And one last foray into the Prince catalogue on The Second Disc with what is arguably one of the dopiest entries in his catalogue. To some, it seems like a total work for hire, a hatchet job, a cash-in - and while that may be the case, it's kind of a fun listen. That's right: Prince's album devoted to the 1989 film Batman. The story goes that star Jack Nicholson was the one who suggested Prince to director Tim Burton. After editing two scenes to a temp track of Prince tunes ("1999" for the
Prince Week Day 7: Crystal Ball
In the penultimate entry of Prince Week (I know, this is Day 7, but we got one more piece for you tomorrow), The Second Disc turns its attention to one of the most fertile times in Prince's life. From 1986 to 1987, just two short years, His Royal Badness managed to record enough material for a good four or five albums; it should go without saying that this material would be greatly served in a box set from Rhino at some point in time. Hit the jump to get your world rocked with a story of lots
Box Set Round-Up: Hank Williams and Level 42
There's a pair you'd never expect to see in the same title. A few bits of news around the way regarding a few box sets coming up. First up, Time-Life has got a really large box set of Hank Williams material coming out. The Complete Mother's Best Recordings...Plus! is a 16-disc box set (including a DVD) of all Williams legendary, surviving recordings for Nashville radio station WSM (where he had his own show sponsored by Mother's Best Flour). These 72 acetates were recorded through 1951, two
Prince Week Day 6: Life in the Madhouse
In determining what was going to make up the contents of Prince Week, a great deal of agonizing was endured over where to place Prince's many side projects. Prince, ever the purple brain trust, developed a lot of side projects over time, particularly during the beginning of his success as a pop artist. The Time, Sheila E. and Vanity 6 are still the best acts he ever squired in the early Paisley Park years, but there were plenty others that deserve a look back someday - and ultimately, the sheer
Prince Week Day 5: Prince in Other Places
Prince's influence has been discussed far and wide, from fashion to music videos to the actual, Hendrixian quality of his guitar playing. But it's always unusual when the mercurial purple genius decides to directly contribute to another artist's canon, particularly since one really never knows where he's going to end up next. What follows is a chronological list of ten of Prince's most interesting "guest appearances." Half of them are actual guest appearances, the other half either songs he
The Sweetest Punch: Costello Compiles the Universal Years
Upon its acquisition of the Elvis Costello catalog in 2007, UMe wasted no time in releasing The Best of Elvis Costello: The First 10 Years (Hip-O B0008640-02). That self-explanatory set was compiled by Costello himself, and so it’s fitting that some three years later, Costello and Hip-O are bookending that disc with Pomp & Pout: The Universal Years. This 18-track compilation, slated for a July 13 release, draws from the 10 years Costello spent at various Universal labels between 1998 and
Prince Week Day 3: He Would Die 4 U
This particular installment of Prince Week is an unorthodox one. The Second Disc is usually a place for just catalogue type stuff, since that is the gateway to most of our feelings about classic music. But sometimes the feelings themselves are worth writing about, if they're particularly strong. It's with this in mind that The Second Disc presents a bit of an emotions-based look at Prince's music. The following (admittedly lengthy) essay is something I've worked on for a few years in college,
It Might Be (The Soundtrack for) You
The Film Score Monthly label has prepped another two titles for release: two very different scores from two different composers, but winners both. First up is Jerry Goldsmith's in-demand score for the Sean Connery space Western Outland (1981). Goldsmith created a score that resembled his suspenseful approach to Alien from two years before, and it was augmented by some last-minute additions by Michael Boddicker (Buckaroo Banzai, Flashdance and session work for Michael Jackson) and Morton Stevens
Weezer Going Back to the Good Life
A hat tip to Pause & Play for posting the Amazon pre-order link for a Deluxe Edition of Pinkerton, the sophomore LP by alt-rock stalwarts Weezer, coming from Geffen and UMe. When it was released in 1996, Pinkerton was ill-received by critics and fans expecting a traditional follow-up to the band's excellent self-titled debut, which featured hooky garage-pop with Ric Ocasek of The Cars in the producer's chair. By contrast, Pinkerton - initially conceived as a space-rock opera called Songs
Friday Feature: Prince on Film
The Second Disc reader Robert Altman was predicting the future when he suggested a week devoted to Prince a few days ago. Prince - one of the most polarizing and intriguing figures to ever saunter onto the pop music scene - deserves reams (or gigabytes, in this case) written about his music and its impact, and The Second Disc promises to deliver in that regard. From this Friday to next Friday - going right through Prince's 52nd birthday on Monday - TSD will present a few features on Prince's
Take Them On...Later
Another quick update on a catalogue reissue: Rhino has pushed back the shipping date of the upcoming Deluxe Editions of a-ha's Hunting High and Low and Scoundrel Days to July 6 in the U.S. and August 6 in the U.K. All together now: noooooooooooo.
Clouds on the Horizon
Even though The Second Disc is primarily geared toward catalogue matters, I'd be doing myself a disservice by not paying attention to music as it stands in the present day. There's a trend I've been trying to wrap my head around on the tech side of music, one which could actually have spectacular implications for catalogue works if done properly. They're calling it "the cloud" - mobile, streaming music services that keep the music on a server instead of directly downloading it to your computer.
Back Tracks: WHAM!
The great thing about most reissues over the past few years is that labels seem to want to follow one rule: if they can reissue it, they will do their best. Of course there are people out there who like, say, Cutting Crew or a-ha - but who could have seriously predicted that labels would be open to the idea of reissuing those records with bonus cuts and all that? Of course, this rule makes some of the great bands without reissues - Prince, The Go-Gos, that one Buckingham Nicks album - look like
Boldly Going Back
Man, it's been a good week for Star Trek music enthusiasts. First Film Score Monthly announces a brand-new deluxe reissue of James Horner's score to Star Trek III: The Search for Spock last week. And now, Varese Sarabande has jumped ahead on the Trek timeline to give fans another new deluxe set: starting June 14, the label will ship Star Trek: The Deluxe Edition, featuring the complete score to last year's fantastic reboot of the sci-fi series. As if the movie wasn't great enough on its own
Hip-o Loves Lofgrin
A late announcement for readers: Hip-o Select has begun taking pre-orders for another reissue from Nils Lofgren. Since 2007, the label has been remastering and reissuing the solo works of Lofgren, of course best known as one of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band members for the past quarter-century. Thus far, his original band Grin's final LP, Gone Crazy (1973) and solo efforts Nils Lofgren (1975), Back It Up!! Live-An Authorized Bootleg (1975) and Cry Tough (1976) - all originally released on
Back Tracks: Billy Idol
Lately, I've been unable to turn the radio dial to a rock-oriented radio station without happening on the music of Billy Idol. There's nothing wrong with that - Idol was one of the best artists of the '80s - but it's a bit jarring, if only because it's hard to think of Billy Idol as a rocker, in the truest sense. Sure, his music is dominated by some excellent guitar (usually from the axe of the fantastic Steve Stevens), and it has a bit of an edge thanks to Idol's irrepressible snarling vocals.
Paying the Price
Next week is going to be much more comfortable when it comes to posting on The Second Disc. After several months of bitterly typing and researching over a creaky, aging Dell PC (having lost a nearly-just-as-creaky Thinkpad T60 laptop), the weekend should see your humble correspondent upgrading to a Macbook. As a lifelong Windows user (barring my time writing and editing for my newspaper in college), it's an unusual but worthwhile transition, and I can't wait to regain simple pleasures like
Our Castle and Our Keep
After yesterday's Miles Davis pricing madness, The Second Disc brings you some much more appreciable madness, through another set of reissues by Madness, one of the best-known ska acts of the '80s. Continuing the band's ongoing reissue project, Salvo and Union Square Music has prepped the band's fourth and fifth LPs, The Rise & Fall (1982) and Keep Moving (1984), as double-disc deluxe reissues. Both sets will feature various remixes, B-sides and promo videos to boot. It's notable that The
Miles More
Eighty-four years ago today, Miles Dewey Davis III was brought into the world. His contributions to the fabric of American music - jazz, pop, rock, whatever you want to call it - are immense. Accordingly, he has been celebrated often by the label with which he had his greatest successes, Columbia Records. Last year, the label released The Complete Columbia Album Collection, a 70 CD/1 DVD box set which captured just that: every one of the LPs Davis recorded for the label from 1957 to 1985. It
Put Him Back In, Coach
It's been known for awhile that John Fogerty's 1985 album Centerfield was slated for a reissue by the folks at Geffen and UMe. Now, the bonus tracks are known. According to both the press release and this story from Billboard, Fogerty - who, in a perfect stroke of timing and publicity, is being honored in July by the Baseball Hall of Fame for the album's iconic title track - will include two B-sides released during the Eye of the Zombie era, "My Toot Toot" and "I Confess," in addition to the
Soundtrack News Round-Up: Spock, Mancini and Spartacus
Well, here's a nice surprise. Following their masterfully-done expansion of James Horner's score to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan last year, Film Score Monthly presents a double-disc reissue of Horner's Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. The unlimited set includes the complete score on one disc and the original LP presentation on the other. Intrada's announced some new titles as well. Les Baxter's score to The Beast Within and Henry Mancini's jazzy soundtrack to 99 and 44/100% Dead!, both
R&B Releases: A Classic "Thing," Plus Some Buried Grooves
If you're itching for some vintage R&B from around the way, a few labels have some new releases to keep you satisfied. One is a classic soul LP making its debut on CD, the other two are some solid disco efforts with some bonus cuts to boot. Iconoclassic Records has planned a June 22 reissue of It's Our Thing by The Isley Brothers. Released on the Isleys' own label after leaving a solid but fleetingly successful tenure at Motown, this disc includes the funky, anthemic "It's Your Thing." This
News Roundup: Going for the Gold
Yet another sub-genre of the catalogue world is the audiophile reissue. Companies like Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, Audio Fidelity and Analogue Productions specialize in reissuing classic titles for an audiophile audience, often utilizing the original master tapes for a release on gold CD, hybrid SACD or high-quality LP. With excellent sound quality as the main mandate, bonus tracks and new liner notes are rare on these releases which generally intend to replicate the original artwork and
From The King of the New York Streets to The Wolf King of L.A.
It seems that the Cherry Red family of labels' slogan should be "expect the unexpected." Each label is run by a different team, resulting in an extremely diverse array of offerings. Steve Stanley's Now Sounds celebrates, but isn't strictly limited to, the musical era of 1964-1972. Past reissues have encompassed such styles as harmony and sunshine pop (Roger Nichols and the Small Circle of Friends, The Association), folk (Janis Ian), light psychedelia (Colours), "Bacharock" (The Golden Gate) and
The Trend
When The Second Disc's Exile on Main St. poll was posted, I mentioned that I had noticed a rather unusual trend in the purchase of the various deluxe sets that were available. As a member of the electronics/entertainment staff at a Target store, I was able to track a few of the big sets, some of which were only available through our retailers. Target was the only place to get the bonus disc of the deluxe edition (that is, the Rarities Edition), as well as the fan pack which bundled a t-shirt
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