Early in Robert Johnson's career, he was considered a mediocre delta bluesman, mostly disliked by his contemporaries and never mentioned in the same breath as someone like Son House or Bukka White. A myth says he went down to the 'crossroads' one day and made a Faustian deal for his guitar skills. Today of course, Johnson is thought of as the most well-known and greatest bluesman to ever live. Johnson's story is one in a long line that plays into America's uncanny cultural proclivity for creating new personas and larger-than-life back stories-for reviving the past and reinventing it. So it's not so outrageous to say that the reissuing and repackaging of artists' works is a particularly American phenomenon-it's just one more particularly monetary form of it. Reissues, by and large, are releases of albums on compact disc that have not ever been on CD, have gone out of print or are getting a sound quality boost.

With the advent of CD technology, a majority of pre-1985 albums were released on CD immediately. The technology for transferring tapes was primitive at the time, so many early CDs sounded shoddy. During the '90s, companies quietly went through their back catalogues to put out better transfers of albums. The reissuing and repackaging of albums, as we know it today, only became popular toward the turn of the century, once its commercial viability was proven.

David Bowie is one of the founders of this particular trend. In the early '90s, he took control of his own catalogue to oversee its reissuing. He went through all his old sessions' tapes, and included three to four bonus tracks at the end of each disc-either demos, incomplete rehearsals or live takes. These were then packaged with the "David Bowie Collection" seal of approval and marketed to fans as if part of some sweet commemorative Elvis dinner plate collection, incomplete unless taken as a whole.

But reissuing is not inherently bad. Inevitably, new technology will eclipse old, and any excuse for hearing that drum sound on "Be My Baby" more vividly should be taken as necessity. The problems begin with the needless reissuing of albums that have already been reissued, and are not sonically improved. Of course, it is the companies, not artists, who make the bulk of the profits from this dubious practice.

The one complete success of this trend is the reissue of albums that have gone out-of-print or never been on CD. So many lost classics have finally been given the attention they deserve. Recently, that includes Gary Higgins' brilliant folk-plea Red Hash, recorded in 1972, months before he was sent to jail for possession of marijuana. The entire works of Bill Fay were also unknown to even the most well-versed listener until earlier this year when, at the insistence of producer/musician Jim O'Rourke, they were finally put out on CD. Fay's Time of the Last Persecution is a treasure, one that likely could not have been discovered without its reissuing.

Repackaging is just as two-headed as reissuing-take Elvis Costello, for example. Rhino Records has been re-releasing all of his albums for the past four years, including second discs that sometimes include twice as much bonus material as the regular albums. The bonus material here is compelling, largely because Costello is such a prolific songwriter. The worst of these repackages have been released by Sony's Legacy Series, which, for example, charges 30 dollars for the Clash's London Calling with a poorly-recorded early version of the album called The Vanilla Tapes tacked on. Even a completist like myself finds this pointless.

The most egregious example of Sony's repackaging is last December's reissue of Jeff Buckley's Grace, his only full studio album. Buckley was notorious for recording little during his short life, so the bonus materials included are awful. When the regular album costs eight to 10 dollars at discount price, why waste all this other money for an extra 40 minutes of crap?

What we are left with is a double-edged sword. Revealing lost classics and improving sound quality will always be welcome in the music world. This is obfuscated, however, by the profiteering companies who wouldn't release these gems originally, and whose only interest in the albums is to sell people something they already own. I have bought Blood on the Tracks three times; how many more times will this circle be unbroken?