One of the advantages of vinyl over CD is the absence of so-called “bonus tracks”. Almost by definition, the “bonus tracks” are the out-takes which, at the time, were not included into the original albums. If you grew up listening to albums (not compilations), there’s very little added value in bonus tracks, which are either not as good as the rest of the album, or sound out of place. Of course, from a CD-centric point of view, it is an utter waste of CD space not to put there any extra material.
Here’s a commendable solution to this problem (how to make a completist happy without offending a purist): Deluxe Edition of Coltrane’s Ballads. Disc One is the original album as released by Impulse! in 1962: eight tracks, just about 32 minutes of music. Disc Two includes 14 tracks, of which 13 were never released before. Now, this one is really for Trane fans only: apart from Irving Berlin’s They Say It’s Wonderful (“which he <Coltrane> abandoned after only one complete take”, according to Francis Davis’s liner notes), the rest are the alternate takes. I mean, do you really want to hear five takes of Greensleeves (I prefer this version from Africa/Brass Sessions to any of those) or seven takes of It’s Easy to Remember? I stick to the first CD, which is a masterpiece.
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