Having delivered a typically stunning last batch of archival film score reissues last November, La-La Land Records is wasting no time at all kicking off 2024 with a bang. On Christmas Eve, they surprise-announced two pre-orders of expanded editions of soundtracks to two James Bond films from the ’70s and ’80s. La-La Land has long been the home of definitive presentations of 007 on CD, having licensed deluxe 2CD sets of three scores fan favorite composer David Arnold composed for Pierce Brosnan’s late ’90s/early ’00s tenure as Ian Fleming’s daredevil secret agent…
Short Takes: McCartney’s “III”-Peat, The Rolling Stones’ “Live” Racket
Paul McCartney’s 2020 “lockdown” – make that “rockdown” – album, McCartney III, was seemingly ubiquitous upon its release with various-color editions on CD, LP, and cassette; Discogs currently shows 57 unique versions of the album. (That’s not counting the remix album McCartney III-Imagined or the 2022 box set which bundled III with its two predecessors in the artist’s self-titled trilogy.) Now, for its third anniversary, Macca is offering another release with yet more variants. McCartney III: 3×3 Edition arrives December 15 on Capitol Records in three randomly-distributed vinyl configurations. Each features one…
Let Me Roll It: Paul McCartney’s ‘Band on the Run’ to Be Reissued with New “Underdubbed” Mixes
In 2010 – not even a year after this site was founded! – Paul McCartney announced the arrival of the Paul McCartney Archive Collection, a catalogue project involving his post-Beatles works (as a solo artist and Wings) in partnership with Hear Music/Concord. A baker’s dozen of his works, from solo debut McCartney (1970) to the acclaimed Flaming Pie (1997), were given the box set treatment, occasionally baffling fans with omissions, from non-LP B-sides only being digitally available on the Flowers in the Dirt box to the lack of love for cult favorites like Back to the Egg….
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Now and Then: Unheard Outtake, New Mixes Added to Classic Beatles Compilations
On April 2, 1973, the first career-spanning compilations by The Beatles – broken up for three years – were released. Nicknamed for the colored borders around Angus McBean’s iconic photos of The Fab Four (taken six years apart) leaning over a stairwell at EMI’s offices in London, the “Red” (The Beatles 1962-1966) and “Blue” (The Beatles 1967-1970) albums offered on eight sides of vinyl a holistic view of the group’s unbelievable discography: 54 hit singles, B-sides and treasured album cuts that would offer a perfect primer for new generations of Beatlemaniacs. Five…
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She Is the Champion: Dolly Parton Unveils “Rockstar,” Featuring All-Star Cast Including Elton John, Peter Frampton, Stevie Nicks, Sting, Lizzo, Miley, Many More
“If I’m gonna be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I’m going to have to earn it,” Dolly Parton commented upon her 2022 induction into the Cleveland hall. She promised that a rock and roll album was on the way, and today, she made good on that promise…with what essentially amounts to two such records! On November 17, Dolly’s own Butterfly Records in association with Big Machine will release Rockstar, a whopping 2-CD or 4-LP collection with 30 songs featuring some of the biggest names in the genre including Sting,…
The Weekend Stream: April 9, 2023
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 usher you into the weekend. ZTT rarities, dream pop from down under, two Michael Jackson connections, great ’70s songwriters – this latest Stream has everything, plus a call to support one of our favorite music services as they take on a big challenge. Act, Snobbery and Decay (Showtime) / Leilani, Precious Treasure (ZTT) Act: iTunes / Amazon Leilani: iTunes / Amazon Although they’ve…
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The Year In Review: The 2022 Gold Bonus Disc Awards, From A to Z – Part Two
Happy 2023! Welcome, friends, to The Second Disc’s 13th Annual Gold Bonus Disc Awards! A lot has happened in the last twelve months, but as we look to a new year with optimism and a hopeful spirit, we recognize the many roles music has played in our lives. With that spirit in mind, The Second Disc wishes to recognize 2022’s cream of the catalogue music crop – those exemplary reissues and box sets, big and small, that proved to be truly outstanding for music lovers worldwide. Despite the many delays caused by…
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The Weekend Stream: December 3, 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 usher you into the weekend. This week, we’ve got a treasure trove from the great ladies of song, a Fab mega-box, and much more! Petula Clark, Blue Lady: The Nashville Sessions (UMe) (iTunes / Amazon) On November 15 of this year, Petula Clark celebrated her milestone 90th birthday. The legendary performer was hardly sitting idle; she’s still performing eight shows a week at London’s…
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Women, Wives and Everything in Between: Paul McCartney Announces Massive 7″ Singles Box
At 80 years old – hell, at many ages younger than that – Paul McCartney has little to prove. Fans may blanch at his catalogue choices of late (whither the Archive Collection? why box up all the self-titled albums? we’ve heard and seen it all), but it’s hard to claim all of his reissue products as uninteresting. Take The 7″ Singles Box – a rather massive trove of vinyl featuring 80 single releases personally curated by the former Beatle. With 163 tracks across its sides, The 7″ Singles Box revises history somewhat:…
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Review: The Beatles, “Revolver” (2022)
I took a ride, I didn’t know what I would find there… George Harrison’s snarling takedown of the “Taxman” opened The Beatles’ Revolver with a powerful sting. The so-called Quiet Beatle took on the first-person role with the relish of (and a musical nod to) a Batman villain. Though 1965’s folk-rock-influenced Rubber Soul had seen the Fab Four’s songwriting grow by leaps and bounds, Revolver matched the songwriting strides with revelatory studio processes including ADT (Artificial Double Tracking), tape loops, close miking, varispeed and reversed tapes, and non-traditional instrumentation including sitar, tamboura,…
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You Make It Feel Like Christmas: New Collections Coming From Neil Diamond, Reba McEntire, Louis Armstrong, More
The Christmas season is upon us, and there are plenty of new titles coming your way to make spirits bright! Today’s round-up looks at upcoming collections from Neil Diamond, Louis Armstrong, and Reba McEntire, as well as one various-artists set filled with heavy hitters. Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and Kennedy Center Honoree Neil Diamond has been a Christmas music mainstay since the release of 1992’s The Christmas Album. The Brooklyn-born superstar, whose story is coming soon to Broadway in the new musical A Beautiful Noise, has since released three more…
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And Your Bird Can Sing! The Beatles’ “Revolver” Goes Super Deluxe in October
The Beatles’ seventh studio album – and the bridge between Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – 1966’s Revolver is recognized as one of the Fab Four’s most groundbreaking as well as significant albums. With producer George Martin, the group employed studio wizardry to bring their new songs to life – tape loops, automatic double tracking, close miking, use of varispeed and reversed tapes, among other techniques that would soon be imitated by countless others – as well as non-traditional instrumentation. It didn’t hurt, of course, that all of…
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Release Round-Up: Week of September 2
As we here in the U.S. head into Labor Day weekend, we have a shorter Release Round-Up than usual! To all our readers – wherever you might be – please have a safe and happy weekend! Shania Twain, Not Just a Girl: The Highlights (Mercury Nashville/UMe) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Not Just a Girl (The Highlights), a new companion album to the documentary coming to Netflix, features 17 of Shania Twain’s classic pop and country hits plus the new title track. Read more here. Mel Carter, When a Boy Falls in Love…
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Release Round-Up: Week of August 5
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles in stores today! 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) Second Disc Records and Real Gone Music are bringing Michael Nesmith’s Different Drum: The Lost RCA Victor Recordings to vinyl for the first time today! This 2-LP compendium features 22 tracks on CD drawn from the RCA Victor vaults, most of which are new to vinyl. These songs were originally released to digital platforms in 2018 as bonus tracks…
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That Would Be Something: Paul McCartney Boxes Three Self-Titled Albums on CD, LP
Though Paul McCartney turned 80 on Saturday, June 19, he’s hardly slowed down. He wrapped his acclaimed, sold-out Got Back tour of North America on Thursday evening in East Rutherford, New Jersey – joined by a couple of the state’s favorite sons, Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi – and will soon headline the Glastonbury Festival. On Friday, the legendary artist announced an upcoming box set collecting his three influential self-titled albums. McCartney (1970), McCartney II (1980), and McCartney III (2020) will be united on CD, black vinyl, and colored vinyl in…
Release Round-Up: Week of February 4
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up! B.J. Thomas, In Remembrance: Love Songs and Lost Treasures (Real Gone Music) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Real Gone Music remembers the late, great B.J. Thomas with this new collection of rare and previously unreleased material drawn from both Thomas’ personal archives and the vaults of Reprise and Warner Bros. Records. In Remembrance: Love Songs and Lost Treasures features 18 tracks, 13 of which are making their debut here, including all five songs which B.J. recorded for the 2008 independent film Jake’s Corner, and tracks cut with producers Steve Dorff,…
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Take The Red Pill: Real Gone Reissues “The Matrix” and “Vanilla Sky” Soundtracks on Vinyl In December
Adding to its eclectic slate, Real Gone Music has announced a pair of soundtrack vinyl reissues hitting stores in December: The Matrix: Music from the Motion Picture due on December 3 and Music from Vanilla Sky, due on December 10. To tie in with The Matrix: Resurrections, the somewhat unexpected fourth movie in the sci-fi franchise due in theaters on December 22, Real Gone is re-releasing a vinyl edition of the soundtrack to the original Matrix film on December 3. Real Gone first brought the album to the format in 2017 (and…
Review: The Beatles, “Let It Be” [Various Formats]
Everybody had a hard year/Everybody had a good time… The Beatles’ twelfth and final studio LP may have been titled Let It Be, but that particular admonition has been all but ignored over the years. The album – recorded before, but released after, 1969’s Abbey Road – was in some respects a step backward from the band’s previous, experimental LPs as they sought a “back to basics” sound that didn’t involve overdubs and studio wizardry. Ultimately, though, that approach was rejected. The album that began life mixed by engineer Glyn Johns as…
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The Beatles “Get Back” In New Hardcover Book Chronicling the “Let It Be” Sessions
A book about a film about an album? The new coffee table book from Callaway Arts and Entertainment and Apple Corps, The Beatles: Get Back, is essentially that: a hardcover, 240-page tome based on the film footage shot in the buildup to The Beatles’ final album, 1970’s Let It Be. Get Back was, of course, the name of the first version of Let It Be. It’s also the name of director Peter Jackson’s upcoming three-part, six-hour documentary (the first part of which premieres November 25 on the Disney+ streaming service) to which…
The Weekend Stream: September 18, 2021
While The Second Disc prides itself on connecting people to reissues and box sets they can keep on their shelves, it’s no secret that listening audiences are also digital – catalogue music lovers, too – and our passion is connecting people to music from the past that they might adore. So we’ve introduced a new feature: The Weekend Stream, which focuses on hidden gems that recently made it to digital channels that might make your playlists a little brighter! The Beatles, Get Back (Take 8) EP (Apple/Capitol/UMe) (iTunes / Amazon / Spotify)…
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Get Back: The Beatles Remix, Expand ‘Let It Be’
More than 50 years after its May 1970 release, The Beatles’ Let It Be – the Fab Four’s final original studio album – remains anything but the last word on the band. While the LP topped the charts in multiple countries including the U.S. and U.K., and included such beloved now-standards as “The Long and Winding Road,” “Across the Universe,” “Get Back,” and the title track, the road to its release was anything but a smooth one. It was previously announced that the story would be chronicled this fall in director Peter…
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Release Round-Up: Week of July 23
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up! Paul McCartney, III-Imagined (MPL/Capitol) CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Your Local Record Shop CD with alternate art insert: Target 2-LP black vinyl: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Your Local Record Shop 2-LP red vinyl: Newbury Comics 2-LP gold vinyl: Your Local Record Store 2-LP splatter vinyl: Paul McCartney Online Store (limited to 3500 copies in the US) 2-LP “Spotify” green vinyl: Paul McCartney Online Store US / Paul McCartney Online Store UK / Music Vaultz 2-LP silver vinyl with alternate art insert: Target 2-LP blue vinyl: Barnes and Noble Paul McCartney is re-, um, III-imagining his 2020 album McCartney III. This new…
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Paul McCartney, John Lennon, The Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, and More Feature on “1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything” Soundtrack
David Hepworth’s 2017 book Never a Dull Moment: The Year That Rock Exploded set forth the author’s belief that the year crystallized the “rock era,” producing more enduring recordings than any other year in the genre’s history. It’s difficult to argue with any year that yielded John Lennon’s Imagine, The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, Carole King’s Tapestry, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Elton John’s Madman Across the Water, Carly Simon’s Anticipation, Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On, The Who’s Who’s Next, The Beach Boys’ Surf’s Up, Black Sabbath’s Master of…
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Release Round-Up: Week of May 14
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up! Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Déjà Vu: Deluxe Edition (Atlantic/Rhino) 4CD/1LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 5LP: CSNY50.com / Rhino.com Rhino revisits Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s landmark 1970 release as a deluxe 4CD/1LP set featuring a remastered version of the original album plus 28 previously unreleased demos, outtakes, and alternate takes. It’s all topped off with an essay from Cameron Crowe. In addition to the 4CD/1LP set, the box will be released in super-deluxe 5LP format exclusively from the new CSNY50.com and Rhino.com. Additionally, the audio will be released to download and streaming…
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Release Round-Up: Week of April 16
Welcome to this week’s Release Round-Up! Mary Wilson, Mary Wilson: Expanded Edition (Motown/UMe) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) Just days before her sudden passing, Mary Wilson promised that her 1979 Motown solo debut would finally see reissue. Universal Music and Wilson’s estate have made good on that promise with this new digital release. Mary Wilson: Expanded Edition will include the original Mary Wilson album produced by Motown great Hal Davis; three single versions of the album’s disco anthem “Red Hot;” the four bonus tracks produced by Gus Dudgeon; and an all-new single streaming now with special relevance…
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