Reviews / Classic Rock

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CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming, Vinyl

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Classic Rock, Funk, R&B/Soul

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War

Holiday Gift Guide Review: Joni Mitchell, “Archives: Volume Four (1976-1980)” and “The Asylum Albums (1976-1980)”

December 20, 2024 by Joe Marchese | 4 Comments

Earlier this year, Joni Mitchell brought her now-famous Joni Jam shows to the Hollywood Bowl for two sold-out evenings. A little more than 45 years ago, Mitchell closed out her North American tour with a series of shows some fifteen minutes away from the Bowl at the Greek Theatre; a selection from that concert closes the fourth volume of the Joni Mitchell Archives series of box sets. The Bowl shows proved another triumph for the artist who’s now widely recognized for the innovations that stunned and even divided audiences all those decades…

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Formats:

Box Sets, CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming

Genres:

Classic Rock, Jazz, Pop

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Joni Mitchell

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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Formats:

Blu-Ray Audio, CD, Vinyl

Genres:

Classic Rock, Rock

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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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Classic Rock, Rock

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Bob Dylan, The Band

Holiday Gift Guide Review: The Beatles, “1964 U.S. Albums in Mono”

December 3, 2024 by Joe Marchese | 10 Comments

Any Time at All Did The Beatles save rock and roll? If John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr didn’t save the still-young form, they certainly gifted it with a reinvigorating, exhilarating jolt of musical euphoria the likes of which hadn’t been seen before – and hasn’t been duplicated since. The scene was early 1964. Buddy Holly was long gone, and the big hits had dried up – at the moment, at least – for Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. Elvis had served his time in the Army and…

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Formats:

Box Sets, Vinyl

Genres:

Classic Rock, Pop

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The Beatles

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

Review: Frank Zappa, “apostrophe (‘): 50th Anniversary Edition”

October 15, 2024 by Joe Marchese | No Comments

Strictly commercial? Not quite. Though Frank Zappa earned his first top ten record and first Gold record with apostrophe (‘) – the same LP that spun off his first single to make the Billboard Hot 100 – it would be difficult to argue that the singer-songwriter-bandleader had dramatically altered his art in an effort to hit the charts. Sure, the material was a bit more focused and the album rather tight at 32 minutes in length. Yeah, the cover artwork, with its instantly recognizable, tightly-cropped image of the long-haired artist, looked much…

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Blu-Ray Audio, Box Sets, CD

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Frank Zappa, George Duke

Quadio Spotlight: Bette Midler, “The Divine Miss M” and Bread, “Baby I’m a Want-You”

October 2, 2024 by Joe Marchese | No Comments

Way back in Ye Olden Days of 2011, The Second Disc advocated for the release of the original quadraphonic mix of Bette Midler’s 1973 debut, The Divine Miss M. Well, lo these many years later, Rhino has granted our wish, and it’s been released on Blu-ray as part of the label’s still-growing Quadio series of four-channel reissues. In Craig Anderson’s stellar remaster, it’s happily as good as we remember it! The 4.0 mix by Atlantic Records veteran Tom Dowd, a legendary producer in his own right, is immersive from the get-go. The…

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Classic Rock, Pop, Popular Standards/Vocal

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Blu-Ray Audio

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Bette Midler, Bread

Review: Faces, “Faces at the BBC: Complete BBC Concert and Session Recordings 1970-1973”

September 11, 2024 by Joe Marchese | 1 Comment

Between the summer of 1969 and the fall of 1975, a joyful noise emerged whenever Faces took the stage. Ronnie Lane (bass), Kenney Jones (drums), and Ian McLagan (keyboards) had emerged from the ashes of pop’s Small Faces, while Rod Stewart (vocals) and Ronnie Wood (guitar) were blues-rock veterans of the first iteration of The Jeff Beck Group in which Wood played bass. When they came together, they created a sound unlike either of those earlier groups: rough-and-tumble, raw, ramshackle, powerful, and fun. As one of their lyrics goes, “While I’m here,…

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Blu-Ray, Box Sets, CD

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Faces, Rod Stewart

Review: Rhino’s Sounds of the Summer Series – Randy Newman, Chicago, Daryl Hall and John Oates, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, Al Stewart, Utopia

August 2, 2024 by Joe Marchese | 5 Comments

Over the past month, Rhino has been releasing numerous titles as part of its Sounds of the Summer initiative, for a total of over two dozen vinyl releases hitting brick-and-mortar stores. These titles encompass various reissues as well as new entries in the label’s ongoing Now Playing series of compilations. As of now, these LPs are all exclusive to independent record stores and Barnes & Noble locations. We’ve given a spin to a few of these titles! How to distill the discography of one of America’s pre-eminent songwriters into the contents of…

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Formats:

Vinyl

Genres:

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

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Al Stewart, Chicago, Daryl Hall and John Oates, Frankie Valli, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Randy Newman, Todd Rundgren, Utopia

Review: Joni Mitchell, “The Asylum Albums 1972-1975” in Quadio

July 23, 2024 by Joe Marchese | 1 Comment

The Joni Mitchell renaissance continues. Following a triumphant surprise appearance in July 2022 at the Newport Folk Festival, the singer-songwriter returned to the stage for a full-length Joni Jam in June 2023 at Washington’s Gorge Amphitheatre; tickets were quickly snapped up by ardent fans who had waited roughly two decades to see Mitchell in concert once again. The evening was a transcendent one, a taste of which was supplied to the public when Mitchell and her band of friends performed “Both Sides Now” to devastating effect on the Grammy Awards broadcast of February…

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Formats:

Blu-Ray Audio, Box Sets

Genres:

Classic Rock, Jazz, Pop

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Joni Mitchell

Review: David Bowie, “Rock ‘N’ Roll Star”

June 18, 2024 by Joe Marchese | 5 Comments

“So Long, ’60s,” David Bowie proclaims on the first track of the new 5CD/1BD Parlophone box set Rock ‘N’ Roll Star. Strumming his 12-string at a San Francisco Holiday Inn, the future superstar was embracing the new decade and its immense possibilities: “I’ll kick you in the ass, you rascal, you!” Its verse melody and the barest wisp of the lyric (“keep your mouth shut!”) would make it to a new composition, “Moonage Daydream,” the third song on his fifth album. That LP was The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and…

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Blu-Ray Audio, Box Sets, CD

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David Bowie

What’s So Funny: Cherry Red, Lemon Collect Brinsley Schwarz Albums on “Thinking Back”

May 6, 2024 by Joe Marchese | 6 Comments

Brinsley Schwarz, the band, may be best-remembered today as the launching pad for singer-songwriter Nick Lowe and as a prime exemplar of the U.K. pub rock scene. The band’s studio albums, though, reveal diverse influences and a vibrant sound that more than holds up today. In recent months, Cherry Red’s Lemon Recordings imprint brought together the band’s seven albums plus more than 60 bonus tracks on the whopping 7-CD box set Thinking Back: The Anthology 1970-1975. Guitarist Brinsley Schwarz and bassist Nick Lowe had known one another since their school days in…

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Brinsley Schwarz, Ian Gomm, Nick Lowe

Back On My Feet Again: Rhino Adds Randy Newman, WAR, AWB, Gil Evans to Quadio Roster

January 19, 2024 by Joe Marchese | 7 Comments

Today, Rhino announced four new titles in its ever-growing line of Quadio Blu-rays: Randy Newman’s Good Old Boys (1973), WAR’s The World Is a Ghetto (1972), Gil Evans’ Svengali, and Average White Band’s AWB. The Second Disc had the opportunity to preview this quartet of Blu-ray reissues of classic albums in quadraphonic (four-channel) sound, and we’re happy to report that this is another feast for surround fans with all four titles making good – or better – use of surround. (Those equipped only for stereo sound can still enjoy the two-channel mixes…

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News, Reviews

Formats:

Blu-Ray Audio

Genres:

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

Tags:

Average White Band, Gil Evans, Randy Newman, War

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

Genres:

Classic Rock, Pop, Rock, Soundtracks

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Stevie Nicks

Holiday Gift Guide Review: Frank Zappa, “Over-Nite Sensation: 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition”

December 18, 2023 by Joe Marchese | 1 Comment

Had Frank Zappa gone commercial? Surely the artist who proudly embraced the slogan “No Commercial Potential” hadn’t sold out to the masses. Yet, with 1973’s Over-Nite Sensation, the composer-guitarist-bandleader found himself in a particularly purple patch that resulted in two consecutive Gold albums and four straight top 40 entries on the Billboard 200. The title of Over-Nite Sensation was, of course, sarcastic; the record was Zappa’s seventeenth overall and twelfth with The Mothers of Invention. But the new fans he picked up with the LP might have believed it was a rebirth. …

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

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Frank Zappa, George Duke

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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Formats:

Box Sets, Vinyl

Genres:

Classic Rock, Pop, Rock

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Billy Joel

Holiday Gift Guide Review: Bob Dylan, “The Complete Budokan 1978”

November 20, 2023 by Joe Marchese | 8 Comments

We’re kicking off our Holiday Gift Guide Review series with a look at Bob Dylan’s The Complete Budokan 1978. Long before Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan was reinventing himself. The artist who stepped onstage at Tokyo’s Budokan arena in 1978 only bore superficial resemblance to the firebrand who was proclaimed a “Judas!” by an irate fan over a decade earlier at Manchester Free Trade Hall. That audience member was famously angry over the then-folkie’s decision to plug in and go electric; what would he have thought of this “new”…

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Box Sets, CD, Vinyl

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Bob Dylan

Review: Joni Mitchell, “Archives Vol. 3: The Asylum Years (1972-1975)”

November 3, 2023 by Joe Marchese | 3 Comments

Late in 1970, Joni Mitchell took a moment while performing at London’s Royal Festival Hall to announce an early retirement from the stage. She relocated to British Columbia, built a modest stone cabin in the somewhat remote area, and let inspiration guide her rather than the machinations of a manager or record executive. While in this self-imposed creative exile, Mitchell began crafting the album that became 1972’s For the Roses. It would reach listeners more than a year after the June 1971 release of Blue, and would point towards a new direction…

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Formats:

James Taylor, Joni Mitchell

Genres:

Classic Rock, Jazz

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Review: Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, J. Geils Band, Jefferson Starship In Quad

October 17, 2023 by Joe Marchese | 3 Comments

Alice Cooper Billion Dollar Babies Quadio

With Rhino having just announced a second batch of Quadio releases, we’re taking a look at the first four titles in the relaunched series – all of which are now available on Blu-ray Disc with high-resolution presentations of the original 4.0 quadraphonic and 2.0 stereo mixes. Black Sabbath’s 1970 LP Paranoid was a landmark record in the transition from “hard rock” to “heavy metal.” Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward followed up their self-titled debut album of early 1970 with Paranoid, recording it in London in June with producer…

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Formats:

Blu-Ray Audio

Genres:

Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, J. Geils Band, Jefferson Starship

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Review: Van Morrison, “His Band and the Street Choir,” Jaco Pastorius’ “Word of Mouth” in Rhino Hi-Fi

August 31, 2023 by Joe Marchese | 6 Comments

Don’t want to discuss it/I think it’s time for a change… Van Morrison‘s 1967 debut album for Bert Berns’ Bang Records, Blowin’ Your Mind, came close to living up to its title with the lovably breezy “Brown-Eyed Girl” nestled alongside more challenging fare such as “T.B. Sheets,” and everything in between: pop, folk, Latin, rock-and-roll, blues. But the Northern Irish singer-songwriter truly came into his own with a move to Warner Bros. the following year. The mystical, hypnotically free-flowing Astral Weeks was an album unlike any other: a steadfastly non-commercial, intense song…

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Jaco Pastorius, Van Morrison

Formats:

Vinyl

Genres:

Classic Rock, Jazz

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Review: Little Feat, “Sailin’ Shoes” and “Dixie Chicken” Deluxe Editions

June 30, 2023 by Joe Marchese | 1 Comment

Little Feat was no ordinary rock-and-roll band. The seeds of the California group were planted when singer-songwriter Lowell George, then playing in Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, met keyboardist Bill Payne, who had unsuccessfully auditioned for the famously tough Zappa. The pair hit it off and teamed with former Mothers bassist Roy Estrada and drummer Richard Hayward, late of George’s old band The Factory, to form Little Feat. The story remains unclear as to exactly what prompted George to depart from the Mothers; one version has Zappa assuring him that he was…

Categories:

Digital Download, Digital Streaming

Formats:

CD, Digital Download, Digital Streaming, Vinyl

Genres:

Classic Rock, R&B/Soul

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Little Feat

Made For These Times: The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” Arrives in Dolby Atmos, Mixed by Giles Martin

June 8, 2023 by Joe Marchese | 19 Comments

When The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, the band’s eleventh studio album, first was released in May 1966, response in the U.S. was surprisingly tepid. Though both “Sloop John B” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” soared to the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100, Capitol Records was unsure how to promote the album which represented an artistic zenith, and the beginning of a new era, for The Beach Boys. It peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard 200 and was the group’s first album since 1963 to miss a Gold certification. (The…

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News, Reviews

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Classic Rock, Pop

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Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys

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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Formats:

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

Genres:

Classic Rock, Pop, Rock

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Bob Dylan

Review: Elvis Presley, “Elvis on Tour”

March 6, 2023 by Joe Marchese | 5 Comments

When Elvis on Tour hit the big screen in 1972, Elvis Presley was no longer the frequent cinema fixture of the 1960s, when he would crank out two or even three motion pictures a year. His last movie appearance was the 1970 documentary Elvis: That’s the Way It Is, chronicling the Elvis Summer Festival of 1970 at Las Vegas’ International Hotel. Elvis on Tour painted with an even larger canvas. Though it had originally been mooted as a new showcase of Presley’s Vegas performances, the concept soon expanded to cover his 15-city…

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