Welcome to another edition of The Weekend Stream, The Second Disc's review of notable catalogue titles (and some new ones, too!) making digital debuts. A classic film score gets remixed for a major anniversary; a modern jazz great reunites two-thirds of a classic rock band; and it's funny how time flies for Tears for Fears. All this, plus morsels of news on potential reissues from Bruce Springsteen and Duran Duran, and two tributes to singers we lost this week.
John Williams, JAWS (Original Motion Picture Score - Remastered) (Back Lot Music) (Apple / Amazon)
The 50th anniversary celebration of JAWS comes to shore with a new mix of the Oscar-winning film score by Mike Matessino. As we noted earlier this week, it'll come to vinyl this year courtesy of Mondo, along with a reissue and remix of the original soundtrack LP in two different variants from UMe and an expanded CD set featuring mixes of both recordings plus bonus material from Intrada.
Tears for Fears, Head Over Heels EP (Mercury/UMR) (Apple / Amazon)
The third U.S. Top 10 from Songs from the Big Chair celebrated its 40th anniversary this week, and UMR bundled together a digital maxi-single that included not only the original mixes and B-sides but a host of more recent dance versions, too.
Christian McBride Big Band feat. Sting & Andy Summers, "Murder by Numbers" (Mack Avenue) (Apple / Amazon)
The celebrated jazz bassist has a new album, Without Further Ado, Vol 1, coming out August 29. The album kicks off with a cover of The Police's Synchronicity CD closer/"Every Breath You Take" B-side "Murder by Numbers," offering contributions from two-thirds of the group's line-up: vocals from Sting and echoing, jazzy guitar chords from Andy Summers! (Sting previously toured with McBride in the early '00s, and previously re-recorded solo track "Consider Me Gone" with him.)
Evelyn "Champagne" King, "Skillz" (Perpetual Gold/SoulMusic Records) (Apple / Amazon)
The disco-soul queen behind favorites like "Shame" and "Love Come Down" is back with a new single, written and co-produced by Preston Glass and released in partnership with our friends at SoulMusic Records.
The New Christy Minstrels, The Wandering Minstrels (Expanded Edition) (Columbia/Legacy) (Apple / Amazon)
The celebrated vocal folk ensemble's 1965 album - the last to feature core members including Nick Woods, Art Podell, Larry Ramos, Clarence Treat and Karen Gunderson - was overshadowed by the success of another former member, Barry McGuire, who scored the chart-topping "Eve of Destruction" around the time of release. But it's getting its due now for its 60th anniversary! Most of the tracks here, including covers of "The Girl from Ipanema" and "Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)," are heard digitally for the first time here, including a whopping 12 bonus tracks from contemporaneous sessions - mostly songs in various foreign languages.
And that's not all! We wanted to share some interesting potential developments on box sets you could be reading about on The Second Disc some time in the future.
Bruce Springsteen has had quite the month. Beyond the fiery tour that yielded a new live EP, he's gearing up for the release of Tracks II: The Lost Albums - an in-depth visual liner notes just dropped and can be watched above - as well as whetting fans appetites with the trailer for Deliver Me from Nowhere, a biopic starring Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) as The Boss in 1982, creating the raw sound of Nebraska. And in talking about Tracks II, he's suggested more could be on the way: both vault clearinghouses (a completed, five-volume Tracks III) and new material (a solo record, likely due in 2026). He also confirmed the existence of "electric" band versions of songs from the stripped-down home demo that became Nebraska. (We wouldn't be surprised if that came out around the time Deliver Me from Nowhere hits theaters in October.) Read more at Rolling Stone and The New York Times.
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In other unexpected box set news, Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran recently revealed on Instagram an early plan to excavate outtakes from 2000's Pop Trash for a potential box set, along with 60 hours of footage from the resultant tours. ("A documentary threatening to happen," he says.) Though the late '90s and early '00s are considered something of a fallow commercial period for the band - then consisting only of keyboardist Rhodes, vocalist Simon Le Bon and guitarist Warren Cuccurullo - it does represent some of Duran's least explored material, with few outtakes from the period surfacing on bootlegs and set lists at club shows mixing rearranged hits with deep cuts. (This period also yielded TV Mania, the collaborative project between Rhodes and Cuccurullo, who upheld most of the production at the time. A long-rumored album was finally released in 2013.) Leapfrogging past The Wedding Album is a choice, but we'll take any great reissues we can get from the group.
We're also taking the time to say goodbye to musical legends we've lost. Here's Joe with a remembrance of pop/rock hero Lou Christie (1943-2005)...
Lightning struck whenever Lugee Alfredo Giovanni Sacco began to sing. Rechristened Lou Christie at the urging of Co & Ce Records chief Nick Cenci - Lou's dad reportedly liked the change because his son's new name had "Christ" in it - the young singer shot to popularity in 1963 with the dramatic pair of "The Gypsy Cried" and "Two Faces Have I." Both songs were co-written by Lou and Twyla Herbert, a pianist and part-time mystic who was more than two decades his senior. They might have made an unlikely team, but they were in perfect harmony. Herbert knew how to write for Christie's multifaceted voice, which could shed its inherent sweetness to soar in an urgent, even manic falsetto.
Lou was just 23 when "Lightnin' Strikes," arranged and conducted by Charlie Calello, shot to No. 1 on MGM Records after two months on the pop chart. "Stop, stop," cooed the background singers; "I can't stop, I can't stop myself," Christie replied with utter abandon. "Lightning is striking again...and again and again and again!" Indeed, it did. "Rhapsody in the Rain" was as exultant as its title - and a little too exultant for the DJs who banned the song for its suggestive lyrics about a guy and a gal in the backseat of a car during a rainstorm. Though Lou's time at Columbia Records proved frustrating, it nonetheless yielded some of the most fascinating and unusual music of his career - some of it which remained unreleased until Ace Records rectified the situation last year.
Lou bounced back in 1969 on Buddah with Tony Romeo's "I'm Gonna Make You Mine," as potent a bubblegum delight as could be - and one with the same urgency that characterized the Lou Christie sound. At Buddah, Lou embraced psychedelic pop with 1971's Paint America Love, an atmospheric journey well worth a reappraisal. Lou continued to write, record (including a 1974 album with country leanings which yielded the Rain Man soundtrack cut "Beyond the Blue Horizon," a one-off single with his friend Lesley Gore in 1986, and a number of tunes from Grease for a 1998 Rhino tribute album), and perform as the decades passed, always thrilling audiences with his undiminished falsetto and abundant energy. A proud Pennsylvanian and Italian-American, the thrilling and joyful pop of Lou Christie will continue to play again and again and again and again...
And here's Mike with a tribute to the late singer Cavin Yarbrough (1954-2025), a favorite of early '80s dance and electro-funk connoisseurs.
Dallas-raised Cavin Yarbrough got his big break touring with Leon Russell, but found his voice alongside childhood friend Alisa Peoples; the duo's clear, soulful voices mixed like peanut butter and jelly. That time with Russell yielded a friendship with bandmates and brothers Charlie, Ronnie and Robert Wilson, who'd go on to form The Gap Band and recommended Yarbrough & Peoples to their producer, burgeoning Black music mogul Lonnie Simmons, who'd co-produce the duo's debut The Two of Us in 1980. Yarbrough & People's "Don't Stop the Music" combined a killer pop melody with soulful vocal stylings and a sleek, electronic-assisted dance groove that took the song to the top of Billboard's R&B survey and No. 19 on the Hot 100 - their biggest pop crossover. Along with The Gap Band, Yarbrough & Peoples would help put Simmons' Total Experience label on the map, morphing the sound of the post-disco dance floor into something really hot. "Don't Waste Your Time" and "Guilty" were also smashes on the R&B charts (No. 1 and No. 2, respectively), and the duo would marry a year after releasing Guilty, their final album. But to this day, nothing makes you groove quite like that first big smash. You don't really wanna stop - and neither do we.
Release Round-Up: Week of June 27
This Shark'll Swallow You Whole: New 'JAWS' Soundtrack Reissues Are Surfacing
Love is the Seventh Wave: Sting Digital Deluxe Editions to Make CD Debut in Japan
Soundtrack Watch: Bond Back on Vinyl At La-La Land, Intrada Unsheathes Kamen's 'Three Musketeers'
There are some 70s nuggets that also hit streaming this weekend: RCA released Benny And The Jets’ “An Elton John Song Book” in HD. Columbia issued Jim Nabors’ “A Very Special Love Song”. Fro more modern digital reissues: UMG reissued Italian Pop/Rock titan Zucchero’s 1995 Lp “Spirito DiVino” as a 30th Anniversary expanded edition. Also UMG reissued Anne Murray’s 1974 Lp “Country". Modern Harmonic continued their Sun Ra reissue campaign with “Stray Voltage” (have listened to this yet). Cleopatra Records released Pat Travers “Going Down To Jacksonville 1983”. And Sunset Blvd Records released “Blue Skies” a collection of Art Tatum performances post 1945 (haven’t listened yet.)
Thank you for the tribute to Lou Christie. I was 13 when Lightning Strikes was a hit. I played that 45 on my yellow plastic "record player" constantly.
Is that Darlene Love in the middle of the backing trio on the Midnight Special clip?
Some of my favorite Duran Duran albums were recorded and released on CD in the late 1990's - early 2000's: Medazzaland (1997), Pop Trash (2000) and Astronaut (2004). To put this in perspective, the first record I bought from them was Planet Earth, released as a 7" 45 RPM single in the UK, in early 1981.
Throughout the 1970's, 1980's and well into the 1990's, every week and I do mean every week, I diligently went to a local international news stand where I bought weekly issues of the UK music papers, Melody Maker and New Musical Express, and sometimes I also bought Sounds. These publications presented coverage of bands and recording artists, plus exceptional interviews with these people, that I'd never see in Rolling Stone, Creem or any other US music publication. That's how I first read about a new band called Duran Duran, in 1980. The review covered a live concert, plus an interview with band members. The article was extensive, respectful and this band I never heard of in 1980, got my notice.
When another review of a later Duran Duran concert came up in the same year I thought, "There's that band again. I wonder how this review will be?" and I was pleased to see, the band was gaining more fans as well as positive acclaim from the UK music press. A wonderful inclusion to the British music papers: Every week, the latest 45 RPM singles were reviewed and the writers took this job seriously. When a brand new single called Planet Earth got great reviews in New Musical Express as well as Melody Maker in the same week, I knew I had to buy it. I went to one of L.A.'s better record stores that also specialized in import discs. There it was, the UK only pressing of Planet Earth, with a B-side song titled Late Bar. I bought that single, took it home and immediately played it on my living room stereo system. This was the first time I actually heard this band, and I played both sides of the disc several times that day. I knew absolutely no one else who had this UK import record but there it was, in my record collection. Additionally, I didn't know anyone else who knew what Duran Duran was. I had to explain this new name to friends, neighbors and coworkers.
In October 1981, they came to the USA. Two cities, 1 concert in each city; no more than that. I saw them perform at The Roxy, on Sunset Boulevard. I still have the ticket and the band have seen it. I've been fortunate to meet them 3 times. All of them, true gentlemen.
From buying Planet Earth, I bought Duran Duran's latest UK import 12" singles, the debut album and I continue to buy their music to this day. Their musical journey isn't over. Regarding their later output, I feel they became more adventurous, more experimental and I own the Japan CD releases of Medazzaland and Pop Trash, with bonus tracks.
I do hope this receives a deluxe box set! Nick Rhodes, if you're reading this, I'm ready to place my order. Believe it.