Two semi-obscure scores are coming from La La Land Records today: one’s the music to an primate-oriented family film, the other is an early-’70s rock score. First up, Miles Goodman’s complete score to Dunston Checks In (1996), the comedy about an orangutan in a fancy hotel. (Seriously.) It’s a nice comedic romp, despite the fact that the source material isn’t quite a classic, and it’ll be a nice little limited edition at 1,200 copies. The label also has a reissue of the soundtrack to Hell’s Belles, an interesting little 1970 flick involving…
Dylan Goes Mono-Lite, Too
Excited about Sony’s new batch of Bob Dylan material? As if another entry in The Bootleg Series (with some additional live bonuses depending on where you buy it) and a mono box set wasn’t enough, Columbia/Legacy is also releasing The Best of The Mono Recordings, a single-disc teaser culled from that box set. Of course, hardcore collectors are going to want to pick this set up in addition to the mono box; included on the 15-track sampler is the mono mix of a non-LP single, “Positively 4th Street.” The set, due on…
C’est CHIC, Indeed: More Nile Rodgers Box Set Details Released
If you’ve followed the legendary producer/CHIC co-founder Nile Rodgers on Facebook or Twitter, you’ve no doubt realized that he’s been combing through his archives for some projects, including his autobiography and a forthcoming box set chronicling The CHIC Organization and its productions. Finally, news of the latter has broke from someone other than Rodgers himself: Rhino France, through their Facebook page, has issued the first details about Nile Rodgers Presents The CHIC Organization Vol. 1: Savoir Faire. Due for release on October 18, the label promises to include music from CHIC, Norma Jean,…
“TNG” Box Boldly Goes Where Few Have Gone Before
Film Score Monthly has announced its fifth box set, and like the others, it’s quite an undertaking: Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Ron Jones Project collates 14 discs’ worth of music from the famous television series plus a heap of other Trek goodies from composer Ron Jones. Jones, best known for some surprisingly notable scores to animated television works (including the Disney cartoons DuckTales and Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers along with turns on Family Guy), composed scores to 42 episodes of ST:TNG, and about 40 or so of them…
Legacy Bumps Jayhawks Reissues to Next Year
We may have only fleetingly mentioned these before, but Legacy has prepped expanded reissues of Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow the Green Grass, the first two records that alt-country rockers The Jayhawks recorded for the American Recordings label in the early 1990s. Hollywood Town Hall, released in 1992, will feature five bonus tracks (two of which are unreleased) while Tomorrow the Green Grass (1995) will be presented as a double-disc Legacy Edition with a heap of bonus cuts, 20 of them previously unreleased. The discs have recently been rescheduled for reissue on…
Friday Feature: The Terminator Saga
Every August 29, incredible geeks like myself look skyward and emit sighs of relief that no nuclear warheads are heading our way. Of course, on a fictitious August 29 – in 1997 to be exact – a nuclear attack did indeed happen, triggered by a dangerously self-aware defense network system called Skynet. A war would rage between these sentient machines and their human creators, ultimately climaxing with soldiers on each side being sent to the past (our present) to alter future events. That tale, with the help of an Austrian bodybuilder and…
Rounder Records Adding Box Set to the Holiday Rush
Add another box set to the pile for this holiday season: The Rounder Records Story, an 87-track, four-disc chronicle of the Massachusetts-based indie folk label, celebrating its 40th year. The set includes tracks by notables names like Willie Nelson, NRBQ, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Rush, George Thorogood and The Destroyers, Bela Fleck and more. Pre-order it here and check the track list out after the jump.
Short Takes: Dylan Bonuses to Come with Bootlegs, Bernstein Box on the Way
A pair of notes from some Sony properties today: one focuses on a bonus with Bob Dylan’s newest Bootleg Series release, the other is a big box coming from Sony devoted to one of America’s greatest composers. Apparently, those who purchase The Bootleg Series Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos 1962-1964 from Amazon will get a bonus disc recorded at Brandeis University’s First Annual Folk Festival in 1963. The reel-to-reel tape source had been in the collection of Rolling Stone co-founder Ralph Gleason. Read the article at Rolling Stone for more info, including…
Reissue Theory: Beck, “Mellow Gold”
It’s not common that The Second Disc gets political, but this past weekend inadvertently made for a hilarious segue into catalogue discussion: conservative firebrand Sarah Palin took to Twitter on Monday defending television host Glenn Beck’s really weird “Restoring Honor” rally held last weekend. In particular, she criticized the mainstream media “sheeple” (a terrible portmanteau if ever there was one) for downplaying the significance of the rally. Her tweet, in full: Silly media reports“maybe thousands”@Beck’s “irrelevant” event;insinuating MSM sheeple mustn’t believe their own eyes&ears re: event’s truth Here’s the trick, though: instead…
Don’t Dream the Compiling is Over
EMI has announced an October 26 release date for the cheekily-titled The Very Very Best of Crowded House, the latest compilation from the Australian pop masters. The 19-track compilation (14 of which appeared on the last EMI comp, Recurring Dream: The Very Best of Crowded House (1996)) features tracks from all of the band’s albums save this year’s Intriguer. Additionally, there will be an expanded digital-only version with a rare live cut, a cover of “Throw Your Arms Around Me” by fellow Aussie rockers Hunters & Collectors which was released as a…
Lennon Reissue Updates: “Power to the People,” Kind Of
A few details have crossed the wires regarding the upcoming John Lennon reissue campaigns due for domestic release October 5. The aforementioned track lists for the new Power to the People: The Hits compilation, the Gimme Some Truth box set and the bonus discs in the John Lennon Signature Box we wrote about a few weeks ago is accurate (although the discs in Gimme Some Truth are presented in a different order – the set kicks off with the “Roots” disc thought to be Disc 4 then continues in proper order from…
“Beauty and the Beast” Reissue Adds Something There That Wasn’t There Before
Given The Walt Disney Company’s notorious penchant for avoiding most soundtrack releases on CD – Michael Giacchino’s score to Up is probably one of the few Oscar-winning scores in history to never have been pressed on CD, and Randy Newman’s Toy Story 3 soundtrack is another digital-only affair – it’s nice to see Walt Disney Records reissuing the soundtrack to Beauty and the Beast, one of their crowning achievements, on CD once more. However, it’s far from the best presentation the music has ever received. Beauty and the Beast was a smash…
News Round-Up: Stripped Smokey, Another QotSA Reissue and An Unsurprising Delay
If you were looking for a bit of a change, musically, today might be the day to check out yesterday’s digital release from Motown, Smokey Robinson’s The Stripped Mixes. Not unlike a Michael Jackson set that was rush-released after his death last summer, Stripped puts an emphasis on The King of Motown’s inimitable voice through ten acoustically-minded remixes. Call it a cash-in if you want, but the MJ set revealed some buried treasure in those new mixes. Plus, come on, it’s Smokey Robinson. He sounds like an angel. Queens of the Stone…
The Crazy Train is Running Behind Schedule
It’s been reported that the upcoming reissues of Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard of Ozz (1980) and Diary of a Madman (1981) – which would finally see the original bass and drum tracks (replaced on the 2002 CD reissues) restored – were delayed, based upon the fact that CD Japan had removed the preorder listings from their inventory. Allow The Second Disc to add further confirmation: we inquired about the status of the titles with Legacy Recordings, and they’ve been confirmed to have been bumped to next year (the exact time was not given)….
A Heroic Selection of Music
It’s always a blast to find out catalogue news from unexpected sources, so when I read a report from my favorite geek news site Topless Robot about a DC Comics music compilation, I got pretty darn excited. Set for release September 28, The Music of DC Comics: 75th Anniversary Collection collects 31 tracks from various DC-affiliated film and television projects – Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, The Flash and even Swamp Thing are all here – and the best part is that nearly all of it is previously unreleased. Hit…
New Concord Reissues on the Way, None of Which Are Ray Charles-Related
From Paste magazine, we have word of a few expanded reissues due from the Concord catalogue, which will include titles by The Vince Guaraldi Trio, Miles Davis with Sonny Rollins, Wes Montgomery, Chet Baker and The Bill Evans Trio. Still no word on another intriguing Concord catalogue title – Ray Charles’ Rare Genius: The Undiscovered Masters, supposedly due for release October 26 – but these might be of interest to our jazz-minded readers. None of these have been reported on Concord’s own site (based on this author’s past experiences with the label,…
Intrada Goes “Deep”
Chalk up another in-demand title getting resurrected from the soundtrack honchos at Intrada: an expanded presentation of John Barry’s score to the 1977 underwater thriller The Deep. Based on the novel by Peter Benchley (who of course wrote that other undersea horror tale, JAWS), the film – centered around a quest for undersea treasure – had only a few similarities to Steven Spielberg’s fish story from two years earlier: both films shared a star (Robert Shaw, although Louis Gossett Jr. would have a role in JAWS 3-D in 1983) and possessed a melodic…
A Year-Old Reissue That Mayer May Not Be of Interest
I sort of hesitate mentioning this on The Second Disc, but it does count as a reissue, even if it’s an obvious grab for holiday shoppers: Columbia is releasing an expanded edition of singer-songwriter John Mayer’s latest album, last year’s Battle Studies. Depending on who you ask, Mayer is known as an engaging musician with guitar chops reminiscent of Stevie Ray Vaughan, or he’s a womanizing jerk who can be too smart or too verbose for his own good. (To this longtime fan, who has caught the man in concert some seven…
News Round-Up Part II: Expansions All Over, TV Treasures and a Bon Jovi Compilation
With the calendar about to turn over to September, it’s definitely catalogue season. We’ve seen a lot of reissues, expansions and box sets announced – enough to make my post-vacation-hazed head spin – and plenty more are certainly on the way. Before we get into that, though, I want to thank not only Joe for holding the fort down expertly while I was away, but to you, the reader, for sticking with us. The rest of the year is going to be awesome for catalogue enthusiasts, and The Second Disc is more…
Reissue Theory: Go West
Reading Rob Sheffield’s Talking to Girls About Duran Duran was a mistake. I don’t mean that in a literal sense; the Rolling Stone writer’s newest book is a great read (as good as his incredibly bittersweet memoir Love is a Mix Tape), especially for an ’80s enthusiast like myself. But reading the author’s meticulous combing of tracks from his youth (everything from A Flock of Seagulls to the truly obscure Hayzi Fantayzeee) and how they inspired his ability to engage in dialogues with the women in his life made me think of…
Reissue Theory Guest Post: Coldplay, “Parachutes”
A special guest post comes to you during this oddly-scheduled week from Eric Luecking of Record Racks, a very well-executed music blog for your perusal. Here, he gives a Reissue Theory-style look at Coldplay’s debut album, some ten years later. Depending upon your location, we’ve either passed the 10th anniversary of Coldplay’s debut LP “Parachutes” (July 10, 2000 in the U.K.), or we haven’t quite made it there yet (November 7 in the U.S.). The Second Disc wants to take the time to honor one of the bands who has been everywhere in…
The Great Second Disc Pseudo-Hiatus
Just a quick note to our dear readers out there: from Sunday, August 15 to Thursday, August 26 I shall be taking a leave from my post at The Second Disc to go on vacation. However, I realize that reissues never sleep – so with that in mind you’ll be in the capable hands of Joe Marchese for the next two weeks or so. He’ll be providing you with daily news as well as his usual top-notch features (and there’s at least one big, previously-announced title that’s going to have some more…
News Round-Up: Release Date Changes, Hip-o Select Releases and More
A quick note that both Queensryche’s 20th anniversary reissue of Empire and Morrissey’s 20th anniversary reissue of Bona Drag – both from EMI – have been moved on the calendar. The latter will now street October 5 (the reissue of the “Everyday is Like Sunday” single will still street September 28) and the former will be released on September 28. MusicTAP tweeted this intriguing article from Billboard and Reuters: the Pink Floyd catalogue is now digitally out of print. There was talk for awhile of them moving the catalogue from longtime home EMI;…
Friday Feature: The Rocky Story
Today saw the release of the widely-hyped The Expendables, in which Sylvester Stallone gathered as many action movie heroes, past and present, and shoved them all into a film. By all accounts, it doesn’t seem to have worked as well as it could have. And that’s more or less latter-day Stallone for you. (Seriously, have you seen Rambo?) With that in mind, this week’s Friday Feature takes you to a simpler time. A time where Stallone was a young actor with a dream, which he turned into a beautifully metaphoric script. That’s…
More Lennon Reissue Info
Apologies for the shorter posting, but there’s some new chatter about some of the upcoming John Lennon reissues that catalogue enthusiasts should know about. It looks like there might be two editions of the upcoming Power to the People compilation – one single-disc compilation, and a deluxe set with a DVD of promo videos. Additionally, HMV Japan has revealed a track list for both the four-disc box set and the upcoming 11-disc anthology of all the remasters, including the two purported discs of rarities and unreleased material. (Regrettably, the unreleased material seems…
