Features / The Weekend Stream

Welcome back to another edition of The Weekend Stream, The Second Disc’s review of notable catalogue titles making digital debuts, plus new works from legacy acts and even some personally curated favorites. You know you’re in for a treat when the most recognizable digital catalogue here is a country-rock record by Jimi Jamison – plus new singles from Madonna and Peter Gabriel, for good measure.

Madonna & Sabrina Carpenter, “Bring Your Love” (Warner) (Apple / Amazon)

The official lead single from Madonna’s anticipated Confessions II – a sequel to her 2005 blockbuster Confessions on a Dance Floor and her first studio album since 2019’s Madame X – harkens back to an even earlier time in the Queen of Pop’s career, recalling the early ’90s vibe of “Vogue” and Shep Pettibone’s remix of “Express Yourself.” Madonna finds a welcome kindred spirit in duet partner Sabrina Carpenter, who’s cultivated a similar successful streak in the 2020s with the same coy sexuality that made Madge so famous back in the ’80s. This one’s fun!

Peter Gabriel, “Won’t Stand Down” (Bright-Side Mix) (Real World) (Apple / Amazon)

The fifth track from Peter Gabriel’s o\i takes inspiration from Marvin Gaye and a hope “to encourage some sort of activism,” Gabriel said in a statement. “We are much more likely to engage if we feel hope. Right now, we don’t see so many positive visions of the future, at least they’re not being projected so strongly as the negative, so I think it’s really important that we start looking for visions to which we can aspire and looking for people who can provide that.”

Jimi Jamison, Jimmy Wayne Jamison (Legacy Music) (Apple / Amazon)

Originally released on CD by Iconoclassic in 2024, this collection of 11 country-rock tunes was recorded in 2007 with Jamison’s producer Jim Peterik and much of the team that created Jamison’s Crossroads Moment (2008). While a digital copy is missing all the things that made the physical package great, this is your chance to hear the late, great former Survivor frontman in a whole different way.

Puddles Pity Party, No One’s Free (self-released) (Apple / Amazon)

Truly something you don’t see every day, Puddles Pity Party is a towering, 6’8″ clown in black and white makeup and matching outfit; he never speaks, but sings in a stunning, emotive baritone. (Perhaps you’ve seen him on America’s Got Talent or opening for “Weird Al” Yankovic on the Bigger & Weirder Tour, a job he’ll reprise on the latest leg this summer.) While most of his recordings are covers of everyone from Sia to Tom Waits, new album No One’s Free is 11 tracks of originals from Atlanta-based songwriter Andrew Quinn, who’s worked with Puddles and his chattier friend who discovered him, Mike Geier.

The Head and the Heart, The Head and the Heart (15th Anniversary Edition) (self-released) / Ghosts in the Machinery (Verve)

THatH (15th Anniversary Edition): Apple / Amazon
Ghosts: Apple / Amazon

The self-titled 2011 debut from Seattle indie-folk act The Head and the Heart featured AAA radio chart-topper “Lost in My Mind” and was supported by relentless touring. It’s just been expanded with a bonus suite of demos, outtakes and live tracks. Also recently delivered to digital is the band’s Ghosts in the Machinery, an EP of rearranged and acoustic versions of tracks from the band’s sixth album Aperture (2025), released for Record Store Day Black Friday last year.

Clodagh Rodgers, Clodagh Rodgers (RCA Victor U.K.) (Apple / Amazon)

Clodagh Rodgers (1947-2025) represented the U.K. in the 1971 Eurovision Song Contest with “Jack in the Box,” finishing in fourth place – the same position the song would occupy on the U.K. Singles Chart. But there’s so much more to the Northern Irish singer, from her appearance on the Grand Ole Opry at the behest of Jim Reeves to her appearances with British comedy legends The Two Ronnies (Barker and Corbett) and Cliff Richard on television and stage appearances in Blood Brothers and Pump Boys and Dinettes. Now, Sony is finally reissuing Rodgers’ long-unavailable RCA albums beginning with 1969’s self-titled set; more albums will follow each Friday until her five-LP RCA discography is complete. (Favorite title? 1971’s Rodgers and Heart!)

Robbie Basho, Visions of the Country (Windham Hill) (Apple / Amazon)

Initially overlooked upon release in 1978, Visions of the Country has come to be viewed by fans of “American primitive,” acoustic steel-string guitar as a landmark release, assuring the legacy of its late practitioner, Robbie Basho. Thanks to the fine folks at SuperVisible Multi Media, you surely won’t hear anything quite like this any time soon.

Paul Clinch (with Choya), Living Like a Rich Man (Buddah) (Apple / Amazon)

A former member of the Toronto R&B/pop/beat group The Magic Cycle, this 1976 release was Paul Clinch’s only with a completely different backing band, known as Choya.

Celia Cruz, Johnny Pacheco, Justo Betancourt & Papo Lucca, Recordando el Ayer (Remastered 2026) (Fania/Craft Recordings) (Apple / Amazon)

An all-star 1976 team-up on the Fania label, the newly-remastered Recordando el Ayer is a starring vehicle for salsa icon Cruz (recently announced as a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee in the early influence category), her fellow singer Betancourt, bandleader Pacheco and pianist Lucca.

We Shall Someday: A New Musical (World Premiere Recording) (Joy Machine Records) (Apple / Amazon)

The new musical We Shall Someday celebrates the courageous Freedom Riders on the 65th anniversary of their historic bus rides into America’s segregated southern states. Harrison David Rivers has written the book and lyrics, and Ted Shen has contributed music (taking cues from jazz, gospel, folk, R&B, funk, and Broadway) and additional lyrics. Michael Starobin (Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins) has provided orchestrations for the recording produced by musical director Deborah Abramson (Maybe Happy Ending). John Edwards, Cole Thompson, Danyel Fulton, and Jake Loewenthal star. To date, We Shall Someday has been performed at Theater Latté Da in Minneapolis, MN, as a concert presentation at the Signature Theatre in Washington, D.C., and, in 2025, as part of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s season. This recording should certainly lead to future productions.

PASSINGS

Nedra Talley-Ross formed a singing trio in New York in 1957 with her cousins Veronica and Estelle Bennett. Initially known as “Ronnie and The Relatives,” the trio became an important cornerstone of ’60s pop/rock as The Ronettes, working with the brilliant and deeply troubled writer/producer Phil Spector and creating one of the last century’s greatest singles, the yearning “Be My Baby.” Talley-Ross’ passing marks the group’s last; Estelle passed away in 2009 and Ronnie Spector in 2022.

British soul group Hot Chocolate placed at least one hit in the U.K. charts in every year from 1970 to 1984, and a good bit of those were co-written by the group’s founding bassist, Tony Wilson (1936-2026). “Love is Life,” “Brother Louie” (a U.S. chart-topper for Stories in 1973), “Emma” and, perhaps most famously, the U.S./U.K. Top 5 smash “You Sexy Thing” all bore his handiwork. The Trinidad-born Wilson left the group a year later.

“Complicated” doesn’t even begin to describe David Allan Coe (1939-2026). The outlaw country standout was an unpredictable hellraiser who, for better or worse, did things his way. That meant mid-’70s genre hits like “You Never Even Called Me by My Name,” “Longhaired Redneck,” “The Ride,” “Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile” and “She Used to Love Me a Lot” (whose cover by Johnny Cash is a personal favorite of Mike’s); standards he penned like Tanya Tucker’s “Would You Lay with Me (in a Field of Stone)” and Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It”; a share of legal run-ins; and, most unfortunately, a trail of bad business and family estrangement. (His son and former rhythm guitarist Tyler Mahan Coe, host of the country music history podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones, summed up his thoughts briefly but movingly.) He was many things to many people, and an original to most.