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 that
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
From all of us here at Second Disc HQ to all of you, we hope you've enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving in the company of beloved family and friends. (And with plenty of delicious food, too!) Now, Record Store Day's annual Black Friday event is upon us, so we're spotlighting a dozen of the most eagerly anticipated releases arriving to your local independent brick-and-mortar record shop! Here are our personal picks for RSD BF must-haves; visit Record Store Day's official website for a list of
September was an unusually bountiful month for archival soundtracks, and we're here to break it all down. Varese Goes West, Revisits Buddy Holly The latest title in Varese Sarabande's CD Club was an expansion of Elmer Bernstein's heroic score to the 1999 blockbuster Wild Wild West. Though the film somewhat infamously broke co-star Will Smith's ironclad grip on the July 4 weekend box office after star turns in Independence Day (1996) and Men In Black (1997), the weird cult charm of this
Even though La-La Land's traditionally generous Black Friday slate is a week away, the beloved soundtrack label isn't waiting to make you say "yippie-ki-yay" - they've reconstructed Michael Kamen's classic score to Die Hard for a definitive 3CD edition. Loosely based on Roderick Thorp's 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever, Die Hard casts Moonlighting star Bruce Willis in his first major film role as John McClane, a New York City cop caught in the middle of a terrorist plot on a high-rise Los
From the forests of medieval England to the furthest corners of the galaxy, two of the biggest soundtrack labels are kicking off 2018 with some great archival titles. Intrada announced last night their first release of the year: an expansion of Michael Kamen's score to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The 1991 adaptation of the English folk hero, starring Kevin Costner in the title role and star turns from Morgan Freeman (as Azeem, one of the Merry Men) and Alan Rickman (as the villainous
Varese Sarabande has opened up a new batch of CD Club limited edition soundtrack reissues for the holidays. Beginning in 2014, six titles - including two deluxe editions - will start shipping from the long-running soundtrack label. First up, a milestone from the final frontier: Varese expands the soundtrack to 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis. This time, the USS Enterprise encounters a dangerous foe from within the Romulan Empire: a villainous clone of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (played by a then-unknown
La-La Land never fails to amaze when it comes to Black Friday. The soundtrack label often saves some of its biggest and highest-profile titles for announcements on the shopping weekend (see 2010, 2011 and 2012) - and this year is no different, with two premiere releases of acclaimed scores, an expanded edition of a superhero sequel and a box set devoted to one of the biggest action film franchises of all time. First up: call them slobs, call them jerks, call them gross - just don't call them
Like a sleeping giant, soundtrack reissue Varese Sarabande wakes only periodically and deliberately to release film and television scores from the vaults through their famed Soundtrack Club. In recent years, fans have bemoaned the lack of "Silver Age" scores - that is, more recent music from blockbuster films. That trend looks to change with the latest solid batch of limited edition reissues from Varese. First up, following Varese's own limited edition of Michael Kamen's score to Die Hard in
After a healthy and innovative year for film score reissues, Intrada starts off the new year with a bang - or better yet, a swift roundhouse kick: two heretofore-unreleased late-'80s action scores by the excellent Michael Kamen. The first one is a very familiar title to pop-culture junkies and cult-classic geeks: the score to Road House. The 1989 action flick starred Patrick Swayze in his first post-Dirty Dancing project as Dalton, a strangely complex, widely-renowned bouncer with a degree in
The end of the calendar year is a boom time for all those working in reissues, especially the soundtrack labels. Today, six major titles go on sale that are certainly worth a look here at Second Disc HQ. Intrada's two latest sets, announced last night, are pretty major. One is a brand new reissue of the score to The Great Train Robbery, Jerry Goldsmith's classic soundtrack to the film directed by author Michael Crichton from his best-selling novel. Though the score is no stranger to CD, having