Contraband (20th Anniversary)

This expanded edition marked the twentieth anniversary of Contraband, Velvet Revolver's debut album. It was released on 13 September 2024 on double vinyl and digitally, the digital version appearing as Contraband (Deluxe Edition) with nineteen tracks. A new remaster of the original thirteen songs is followed by six recordings that had first come out in other forms between 2003 and 2005. An acoustic "Fall to Pieces" was released digitally in July as a preview, followed by "Money" in August. On release day the band's YouTube channel posted official audio of the songs. The only CD edition was issued in Japan on 25 September by Sony Music, two Blu-spec CD2 discs (SICP-31736/7) in a paper sleeve as a limited edition, with the bonus songs on the second. Of the six additions, "Bodies", the Sex Pistols song that opened the band's first concert at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on 19 June 2003, is the live recording from that night. It had been a bonus track on the Japanese and European editions of Contraband in 2004. Nirvana's "Negative Creep", that night's encore, is a studio recording that was on the European "Slither" single. Their Pink Floyd cover "Money" was used over the closing credits of the 2003 film The Italian Job and later appeared on the British "Slither" single. With "Negative Creep", Cheap Trick's "Surrender" and Aerosmith's "No More No More" were the three covers on a bonus CD that came with editions of Contraband in 2004, and "Surrender" was also on the "Fall to Pieces" single. The acoustic "Fall to Pieces" had been on the European tour edition of Contraband in 2005. On the vinyl the original album runs from side A to the third track of side C, and the extras take up the rest of side C and all of side D. The digital edition keeps the same order and gives the El Rey date in the title of "Bodies". The album underneath is the one RCA released on 8 June 2004, which entered the Billboard 200 at number one, was certified double platinum, and whose single "Slither" won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance.