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. Oddities and curiosities abound in this Saturday’s column!

Peggy Lee, “Big $pender (Girl Math Remix)” (Capitol/UMe) (Apple / Amazon)

House music DJ duo Girl Math has remixed Peggy Lee’s rendition of Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields’ Sweet Charity showstopper “Big Spender” – the title track of her 1966 album – with a modern, electronic dance sound. Spend a little time with her?

Desmond Child, Desmond Child Rocks The Parthenon: The Live Concert Album (BMG) (Apple / Amazon)

Known for an incredible run of pop/rock songsmithing, including hits for KISS, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Ricky Martin and many, many others, Desmond Child began his career as the frontman of the studio project Desmond Child & Rouge – so this new live album, recorded at the ancient Greek landmark in 2022, is a bit of a full circle moment. But Child is hardly going it alone, tearing through plenty of his classic songs with the help of notable names like Alice Cooper, Rita Wilson, Kip Winger, Swedish songwriter/producer Andreas Carlsson, and a powerful mini-set from the recently-departed Bonnie Tyler.

Gene Loves Jezebel, Discover (2026 Remaster) / Glad to Be Alive (Live in Nottingham) (Beggars Banquet)

Discover: Apple / Amazon
Glad to Be Alive: Apple / Amazon

Recently expanded to completion by Iconoclassic Records in 2025 is Glad to Be Alive, a live set originally featured on limited edition pressings of Gene Loves Jezebel’s 1986 breakthrough album Discover. A brand new remaster of said album is now digitally available, too.

Mojave 3, Ask Me Tomorrow / Out of Tune / Excuses for Travellers / Spoon and Rafter / Puzzles Like You (2026 Remasters) (4AD)

Ask Me: Apple / Amazon
Out of Tune: Apple / Amazon
Excuses: Apple / Amazon
Spoon: Apple / Amazon
Puzzles: Apple / Amazon

Singer/guitarist Neil Halstead, singer/bassist Rachel Goswell and drummer Ian McCutcheon formed Mojave 3 after the breakup of their previous band, Slowdive, in the mid-’90s. The three Brits combined that group’s dream-pop style with folk and country leanings, eventually welcoming Chapterhouse guitarist Simon Rowe and keyboardist Alan Foster; the group issued five LPs between 1995 and 2006 before Halstead and Goswell permanently reformed Slowdive. Those albums were all recently remastered for a vinyl box set at Abbey Road from the 4AD label, and are digitally available now.

Ruben Blades, Mucho Mejor (Remastered 2026) / Doble Filo (Remastered 2026) (Craft Recordings)

Mejor: Apple / Amazon
Doble: Apple / Amazon

One of the most meaningful Spanish-language artists of his generation, the Panamanian poet, actor and activist Ruben Blades brought big ideas to salsa and Latin jazz, working diligently as a recording artist throughout the ’70s and ’80s for the Fania label, where he got his start in the mail room. Two of his albums from the mid-’80s are cleaned up for digital release and remain worthy listens for loyal fans of Blades’ brilliant musical work.

El Grupo Libra, El Grupo Libra (Remastered 2026) (Craft Recordings) (Apple / Amazon)

Hailing from Sinaloa, Mexico, El Grupo Libra carved a niche in the ’90s and ’00s as emotional balladeers starting with their self-titled solo album from 1990, featuring the favorite song “Una lagrima.” Craft has newly remastered the album for digital consumption.

Gerry Beckley feat. Graham Nash, Norwegian Wood (Blue Elan) (Apple / Amazon)

America’s Gerry Beckley offers another tantalizing preview of his upcoming album Merciful (due August 28) with this close-harmony take on The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” featuring another music legend, Graham Nash.

Reba McEntire, Ring Ring (MCA Nashville) (Apple / Amazon)

The country superstar and Happy’s Place star serves up a new single this weekend: the twangy “Ring Ring” (not the ABBA/Neil Sedaka song!), co-written by Kellie Pickler and helmed by prolific Nashville producer Dave Cobb. It leads off an EP drawing on McEntire’s catalogue of other telephone-themed tunes such as “Long Distance Lover,” “It’s Your Call,” and “Why Haven’t I Heard from You.”

John Ford, Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Iconoclassic) (Apple / Amazon)

Iconoclassic has the latest studio set from John Ford (The Strawbs, Hudson-Ford, Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera) featuring 11 new recordings from the singer-songwriter (including covers of Tom Petty’s “Walls” and George Harrison’s “The Rising Sun”). Streaming is a great way to sample this new record, but Ford fans should check out the expanded CD which adds a second disc sampling Ford’s 1988-2026 catalogue, including one new track.

Kennedy Caughell, Just the Beginning (Center Stage) (Apple / Amazon)

Kennedy Caughell (currently on tour as Jersey in Alicia Keys’ Tony Award-winning musical Hell’s Kitchen) has served up a new album, joined by such artists as Jason Gotay (Floyd Collins), Ben Fankhauser (Newsies), Shoba Narayan (Aladdin), and Isaiah Bailey (National Tour, The Phantom of the Opera). Nyla Watson (Waitress), Gabrielle Elisabeth (Galileo), Emily Tucker (Frozen), and Andrew Cekala (Pippin) also appear on this set of Broadway favorites which encompasses songs by Stephen Sondheim (“Being Alive” from Company), Pasek and Paul (“This is Me” from The Greatest Showman), Irving Berlin (“I Got the Sun in the Morning” from Annie Get Your Gun), and Dolly Parton (“Get Out and Stay Out” from 9 to 5) and more, plus three world premiere recordings. Two of those premieres, “I Dream of Janey” and “Heaven Save Our Home,” are from the score to the 2022 Broadway musical Paradise Square, the cast album of which was never released. (“Janey” was cut from the final production.) Composer Jason Howland has arranged and orchestrated both tracks. The third premiere recording is “Just the Beginning” from Danny K. Bernstein’s score to Far from Canterbury. Just the Beginning is an apt title, indeed, for this rising Broadway star’s solo debut.

PASSINGS

Plas Johnson (1931-2026) 

If you don’t know the name of Plas Johnson, you know his unmistakable tenor sax sound. His was the instrument that took Henry Mancini’s slinky, instantly recognizable theme to The Pink Panther to immortality. (Johnson once recalled the recording taking just two takes to get right.) In an illustrious career that spanned decades, the multi-instrumentalist also supported such artists as Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Nat “King” Cole, Neil Diamond, Ry Cooder, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, B.B. King, Carole King, Nicolette Larson, and Rod Stewart while building a discography that saw him lead over a dozen albums for labels including Capitol and Concord. Johnson passed on July 15, just six days prior to his 95th birthday.

Jennifer Finch (1966-2026)

Bassist Jennifer Finch was a teenage fixture of Los Angeles’ punk scene in the mid-’80s as a photographer, but deftly picked up a bass as part of the alt-rock quartet L7. As labelmates of Nirvana on Sub Pop Records, L7 got swept up in the post-grunge/alternative explosion and issued Bricks Are Heavy on the Slash label, yielding an international radio hit with the beloved “Pretend We’re Dead.” The positive, feminine energy of L7 proved extremely formative for new generations of DIY rockers – and more than a decade after going on hiatus in 2001, the group reformed permanently and successfully, issuing a documentary in 2016 and one more album, Scatter the Rats, in 2019. A plan for one final tour was marred by the announcement just weeks ago that Finch would sit out the trek to battle an extremely aggressive form of brain cancer; she died days after the announcement, but her memory lives on. A GoFundMe set up in her name will cover remaining medical expenses, set up archival projects (including her memoirs, the last work she completed, due for publication next year) and donate further to MusiCares.

Jim Gilstrap (1946-2026)

An in-demand session singer, Jim Gilstrap lent his resonant vocals to such classic songs as Stevie Wonder’s “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” – singing its opening two lines, prior to Lani Groves and then Wonder himself – and the Dave Grusin/Alan & Marilyn Bergman theme to Good Times opposite the one and only Blinky Williams. Those songs alone ensured Gilstrap’s musical immortality, but he also scored an international hit under his own name (“Swing Your Daddy”) in 1975 and sang the memorable theme to Disney’s animated series TaleSpin. His voice graced records from a Who’s Who of artists (Quincy Jones, Elton John, Johnny Mathis, George Duke, Henry Mancini, Kenny Loggins, Michael Jackson, and Nancy Wilson, among them). Forget 20 feet from stardom; Gilstrap was a star, through and through.

Freddy “Boom Boom” Cannon (1936-2026)

Freddy Cannon burst onto the charts (on both sides of the Atlantic!) in 1959 with “Tallahassee Lassie,” a Bob Crewe co-write; the Massachusetts native included it on his 1960 LP The Explosive Freddy Cannon, which became the first rock and roll album to top the U.K. album chart. And the artist later nicknamed “Boom Boom” for his larger-than-life persona dedicated much of his life to rock and roll.  He went on to further success with other geographically-themed tunes from that record (“Way Down Yonder in New Orleans,” “Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy,” “California, Here I Come”) and beyond; future Gong Show host and producer Chuck Barris penned what would become his signature song, the 1960 ode to New Jersey’s gone-but-not-forgotten amusement destination, “Palisades Park.” Moving from Swan to the bigger Warner Bros. label, Cannon continued to score hits like “Abigail Beecher” and the Where the Action Is theme “Action.” Though chart success mostly dried up in the late 1960s – he did enjoy one last chart entry in 1981 with “Let’s Put the Fun Back in Rock and Roll,” featuring The Belmonts – Freddy continued to be an entertaining and energetic staple of the oldies circuit, working with the likes of Dick Clark and Cousin Brucie Morrow, Palisades Park concert host and longtime radio mainstay (most recently on Saturday nights on WABC-AM).