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
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: 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
Five Things the Michael Jackson-Sony Deal Should Consider
After a deafening silence broken only by the just-OK This is It album, Michael Jackson's posthumous release projects at Sony just amped up. The King of Pop's estate and Sony Music have brokered a $250 million, ten-album deal that will keep the Jackson train rolling at Sony through 2017. Speculation has already begun over what the nine forthcoming titles (the This is It soundtrack is retroactively included in the deal) will be. Rumored audio titles include: New reissues of Off the Wall and
Cratediggers
Inspiration comes from strange places. My latest bout would never have happened if it hadn't been for a burst water heater. That part of the story's not worth recounting - suffice to say that a new carpet had to be installed in the basement - but while my family began moving furniture back downstairs, I made a crucial discovery: a shelf full of records and tapes that I'd never bother to look through. As we put the boxes back in their place, I intended to take a cursory glance through the
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
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
Genius + Soul + Reissue = Lots of Jazz
The previously-reported reissue of Ray Charles' Genius + Soul = Jazz has finally been given a track list by its distributor, Concord Records. Not much in the way of previously unreleased content (one vault cut), but this two-disc set will pull four Ray LPs back into print. The package, due April 6, will feature Genius + Soul = Jazz as well as My Kind of Jazz (1970), Jazz Number II (1973) and My Kind of Jazz Part III (1975). (My Kind of Jazz was paired up with Genius + Soul = Jazz for a Rhino
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
Judas Priest Re-Forging "British Steel"
Legacy Recordings announced details for a new Legacy Edition of Judas Priest's 1980 classic British Steel. This LP - their second with producer Tom Allom - was destined to become a heavy metal classic from the get-go, earning Priest their first U.S. Top 40 record and paving the way for a loud, in-your-face but streamlined metal sound that would be deployed to full effect by bands like Metallica and Anthrax in the coming years. As for the vault material, the audio offerings are nothing new -
Reissue Theory: Robert Palmer - "Riptide"
It's no secret that I'm a huge Duran Duran fan (these upcoming reissues are seriously a thing of beauty). But I also credit them with opening me up to a whole lot of other acts. Had I not started listening to them in middle school, I would not have been drawn to other synth/New Wave bands, CHIC, Madonna, David Bowie or Robert Palmer. Palmer in particular was quite the performer. His Duran connections were smallish - he was the lead vocalist for DD side-project The Power Station - but he was a
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
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
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
Reissue Theory: The Family, "The Family"
Tuesday was the 20th - count it! - anniversary of I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, the polarizing breakthrough LP by Sinead O'Connor. There's a fascinating write-up about the record and its aftermath over at Popdose that really shows off what an intriguing figure O'Connor was at the time. It certainly says something that an album with one Top 40 hit (her only one) sold over 7 million copies in its day. Clearly something was up here. I completely forgot that the record was given a double-disc
Did You (Ever) Hear?
It greatly pleases me that The Second Disc has attracted an interested readership. It's a pleasure that there are many out there interested in how the industry behaves and evolves. And as a writer and enthusiast with such devotion to the niche, it's just exciting to connect with like-minded individuals. To that end, I pose something of a catalogue-oriented challenge to you. In all my years collecting and listening to pop music, I have only come across the following track once. The complete lack