Features / Release Round-Up

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today!  As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Yes, Live at Roosevelt Stadium, Jersey City, 17 June 1976 (Atlantic/Rhino)

2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
3LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada

Yes’ 50th anniversary release Live at Roosevelt Stadium, Jersey City, 17 June 1976 takes listeners back to the long-gone New Jersey venue for the concert broadcast on WNEW-FM and bootlegged countless times since.  It will be available on 2 CDs or 3 LPs, including an edition exclusive to Rhino.com with a Roger Dean lithograph and a “Spirit of ‘76” edition exclusive to independent record stores as part of Rhino’s summer campaign.  The show boasts such Yes favorites as “Siberian Khatru,” “I’ve Seen All Good People,” and “Roundabout,” as well as a cover of The Beatles’ “I’m Down.”  This marks the concert’s first official appearance. Get the track listing and more here.

Frank Zappa, ZAPPATite: Frank Zappa’s Tastiest Tracks (Zappa/UMe)

CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Zappa.com

UMe and Zappa Records are dipping into the recent past for the vinyl debut of the 2016 compilation ZAPPAtite (Frank Zappa’s Tastiest Tracks).  The 18-track collection is sequenced in the manner of a meal, with tracks representing Appetizers (“Dancin’ Fool,” “Peaches En Regalia”), Entrees (“Valley Girl,” “Tell Me You Love Me”), a Second Course (“Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow,” “Titties and Beer”) and Dessert (“Zoot Allures,” “Strictly Genteel”) – one course per side of vinyl.  Collectively, these tracks encompass some of the late composer-guitarist-sonic auteur’s most accessible recordings while simultaneously sampling the many flavors of his work: blues, jazz, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, psychedelia, classical, and beyond.  The CD is being re-pressed for the occasion, while vinyl editions include standard black and pink swirl vinyl (the latter exclusive to Universal storefronts including Zappa.com); both LPs boast gatefold artwork and a menu-styled insert.

The Waterboys, Atlantic Rain: The Lost ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ Recordings (Chrysalis) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

Sessions for The Waterboys’ 1988 album Fisherman’s Blues have yielded a new 3CD box set.  Atlantic Rain is drawn from a reported 150 hours of recording and 400 multi-track tapes reviewed by the band’s Mike Scott; the resulting box boasts 25 tracks (including covers of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “When Doves Cry,” “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”) and a book containing a 15,000-word essay by Scott plus lyrics and previously unpublished photos.  Watch for more on this title soon!

New Order, the best & the rest of New Order (Warner Music UK)

4CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
(the best of) 2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
(the rest of) 3LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada

Less than a decade from the beloved compilation Substance, New Order issued (the best of) New Order in 1994 that chronicled their ’90s transitions into house and traditional alt-rock music, with a few new mixes to boot. The following year, (the rest of) New Order compiled recent and new remixes of the same material. (the best & the rest of) New Order brings together both collections with a further two discs of rare, new-to-CD and unreleased remixes from the period and a few tracks exclusive to the original compilations on various formats around the world.

Yoko Ono, Season of Glass: Expanded Edition (Secretly Canadian) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

Yoko Ono’s 1981 album Season of Glass – released just seven months after the shocking murder of John Lennon and featuring his blood-stained glasses on its front cover – returns to CD in an expanded edition. Composed by Ono and produced by the singer-songwriter and Phil Spector, Season of Glass was harrowing yet cathartic, an album of enormous anguish but also of hope.  It gains two bonus tracks here: the non-LP hit single “Walking on Thin Ice” (recorded by Ono and Lennon just hours before his murder; he was carrying a cassette of track when he was shot), a demo of “I Don’t Know Why,” and an alternate version of “Dogtown.”

The Hollywood Stars, Hey! L.A.! (Rum Bar) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

In 2024, The Hollywood Stars released Starstruck, their first album in a whopping 47 years.  Happily, the L.A. band – featuring original members Scott Phares (lead vocals), Terry Rae (drums/percussion), and Michael Rummans (bass) – hasn’t waited another 47 years for a follow-up!  Hey! L.A.! is a love letter to their hometown, beginning with a title track which addresses the horrific wildfires that devastated Southern California.  The album is a rip-roaring, swaggering fusion of power pop, glam, and rock and roll in true Hollywood fashion, building to the band’s own reclamation of “King of the Night Time World” which they memorably provided to KISS for 1976’s Destroyer.  Hey! L.A.! is out today on digital, CD, and LP.  It’s a visit to the City of Angels well worth taking.  Visit here for Bandcamp links.

Gary Stewart, One Track Mind (Delmore Recording Society) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

One Track Mind assembles a cache of restored home recordings, publishing demos and more, telling the story of Gary “King of the Honky Tonks” Stewart’s early years as a songwriter. A handful of Stewart’s early songs were cut by signed acts – most notably, one recorded by Johnny Paycheck shortly before signing to Epic – and Stewart cut two himself: “The Snuff Queen” on a 1970 single for Kapp, and “Williamson County” for his breakthrough album Out of Hand (1975). But nearly none of the recordings on this new collection have been released before – a real treasure trove for fans of the impossible-to-pin-down musician. (The sole exception are two publishing demos that have to be heard to be believed: covers of Four Tops’ “Baby I Need Your Loving” and Stevie Wonder’s “Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday,” recorded at the behest of Motown’s publishing arm Jobete to attract potential country crossovers into their catalogue and pressed on a Record Store Day-exclusive single in 2018. Stewart was paid $30 to cut these two alongside a take on the Tops’ “I Can’t Help Myself,” heard on CD and digital copies of One Track Mind for the first time.) One Track Mind is out on CD and digitally as well as a 140-gram “Okeechobee purple” vinyl pressing, which does not include the Motown tracks nor the tune “Morbid the Great.” Digital and Bandcamp links are available here.  Read the track listing and more here.

Flamin’ Groovies, Shake Some Action: 50th Anniversary Edition (Sire/Rhino) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

This new 50th anniversary 2CD expansion of The Flamin’ Groovies’ 1976 Sire debut is built around a new remaster of the original album from the analog tapes.  The bonus disc adds previously unreleased outtakes and alternates as well as the existing audio from a Roxy show in ’76.  Alec Palao provides the new liner notes.

Melanie, First Nights on Broadway 1971 (Cleopatra) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

Cleopatra continues its long-running Melanie archival series with this release recorded at the now-demolished DeMille Theatre in New York City, a onetime burlesque theatre (and, later, a cinema) that once sat on the site of the current 20 Times Square skyscraper.  The set has seventeen performances including one bonus track from a Saratoga Springs concert.  Dave Thompson provides new liner notes.

Elaine Paige, Miscellaneous Paige (Westway) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

The West End and Broadway diva returns with a new studio album – her first in roughly a decade.  Miscellaneous Paige finds the singer blending pop and theatre genres on songs from past and present by such notable and stylistically diverse writers as Randy Newman, Bruno Mars, Harry Nilsson, Carole King, Finneas, Joni Mitchell, The Bee Gees, Bacharach and David, The Beatles, Julian Lennon, and Jimmy Webb.  Out on CD and digitally.

Betty Buckley, Enough: Live at Joe’s Pub (Palmetto) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

Elaine Paige isn’t the only former Grizabella and Norma Desmond to release a new CD this week!  Broadway’s own Betty Buckley has a live album titled after Sara Bareilles’ “Enough.”  Like Paige, too, she’s taken a theatrical approach to pop with this set, reinterpreting Bob Dylan, Burt Bacharach, and Paul Simon – and reprising a little song called “Memory,” too.  Available on CD and digitally.