Since its founding in 1961, Amnesty International has endeavored “to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated.” The Nobel Peace Prize-winning international human rights organization has, naturally, attracted a number of high-profile supporters over the years. In 1988, a number of those men and women took the road to spread Amnesty’s message and raise funds via the Human Rights Now!
Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings are getting Miles Ahead with a new box set due on November 12. Miles Davis’ The Original Mono Recordings is a definitive portrait – in crisp monaural sound – of the legendary trumpeter’s earliest, era-defining period at Columbia Records. Its nine albums, recorded between 1956 and 1961 (and released between 1957 and 1964), include some of the greatest landmarks in recorded jazz as well as a couple of lost treasures: ‘Round About Midnight (1957) Miles
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
It's not quite the summertime yet, but Legacy Recordings has some hot fun planned for Record Store Day thanks to a diverse slate of releases from A (Aerosmith) to, well, S (Sly and the Family Stone)! April 20 is the date when Legacy will join 2013 Record Store Day Ambassador Jack White to celebrate not only those beloved black vinyl discs, but also the brick-and-mortar retail record store experience which we hold very dear at The Second Disc. Titles for the sixth annual Record Store Day have
Duane Allman, Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective (Rounder) A massive seven-disc box set celebrates the life and work of a guitar legend, gone far too soon. Read Joe's review here! (Amazon U.S.) Elvis Presley, Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite: Legacy Edition (RCA/Legacy) The classic best-selling live album, taken from the famed TV special, is paired with a newly-remixed version of The Alternate Aloha (a rehearsal show recorded days earlier) and rare bonus performances. You'll find Joe's
“Directions in music by Miles Davis,” read the subtitle of the trumpeter’s late-1968 Columbia album Filles de Kilimanjaro. It was the first, but not the last, of his albums to bear those words. But listeners couldn’t have been expected to know which direction Davis would take with each album. Nefertiti, recorded in June-July 1967 but released in March 1968, turned out to be Davis’ last fully acoustic LP, with its follow-up Miles in the Sky (recorded January and May ’68 and released in
Fleetwood Mac, Rumours: Expanded/Deluxe Editions (Warner Bros.) Ahead of the band's forthcoming tour, a new 4CD/1DVD/LP deluxe box set edition of their most popular album, featuring the original album on CD and vinyl, two discs of studio outtakes (including the one from the 2004 reissue) and an unreleased documentary. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) A three-disc edition collects the album and the two new bonus CDs, so if you own the last expansion and can live sans DVD, you can pick the rest up for
Where was Miles Davis at in 1968? In a June 1968 interview with Leonard Feather of Downbeat, the journalist observed of Davis’ hotel suite, “I found strewn around the room records or tape cartridges by James Brown, Dionne Warwick, Tony Bennett, The Byrds, Aretha Franklin and the Fifth Dimension. Not a single jazz instrumental.” Feather asked “Why?” but concluded that most likely, “when you have reached the aesthetic mountaintop, there is no place to look but down.” Feather’s summation was
Here in the U. S. of A., Black Friday is almost upon us: that unusual date following the prior day of giving thanks, in which consumers make a mad dash to the local big-box store, mall or shopping center to procure bargains for the holiday season ahead. Retailers are controversially beginning Black Friday “festivities” even earlier than usual this year, with many sales starting on Thanksgiving Day itself and not even at midnight but in the early part of the evening. For a number of recent
If you've ever felt it might be a daunting task to "get into" jazz, Concord Music Group just might have the perfect releases for you. Concord is home to many of the genre's greatest labels, including Prestige, Contemporary, Riverside, Milestone, Fantasy and Pablo. With the new series simply titled The Very Best Of, the Concord team has offered an affordable, entry-level look into five of the most influential musicians of all time: Miles Davis (trumpet), John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Sonny
Well, Record Store Day is finally upon us! Tomorrow, Saturday, April 21, music fans and collectors will descend upon their local independent record stores to celebrate both the sounds on those black platters and the cherished physical shopping environments alike. As Record Store Day 2012 will offer a typically eclectic array of limited edition releases (primarily on vinyl but also some on CD, too!) from many of our favorite artists here at Second Disc HQ, we thought we would take a moment to
Here at Second Disc HQ, we're eagerly anticipating April 21, or Record Store Day, the industry-wide celebration of all things vinyl (and a few CDs, too!). Record Store Day, now in its fifth year, gives shoppers the chance to interact with big crowds of fellow music enthusiasts in the brick-and-mortar retail environment cherished by so many of us. Legacy Recordings has announced its impressive line-up of limited edition releases that will line the shelves of your favorite independent music
Any label president would have killed to have Bob Dylan or Miles Davis on his company’s roster, but Columbia Records’ legendary Goddard Lieberson had the good fortune to have had both of these groundbreaking artists making their most important music on the red label under its watchful eye logo. Since the advent of the compact disc era, there’s been no shortage of reissued music from these giants, and it’s already clear that 2012 will continue the steady flow. Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab has
Brace yourselves, compilation collectors: Legacy's got another batch of Playlist titles out next week. The latest batch of set, due out January 31, skew mainly toward modern country and rootsier rock (Gretchen Wilson, Montgomery Gentry, solo works by Gregg Allman) with some wild cards thrown in for good measure (R&B from Charlie Wilson of The Gap Band and Wyclef Jean, contemporary pop-rockers Augustana, a set from The Hooters that was delayed from the last batch). In a nice change of pace,
What are you doing New Year's Eve? As we count down to that big celebration, we've been holed up at Second Disc HQ readying another year's Gold Bonus Disc Awards for you! We consider our annual awards a companion piece to Mike's round-up over at Popdose (essential reading, I might add!) and we endeavor to recognize as many of the year's most amazing reissues as possible as well as to celebrate those labels, producers and artists who have raised the bar for great music throughout 2011. These
And the Top 15 of our 100 Greatest Reissues list begins! We've taken Rolling Stone‘s list of the greatest albums of all time and investigated their many pressings and expansions over the years. Today, we're rocking in the 1960s, take a jazz detour to 1959, and remember a 1976 compilation of material circa 1955! 15. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced (Reprise, 1967) If you weren’t experienced before listening to the 1967 debut of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, it’s safe to say
With a brand-new decade just around the corner, and his finger on the pulse of the bustling, inventive New York City jazz scene, Bob Weinstock must have been reasonably confident that day in 1949 when he christened his record label "New Jazz." But he set his sights even higher when he renamed the label "Prestige" a year into its operations. That lofty moniker, of course, proved prescient when Prestige became home to the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk and
And the winners are… With our second week of exciting giveaways about to kick off later today, it’s about time to reveal the winners from our first week of Second Discmas! Without further ado, here we go! Congratulations to… Charles K. of Cleveland, OH, and Jose M., winners of Ben Folds’ The Best Imitation of Myself: A Retrospective! Jeffrey R. of Los Angeles, California, Rich D., Jake H., Kenneth R., and Anthony "Anth", winners of Billy Joel’s Piano Man: Legacy Edition! Edward O., Richard
We're at the end of our first week of prizes for Second Discmas, and today's might be our best yet! We have a special bundle of prizes from our friends at Legacy Recordings: two packs of two very special box sets the label has done in the past few months. Today's titles are Miles Davis' The Bootleg Series Vol. 1: Live in Europe 1967, a 3-CD/1-DVD box set of unreleased performances by the legendary trumpeter's quintet, and Move Over!, a special box set of four 7" singles, made for Record Store
Welcome to our brand-new, exhaustive feature to take us to the end of another great year for reissues and box sets: our first-ever official Second Disc Buyers Guide! From now until Christmas, we’re taking you on a delightful trip through the 100 greatest albums of all time, as selected by Rolling Stone in 2003, through the filter of when and how these classic albums have been reissued, remastered and repackaged. If you’ve ever wondered to yourself which versions of these albums to buy for
Could anyone ever truly offer The Last Word on Miles Davis? Warner Bros. and Rhino attempted to do just that back in 2001-2002, with the planned release of a box set of the same name. Of course, the set was planned to be the last word on the trumpeter's Warner Bros. years, the last period of his lengthy career. The Last Word began as a 6-CD set, and a little sleuthing around the ‘net will yield a fascinating track listing of a 77-track comprehensive box, loaded with previously unreleased
For those of us who still savor the experience of shopping in a physical environment, Record Store Day has become a yearly tradition. It’s sometimes frustrating and sometimes exciting, but few could argue with an event that spotlights the hard-working independent music retailers out there who believe that brick-and-mortar retail can still thrive in the iTunes era. (Amen to that!) A more recent offshoot of Record Store Day has been the mini-event held each Black Friday, or the day after
Reflecting on Miles Davis’ so-called Second Great Quintet to director Mark Obenhaus, Herbie Hancock recalled that “when people were hearing us, they were hearing the avant-garde on one hand, and they were hearing the history of jazz that led up to it on the other hand - because Miles was that history. He was that link. We were sort of walking a tightrope with the kind of experimenting we were doing in music, not total experimentation, but we used to call it ‘controlled freedom.’” What exactly
Miles Davis Quintet, Live in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1 (Columbia/Legacy) A three-CD/one-DVD collection of live stints from Belgium, Germany, France and Sweden, and the inaugural title in a new series of archival material for Miles. And Joe's got the review this week! (Official site) DeBarge, Time Will Reveal: The Complete Motown Albums (Hip-o Select/Motown) All four of DeBarge's classic '80s R&B LPs on two discs, with a further bonus disc of remixes and rarities. (Hip-o
For many, the very art of jazz is inextricably tied to the art of improvisation, or creating in the moment. So it’s both innovative and altogether appropriate that Legacy Recordings is spearheading an improvised album of a sort for one of jazz’s true greats, the trumpeter and composer Miles Davis. Though christened Blue Flame, little else has been set in stone for the digital-only album which will be released on September 26. (And even that title was chosen via a fan poll! Doesn’t it tip the