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. Today, there's some newer KISS, some obscure Duke Ellington, and a few rare cast albums - plus a way you can help out some writers in need. KISS, Sonic Boom (UMe) (iTunes / Amazon) After a mid-'90s reunion of the classic KISS line-up, the band dynamics began to shift again In the early 21st
For the second volume in its Lost Broadway series of 2-CD sets, the U.K.'s Stage Door Records label has turned its attention to the years 1956 and 1957. Musical hits during the 1956-1957 and 1957-1958 seasons included Bells Are Ringing, Li'l Abner, West Side Story, and The Music Man, but Stage Door's attention doesn't lie with those smashes but rather with the largely-forgotten, but certainly worthy, shows that haven't received nearly as much love over the years. Like the first volume (which
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Janet Jackson, Control: The Remixes (A&M/UMe) CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / uDiscover Store (color variant) Fans looking for some rare or hard-to-find content from Janet Jackson will flip for a new pressing of Control: The Remixes on 2LP and CD. Originally released in Europe and Japan in 1987, this pressing features all the tracks of the former territory's releases
Stage Door Records' five volumes of Lost West End have sampled numerous rare musicals that have played London over the years. Now, the U.K. label is turning its sights across the pond to the Great White Way to launch a new series: Lost Broadway. The first volume focuses on the year 1961, when composer-lyricist Jerry Herman made his Broadway debut with the successful Milk and Honey; some of the brightest stars included Barbara Cook, Jerry Orbach, Elaine Stritch, and Alfred Drake; the venerable
Kritzerland is continuing its long-running series of reissues drawn from Ben Bagley's Painted Smiles archives. The label has just announced new editions of the long out-of-print George Gershwin Revisited and Noel Coward Revisited. George Gershwin Revisited remains one of the starriest releases in the Revisited series, featuring Barbara Cook, Elaine Stritch, Bobby Short, and Anthony Perkins. Keeping with the focus of the series, producer Bagley and musical director-arranger Norman Paris
The Babylove Miracle Show is back in town. Kritzerland has announced the reissue of the 1971 original cast recording of composer Claibe Richardson and lyricist-librettist Kenward Elmslie's The Grass Harp, the cult favorite musical that played seven performances at the Martin Beck Theatre (today, the home of Kinky Boots). Based on the novella and subsequent play by Truman Capote, the musical told the tale of spinster sisters Dolly (Barbara Cook) and Verena (Ruth Ford). Verena becomes
Farewell, Barbara Cook: The legendary original star of Broadway's The Music Man, Candide, and She Loves Me has passed away at the age of 89. Cook's enchantingly pure soprano made her a favorite ingénue of the Broadway stage, and her indelible performances in the above musicals as well as Flahooley, Plain and Fancy, The Gay Life, The Grass Harp, Follies in Concert, and others - including her final Broadway appearance in 2010's Sondheim on Sondheim - are happily preserved on original cast
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! The Bangles, Ladies and Gentlemen...The Bangles! (Omnivore) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Ladies and Gentlemen...The Bangles!, first released digitally in 2014, features all of the band's pre-Columbia studio material, plus four unreleased demos, two live tracks and other odds and ends! It arrives in stores from Omnivore just before Susanna Hoffs, Vicki Peterson and Debbi Peterson hit the road again! Read more here! Laura