Though they're located across the pond, the team at Ace Records literally has the entire map of the U.S. covered when it comes to celebrating classic soul sounds. Among the numerous titles recently issued by the Ace family are three geographically-attuned sets sure to pique your ears and interest. Ace's journey begins in the American northeast, and specifically in New York City, with a second volume of Manhattan Soul. Like the first volume in the series, it's drawn from the considerable
In The Shadow of The Shadows: Songwriter Jerry Lordan Remembered on "All My Own Work"
Just who the heck was Jerry Lordan anyway? The English singer, songwriter, actor and comedian (1934-1995) provided hit records for Dale Hawkins, Anthony Newley, The Shadows and Jet Harris, but Lordan has never gotten his due in the CD era. Because most of his work came in the pre-Beatles era of British pop, too many of Jerry Lordan's songs are all but forgotten. RPM Records, an imprint of Cherry Red, has come to right that wrong with the comprehensive All My Own Work, combining Lordan's
Compilation Watch: Best-Ofs Planned for Whitney Houston, Kelly Clarkson
Next month - the all-important Christmas shopping season - sees two compilations from two immensely popular singers from the RCA roster with unmistakable voices. The label will release new compilations in the same week for departed R&B legend Whitney Houston and American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson - the latter of whom definitely owes more than a little of her style to the former. I Will Always Love You: The Best of Whitney Houston marks a few firsts in Whitney's catalogue: it's her
Review: The Beach Boys Remasters, Part Two: The Album-by-Album Guide
It’s about time now! Don’t you know now? It’s about time we get together to be out front and love one another… - Dennis Wilson, Carl Wilson, Bob Burchman and Al Jardine (1970) Isn’t it time we danced the night away? How about doing it just like yesterday? - Brian Wilson, Joe Thomas, Jim Peterik, Larry Millas and Mike Love (2012) No, Mike Love didn’t fire Brian Wilson from The Beach Boys. But that didn’t stop the Beach Boys’ leader, producer and chief songwriter from telling The Los
The Fruits of Another: Paul Carrack's Career Anthologized on Triple-Disc "Collected"
Like some sort of blue-eyed soul version of Zelig, Paul Carrack has been a fixture of British rock for decades. As frontman of pub-rock Ace, he took "How Long" to the U.K. Top 20 and to No. 3 on Billboard's U.S. chart. He joined Roxy Music for their reunion album Manifesto in 1979, then sang and played keyboards for Squeeze on their iconic East Side Story album in 1981, which yielded the unforgettable "Tempted." Even while eking out a solo career post-Squeeze (enjoying U.S. hits with "Don't
Do The (Salsoul) Hustle: Big Break Celebrates Salsoul Records Legacy with Four Reissues
By 1975, Philadelphia soul had become too big even for the City of Brotherly Love. In the first half of the decade, Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff had, along with the third member of their Mighty Three, Thom Bell, reinvented the sound of soul music. The Pennsylvania city had become synonymous with sweeping strings, punchy horns and the hi-hat cymbal of drummer Earl Young, offering up music that could be dramatic, sweet and funky, sometimes all within the same three-minute song! Bell had long
Review: Old 97's, "Too Far to Care: Expanded Edition"
Was it rock and roll? Was it country and western? By 1997, Rhett Miller and his Old 97’s were, well, Too Far to Care. As Miller recalls in his liner notes to Omnivore Recordings’ new 2-CD expanded edition of the band’s seminal third album (OVCD-45, 2012), his “little band from Texas…had only recently gotten folks to stop referring to their particular brand of music as ‘rockabilly.’” The Old 97’s were subject to a major label bidding war in which Elektra Records proved victorious, giving the
Review: The Beatles, "Magical Mystery Tour" on Blu-ray and DVD
“Paul said ‘Look I’ve got this idea’ and we said ‘great!’ and all he had was this circle and a little dot on the top – that’s where we started,” Ringo Starr recalls in one of the special features included on Apple’s new DVD and Blu-ray of The Beatles’ 1967 BBC television film Magical Mystery Tour. That McCartney-drawn circle, later transformed into a pie chart, is included in the accompanying booklet. It epitomizes the loose, freewheeling nature of this largely improvised musical journey
Review: Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb, "In Session"
What drew together the son of a sharecropper from Delight, Arkansas and the minister’s boy from Eld City, Oklahoma? They were separated by a decade; one conservative, one liberal; one singer, one songwriter; one an establishment country star, the other a long-haired pop wunderkind – the paths of Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb first crossed when Campbell chose to record Webb’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” in 1967. The Oklahoma kid had written the song as a young staff songwriter at Motown’s
Bikini Kill to Reissue Debut EP, Archival Campaign Planned
Here's something to add to the growing pile of '90s reissue nostalgia: riot-grrl rock act Bikini Kill, who announced earlier this year the acquisition of their own back catalogue, is prepping the first physical reissue from that discography: a 20th anniversary edition of their debut EP. From 1990 to 1997, Bikini Kill were at the forefront of a punk movement that saw empowered women expressing their views through good old-fashioned rock and roll. Singer/songwriter Kathleen Hanna, guitarist Billy
Take the Power Back: 20 Years of Rage Against the Machine Celebrated on "XX"
When current Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan earlier this year listed Rage Against the Machine among his favorite bands, more than a few eyebrows were raised, including those of the rap-rock-metal band’s guitarist, Tom Morello. In a withering op-ed piece for Rolling Stone, Morello cited Ryan as “the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades,” affirming that “his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is
GRRR! And The Stones Keep On Rolling with Career-Spanning Box Set, All-New Songs [NOW WITH TRACK LISTING]
When the Rolling Stones kick a celebration into high gear, they're not kidding. Hot on the heels of various and sundry documentaries, DVDs, Blu-rays and luxury vinyl box sets, the world's greatest rock and roll band has just announced its first-ever compilation-styled career-spanning box set. GRRR! is a joint project of ABKCO and Universal Music Group, and it's slated to arrive on November 13 in the U.S. and one day earlier in all other territories. The new set is more comprehensive than the
White Light/White Heat: Sundazed Preps Velvet Underground Vinyl Box with Rare "1969" LP
The Velvet Underground is going back to mono, thanks to the Sundazed label. On October 30, the seminal underground rock band’s first three albums will get the deluxe box set treatment in their original mono versions. But that’s not all. The Verve/MGM Albums will also include the mono version of Nico’s 1967 solo debut Chelsea Girl (featuring the Velvets’ Lou Reed, John Cale and Sterling Morrison) as well as what the label is billing as “the definitive version of the band’s unfinished fourth
Review: The Beach Boys Remasters, Part One: "50 Big Ones: Greatest Hits"
We’re continuing our series of in-depth features dedicated to America’s band, The Beach Boys, and the various projects that have kept the group occupied throughout 2012! Today, as the Boys launch a new series of album reissues and compilation titles, we explore Greatest Hits, 50 Big Ones and more! It was the headline heard the world (wide web) over: Mike Love Fires Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. Of course, it wasn’t true. No matter, though: suddenly, good, good, good vibrations were
Review: Steve Winwood, "Arc of a Diver: Deluxe Edition"
Steve Winwood turned 32 in 1980, a grand old man by rock and roll standards. He was already a veteran, having played with the Spencer Davis Group, Blind Faith and perhaps most notably, Traffic, but a 1977 solo debut failed to yield significant commercial gains. “I suppose I’ve always been a band leader, rather than a virtuoso like [Blind Faith bandmate] Eric Clapton,” Winwood once mused. So it might have come as a shock to many when the inner virtuoso emerged on New Year’s Eve, 1980, with the
The One and Only: Salvo Expands Kirsty MacColl's Catalogue
This week, Salvo Records takes a big step in getting people to stop saying they don't know about the late, famed British singer/songwriter Kirsty MacColl, by releasing new remastered and expanded editions of four of her albums. The reissue campaign, titled Kirsty MacColl: The One and Only, happens in honor of what would have been MacColl's 53rd birthday. Salvo has prepped double-disc expansions of her albums Kite (1989), Electric Landlady (1991) and Titanic Days (1993), as well as the
7Ts Wakes Up in Love This Morning with David Cassidy Reissues; Beach Boys Among Guests
David Cassidy sure is getting a lot of love on both sides of the Atlantic. Almost simultaneously, reissue campaigns for the singer, actor and former teen idol were launched in the U.S. by Real Gone Music and in the U.K. by Cherry Red's 7Ts imprint. The former label has already reissued 1974's Cassidy Live!, 1976's Gettin' It in the Street, and 1985's Romance. 7Ts began its own campaign with a two-fer of Cherish and Rock Me Baby (both from 1972) and is continuing chronologically with four
"Mellon Collie" to Get More Infinite on Six-Disc Deluxe Set
Iconoclastic Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, never one for subtlety or restraint, is continuing the ongoing Smashing Pumpkins reissue campaign this holiday season with a humongous six-disc edition of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The Pumpkins' most ambitious project at the time, the double-album Mellon Collie was described by Corgan as "The Wall for Generation X." Produced Corgan with Flood and Alan Moulder, Mellon Collie attempted to showcase the band closer to how they were
New Box Set Spotlights 10cc and the Things They Did for Love
10cc: smooth rock pioneers? Irreverent architects of "art for art's sake"? The debate continues this year with the U.K.'s first-ever career-spanning 10cc box set, Tenology, to be released by Universal in November. The group U.S. audiences know best for the immaculately-crafted "I'm Not in Love" and "The Things We Do for Love" are only seeing half the picture: singers/songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman, who were responsible for the poppier songs in the 10cc
Certified Honey: Donny and Marie, Mungo Jerry Get "Singles Collection" Treatment from 7Ts, Osmonds Go "Around the World"
If you’re looking for a little bit country, a little bit rock-and-roll, Cherry Red’s 7Ts Records has got three new releases just for you! The seventies preservationists have unleashed two complete singles anthologies: Donny and Marie Osmond’s The Singles Collection, spanning the period 1974-1978, and Mungo Jerry’s The Dawn Singles Collection, drawing on the period spent at Pye Records subsidiary Dawn between 1970 and 1974. In addition, the Osmonds' Around the World: Live in Concert (1975) gets
It's The Falling In Love: Raven Reissues The Complete Carole Bayer Sager Albums; Bacharach, Jackson, Diamond, Midler Guest
Carole Bayer Sager knew "that's what friends are for" long before she wrote the song of the same name. The former Carole Bayer was already a hitmaking lyricist before graduating high school, thanks to the Mindbenders' No. 2 hit "A Groovy Kind of Love." The song was written by Bayer and Toni Wine before both women hit the ripe old age of 18. Following more hit tunes with the likes of the Monkees and Neil Sedaka, and even a Broadway musical (1970's Georgy, with music by George Fischoff), she
"Hats" Off (Sort of) to Two Expansions of Blue Nile LPs
If you've been waiting for expanded remasters from Scottish alternative band The Blue Nile, congratulations! Also, sorry to bear some bad news. The Blue Nile, a trio consisting of non-traditional musicians Paul Buchanan (vocals/guitar/synthesizers), Robert Bell (bass) and Paul Joseph Moore (synthesizers), have an origin story almost as unusual as their musical direction. The group formed their own label, Peppermint Records, to distribute debut single "I Love This Life" in 1981; eventually, RSO
Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be: Archival Releases Set from Judy Garland, Anthony Newley, Lionel Bart
Now that’s entertainment. Thanks to the efforts of some dedicated reissue specialists in the U.K., some legendary artists – one performer (the performer?), one performing songwriter, and one songwriter – are soon receiving deluxe sets truly capturing an era gone by. On October 9, Sepia Records will release The Genius of Lionel Bart, a 3-CD set authorized by the Lionel Bart Foundation consisting of hits, misses and everything in between from the Oliver! creator (including unreleased material
Born on the Bayou: "Ultimate Collection" Compiles Live, Studio Creedence Clearwater Revival
With just seven albums released over a four-year period between 1968 and 1972, Creedence Clearwater Revival managed to tap into the roots of rock and roll with songs like “Down on the Corner,” “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Have You Ever Seen the Rain,” Fortunate Son,” and of course, “Proud Mary.” All of those songs, and more, will be appearing on CCR’s 3-CD set Ultimate Creedence Clearwater Revival: Greatest Hits & All-Time Classics, due on November 6 from Fantasy
The Second Disc Interview: Keeping the Beat with Gerry Galipault of Pause & Play!
He's humbly suggested he's doing his part to save the music business, but Gerry Galipault is doing something even more important: keeping it fun. On this date 15 years ago, Galipault started Pauseandplay, a simple-but-effective online resource for just about any music release - physical or digital; brand-new or catalogue; vinyl or DVD - that you could dream of. Coupling a tireless work ethic (the result of years of work in the journalism field) with a unique, positive voice, Pauseandplay -
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