2022 has been Joni Mitchell's year. Following a triumphant surprise appearance in July at the Newport Folk Festival, the singer-songwriter announced a return to the stage for a full-length Joni Jam in June 2023 at Washington's Gorge Amphitheatre; tickets were quickly snapped up by ardent fans who had waited roughly two decades to see Mitchell in concert once again. More recently, she attended her first-ever Broadway musical, Cameron Crowe and Tom Kitt's Almost Famous - and made her Broadway
Release Round-Up: Week of December 2
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles in stores this week! The Beach Boys, Sail On Sailor: 1972 (Capitol/UMe) 6CD Super Deluxe: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2CD Highlights (Remastered Albums plus bonus tracks): Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 5LP+7" Super Deluxe Vinyl Edition: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 5LP+7" Super Deluxe Vinyl Edition (Limited Edition): Beach Boys Store 2LP+7" Remastered Albums
In Memoriam: Christine McVie (1943-2022)
Many words have already been typed to memorialize Christine McVie, the stalwart Fleetwood Mac singer/songwriter/keyboardist who died November 30 after a brief illness. But really, it was right there in the name all along: before that fateful marriage to John McVie, she was born Christine Perfect. How she'd live up to that name over time. McVie, a founding member of the British blues band Chicken Shack, joined her bass-playing husband in Fleetwood Mac in 1970, a year after they were wed.
Easy To Love Again: Carole Bayer Sager's "Sometimes Late at Night," with Burt Bacharach, Michael Jackson, Neil Diamond, Returns from Iconoclassic
Carole Bayer Sager was still a student at New York's High School of Music and Art when her song "A Groovy Kind of Love," co-written with Toni Wine, topped the U.S. Cash Box and Record World charts and reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966. Though some at the time thought it wouldn't last due to its prescient use of the word "groovy," Sager and Wine's youthful tune more than proved its endurance. 22 years later, Phil Collins took it to No. 1 Pop and AC in the U.S. - not to mention No.
Holiday Gift Guide Review: Michael Jackson, 'Thriller 40'
We are more than 35 years into the practice of record labels utilizing compact discs to sell a venerated artist's catalogue while also telling a story through the format's expanded capacity and clarion sound capabilities. The one-two punch of Bob Dylan's Biograph (1985) and Eric Clapton's Crossroads (1988) helped legitimize the idea of the CD box set and put both artists' bodies of work in sharper focus at a time when both of them were, should we say, not as relevant to the cultural
An Offer You Can't Refuse: La-La Land's 2022 Black Friday Batch May Be Their Best
Black Friday isn't just a day for holiday sales and Record Store Day's second event of the year - it's also the day La-La Land Records announces their final (and often biggest) soundtrack reissues of the year. And it might not get bigger than 2022's batch of titles, which feature two underrated scores from a pair of legendary composers, two massive franchise favorites with rich themes, and the soundtrack to what some consider the greatest American film ever made. Up first is one of those
The Weekend Stream: November 26, 2022
Welcome to The Weekend Stream, a relaxing weekly review of notable digital-only catalogue titles. There may be no CD or vinyl, but there's plenty of great new/old music to usher you into the weekend. This week, it's hardly Thanksgiving leftovers thanks to some British Christmas favorites, a legendary dance duo and a killer rockabilly discovery. Elton John, Step Into Christmas (Rocket/Mercury/UMe) (iTunes / Amazon) He may have retired from performing, but Elton John is still in the release
The Second Disc's Guide to Black Friday Record Store Day 2022: Our Essential Picks
From all of us here at Second Disc HQ to all of you, we hope you've enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving in the company of beloved family and friends. Of course, from this day which conjures nostalgic and warm feelings comes a celebration of a different kind with this year's annual Black Friday Record Store Day event. In keeping with tradition, Mike, Randy, and Joe have once again selected some essential picks of the roughly 200 titles being released tomorrow at independent record stores
Release Round-Up: Week of November 25
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the (non-Record Store Day) titles hitting stores today! Watch this space for our RSD Black Friday Picks! David Bowie, Divine Symmetry (An Alternative Journey Through 'Hunky Dory') (Parlophone) 4CD/1BD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 1LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada This 4CD/1BD slipcased box set chronicling the twelve months leading up to the December 1971 release of David Bowie's fourth
Close To It All: Cherry Red, Grapefruit Collect Power Pop, Folk, "Bubblerock," and More on New Anthologies
Cherry Red's Grapefruit imprint, dedicated to the psychedelic and garage eras, has concentrated in recent months on various-artists anthologies exploring different aspects of the pop-rock scene of the mid-to-late 1960s through the mid-1970s. Today's Grapefruit Round-Up looks at a quartet of those recent releases. The 3-CD anthology High in the Morning: The British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1973 is focused on the twelve-month period in which the look and sound of glam rock made ripples
The Weekend Stream: November 19, 2022
Madonna, You Can Dance (Single Edits) / Rain (Warner/Rhino) Dance: iTunes / Amazon Rain: iTunes / Amazon Rhino keeps digitally uploading intriguing stuff from Madonna's single and remix catalogue, and this month saw two such releases: first, a bundle of mixes surrounding the Erotica favorite "Rain," then this week, to celebrate the 35th anniversary of remix album You Can Dance, an upload of the rare promo version that found all the tracks unmixed and edited to single-ready
Not Dark Yet: Bob Dylan's Next Bootleg Volume Celebrates "Time Out of Mind"
The last volume of Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series, 2021's Springtime in New York, chronicled the singer-songwriter at the outset of the 1980s. On January 27, 2023, the seventeenth volume of the long-running series will arrive, this time exploring the creation of Dylan's thirtieth studio album. Fragments: Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996-1997) takes a deep dive into the three-time Grammy Award-winning album which was perceived by many as a comeback after a string of lackluster or uninspired LPs.
Give Me the News: Edsel Preps New Box Set of Robert Palmer Classics
For as long as CD reissues have been a thing, Robert Palmer's catalogue has been crying out for some real respect. The late blue-eyed soul singer, only 54 when a heart attack ended his life in 2003, has been in real need of rediscovery - and efforts to rebuild his discography for the modern age are few and far between. Next year, U.K. label Edsel will throw their hat in the ring (again) with a deluxe box set of his most famous work. The Island Records Years is an in-depth look at the first
Dream Starts: Grapefruit Collects Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera on New Anthology
The Five Proud Walkers weren't the only British blues 'n soul band to go psychedelic, but they were certainly one of the finest. As Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera and then just plain Velvet Opera, the group recorded two well-received albums in the late 1960s before splintering. Cherry Red's Grapefruit imprint has recently collected and expanded those LPs on 3 CDs as Long Nights of Summer: The Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera Anthology. Lead singer Dave Terry - who took the name of Elmer Gantry, the
Snap Shot: Iconoclassic Expands Slave's Funk Classic "Show Time," Steve Arrington's "Dancin' in the Key of Life"
Dayton, Ohio-based funk band Slave achieved success right out of the gate when their self-titled 1977 album shot to No. 6 R&B and No. 22 Pop, earning a Gold certification from the RIAA. Slave was off and running, producing eight consecutive chart albums for Atlantic Records' Cotillion imprint through 1983. (A ninth, in 1984, would do less well and precipitate a change of labels.) Slave weathered changes in the musical landscape, spinning off more than a dozen hit singles in that period.
The Weekend Stream: November 12, 2022
Welcome to The Weekend Stream, a relaxing weekly review of notable digital-only catalogue titles. There may be no CD or vinyl, but there's plenty of great new/old music to usher you into the weekend. This week features a new version of a pop legend's most recent compilation, great proto-Motown soul, an expanded version of Robert Glasper's breakout album, Bon Jovi in Spanish(?) and a heap of early Christmas gifts. Check it out! Elton John, Diamonds (Deluxe) (Virgin/EMI) (iTunes /
Women, Wives and Everything in Between: Paul McCartney Announces Massive 7" Singles Box
At 80 years old - hell, at many ages younger than that - Paul McCartney has little to prove. Fans may blanch at his catalogue choices of late (whither the Archive Collection? why box up all the self-titled albums? we've heard and seen it all), but it's hard to claim all of his reissue products as uninteresting. Take The 7" Singles Box - a rather massive trove of vinyl featuring 80 single releases personally curated by the former Beatle. With 163 tracks across its sides, The 7" Singles Box
Seven Bridges Road: Real Gone's November Slate Features Pat Martino, Herb Ellis, Remo Palmier, Less Than Jake, and Steve Young
We've already told you about Real Gone Music's pair of Christmas albums coming out this Friday, November 11: a vinyl version of Lea Michele's Christmas in the City and an expanded CD reissue of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme's That Holiday Feeling! featuring liner notes by our very own Joe Marchese. (Unfortunately, the expanded CD reissue of B.J. Thomas' Christmas Is Coming Home has been canceled for this year due to an unforeseen issue relating to the bonus material. Hopefully it will be
An Interview with Scott Davies, Rubellan Remasters' One-Man Band
Scott Davies has learned a lot on the job. Once toiling in the business of IT, music fans now know him as the singular creative force behind Rubellan Remasters - the sole curator, engineer, designer and distributor of a handful of CDs covering respected catalogues by New Wave/alternative acts including Visage, Missing Persons, Divinyls and most recently Oingo Boingo, the alt-rock band led in the '80s and '90s by future film composer Danny Elfman. From 2021 to the present Rubellan remastered
It's Only a Paper Moon: Cherry Red's El Imprint Celebrates Director Peter Bogdanovich on New Anthology
Writer-director Peter Bogdanovich (1939-2022) rose to fame as part of the "New Hollywood" movement of cinematic auteurs. While these maverick filmmakers shattered conventions and reshaped film to modern sensibilities, many had a deep and abiding love of the medium - and perhaps none more so than Bogdanovich. The onetime film critic and Museum of Modern Art programmer wrote extensively about Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, and Howard Hawks; shot The Last Picture Show in black-and-white; and
Rubellan Puts Flesh N' Blood Into Next Wave of Oingo Boingo Reissues on CD, Vinyl (UPDATED PRE-ORDER LINKS)
All of Rubellan Remasters' titles are a labor of love, but special care was taken when the label expanded a section of the Oingo Boingo catalogue in 2021. The seminal California alt-punk band, which first catapulted film composer Danny Elfman to the national stage, never got their due in peak reissue eras - but Rubellan corrected that record with expanded CDs (and colored vinyl reissues) of the band's first four albums, issued on the I.R.S. and MCA labels. With the Day of the Dead just
Release Round-Up: Week of November 4
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles in stores today! Billy Joel, Live at Yankee Stadium (Columbia/Legacy) 2CD/Blu-ray: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 3LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Billy Joel's Live at Yankee Stadium, originally released on video, is getting a major makeover. The concert film, shot on June 22 and 23, 1990, has been restored and remixed from original audio and video elements for a 2CD/Blu-ray
This Girl's in Love: Mercury Studios Premieres Ella Fitzgerald's "Montreux 1969" on CD and LP
Following in the footsteps of such titles as Ella at the Hollywood Bowl: The Irving Berlin Songbook (2022), The Lost Berlin Tapes (2020), Ella at the Shrine (2018), and Ella at Zardi's (2017), the team at Mercury Studios has unveiled another previously unreleased concert from the late Ms. Fitzgerald. On January 20, 2023, the label will release Live at Montreux 1969. While the performance from the early years of the Montreux Jazz Festival (founded in 1967) was seen on DVD in 2005, the upcoming
You Just May Be The One: The Monkees Revisit "Headquarters" With 55th Anniversary Box Set
55 years ago, The Monkees took part in what TV Guide deemed to be "the Great Revolt of '67." Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork demanded creative control from impresario Don Kirshner - and won it. The group might have been brought together as actors portraying a band, but they were ready to build upon their phenomenal success and become that band in reality, too. The Headquarters album, The Monkees' third, was the startling result. It became their third consecutive No.
The Weekend Stream: October 29, 2022
Welcome to The Weekend Stream, a relaxing weekly review of notable digital-only catalogue titles. There may be no CD or vinyl, but there's plenty of great new/old music to usher you into the weekend. This week, it's a stuffed Halloween sack full of sweet rarities from INXS and Madonna, remixes of Frank Zappa and Bing Crosby, two completely unreleased 50-year-old albums and a brand-new spin on a Stephen Sondheim classic - and that's only half of it! INXS, Shabooh Shoobah (40th Anniversary
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- …
- 176
- Next Page »