Indie label Get On Down Records is preparing a lavish deluxe reissue of Return to the 36 Chambers, the solo debut by late, iconic Wu-Tang Clan member Ol' Dirty Bastard. Almost no one could have predicted the meteoric success of the Wu-Tang Clan, upon the release of 1993's landmark Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers, a seminal East Coast hip-hop record that slow-burned its way to a million copies by 1995 and spawned definitive tracks like "C.R.E.A.M." and "Method Man." That said, the gritty,
Archives for November 16, 2011
When The Saints Go Marchin' In: Louis Armstrong Goes to Storyville in New Box
Louis Armstrong’s going to Storyville! The venerable Copenhagen-based jazz label, founded in the early 1950s by Kurt Emil Knudsen, has just released a new box set that happens to be third major box in 2011 alone for the one and only Louis Armstrong. Following Universal’s Satchmo: Ambassador of Jazz and The Complete Masters, Storyville’s efficiently-titled The Armstrong Box arrived last Tuesday. The 7-CD/1-DVD set falls somewhere between those two projects; Ambassador of Jazz is the first
Curt Was Mayfield - and Now It's Reissued
Here's an under-the-radar catalogue release for your consideration this week: a reissue of Mayfield, a nice little solo album by Curt Smith, one-half of synth-rock legends Tears for Fears. Unless you're a major '80s pop geek, you'd probably be okay with having no idea who made up the membership of Tears for Fears. But most of our readers probably know that singer/guitarist Roland Orzabal and singer/bassist Curt Smith made the nucleus of the band that gave us "Mad World," "Shout," "Everybody
In Case You Missed It: INXS Release New Hits Set
You certainly wouldn't be wrong in debating the merits of another INXS compilation on store shelves, particularly after the good job Rhino did with 2001's double-disc Shine Like It Does: The Anthology and the breezy, single-disc The Best of INXS the next year. (The band, of course, haven't released much new material worth covering since the tragic death of original frontman Michael Hutchence in 1997.) But in the U.K., new things are happening with the band's catalogue - Universal Music has
Get Together: The Youngbloods Reissued, Mick Fleetwood Visited By George Harrison, Peter Green On Wounded Bird
Wounded Bird may fly a bit under the radar, but over the past couple of months, the no-frills reissue specialists have recently restored to catalogue well over 30 titles of interest across multiple genres! For jazz fans, Wounded Bird has offerings from George Benson (1976’s compilation Benson Burner), Airto Moreira (1978’s Touching You…Touching Me, which alas, doesn’t have a Neil Diamond cover on it!), Ramsey Lewis (1974’s Solar Wind) and Maynard Ferguson (1981 compilation Maynard). If you’re