The Second Disc is pleased to introduce our first contributor, Joe Marchese. Joe is a NY/NJ-based writer, theatre director and music enthusiast, and is thrilled to be on board. For many of her fans, Carole King's career begins and ends with Tapestry. It's not hard to see why; the seminal 1971 album spent fifteen weeks perched at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart, remained on the chart for six years, spawned two chart-topping pop singles, and influenced an entire generation of introspective
The Not-So-Finer Things
The announcement of Revelutions: The Very Best of Steve Winwood - a new compilation from Island available as either a single-disc compilation or a four-disc box set - should be exciting. Winwood is a hell of a musician whose illustrious career has seen him work with Blind Faith, Traffic and The Spencer Davis Group, not to mention his own successful solo work. But this set is boring, not just for its lack of vault content but because it's essentially been released before. The Finer Things was a
In Case You Missed It: Monsieur Hathaway
A little bit of old news for you, but a must-know if you didn't already: the folks at Rhino have put together Someday We'll All Be Free, a four-disc overview of soul singer Donny Hathaway's brief but powerful career. The set includes all four studio albums, a heap of live tracks, and seven previously unreleased recordings. Here's the catch, though: it seems that it's only available - as a 5,000-copy limited edition, at that - in France. While I had little to no idea of Hathaway's apparently
Guessing Game: Devo - "New Traditionalists" (UPDATED 3/30)
It was recently announced that, not long after Devo's Duty Now for the Future reissue and upcoming new single, Warner Bros. will be continuing the reissue chain with New Traditionalists, the band's fourth LP from 1981, due back in stores on May 11. To date, no bonus tracks have been announced. Prior reissues have seen bonus tracks ranging from new live material (the 2009 live performance of Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! that accompanied the reissue of the original) to old live material
Reissue Theory: Tracy Chapman, "Tracy Chapman"
We music fans live for that moment when a song comes from nowhere - through a radio, perhaps, or more likely through your computer speakers nowadays - grabs us and doesn't let go. That was undoubtedly the case with "Fast Car," the first single by singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman. The song - for the ten or so of you who might have missed it over the better part of 20 years - is an achingly bittersweet, first-person ballad about a woman planning to escape her impoverished, broken family only to
Rarities Editions: Round Two
The Second Disc did a run-through earlier this month concerning Universal Music Enterprises' "Rarities Editions," repackagings of the second discs of various Universal Deluxe Editions. Some of them were worth it if you avoided buying the Deluxe Edition before, but a few lacked the bonus tracks that were on some of the deluxe titles' first discs. However, they must have been enough of a success for UMe, because another seven in the series have been announced for April 27. Thus, it would be worth
News Round-Up: Broken Wings, Hendrix Rocks, Phish in Exile and Film Score Tidbits
A big reissue is coming from indie reissue label Friday Music: a 25th anniversary reissue of Welcome to the Real World, the 1985 sophomore LP by Mr. Mister. This record, which spawned the Top 10 hits "Broken Wings," "Kyrie" and "Is It Love," is remastered direct from RCA's original master tapes and comes in a digipak. (No bonus tracks, but outside of a dance mix and dub for "Is It Love," there were none, really.) Amazon has this one listed for an April 20 release. (Thanks to Pause & Play for
Reintegration
Hooray! Slicing Up Eyeballs reports that the triple-disc reissue of Disintegration by The Cure seems to finally have a release date. The reissue press release was recently posted to The Cure's official site with a May 24 release date from Polydor/Universal in the U.K. Hopefully this means a May 25 release from Rhino in the U.S. will be locked down before long. There have been far too many inexplicable delays of '80s reissues in the States lately. Stay tuned as always for more!
Reissue Theory: a-ha - "Scoundrel Days"
The Ending on a High Note Tour, the farewell trek by synthpop legends a-ha, has been in full swing for some time now. In about a month, the band takes their show to the U.S.A., a country that knows them for that first great hit "Take on Me," but little else. Readers of The Second Disc, however, likely know that the band continued to succeed (particularly in Europe and South America) through the mid-1990s and again in 2000, when comeback album Minor Earth, Major Sky earned them a new generation
No-Brainers
One of the biggest unasked or unanswered questions about The Second Disc is: why catalogue stuff? Is the site meant to conjure up memories of musical generations past? Is it trying to remind labels that their back catalogues should be treated with the utmost care in conjunction with their burgeoning new acts? Is there something else about it? The answers are maybe, yes and yes. At heart, though, The Second Disc has more to do with journalism than anything. Journalism, they say, is the first
Reissue Theory: More Novelties
It's almost the weekend, which hopefully means for you, the reader, a few days of fun and frolic. To that end, let's get the fun started early with a few particularly goofy Reissue Theory novelties. One is a one-hit wonder who managed to combine New Wave and a slightly older generation of music, and the other is an inexplicably house-oriented companion piece to a popular video game. Bet you won't find that combination anywhere else on the Internet today! Hit the jump to see which red-letter
Broken Promises, Broken Habits
This is getting ridiculous. Duran Duran's EMI reissues have suffered yet another delay - the third or fourth this year. The deluxe editions of Duran Duran and Seven and the Ragged Tiger, previously set for March 30 and April 20, have now been bumped to May 18. This complements the recent news that the next wave of reissues - covering Notorious and Big Thing - will hit stores on July 6 instead of the planned June date. (The deluxe reissue of side-project Arcadia's So Red the Rose is still set for
Back Tracks: Squeeze
If The Second Disc has any European readers, allow me to express my intense jealousy that Squeeze, one of the best British pop bands I can name, is embarking on a tour in your neck of the woods later in the year. It pleases me that Squeeze is not an unknown entity in the United States (the first Squeeze concert I partook in, at Radio CityMusic Hall in 2008, looked pretty sold out), but ask any casual or younger music fan and you'll likely get blank stares. This may change if you sing a few bars
Reissue Theory x4: Chaka Khan (and Rufus Too)
The Second Disc is a day late (but no less enthusiastic) in wishing Chaka Khan, The Queen of Funk Soul, a happy birthday. Chaka has had, to say the least, an illustrious career, first as a member of Rufus then as a wildly successful solo artist in the late '70s and '80s. What is the secret to Khan's ongoing popularity? Chalk it up to three things. First, there's that powerhouse voice - at once sensuous and celebratory. There's also the great sounds she surrounds her vocals with, whether it's
Lena Horne Soars, The Lion Roars
As previously mentioned, Hip-O Select had yet another release up their sleeve: Lena Horne Sings: The M-G-M Singles Collection. It's a set of 16 early Lena Horne classics cut for M-G-M Records in the '40s and '50s and largely unavailable on CD until now. There's a heap of standards, including "'Deed I Do," "Where or When," "I've Got the World on a String" and "The Lady is a Tramp," plus liner notes from Horne biographer James Gavin. Pre-order it here and hit the jump for some specs (culled
Rick James Coming Into Your Life Again
Just a day after readying a deluxe edition of Meet the Supremes for the world, Hip-O Select comes through with a pair of out-of-print Rick James titles. Fire It Up (1979) and Garden of Love (1980) are both making their way to CD (the latter being pressed on CD for the first time) with a few bonus tracks. The original artwork will be replicated for each and complemented with liner notes by Yale music professor Michael Veal. Links are here and here and full song specs are below. Rick James -
Devo's "Duty" Has a Tracklist
Amazon has posted the tracklist for the upcoming reissue of Devo's Duty Now for the Future coming from Warner Bros. The band's sophomore LP is getting a CD and vinyl reissue on April 13, just in time for Record Store Day, and it'll feature five B-sides as bonuses. Check it out after the jump!
Insanity, Bohemian-Style
Legacy recently hipped their Facebook fans to the pre-order page for the double-disc Legacy Edition of This is Big Audio Dynamite, the 1985 debut LP by Big Audio Dynamite. Led by Mick Jones, who was at the time recently fired as guitarist of The Clash, BAD was quite the stylistic melting pot, fusing punk with reggae and club music and garnishing it with samples aplenty. The new edition, released for the album's 25th anniversary, includes an extra disc of rare and unreleased remixes. Have a look
Re-Meet the Supremes
Although the track list was up and running at Amazon some time ago, Meet The Supremes: Expanded Edition is finally up for pre-order from Hip-O Select. And this two-disc set has a lot of rarities for Motown fans. The set has the original stereo and mono versions of the LP, a four-song set from the Apollo Theater in 1962 (touted by Universal as "the earliest known Supremes live recording"), seven more live tracks from 1964 and more than a dozen unreleased alternate takes. The packaging looks
Labelled with Love
It might not mean as much now in an era dominated by digital files (not to mention a music business that is more or less split between four major labels), but there's a certain beauty in looking at the label on a piece of vinyl. Next to a picture sleeve, it's the prettiest art you could get in the early days of buying music. With that label, there would be an image, not only literally but spiritually as well; the image a label projected onto its LPs and singles usually called a certain emotion
Reissue Theory: Various Artists - "Soup for One: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"
There may not be enough positive words to write about Nile Rodgers. The sole surviving member of The CHIC Organization (which included bassist Bernard Edwards and drummer Tony Thompson), Rodgers helped shape the sound of late '70s and early '80s pop and R&B, either as a performer with CHIC, a producer - often alongside Edwards - for Diana Ross, Sister Sledge, Madonna and others or even as a sampled artist (see The Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" and "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash
Never Gonna Give You Up. No, Really.
In a move that proves that any reissue is possible, or at least probable, the Edsel label has set an April 13 release date for expanded reissues of Rick Astley's Whenever You Need Somebody and Hold Me in Your Arms. Yes, you are reading this right. You are also reading correctly that each reissue will be two discs with expanded liner notes by Pete Waterman Entertainment, Ltd. expert Tom Parker. More info is here, here and here and a detailed tracklisting for each is after the jump.
Every Day Should Be Record Store Day
And perhaps it is, depending on how often you buy from one. The fourth annual Record Store Day is happening in less than a month (April 17) but already a lot of releases have been announced for the occasion. Best of all, there are some neat releases for catalogue fans out there, too. You can have a look at the full list here, but here are some of the neatest catalogue offerings coming on Record Store Day. Devo, Duty Now for the Future (1979) (Warner Bros.) As previously mentioned, Devo's
Back Tracks: Alex Chilton
A potentially embarassing confession: it took the death of Big Star frontman Alex Chilton for me to realize just what I knew about him. I knew his name was the title of a Replacements song (thanks, Rock Band), I'd known of Big Star thanks to the justifiable hype over last year's box set from Rhino and I'd known a handful of his most famous, very solid compositions that he either wrote or popularized ("Thirteen," "The Letter," "In the Street") through inevitable cultural osmosis (thanks, That
Reissue Theory: Howard Jones, "Dream Into Action"
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=IT&hl=it&v=ZZEGHnAxEpo] Predicting the future is a tough game. While the above video - a possibly-not-entirely-live performance by Howard Jones, Herbie Hancock, Thomas Dolby and Stevie Wonder at the 1985 Grammys - probably looked like the future of music some 25 years ago, it seems a little, shall we say, overdone in hindsight. But nobody will ever stop predicting the future - certainly not here at The Second Disc, where (ideally) every day
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