think they’ve stopped releasing new material from the vault because of a self-imposed commitment to having to play every song live? It strikes me as really strange that a band once known for its vast amount of side material now releases practically nothing official. Not even the Xmas singles. What happened?

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Yeah. Probably a much higher profit margin in archival releases than in actual new albums

Well, if this year has taught us anything, it's that they certainly have plenty of material in the vaults if/when they decide to release it...

Most likely a $ reason indeed.

I just cannot understand why these people hold on to this stuff, why don’t they just want to see and reap the rewards of their work while they are still alive? Why keeping all this stuff for when they will be gone? As artists shouldn’t they want to live in the present?

money comes from touring. archival releases cant possibly amount to enough to justify a now twenty year strategy.

i do thin, to jorge’s point, having additional material allows you to keep releasing stuff (or justify a look back) after your creative arc as a band has ended and allows unreleaed material to recontextualize how we think of different albums and eras (think of how lost dogs transformed the conversation around binaural)

armogi wrote:Most likely a $ reason indeed.

I just cannot understand why these people hold on to this stuff, why don’t they just want to see and reap the rewards of their work while they are still alive? Why keeping all this stuff for when they will be gone? As artists shouldn’t they want to live in the present?

Releasing 30 year old songs isn't exactly living in the present. It's admitting you're no longer relevant. When they retire, it's a nest egg. I know from experience that artists can be of this mindset.

stip wrote:money comes from touring. archival releases cant possibly amount to enough to justify a now twenty year strategy.

Money comes from several places, and the deluxe/reissue market is huge

Especially for a band like Pearl Jam with a (now) older fanbase with expendable income and a collector's mentality they've fostered over decades

Plus what I'm positing is they're probably going to wait until retirement to release this stuff, when the touring money is no longer flowing in

Like WCT said, a nest egg

They also rework a lot of the material they havent put out, like Parting Ways or Severed Hand in the past, so probably most of that stuff can appear as material from new albums.

I do feel they will come back eventually to the EP or Single form now that vinyl is getting bigger and bigger.

Jorge wrote:Plus what I'm positing is they're probably going to wait until retirement to release this stuff, when the touring money is no longer flowing in

Like WCT said, a nest egg

i agree. im just saying they dont appear to be releasing these kinds of archival editions now while they are still an active band - and I would be interested to see numbers but I have to assume even archival rereleases would be dwarfed by touring