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
Somewhere Along the Line: Japanese Expansion of Billy Joel's 'Piano Man' Includes Quad Mix, New-to-CD Tracks
Japan can't get enough of the Piano Man! Shortly after Sony Music's Japanese division released a newly-compiled collection of live odds and ends by Billy Joel, the label will next put out a deluxe edition of Joel's sophomore album (and first in a long line of albums for Columbia Records), 1973's Piano Man. Billed as a 50th anniversary edition (a few months late) and ostensibly meant to tie into his Japanese tour dates later this month, the 2CD/1DVD set features a few extra features for die-hard
Release Round-Up: Week of January 19
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Bert Kaempfert, The Bert Kaempfert Decca Collection (Decca) (Amazon U.S. (not yet available) / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) The Bert Kaempfert Decca Collection collects 24 of the German composer-bandleader's American LPs originally released in the 1960s and 1970s, including the worldwide CD debut of Pete Fountain Plays Bert
The Year In Review: The 2023 Gold Bonus Disc Awards, From A to Z - Part Two
Happy 2024! Welcome, friends, to Part Two of The Second Disc's 14th Annual Gold Bonus Disc Awards! As we yet again look to a new year with optimism and a hopeful spirit, we recognize the many roles music has played in our lives. With that spirit in mind, The Second Disc wishes to recognize 2023's cream of the catalogue music crop - those exemplary reissues and box sets, big and small, that proved to be truly outstanding for music lovers worldwide. After much deliberation, we're excited
The Year In Review: The 2023 Gold Bonus Disc Awards, From A to Z - Part One
Happy 2024! Welcome, friends, to The Second Disc's 14th Annual Gold Bonus Disc Awards! As we yet again look to a new year with optimism and a hopeful spirit, we recognize the many roles music has played in our lives. With that spirit in mind, The Second Disc wishes to recognize 2023's cream of the catalogue music crop - those exemplary reissues and box sets, big and small, that proved to be truly outstanding for music lovers worldwide. After much deliberation, we're excited to unveil our
Look Hear: 10cc Box Set Compiles Two Decades of Albums and B-Sides
10cc were one of the most formidable pop/rock bands to come out of England in the 1970s. A forthcoming box set from Edsel/Demon Music Group will put their output under a microscope. 20 Years: 1972-1982, due out January 26, offers 14 discs of the beloved group: all 11 studio albums issued on the UK, Mercury and Polydor labels between 1973 and 1992, the rare 1977 double live album Live and Let Live, and two collections of 33 additional B-sides, single versions and alternate mixes released
Release Round-Up: Week of January 12
Happy New Year, and welcome to our first Release Round-Up of 2024, featuring a selection of the new titles in stores today! As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Lou Reed, Hudson River Wind Meditations (Light in the Attic) CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Lou Reed's twentieth solo album (and penultimate studio record) returns from Light in the Attic in CD and LP editions. Featuring meditative music
A Second Disc Interview: Mixing It Up with John Luongo
John Luongo is a good liar. Well, maybe he's good at being tongue-in-cheek. "I'm bashful," he says at the start of our interview back in October. "You're gonna have to really drag these things outta me, 'cause I'm a little shy!" What follows is about 100 minutes of captivating stories and thoughtful, enthusiastic lessons from one of the most notable names in dance music. The Boston-born DJ and mix engineer made a name for himself transforming dozens of soul and pop tracks for disco 12"
Death Warmed Up: Esoteric Collects Proto-Metal Band High Tide's "Complete Liberty Recordings"
Cherry Red's Esoteric Recordings imprint has recently celebrated the recordings of prog-rock band High Tide on a lavish new 3-CD box set. The Complete Liberty Recordings brings together the short-lived group's two albums and adds a bonus disc of demos and studio sessions recorded in 1969-1970. As with so many bands of the era, High Tide refused to be boxed into one specific genre, melding a hard rock sound with psychedelic, progressive, folk, and classical flourishes. Tony Hill
Freak Out in a Moonage Daydream: Early Version of Bowie's 'Ziggy Stardust' Announced for Record Store Day
On what would have been the 77th birthday of the incomparable David Bowie, his estate has announced a new catalogue title due out for Record Store Day, featuring an early track list for 1972's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars. Waiting in the Sky (Before the Starman Came to Earth) takes its title from "Starman," the U.K. Top 10 hit that helped propel Bowie from art-folk wonder to glam icon for a new decade. But when this line-up for the album was assembled onto a
Dear Little Buttercup: Rhino's "Start Your Ear Off Right" Features America, The Doors, Grateful Dead, "Three Amigos," More
Rhino is once again inaugurating the new year with a Start Your Ear Off Right campaign, launching this Friday in brick-and-mortar independent record stores (and if the past is any indication, at Barnes and Noble locations across the United States). The vinyl-only slate, which is spread out over the next four release weeks, concentrates on classic rockers (The Doors, Foghat, America, Grateful Dead, Velvet Underground, Black Sabbath, Stevie Nicks, Yes) with a healthy dose of R&B legends (Ray
We Wish You (Another) Merry Discmas!
The stockings are hung, the presents are wrapped, and the time is now to wish all of our readers at The Second Disc a wonderful holiday season before we enter a brief winter hibernation until the new year! 2023 was our 13th year as (we hope!) one of the more fun destinations for music reissues, box sets and catalogue releases. The business has certainly changed a lot in that time - maybe too much vinyl, maybe not enough CDs? - but labels big and small keep finding new, old and interesting
Short Takes: McCartney's "III"-Peat, The Rolling Stones' "Live" Racket
Paul McCartney's 2020 "lockdown" - make that "rockdown" - album, McCartney III, was seemingly ubiquitous upon its release with various-color editions on CD, LP, and cassette; Discogs currently shows 57 unique versions of the album. (That's not counting the remix album McCartney III-Imagined or the 2022 box set which bundled III with its two predecessors in the artist's self-titled trilogy.) Now, for its third anniversary, Macca is offering another release with yet more variants. McCartney
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Stevie Nicks, 'Complete Studio Albums and Rarities'
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
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Frank Zappa, "Over-Nite Sensation: 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition"
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
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Billy Joel, "The Vinyl Collection Vol. 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
Heart Food: Intervention Records Revisits, Re-Presses Long Out-of-Print Judee Sill Albums
Q: Who was the first artist to release an LP on David Geffen's Asylum label? A: It wasn't Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, or Eagles - though all three all released albums in the label's first year of 1972. It was Judee Sill. Who is Judee Sill? In her all too short lifetime, the artist released just two albums, both of which revealed an unusual yet mesmerizing voice as a singer and a songwriter. She's recently been celebrated as the subject of the 2022 documentary Lost Angel: The Genius
Release Round-Up: Week of December 8
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles in stores today! As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Dan Hartman, It Hurts to Be in Love (Iconoclassic) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Today, Dan Hartman would have turned 73. Sadly, the singer-songwriter-producer-musician-engineer's life was cut short by an AIDS-related brain tumor on March 22, 1994. He was just 43. The immense musical legacy of the "I Can Dream
Smell of Incense: Cherry Red's Grapefruit Label Collects The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band's Reprise Recordings
Cherry Red's Grapefruit Records has kept a busy schedule throughout 2023 with a number of artist anthologies and various-artists compilations. We'll be looking at a few of those sets, beginning with today's spotlight on The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band released three albums in 1967 and 1968 on the Reprise Records label, blending straightforward late-'60s L.A. rock with dark, often surreal lyrics and psychedelic soundscapes. All of these
I'll Meet You Anytime You Want: Billy Joel's "Live Through the Years" Comes to CD
On January 24, 2024, Billy Joel will take the stage at the Tokyo Dome for his first concert in Japan since 2008. To commemorate the occasion, Sony Japan is revisiting the 2019 digital release Live Through the Years on December 20 in the Blu-Spec CD2 format (playable on all CD players). It's being expanded from 20 tracks to a whopping 32. Of those, 13 are worldwide CD premieres, and six are new to Japanese CD; all have been freshly remastered for this debut physical release. In essence, this is
Let Me Roll It: Paul McCartney's 'Band on the Run' to Be Reissued with New "Underdubbed" Mixes
In 2010 - not even a year after this site was founded! - Paul McCartney announced the arrival of the Paul McCartney Archive Collection, a catalogue project involving his post-Beatles works (as a solo artist and Wings) in partnership with Hear Music/Concord. A baker's dozen of his works, from solo debut McCartney (1970) to the acclaimed Flaming Pie (1997), were given the box set treatment, occasionally baffling fans with omissions, from non-LP B-sides only being digitally available on the Flowers
The Weekend Stream: December 2, 2023
Welcome to another edition of The Weekend Stream, The Second Disc's review of notable catalogue titles making digital debuts. This week's latest includes anniversary projects from Alicia Keys, live vault material from Bruce Springsteen, an oddity from The Alan Parsons Project and possibly the only article where Taylor Swift shares space with Minor Threat! Alicia Keys, The Diary of Alicia Keys 20 (RCA/Legacy) (iTunes / Amazon) Legacy Recordings celebrates two decades of R&B
Release Round-Up: Week of December 1
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles in stores today! As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. The Sound of Music: Super Deluxe Edition (Craft Recordings) 4CD/Blu-ray: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 3LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Craft Store (picnic meadow green) This remarkable new 4CD/1BD box set invites listeners to hear The Sound of
Freedom Is More Than a Word: Cherry Red, Grapefruit Collect Complete Recordings of Procol Harum Offshoot Band
Freedom...at last! Grapefruit has recently collected the five albums recorded by Procol Harum offshoot Freedom in one handsome box set. Born Again: The Complete Recordings has the band's album discography plus a handful of bonus tracks for easy, one-stop-shopping. Guitarist Ray Royer and drummer Bobby Harrison were enlisted by Gary Brooker and Keith Reid to join them in the initial lineup of Procol Harum. Royer played on their landmark debut single "A Whiter Shade of Pale," but Harrison was
THE SECOND DISC'S 2023 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE IS HERE!
Cyber Monday is upon us today, which means one thing at Second Disc HQ: it's time to launch our annual Holiday Gift Guide, featuring (more than) a few of our favorite things for the music enthusiast in your life. Sure, we might not have included raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but we've filled the guide with around 50 essential selections: sprawling box sets and deluxe vinyl editions, as well as releases on CD from favorite artists that just might make great stocking stuffers. So
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