Just as we noted the box sets and other catalogue sets that were nominated for Grammys this year, we would also like to tip the hat to the recordings that were put into the Grammy Hall of Fame, as announced Monday. Thirty recordings, including nine LPs, have been added to a group that now includes 881 classic pieces of music. The oldest recordings on the list are two singles, "Dark Was the Night - Cold Was the Ground" by Blind Willie Johnson and "My Mammy" by Al Jolson (both released in 1927);
Back Tracks: John Lennon
Whether you thought he was the smartest of The Beatles, the best writer, the most politically astute, the one with the most interesting solo career - or if you disagree with any of those statements - I daresay I cannot allow you to disagree with this one: it is not fair that John Lennon is not still alive today. Regardless of your take on his input into the Fab Four (or their eventual demise), Lennon was very much an intelligent, caring, smart musician, who spent much of his career using those
Re-eh-sue Theory
Welcome to another installment of Reissue Theory, where we reflect on well-known albums of the past and the reissues they could someday see. Today's focus is on two hosers from the Great White North and the strangely funny musical legacy they left behind. The first flurries of the new winter stuck to the lawn outside The Second Disc HQ yesterday. Inevitably, we're going to need something to warm us up into the holiday season and the bitterest cold months of 2011. Sweaters? Check. Tuques? Check.
Release Round-Up: Week of December 7
ABBA, ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits - Special Edition / The Vinyl Collection (Polydor/UMe) The most popular ABBA compilation ever gets expanded with a DVD of music videos, including a previously unreleased animated clip. Also, a deluxe box of the band's eight LPs on vinyl alongside a ten-track record of single and non-LP tracks will be released the same day. (Official site) Joy Division, +- (Rhino U.K.) A box of ten partially fictional singles on vinyl to honor deceased frontman Ian Curtis, 30
Release Round-Up: Week of November 30
Dinah Washington, The Fabulous Miss D! The Keynote, Decca and Mercury Singles 1943-1953 (Verve/Hip-o Select) The early, pre-LP singles of Dinah's pre-Mercury career, on four discs in Verve Select style. (Hip-o Select) The White Stripes, The White Stripes / De Stijl / White Blood Cells (Third Man/Warner Bros.) Everyone's favorite garage-blues band puts their first three albums back in print on 180-gram vinyl. (Amazon) Tim McGraw, Number One Hits (Curb) A straightforward package of McGraw's
Release Round-Up: Week of November 23
With most retailers putting out their new releases today to get a jump on the inevitable holiday weekend blitz, here's the big catalogue releases for the week a day early! Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson's Vision (Epic/Legacy) A three-DVD set that includes just about any MJ video you could be searching for. Of course, the one unreleased clip just officially hit the Internet, making you wonder what the fuss is all about. Oh wait, it's Michael Jackson. (Official site) Jay-Z, The Hits
Release Round-Up: Week of November 16
Bruce Springsteen, The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story (Columbia/Legacy) Bruuuuuuuuce celebrates one of his most acclaimed albums in a big way. Darkness will be augmented with two discs' worth of outtakes and three(!) DVDs, including the new making-of documentary The Promise. (The outtakes are available as their own double-disc set as well.) (Official site) Jimi Hendrix, West Coast Seattle Boy: The Jimi Hendrix Anthology / BBC Sessions / Live at Woodstock / Blues / Merry
Motown Goes Funky
A neat duo of reissues is on the way later this month from Funkytown Grooves - two R&B women on Motown Records in the 1980s. The label is prepping expanded reissues of Stacy Lattisaw's Take Me All the Way (which spawned the Top 5 R&B and Dance hit "Nail It to the Wall") and Set My Love in Motion, a 1981 LP by Syreeta Wright (the late ex-wife of Stevie Wonder). Each release will be accompanied by two 12" single tracks each. Pre-order links are here and here; track lists are after the
Release Round-Up: Week of November 9
Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Damn the Torpedoes: Deluxe Edition (Geffen/UMe) With a bonus disc of B-sides and unreleased outtakes and an optional Blu-Ray audio version, audiophiles hopefully won't have a reason to say "don't do me like that" with this set. (Official site) Bon Jovi, Greatest Hits: The Ultimate Collection (Island) If 1994's Cross Road isn't enough of a Bon Jovi comp for you, this career-spanning set (available in single and double-disc formats) combines all the usual hits
Twenty Years and "Ten Legs"
To celebrate their 20th anniversary as a band - a celebration that unofficially kicked off back in 2009 with a massive reissue of their debut album - Pearl Jam will release Live on Ten Legs, a concert chronicle of the band in the 2000s. Culled from shows recorded between 2003 and 2010 (many of which have been offered by the band for download or direct-burn-to-order CDs), Live on Ten Legs will be available through the band's long-running Ten Club and in indie shops on January 18. It will be
Release Round-Up: Week of November 2
Another week, another batch of reissues! Wings, Band on the Run: Special Edition (Concord) After reissues of John Lennon's solo catalogue and the Apple Records discography, another Beatles-oriented campaign kicks off with a new reissue of Band on the Run, Paul McCartney and Wings' classic LP. It's the first of his classic discs to be re-released on Concord, and will be available in a wide variety of formats. (Best of all, it's the first drop in the bucket - an insert inside the sets
The Great Purple Freak-Out
It's no secret that The Second Disc HQ holds a lot of love for Prince - remember our weeklong blitz for The Artist back around his birthday this past June? - so this bit of news is, to put it mildly, rather massive. After the jump, learn what an Australian podcast got His Royal Badness himself to say about the potential future remastering of the Prince catalogue.
Release Round-Up: Week of October 26
And now, here it is: the catalogue titles coming to your local stores this week. Various Artists including James Taylor, Billy Preston and Badfinger, The Apple Records remasters (Apple/EMI) This year's Beatles remasters are remasters of albums on The Beatles' short-lived Apple label. There's a lot of great, varied stuff to be hand across many genres. There's 14 individual remasters plus a new compilation with some other hard-to-find tunes (Come and Get It: The Best of Apple Records), not to
La La Land Spooks Up Sales, Another Catalogue Score
La La Land Records has scared up a spooktacular score from a romance film this week, as well as a bootiful bounty of titles on sale.* This week's catalogue title (alongside an impressive, triple-disc edition of Bear McCreary's music to the FOX television series Human Target) is a bit of an obscurity: Christopher Young's score to the 1988 romantic drama Haunted Summer. Based on true events, Haunted Summer tells the story of Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley's vacation to Lake Geneva in
Release Round-Up: Week of October 19
It's hard to believe The Second Disc has never done an ongoing round-up of all the reissues, remasters, compilations and box sets. (Perhaps it felt redundant? Everyone does it.) But sometimes there's just so much stuff to consider - especially with the holiday season fast approaching - so it's time to jump on the bandwagon and give you, the treasured reader, a comprehensive list of what's coming out in the catalogue world this week. The Beatles, The Beatles 1962-1966/ The Beatles 1967-1970
Back Tracks: Culture Club
It's safe to say we've given Boy George more than enough time to realize his crime. The beleaguered singer has had more than his share of legal troubles throughout the '90s and 2000s, and that has occasionally overshadowed the music he put out in the 1980s. This is a shame, since Culture Club was one of the better U.K. pop bands of the early '80s. Don't let George's gender-bending look fool you. Heaven knows that's become the primary takeaway for nostalgists, but there's a lot more underneath
Sellout!
It's no longer a snarky term to throw at indie bands that sign to a major label. Right now, "sellout" makes this author think of The Complete Elvis Presley Masters, Legacy's massive 30-disc box set devoted to The King of Rock and Roll. Several days ago, it was confirmed to have sold all 1,000 copies - a monumental achievement, if not a surprising one. Readers, we've seen a growing number of limited sets finding their way into our collective catalogue consciousness. The soundtrack world has been
You Can Look At the Menu…
As previously speculated and promised, synth-pop stalwart Howard Jones is set to reissue his first two LPs on CD, digitally remastered for the first time. But fans have to wait a bit, or travel a great distance, for bonus material. These versions of Human's Lib (1983) and Dream Into Action (1985), the records that spun off hits like "What is Love?", "New Song," "Things Can Only Get Better" and "No One is to Blame," will be released through Jones' own Dtox label. They retain their original track
Back to the Street
Earlier this year, E1 Music struck gold with Sesame Street: Old School Vol. 1 (1969-1974), a three-disc reissue of some long out-of-print albums recorded by the children's television show cast. It was a pleasant surprise for fans of the lovable Muppet citizens of Sesame Street, who've captivated audiences for 40 years and counting. On October 25, E1 continues the wave of reissues with Sesame Street: Old School Vol. 2, which will see three albums from the early, sunny days of the show put onto
New U.K. Black Sabbath Box Set: What's to Be Cross About?
Since The Second Disc began, we've seen more than a bit of Black Sabbath reissues and remasters, all of them confined to the United Kingdom, where the band's catalogue is distributed by Universal Music Group's Sanctuary Records (Warner Bros. handles it in the U.S.). The latest British-only set has been announced, and it's a doozy. A new box, The Ozzy Years: Complete Albums Box Set, will make its way to U.K. record shops on November 15. It has exactly what it says: nine remastered Sabbath albums
Back Tracks: The Jam
The Jam were easily one of the best things to come from the U.K. punk-rock scene. This is an unusual consideration, given that nothing about the band really screamed punk-rock. The members of The Jam were polished in appearance and musical experience, and they were clearly influenced by American rock and R&B acts from Motown, Stax and Atlantic. They were as mod as one could get without joining the cast of Quadrophenia. But their sound had an edge that bands like The Clash and The Sex Pistols
The La La Land Slate Expands (UPDATED 9/21)
You've got to love La La Land Records not only for the scope of their soundtrack reissues - titles released this year included expansions of Eraser, the 1966 and 1989 film versions of Batman, Innerspace, Independence Day and the debut CD release of the Caddyshack LP - but their openness in discussing what's on the horizon. Label head M.V. Gerhard maintains an active presence on his label's own message board and the boards for fellow label/publication Film Score Monthly, and discusses upcoming
Polled as Love
We kick off the weekend with a poll for you, dear readers: with the myriad of options coming up for Experience Hendrix/Legacy's upcoming Jimi Hendrix box set, West Coast Seattle Boy: The Jimi Hendrix Anthology, which one do you think you'll be picking up? Have fun voting! [polldaddy poll=3777262]
Cherry Pop Goes Au Naturel
Here's a few fun upcoming reissues from our friends at Cherry Pop: an expanded reissue of an '80s R&B novelty classic and two reissues from British vocalist Nick Heyward. Released in 1986, Frantic Romantic was the sophomore LP for singer-dancer Jermaine Stewart. The Soul Train dancer had already had his first single, "The Word is Out" (co-written with Culture Club's Mikey Craig), just miss Billboard's Top 40, but Frantic yielded the chaste dance anthem "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes
How Does "West Coast Seattle Boy" Stack Up?
So, just in time for Christmas, Jimi Hendrix fans are getting rewarded for their patience (a good half-dozen or so CD/DVD reissues and only one compilation of unreleased material since Legacy Recordings took distributorship of the Experience Hendrix catalogue) with the full specs for West Coast Seattle Boy: The Jimi Hendrix Anthology. This five-disc set includes a disc of rare tracks from Hendrix's days as an R&B sideman, three discs of what looks like almost entirely unreleased material