Reviews / Rock

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Al Jardine, Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Mike Love, The Beach Boys

Review: The Beach Boys, “We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years” Part 1 – “15 Big Ones,” “The Beach Boys Love You”

March 23, 2026 by Joe Marchese | 11 Comments

What I remember is “Brian’s Back” was a campaign for a record company, but it was far more than that for all the rest of us. – Mike Love, February 12, 2026 At the recent Grammy Museum event celebrating the release of The Beach Boys’ latest box set, the 3CD/3LP We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years, a visibly emotional Mike Love recounted the media frenzy that surrounded Brian Wilson’s so-called comeback. The Beach Boys’ onetime leader and creative visionary had largely retreated from the producer’s chair after the shelved SMiLE sessions;…

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Al Jardine, Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Mike Love, The Beach Boys

Holiday Gift Guide Review: Prince and The Revolution, ‘Around the World in a Day (Deluxe Expanded Edition)’

December 1, 2025 by Mike Duquette | 3 Comments

In theory, the posthumous care and handling of an esteemed discography with the deep potential for archival excavation like Prince’s would be an easy if daunting task. When the pop icon died unexpectedly in 2016 with no will and considerable assets to settle, the art of memorializing him through reissues moved with almost shocking precision: solid expansions of several of his best-loved ’80s albums, a handful of notable archival one-offs, and the reinstatement of his digital and physical catalogue of the ’90s and ’00s back into print. After the estate settled in…

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CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming, Vinyl

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Classic Rock, Pop, R&B/Soul, Rock

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Prince

The Second Disc’s Guide to Record Store Day Black Friday 2025

November 28, 2025 by The Second Disc | 3 Comments

From all of us here at Second Disc HQ to all of you, we hope you’ve enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving in the company of beloved family and friends. (And with plenty of delicious food, too!) Now, Record Store Day’s annual Black Friday event is upon us, so we’re spotlighting a dozen of the most eagerly anticipated releases arriving to your local independent brick-and-mortar record shop! Here are our personal picks for RSD BF must-haves; visit Record Store Day’s official website for a list of participating retailers. Happy Listening, and have a great…

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CD, Vinyl

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Classic Rock, Country, Folk, Jazz, Pop, R&B/Soul, Rock, Soundtracks

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Alan Silvestri, Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Brandi Carlile, Chappell Roan, Dwight Yoakam, Elton John, John Debney, Jonathan Larson, Love, Prince, Randy Newman, Sugar, Talking Heads, Todd Rundgren, Warren Zevon, a-ha

Holiday Gift Guide Review: Split Enz, ‘Encyclopedia Volumes 1 & 2’

November 17, 2025 by Mike Duquette | 2 Comments

It’s kind of a minor miracle that Enzyclopedia Volumes 1 & 2 (Chrysalis CRC/CRV1899) – the first in what we hope is an ongoing reissue campaign for Antipodean rock icons Split Enz – exists at all. Their catalogue is probably a tough sell if you live outside of Australia or New Zealand (none of their discography is consistently available worldwide), and their best-known work, where they became a razor-sharp, New Wave-adjacent ensemble, doesn’t come until years after what’s covered in this collection (available as a 5CD or 3LP set). And that’s before you get…

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Box Sets, CD, Vinyl

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Pop, Rock

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Split Enz, Tim Finn

Review: Frank Zappa, “Halloween 78”

October 28, 2025 by Joe Marchese | 10 Comments

“Happy Halloween, everybody!” Greeting his audience at New York’s late, lamented Palladium on October 31, 1978, Frank Zappa promised the enthusiastic crowd. “This is it…this is the big one!” He wasn’t kidding. The composer-guitarist and his band – drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, bassists Arthur Barrow and Patrick O’Hearn, keyboardists Peter Wolf and Tommy Mars, singer-guitarist Denny Walley, and percussionist Ed Mann – delivered perhaps the most epic show of their annual New York holiday residencies. That concert is the centerpiece of Halloween 78, a massive new box set from Zappa Records and UMe….

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Frank Zappa

Review: David Bowie, “I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002-2016)”

October 15, 2025 by Joe Marchese | 6 Comments

C’mon, Let’s Go Slip Away For in truth, it’s the beginning of nothing/And nothing has changed/Everything has changed… After a period of nearly four years, David Bowie’s series of “Eras” box sets has continued with its sixth and final volume. I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002-2016), from ISO Records and Parlophone, concludes the career-spanning chronicle of the shape-shifting superstar on 13 CDs or 18 LPs. Picking up where 2021’s Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001) left off, it vividly re-presents the final years of an artist for whom “iconoclastic” barely scratches the surface. In a sense, every one…

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Box Sets, CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming, Vinyl

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Rock

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David Bowie

Review: Frank Zappa, “Cheaper Than Cheep”

July 29, 2025 by Joe Marchese | 3 Comments

The latest archival release from the Frank Zappa camp may be called Cheaper Than Cheep, but rest assured, this concert program is actually an embarrassment of audiovisual riches. Available in a variety of formats including 2CD+Blu-ray, 3LP, and 2CD/3LP/1BD configurations, Cheaper Than Cheep preserves a long-lost concert recorded on June 21, 1974 at a rehearsal studio on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood in the wake of the Mothers of Inventions’ tenth anniversary tour. Zappa was joined by a Mothers line-up including Chester Thompson (drums), George Duke (keyboards, vocals), Jeff Simmons (guitar, vocals), Napoleon…

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Blu-Ray, CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming

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Classic Rock, Rock, Soundtracks

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Frank Zappa

Cuts The Deepest: Edsel Celebrates P.P. Arnold on “Soul Survivor” Box Set

March 24, 2025 by Joe Marchese | 1 Comment

One of P.P. Arnold’s early sides for Immediate Records was titled “Am I Still Dreaming?” The song, which the artist born Patricia Ann Cole in Los Angeles wrote at the encouragement of none other than Mick Jagger, is one of the 57 songs on 3 CDs assembled by Edsel Records on the dream of a box set appropriately entitled Soul Survivor: A Life in Song. The collection, compiled by the singer and Michael Mulligan, traces the onetime Ikette’s career from her signing to Andrew Loog Oldham’s label through subsequent collaborations with Barry…

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Blues, Cast Recordings, Classic Rock, Pop, R&B/Soul, Rock

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Andrew Lloyd Webber, Andy Gibb, Barry Gibb, Eric Clapton, Ocean Colour Scene, P.P. Arnold, Paul Weller, Rod Stewart, Roger Waters, Steve Howe

Holiday Gift Guide Review: ‘Dearly Beloved: A Prince Celebration’

December 20, 2024 by Mike Duquette | 3 Comments

The holidays are a time of good cheer and gratitude, where we all (in theory) come together to share in a common joy. There has not been a lot of common joy if you’re a Prince fan; we don’t need to re-litigate it more than we did this summer, but it’s worth noting that the quest to make intriguing, posthumous Prince projects under the current estate organization has maybe gotten worse than when we published our editorial. But there have been celebrations of The Purple One that honor his restless creative spirit….

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Country, Disco/Dance, Electronic, Everything Else, Funk, Pop, R&B/Soul, Rock

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Andre Cymone, Dead or Alive, Kenny Rogers, Martika, Paula Abdul, Prince, Robyn, Stephanie Mills, The Bangles, The Pointer Sisters

Holiday Gift Guide Review: Alice Cooper, “Muscle of Love: Deluxe Edition”

December 19, 2024 by Joe Marchese | 2 Comments

Rare is the album that’s better remembered for its packaging than its contents. But that may well be the case with the band Alice Cooper’s seventh (and final) album, 1973’s Muscle of Love. As it followed the Platinum-certified international chart-topper Billion Dollar Babies, hopes were high for the LP. It was greeted by lukewarm critical assessments, though, and “merely” reached No. 10 on the Billboard 200 and No. 34 on the U.K. Albums Chart. As such, it was inevitably considered a disappointment. (It did go Gold.) But fans – and even those…

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Blu-Ray Audio, CD, Vinyl

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Alice Cooper

Holiday Gift Guide Review: Bob Dylan and The Band, “The 1974 Live Recordings”

December 4, 2024 by Joe Marchese | 4 Comments

Bob Dylan and The Band 1974 Live Recordings

Big things often come in small packages. Such is the case with Legacy Recordings’ recent excavation of Bob Dylan and The Band’s 1974 tour. 40 concerts took place over 30 dates and 21 cities, with Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Levon Helm, and Rick Danko even playing two shows in one day in many markets. The 1974 Live Recordings takes the form of a tiny cube, packing in 27 discs and 431 tracks (417 of which are previously unreleased). The set contains every professionally-recorded Dylan track from the concerts, and…

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Bob Dylan, The Band

Holiday Gift Guide Review: Elvis Costello, “King of America and Other Realms”

November 18, 2024 by Joe Marchese | 3 Comments

It was a fine idea at the time/Now it’s a brilliant mistake… Elvis Costello delivered a powerful surprise in 1986 when he shed his backing band, The Attractions, and teamed up with T Bone Burnett for King of America. Originally credited in the U.K. to The Costello Show (Featuring The Attractions and Confederates) and in the U.S. to The Costello Show (Featuring Elvis Costello), the album backtracked from the sleek ’80s polish of its two immediate predecessors (Punch the Clock and Goodbye Cruel World) and instead tapped into a vein closer to…

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Classic Rock, Country, Pop, R&B/Soul, Rock

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Allen Toussaint, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Kris Kristofferson, Lucinda Williams, Rosanne Cash, T Bone Burnett

Holiday Gift Guide Review: Prince and The New Power Generation, ‘Diamonds and Pearls (Super Deluxe Edition)’

December 22, 2023 by Mike Duquette | 1 Comment

I. Come On, Save Your Soul Tonight In the years since Prince’s tragic death in 2016, one of the more shocking events in catalogue history has occurred: the construction of a cottage industry surrounding his vast recorded output – both his dozens of released albums and countless tracks rumored to exist in the mythic vault at his Paisley Park recording complex. As a lucrative artist who left no will, the matters of his heirs were not settled until 2022. In those intervening years – with only a ragtag collection of record industry…

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Blu-Ray, Box Sets, CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming, Vinyl

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Pop, R&B/Soul, Rock

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Prince

Holiday Gift Guide Review: Stevie Nicks, ‘Complete Studio Albums and Rarities’

December 19, 2023 by Mike Duquette | 2 Comments

I. Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You? When was the moment that Stephanie Lynn Nicks became inevitable? It’s not as though you can just forget a voice like hers. Ever since the start of her on-again, off-again tenure in Fleetwood Mac – when her dulcet tones powered songs like “Rhiannon,” “Landslide,” “Dreams” (the band’s first No. 1 single in America), essential B-side “Silver Springs,” “Gypsy” and others – Nicks’ artistry and talent has been a given. But you can feel it in the air too, right? At some point in the last decade,…

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CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming, Vinyl

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Classic Rock, Pop, Rock, Soundtracks

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Stevie Nicks

Holiday Gift Guide Review: Billy Joel, “The Vinyl Collection Vol. 2”

December 14, 2023 by Joe Marchese | 9 Comments

Billy Joel The Vinyl Collection Volume 2

On July 25, 2024, Billy Joel will play his 150th lifetime show at New York’s Madison Square Garden. It will be the 104th show of the first-of-its-kind residency which began in 2014. Remarkably yet unsurprisingly, his final ten shows are already sold out. More remarkably – but just as unsurprisingly to anyone who’s followed the singer-songwriter over the past 30 years – he’s filled the cavernous arena 100+ times over the past decade without introducing a single new song. (His last two pop songs as of this writing were 2007’s “All My…

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Box Sets, Vinyl

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Reviews, The Weekend Stream

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Billy Joel

Weekend Stream Extra: Talking Heads, “Stop Making Sense”

November 16, 2023 by The Second Disc | 6 Comments

With the news that the theatrical re-release of Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense has exceeded the box office gross of the original film, we’ve given a listen to the recent release of the movie’s soundtrack, now streaming everywhere, as we kick off the Weekend (Stream) early! Earlier this fall, the late Jonathan Demme’s film of Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense returned to cinemas from buzzy studio A24 (Everything Everywhere All at Once, Priscilla) in a restored print. Variety has just reported that the re-release has earned $5 million at the box office,…

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Digital Download, Digital Streaming, Vinyl

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Pop, Rock

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Talking Heads

Review: Bob Dylan, “Fragments – ‘Time Out of Mind’ Sessions (1996-1997): The Bootleg Series Vol. 17”

March 29, 2023 by Joe Marchese | 4 Comments

The Oxford dictionary describes the phrase time out of mind as “a time in the past that was so long ago that people have no knowledge or memory of it.” What was Bob Dylan getting at when he lifted the phrase for his 1997 Grammy Award-winning album? Critics and fans alike immediately seized on the notion of the record as some kind of dark farewell from an artist in the September of his years. Indeed, the album was filled with musings on lost love, mortality, hopelessness, and despair. But there was more…

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Bob Dylan

Holiday Gift Guide Review: David Bowie, “Divine Symmetry: An Alternative Journey Through ‘Hunky Dory'”

December 22, 2022 by Joe Marchese | 1 Comment

MAGNIFICENT OUTRAGE. The phrase is emblazoned on the slipcase of David Bowie’s new box set Divine Symmetry (An Alternative Journey Through ‘Hunky Dory’). It was derived from an ad – reprinted as the first image in the 100-page tome housing the set’s four CDs and one Blu-ray Disc – which noted, “That’s what they’re saying about David Bowie.” Happily, no one would accuse this latest Bowie archival dig of being an outrage, though magnificent comes closer. Much like its 2019 predecessor Conversation Piece shed considerable light on the 1968-1969 David Bowie/Space Oddity…

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David Bowie

Holiday Gift Guide Review: Michael Jackson, ‘Thriller 40’

November 30, 2022 by Mike Duquette | 2 Comments

We are more than 35 years into the practice of record labels utilizing compact discs to sell a venerated artist’s catalogue while also telling a story through the format’s expanded capacity and clarion sound capabilities. The one-two punch of Bob Dylan’s Biograph (1985) and Eric Clapton’s Crossroads (1988) helped legitimize the idea of the CD box set and put both artists’ bodies of work in sharper focus at a time when both of them were, should we say, not as relevant to the cultural conversation. The possibilities were limitless, we might have…

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CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming

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Disco/Dance, Pop, R&B/Soul, Rock

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Michael Jackson

Review: The Beach Boys, “Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of The Beach Boys”

July 1, 2022 by Joe Marchese | 19 Comments

We’ll be havin’ fun all summer long… For nearly sixty years, the sun-drenched harmonies of The Beach Boys have provided the soundtrack for summer – from those welcome first days and first rays through the season’s bittersweet final moments as autumn’s chill approaches. They’re the rare band whose compilations, beginning with 1974’s chart-topping Endless Summer, have become nearly as key to their legacy as the core studio albums. 2003’s Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of The Beach Boys became their highest-charting album since 15 Big Ones (1976) and highest-charting collection since Spirit…

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Al Jardine, Brian Wilson, Bruce Johnston, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Mike Love, The Beach Boys

Everlasting: Edsel Collects Steve Ellis, Love Affair on “Finchley Boy” Box Set

June 21, 2022 by Joe Marchese | 1 Comment

The voice of Steve Ellis first burst out of radios on The Love Affair’s 1967 recording of “Everlasting Love.” A chart-topper in the U.K. and a hit throughout Europe, it failed to chart in the U.S. but set Ellis on a path of music-making that continues to this day. Edsel has taken a deep dive into his extensive career for an impressive new box set. Over 10 discs, Finchley Boy chronicles the Steve Ellis story both as a solo artist and with the groups Love Affair, Ellis, and Widowmaker. In the period…

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Classic Rock, Pop, R&B/Soul, Rock

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Ellis, Love Affair, Steve Ellis, Widowmaker

Release Round-Up: Week of May 6

May 6, 2022 by The Second Disc | 2 Comments

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles out today including a very special pair from Second Disc Records and Real Gone Music! Melissa Manchester, Live ’77 (Second Disc Records/Real Gone Music) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Real Gone Music) Second Disc Records and Real Gone Music proudly present the premiere release of Melissa Manchester’s Live ’77, recorded by Arista Records in October 1977 at Gainesville, Florida’s Great Southern Music Hall but unreleased until now! The 21 songs on Live ’77 – the singer-songwriter’s very first live album – include Manchester’s hits…

UPDATE – Glory of Love: Cherry Pop’s Expansive Peter Cetera Box Arrives

March 1, 2022 by Joe Marchese | 4 Comments

UPDATED 3/1/22: As one of the seven members of Chicago as featured on their 1969 debut album Chicago Transit Authority, bassist-singer Peter Cetera’s soaring tenor became an integral component of the band’s sound on such hits as “25 or 6 to 4,” “Feelin’ Stronger Every Day,” “Just You ‘n’ Me,” and “(I’ve Been) Searching So Long.” When his own composition “If You Leave Me Now” became Chicago’s first-ever No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 – not to mention in international territories such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia – Cetera was recast…

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Pop, Rock

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Amy Grant, David Foster, Peter Cetera

Review: The Replacements, “Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash: Deluxe Edition”

February 10, 2022 by Joe Marchese | 3 Comments

Everything about The Replacements’ debut was fast and furious. Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, first released in 1981 on the Twin/Tone label, introduced eighteen rip-roaring nuggets primarily from the pen of Paul Westerberg. More than half were under two minutes long, and only two cracked the three-minute mark. While the lyrics were filled with aggression and the spirit of youthful rebellion, they weren’t devoid of self-aware humor. And though the sound was primal, abrasive, and rough, there were melodies lurking underneath the barrage of guitars, bass, and drums. Late…

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