Start saving your pennies now. In an eye-opening move, audiophile specialty label Mobile Fidelity has announced a massive slate of releases across the CD, SACD and LP formats scheduled for 2011. Longtime collectors of audiophile masterings may get a thrill at seeing the “Original Master Recording” banner above the works of classic artists ranging from Tony Bennett and Ray Charles to Carole King and James Taylor. While this writer has some quibbles (why no CDs or SACDs for Bennett, Frank
Bruce Springsteen, The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story (Columbia/Legacy) Bruuuuuuuuce celebrates one of his most acclaimed albums in a big way. Darkness will be augmented with two discs' worth of outtakes and three(!) DVDs, including the new making-of documentary The Promise. (The outtakes are available as their own double-disc set as well.) (Official site) Jimi Hendrix, West Coast Seattle Boy: The Jimi Hendrix Anthology / BBC Sessions / Live at Woodstock / Blues / Merry
It's no surprise that Legacy's intention to reissue the Billy Joel catalogue in 2011 has been met with a lot of enthusiasm and expectation. For better or worse, Joel has been one of the most intriguing artists in the American rock canon: he found success writing deceptively traditional pop songs in an AOR era, he performed them from behind a piano, he used that talent to springboard a relationship with one of the hottest supermodels in recorded history and - unlike nearly all of his
It's true: that upcoming Billy Joel compilation is indeed the tip of the iceberg. Legacy issued a press release late last night promising to burst open the floodgates of Billy Joel catalogue material in 2011. The Hits, the first single-disc compilation of the Piano Man's music, kicks things off, followed by a dozen songs being made available for download on the upcoming Rock Band 3 video game. But next year? The press release promises a live release of the Shea Stadium concerts documented in
It's hard to believe The Second Disc has never done an ongoing round-up of all the reissues, remasters, compilations and box sets. (Perhaps it felt redundant? Everyone does it.) But sometimes there's just so much stuff to consider - especially with the holiday season fast approaching - so it's time to jump on the bandwagon and give you, the treasured reader, a comprehensive list of what's coming out in the catalogue world this week. The Beatles, The Beatles 1962-1966/ The Beatles 1967-1970
One might think nothing of MusicTAP's recent listing of The Very Best of Billy Joel as coming from Legacy on November 9. The Long Island native has been compiled a lot - his first, double-sized greatest-hits compilation in 1985, a third volume in 1997, an entry in Legacy's Essential series and so on. Call it a hunch, but this author thinks there might be something to this set. For one, Amazon's list price for the compilation is $9.99, suggesting a single-disc set...and when you think about it,
With the fall officially underway, we’re now in the busiest time of the year for the music biz, and as this week hits its halfway point, we’re here to offer a few announcements you might have missed. Audio Fidelity offers on November 2 a 24K Gold CD version of James Taylor’s seminal 1972 album originally released on Warner Bros. Records, One Man Dog. Remastered by audio guru Steve Hoffman, One Man Dog has among its highlights the now-standard “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight.” One Man Dog joins
Some of rock’s finest will be receiving the deluxe treatment from audiophile specialist labels Audio Fidelity and Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MFSL) in the coming months: The Beach Boys, The Band, Gram Parsons, Deep Purple, Foreigner, The Pretenders and Billy Joel. The earliest release in this bunch is also one of the most exciting. The Beach Boys' Today! was released in 1965 and is generally remembered as one of the first albums on which Brian Wilson displayed the sensitive studio wizardry that
I've been listening to Pet Sounds a lot lately. Maybe it's the dreary weather; whenever I put on some Beach Boys things feel a bit sunnier. But it's a heck of a record (as I'm sure most of you know) - one of those rarified few that's hard to chop down entirely. It's also fascinating that it's one on a rather short list of pop albums that have supported its own box set. The sprawling The Pet Sounds Sessions, released in 1997, chronicles the process of the album through alternate mixes, outtakes,
I'm not a betting man, but if I were, I'd bet that there are two big questions that reissue producers and catalogue compilers get from fans. There's "What about a proper reissue/expansion of such-and-such an album?" and "Why did you miss/forget that one track?" I've been thinking about that last query lately - and I'll bet you've thought about it at some point, too. Oh sure, to some of your friends and fellow fans it sounds crazy - why on Earth would someone obsess over one stupid little