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. Cyndi Lauper celebrates one of her best-known albums, an Earth, Wind & Fire legend pays tribute to the man who founded the group, plus rare and unvaulted favorites from Peggy Lee, Neil Sedaka and Burl Ives, and reissues of new records by David Byrne and Wednesday.

Cyndi Lauper, True Colors (40th Anniversary Expanded Edition) (Epic/Legacy) (Apple / Amazon)

Of course a debut album with four Top 10 hits is going to get a lot of attention, but Cyndi Lauper followed up She’s So Unusual with a deeply underrated LP that gets some extra attention this season for its 40th anniversary. True Colors once again matched Lauper’s one-of-a-kind voice with even more of her own original compositions, like the terrific “Change of Heart” (featuring backing vocals by The Bangles and a dazzling guitar performance from Nile Rodgers) and the heartbreaking AIDS anthem “Boy Blue.” There’s also some unique covers of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and the New Orleans standard “Iko Iko” – but the real gem, of course, is the Billy Steinberg/Tom Kelly-penned title track, which soared to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and became one of Lauper’s signature recordings (not to mention the namesake of the organization she helped create to combat homelessness among LGBTQ+ youths and young people of color).

Previously reissued digitally for its 35th anniversary, the new, deluxe True Colors is packed with unreleased content: two studio tracks, including another Steinberg/Kelly cut, “The River Cried,” and a cover of The Beatles’ “Across the Universe.” There’s also a full concert from Le Zenith in Paris shot in 1987 for a live video. A 2LP edition is available to order, but it only includes “The River Cried” among the studio bonuses and none of the songs from She’s So Unusual on the live disc.

David Byrne, Who is the Sky? (Digital Deluxe Edition) (Matador) (Apple / Amazon)

The ex-Talking Heads frontman’s 2025 follow-up to American Utopia continued the frenetic art-rock style that slotted nicely alongside Byrne’s first major performances of Heads hits in quite some time, during a Broadway residency named after that last album. Who is the Sky?, produced by Kid Harpoon and featuring backing by the Ghost Train Orchestra and a guest appearance by Hayley Williams of Paramore, is now expanded with four extra tracks including the new song “T Shirt.”

Peggy Lee, Since You Have Gone EP (Capitol/UMe) (Apple / Amazon)

The teams at The Peggy Lee Estate and UMe have unearthed another treasure from the archives of the late vocal legend. “Since You Have Gone” was recorded in Hollywood on November 2, 1963 with renowned arranger Shorty Rogers (Three Little Bops) and conductor Max Bennett for Miss Lee’s In Love Again album; it’s never been heard…until now. The evocative and moody ballad with a beat is joined on a new EP of the same name with three other Lee standards: “Big Spender,” “Fever,” and “Why Don’t You Do Right.”

Verdine White feat. Maurice White, “Celebrate Our Love” (PWP Works of Art Productions) (Apple / Amazon)

The longtime Earth, Wind & Fire bassist has come together with producer Neal H. Pogue and EWF drummer John Paris (ostensibly recorded before the health challenges he started facing this summer) to build a finished track around “Celebrate Our Love,” the long-vaulted final demo of White’s brother, EWF founder and original frontman Maurice White. It’s a terrific tribute to one of the great legends of R&B.

Neil Sedaka, The Good Times / “Laughter in the Rain” (Live, The Val Doonican Music Show, 1977) (Primary Wave)

The Good Times: Apple / Amazon
“Laughter”: Apple / Amazon

Primary Wave has brought the late, great Neil Sedaka’s 1986 album The Good Times, originally released on PRT Records, to digital/streaming for the first time. Sedaka’s last original studio album for nearly a decade – and one which wasn’t even released in the United States at the time – The Good Times was entirely composed by the artist, with lyrics from his daughter Dara on every song but one (a remake of his classic “The Hungry Years,” with words by Howard Greenfield). Dara joined him on vocals for songs including the title track, a beautiful ballad with echoes of their hit duet “Should’ve Never Let You Go.” Despite its varied tunestack – including the bouncy “Love Made Me Feel This Way,” buoyant “Rosarita,” lightly Latin-tinged “Sweet Dreams of You,” and moving “Let Me Walk with You Again,” The Good Times became a bit of a lost album in the Sedaka catalogue, making its reappearance now all the more poignant. Now if only Curb Records would revisit Neil’s 1984 Dan Hartman collaboration Come See About Me, featuring a host of oldies as reinterpreted by Neil with guests Edgar Winter, Mary Wilson, Gary U.S. Bonds, and Rick Derringer, among others!

And that’s not all from Mr. Sedaka. Here’s one we missed from earlier this summer: Primary Wave teamed with the BBC to unearth a live recording (available in both audio and video formats) of his 1975 chart-topper (co-written with Phil Cody) from a 1977 broadcast of The Val Doonican Music Show (the long-running program hosted by the Irish vocalist). With piano and vocals only, Sedaka veers a bit from the familiar studio recording, showing off his piano chops as well as his natural joie de vivre and a winking vaudevillian’s sense of humor. It’s certainly enough to brighten up a rainy day.

Bob Marley & The Wailers, “Who the Cap Fit” (Salaam Remi Remix) (Tuff Gong/Island/UMe) (Apple / Amazon)

Billy Idol, “Cradle of Love” (R3HAB Remix) (Capitol/UMe) (Apple / Amazon)

Two very different icons with deep catalogues at UMe get new remixes. Amy Winehouse producer Salaam Remi offers a spacey remix of Bob Marley’s “Who the Cap Fit” in tribute to the 50th anniversary of its parent album Rastaman Vibration. R3HAB, meanwhile, offers an unusual deconstruction of Billy Idol’s 1990 hit that seems to utilize some completely unused vocal performances.

Burl Ives, Ballads and Folk Songs, Volume II / A Collection of Ballads, Folk and Country Songs – Vol. 3 / Down to the Sea in Ships / Capt. Burl Ives’ Ark / Junior Choice (Decca/Geffen)

Volume II: Apple / Amazon
Vol. 3: Apple / Amazon
Down to the Sea: Apple / Amazon
Capt. Burl Ives’ Ark: Apple / Amazon
Junior Choice: Apple / Amazon

Burl Ives’ distinctive voice and tender persona suited him well both as a country/folk balladeer and a warmly-received actor in such fare as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, an Oscar-winning turn in The Big Country, Disney flicks like So Dear to My Heart and Summer Magic, and, of course, his voiceover as the jolly snowman narrator of the Rankin-Bass Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Five classic albums of Ives’, mostly stemming from his early tenure on Decca (including two volumes of Ballads and Folk Songs that largely predated the LP era, originally issued on 10″ or sets of shellac discs), are now digitally available for the first time. Of particular interest to collectors might be Junior Choice, a 1974 disc of children’s songs released only in the U.K., on the MCA Coral imprint.

John Farnham, Whispering Jack (40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) (Sony Music Australia) (Apple / Amazon)

John Farnham scaled the heights in his native Australia, becoming the only artist in that country to score a No. 1 hit in six consecutive decades; starring in such musicals as Pippin, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Charlie Girl; and earning the best-selling album in Australian history by an local artist (and the third best-selling album in Australian history following Shania Twain’s Come on Over and Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell). That album, 1986’s Whispering Jack, gets a digital deluxe edition today. Anchored by its chart-topping single “You’re the Voice,” Whispering Jack was also the first album by an Australian artist to see CD release within the country. The second “disc” of the expanded edition features a 1987 Farnham concert. For those wondering, this title is available physically in Australia or as an import.

Wednesday, Bleeds (Deluxe) (Dead Oceans) (Apple / Amazon)

Alt-rock act Wednesday’s sixth album, released in 2025, became one of their most acclaimed thanks to a selection of gripping songs that hinted at the end of the romantic relationship between lead singer Karly Hartzman and guitarist MJ Lenderman. (Lenderman, who’d embarked on a critically successful solo career several years before, since declared that, while he would no longer tour with the group starting with the promotion of Bleeds, he would remain a member of the band as a studio contributor.) For its one-year anniversary, it’s been expanded with eight remixes, alternates and demos.

New York Mary, A Piece of the Apple (Arista) (Apple / Amazon)

Jazz fusion combo New York Mary issued only two albums for the Arista imprint Freedom, both of which came out in 1976. Its self-titled predecessor was backfilled only a few weeks ago.

The Red Garland Trio feat. Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Moodsville, Volume 1 (Remastered 2026) / Frank Wess Quartet, Moodsville, Volume 8 (Remastered 2026) (Craft Recordings)

Garland: Apple / Amazon
Wess: Apple / Amazon

Prestige Records founder Bob Weinstock founded a new label in 1960 with the goal of finding common ground between jazz aficionados and the mainstream audiences of easy listening instrumental music. It was called Moodsville, and its first dozen-plus albums may have established a brand even more than the music in the grooves – in this case, a session with the Red Garland Trio (featuring guest saxophone by Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis on three tracks) and another with saxophonist/flautist Frank Wess, formerly of Billy Eckstein’s band.

Coleman Hawkins, The Hawk Relaxes (Remastered 2026) (Craft Recordings) (Apple / Amazon)

A fine late-period offering from the jazz-sax trailblazer finds Coleman Hawkins in fine form on standards like “Moonglow” and “Just a Gigolo.” He’s fronting a killer quintet that includes Kenny Burrell on guitar, Ronnell Bright on piano, Ron Carter on bass and drummer Andrew Cyrille.

PASSINGS

It could have been enough for Duncan Sheik to become one of those celebrated singer/songwriters playing off the strength of his only chart hit, the Grammy-nominated Top 20 “Barely Breathing.” But Sheik, a former bandmate of college friend Lisa Loeb, had a restless creative spirit that led to chapters of his career that no one saw coming. His third album, Phantom Moon, was conceived as a dialogue of sorts with Nick Drake’s folk masterpiece Pink Moon, and created in collaboration with playwright and lyricist Steven Sater, whom he met on a Buddhist retreat. That partnership continued and blossomed, leading to Sheik writing the music for Sater’s adaptation of the controversial German play Spring Awakening, turning it into a generation-defining musical that explored teenage angst and desire in ways no Broadway production had ever before. It won eight Tony Awards and gave Sheik a second wind as a stage composer, writing music to productions like Alice by Heart (with Sater), American Psycho (for which Sheik also penned lyrics), The Secret Life of Bees and the forthcoming off-Broadway adaptation of the manga Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen.

On a personal note, I spent part of this spring editing a new oral history and liner notes to a forthcoming 20th anniversary vinyl edition of Spring Awakening, finding myself deeply touched by what Sheik and Sater created and said about their defining work. I do hope its groove offer fans peace and warm memories of a singer/songwriter who deeply had the power to touch people. -MD

While her name wasn’t on the marquee (or ahead of the group’s name, unlike leader Martha Reeves), Rosalind Ashford had a lovely front-row seat to the rise of Motown Records as a member of Martha and The Vandellas. A member of the ensemble since their founding in 1957 (when they were known as The Del-Phis), Ashford-Holmes was with the group almost through their entire tenure, exiting in 1969; this put her on a host of era-defining hits including “Heat Wave,” “Dancing in the Street,” “Nowhere to Run” and “Jimmy Mack.” May she be remembered as a true Motown original.

His stage name sounded like a glam rock outfit, but Cheetah Chrome was an icon of punk rock in America. Though he first played guitar in the influential Cleveland band Rocket from the Tombs (who wouldn’t record together until decades after their 1975 breakup), he was best known as the guitarist for one of U.S. punk’s most ferocious acts, the Dead Boys. The group became a fixture of the New York punk scene in the late ’70s alongside the Ramones, Television, Patti Smith (who covered the Dead Boys’ “Sonic Reducer” at the closing show of venerable Manhattan punk club CBGB), Talking Heads, Blondie and others. Despite an ultra-aggressive presence on the guitar, Chrome (born Eugene O’Connor) had a positive reputation among punk veterans and those who cited him as an influence.