Holding the Music in Your Hands ®
Paul Young‘s back catalogue has been reissued by a number of record labels, with varying degrees of success.
Sony kept hold of 1983 debut No Parlez for a reasonable 2CD deluxe reissue in 2008, although they somehow managed to omit the extended version of Sex that had actually appeared on the original non-deluxe CD release and a few of the album tracks were slight edits of the original LP versions.
Continue reading “Paul Young / Other Voices 2CD Deluxe Edition review”
The Doors will “almost certainly” release a digital version of a three-CD L.A. Woman outtake set sometime this year, according to manager Jeff Jampol, but an actual physical set is uncertain at this time.
“As soon as I have a definite release commitment and date, you’ll know” is the official line from Jampol, who was forced to make a U-turn on his promise to fans of a five-disc super deluxe edition of L.A. Woman last autumn.
Continue reading “The Doors / Physical release of L.A. Woman outtakes set in the balance”
As previously reported, Swing Out Sister will be reissuing their 1987 debut It’s Better To Travel this year as a two-disc 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition.
This expanded reissue is now available to pre-order
Continue reading “Swing Out Sister reissue: a complete a waste of space?”
Duran Duran‘s Rio album is 30 years old today. To celebrate, here is the fabulous acoustic version of album track The Chauffeur. It was originally the B-side to the Rio seven-inch single and has made CD appearances on one of the Come Undone US CD Singles, as part of The Singles 81-85 box set/3CD release and most recently on the 2009 2CD Rio Deluxe Edition.
CD singles, remember them? Introduced to the public in 1986, they soon superseded the humble cassette single as the format of choice during the 1990s.
Indeed, such was the popularity of the format (particularly in the UK), that record labels started releasing multiple CDs for each single release. “CD two out next week” was all too familiar.
Continue reading “The Art of CD Single Packaging”
Concert Live the specialist at producing limited edition live CDs of gigs will be recording the Happy Mondays Brixton Academy (London) show tomorrow night (10 May, 2012).
The entire live show will be recorded, featuring the full original line up.
If you are lucky enough to be attending, the CDs will be made available instantly at the venue, right after the band finish performing. The price at the venue will be £20.
If not, you can order online for £15 (double disc set). Concert Live will deliver worldwide. These CDs will be limited, although it is not stated how many will be produced.
Duran Duran are set to release a live DVD, Blu-ray and CD to commemorate their successful All You Need Is Now tour.
Out on 2 July 2012 through Eagle Vision and Eagle Records, A Diamond In The Mind was filmed and recorded at Manchester’s MEN Arena in December of last year, where the band garnered some of the finest reviews of their career.
Continue reading “Duran Duran / “A Diamond In The Mind” / Live In Concert 2011″
Lenny Kravitz‘s 1991 album, Mama Said, has been remastered and expanded and will be reissued on 5 June in the US and 4 June everywhere else by Virgin/EMI. The 2CD reissue adds 21 bonus tracks to the album, including 15 previously unreleased recordings (see track listing below).
Mama Said was the follow-up to 1989 debut Let Love Rule and featured the hit singles Always On The Run and It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over.
As well as originally released B-sides, the bonus material includes several unfinished songs from the Mama Said album sessions, home demos, and two unreleased remixes of It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over.
Pre-order here
Full track listing below:
Continue reading “Lenny Kravitz / Mama Said Reissue”
Propaganda‘s 1985 album A Secret Wish was swiftly followed up later that same year with Wishful Thinking, an eight-track remix album featuring reworked versions of many tracks including singles Duel and Dr. Mabuse.
A Secret Wish was reissued in 2010 as a 2CD Deluxe Edition (number 11 in ZTT’s element series) and June 2012 sees the release of Wishful Thinking from ZTT/Salvo in the form of an expanded one CD remaster (number 23 in ZTT’s element series).
The reissue features six bonus tracks (five previously unreleased) details below:
Secret World Live, Peter Gabriel‘s concert film from 1994, is to be re-released on 2 July on DVD and Blu-ray.
Extensive work has been carried out to create the best possible quality – the original 16mm film negatives were repaired / cleaned and scanned (at cinema-spec super 2K) for mastering and restoration. Once scanned, the footage was digitally restored and graded to allow fans to view the concert as never been seen before.
The Secret World Live tour supported the release of Gabriel’s 1992’s Us album and featured elaborate presentation and choreography, with two stages joined by a narrow moving walkway. The line-up for this show featured Peter Gabriel (vocals, keyboards); Manu Katche (drums); Tony Levin (bass, vocals); David Rhodes (guitar, vocals); Jean Claude Naimro (keyboards, vocals); Paula Cole (vocals); Shankar (violin, vocals); Levon Minassian (doudouk) with guests Papa Wemba and Molokai.
Bonus Features will include Red Rain (not featured in the original film), a time-lapse film of the complex stage set up, plus a featurette on the making of the Secret World Live film including interviews and behind the scenes footage. Additionally, there’s a newly restored photo-montage slideshow to the remixed “Quiet” version of Steam.
Californian singer-songwriter Michael Franks has been entertaining fans since the early-seventies, and his long career – including a fruitful 24-year association with Warner Bros. – was recently celebrated with The Dream: 1973-2011, an extensive five-disc box set created by Rhino France.
Continue reading “Michael Franks / The Dream 1973-2011 / 5CD Box Set”
Kate Bush made a rare public appearance yesterday when she picked up the Pop Award at the South Bank Sky Arts Awards for her 50 Words For Snow album from last year. Watch the video below to see her acceptance speech.
Universal/Sanctuary records release a four-disc box set of material from The Searchers on 25 June 2012.
Continue reading “The Searchers / “Hearts In Their Eyes” 4CD Box Set coming in June”
Early Takes Volume 1, as the title suggests, is a series of early versions (and demos) of familiar and perhaps not-so-familiar tracks by George Harrison. Some of the music was used in Martin Scorsese’s superb Harrison documentary Living In The Material World and the ten songs on this CD were first available as a bonus audio disc in the Living In The Material World Super Deluxe Box set (which also included the companion book as well as the DVD).
Clearly, anyone who spent £75 on that set to get the exclusive audio is likely to feel a little peeved that it is now available on its own for £9 or so. Them’s the breaks, as they say.
Whether Early Takes Volume 1 is simply an opportunity to sell these tracks to an audience with shallower pockets, or a serious attempt to start reissuing rare and unreleased material from Harrison’s archive is hard to determine. Certainly “Volume 1” suggests further releases, rather than just a one-off, but on the other hand this collection comprises only 30 minutes of music and contains six tracks from All Things Must Pass including two of Harrison’s best known songs outside The Beatles – My Sweet Lord and the title track All Things Must Pass. If you were planning a multi-volume archive set would you choose to put all those tracks on one CD?
Whatever the plan (if there is a plan) what is really disappointing is that no attempt has been made to inform the audience. None of the ten tracks have any annotation in terms of when they were recorded, where they were recorded, or who played on the tracks. The CD does not even come with an accompanying booklet. A curious decision especially since once you start listening to the songs those very questions enter your head.
[nggallery id=71]
So onto the music then. I will admit to having reservations about a whole album of intimate George-plus-acoustic home demos – but in the end this disc is much more satisfying than that, with many tracks having band arrangements – early loose exploratory takes that are full of fun, charm and energy. Awaiting On You All typifies this, with a great vocal performance and Woman Don’t You Cry For Me is much easier on the ears than the rather overblown 1976 master version from Thirty Three and 1/3.
That is one of the best aspects of this release. Without the production frills the tracks are to a certain degree shorn of their ‘identity’ and share the same space quite happily. The outstanding tracks are (inevitably) the demos of My Sweet Lord and All Things Must Pass. These versions are a natural progression from the very early solo outings that appeared on The Beatles’ Anthology 3 collection and are demos with guitar, bass, drums and simple arrangements. The sound quality is outstanding, and Giles Martin, who has produced this compilation describes the recordings as “multi-track live tapes” which has allowed Steve Rooke and his team at Abbey Road to master sympathetically.
This short, charming release is a delight and (as if it were needed) it showcases what a great talent George Harrison was. What may have started out as a box-set filling exercise has turned out to be a surprisingly essential individual release. Recommended.
