When The Collage signed with Mercury Records' Smash division in 1968 (also the home of The Left Banke), the group was on the verge of a breakthrough. Consisting of Jerry Careaga, Ron Joelson, Donna Byrd and Jodie Cline, the two-man, two-woman Collage was in the mold of The Mamas and the Papas, but with two […]
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If Phil Spector didn’t exist, someone would have had to invent him. Spector scored his first chart-topper as writer, artist and arranger in 1958 with “To Know Him is to Love Him” performed his by group, the Teddy Bears. But a 1960 apprenticeship with famed songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller convinced the ambitious young […]
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In another time, in another place, I would not be writing this review of Legacy's new Phil Spector compilation with a slight pang of melancholy. And you wouldn't be reading it with the possible tug at the heartsrings you might face now. Phil Spector was one of the most significant pop producers of the 20th […]
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As if music fans needed another reminder that, every now and then, the pop culture ship sometimes docks in unusual waters, Sony is prepping a compilation of hits for American Idol's tenth anniversary. I mean, whaaaaaat? Alright, so the show's being a bit premature in celebrating its legacy; Idol premiered on FOX in the summer […]
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If you thought you already had the best of Morrissey on CD - even if you probably do - Moz is going to prove you wrong with The Very Best of Morrissey, a new CD/DVD compilation due in April. If our count is correct, this is Morrissey's seventh or eighth compilation, but it's good to see […]
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Intrada knows how to make film score fans hang onto every release: their latest batch includes a long-unreleased, underrated suspense score and the long-awaited deluxe reissue of a classic early '90s action score. Released in 1993, Cliffhanger, starring Sylvester Stallone as a mountaineer unwillingly forced into a heist led by John Lithgow was a critical […]
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Rock music has a definite genre problem. When Rhino Handmade announced the reissue of Ride's Nowhere late last year, some absent-minded reading on Wikipedia yielded a primer on the shoegaze genre. "Shoegaze" is one of those things you might encounter if you were a voracious reader of music reviews in the early '90s, but it […]
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Universal Music Group has an impressive array of jazz titles in their library. Defining labels of the genre like Verve and Mercury are jewels in UMe's crown, while the catalogues of Concord and Fantasy are distributed domestically by Universal as well. One of the more arguably underrated vintage labels in Universal's family, though, is Impulse! […]
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Here's one for Watson: "This actor, comedian, voice artist, singer, songwriter and advertising guru coined the name 'Grammy' for the annual awards bestowed by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS)." The correct answer? "Who is Stan Freberg?" To list Freberg's credits in the fields of cinema, radio, television, animation and music would […]
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