Neil Finn hints that Crowded House deluxe editions are on the way

Do I want to see the Crowded House back catalogue remastered? Are you kidding?? I’ve been asking, nay PLEADING with whoever might have control over their material to PLEASE hurry up (30 plus years and counting) and remaster all the Crowdies music! There are millions of fans like me who, I’m sure, will snap up remasters, box sets or any configuration of their wonderful music. Whoever has the power to make it happen…..for Pete’s sake make it happen!!

First and foremost I want the original album tracklisting on one cd, so that it the album ends where is should end. All bonus tracks or live recordings on a separate CD. A nice booklet with reviews, comments and special pictures is of course also welcome. I also like if the artwork is kept as original as possible. I can’t stand jewel boxes (a nice name for a horrible packing) . Miniature LP sleeves like the Japanese do are more stylish and in addition use up less space. If there is more than one CD and a booklet put the whole thing in a small box which has CD size, no LP sized boxes for CDs please.

don’t give us what we have.
not enough b-sides.
unreleased songs turned up on the excellent “afterglow”.
All songs were written by Neil Finn, except where noted.
“I Am in Love” – 4:38
“Sacred Cow” – 3:37
“You Can Touch” – 3:46
“Help Is Coming” (N. Finn, Peter Jones, Nick Seymour) – 4:49
“I Love You Dawn” – 2:34
“Dr. Livingstone” – 3:57
“My Telly’s Gone Bung” (Paul Hester) – 3:13
“Private Universe” [Acoustic Mix] – 4:08
“Lester” [Demo] – 2:18
“Anyone Can Tell” – 3:36
“Recurring Dream” (N. Finn, Hester, Craig Hooper, Seymour) – 3:24
“Left Hand” – 2:57
“Time Immemorial” – 4:07

I would love to see a big box set from CH! I’ve been collecting singles and club CD’s for years, but would be happy to add a box set to the collection! All Finn, all the time!

A live album from the Woodface tour, please.

For me, the B-sides to the Finn album singles were absolutely amazing, so I would love anything raw like that. There was Weather With You, How Will You Go, There Goes God, Prodigal Son, Catherine Wheels – all sounded so rough and ready but so so good. Anything like that would be welcome. Better still, how about some kind of Unplugged project – CH did their MTV session before the concept became huge, yet there are so many Finn compositions that benefit from the stripped back approach. Bluegrass-Black And White Boy, anyone?

As much as I love all the Crowded House stuff, I’m not sure what’s to be gained from re-releases. The recording and mastering of the original CD’s was pretty great, and these days remastering usually ruins things, as a couple here have alluded to with recent CH albums. Maybe some HiRes 24/96 downloadable reissues might be worthwhile.

For years, I’ve wanted an audio version of the amazing Sessions at West 54th DVD Neil did.

Convent Girls!!!

I’d prefer Bob Clearmountain do the new mixes – hi did a great job on the Paul Kelly/Neil Finn “Goin’ Your Way” release.

If anyone has Paul Kelly vinyl or CD singles they want to sell…

SACD or hybrid would awesome. A Steve Wilson remix… oops I’ve just peed my pants!

I’m pretty sure there is an entire earlier mix of “Together Alone” with an altered tracklisting that I would LOVE to hear.

Still enjoying the DVD-Audio of the eponymous first album. More DVD-A is unlikely, but at least stereo on Blu-ray Audio with some bonus content would be nice.

Let’s hope they do t master them as badly as the Split Enz reissues

You rascal Neil! Just hwve I went to all of the effort to finally get everything that had eluded me for years. Figures. Yes, I’ll probably buy it.

Good quality versions of the pre-CH Mullanes demos would be good

There are loads of unique work-in-progress songs from various live shows that are unavailable anywhere else.

Not sure if all the York Street sessions from ’95 have been released, although a few have surfaced on dvd menus over the years!

There are lots of great tracks on the Neil Finn site, so more of the same please. Love the idea of ‘Zen’ mixes as described below:

“During the Together Alone sessions at Karekare in 1992-3, playful Zen mixes were created of some songs. The idea was to allow only four tracks from a multi-track recording to be faded up on the mixing desk at a time. “Zen Roxy” on the Nails On My Feet CD single was mixed this way as was the alternative version of “Private Universe” on Afterglow.”

to be honest i would be more keen on the Split Enz stuff as it was just being made readily available at decent prices, as nice as a whole load of Crowded House stuff would be.

https://flic.kr/p/fVexAz

Let’s do this!

I love Crowded House but I’m not really sure what’s out there that hasn’t been released before. I think Afterglow probably picked up the best of the unreleased stuff so what else is left that’s worth listening to?
They have probably released over 100 live gigs either via livedownloads.com, the fanclub or bonus cds so there can’t be much left there either.
I’d love to hear a remastering of the first couple of records though. The debut is horribly compressed – even on the dual disc, so that would be a good candidate for a revisit.

I’m in. Can’t get enough Finn.

Crossing my fingers, already !!!!

This sounds wonderful! If these eventuate, I hope that an expansive video collection is included. The 2CD/1DVD “Very Very Best Of…” release a few years ago seemed promising, but the DVD was a real let-down! The videos were NOT remastered (which they desperately needed) and all the 4:3 clips* were zoomed/cropped (GAH!) to fit 16:9 format, which only magnified their deterioration over the years. :(

*except ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’

So fingers crossed, they’ll get all the video masters and give them a thorough spit’n’polish (in original format!).

I hope all the CH-rarities, that are available for your listening pleasure on Neil’s website neilfinn.com, will also be included in a forthcoming CH-box set.

I’d hope for more bonus tracks that got finished but never released, as opposed to demos or live material. They must have thousands of hours of live gigs, since every CDs used to include a live song or eight (slight exaggeration.) And while 5.1. would be nice, high-rez would be better from my point of view. Oh, and Glenn, I have dozens of CD singles – anything you’re looking for in particular?

really hope they do vinyl reissues too

Definitely on my wish list. 5.1 would be nice.

If they have a video collection, please include the historic set from Live Earth! That set rocked. oh yea, some high def music please!

There are some fantastic live recordings. Many have appeared as extra tracks on long deleted singles. Many haven’t. Let’s hope there’s a tour planned soon.

I wouldn’t read to much into the fact Neil deleted his reply, he deletes all his ‘reply’ tweets. Just in case anyone thinks it’s a conspiracy theory :-)

I’m very excited by the thought of remastered and expanded reissues. Regarding the cd singles, most of them can be picked up for pennies from Amazon/Ebay these days. They were very much in the age of the ‘2cd’ single sets, with the majority of the b-sides being live tracks. They’re a great live band so they always sound excellent, but I don’t think there are piles and piles of non-live b-sides to be had.

If live tracks are your thing, there was a limited 2cd issue of ‘Recurring Dream’ that came with a bonus live cd.

Probably way outside the realm of likelihood, but a Steven Wilson remix of Woodface and/or Together Alone would be very cool.

YES!!!!!!!!!!! They need to follow the example set by XTC. 5.1 mixes plus all relevant b-sides, promo videos and stuff from the vaults. This is also a band with tons of video in the vaults as they came along during the height of the MTV era. It would be great to have some unreleased live footage to complement the releases. You don’t fully know Crowded House until you’ve experienced them live.

I did get to talk to Neil a couple of years ago before a Pajama Club gig. I asked about the box set. He said it was still in the works; it had not been abandoned.

This would be great. I recall seeing the remastered reissue of the first album at Tower ~2005. Believe it was a DualDisc and included some videos. I sold off my Crowded House-related CD singles during a purge I did a couple years ago and regret it now. The used record stores around here (Bay Area, CA) don’t carry many used CD singles these days (they won’t take them on trade-in usually). Used to be huge CD Singles sections. It’s a bummer as I see the singles as more collectible than the albums.

I hope the kitchen sink rarities from Neils website (http://neilfinn.com/albums/other/page/4/)
will be included.

I would love vinyl reissues of their albums inc afterglow

Looking forward to this very much.

I really hope it’s the much talked about boxset, Neil Finn already said that it would see the light of day in the farewell to the world documentary.
Or maybe it’s a new album
PS : there has been an expanded release of woodface, for EMI’s 100th birthday…

Ooooooooooh! Yes please!!!!!!!!

Number one for me would be more 5.1 please. Any other extra tracks,demos would be a bonus.

Put in all you can find and release them. I’ll be the first to buy