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! And after a week away, you better believe we're coming in hot! Billy Joel, 50 Years of the Piano Man (Columbia/Legacy) (Apple Music / Amazon) On the surface, this 50-track digital compilation-cum-playlist looks like a typical algorithmic survey of Joel's five-decade career, with all the great radio hits rising to
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the titles arriving in stores today! Frank Zappa, The Mothers 1971 / Fillmore East - June 1971: 50th Anniversary Expanded Edition / Rainbow Theatre - December 10, 1971 (Zappa Records/UMe) The Mothers 1971: Official Zappa Store / Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Fillmore East - June 1971: 50th Anniversary Expanded Edition: Official Zappa Store / Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Rainbow Theatre -
Cherry Red continues their ongoing excavation of the Howard Jones catalogue with a new set that collects two remix albums from the mid-'80s: one a special early part of his discography, and one a treasured rarity for Japanese collectors. The label will issue a 2CD set on March 18 featuring the contents of The 12" Album and 12"ers Vol. 2, which collected a plurality of mixes, some B-sides and the odd unique track from the Human's Lib and Dream Into Action albums. 1984's The 12" Album featured
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! It's a smaller week than usual owing to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday as well as to Record Store Day's slate of Black Friday releases! To all those who celebrated Thanksgiving, we hope it was a wonderful one! David Bowie, Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001) (Parlophone) 11CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 17LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Parlophone continues its career-spanning series of box sets for the late David
Howard Jones may have issued deluxe editions of all his WEA albums with Cherry Red (who now own the recordings outright), but he's not done archiving his works with the label. They'll issue a 5CD box set of the keyboardist's BBC recordings this fall. Howard Jones At The BBC offers a treasure trove of rare and unreleased recordings taped by the national radio between 1983 and 1987. Aside from a handful of B-sides and bonus material - including a long out-of-print box set of Howard's first two
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Michael Nesmith, Different Drum: The Lost RCA Victor Recordings (Second Disc Records/Real Gone Music) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Real Gone Music) For our first release of 2021, Second Disc Records and Real Gone Music take a deep dive into the archives for Michael Nesmith's Different Drum: The Lost RCA Victor Recordings. This compendium features 22 tracks on CD drawn from the RCA Victor vaults, every one of which is previously
Cherry Red's ongoing Howard Jones reissue campaign hits its next marker on April 30, with an expanded CD/DVD and vinyl reissue planned for In the Running, Jones' fifth album and final release for a major label. In the Running continued the artistic and commercial trends that had been a part of Jones' career since 1989's Cross That Line sold modestly outside of the U.S. Top 20 hit "Everlasting Love." With a new decade in full bloom, Jones consciously moved away from the densest electronics of
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! John Lennon, Gimme Some Truth: The Ultimate Mixes [Various Formats] (Capitol/UMe) 2CD/Blu-ray Deluxe Edition: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 4LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Today would have been John Lennon's 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, Capitol and UMe have released
Cherry Red's latest reissue in their ongoing Howard Jones campaign is one of the series' most expansive yet, offering a deeper look at the singer/songwriter/synthsmith's fourth LP, Cross That Line. Released in 1989, Cross That Line found Jones in an introspective, experimental mood. His first mostly self-produced album, it featured meditations on lost relationships ("Last Supper") and extended polemics on power ("Guardians Of The Breath") nestled within its tracks. There were also classic
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Rod McKuen, New Ballads (Real Gone Music) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Real Gone celebrates the late Rod McKuen with a slate of releases this week. For the 1970 album New Ballads, the singer-songwriter teamed with renowned arranger-conductor Don Costa for this remarkable collection of songs including "As I Love My Own," the dramatic Jacques Brel collaboration "I'm Not Afraid," "Thank You for Christmas," and a composition which
In 2017, Howard Jones took his scintillating synthpop catalogue from Warner Music to U.K. indie Cherry Red Records, releasing a new compilation as well as expanded editions of his first two albums. After releasing the new album Transform earlier this year, Jones will continue revisiting his discography alongside the label early next year with a deluxe edition of his third LP One To One. Released at the end of 1986, One To One followed Jones' biggest-ever hit in America: a re-recording of the
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Cilla Black, Cilla/In My Life (SFE/Cherry Red) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Cherry Red's Strike Force Entertainment imprint has two more reissues in the ongoing series of definitively remastered and expanded Cilla Black albums. First up is the late vocalist's debut album Cilla (1965) with In My Life (1974), the latter of which is making its premiere on CD in full. This 2-CD set adds 26 bonus tracks, three of which are new to
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Neil Diamond, 50th Anniversary Collector's Edition (Capitol/UMe) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Neil Diamond revisits a 50+-year career with a new 6-CD, 115-song retrospective box set featuring hits, rarities, and 15 previously unreleased tracks including the original demos of "America" and "I Am...I Said." Everything is packaged within a deluxe hardcover book-style format. 50th Anniversary Collector's Edition expands upon 2017's
Cherry Red Records has a pair of treats for fans of English singer-songwriter and '80s synthpop hero Howard Jones. On November 30, the label will expand and remaster Jones' chart-topping debut album Human's Lib and its follow-up, Dream Into Action. Originally issued in March 1984, Human's Lib rocketed into the U.K. Album Chart at No. 1 with sales of over 100,000 units in the first week alone. The double platinum smash spent a total of 57 weeks on the British chart, and yielded four top 20
Howard Jones is more than his synths. The British keyboardist dominated his home country's charts in the '80s (and flirted with success on American shores more than a few times in the same period) with fascinatingly busy, seriously catchy slices of synthpop with more than a little R&B influence. But peel back the hooks and riffs and you'll find the work of a man who is searching--for what, it's not always clear, but the search is there. Best 1983-2017 (Cherry Red Records PCDTRED 707), an
Don't crack up, bend your brain: a new triple-disc Howard Jones compilation is coming out from U.K. label Cherry Red Records. The blonde keyboardist from Southampton was a staple of early-mid '80s U.K. pop thanks to his catchy synth-driven melodies with often heavy, introspective lyrics. This combination took "New Song," "What is Love," "Things Can Only Get Better," "No One is to Blame" and five more songs into his home country's Top 20. Success in the United States was later but slightly