Pet Shop Boys are looking back on 35 years of music with a newly remastered singles collection to be released on June 16 in a variety of formats. Synthpop duo Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe released their debut single in 1984 with "West End Girls." The strikingly original song melding catchy pop and irresistible dance rhythms was generally well-received but Tennant and Lowe suspected it hadn't met its full potential. The following year, they re-recorded a new version with producer Stephen Hague
Producer-DJ Arthur Baker has brought his magic touch to recordings by everybody from Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen to Tina Turner and Diana Ross, turning pop, rock, and R&B hits into dance floor-fillers. Now, Baker is looking back and taking stock of his fellow Dance Masters with a new series from Demon Music Group. Arthur Baker Presents Dance Masters: The Shep Pettibone Master Mixes is an expansive salute from one legendary remixer to another. Available on 4 CDs (47 songs in one box
August 14 sees the theatrical release of Blinded by the Light, a new coming-of-age film inspired by Sarfraz Manzoor's Greetings from Bury Park: Race, Religion and Rock N' Roll. Both book and movie chronicle the story of a young man's life-changing experiences with the music of Bruce Springsteen, so it's only appropriate that a soundtrack filled with Boss tunes would be on the way. On August 9, Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings will release Blinded by the Light: Original Motion Picture
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! The Band, Music from Big Pink [Various Formats] (Capitol/UMe, 2018) Super Deluxe Edition: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2-LP Black Vinyl: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2-LP Pink Vinyl: uDiscoverMusic.com Just in time for its 50th anniversary, Capitol/UMe will reissue The Band's seminal exploration of Americana, Music from Big Pink, on CD, 2-LP vinyl, digital, and in a
Pet Shop Boys' remastered Catalogue: 1985-2012 series is drawing to a close on August 31 with the fourth and final round of albums. This batch includes Behaviour (1990); Very (1993); and Bilingual (1996). All three albums from Messrs. Tennant and Lowe have been newly remastered and will be accompanied by Further Listening discs of bonus tracks such as demos, extended mixes, and remixes. (Note that these three albums were released with the Further Listening discs in 2001, and those track
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring three new titles from Second Disc Records and Real Gone Music, and much, much more! Johnny Mathis, Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head: Expanded Edition (Second Disc/Real Gone) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Johnny Mathis' 1970 album - featuring the songs of Bacharach and David, Paul Simon, Jimmy Webb, George Harrison and others - gets its first-ever expanded CD reissue from Second Disc Records and Real Gone Music. And
Almost a year after the Pet Shop Boys announced their Catalogue 1985-2012 reissue series - which, over the course of 2017, saw the expansion of the remaining un-reissued albums from the duo's Parlophone years - they will restart things with new remasters of the first three entries in the series. The band's debut album Please (1986) and follow-ups Actually (1987) and Introspective (1988) will all be remastered and reissued March 2. These 2CD sets faithfully replicate the Further Listening
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! George Michael, Listen Without Prejudice 25 (Columbia/Legacy) 2-CD (Disc 1 & 2 Only): Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 3-CD/1-DVD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Vinyl: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Legacy is delivering a deluxe edition of George Michael's classic 1990 album. Listen Without Prejudice 25 sees release in several formats. The biggest is a 3-CD/1 DVD box set. The first CD contains a
The list of Liza Minnelli's musical partners reads like a "Who's Who" of popular culture: Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Charles Aznavour, Donna Summer, Joel Grey, Chita Rivera, and of course, her mother Judy Garland, to name a few. Yet one of Minnelli's most cherished collaborations was also one of her most unexpected. 1989's Results was the superstar's first studio album in over a decade, and teamed her with Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, a.k.a. the British dance-pop duo Pet Shop Boys.
After rebooting their reissue program last month, Pet Shop Boys will continue Catalogue 1985-2012 with expanded, remastered reissues of their final two studio albums for Parlophone Records, 2009's Yes and 2012's Elysium, on October 20. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe's 10th and 11th studio albums continued an still-unbroken streak of U.K. Top 10 efforts. Yes' lead single, "Love Etc.," was a British Top 20 hit and broke a U.S. record for most Billboard No. 1 dance hits by a duo or group. Legendary
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Alex Chilton, A Man Called Destruction: Expanded Edition (Omnivore) CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2-LP Vinyl: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada In 1995, the late Big Star and Box Tops frontman Alex Chilton returned to Memphis' Ardent Studios, the site of his classic work with Big Star, to record A Man Called Destruction. Blending original songs with a host of eclectic covers from the likes of Chris Kenner ("Sick and
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Elvis Presley, A Boy From Tupelo - The Complete 1953-55 Recordings (RCA/Legacy) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon Canada / Amazon U.K.) A Boy From Tupelo: The Complete Recordings 1953-1955 journeys back to the birth of rock-and-roll to feature, on three CDs and digitally, every known Elvis Presley Sun Records master and outtake. In addition, the collection also contains Elvis' four earliest, privately-pressed sides, and vintage radio and concert
Following its recent reissues of Liza Minnelli's Columbia albums The Singer and Tropical Nights, Cherry Red's Strike Force Entertainment (SFE) imprint is turning its attention to Liza with a Z's 1989 Epic album Results - an epic collaboration, if there ever was one, with The Pet Shop Boys. The SFE edition, due in the U.K. on August 25, promises to be a definitive look at this classic pop album, stacked with 3 CDs and 1 DVD. (Read about those past reissues right here!) When the stage and
After a 16-year break, legendary British duo Pet Shop Boys have announced a trio of expanded reissues from within their Parlophone Records discography--now part of a new initiative, Catalogue 1985-2012. On July 28, new remastered reissues of Nightlife (1997), Release (2002) and Fundamental (2006) will be issued worldwide. As with prior releases, each CD title will include a series of Further Listening discs featuring "master quality bonus tracks and demos created in the same time period as
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Dusty Springfield rightfully regained her reputation as one of the best British soul singers of her generation, with the help of some famous collaborators. The fruits of that labor, 1990's Reputation, is being expanded by Cherry Red Records this summer. While Dusty had dominated part of the '60s with a unique brand of soul-pop on tracks like "I Only Want to Be with You," "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" and the Burt Bacharach-Hal David-penned "Wishin' and
It's not enough for Johnny Marr to be one of the greatest guitarists of the modern era (one with a solo album bowing today in the U.K.); this March, his acclaimed foray into dance music with Bernard Sumner will be reissued. But brace yourself, fans: it's a little weird. Frustrated by New Order's resistance to a more synth-based direction, Sumner began work on the Electronic by himself, but called longtime friend Marr - whose departure from The Smiths caused the band to dissolve - to
Queen, The Works / A Kind of Magic / The Miracle / Innuendo / Made in Heaven: Deluxe Editions (Hollywood) The last five deluxe reissues of the Queen catalogue, which began last year for the 40th anniversary, are now available domestically (they came out in the U.K. in November). So if you've missed these, now's the chance to get them without importing 'em. Big Country, The Crossing: Deluxe Edition (Mercury/UMC) From the U.K., one of the most criminally underrated albums of the '80s, expanded
Add another catalogue set for 2012 to the list: this winter will see the release of the Pet Shop Boys' second B-sides compilation, spanning the past 15 years of their recording career. As reported by our dear friends at Slicing Up Eyeballs, the Boys (who are also working on a new LP for the new year) revealed to Varsity, Cambridge University's paper, their intent of releasing a new B-sides set, following the tradition of 1995's Alternative, the group's first two-disc set of rarities from 1986
With most retailers putting out their new releases today to get a jump on the inevitable holiday weekend blitz, here's the big catalogue releases for the week a day early! Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson's Vision (Epic/Legacy) A three-DVD set that includes just about any MJ video you could be searching for. Of course, the one unreleased clip just officially hit the Internet, making you wonder what the fuss is all about. Oh wait, it's Michael Jackson. (Official site) Jay-Z, The Hits
Another week, another batch of reissues! Wings, Band on the Run: Special Edition (Concord) After reissues of John Lennon's solo catalogue and the Apple Records discography, another Beatles-oriented campaign kicks off with a new reissue of Band on the Run, Paul McCartney and Wings' classic LP. It's the first of his classic discs to be re-released on Concord, and will be available in a wide variety of formats. (Best of all, it's the first drop in the bucket - an insert inside the sets
There's a bit of a misnomer in the title. The Pet Shop Boys' classic "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" is one of a few singles not on their forthcoming compilation Ultimate Pet Shop Boys. Such a long and prolific career sometimes leads to an occasional omission in a compilation, but this new set has some things to keep PSB fans satisfied, even as they scratch their heads and wonder why some tunes are missing. This new set compiles 19 singles together, from monster hit "West End Girls"