The music business has always had a funny way of turning artists into overnight sensations. But although The O’Jays achieved widespread fame on the Philadelphia International label with 1972’s one-two punch of “Back Stabbers” and “Love Train,” the group hardly broke through overnight. As the Mascots, the Ohio natives recorded their first single in 1960. As the O’Jays (named after their manager, Cleveland DJ Eddie O’Jay), they recorded for the Daco, Apollo and Little Star labels. It was
Bellamy Brothers Release Box Set Through Reader's Digest
Country-pop crossovers The Bellamy Brothers are releasing a box set through Reader's Digest, collating four discs' worth of hits with rare and new tracks. Howard and David Bellamy, self-taught brothers from Florida who enjoyed mixing traditional country sounds with rock/pop influences, first enjoyed success behind the scenes of the music industry. David wrote Top 5 country hit "Spiders and Snakes" for Jim Stafford, while Howard became his road manager. (Trivia alert: Stafford's previous manager
Trans-New York Express: Kraftwerk Box Makes Appearance at MoMA Exhibit
If you're one of the lucky few attending Kraftwerk's sold-out week of concerts at New York's Museum of Modern Art beginning this Tuesday, keep an eye out for a reissue of the band's much-coveted The Catalogue box set to be sold at the gigs. The influential German electronic band's exhibit, Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, will feature, over eight nights, the group performing one album in full each night (from 1974's Autobahn to 2003's Tour de France Soundtracks), augmented with additional
Just The Tracks, Ma'am: Ace Collects "Criminal Records" On New Compilation
Long before CSI, there was Dragnet. The granddaddy of the television procedural drama, Dragnet actually began on radio in 1949, moving to television in 1951, where it has remained a staple ever since in both repeats and revivals. So it’s appropriate that the ominous theme to Dragnet both opens and closes Ace’s rip-roaring new compilation, Criminal Records, subtitled “Law, Disorder and the Pursuit of Vinyl Justice.” Between Ray Anthony’s treatment of that famous theme and Stan Freberg’s
California Feelin': The Beach Boys' Al Jardine Reissues and Expands "Postcard From California"
Dennis Wilson did it in 1977. Carl Wilson did it in 1981. So did Mike Love. Brian Wilson waited until 1988. But it wasn't until 2010 that Al Jardine released his first solo studio album. Entitled A Postcard from California, Jardine had to content himself with a limited release via Amazon's MOD (Made on Demand) system. Now, with the surviving Beach Boys reuniting for a hotly-anticipated 50th anniversary tour beginning later this month and gearing up for the band's first studio album since
Something Special, Something Pure: Howard Jones Announces Final Warner Remasters Box Set
Howard Jones brings his Warner remaster series to a close with a massive five-disc box set to be released next week. Jones' Dtox label, in agreement with Rhino Records, has licensed and remastered Jones One to One (1986), Cross That Line (1989) and In the Running (1992) to be released as one box set with two bonus discs of bonus material. After a whirlwind few years that saw him ascend to the top of the British pop scene and perform with luminaries at Live Aid and the Grammy Awards, Howard Jones
Essentially Repackaged: Legacy Reissues Double-Disc Compilations Under New Names
There's something familiar about many of Legacy's new entries in their ongoing The Essential series hitting stores in April and May. Of the four double-disc compilations - one for prog-rock masters Blue Öyster Cult, one apiece for country stars Alan Jackson and Brooks & Dunn and one for pop chanteuse Mariah Carey - three have already been reissued under different names. The country ones are repackages of each performer's latest hits set (Jackson's 2010 contract-closing 34 Number One Hits
Rolling Stones Flash Back To 1975 With New Archive Release "LA Friday"
Since inaugurating the digital-only Stones Archive in late 2011 with the release of 1973’s The Brussels Affair, The Rolling Stones have made good on their promise to rescue never-before-available concerts and make them available to the public in higher quality than previous bootleg editions. The new LA Friday follows the late January release of Hampton Coliseum: Live 1981, which preserved a show from Hampton, Virginia. LA Friday was recorded on July 13, 1975 at the venue known as The Forum.
Satchmo's Final Recordings to Be Released by Smithsonian
More than 40 years after his passing, one of the final recordings of jazz legend Louis Armstrong is coming to CD from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Satchmo at the National Press Club: Red Beans and Rice-ly Yours presents Armstrong's five-song set given before members of the National Press Club at a black-tie gala honoring the inauguration of club president Vernon Louviere, who, like Armstrong, was a native of Louisiana. The biggest surprise to the audience was Pops' bringing his trusty horn
EMI Releases Second Budget Box by UFO
UFO are getting their second budget box set from EMI in the U.K., covering the band's work in the '80s on Chrysalis Records. A follow-up to last year's budget set from the label, The Chrysalis Years Volume 2 follows the hard-rocking band through several periods of transition. In 1978, virtuosic guitarist Michael Schenker, formerly of Scorpions, left the band, to be replaced by Paul "Tonka" Chapman, the band's guitarist from 1974 to 1975. (This was far from the only lineup change through the
Review: Johnny Cash, "Bootleg IV: The Soul of Truth"
“John, let’s do a shot for the warden,” photographer Jim Marshall reportedly implored Johnny Cash during the singer’s 1969 performance at San Quentin Prison. Cash’s snarling response, with his middle finger in air, made for one of the most famous music photographs of all time. Cropping up on T-shirts, posters and the like, Marshall captured the outlaw side of Johnny Cash like no photographer before or since. Though it might have, indeed, been worth a thousand words, the image still only
Happy Birthday, Doris Day! Screen Legend Celebrated With "Ultimate Collection" and TCM "Smile and a Song"
Doris Day made quite a splash in 2011 when My Heart, her first album of primarily original material in some seventeen years, entered the British album charts with a Top 10 placement. The singer, actress and animal rights activist turns 88 today, April 3. Day remains greatly beloved around the world, and our coverage of My Heart quickly became one of The Second Disc’s most-visited articles since our inception in January 2010. Now, two new releases are looking back on her rich musical legacy.
Release Round-Up: Week of April 3
Johnny Cash, Bootleg IV: The Soul of Truth (Columbia/Legacy) Three complete gospel albums - one of which was never released - and a heap of unreleased material make this one to look out for if you like The Man in Black at his sacred best. Morrissey, Viva Hate: Deluxe Edition (Liberty/EMI) If you can call it that, an expanded edition of Moz's debut album, remastered with one bonus track, one edited track and one excised track. Elvis Costello & The Imposters, The Return of the
Barenaked Rarities Arriving in May
Canadian rockers Barenaked Ladies are releasing a compilation of outtakes and rarities that, fortunately, more or less lives up to the title. Stop Us If You've Heard This One Before!, a counterpoint to last year's Hits from Yesterday and the Day Before, features 12 tracks, only two of which have ever seen the official light of day. (Those tracks are a remix of megahit "One Week" and "Yes, Yes, Yes," a bonus track on some versions of the band's 2003 album Everything to Everyone.) The remainder
Just The Way He Is: Starbucks Brews Billy Joel "Opus Collection"
Though Billy Joel retired from the business of writing and recording new pop music in 1993 following his River of Dreams, and has largely kept his word in the ensuing almost-twenty years, the music legend has hardly lowered his profile. Since River of Dreams, Joel, now 62, has written an album’s worth of classical compositions, overseen a hit Broadway musical, staged lucrative tours and issued numerous live albums and career-overview collections. As recently as last week, Joel’s catalogue was
Shining Like a "Ruby": Kaiser Chiefs to Release New Compilation
Indie rockers the Kaiser Chiefs are set to release their first career-spanning collection, Souvenir: The Singles 2004-2012, this summer. The Leeds-based quintet formed in 1996 under the name Parva, and released one album on Beggars Banquet's short-lived Mantra label. After their label shuttered, they rebuilt from the ground up, writing new, New Wave and punk-inspired songs under the Kaiser Chiefs moniker (named for the South African football club). Their buzzworthy live sets got them a deal
Uncanned: Legendary Krautrock Band to Release Box of Unreleased Songs
Notable German rockers Can are releasing 30 unreleased tracks in a new box set coming this June from Mute Records. The Lost Tapes, co-curated by founding band member Irmin Schmidt, draws from over 30 hours of uncovered tapes that lay hidden in the band's studio in Weilerswist, discovered when the studio and all its possessions was sold to the German Rock N Pop Museum. Best of all for collectors, the tracks, spanning through the band's classic period from 1968 to 1977, are all entirely
My Huckleberry Friend: El Records Offers Variations on Mancini's "Moon River and Me"
Quick - think of your favorite Blake Edwards movie. Okay, now be honest: when conjuring up an image of one of Edwards' signature comic set pieces, didn't you automatically start hearing a famous theme? If you did, chances are it was composed by Henry Mancini. Edwards and Mancini worked hand in hand for some 30 projects over a 35-year period, from 1958's groundbreaking television series Peter Gunn through 1993's Son of the Pink Panther, Edwards' final motion picture. One of the most cherished
The Road to Tarkio: Brewer and Shipley's Debut "Down in L.A." Remastered and Expanded By Now Sounds
Oklahoma-born Michael Brewer and Ohio native Tom Shipley found fame on Missouri's mythical Tarkio Road, thousands of miles away from Hollywood's La Brea Avenue and the headquarters of A&M Records. But before they took one pivotal toke over the line into stardom, Brewer and Shipley recorded an album for Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss' label that couldn't have been recorded at any other time and place than Los Angeles, circa 1967-1968. Down in L.A. was almost entirely written by Brewer and
All Around the World, Or the Myth of "Graceland" Revisited: 25th Anniversary Box Set Due in June
Paul Simon was back. With a vengeance. The sixties wunderkind and one-half of Simon and Garfunkel had greeted the 1980s uneasily. The film One-Trick Pony, for which he served as writer, star and composer in 1980, was tepidly-received. An underperforming LP (Hearts and Bones) followed in 1983, his first solo album since 1965 not to hit the Billboard Top 10. It peaked at No. 35. Simon’s biggest success of the first half of the decade was a headline-making reunion concert with his old friend
Sweet As Sugar: Bob Mould's Other Trio Gets Expanded Treatment
While Bob Mould has gained rock immortality as one third of the criminally underrated alt-rock outfit Hüsker Dü, his work as frontman for alt-rockers Sugar in the 1990s deserves its own recognition. In May and June, the hard workers at Demon/Edsel will give Sugar its due in the form of expanded, remastered editions of their entire catalogue. After the split of Hüsker Dü in 1988, Mould locked himself away in a Minnesota farmhouse, attempting to write new material and purge himself of the
Bring Back That Lovin' Feelin': Righteous Brothers' Philles Albums Arrive on CD...In Japan!
It’s time to get Righteous…at least if you’re in Japan, that is, or willing to shell out big bucks from an import retailer. Though they have eluded U.S. CD release to date, The Righteous Brothers’ three long-players from Phil Spector’s Philles label will be reissued on April 3 as limited edition SHM-CDs from Universal Music Japan. 1965’s You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ and Just Once in My Life, as well as 1966’s Back to Back, are all anchored by key Spector-produced tracks. The remaining
Don't Pass Him By: Get Acquainted With Paul Korda's "Passing Stranger"
If you don’t know the name of Paul Korda, you might have reason to be grateful that the compilers at RPM Records do! Korda’s story is one dotted with familiar personages: P.P. Arnold, Roger Daltrey, Chris Spedding, Madeline Bell, Doris Troy, Andrew Loog Oldham, Onnie McIntyre and Alan Gorrie (Average White Band), Vic Smith (The Jam) on the musical side, Cat Stevens and even Johnny Depp on the personal side. Korda’s career has taken him from the original West End cast of Hair (alongside Paul
Brave New World: Catalogue Labels Take to Spotify for Featured Content
When it first launched in America in November of last year, Spotify looked like it might be the answer to the question of how to move music consumption into the digital frontier in a positive way. It's no secret the music industry has been crippled by technological advances labels were unfortunately not able to predict or adapt to very quickly, and it's thrown the nature of buying, collecting and immersing oneself into music the way we once did into question. But Spotify's model - where, either
Behind That Locked Door: George Harrison Demos Surface on "Early Takes Volume 1"
As if yesterday's announcement of Paul McCartney's reissue plans for Ram wasn't enough... Martin Scorsese's documentary Living in the Material World, exploring the life and legacy of George Harrison, premiered in October 2011, broadcast in the United States on HBO. Roger Ebert wrote of the film, "Scorsese has accomplished the best documentary that is probably possible," noting that the film is a "more objective, less personal documentary than Scorsese usually makes." Todd McCarthy in The
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