If you do as Replacements frontman Paul Westerberg says and "never travel far without a little Big Star," some new products related to the legendarily underrated Memphis rockers may find a place on your shelves. Concord Bicycle Music recently announced the springtime release of Thank You, Friends: Big Star's Third Live...and More. This exciting set pays tribute to the legendary power pop band's "lost" third album, recorded in 1974 but shelved until 1978, after the band broke up. In 2010,
That chill in the air and the buzz in your favorite record store can only mean one thing: Record Store Day Black Friday is nearly upon us! On November 25, indie record retailers and labels great and small will partner together to issue dozens of exclusive packages you can't get anywhere else (except maybe eBay, after the fact, though we're not happy about that.) The vinyl boom refuses to end, but owing to the lesser size of the event in general, there don't seem to be as many titles as usual.
Will the real Big Star’s Third please stand up? That’s a loaded question, for it’s possible that there never, in fact, was a “real” version of the album recorded at Memphis’ Ardent Studios in 1974 by Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens with producer-engineer Jim Dickinson, studio owner John Fry and engineer Richard Rosebrough. Chilton even asserted numerous times that the sessions were never intended to yield a Big Star album at all. (One potential name for the duo of Chilton and Stephens was
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Big Star, Complete Third (Omnivore Recordings) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Omnivore does an in-depth vault dive into the creation of Big Star's Third for a new 3-CD box set. Complete Third includes every demo, rough mix, outtake, alternate take and final master from the Third sessions known to exist. The 69 tracks on this set represent the culmination of a decade-long search to assemble all extant recordings for the album
Omnivore Recordings has kept the legend of Big Star alive with a number of projects over the years including the release of frontman Alex Chilton's Free Again: The 1970 Sessions, the soundtrack to the acclaimed documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, and Big Star: Live in Memphis. Now, the label has turned its attention to its most expansive Big Star release yet: a definitive look into the making of the band's third album. The 3-CD collection Complete Third, due on October 14, includes
Tomorrow, Saturday, April 16, music fans and collectors will flock to their local independent record stores worldwide to celebrate both the sounds on those familiar round black platters and the cherished opportunity to shop for music in a physical retail environment. To many of us, both are a way of life. Each year around this time, we here at Second Disc HQ take a few moments to count down the titles to which we're most looking forward to picking up! Our very own Mike Duquette kicks things
Record Store Day is coming up in a little more than a month, on Saturday, April 16, and the titles are starting to pour in for the annual celebration of brick-and-mortar record stores. Today, Legacy Recordings has just announced its slate! It's a typically eclectic line-up of vinyl releases from some of the label's heaviest hitters from rock-and-roll, country, jazz, and beyond, including Elvis Presley, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Big Star and many more! Big Star - Complete
From all of us here at Second Disc HQ to all of you, we hope you're enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving in the company of family and friends. Of course, from this day which conjures nostalgic and warm feelings comes a celebration of a different kind with this year's annual Black Friday - the day for consumers to start off the holiday shopping season on a mad, frenetic note. But 2015 is just in the latest year in which numerous retailers in the U.S. have made headlines by blackening Thursday, or
Omnivore Recordings is looking ahead to this year's annual Black Friday Record Store Day event on Friday, November 27, with the announcement of two special vinyl releases. The first continues in the tradition of Omnivore's Big Star releases. The RSD 10-inch EP of Jesus Christ features the original album version of the song recorded for the band's Third plus the demo version (which first appeared on the acclaimed Keep an Eye on the Sky box set) and five previously unissued tracks, for a total
For Alex Chilton, coping with the legacy of The Box Tops wasn’t always easy. As the band’s frontman – and future cult hero as leader of Big Star – once ruminated to the San Francisco Chronicle, “I guess my life has been a series of flukes in the record business. The first thing I ever did was the biggest record that I’ll ever have.” He was, of course, speaking of “The Letter,” the Wayne Carson Thompson song that opens Raven Records’ new 2-CD collection The Original Albums 1967-1969 containing
Welcome to Part One of our two-part review round-up featuring some of Omnivore Recordings’ releases from late 2014! Just when one thinks the Big Star well has run dry, Omnivore Recordings surprises with a treat of the magnitude of Live in Memphis (OVCD-107). On October 29, 1994 at Memphis’ New Daisy Theatre, Big Star founding members Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens, were joined by Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of The Posies for an overflowing set of Big Star classics and covers in front of an
Bob Dylan, The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete and Raw (Columbia/Legacy) At long last, here are the complete and unexpurgated Basement Tapes - 6 discs and over 140 songs recorded in the creatively fertile days of 1967 and 1968 by Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Levon Helm. Quite simply, this treasure trove of Americana may well be the Catalogue Music Event of the Year. Complete: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. Raw: CD: Amazon
Our mini-Power Pop Festival begins here! Next, look for our reviews of new reissues from The Posies and Game Theory! O My Soul! Big Star is back! Despite an amazingly small catalogue – four studio albums, a handful of live releases, an even bigger handful of compilations, a key soundtrack, and one stunning box set – there never seems to be a shortage of releases for the biggest band that never was. Two of the most recent have arrived from Stax Records and Concord Music Group, and they’re
Omnivore Recordings is greeting autumn with projects from a couple of, well, big artists. By big, we mean perhaps the biggest cult band of all time – Big Star – and if that’s not big enough, how about the drummer from one of the biggest rock bands in the world? As in, Roger Taylor of Queen? On October 27, Omnivore will issue the first-ever retrospective of Taylor’s solo work in anticipation of the November 11 U.S. release of his complete, all-encompassing solo box set, The Lot. On November 4,
Willie Hutch, In Tune (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) / Willie Hutch, Midnight Dancer (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) / Esther Phillips, Alone Again, Naturally (Expanded Edition) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. ) /Ullanda McCullough, Ullanda McCullough/Watching You, Watching Me (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) / Ray Griff, The Entertainer – Greatest U.S. & Canadian Hits (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) / Rick Wakeman, Rick Wakeman’s Criminal Record (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) / The Ides of March, Vehicle (Expanded
For years, fans of power pop have had their Magna Carta of a CD: Fantasy Records' two-fer of Big Star's #1 Record and Radio City, the primary records issued by the legendary Memphis band. On September 2, that configuration changes with the release of both albums newly remastered on individual discs. Both albums will be newly remastered from the original analog tapes (approved by original engineer/Ardent Records founder John Fry and allowing for Mastered for iTunes/24-bit hi-res downloads) and
Last week Omnivore Recordings announced their latest title for the late summer: an expansion of the debut album by power-pop idols The Posies. The Washington-based group, built around singers/songwriters/guitarists Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow, earned immediate indie acclaim when first album Failure was released on the PopLlama label in 1988 after Scott McCaughey - leader of The Minus 5 and a constant collaborator with R.E.M. since the mid-1990s - was given a self-released copy of the album on
The Animals, The Mickie Most Years and More / Tower of Power, Hipper Than Hip: Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow – Live on the Air & in the Studio 1974 / Lisa Fischer, So Intense / The Alabama State Troupers, Road Show / The Obsessed, The Church Within (Real Gone Music)An Animals box set and a compilation of unreleased Tower of Power greatness head off Real Gone's slate for the end of the year!The Animals: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.Tower of Power: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.Lisa Fischer: Amazon
The recent release of Alex Chilton's Electricity by Candlelight on Bar/None Records turns a "you had to be there" moment into a "you are there moment." The late, great singer/songwriter and Big Star frontman took a major setback - a sudden power outage between two sets at New York City's Knitting Factory in 1997 - and spun it into a most magical listening experience: Chilton picked up an acoustic guitar and regaled a small audience with a clutch of covers, from standards ("My Baby Just Cares for
On November 26, the Memphis boys of Big Star will be back “In the Street” – and on store shelves. On that date, Magnolia Home Entertainment releases the acclaimed documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me on DVD and Blu-ray, and Sony’s Legacy Recordings unleashes Playlist: The Very Best of Big Star. Reviewing Omnivore Recordings’ soundtrack to the film, we wrote, “Rare is the cult band that actually lives up to its legend. Yet, with each listen – time after time, year after year – Big Star
The feature-length documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me opens today at New York’s IFC Center and on Friday at Los Angeles’ Nuart Theatre. In conjunction with its release, Omnivore Recordings has recently unveiled a soundtrack album collecting 21 previously unissued songs from the legendary Memphis band. Rare is the cult band that actually lives up to its legend. Yet, with each listen - time after time, year after year - Big Star not only meets the hype, but surpasses it. Chances are, if
The Beatles, Help! (Blu-Ray Disc) (Capitol/Apple) The Fab Four's second film gets the hi-def disc treatment. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) The Three O'Clock, The Hidden World Revealed (Omnivore) Early works by power-pop legends The Three O'Clock shine on this new compilation, featuring cuts from their early works on Frontier Records and 10 unreleased tracks. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Omnivore) Released on
When Magnolia Pictures releases the documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me to cinemas, On Demand and iTunes on July 3, it will be the culmination of a years-in-the-making adventure to bring the story of Alex Chilton, Chris Bell, Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel’s band to the big screen. The commercial impact of Big Star was as minimal as its influence over an entire generation of musicians was enormous, but the legacy of the power pop heroes still blazes brightly today. Following the 2009
CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNER, PETE BILDERBACK!
Raise your hand if you’ll be joining 2013 Ambassador Jack White tomorrow to celebrate Record Store Day 2013! Yes, on Saturday, April 20, independent record stores everywhere will offer an eclectic roster of limited edition releases of all kinds – most on vinyl, but some on CD, too. As usual, the labels participating in RSD ’13 have a number of surprises on the way, previewing future releases, revisiting past titles and even curating completely new packages. As is our tradition here, we’re