Amos' Boxed Set is an Overpriced Failure

Let's face it: Tori Amos' star has faded. As sad as it makes me - a 12-year fan - to say, she just doesn't have the entertainment cred she did ten years ago. To be frank, it is kind of an anomoly how Amos ever found success to begin with. Her obtuse, "fairy girl" style of interview-giving coupled with her frequently inaccessable lyricism are not exactly top-40 friendly.

But those of us that love her will love her forever, and it is that upon which I can't help but feel Amos and her handlers and record label are preying upon with each new release.

Early in her career Amos stoked the fire of her fans' devotion with numerous limited edition singles. These contained a plethora of otherwise-unavailable b-sides, and it seemed like all of the fabulous bonuses were focused around actual music.

These days it seems every Amos album comes with a $30.00 "limited edition" version that contains some kind of cheap gimmick - stickers, or a packet of flower seeds - to get her devoted fans to shell out extra money. Amos' true devotees want to own every single possible release they can, and no doubt they buy these limited edition records as well as the regular ones.

Then a year ago Amos released something truly exceptional: a 12-disc boxed set of live albums. But of course, she couldn't just release this set. Oh no; instead they were initially made exclusively available on itunes or from her website, at a cost of $20 per two-disc set. Only much later did she release the entire set in stores for a cheaper, more moderate price.

Now in 2006 comes "A Piano: The Collection". Meant to be Amos' definitive reflection on the first 15 years of her recording career, it recieved the typical Amos-camp hoo-hah. Amos can't just let something come out; it has to be conceptualized and poured over like a novella - it has to have PURPOSE.

In this case Amos claims to have been inspired by Led Zepplin's career-spanning boxed set. You see, it hasn't been an easy road for Tori. Early in her career she had a major flop with a hair-metal album (which is not even remotely touched on in this boxed set,) and when she came back to her "girl and a piano" sound, the record label rejected it. As such Amos contends that her first record suffered from various edits and changes that she wouldn't have liked had she been given the power to make executive decisions.

She further contends that other decisions throughout her career - whether personal, or made at the behest of "the powers that be" - have altered her recordings. So in "A Piano" she attempts, allegedly, to deliver what she would have liked those records to be. Not only does she rearrange track listings, but she also has gone back and remastered, remixed and changed up songs to reflect what she claims was the music's original intent.

To say the result is a disaster would be an understatement.

The five discs are chopped up into album groupings. Disc A is called "Little Earthquakes Revisited". Disc B is "Pink and Pele," while C is "Pele/Venus/Tales". Disc D is "Scarlet/Beekeeper/Choirgirl" and the final Disc E is "Bonus B-Sides".

If the first disc is supposed to be what the "Little Earthquakes" album of 1991 might have been had Tori had her way, I can't help but think it would have cemented her career permenantly. At sixteen tracks, it combines songs that WERE on that album with b-sides that WEREN'T (but were released on singles from the album), and mixes them all up willy-nilly.

Amos has also gone back and located what she called "Alternate Mixes". They are allegedly other mixes of songs that were done AT THAT TIME - *NOT* new mixes done with old recordings. So what we're hearing, allegedly, is the way the songs sounded before Tori's record label asked her to make changes.

In most cases the differences seem excrutiatingly subtle. We get alternate mixes of "Leather," "Precious Things," "Flying Dutchman" (a b-side to the single "China",) and "Mother". Generally this just means that the piano and vocals are more prominent, with guitars and other instruments taking a back seat. This doesn't seem to make much of a different to songs like "Leather" and "Mother" that are primarily piano vocal tracks anyhow.

However the absolutely lush and delicious track "Flying Dutchman" is absolutely destroyed. The original - a sweeping song with full. roaring 12 piece orchestra - is considered to be one of Amos' masterworks, and truly SHOULD have been on the "Earthquakes" album. This new version strips away 50% of the orchestra and heightens Tori's vocals in such a way that they nearly well smack you across the face.

This disc also includes the B-sides "Upside Down," "Take to the Sky" and "Sweet Dreams" - all of which appear on the very easy to find American CD single for "Winter". It also contains the "Unedited Single Version" of Crucify, which is essentially the "Remix" that appears on the "Crucify" E.P., but with the chorus fully restored.

The 18-tracks on Disc B feature "Alternate Mixes" of "Baker Baker," "The Waitress," "Past the Mission", "Yes, Anastasia" (all from "Under the Pink") and "Caught a Lite Sneeze". Again the changes are superficial - a brief orchestral solo intro to "Baker", for instance. The exception is "Sneeze", which has a VERY noticable heightening of Amos' vocals forcing them to not blend well with this song's cacophony of instruments.

The disc features the b-sides "Honey," which Amos has lamented not putting on the original "Pink" album since 1994, and the formerly unreleased track "Take Me With You". Amos claims that this song had begun recording in 1991 and was set aside, but picked up again in 1993 for "Pink" - yet set aside again. It is a very piano-driven song, and it sounds much like it would fit in with the b-sides of the "Earthquakes" era, but is entirely out of place with the "Pink" tracks. Also included is the live "Merry Widow" version of "Professional Widow" from the U.S. "Hey Jupiter" E.P.

Disc C is by far the oddest amalgamation of the bunch, throwing together tracks from 1996's "Boys For Pele" (which was half-covered on Disc B) with those from 1999's "To Venus and Back" and a few from 2003's hit compilation "Tales of a Librarian". Jumping around and skipping albums in-between these does not serve the disc well.

Included are "Remix Versions" of "Bliss" and "Doughnut Song"; calling these remixes is a bit of a joke. They seem to be essentially remasterings of the songs, something Amos already undertook for her "Librarian" album. This disc also features the new song "Walk to Dublin (Sucker Reprise)," a funky throw-away track left off of the "Pele" album and ends with Amos (drunkenly?) bantering with her engineer about a " drinking test" which "is puzzling, Marcel..."

This disc also includes the single-remix version of "Concertina" (from the CD single of the same name,) the ever-present "Star Trunk Funkin' Remix" of the song "Professional Widow" (which ALWAYS seems out of place on these collections,) and the "Dakota Version" of "Hey Jupiter" (from that E.P.)

Disc D backs-up to include 1998's "From the Choirgirl Hotel", as well as Amos' two most recent projects. It has the "Remixed" versions of "IIIEE," "Playboy Mommy," "Jackie's Strength" and "Cruel". Now, were Amos to TRULY remix songs like "Cruel" and "IIIEE" - songs rife with INTESE rock and roll and ethnic percussion and majorly layered vocals - the result could be astounding. Instead we are again trested to a remastering where Amos' voice is heightened to play louder than the rest of the track, which turns these two songs unlistenable!

Also on this disc are the previously unreleased "Not David Bowie," "Zero Point," "Ode to My Clothes", "Intro Jam/Mary's of the Sea" and "Dolphin Song." Frankly, having now heard these tracks, I would have gladly paid $20 just to buy a limited edition E.P. containing ONLY those tracks. "Not David" is an extremely funky R&B jam about betrayal that features a quirky loop of chanting men. "Zero Point" clocks in at nearly 9 minutes and, according to liner notes, was the other song considered for "Venus" instead of the song "Datura" ( - why, then is it not on the "Venus" disc?)

"Ode to My Clothes" is a comedic piano ballad about some unintentionally given-away designer clothes; it's cute, but not something for repeat listening. The "Intro Jam" combo is somewhat oddball - the only new part is the "Jam" itself, a bass and drum driven improv session finding Tori singing throw-away lyrics like "Back that *ss up, now...I've gotta face some kind of evil tomorrow". How this is an intro for the Mary Magdeline inspired "Mary's of the Sea" I don't know, but it does provide insight on how Amos and her band get into their recording sessions. "Dolphin Song" is urgent and up-tempo, but the vocals are fairly benign and monotone, making it a hard listen.

The biggest disappointment of all comes in Disc E, a collection of B-Side material. Amos has released such a voluminous back catalogue of singles and soundtracks and compilation projects, there was even a book published called "Tori Amos Collectables". Suffice to say she had a huge selection of material to draw from - much of it hugely obscure and hard for fans to track down (other than illegal downloads).

Instead, Tori chooses to compile a variety of tracks that seem, frankly, to be the easiest to obtain of all of her available B-sides. They include "The Pool", which along with the tracks on Disc A means EVERY b-side from the aforementioned "Winter" U.S. single is on this boxed set. Also here are "Sugar" (U.K. "China" single,) "Daisy Dead Petals" and "Sister Janet" (U.S. "Cornflake Girl" single,) and "Black Swan (U.K. "Pretty Good Year") - all of which were made available on a 1994 b-side compilation called "More Pink".

She's also included the remake version of "Mary" from the "Tales of a Librarian" collection, and "Merman" from charity album "No Boundaries". There's a new previously unreleased track, "Peeping Tommi", that's a total bore, as well as a three-song "Demo" trilogy for the tracks "Fire Eater's Wife/Beauty Queen," "Playboy Mommy" and "A Sorta Fairytale". These three are gems only in that they reveal some of the creation process of Amos' work (the lyrics of the final versions are very different,) but they are poor quality and rough on the ears, and stick out like a sore thumb in the very middle of this disc.

The rest of the b-sides come from mostly American-rleeased singles that were NOT limited edition and are extremely easy to find. Missing are songs like "Ode to the Banana King (Part II,)" "Song For Eric," "Thoughts" and others that appear on limited edition releases from the early 90's that would cost one $50 or more on ebay to obtain! Why would Tori neglect these TRUE rarities in favor of tracks that most of her true fanbase already have?

In fact, when you get right down to it, neglect seems to permeate this boxed set. I haven't even BEGUN to describe the packaging, which though neat-o to look at is so shoddily constructed it managed to show signs of wear before I even got it home from the record store. The box is rectangular, shaped much like many similarly sized boxed sets. But as it is called "A Piano" it is designed to look superficially like Tori's Bosendorfer Grande. Affixed to the top of the lid is a set of plastic piano keys, the type one would probably find on a cheap children's toy keyboard.

This may look cute, but it is impractical and problematic. When one opens the lid, they press down into the back wall of the box and leave an indentation. If one CLOSES the lid without having the contents inside, the weight of the keys push it down inside the box, causing the side "joints" to rip. And because they didn't want to print up a track listing on the actual box, it is packaged with a paper slip that folds around the bottom - where the hell am I supposed to put THAT?

Inside we have a fairly well constructed book of photos and blurbs of Tori talking about her songs in a manner that is untypically candid. I'll admit, the book is nice. But the CD's themselves come inside very cheap, flimsy cardboard digipack cases that slide into a plastic crushed-velvet holdster so that the edges of the cases begin to scratch and scrape with every removal.

There are so many questions I wish I could ask Tori about this boxed set. Why did you pretend that your 1988 album "Y Kant Tori Read," or your 2001 album "Strange Little Girls" don't exist? (They have no presence on this set.) You've been recording and writing songs since the 1970's; why not give us a taste of "Early Tori"? Why did you go in and mess up a good thing with your "remixes" and "alternate versions" of classic songs? Why did you leave out cherished, hard to find B-sides in favor of your most commonly available tracks? Why did you slap together this "piano-shaped" boxed set in the cheapest way possible, and then put a $75 price tag on it?

Amos' fans deserve better than this, and if she wants that star not to fade out completely, she'd better ditch the self-indulgence coupled with such a transparent attempt at grubbing up money and make with the music-making - fast!

*NOTE - Two weeks AFTER the release of the original boxed set, Rhino Records announced a scaled-down, less fancy version of the boxed set would be released for around half the price. This just lends further credence to my theory that they're taking fans for every penny, as they didn't even offer fans the knowledge that they would have an opportunity to own the same content at a cheaper price.