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Not really a comment - just thought you would like this link to a legendary record store closing:http://www.villagemusic.com/
Actually, the two artists are a study in contrasts. Denver has been re-anthologized to death. It's to the point where someone needs to beg that they please let this poor ultralight aeroplane enthusiast who perpetually needed a real haircut rest in peace, not to mention spare us from yet another keening run through of "Sunshine On My Shoulder." My ex-girlfriend's father liked two kinds of music: show tunes and John Denver. That told me ALL I needed to know.
Boz, on the other hand, I have a soft spot for. And his catalog has not been given the royal reissue treatment, I hear, because the man himself doesn't want or care about it.
So let's compare. Denver's dead and he's being reissued until we beg for mercy (or Helen Reddy) and Scaggs, who's alive, isn't interested in milking the reissue market. There may be something to that whole thing about artists refusing to allow record labels to put out records they deem, "not up to their artistic standards." Course it wouldn't have killed Boz to have added just a few goodies. Seems to me that somewhere there must be more of the concert from which the three bonus cuts on the new Silk Degrees were taken? And what, no outtakes, alternate takes or unreleased tracks? The other side of this argument is that artists go too far in protecting the sanctity of their art.
Meanwhile though, Sony is busy working on the next jarring juxtaposition. The Essential Michael Bolton and Journey's Trial By Fire? No wait, they did that last year.
Record labels. We're gonna miss them when they're gone.