Frank Sinatra. Antonio Carlos Jobim. Two great musical tastes that taste great together. Ol' Blue Eyes brought his inimitable voice to the smooth bossa nova compositions of Jobim in 1967 with the LP Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim, in which the two teamed up on Jobim's best tracks ("The Girl from Ipanema," "How Insensitive") and some great standards as well (Berlin's "Change Partners," Porter's "I Concentrate on You"). Four years later, another Sinatra-Jobim session yielded one
Back Tracks: Cheap Trick
In reading about Cheap Trick on Web sites like the All Music Guide, one keeps finding aspects of the band's work described as "perverse." That's a weird way of defining it - not in the sexual sense, mind you, but as a means of describing how unusual they are - but I guess it fits well enough, for a number of reasons. In the Rockford, Ill.-based band are, visually, one of the most arresting bands ever; vocalist Robin Zander and basist Tom Petersson look like your typical gorgeous rockers, while
Hot Fudge Sundae!
Their repertoire was pretty standard for the late 1960s: a Lennon/McCartney tune here, a Bacharach and David song there, a Motown cover for good measure, even "The Windmills of Your Mind." But similarities ended there between Vanilla Fudge and their MOR-covering contemporaries. Over the course of five albums for the Atco label, the Fudge brought a psychedelic touch to the gestating sound of so-called "heavy rock" with blues-drenched, extended takes on familiar songs. Shadow Morton, famed
Review: Chicago - "Chicago Transit Authority" Quadradisc
What is Quadio? That's the question currently being posed by the fine folks over at Rhino.com. For an answer and some fun interactivity, click here. But in short, Quadio describes the new series of four-channel audio DVDs (or "Quadradiscs") being introduced by Rhino with the reissue of 1969's Chicago Transit Authority, the first album by the band later known simply as Chicago. This release is a landmark in a number of ways. For one thing, it signals a new attempt to court the dedicated
News Roundup: Back from Hiatus Edition, Part 1
Well! After a fun weekend of sun and Easter candy, it's back to tracking the catalogue world at The Second Disc. A hearty thank-you to Joe for his contributions over the weekend, and a welcome back to our loyal readers. A few release nuggets came through the pipeline over the weekend, so let's clean house by getting some of them out of the way. More to come before the end of the day, so stick around! NME reported that a new Oasis compilation would see a U.K. release on June 14. Time Flies
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
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
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
Broken Promises, Broken Habits
This is getting ridiculous. Duran Duran's EMI reissues have suffered yet another delay - the third or fourth this year. The deluxe editions of Duran Duran and Seven and the Ragged Tiger, previously set for March 30 and April 20, have now been bumped to May 18. This complements the recent news that the next wave of reissues - covering Notorious and Big Thing - will hit stores on July 6 instead of the planned June date. (The deluxe reissue of side-project Arcadia's So Red the Rose is still set for
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
Insanity, Bohemian-Style
Legacy recently hipped their Facebook fans to the pre-order page for the double-disc Legacy Edition of This is Big Audio Dynamite, the 1985 debut LP by Big Audio Dynamite. Led by Mick Jones, who was at the time recently fired as guitarist of The Clash, BAD was quite the stylistic melting pot, fusing punk with reggae and club music and garnishing it with samples aplenty. The new edition, released for the album's 25th anniversary, includes an extra disc of rare and unreleased remixes. Have a look
Labelled with Love
It might not mean as much now in an era dominated by digital files (not to mention a music business that is more or less split between four major labels), but there's a certain beauty in looking at the label on a piece of vinyl. Next to a picture sleeve, it's the prettiest art you could get in the early days of buying music. With that label, there would be an image, not only literally but spiritually as well; the image a label projected onto its LPs and singles usually called a certain emotion
Never Gonna Give You Up. No, Really.
In a move that proves that any reissue is possible, or at least probable, the Edsel label has set an April 13 release date for expanded reissues of Rick Astley's Whenever You Need Somebody and Hold Me in Your Arms. Yes, you are reading this right. You are also reading correctly that each reissue will be two discs with expanded liner notes by Pete Waterman Entertainment, Ltd. expert Tom Parker. More info is here, here and here and a detailed tracklisting for each is after the jump.
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
Back Tracks: Alex Chilton
A potentially embarassing confession: it took the death of Big Star frontman Alex Chilton for me to realize just what I knew about him. I knew his name was the title of a Replacements song (thanks, Rock Band), I'd known of Big Star thanks to the justifiable hype over last year's box set from Rhino and I'd known a handful of his most famous, very solid compositions that he either wrote or popularized ("Thirteen," "The Letter," "In the Street") through inevitable cultural osmosis (thanks, That
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: Genesis
Continuing with our Rock and Roll Hall of Fame pre-coverage, we have the first of five catalogue overviews from our artist inductees. Genesis is one of many bands without a definitive entry point into their catalogue. As a five piece outfit composed of Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins through the early 1970s, the band put out some delightful prog-rock that was surprisingly accessible. (Considering that their live sets consisted of twenty-minute jams and
Rock Hall: Fame or Shame?
From now until Monday, The Second Disc will be bringing out some features and opinions on Monday's upcoming Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions. Let's start with a column that ultimately addresses what a mixed blessing the Hall can be. Few music-oriented entities draw so much criticism and debate as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In its 25-year history, it has inducted 165 artists into its ranks (with another five to be inducted on Monday), spurring decades-long debates about which of them
News Round-Up: Today's the Day to Kiss the Sky
Unless you've been living under a rock this year, you know that today's the day Experience Hendrix LLC partners with Legacy to release a new batch of Jimi Hendrix products (CD/DVD versions of Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, Electric Ladyland and First Rays of the New Rising Sun as well as the new Valleys of Neptune rarities set). For those of you who are into such a thing, Valleys comes with two extra tracks at Target stores. (Disclosure: the author works for Target but would not in
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
Order in the Court
The artist-specific compilation almost seems like a useless gesture in the digital age. Now that anyone can buy a song for around a dollar, there's seemingly no need to buy a CD full of singles for more than pocket change. That's simply not true, though; such discs represent more than just songs everyone loves. It's ideally the chronicle of hard-earned success within a lengthy body of work. It's sometimes a chance to visit a catalogue unified by certain musical or lyrical themes. And for
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,
That's Why They've Done It Again (UPDATED 3/4)
A break from the usual weekend radio silence to report on a very exciting story over at Slicing Up Eyeballs: EMI's Dutch Web site has added reissues of Duran Duran's Notorious and Big Thing to their catalogue schedule. Both titles have a release date of June 7, and will ostensibly serve as companion pieces to the great, recent deluxe editions of the Duran discography (Rio and a vintage live show, Hammersmith '82, were released last fall, and 2 CD/1 DVD versions of Duran Duran, Seven and 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