We continue our Prince week with a little something for the fans out there that may have never caught on to His Royal Badness enough to buy any of his music. Often times, in cases where you want to get a firm start on following an artist, a greatest-hits compilation is the way to go. But Prince, like many other rock legends, has more than one such set on the market. And money's tight for a lot of folks. So which one do you end up buying? Follow the jump for a detailed breakdown of each one.
Archives for June 2010
It Might Be (The Soundtrack for) You
The Film Score Monthly label has prepped another two titles for release: two very different scores from two different composers, but winners both. First up is Jerry Goldsmith's in-demand score for the Sean Connery space Western Outland (1981). Goldsmith created a score that resembled his suspenseful approach to Alien from two years before, and it was augmented by some last-minute additions by Michael Boddicker (Buckaroo Banzai, Flashdance and session work for Michael Jackson) and Morton Stevens
Weezer Going Back to the Good Life
A hat tip to Pause & Play for posting the Amazon pre-order link for a Deluxe Edition of Pinkerton, the sophomore LP by alt-rock stalwarts Weezer, coming from Geffen and UMe. When it was released in 1996, Pinkerton was ill-received by critics and fans expecting a traditional follow-up to the band's excellent self-titled debut, which featured hooky garage-pop with Ric Ocasek of The Cars in the producer's chair. By contrast, Pinkerton - initially conceived as a space-rock opera called Songs
Friday Feature: Prince on Film
The Second Disc reader Robert Altman was predicting the future when he suggested a week devoted to Prince a few days ago. Prince - one of the most polarizing and intriguing figures to ever saunter onto the pop music scene - deserves reams (or gigabytes, in this case) written about his music and its impact, and The Second Disc promises to deliver in that regard. From this Friday to next Friday - going right through Prince's 52nd birthday on Monday - TSD will present a few features on Prince's
Take Them On...Later
Another quick update on a catalogue reissue: Rhino has pushed back the shipping date of the upcoming Deluxe Editions of a-ha's Hunting High and Low and Scoundrel Days to July 6 in the U.S. and August 6 in the U.K. All together now: noooooooooooo.
Reissue Theory: "Born in the U.S.A.: The Remixes"
I'm not sure how old I was when I learned what a remix was. I certainly didn't have a childhood of going through 12" singles and hearing alternate, longer versions of my favorite pop songs. But I do know that when I first started realizing that songs would be edited for radio (or extended for single consumption), my mind was blown. This increased tenfold with the discovery of remixes through the '80s. Say what you will about the music at that time, some of it was made better by remixing on
Clouds on the Horizon
Even though The Second Disc is primarily geared toward catalogue matters, I'd be doing myself a disservice by not paying attention to music as it stands in the present day. There's a trend I've been trying to wrap my head around on the tech side of music, one which could actually have spectacular implications for catalogue works if done properly. They're calling it "the cloud" - mobile, streaming music services that keep the music on a server instead of directly downloading it to your computer.
Paul Simon to Embrace His Legacy
It may not be as big a news item as Paul McCartney shifting his solo catalog from sinking ship major EMI to rising indie Concord, but Paul Simon has told Showbiz411’s Roger Friedman of his plans to move his entire output from Warner Music Group to Sony/Columbia. Or more accurately, back to Sony/Columbia. Simon recorded his very first solo album, The Paul Simon Songbook, for Columbia’s U.K. arm in 1965, and of course, the entire Simon and Garfunkel catalog has long resided there. When Simon and
Back Tracks: WHAM!
The great thing about most reissues over the past few years is that labels seem to want to follow one rule: if they can reissue it, they will do their best. Of course there are people out there who like, say, Cutting Crew or a-ha - but who could have seriously predicted that labels would be open to the idea of reissuing those records with bonus cuts and all that? Of course, this rule makes some of the great bands without reissues - Prince, The Go-Gos, that one Buckingham Nicks album - look like
In Defense of Playlist
In today’s radically-changed music climate, it should come as no surprise that record labels are trying many different series and business models to figure out just what the heck will sell. These releases aren’t necessarily aimed at the audience reading this site, most often targeting the casual music buyer. As such, these greatest hits series – whether Sony’s The Essential…, Universal’s 20th Century Masters or EMI’s Classic Masters, just to name a few – tend to be scorned by many collectors as
Reissue Theory: Tears for Fears, "Elemental"
One of the hardest parts of being a reissue fan is waiting. Sometimes a project will get announced, then delayed or cancelled outright. Those long gaps between reissues can be irksome, particularly when the delay time fails to lead to any improvement or innovation in the packaging and presentation of a catalogue title. Other times, though, the reason behind the lack of a reissue is simply that nobody thinks to re-release it. Take, for instance, one of the better bands of the 1980s - Tears for
Boldly Going Back
Man, it's been a good week for Star Trek music enthusiasts. First Film Score Monthly announces a brand-new deluxe reissue of James Horner's score to Star Trek III: The Search for Spock last week. And now, Varese Sarabande has jumped ahead on the Trek timeline to give fans another new deluxe set: starting June 14, the label will ship Star Trek: The Deluxe Edition, featuring the complete score to last year's fantastic reboot of the sci-fi series. As if the movie wasn't great enough on its own
The Second Disc State of the Union
Readers: we need to talk. It's nothing bad. The Second Disc isn't going away, isn't reducing its output, nothing like that. We just need to talk about a few things. Around five months ago, The Second Disc was started with a list of great reissues that were released in 2009. It was a post copied from a Facebook note written some weeks before. A modest beginning, to be sure. It's hard to have high expectations about anything you're just starting out on, particularly a blog. How many blogs must