In a White Room: Cream’s ‘Wheels of Fire’ Spins Back Into Print As Box Set

Cream’s penultimate album – the 1968 studio/live set Wheels of Fire – will be expanded this summer, offering four unique mixes of the studio disc on two CDs, an expanded concert offering on another two, and a selection of rare and unreleased cuts on a fifth CD. The Wheels of Fire (Super Deluxe Edition) will also be matched by Wheels of Fire: In the Studio, a triple LP set that, true to its name, features the studio material from the 5CD collection. (Wheels of Fire: Live At The Fillmore and Winterland, a triple album collecting the…

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Release Round-Up: Week of November 21

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today!  As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. The Beatles, Anthology Collection (Capitol/Apple/UMe) 8CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Official Store 12LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Official Store The Beatles’ Anthology Collection premieres remastered editions of the original three collections of rarities and outtakes compiled by George Martin and released through 1995 and 1996, available across six CDs or nine LPs. Martin’s son Giles, who remastered those albums for this release, also curates a new collection, Anthology 4, across a further two CDs or…

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The Weekend Stream: August 16, 2025

Welcome to another edition of The Weekend Stream, The Second Disc’s review of notable catalogue titles (and some new ones, too!) making digital debuts. A soft-rock legend says farewell on his own terms, a Broadway star channels one of mid-century pop’s greatest voices, plus everything from video game music to “jazz-tinged” alt-pop oddities is headed your way this week! Stephen Bishop, THIMK (Life’s a Bish) (Apple / Amazon) Stephen Bishop is billing THIMK as his final studio album – a decision he explains in the spoken word track that concludes the set –…

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Another Ticket: Eric Clapton, Roxy Music Classics Come to SHM-CD

And the SHMs just keep on coming! Following batches of Japanese pressings of albums by Paul McCartney, Quincy Jones and Sting, two more classic catalogues from Universal Music Group are getting reissued on the format this summer: the first decade-plus of album by Eric Clapton – available this Friday, July 4 – and five titles from Roxy Music, available later in the month on July 25. Clapton’s discs – 1970’s Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (recorded as part of Derek & The Dominos), his 1970 self-titled album, 1974’s 461 Ocean Boulevard, 1975’s There’s One…

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The Weekend Stream Extra: A Guide to ‘MTV Unplugged’ on Paramount+ (Part 2)

Welcome to a special Sunday feature of The Weekend Stream, which takes a look at one of MTV’s great live music programs thanks to a recent reissue of one of its best-known episodes. We’re running a five-part deep-dive on every episode of MTV Unplugged that’s currently streaming on the station’s parent streaming network Paramount+! (Part 1 can be read here.) The evolution of MTV Unplugged was not unlike that of the network itself. If those first years on the air from 1989 to 1991 were proof of the format’s artistic viability, the episodes recorded…

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Release Round-Up: Week of May 9

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today!  As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Jackie DeShannon, Love Forever: Demo Recordings 1966-1968 (Real Gone Music) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Jackie DeShannon signed with Liberty Records and Metric Music in 1960 as a performer and songwriter.  Her big break would come in 1964 when she would open for The Beatles on their first U.S. tour.  The next year she would record Bacharach and David’s “What the World Needs Now is Love” and her recording…

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Record Store Day 2025: The Best of the Rest

Next Saturday, April 12, is certainly one of the most packed Record Store Days in recent memory. Since the list was announced, we drilled down on titles from Craft Recordings, Legacy Recordings, Rhino Records, Universal Music Group, Real Gone Music, Omnivore Recordings, BMG, Cooking Vinyl and Demon Music Group, as well as some notable titles that were getting later general releases on CD. Well, if you thought that was it, you’re wrong! We pored and pored over the list and are here to share with you more than four dozen one-offs, archival…

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Cuts The Deepest: Edsel Celebrates P.P. Arnold on “Soul Survivor” Box Set

One of P.P. Arnold’s early sides for Immediate Records was titled “Am I Still Dreaming?”  The song, which the artist born Patricia Ann Cole in Los Angeles wrote at the encouragement of none other than Mick Jagger, is one of the 57 songs on 3 CDs assembled by Edsel Records on the dream of a box set appropriately entitled Soul Survivor: A Life in Song.  The collection, compiled by the singer and Michael Mulligan, traces the onetime Ikette’s career from her signing to Andrew Loog Oldham’s label through subsequent collaborations with Barry…

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Running on Faith: Eric Clapton’s ‘Unplugged’ Gets Remixed and Expanded

Eric Clapton’s most transformative late-career work will be itself transformed this spring. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer will reissue an “enhanced” edition of 1992’s live album Unplugged, boasting a slightly reorganized and expanded 2CD or 2LP sequence, a brand-new mix and highlights from a never-before-heard audio interview with Clapton discussing the songs in his set shortly before playing them in that session. It’ll be available May 9 through Surfdog Records, to which Clapton has been signed since 2013. A newly upgraded edition of the seminal MTV Unplugged performance, featuring the…

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Release Round-Up: Week of January 24

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today!  As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Badfinger, Head First: 50th Anniversary Edition (Y&T) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Head First, originally intended to be Badfinger’s eighth album and third for Warner Bros. Records, was recorded in 1974 but shelved until 2000.  That release presented a rough mix by Apple Studios engineer Phil McDonald; now, 25 years later, it’s been remixed and remastered under the supervision of keyboardist Bob Jackson – the…

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Release Round-Up: Week of November 29

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up!  While most labels are concentrating today on Record Store Day’s Black Friday releases, we’ve chosen to spotlight a few non-RSD titles out today, as well.  As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Tommy Steele, On Air (Stage Door Pop) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Stage Door Records’ Pop imprint celebrates The Happiest Millionaire and Half a Sixpence star Tommy Steele with On Air, a collection of 31 tracks culled from his 1964 U.K. radio series The Tommy Steele Show.  None of these tracks have been released since their original broadcast sixty…

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The Weekend Stream: August 10, 2024

Welcome to another edition of The Weekend Stream, The Second Disc’s review of notable catalogue titles (and some new ones, too!) making digital debuts. A legendary classic rock concert is back on digital channels, along with EPs from U2, Madonna and Daryl Hall, a remixed cast album from a beloved musical, and a new record from one of the most underrated bands of the last few decades. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. George Harrison, The Concert for Bangladesh (Apple) (iTunes / Amazon) Finally available digitally in its entirety and around…

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Release Round-Up: Week of July 12

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today!  As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. John Lennon, Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection (Capitol/UMe) 6CD/2BD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 9LP/6CD/2BD Super Deluxe Box: Official Store 2CD (includes contents of CD 1 and 6, below): Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2LP (includes contents of CD 1 and 6, below): Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada (TBD) John Lennon’s fourth solo album Mind Games will receive a deluxe box set this summer packed with new mixes of the album’s contents as well…

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Still on the Line: Ace Collects Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb Collaborations, Glen’s “Ghost on the Canvas” Revisited with All-Star Duets

From the time singer-guitarist Glen Campbell recorded “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” in 1967, he became forever linked with the words and music of Jimmy Layne Webb.  Formerly a staff songwriter for Motown’s Jobete Music arm, Webb had placed songs with big names (The Supremes) and lesser-known talents (Danny Day, The Contessas) when he attracted the ear of Soul City Records’ Johnny Rivers.  The “Poor Side of Town” and “Memphis, Tennessee” singer was the first to release a version of “Phoenix,” on his 1967 album Changes.  Within a year, he…

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Fit for a Queen: Tina Turner’s Singles Feature on New Deluxe Compilation

Even before but especially after her explosive pop comeback in the 1980s, Tina Turner more than earned the mantle of Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll. This fall, a new career-spanning compilation from Rhino will reaffirm that title, with 55 of her singles (and a few rarities) on one album. Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, due November 24, spans Tina’s 1975 cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” – issued on Acid Queen, her second solo album (and last before escaping her physically and emotionally abusive relationship with former husband and creative partner…

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Release Round-Up: Week of June 23

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today. Little Feat, Sailin’ Shoes: Deluxe Edition (Warner/Rhino) 2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 3LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 1972’s Sailin’ Shoes was the second album from the original Little Feat lineup of singer-guitarist Lowell George, drummer Richard Hayward, keyboard player Bill Payne, and bassist Roy Estrada. The LP spawned numerous signature songs which would later be covered by the band’s many fans, including “Sailin’ Shoes” (Van Dyke Parks, Robert Palmer), “Easy to Slip” (Bob Weir, Black Crowes), “A Apolitical Blues” (Van Halen),…

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Wonderful Tonight(s): Eric Clapton Announces ’24 Nights’ Box Set

Like Cheap Trick and Budokan or The Allman Brothers Band and the Beacon Theatre, Eric Clapton has a kind of bond with London’s Royal Albert Hall. He’s played there more than 200 times in the last 60 years – more than any other artist – and condensed two runs of shows at the venue into the live album 24 Nights in 1991, the start of a critical and commercial renaissance for the guitar legend. On June 23, Rhino rolls out a series of products telling an even deeper story of the period…

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Vinyl Box Watch: Clapton, a-ha, Neutral Milk Hotel All Prep Big Sets on LP

For nearly no other occasion would you see these three bands in the same sentence, but it’s true: vinyl box sets are all forthcoming from blues-rock legend Eric Clapton, Norwegian popsmiths a-ha, and ’90s indie-folk darlings Neutral Milk Hotel. This week, on January 13, Clapton readies The Complete Reprise Studio Albums – Volume II from Rhino Records. This 10LP set picks up where last year’s first set left off, offering new remasters of Clapton’s 21st century solo material for the Reprise label: Reptile (2001), the 2004 Robert Johnson tributes Me and Mr….

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Release Round-Up: Week of November 4

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles in stores today! Billy Joel, Live at Yankee Stadium (Columbia/Legacy) 2CD/Blu-ray: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 3LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Billy Joel’s Live at Yankee Stadium, originally released on video, is getting a major makeover.  The concert film, shot on June 22 and 23, 1990, has been restored and remixed from original audio and video elements for a 2CD/Blu-ray or 3LP package. Eleven of the tracks have never been released in any format. The ground-up restoration of Live at Yankee Stadium includes the…

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Behind the Mask: Eric Clapton’s ’80s and ’90s Studio Work Included in New Vinyl Box

A forthcoming vinyl box set will chronicle the highs and lows of Eric Clapton’s solo career in the ’80s and ’90s, from pop-adjacent player to triumphant elder statesman. Rhino’s The Complete Reprise Studio Albums Volume 1 will include six of Slowhand’s LPs issued between 1983 and 1998 – from Money and Cigarettes to Pilgrim – as well as an eight-track selection of non-LP live tracks and B-sides that includes two unreleased songs. Nearly every album (save Money and Cigarettes) has been pressed on two LPs – each comprising three sides of vinyl…

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Release Round-Up: Week of June 24

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the week’s new titles! Christine McVie, Songbird: A Solo Collection (Rhino) CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada “Sea Foam” Green LP: Rhino.com Christine McVie releases her first-ever solo compendium.  Songbird (A Solo Collection), available in CD, 180-gram vinyl, and digitally, is a lean 10-track anthology remastered by producer Glyn Johns who worked in tandem with McVie on the release.  Songbird is mainly drawn from 2004’s In the Meantime with two selections from 1984’s Christine McVie: “The Challenge,” featuring background vocals by Lindsey Buckingham and lead guitar by Eric…

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Soundtrack Watch: La-La Land Goes ‘Top Secret,’ Varese Unveils New Titles, John Williams Teams with Anne-Sophie Mutter Again

The last few weeks have seen some fine deluxe soundtrack reissues from two of our favorite film score labels – as well as another album project from the genre’s greatest living luminary. La-La Land Records has aimed for the funny bone with a brilliant new expansion of Maurice Jarre’s score to Top Secret! The 1984 comedy from the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams – only their second big screen effort as writer-directors after the blockbuster Airplane! four years earlier (plus the brilliant ill-received Police Squad!, later adapted into The Naked Gun trilogy)…

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The Weekend Stream: January 15, 2022

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 discover! This week features early works by John Denver, TV works by Jan Hammer and Giorgio Moroder, live stuff from Tegan and Sara and a real throwback of a compilation album. Denver, Boise & Johnson / The Mitchell Trio, Leaving on a Jet Plane: John Denver (Warner Records) (Amazon / Spotify) John Denver’s career took off when his “Leaving on a Jet Plane”…

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Release Round-Up: Week of November 12

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up! Elvis Presley, Back in Nashville (RCA/Legacy) 4CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2LP Colored Vinyl: Graceland Official Store Elvis: Back in Nashville boasts 82 recordings on 4 CDs (or digitally) from The King’s final Nashville sessions in 1971.  With country, folk, holiday and gospel songs, pop, and rock and roll, these seminal tracks represent some of the most richly diverse in Elvis’ storied catalogue.  Like its predecessor From Elvis in Nashville, this collection features all new, stripped-down remixes by Matt Ross-Spang.  A 2-LP highlights release is available…

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Release Round-Up: Week of August 20

Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up! Eric Clapton, Eric Clapton: Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Polydor/UMe) 4CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 1LP (Original Album Only): Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Eric Clapton’s eponymous 1970 solo debut is reissued today in 4CD and 1LP iterations.  The 4CD Deluxe Edition presents Eric Clapton in three separate mixes, with one mix on each of the first three CDs in the box: The Tom Dowd Mix, The Eric Clapton Mix, and The Delaney Bramlett Mix.  The mix by Dowd (Dusty Springfield, The Allman Brothers Band) was originally released in 1970; the…

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