Originally written by Graham Reed · 6 October 2002
They release a 6-CD, 92 song box set called 'Eddie’s Archives' which comes in a silver embossed casket with a crystal Eddie Head shot glass and an band family tree on parchment scroll. And it looks like this.
CD 1 - BBC ARCHIVE Disc 1: BBC Friday Rock Show Session 1979 + Live Reading Festival 1982 Disc 2: Live at Reading Festival 1980 + Live at Donington 1988
CD2 - BEAST OVER HAMMERSMITH Disc 1 + Disc 2: Live Hammersmith Odeon March 1982
CD3 - BEST OF THE B'SIDES Double CD compilation of non-album tracks and b-sides
Well, On top of that £64.99 Box set (which still misses a least a double cd’s worth of rare B-Sides) comes the TV advertised 'EDWARD THE GREAT' which will feature 16 of their biggest hits, which naturally, misses out their 2nd biggest UK hit (1992's 'Be Quick or Be Dead'!) But the band are making the ‘amazing' artwork available as a download for fans who don't want to buy the album for the sake of the artwork alone. Oh the generosity!
So... Is this huge re-issue campaign just a cash-in for a quick buck from a bunch of washed-up middle-aged metallers living off former glories? Is it in anyway whatsoever related to the bands decision to sell off their royalties for the next 15 years for their albums to date to a Japanese finance bank in 1998 for £15 million?...Meaning that the only way they can get new money is from reissuing old stuff? Let us know in the forums...
Of course the perfect antidote is to keep it real with ex-singer Paul Di’Anno’s Autobiography ‘The Beast’ (clogging up HMV’s and WH Smith's "Crime" sections everywhere), which features such self-aggrandizing bumpf as "I may be a rock star... but when the police nicked me with a kilo of coke and an Uzi, they weren't asking me for autographs..."
* Ahem *