Long before the triumvirate of Kenneth Gamble, Leon Huff and Thom Bell immortalized "The Sound of Philadelphia" as silky, smooth soul, Cameo-Parkway Records supplied the soundtrack to the City of Brotherly Love. The label may be best known for dances like the 81, the Twist, the Hully Gully, the Wah-Watusi and the Mashed Potato, or for teenage icons like Bobby Rydell. But Cameo-Parkway's roster was in fact much more diverse, from garage rockers ? and the Mysterians to doo-wop legend Johnny
Review: David Bowie - "David Bowie" Deluxe Edition
David Bowie circa 1966 was an artist in search of an identity. He had flirted with theatre, the mod movement, and even mime. When signed by Decca's Deram arm, he had already released six unsuccessful singles on three different labels and fronted a number of quickly-vanishing bands. The Decca contract came shortly after his recordings for Pye, which had been shepherded by British hitmaker Tony Hatch of "Downtown" and "Call Me" fame. The Deram album, simply titled David Bowie, was all but
You've Still Got A Friend: "The Essential Carole King"
The Second Disc is pleased to introduce our first contributor, Joe Marchese. Joe is a NY/NJ-based writer, theatre director and music enthusiast, and is thrilled to be on board. For many of her fans, Carole King's career begins and ends with Tapestry. It's not hard to see why; the seminal 1971 album spent fifteen weeks perched at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart, remained on the chart for six years, spawned two chart-topping pop singles, and influenced an entire generation of introspective
The Not-So-Finer Things
The announcement of Revelutions: The Very Best of Steve Winwood - a new compilation from Island available as either a single-disc compilation or a four-disc box set - should be exciting. Winwood is a hell of a musician whose illustrious career has seen him work with Blind Faith, Traffic and The Spencer Davis Group, not to mention his own successful solo work. But this set is boring, not just for its lack of vault content but because it's essentially been released before. The Finer Things was a
In Case You Missed It: Monsieur Hathaway
A little bit of old news for you, but a must-know if you didn't already: the folks at Rhino have put together Someday We'll All Be Free, a four-disc overview of soul singer Donny Hathaway's brief but powerful career. The set includes all four studio albums, a heap of live tracks, and seven previously unreleased recordings. Here's the catch, though: it seems that it's only available - as a 5,000-copy limited edition, at that - in France. While I had little to no idea of Hathaway's apparently
Reissue Theory: Tracy Chapman, "Tracy Chapman"
We music fans live for that moment when a song comes from nowhere - through a radio, perhaps, or more likely through your computer speakers nowadays - grabs us and doesn't let go. That was undoubtedly the case with "Fast Car," the first single by singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman. The song - for the ten or so of you who might have missed it over the better part of 20 years - is an achingly bittersweet, first-person ballad about a woman planning to escape her impoverished, broken family only to
Back Tracks: Squeeze
If The Second Disc has any European readers, allow me to express my intense jealousy that Squeeze, one of the best British pop bands I can name, is embarking on a tour in your neck of the woods later in the year. It pleases me that Squeeze is not an unknown entity in the United States (the first Squeeze concert I partook in, at Radio CityMusic Hall in 2008, looked pretty sold out), but ask any casual or younger music fan and you'll likely get blank stares. This may change if you sing a few bars
Reissue Theory x4: Chaka Khan (and Rufus Too)
The Second Disc is a day late (but no less enthusiastic) in wishing Chaka Khan, The Queen of Funk Soul, a happy birthday. Chaka has had, to say the least, an illustrious career, first as a member of Rufus then as a wildly successful solo artist in the late '70s and '80s. What is the secret to Khan's ongoing popularity? Chalk it up to three things. First, there's that powerhouse voice - at once sensuous and celebratory. There's also the great sounds she surrounds her vocals with, whether it's
Reissue Theory: Various Artists - "Soup for One: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"
There may not be enough positive words to write about Nile Rodgers. The sole surviving member of The CHIC Organization (which included bassist Bernard Edwards and drummer Tony Thompson), Rodgers helped shape the sound of late '70s and early '80s pop and R&B, either as a performer with CHIC, a producer - often alongside Edwards - for Diana Ross, Sister Sledge, Madonna and others or even as a sampled artist (see The Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" and "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash
Every Day Should Be Record Store Day
And perhaps it is, depending on how often you buy from one. The fourth annual Record Store Day is happening in less than a month (April 17) but already a lot of releases have been announced for the occasion. Best of all, there are some neat releases for catalogue fans out there, too. You can have a look at the full list here, but here are some of the neatest catalogue offerings coming on Record Store Day. Devo, Duty Now for the Future (1979) (Warner Bros.) As previously mentioned, Devo's
Reissue Theory: Howard Jones, "Dream Into Action"
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=IT&hl=it&v=ZZEGHnAxEpo] Predicting the future is a tough game. While the above video - a possibly-not-entirely-live performance by Howard Jones, Herbie Hancock, Thomas Dolby and Stevie Wonder at the 1985 Grammys - probably looked like the future of music some 25 years ago, it seems a little, shall we say, overdone in hindsight. But nobody will ever stop predicting the future - certainly not here at The Second Disc, where (ideally) every day
Back Tracks: U2
Is it inherently lazy to do a U2 post on a music blog for St. Patrick's Day? Whether it is or not, it's done for two reasons. First, since The Second Disc is all about reissues, it's worth tipping a hat to Universal's ongoing series of U2 reissues. They have been some of the best on the market in recent years. The packaging is nice, the content is comprehensive and groundbreaking (in other words, the fan gets all those hard-to-find tracks he or she is looking for plus a score of vault material)
Reissue Theory: - Public Enemy, "Fear of a Black Planet"
Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Fear of a Black Planet, the third album by hip-hop legends Public Enemy. Billboard did a great write-up about the album's impact after two decades, which dovetails rather interestingly into a highly-recommended recent documentary I had the pleasure to see last week. The film, Copyright Criminals, is a thought-provoking look into the rise of sampling in music and the ongoing legal challenges faced by samplers. Public Enemy frontman Chuck D, as well as
Back Tracks: ABBA
Continuing the Rock and Rall Hall of Fame coverage leading up to Monday night's induction, here is another catalogue retrospective for one of the artist inductees. In his latest book, 2009's Eating the Dinosaur, Chuck Klosterman includes an essay praising ABBA for their intriguing critical status (contending that, like AC/DC, ABBA's work never operated near relevance or irrelevance, thereby guaranteeing that it will have a more lasting impact) as well as their somewhat unusual commercial
Back Tracks: The Stooges
We continue our ongoing Rock and Roll Hall of Fame pre-game coverage by looking back at another batch of reissue offerings from one of the inducted artists. The Stooges were one of those bands that were in the right place at the wrong time. Their music was raucous and energetic, their antics were nothing short of ostentatious. But when they rolled onto the scene in 1969, they really had no place in the rock music landscape behaving the way they did. Sure, other big rock bands of the day were
Channel One
There's a lot of older music fans out there who would give anything to "bring things back" - whatever that might mean to them. Bring it back to the days of radio hits, record stores and so on. Optimistic though we may be, we're pretty much resigned to the fact that most things aren't going to revert back to the way they were. One notable exception exists in the catalogue world, though: it's a simple four-letter word that is quite literally changing the way we listen to our older music. It's
Reissue Theory: Various Artists, "Miami Vice"
Two days of nice weather in a row - especially after the kind of winter the northeast U.S. has had - will make you think of warmer climates really quickly. Music always seems to go well with higher temperatures (i.e.: barbecues, school dances, anything The Beach Boys sang about) - and one of the best pop cultural examples of this idea would be Miami Vice. The genesis behind the 1980s police show is the stuff of legend; NBC exec Brandon Tartikoff allegedly penned a memo that simply said "MTV
Back Tracks: James Horner
As this post is being written, the Oscars have wrapped up. Exciting, right? Of course not. The Oscars are perhaps as ridiculous as the Grammys, and usually don't have a heck of a lot to offer fans of any music in general. Perhaps this year was a bit of an exception - it was very exciting to see Michael Giacchino score his first Oscar for the excellent score to Up - but for someone raised on ultra-thematic scores such as John Williams' work for Star Wars, Jaws and others, there's usually not much
Rarities Editions: Half of a Good Idea?
A few weeks before I started this blog, I kept seeing pre-order links for a bunch of catalogue titles from Universal Music Enterprises under the banner of "Rarities Edition." By the time the first batch of them came out in January, I had found out that the sets were essentially the bonus discs from some of UMe's unmistakable Deluxe Edition titles, priced to entice those collectors who wanted those bonus cuts on disc without purchasing (or re-purchasing) a more expensive set. Now at first blush,
Release Round-Up: From Chicago to the White House
Rhino Handmade has announced its latest title, the first-ever true quadraphonic release of The Chicago Transit Authority, the 1969 debut LP by Chicago. Featuring hits like "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" and "Questions 67 and 68," this DVD release includes the entire album presented in four discrete channels of sound. Order it here and have a go at a demo of "quadio" over here. A couple of soundtrack tidbits coming up. First up, new releases from La La Land Records have been
There They Go Again
Thanks to the ICE boards (where I'd read this a bit ago but foolishly forgot to post here) for pointing out the upcoming release of Callin' All, an enormous 4-disc box set from indie-pop favorites The La's. Despite recording only one LP and a handful of singles in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the band has earned cult immortality thanks to the irresistible "There She Goes." Their other material is pretty neat too, and even though they've had their share of reissues and repackagings over the
The Paradox
If you're an avid follower of the music business at large, you know the common narrative that defines the industry: once, record labels signed great talents and earned lots of money and influence off the back of that art. Gradually, that art became secondary to business and excess, and as labels became absorbed into bigger corporations and followed trends instead of setting them, music fans got increasingly put off by the product. By the time rapid technological advances changed the way we
News Roundup: However Far Away, Banshees Banished and Intrada Releases
A pair of sour notes from our friends over at Slicing Up Eyeballs. First, a source from Universal Music Group tells Cure fan site Chain of Flowers that the planned triple-disc reissue of Disintegration has been delayed a third time. The set - which features the original LP, a disc of demos and outtakes and an expanded version of the live album Entreat - was originally slated for a Feb. 16 release before being pushed back to April 6. In the U.S., where distribution is being dealt with by Rhino
Back Tracks: Tears for Fears
Not many people dig music from the 1980s. To a degree, I understand why. Sandwiched between the monstrous artistry of album-oriented rock bands of the '70s and the mainstream-busting advances of grunge and rap in the '90s, most of the music of the '80s was characterized by an emphasis on image (i.e.: MTV) and artifice (why hire a drummer when you can buy a Linn LM-1?). But a good song - whether it's a hit or not - will transcend its labels and packaging and hopefully turn into something you'll
Release Round-Up: In Case You Missed Them
Here are a couple of catalogue release tidbits, one that I'm certain is fairly new and a few stragglers I've neglected to mention thus far: Rhino has started taking pre-orders for The Prague Sessions, a new Peter, Paul and Mary compilation. The set features previously unreleased live versions of the folk group's best-known songs, backed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. Should be an interesting new way to hear these songs. On March 23, Eagle Records is releasing Live at Knebworth, a