What is jazz-rock? The label has been applied to the work of diverse artists such as Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, Miles Davis, Steely Dan, and Santana (and that's just to name some of the most well-known exponents) not to mention an entire cadre of fusion artists like the groups Weather Report and Return to Forever. In the jazz-rock canon, the name of Frank Zappa certainly stands tall. The multi-faceted artist delivered one of the genre's earliest and most seminal albums with 1969's Hot
Shake a Tail Feather! RPM Collects Complete Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels
Between 1965 and 1968, Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels scored a series of hits on producer-impresario Bob Crewe's DynoVoice and New Voice labels. With the prolific Crewe at the helm, Ryder's records featured a fiery blend of blue-eyed soul and pure, high-adrenaline rock-and-roll. Mitch Ryder (real name: William Levise, Jr.) set the stage for Michigan rockers from Bob Seger to Grand Funk Railroad to conquer the charts. For one of its final releases, Cherry Red's RPM imprint has celebrated the
Ace Round-Up, Part Two: Spotlight on Merseybeat Girls, “Jon Savage’s 1969-1971” and “Deep Soul Treasures”
Today, we're looking at another trio of recent releases from the team at Ace Records! If you missed Part One of our Ace Round-Up, click here! While The Beatles are no doubt Liverpool's most famous musical export, Merseyside - spanning 249 square miles (or 645 square kilometers) bordering Lancashire to the northeast, Greater Manchester to the east, Cheshire to the south and southeast, and The Irish Sea to the west - yielded an abundance of groups like The Cryin' Shames, Gerry and The
The Band, “The Band: 50th Anniversary Edition”
How to top Music from Big Pink? Wisely, The Band didn't even try. Ditching the Dylan co-writes and the covers, The Band returned with their self-titled sophomore LP in fall 1969. Late in 2019, Capitol Records and UMe remixed and expanded that now-classic effort for its 50th anniversary in the style of 2018's Big Pink campaign with releases in a variety of formats - most notably, a 2-CD/2-LP/1-BD/1 -7" single super deluxe edition. The so-called "Brown Album" was recorded about as far from New
You Got Me Anyway: Cherry Red Collects Complete Sutherland Brothers and Quiver on Box Set
This month, we'll be periodically looking at titles from the final months of 2019 which we haven't yet covered. Today's spotlight is on The Sutherland Brothers and Quiver's The Albums box set. Hailing from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, brothers Gavin and Iain Sutherland carved out one of the most consistent runs in '70s pop-rock, releasing eight melodic, memorable albums between 1972 and 1979 on the Island and CBS/Columbia labels. The brothers were born into a musical family, and when they moved
Year-End Review: Bob Dylan, “The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings”
As we continue to look back on the year that was, it's hard to disagree that Bob Dylan was 2019's king of the reissue. Since releasing More Blood, More Tracks in time for the holidays in 2018, Legacy Recordings and the Dylan team approved MoFi's deluxe audiophile version of Blood on the Tracks; celebrated the first leg of the famed Rolling Thunder Revue with a new film, CD box set, and LP reissue; delivered a new Bootleg Series installment focusing on his time in Nashville in the late '60s; and
The Year in Review: The 2019 Gold Bonus Disc Awards, From A to Z
Happy 2020 and welcome to The Second Disc's 10th Annual Gold Bonus Disc Awards! It's time once again to recognize this year's cream of the crop - those exemplary reissues and box sets big and small that proved to be truly outstanding products for music lovers worldwide. There was no shortage of great reissue titles in 2019; in fact, by our count, we covered over 700 releases in all! And after much deliberation, we're excited to unveil our favorites. This isn't your run-of-the-mill Top 10,
Holiday Gift Guide Reviews: A Rhino Round-Up with Bad Company, Rush, Van Halen, Hootie, STP and The Notorious B.I.G.
Many of this year's finest box sets came courtesy of the Rhino label. Here, Joe and Randy take a look at a few more of our favorites! First up are Randy's three picks... First up is Rhino's 25th anniversary 3-CD/1-LP Super Deluxe Edition of Stone Temple Pilots' Purple. Initially hitting shelves on June 7, 1994, the band's sophomore album would debut atop the Billboard 200 and stay there for three weeks, eventually becoming the group's second best-selling album after their debut effort,
Holiday Gift Guide Reviews: Cherry Red’s Esoteric and Grapefruit Imprints Offer Diverse Box Sets
Cherry Red's ongoing series of small clamshell box sets filled with big content make for the perfect stocking stuffer! Here's a look at three more titles you might have missed... Climax Blues Band's The Albums 1973-1976 is the second such box set released this year by Cherry Red's Esoteric Recordings imprint, following The Albums 1969-1972. This 4-CD set contains the following albums, culminating in the biggest commercial triumph for the band that began its life as The Climax Chicago Blues
Holiday Gift Guide Review: David Bowie, “Conversation Piece”
The new David Bowie box set is entitled Conversation Piece - and it's an apt one, as this set is certain to inspire conversations punctuated with cheers. Quite simply, this slipcased, hardcover-book style collection featuring five CDs of material recorded by the late superstar in 1968-1969 is one of the year's best boxes: an exquisite, museum-quality release that exceeds all expectations. Necessity may indeed be the mother of invention, as the set ostensibly exists because of the desire to
Holiday Gift Guide Review: MoFi Gives the Audiophile Treatment to Dylan’s “Blood on The Tracks” and J. Geils’ “The Morning After”
Over the years, Mobile Fidelity has cemented itself as one of the leaders in the audiophile re-issue realm. From deluxe 45rpm box set affairs to more bare-bones remasters, the label has been known to go the extra mile to make every album sound its best. Two of their recent reissues have arrived at Second Disc HQ: the extravagant 45rpm One-Step remaster of Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and the slimmed-down remaster of J. Geils Band's The Morning After. Both titles are sure to please that
Holiday Gift Guide Review: The Doors, “The Soft Parade: 50th Anniversary Edition”
Tell all the people that you see/Follow me... With those words penned by bandmate Robbie Krieger, Jim Morrison invited listeners to the world of The Doors' fourth studio album, The Soft Parade. Originally released on July 18, 1969, it was the fourth consecutive top ten smash for Messrs. Morrison, Krieger, Manzarek, and Densmore, but in the ensuing years it's also become one of the group's most divisive - primarily for its extensive use of orchestral arrangements. To mark its fiftieth
Review: Bob Dylan featuring Johnny Cash, “Travelin’ Thru: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15 (1967-1969)”
There's a delicious moment on the fifteenth volume of Bob Dylan's long-running Bootleg Series. The troubadour is in Columbia Records' Nashville Studio A, rehearsing a duet medley with Johnny Cash of his "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and Cash's "Understand Your Man." Once they stop playing, The Man in Black happily observes that "the phrasing comes out just right, 'cause we both stole it from the same song!" Indeed, Dylan and Cash shared substantial musical roots, with less than a decade
Radioactive: Rave On Releases Roger C. Reale and Rue Morgue’s “Collection” Featuring Mick Ronson
The discography of Big Sound Records proves that great things often come in small packages. While the label didn't release many LPs, those that were released by the likes of The Scratch Band and Van Duren have become favorites of crate-diggers. Big Sound patterned itself on the U.K.'s Stiff Records, and its answer to Stiff's Elvis Costello may well have been Roger C. Reale. The 1978 album Radio Active, credited to Reale and Rue Morgue, was packed with compact rock-and-roll nuggets - ten on the
Review: Ramones, “It’s Alive: 40th Anniversary Edition”
Fast and furious - that was the modus operandi of Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Tommy Ramone when they hit U.K. concert stages in December 1977 in the wake of the November release of their third studio album, Rocket to Russia. The New Year's Eve gig at London's Rainbow Theatre provided the basis of It's Alive, issued in April 1979, with 28 songs comfortably packed onto less than 54 minutes of vinyl. Now, that singular document of the Ramones' electrifying performance has been revisited by Sire and
Review: James Taylor, “The Warner Bros. Albums 1970-1976”
Over six years at Warner Bros. Records, James Taylor laid the groundwork for a career that is now in its sixth decade. The Massachusetts native's records were key exponents of the early Laurel Canyon sound, not to mention the entire confessional "singer-songwriter" movement that today is synonymous with the 1970s. The six albums he released at Warner Bros. were collected over the summer in one essential CD or vinyl LP box set, The Warner Bros. Albums 1970-1976, that's perfect for the impending
Review: The Beatles, “Abbey Road: Anniversary Edition”
I. Once There Was a Way to Get Back Home By the opening days of 1969, it was clear that John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were four very different people, temperamentally and artistically. Their lives were taking them in different directions and threatening to pull them apart from the group that made them internationally famous. The Beatles, a.k.a. The White Album, had made high art out of those very differences and - surprising no one - was another triumph for the
Run Back to Mama: Ace’s “Horn Rock” Anthology Features Chase, Blood Sweat and Tears, Delaney and Bonnie, More
The new collection on Ace Records' BGP imprint packs a mighty punch. That's because it's dedicated to Horn Rock (with the equally-important subtitle And Funky Guitar Grooves), that boldest and brassiest of rock subgenres. The phrase "horn rock" immediately brings to mind the sound popularized by Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears (only one of which is represented here) but the added colors afforded by horns were applied to recordings in the baroque-rock, art-rock, psych-rock, and jazz-rock
Rhino’s 10-CD Woodstock Set “Back To the Garden: The 50th Anniversary Experience” Delivers the Goods
Fifty years ago this summer, more than 400,000 fans convened at Max Yasgur's farm for a music festival that would come to define not only the era, but the entire ethos of music festivals to come. With every passing decade, the magic of Woodstock has been celebrated and, indeed, re-marketed to new generations of music fans. The '90s saw two new Woodstock-branded festivals and an array of 25th anniversary products, including a compilation called Woodstock Diary and a 4-CD box set. To mark the
Review: David Bowie, “The Mercury Demos”
David Bowie collectors with a taste for vinyl have had much for which to be grateful this year. Parlophone and Rhino recently unveiled the third in a series of vinyl box sets this year, The Mercury Demos. (The just-released fourth such box commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of "Space Oddity.") An LP rather than a collection of singles, The Mercury Demos officially premieres ten early, one-take recordings from the future superstar, recorded on a Revox reel-to-reel tape machine in Bowie's
Review: James Taylor, “One Man Band”
The One Man Band tour took James Taylor on the road for three years of unusually intimate performances, even by the standards of the guitar-wielding troubadour. In 2007, the tour culminated in a series of shows at Pittsfield, Massachusetts' small, 775-seat Colonial Theatre, a true homecoming for the famous Massachusetts native. Joined only by keyboardist Larry Goldings, Taylor treated audiences to a tour through his songbook that amounted to a master class in musical storytelling. The live
Ace Explores Rock, Jazz Through the Lens of History with “Three Day Week” and “If You’re Not Part of the Solution”
Ace Records, as always, has delivered some of 2019's finest collections including Songwriter Series volumes dedicated to Eddie Hinton, Leonard Cohen and Merle Haggard, and celebrations of producer Mickie Most and musician Reggie Young. Today, we're taking a look at a pair of the label's other recent releases. Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs present Three Day Week: When the Lights Went Out 1972-1975 (Ace CDCHD 1542) is another sublimely curated compilation focusing on a particular period of
Review: Ronnie Lane, “Just For A Moment: Music 1973-1997”
Ask any of his collaborators and they'll tell you, Ronnie Lane was special. Sure, he was an exceedingly talented singer, bassist, guitarist, and songwriter; he was also a uniquely open-minded and welcoming collaborator who was more than willing to nurture talent. But what really sets Ronnie Lane apart is the way he subverted what it meant to be a popular musician. Unlike the majority of his peers, Ronnie Lane didn't want to be a rock star. He wanted his music to reach people, sure, but he'd
Review: “Pearl Harbor and the Explosions” from Blixa Sounds
Over the past year, the Blixa Sounds label has made a name for itself as the home to an eclectic line of reissues, from yacht rockers Stephen Bishop and Robbie Dupree to soul phenom Linda Clifford and psych-rock veterans Chris Darrow and Max Buda. Earlier last month, the label released its latest reissue - an expanded edition of Pearl Harbor and the Explosions' self-titled debut. The album was originally released in 1980 on Warner Bros. Records and introduced listeners to the infectious
Swinging Doors: Grateful Dead, Emmylou, Dolly, Dino, More Celebrate “The Merle Haggard Songbook”
Along with Buck Owens - with whom he shared a musical history and a wife - Merle Haggard (1937-2016) defined The Bakersfield Sound of country music: authentic, raw, rooted in honky-tonks. But unlike the Texas-born and Arizona-raised Owens, Haggard was actually born in Bakersfield and raised just across the river from that California town. "Hag," as he preferred to be known, rocketed to superstardom thanks to "Okie from Muskogee," his controversial 1969 song that was either a scathing
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