It was a fine idea at the time/Now it's a brilliant mistake... Elvis Costello delivered a powerful surprise in 1986 when he shed his backing band, The Attractions, and teamed up with T Bone Burnett for King of America. Originally credited in the U.K. to The Costello Show (Featuring The Attractions and Confederates) and in the U.S. to The Costello Show (Featuring Elvis Costello), the album backtracked from the sleek '80s polish of its two immediate predecessors (Punch the Clock and Goodbye
When King of America became Rhino's penultimate Elvis Costello reissue in 2005, a hype sticker cheekily hailed it as "the album that fans, critics and Elvis Costello all agree on." Perhaps that's why it'll be the next of his classic albums to receive a deluxe box set this fall. King of America and Other Realms, available November 1, follows the super deluxe, vinyl-and-digital-only The Complete Armed Forces box; however, this one's primarily available on CD - six of 'em, in total. The
Welcome to another edition of The Weekend Stream, The Second Disc's review of notable catalogue titles (and some new ones, too!) making digital debuts. This week's super-sized post-Record Store Day lineup includes more: more remixes, more covers, more Mancini and yes, more Taylor Swift. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology (Republic) (iTunes / Amazon) Can you really call this a reissue? Pop's most ubiquitous
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today. As the next two Fridays will bring few, if any, new releases, this will be the final Release Round-Up of 2024, but we'll continue to have news and reviews all next week. We'll be back with another Release Round-Up in 2024! As an Amazon associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Happy Holidays to all! Rosanne Cash, The Wheel: 30th Anniversary Edition (RumbleStrip Records) 2CD: Amazon
The daughter of Johnny Cash and his first wife Vivian Liberto, Rosanne Cash carved out a musical path all her own. She charted twenty-two country singles under her own name while at Columbia Records between 1979 and 1995, embracing contemporary textures while never forgetting her roots and her role in the distinguished lineage of country music. On December 15, one of her most acclaimed and personal albums, 1993's The Wheel, will return in a remastered deluxe edition from RumbleStrip
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the titles arriving in stores today! Grateful Dead, Road Trips Vol. 1 No. 4: From Egypt with Love (Real Gone Music) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) A little over a month after playing a concert on the desert grounds surrounding the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the Grateful Dead returned home to San Francisco for a five-show stint at Winterland. The band brought along a slide show of their Egyptian stand
Johnny Cash is coming to town (again)! When the legendary Man in Black was unceremoniously dropped by his longtime home of Columbia Records in mid-1986 - "the hardest decision I've ever had to make in my life," opined then-label chief Rick Blackburn - he wasn't yet finished. Mercury Records stepped up to sign Cash, beginning a relationship that lasted for five years and six albums. Now, that fertile 1986-1991 period of rebirth is being revisited by Mercury and UMe in a multi-platform
Can the circle be unbroken? asks The Carter Family on the opening track of Legacy Recordings' new 5-CD, 105-song soundtrack to Ken Burns' epic documentary Country Music: A Film by Ken Burns. The 1935 funeral hymn is a most appropriate way to begin this collection exploring the manifold branches of country music, but the tone on the box set is far from funereal as it gallops from "hillbilly music" to blues, folk, western swing, rockabilly, countrypolitan, outlaw country, and beyond. Country Music
Filmmaker Ken Burns has tackled many subjects over the years, from the Civil War to baseball. His documentaries have garnered numerous awards over the years. In 2001, he took an in-depth look at the genre of jazz. Now, he is aiming to explore a different genre with Country Music, an eight-part, 16-1/2-hour documentary premiering September 15 on PBS. And as with Jazz, there will be an accompanying soundtrack. The most expansive of these is a 5-disc box set debuting on August 30 from Legacy
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Melissa Manchester, Mathematics: The MCA Years (Second Disc Records/Real Gone Music) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Second Disc Records and Real Gone Music bring Melissa Manchester's 1985 MCA album to CD for the very first time in an expanded 2-CD deluxe edition! Mathematics: The MCA Years features the original Mathematics (produced by George Duke, Brock Walsh and Robbie Nevil, Trevor Veitch and executive producer Quincy Jones!) on
Previously unheard words of Johnny Cash are coming to new life on April 6 with Legacy Recordings' release of Forever Words, an album of new songs built around the late Man in Black's unknown poems and writings. In the spirit of similar projects like The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams and Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes (setting new melodies to lost lyrics by Hank Williams and Bob Dylan, respectively), Forever Words features an all-star array of talent placing Cash's words in an
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up featuring our latest Second Disc Records title and much, much more! Laura Nyro, A Little Magic, A Little Kindness: The Complete Mono Albums Collection (Second Disc Records/Real Gone Music) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Second Disc Records and Real Gone Music are proud to present, for the first time on CD, the ultra-rare, original mono mixes of Laura Nyro's first two albums: More Than a New Discovery (Verve Folkways, 1967) and Eli
"Every day I write the book," sang Elvis Costello on his first U.S. Top 40 hit, and this year he is indeed writing one. The iconoclastic British rocker, who's chased his muse through the most diverse of places, from punk to bluegrass, will let it all out in prose on the hotly anticipated memoir Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink. And now, Universal Music Enterprises, the home base for Elvis' catalogue for nearly a decade (following stints at Rykodisc/Demon in the 1990s and Warner
Blue Note Records’ 75th anniversary celebration has already encompassed compact disc and vinyl reissues from the venerable jazz label’s classic roster of artists including Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Clifford Brown and Thelonious Monk. On November 4, the Blue Note party continues with the release of a new 5-CD box set. Blue Note: Uncompromising Expression is the title of both the box set, a 75-track compendium of key Blue Note singles, and an accompanying hardcover book. Uncompromising
The new CD/DVD set is entitled Woody Guthrie at 100! Live at the Kennedy Center, but in fact, Woody never made it past 55. This document of an altogether lively concert program from a wide assortment of admirers proves, however, that his music has not only lasted ‘til 100, but will likely survive us all. This is a celebration, yes, but a celebration with a conscience. A strong thread of morality and social awareness ran through all of Guthrie’s songs, as he believed music could make a
Patty Duke, Don’t Just Stand There/Patty / Sings Songs from Valley of the Dolls/Sings Folk Songs (Time to Move On) (Real Gone Music) All four of Patty's United Artists albums released on a pair of two-fers, including 1968's unreleased Sings Folk Songs. The Supremes, Cream of the Crop / Love Child / I Hear a Symphony / Join the Temptations / Sing Holland-Dozier-Holland / Supremes A Go-Go (Motown MS 649, 1966) (Culture Factory) A bunch of Supremes classics - six albums from 1966's The Supremes
On July 14, 2012, Woody Guthrie would have turned 100 years old. The Oklahoma-born “Dust Bowl Troubadour” died in 1967, just 55 years of age, but all these many years later, his compositions such as “This Land is Your Land,” “Grand Coulee Dam” and “The Sinking of the Reuben James” are cornerstones of American song. The folk hero, whose guitar was famously emblazoned with the slogan “This machine kills fascists,” was celebrated last year with Smithsonian Folkways’ impressive 3-CD/hardcover book
Today is the day for a 2-CD/1-DVD set of previously unissued live performances from the band Incubus. Celebrating their twentieth year together, Incubus is launching a 4-week, 18-city tour co-headlining with Linkin Park. The tour kicks off tonight in Boston, Massachusetts, but the performances on Incubus HQ Live date from one year ago, recorded in West Hollywood, California. That was when the band set up shop at a storefront on La Brea Avenue for seven special nights of performances. HQ Live
It should come as no surprise to fans of Rosanne Cash that she believes “at the heart of all country music lies family, lies a devotion to exploring the boundaries of blood ties, both in performance and songwriting.” In her revealing 2010 memoir Composed, Cash acutely puts her finger on the qualities missing from modern country, finding it lacking in “desperate loss” with even the stories of family fading from sight. Where are the stories of grievous loss, dead babies, even dead dogs that
It’s no small feat to become a success in the music business, but it may be an even greater accomplishment when your father is a legend. While the cachet of a famous last name may provide entrée into the industry, only a major, singular voice can maintain a long career. The number of such successes is small, but an undoubted member of the elite club is Rosanne Cash. Like Nancy Sinatra and Natalie Cole, Cash has defied the odds to become a living legend herself, and produced a body of work