UPDATE (1/23/2013): Whoa, remember this? It's finally coming out to the U.S. on DVD from Eagle Rock on March 12. Pre-order it here. Original post (8/3/2011): "They're talking from here!" Freddie Mercury said, pointing to his behind and addressing rumors of Queen's breakup before a capacity crowd at Wembley Stadium on July 12, 1986. "We're gonna stay together until we fucking well die, I'm sure of it." Those chillingly prophetic words are just a moment in what may be not only Queen's finest
Review: Billy Joel, "She's Got a Way: Love Songs"
“She’s got a way about her…I don’t know what it is,” Billy Joel sings on his very first album. But it isn’t long before the song’s narrator explicates many of those ways about her, like a “smile that heals me” or “a light around her.” Even if he can’t put his finger on it, he’s confident that “a million dreams of love surround her ev’rywhere.” Yet rarely (in life or in art) has love been so simple for Billy Joel. “She’s Got a Way” lends its title to a new compilation subtitled Love Songs
Big Beat Has "Too Much to Dream" with Two New Psychedelic Sixties Collections
When one thinks of musical psychedelia, the city that most often comes to mind is San Francisco. That rock epicenter hosted the likes of The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Blue Cheer and Moby Grape at venues including The Fillmore, The Matrix and the Avalon Ballroom. But psych-rock exploration wasn’t limited to San Francisco, with New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and Austin among the other American spots making major contributions to the genre.
For Your Eyes Only: Edsel Plans Expanded Two-Fers of Sheena Easton's Catalogue
Edsel is expanding and reissuing four albums by Scottish pop star Sheena Easton as a pair of double-disc sets in February. After the success of 1980's insanely catchy "Morning Train (9 to 5)," Easton generally continued recording in the soft, synth-based pop vein in which she'd proven to work well. But sophomore You Could Have Been with Me, released by EMI in 1981, was most bolstered by two singles that didn't appear on the album: "When He Shines" was a Top 20 hit in the U.K., and "For Your
Back Tracks: Adam Ant
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o41A91X5pns] It's the statement few in the Internet age expected to type: today, Adam Ant releases his first album in nearly 20 years. Adam Ant is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunnar's Daughter (try saying that three times fast) features brand-new original compositions by Ant with longtime collaborators/guitarists Marco Pirroni and Boz Boorer, and is the first album on his new label, the eponymous Blueblack Hussar Records. Early critical notes
Reviews: Buck Owens, "Honky Tonk Man: Buck Sings Country Classics" and Don Rich, "Sings George Jones"
With its two latest releases, Omnivore Recordings continues its great Bakersfield rescue mission. Texas-born and Arizona-raised, Buck Owens made his mark in that California city, answering the prevailing “countrypolitan” style with a return to a pure and unadorned honky-tonk sound. But that “natural” sound had roots that ran deep in Bakersfield. Yet Owens’ parallel career as the avuncular, perpetually joking co-host of television’s cornpone Hee Haw may have caused audiences to take his
Release Round-Up: Week of January 22
Billy Joel, She's Got a Way: Love Songs (Columbia/Legacy) The romantic side of the Piano Man is featured on this new compilation. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) Rodriguez, Searching for Sugar Man (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) One of the most captivating catalogue music documentaries of 2012 is now available on DVD (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) and Blu-Ray (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)! The Blue Nile, A Walk Across the Rooftops / Hats: Deluxe Editions (Virgin/EMI) Slated for release in the
Rare Gems Hidden in New "Playlist" Wave
The latest wave of Playlist releases is almost here from Legacy Recordings, and the series dedicated to collecting “the hits plus the fan favorites” doesn’t look to disappoint. On January 29, Playlist volumes will be released for an eclectic cadre of artists in a variety of genres: vintage metal (Accept), traditional pop (Andy Williams), blue-eyed soul (The Box Tops), classic rock (Mountain, The Doobie Brothers, Harry Nilsson), country (Sara Evans, The Highwaymen), hip-hop (G. Love and Special
Let's Hang On to Two Volumes of Frankie Valli and 4 Seasons' "Gold Vault of Hits"
Whether you consider them the East Coast answer to The Beach Boys, or rivals to The Beatles (as on a famous Vee-Jay LP compilation), Frankie Valli and the 4 Seasons have had a long, illustrious career. Despite having scored his first hit with the Seasons back in 1962, Valli has hardly slowed his pace over the years, overseeing companies and productions of the 2005 musical Jersey Boys, readying a film version, and recently performing a concert on Broadway with a new line-up of Seasons. The
Otis Redding's "Deepest Soul" Explored on New Concept Album
When is a lost album not a lost album? In the case of Lonely and Blue: The Deepest Soul of Otis Redding, the answer is, “when the album has been created in 2013 to look, sound and feel like a Stax/Volt release from almost five decades prior!” On March 5, Stax and Concord Records will release this newly-created concept album of the late soul shouter’s most torrid ballads on both CD and a special blue vinyl LP. Compilation producer David Gorman set out with one goal in mind: “to find the
Numero is (Possibly) Purple on Forthcoming LP Reissue
Nearly 35 years after the unceremonious release of The Lewis Conection, a local Minneapolis band's sole funk LP, The Numero Group is resurrecting the disc, giving it a premiere release next month. (It's part of an forthcoming phase at Numero to unearth significant and rare recordings from the early days of the Minneapolis sound.) What makes this set so special? According to popular lore, while recording the album at Minneapolis' Sound 80 Studios, The Lewis Connection invited an 18-year-old
Duran Duran's TV Mania Project Resurrected for Release in Spring
As previously reported, TV Mania - the short-lived, little-heard side project of Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes and former guitarist Warren Cuccurullo - is finally getting a release after years in the vault. The concept sounds surprisingly relevant: a musical treatise on an overly media-saturated couple, culled from snippets of original studio creations and found sound. But it's not something crafted by an upstart artist in 2013 - it was finished nearly 15 years ago, before the Internet really took
Grammy Time: Music's Biggest Night Honored with Annual Compilation
We're just a few weeks from the 55th Annual Grammy Awards - or as I like to call it, "how many times can my music geek friends and I make cutting jokes on the Internet?" - and, as is customary, next week will see the release of a compilation of Grammy-nominated songs for your perusal. The 22-track compilation, distributed this year by EMI, has quite the cross-section of cuts from what is a rather diverse year for the awards ceremony. Altogether, six different artists - Dan Auerbach of the
Mary Wells' Early Motown Albums Collected in Mono on New Release
The third major Mary Wells release in recent months has arrived courtesy Ace Records’ Kent label. The One Who Really Loves You/Two Lovers combines Wells’ second and third Motown long-players on one remastered CD, with every track taken from the original mono masters for the first time in the compact disc era. Though Wells’ time at Motown was relatively brief, her star burned brightest there. The first true superstar to emerge from Hitsville, she was also the first of the company’s artists to
Don't Cry For Me, Princess Leia: John Williams, Andrew Lloyd Webber Go Disco
What do a beloved Broadway musical and an iconic sci-fi epic have to do with dance music pioneer Boris Midney? Plenty, as it turns out. Midney, a producer and arranger who came to prominence in the disco era with his expansive 48-track productions, recorded under a number of guises: Caress, Beautiful Bend, Masquerade, Double Discovery, to name a few. And The Demon Music Group’s Harmless Records imprint indeed does have a double discovery! On January 26 in the U.K. and one week later in the
Release Round-Up: Week of January 15
New Order, The Lost Sirens (Rhino) (Amazon U.S./Amazon U.K.) A cadre of outtakes from the Waiting for the Siren's Call sessions, this marks the last New Order material with original bassist Peter Hook. Johnny Mathis, A Special Part of Me: Expanded Edition (Amazon U.S./Amazon U.K.) (Funkytowngrooves) FTG's latest R&B expansion has a Michael Jackson connection: the future King of Pop co-wrote for Mathis "Love Never Felt So Good" with Paul Anka! Talk Talk, Natural History: The Very Best of
Dusty Groove Label Returns From Real Gone Music with Steig, Humphrey, Harris
The venerable Blue Note Records label was founded in 1939, and from the late 1940s onward emphasized what was most modern about jazz. Blue Note became well known, of course, for the hard bop classics recorded under its aegis. But the varied influences that created hard bop led Blue Note to explore how the avenues of soul, rock and blues intersected with that of jazz. Three new releases from Real Gone Music and the reactivated Dusty Groove Records label explore three sonically-diverse titles
Getting Away with It: Sumner and Marr's "Electronic" Gets a Confusing Expansion
It's not enough for Johnny Marr to be one of the greatest guitarists of the modern era (one with a solo album bowing today in the U.K.); this March, his acclaimed foray into dance music with Bernard Sumner will be reissued. But brace yourself, fans: it's a little weird. Frustrated by New Order's resistance to a more synth-based direction, Sumner began work on the Electronic by himself, but called longtime friend Marr - whose departure from The Smiths caused the band to dissolve - to
Short Takes: Tabu, TV Mania, Living Colour All Have Plans
Some small morsels of potential catalogue-oriented stuff coming your way on this fine Thursday: Demon Music Group promised back in July a slew of reissues from the Tabu Records catalogue, a label that included R&B hits by Cherrelle, Alexander O'Neal and The S.O.S. Band. It looks like those plans may be moving further forward: the label's official Facebook page yesterday teased "huge plans for the label" in 2013. Though not out of reissue ideas for their own proper catalogue, Duran Duran
Deep Purple Duo: Blackmore's Final Show, "Slaves and Masters" to Be Reissued
Deep Purple fans have much to be excited about this month with two new catalogue projects covering two very different eras of the long-running rock group. Eagle Rock kicks things off with a new remaster and reissue of Live in Paris 1975, reportedly the first of 10 forthcoming titles from the band on the label. First released in full back in 2004 but excerpted on many Deep Purple live projects (starting with 1976's Made in Europe), this show, recorded at Paris' Palais de Sports in April 1975, is
Johnny Mathis' Expanded "Special Part of Me" Highlights Paul Anka and Michael Jackson Collaboration
It's been a wonderful, wonderful time to be a fan of Johnny Mathis, with the singer's long-lost Mercury Records catalogue recently having been upgraded to CD by Real Gone Music. As 2013 opens, another label is turning its attention to the Mathis catalogue. Funky Town Grooves is returning the 1984 album A Special Part of Me to CD in a first-ever expanded edition due on January 15. Mathis' association with Columbia Records began in 1956 when he was just 21 years of age, and these many years
Intrada Goes Ape, Expands "Congo" and "Cromwell" Scores
Expanded scores by iconic composers? Reissues of soundtrack oddities paired with newly-discovered gems? Yes, it's certainly 2013 at Intrada! The label unveiled its first two titles for the new year on Monday: complete presentations of Jerry Goldsmith's score to Congo and Frank Cordell's Cromwell. Released at the height of the mid-'90s post-Jurassic Park frenzy, Congo (which, like JP, was based on a techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton) was the story of a team of scientists and mercenaries
30 Years of F#@$?!in' Up: NOFX Unveil Career-Spanning Vinyl Box
Long-running punk outfit NOFX will celebrate three decades of recording with a lavish vinyl box set next month. The iconoclastic group, led by punk elder statesman "Fat Mike" Burkett, has remained one of the most "pure" (for lack of a better term) American punk groups in their time together, largely eschewing press and having never signed to a major label. (Epitaph has distributed much of their catalogue, but Burkett has also operated indie label Fat Wreck Chords since 1990; that label issued
Bob Dylan's (Copyright) Blues: "Freewheelin'" Outtakes and More Get a Limited, Pricey Release
January 2013 is barely one week old, but a candidate for strangest catalogue music story of the year has already broken. A 4-CD set of outtakes from the early career of Bob Dylan has recently been released, but don’t look for it in your local record shop, or even online. The 50th Anniversary Collection contains 86 Dylan songs, all recorded in 1962. But despite the interest that fans worldwide might have in this material (some of which has never circulated, even in collectors’ circles), the
Mad Season's "Above" Rediscovered for Expansive Deluxe Edition
Though the group isn’t often spoken of in the same breath as Crosby, Stills and Nash or The Traveling Wilburys, Mad Season was a bona fide supergroup for the 1990s. The Seattle-based group of musicians - Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, guitarist Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, drummer/percussionist Barrett Martin of Screaming Trees, and bassist John Baker Saunders of The Walkabouts and The Lamont Cranston Band - joined together in 1994 and released just one album, 1995’s Columbia Records release
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