Mark Caro
Pop Machine
A Chicago Tribune Web log
Originally posted: February 24, 2006
Cracker vs. Cracker
........Yet on Tuesday two new compilations from veteran alt-rootsy-hooky rockers Cracker hit the stores: "Get on With It: The Best of Cracker" and "Cracker Greatest Hits Redux."
The "Best of" was released by Virgin Records, the band's former label, and boasts a cover sticker announcing, "This compilation produced in collaboration with the band!"
It might occur to you that CDs generally don't make such claims because it's assumed that most product isn't released against the performers' will.
Doeth Virgin protest too much?
Why, yes, said Cracker frontman David Lowery.
In fact, Cracker was so miffed at the label's plans to release "Get on With It" that it went and rerecorded most of the same songs to create "Greatest Hits Redux." The band then pointedly released its version simultaneously through the independent label Cooking Vinyl.
"I guess you could say they consulted with us, but it wasn't like a friendly exchange," Lowery said. "We got a cease-and-desist letter from them."
The problem, he said, was that Cracker had recorded a new album, "Greenland," that it was planning to release in March until Virgin made known its plans to release "Get on With It" in February. The band wound up pushing "Green-land" back to June.
"Our whole point was 'Look, we have a new record coming out. It's not cool to drop a greatest-hits record,' " Lowery said. "As they say in marketing, it sends a wrong message and it gluts the marketplace. But the higher-ups in the [Virgin] legal department said, 'We can do this whether you guys say so or not, so we're going to do it.' "
Cracker, founded in 1991 by Lowery and guitarist Johnny Hickman after the dissolution of Lowery's former band Camper Van Beethoven, already had bad blood with Virgin over the label's non-promotion of 2002's "Forever." After departing the layoffs-decimated label, the band gleefully skewered Virgin in the song "Ain't Gonna Suck Itself" from the 2003 independent release "Countrysides."
In figuring out how to respond to this latest conflict with Virgin, Lowery said the bandmates asked, "What would Andy Kaufman do?" When their lawyer noted that the band's restrictions on rerecording most of its songs were expiring, the idea clicked.
"Our lawyer was so confident of the legality of this that he said, `I'll even play some keyboard parts on this,'" Lowery said.
Cracker no longer is listed on Virgin Records' Web site, and the first publicist reached for comment for this story asked, "Is Cracker a band?" Finally a publicist in the catalog division said no one at the label would talk, but she forwarded a statement attributed to "EMI Music Catalog Marketing":
"We gladly worked for several weeks with David Lowery and the band's management to accommodate their ideas, revising our tracklist and cover art. . . . We're very proud of the resulting compilation, and thought that the band was, as well, after soliciting their feedback and incorporating their ideas into the new collection."
In a follow-up e-mail, Lowery wrote that he talked to the label about song selections and cover art after hearing "through the grapevine" about the project. "They revised their track list, not because of our wishes but because they originally included CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN songs," he wrote. "CVB rejected a combo `Greatest Hits' out of hand."
He added: "They may be proud, but they clearly are misrepresenting us. In fact they were very aware of the band's unhappiness with the timing of the CD, and further, they couldn't possibly think we were happy once they accused us of FRAUD, and sent us a cease-and-desist letter, for putting out our own greatest hits, and for continually telling our fans not to buy the record, but to buy ours instead."
Cracker is far from the first band to rerecord its older material. Early country and R&B performers did so often, as did Gordon Lightfoot (on his 1975 "Gord's Gold" compilation), Roy Orbison (1987's "In Dreams") and, this year, New Wave rockers Gang of Four ("Return the Gift").
Cracker's "Redux" versions tend to have more of a live-in-the-studio feeling than the originals. Lowery said the band tried to get the hits "as close as possible" to the first versions, though "Low" has been embellished with an Egyptian accordion interlude.
Others, such as "I See the Light," are played in the extended live arrangements that have evolved over years of touring.
"Best of" probably makes more sense for new initiates (though it adds little over the 2000 compilation "Garage d'Or"). "Redux" is more for fans who already have the originals.
At least on the artistic end, Lowery isn't bashing the Virgin version. "I think I would have favorites off of either album."
) , was eine gute Mischung aus schnellen Punk/Rock Nummern und intensiven Songwriter-Stücken ermöglicht.
