Metal Shock Finland (World Assault )

What Goldmine magazine describes as “one of the most significant reissue campaigns of recent years” continues with the release of Reimaginings, a deluxe 42 track collection which saw Melanie revisiting (and in some cases, remixing) some of the most beloved songs from across her career.

Melanie never permitted her songs to stand still.  Both in concert and in private, she was forever looking back and making changes – to how she played them, how she sang them and how she personally interpreted them.  “I think of songs as living beings who develop and grow as they get older,” she explained last year, and occasionally she would include these latest revisions on record, on live albums of course, but also new studio recordings.

This 2 CD set is remarkable in that, for the first time, it compiles performances that were previously released, in perplexingly piecemeal fashion, across a bewildering variety of budget compilations. Melanie’s own archive contained twenty or so different albums drawn from these recordings, but it is likely that there were many more.  “I gave up counting,” she shrugged.

Many fans, and Melanie too, have numbered rerecordings from these sessions among their favorite Melanie recordings, while some of husband/producer Peter Schekeryk’s remixes are so audacious that it is impossible to ignore them – none more so than the so-called “Ruby Tuesday ’99,” which imposes both a rapper and a guitar straight out of another Stones song, “Honky Tonk Women,” upon what was originally Melanie’s solo performance.  

Then there’s the wildly reggae-fied “Brand New Key,” with a guest appearance from the legendary Jimmy Cliff; her laughing introduction to “You Could Have Had Me For A Nickel”; another spoken intro, this time unforgettably realigning “Ruby Tuesday” with “a chain of restaurants”; and an all-time darkest, mysterious take on “Tuning My Guitar,” recorded with son Beau Jarred.

Available here!

Track listing

1. Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)
2. The Nickel Song
3. What Have They Done To My Song, Ma
4. Brand New Key
5. Ruby Tuesday
6. Any Guy
7. Purple Haze
8. Together Alone
9. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow
10. Babe Rainbow
11. Close To It All
12. Baby Guitar
13. People In The Front Row
14. Stop! I Don’t Wanna Hear It Anymore
15. Shine On (The Sun Will Shine On You and Me)
16. Tuning My Guitar
17. Brand New Key
18. You Could Have Had Me For a Nickel
19. The Nickel Song
20. Peace Will Come (According to Plan)

DISC 2

1. Ring The Living Bell
2. Ruby Tuesday
3. Some Day I’ll Be A Farmer
4. What Have They Done To My Song, Ma
5. Bitter Bad
6. Baby Day
7. Beautiful People
8. The Nickel Song
9. Ruby Tuesday
10. Bitter Bad
11. Together Alone
12. Any Guy
13. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow
14. Baby Guitar
15. People In The Front Row
16. Stop! I Don’t Wanna Hear It Anymore
17. The Nickel Song
18. Some Day I’ll Be A Farmer
19. Baby Day ’99
20. Ruby Tuesday ’99
21. The Nickel Song
22. What Have They Done To My Song, Ma

Also available now is photographer and long time Melanie friend Maddy Miller’s photo book May I Have This Dance?, a stunning and intimate photographic record of a creative collaboration and friendship that spanned over five decades. Miller first photographed Melanie for a magazine assignment in 1969, and went on to shoot some of the singer’s own favorite images.  

Combining familiar shots with a wealth of unseen pictures, and an introduction from mutual friend Peter Yarrow, May I Have This Dance offers a joyful, whimsical celebration of Melanie, in both her public and private life,.

May I Have This Dance is available from https://www.blurb.com/b/12130534-melanie-may-i-have-this-dance