Harry Belafonte has worn many hats in his 84 years: recording artist, film star, civil rights crusader, tireless humanitarian. Though he gracefully and modestly bowed out of performing some years back with little fanfare, Belafonte has returned to the spotlight this month to narrate a documentary on his life and author an autobiography. Though the […]
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By the time 1993 rolled around, devotees of the musical wizardry of Todd Rundgren only knew to expect the unexpected. Warner Bros. Records had rescued 1985’s A Cappella after the album had been rejected by Rundgren’s longtime home, Bearsville. The maverick artist followed that with two efforts recorded expressly for the label, Nearly Human (1989) […]
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Opening the four-panel digipak that houses Ben Folds' The Best Imitation of Myself: A Retrospective (Epic/Legacy 88697 92683-2), listeners are treated to an unsettling and hilarious sight: the bespectacled, slightly quizzical face of the singer/songwriter, superimposed onto bodies he clearly has no place being attached to. Those off-kilter images are exactly the kind of strange silliness […]
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Well, everybody didn’t quite cut loose this weekend. Despite Paramount Pictures’ lavish promotional campaign for the film, its remake of 1984’s Footloose couldn’t topple Hugh Jackman’s Rocky-meets-The-Transformers epic Real Steel for the top spot at the box office. Still, the lukewarm reception accorded Craig Brewer’s picture likely won’t diminish the reputation or popularity of Herbert […]
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Rejoice, Supremes fans! Hip-o Select today announced the release of the next expanded album package by Motown's most famous girl group, a double-disc edition of More Hits by The Supremes with tons of exciting bonus content. By 1965, the years of the "no-hit" Supremes at Motown Records were history. The previous year had seen three consecutive […]
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Our enjoyment of music takes many shapes and sizes, from the most basic of digital files to the vast quantities of reissues and box sets we all enjoy around The Second Disc. Part of the nervous excitement in being a collector is really never knowing what your latest musical obsession will look or sound like […]
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Eddie, are you kidding? Is the Zappa Family Trust finally liberating Frank Zappa’s October 11, 1971 concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall from the vaults? What’s that? Four discs, you say? Remastered in mono? Yes, it’s all true. When Frank Zappa and his Mothers of Invention took the stage at Carnegie Hall forty years ago, […]
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Rush may be Canadian, but the classic rock trio has the perfect soundtrack for your Thanksgiving! On November 21, Universal Music Enterprises will follow their acclaimed reissue earlier this year of 1981’s Moving Pictures with the release of three separate six-disc box sets. Collecting the entire Rush output between 1974 and 1989, including both live […]
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How terribly strange to be seventy. Today, October 13, Paul Simon reaches that milestone, over forty-three years after he first mused what it would be like to be sitting on that park bench with his friend, like bookends. Yet in that time, Simon’s music has remained resonant and timely, a point driven home when the […]
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It's always a cause for celebration when a label gets some long-lost piece of music out to the public for consumption. And Intrada's special mid-week batch of archival film scores is no different, offering two premiere horror scores, one of which was presumed lost for years. First up is the score to Fright Night, the […]
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