A then-unheard of gap of three years stood between R.E.M.'s first two albums for Warner Bros. Records - 1988's Green and 1991's Out of Time - so there's still time to go before the departed band's ongoing 25th anniversary album remaster campaign enters the 1990s. With that, Warner Bros. is instead releasing, for the first time, two complete live sets the band recorded for the beloved MTV Unplugged series. Both sets will first be available in a single, four-disc vinyl box set to be released on
Archives for March 17, 2014
Big Day: XTC's "Skylarking," with Improved Sound, to Get CD Reissue
Four years after it was upgraded for vinyl, XTC's Skylarking will get the same sonic upgrade on CD next month. XTC's ninth (and arguably best) album found them working an uneasy alliance with producer Todd Rundgren, with whom singer-songwriter Andy Partridge found himself frequently at odds with (despite Partridge's lasting respect for Rundgren's work on the album). But a spate of killer songs by Partridge ("Summer's Cauldron," "Earn Enough for Us") and vocalist/bassist Colin Moulding (singles
California Dreamin': Carole King, Merry Clayton, The Everly Brothers Featured on "Lou Adler: A Musical History"
Songwriter, manager, A&R man, producer, director, impresario, diehard L.A. Lakers fan – in his eighty years, Lou Adler has worn all of those labels proudly. It’s hard to believe that the same man behind The Rocky Horror Show – both on stage and on screen – and Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke also helmed one of the most successful records ever in Carole King’s Tapestry, or that the same man penned a bona fide standard in Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World.” But much of Lou Adler’s extraordinary