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.

Dave Clark Five, Glad All Over the World: The Hits and Albums Volume 1 (1964-1965) (BMG) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

At last, the long-unavailable albums of The Dave Clark Five are arriving on CD…sort of.  Today sees the release of the first in a series of three-volume sets reissuing the Five’s core North American album catalogue, beginning with Glad All Over the World: The Hits and Albums Volume 1 (1964-1965).  Five DC5 albums are presented on five CDs in this volume, with the discs housed in a ten-panel fold-out digipak also containing a 24-page booklet.  However, the track listings mirror the 2019 digital remasters which were substantially altered and resequenced; they do not reflect what American listeners first heard on Epic Records LPs during the British Invasion.  The albums are as follows:

• Glad All Over (1964);
• The Dave Clark Five Return! (1964);
• American Tour (1964);
• Coast to Coast (1964); and
• Weekend in London (1965).

Get more details, including the full track listings, here.

Frank Sinatra, Sinatra at the Sands: 60th Anniversary Edition (Capitol/FSE/UMe) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

Frank Sinatra Enterprises and Capitol/UMe are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the original Sinatra at the Sands with a new campaign encompassing a 2LP remixed reissue of the album, a 5CD box set premiering five previously unreleased concerts from the Sands “residency,” and digital versions including a Dolby Atmos mix of both releases.  (The Atmos mix is not included within the physical package.)  The main attraction for CD fans and collectors alike will be the 5CD box.  Whereas the original album’s performances were culled from various nights at the Copa Room with Count Basie and His Orchestra arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones, the box set premieres five complete, previously unreleased shows from the January 26 to February 1, 1966 run:

• January 26, 1966 (Second Show);
• January 27, 1966 (First Show);
• January 28, 1966 (First Show);
• January 29. 1966 (First Show); and
• February 1, 1966 (Second Show).

In addition, the set includes two bonus tracks, Matt Dennis and Earl K. Brent’s “Angel Eyes” and Rodgers and Hart’s “Where or When,” from the second show of January 28, 1966.  (That show was included in full on the 2018 Standing Room Only box set, hence its lack of appearance here.)  The 2LP 180-gram “Vinylphyle” presentation has been newly mixed by longtime FSE engineer Larry Walsh and mastered by Joe Nino-Hernes at Sterling Sound.  The package replicates the original gatefold jacket with Stan Cornyn’s Grammy-winning liner notes; it also includes an insert with new notes by FSE’s Charles Pignone and previously unpublished photos from the concerts. Read more here.

The Doors, Unbound and Dangerous (Elektra/Rhino) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

The Doors’ longtime engineer Bruce Botnick has compiled and mixed this new collection of recordings from The Doors’ 1970 Roadhouse Blues tour, which he originally recorded.  Compiled from numerous shows, the album recreates a complete concert.  Available on 1CD, 2LP, Blu-ray Audio (with Atmos, quad, and high resolution stereo mixes), and digitally.

Amy Winehouse, Back to Black: 20th Anniversary Edition (UMe)

3CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
3LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
1CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
Zoetrope LP: Official Store

UMe reissues the late Amy Winehouse’s 2006 triumph Back to Black on October 23 (the Friday before its official anniversary on October 27) in a variety of formats, most notably 3CD and 3LP sets packed with more than two dozen bonus tracks. (In a coup for CD buyers, five B-sides and three live cuts will not be on the 3LP set, which is pressed on clear vinyl.) Additional pressings of the original album will be available, including a new Amazon-exclusive CD with an alternate cover (curiously lacking the bonus remix of “You Know I’m No Good” featuring Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah, which was on original U.S. pressings and is on the deluxe CD set’s bonus disc of studio tracks) as well as zoetrope and “chalkboard marble” color variants. Alongside the four unheard demos and a live show recorded on the Back to Black tour in Amsterdam in 2007, the package will feature unseen photos from Mischa Richter and Alex Lake (including another alternate image on the album’s cover) and new liner notes from the album’s producers, Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson.  Read more here.

Jackie DeShannon, When You Walk in the Room (Liberation Hall) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

Liberation Hall brings Jackie DeShannon’s 2011 album to vinyl for the first time.  On When You Walk in the Room, the singer-songwriter revisited her classic songbook in moving fashion, with new, acoustic renditions of such staples as “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” “Come and Stay with Me,” the Grammy-winning “Bette Davis Eyes,” “Needles and Pins,” “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” and the title track.

Mike Bloomfield, Dark Road Blues: Santa Cruz 1981 (Liberation Hall) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

Liberation Hall brings legendary blues great Mike Bloomfield’s final performance – an acoustic set recorded just two weeks before his untimely passing at the age of 37 – to CD.  Dark Road Blues was recorded on the soundboard at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz and finds Bloomfield on guitar and piano tackling songs by Robert Johnson (“Come on in My Kitchen”), Jimmie Rodgers (“TB Blues”), Jimmy Cox (“Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out”), and others in a deeply-felt fashion made even more poignant by our knowledge of his death soon after.  Chris Morris provides new liner notes within the CD’s insert.

Marshall Crenshaw, The Bootleg Sounds of Marshall Crenshaw 1984-1987 (Yep Roc) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

The singer-songwriter has curated a compilation of previously unreleased recordings, demos, and live material recorded in the 1980s. Songs include covers of Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day,” featuring Garry Tallent and Max Weinberg, and Gene Pitney’s “Town Without Pity”; demo versions of songs that would appear on his third and fourth studio albums; live recordings from 1986-87; an excerpt of “All I Ever Wanted” with the late Kirsty MacColl, and other rarities.  Previously available for Record Store Day on vinyl, this compilation now comes to CD and digital formats.

My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade: 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Reprise) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

Welcome back to The Black Parade: My Chemical Romance revisits their 2006 concept album (featuring a cameo from no less than Liza Minnelli!) in a 20th anniversary expanded edition with three live performances from The Black Parade World Tour (2007) and three rare B-sides.  Available on CD, LP, cassette, and digitally in various versions.

Jimmy Webb, Yours for the Taking: The Found Songs of Jimmy Webb (Sun) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

Yours for the Taking: The Found Songs of Jimmy Webb draws on the songs in the composer-lyricist’s trunk.  Though the songs may date back decades, the recordings are new – and in Webb’s trademark sweeping, poignant, lyrical, romantic, and thoughtful style. Yours for the Taking welcomes Marc Cohn, Amy Grant, and Michael McDonald, and includes two vintage demos alongside the new recordings: “Winter Clothes” (written for Frank Sinatra) and “If I Ever Get to Talk to You Again.” Available on CD, LP, and digitally.

Bernie Taupin, The Sea Has No Mercy (MCA Nashville) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

Bernie Taupin’s first solo album in almost 40 years – and first to be entirely self-composed – was recorded in Nashville with producer Frank Liddell and boasts guest appearances from Brandi Carlile, Lee Ann Womack and Georgey Taupin.  Available on CD, LP, and digital formats.