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: Bear Family Explores "The Bakersfield Sound" on New Box Set
Get Along Down to Town Bakersfield, California is a long way from Nashville - a little under 2,020 miles west, actually. But the distance isn't quite as great when one considers how much significant country music came out of the city in Kern County. Recent years have seen numerous reissues from legendary Bakersfield artists like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, as well as a fine exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame. But now Bear Family Records has delivered the ultimate tribute to the
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Jewel, "Joy: A Holiday Collection" [Reissue]
In 1999, singer-songwriter Jewel teamed with veteran producer-arranger Arif Mardin (Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield) for Joy: A Holiday Collection, her first Christmas album and third overall studio LP. Within a month of its release, it received a platinum certification, and it continues to be a perennial during the holiday season. Now, Craft Recordings has reissued the gentle album originally released on Atlantic Records for its vinyl premiere, as newly mastered by George Horn and Anne-Marie
Holiday Gift Guide Review: The Replacements, "Dead Man's Pop"
One of the year's most unexpected box sets - The Replacements' Dead Man's Pop, an alternative look at the band's 1989 album Don't Tell a Soul - has turned out to be one of its most exciting. The hell-raising Minneapolis rockers have proudly told the tale of stealing a clutch of tapes from their onetime home of Twin/Tone Records and chucking them into the Mississippi River back in 1987. But happily, the 'Mats and their associates were more careful about subsequent masters, and the next year,
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: Jeffrey Foskett, "Voices"
It's only appropriate that Jeffrey Foskett's new release on the BMG label is entitled Voices. For it's the beauty of the human voice that's the key ingredient here - specifically the artist's rich, supple, and multi-faceted vocal instrument which has lent support over the past four decades to The Beach Boys in their various incarnations. While Foskett has recorded numerous solo albums for the Japanese market, his own works are somewhat less known here in the United States. Happily, Voices
Thanks For the Dance: Leonard Cohen's Final Farewell Reviewed
"I'm ready, my lord..." so sang Leonard Cohen on You Want It Darker, his final album that hit shelves just weeks before his death. If You Want It Darker was his farewell, then Thanks For the Dance - released today from Columbia/Legacy - is a gift from beyond. The album was completed by son Adam Cohen, as the younger Cohen had been instructed. The pieces were in various stages of completion when Adam began to reappraise the work. Some were no more than vocal tracks with no accompaniment at
Review: Harry Nilsson, "Losst and Founnd"
Welcome back, old friend. Omnivore Recordings has delivered one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the year with the first posthumous release from the late Harry Nilsson (1941-1994). Losst and Founnd premieres 43 minutes of "new" Nilsson music, and as the man himself sings on the title track, "what a miracle" it is. While longtime fans and collectors will be familiar with a handful of these recordings from their inclusion on a posthumous publishing promo and ubiquitous bootlegs of the
Nothing Sweeter: Rocksteady Royalty Alton Ellis' "Greatest Hits" Gets Expanded Reissue from Cherry Red
Cherry Red Records' Doctor Bird imprint is committed to uncovering and reappraising the early years of reggae, ska, Calypso, rocksteady, and mento music, and few figures are as instrumental in the development of those genres as Alton Ellis. Starting with his first recordings in 1960, the gifted songwriter, singer, and performer quickly garnered a reputation as one of Jamaica's greatest musical exports. Moving on from the American R&B style that inflected his earliest recordings, Ellis
The Milk of the Tree: Cherry Red, Grapefruit Unearth Lost Album from Polly Niles
Listeners who picked up Ember Records' 1970 LP Future Star Explosion - New Faces of the '70s might have been beguiled by the third track on the second side. The lightly psychedelic "Sunshine in My Rainy Day Mind" introduced the captivatingly ethereal voice of singer Polly Niles. Yet those looking for more of Niles, a New York-born, conservatory-trained performer, would have been disappointed. "Sunshine" remained her only released track for decades, until labels in the CD era began mining the
Shadows and Reflexions: High Moon Records Collects Rarities from Curt Boettcher and Friends
High Moon Records' new collection from Curt Boettcher and Friends, Looking for the Sun, takes its title from a 1968 Boettcher production for singer-songwriter Gordon Alexander. Given Boettcher's participation, one might expect the song to be a dreamy SoCal pop fantasia with richly layered harmonies. But instead it's a rather sparse, dark rumination with an acid coffeehouse feel. Alexander, in the song at least, doesn't find the sun, and arguably, neither did Curt Boettcher in his lifetime. But
Red's Favourites: John Renbourn's Formative Albums Collected on "Unpentangled" Box Set
Few figures were as instrumental to the British folk music revival as John Renbourn, whose guitar style incorporated influences from Celtic, jazz, pop, R&B, and beyond. As one-fifth of Pentangle, he and his bandmates expanded the possibilities of a folk-infused combo with odd time signatures, lengthy instrumental passages, and a repertoire that spanned decades, genres, and forms. But even before forming Pentangle, Renbourn had stunned audiences and listeners with his unique approach to the
Keep the Customer Satisfied: Ace Celebrates Paul Simon, Teddy Randazzo, Van McCoy On New Collections
Today, we're taking a look at three recent, stellar additions to Ace Records' long-running Songwriter Series! Teddy Randazzo (1935-2003) might have not attained the same "household name" status as some of his peers, but the prodigiously gifted composer-arranger-producer-artist nonetheless left behind a remarkable body of work in a career spanning over five decades. Ace's Yesterday Has Gone: The Songs of Teddy Randazzo is the first-ever anthology of his output, concentrating on the mid-1960s -
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
Surprise Surprise: Cilla Black's "Especially for You" Comes to CD with "Classics and Collectibles"
Tomorrow, November 1, Cherry Red's Strike Force Entertainment imprint will release the next title in its series of definitive reissues from Cilla Black's considerable catalogue. The 2-CD set Especially for You Revisited/Classics and Collectibles brings together a newly remixed version of Cilla's 1980 album Especially for You with a second disc of rare and previously unreleased tracks. Especially for You marked a turning point in Black's career as it was her first recording project after
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: Cher, "3614 Jackson Highway" [Run Out Groove Edition]
Cher's album 3614 Jackson Highway arrived midway through 1969 as the singer and her partner Sonny Bono worked furiously to re-establish themselves in a changing musical landscape and escape from mounting debt. Their first child had been born in March, a Sonny and Cher single arrived in May and was quickly followed by a Cher solo 45, and her film Chastity hit theatres in June. Sonny and Cher hadn't had a major hit single since 1967's "The Beat Goes On" and the solo Cher hadn't had a chart entry
Let the Wind Carry Me: Joni Mitchell's Stunning Volume of Handwritten Lyrics and Drawings Reviewed
Joni Mitchell doesn't look back. That's what fans have come to understand about the fearless songwriter, singer, poet, and visual artist. She's famously rejected reissue campaigns, career-spanning box sets, cash-in live albums, and hits collections. Over the years, though, she's begun to come around. She approved the DVD/Blu-ray of her 1970 appearance at the Isle of Wight and the LP reissue of the box set Love Has Many Faces, helped organize the Joni 75 tribute concerts, and recently gave the OK
Review: Lee Hazlewood, "400 Miles from L.A.: 1955-56"
400 Miles from L.A.: Phoenix, Arizona was the birthplace of Lee Hazlewood's professional career. The future writer of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" was well-acquainted with the Greyhound bus between Phoenix and Los Angeles, making frequent trips in the hopes of selling his songs. Though he was a successful DJ in Phoenix, Hazlewood wanted more, and songwriting seemed to be his means of attaining it. Lee wrote his first songs, it's believed, in 1953; the following year, his first songs
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: Frank Sinatra, "My Way: 50th Anniversary Edition" and "Sings Alan and Marilyn Bergman"
The album was entitled My Way for the song by Paul Anka, Claude Francois, Gilles Thibault, and Jacques Revaux, but truth to tell, the moniker would have been fitting even without that famous anthem. For the ten songs on Frank Sinatra's 1969 Reprise LP were indisputably sung as only one man could: swing - his way, pop - his way, rhythm and blues - his way. Capitol Records, Frank Sinatra Enterprises, and UMe have reissued My Way in a 50th anniversary expanded edition celebrating both the song and
Heaven Is: Belinda Carlisle's "Runaway Horses" Turns 30, Gets Deluxe Edition; "Gold" Anthology Also Released
Thirty years ago, Belinda Carlisle released her third LP. Runaway Horses came on the heels of two successful albums: her 1986 IRS Records debut, Belinda (featuring the hit "Mad About You"), and 1987's Heaven on Earth (boasting the smash "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" as well as "I Get Weak" and "Circle in the Sand"). Runaway Horses completed the hat trick for the Go-Go-gone-solo when it reached the top five in the United Kingdom. Now, the U.K.'s Demon Music Group has revisited the album in a
Earwig Music Unearths Trove of Chicago Blues and Soul on "Cadillac Baby's Bea & Baby Records: The Definitive Collection"
Chicago in the '50s was overflowing with skilled bluesmen, vocal groups, gospel singers, not to mention the mom-and-pop labels eager to make a hit off the artists. There are the now-famous labels - Chess, Delmark, and Vee-Jay among them. But the Windy City was so teeming with talent (and entrepreneurial hucksters trying to launch their own careers) that small, independent labels were plentiful. Earwig Music Company celebrates one such label in its ambitious new box set, Cadillac Baby's Bea
Song of Time: Two Folk Classics from Art and Paul Are Reissued for First Time
With a recent pair of reissues, Sony Music/Legacy Recordings has transported listeners to Greenwich Village at the dawn of the 1960s, when guitar-wielding troubadours took the stages at venues like Café Wha? to share their own "alternative" music: folk. While Connie Francis, Brian Hyland, Elvis Presley, and even Percy Faith were ascending to the top of the Pop chart, folksingers were spinning their own musical yarns that didn't involve teenage romance or itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polkadot
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