Holding the Music in Your Hands ®
Roger Taylor‘s solo career-spanning box set The Lot was due out today, but Amazon are no longer selling the set after fans complained of a host of errors with the box, both with the music itself and typos in the actual text.
Continue reading “Fans left disappointed over errors on Roger Taylor “Lot” box”
British synth-pop pioneer Howard Jones is playing three dates in the UK at the end of this month to celebrate 30 years of making music. Ticket holders for the Shepherd’s Bush Empire on 29 November and Birmingham’s O2 Academy on 30 November, will each receive a complimentary CD that will be available from a special desk near the merchandise stand at each show.
Continue reading “Howard Jones celebrates 30 years with free CD for gig-goers”
The Who‘s Tommy is reissued as a Super Deluxe Edition and includes a disc of 25 unheard demos, an unreleased ‘live bootleg’ performance of the rock opera and the whole album in 5.1 surround on Blu-ray ‘Pure Audio’ disc. 
19 years after the first BBC Beatles set, comes this 63-track follow up. Just for good measure Apple have remastered the first volume as well and you can even pick both up in a limited ‘collection’ slipcase.
This celebration of The Rolling Stones‘ 2013 Hyde Park gigs is available in a bewildering array of formats, but the pick of the bunch is this surprisingly well-priced 4-disc deluxe book package.
Hot on the heels of the Dylan Complete Album Collection from last week comes a similar set featuring the work of American keyboardist and composer Herbie Hancock. This collection contains 34 remastered CDs, with many getting their debut outside of Japan.
A new Pogues box set, 30 Years, will be released by Rhino in December 2013.
This eight CD collection contains the albums Red Roses For Me, Rum Sodomy and the Lash, If I Should Fall From Grace With God, Peace and Love, Hell’s Ditch, Waiting For Herb, and Pogue Mahone. A previously unissued live album The Pogues With Joe Strummer Live in London (recorded at The Forum in 1991) is also included.
Continue reading “The Pogues / “30 Years” box set”
Quick-off-the-mark Who fans spotted that the Super Deluxe Edition box set version of the forthcoming Tommy reissue was listed on Amazon Germany for only €19 when it was first listed for pre-order back in late August.
Continue reading “Amazon Germany honour “Tommy” misprice as Who fans snag bargain”
Guest reviewer and pop enthusiast Anthony Kay takes a look at Edsel’s recent Bananarama 2CD+DVD reissues for SuperDeluxeEdition.
It’s impossible for me to avoid slipping into syrupy nostalgia when re-visiting these six albums by Bananarama…
They shaped my childhood. They have been played more times than I care to remember and I know them pretty much inside and out. It was my babysitter who first introduced me to them as a child, way back in the early 1980s. She bought records, read Smash Hits magazine and recorded The Official Gallup UK Top 40 every Sunday evening, so to me she seemed like the coolest person in the world at the time. It should happen that my babysitter would leave behind one of her magazines one night, and upon poring over the pages with great interest, I was to fall instantly in love with a trio of moody looking girls starring back at me; Keren, Sara and Siobhan, AKA Bananarama. I was particularly drawn to Siobhan, or “Shuv” as they nicknamed her, not least of all because my babysitter seemed to be styling herself in her image, and for the next 30 years or so, I would be quite the loyal fan. As you may well know, there have been numerous Bananarama reissues, compilations and pressings since their heyday, most of which regurgitate the same old material, so the news of yet more album reissues was initially met with mixed feelings.
Continue reading “Bananarama / 2CD+DVD Deluxe Edition Reissues reviewed”
Released only in Japan in 1997, Sting At The Movies (POCM-1553) is a collection of Sting songs that had featured in films over the years.
Actually, it’s not just Sting, because a few Police tracks do make an appearance, including the opener De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da (used in The Last American Virgin) and the fantastic I Burn For You, from the soundtrack to the 1982 Dennis Potter film Brimstone and Treacle.
Continue reading “Japanese CD of the Day: Sting At The Movies / compilation from 1997”
David Bowie‘s The Next Day was released this week as The Next Day Extra.
This new limited edition box set edition features the standard 14-track album on one CD and comes with a bonus CD containing two remixes and four previously unreleased tracks. This second disc also includes the four bonus tracks issued around the world as part of the original release. A DVD with the videos for Where Are We Now?, The Stars (Are Out Tonight), The Next Day and Valentine’s Day complete the set.
The package is a lift-off lid box with the three discs (dubbed ‘Tracks’, ‘Extra’ and ‘Light’) packaged in card sleeves. You also get three booklets.
Continue reading “FIRST PICTURES: David Bowie / The Next Day Extra / limited box set”
It’s been 20 years since the Frank Sinatra Duets album which saw him collaborate with artists as diverse as Barbara Streisand, Tony Bennett, Bono and Gloria Estefan.
To commemorate this, Capitol/Universal Music have created a Super Deluxe Edition box set that features both the Duets album and its follow-up Duets II (which was originally released a year later in 1994).
Continue reading “Frank Sinatra / “Duets” 20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition”
Time, Rod Stewart‘s first ‘proper’ studio album for nearly two decades was issued back in May 2013 and was available as a standard 12-track version and a deluxe edition which came with three bonus songs.
Well, much like David Bowie‘s The Next Day Extra, there is now another deluxe edition, just in time for Christmas…
Continue reading “Rod Stewart / “Time” 2CD deluxe set”
Edsel Records are reissuing the four Elektra albums released by US alternative band They Might Be Giants, in December this year.
The band consists of John Flansburgh (guitar) and John Linnell (accordian and saxophone) and their first two albums – They Might Be Giants and Lincoln – are alternative classics from the mid/late eighties, featuring memorable tracks such as Don’t Let’s Start, (She Was A) Hotel Detective, Youth Culture Killed My Dog, Ana Ng, They’ll Need A Crane and The World’s Address.
Continue reading “They Might Be Giants / Elektra album 2CD reissues, including “Flood””
Fire Records are to issue Little Sand Box, and eight-disc box set featuring the solo work of Giant Sand frontman Howe Gelb, in December.
The collection will feature all of the Tucson based musician’s six commercially released solo albums, including the acclaimed Sno Angel Like You from 2006. Each album will come with bonus tracks and two further discs complete the set; a selection of piano pieces entitled Some Piano and the Sno Angel Winging It live CD. Liner notes from Gelb himself are included within the booklet.
Continue reading “Howe Gelb / Little Sand Box”
Paramount Records were an American record label that ran for 15 years from around 1917 onwards. The company were a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Chair Company who (amongst other things) originally made wooden phonograph cabinets.
The firm released blues and jazz records by artists such as Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Charley Patton, and Blind Lemon Jefferson specialising in so-called “race records” – that is music from African-American artists.
Continue reading “The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records, Volume One / lavish box”
Peter Gabriel today releases (digitally) an outtake from his 1986 classic album So.
The track Courage first saw the light of day last year when it was featured on twelve-inch vinyl as part of the So 25th Anniversary box.
Peter Gabriel has worked on it some more since then, and it now features new overdubs by himself and long-term guitarist David Rhodes. It has been newly mixed by Tchad Blake. This ‘Radio Edit’ version forms a ‘digital bundle’ with ‘The Hexidecimal Mix’ courtesy of remixer and producer Steve Osbourne.
Continue reading “Peter Gabriel releases “Courage”: a newly remixed “So” outtake”
Fifty years after the first release from The Animals comes The Mickie Most Years And More – a new five CD box set.
The box offers, for the first time on CD, the group’s first four American albums The Animals, The Animals on Tour, Animal Tracks and Animalization in their original mono versions. The fifth CD features the band’s first ever release – the I Just Wanna Make Love To You EP.
Continue reading “The Animals / “The Mickie Most Years and More” / five CD box set”
The mammoth Dylan collection arrives today. 35 studio albums, six live albums and a special 2CD compilation of non-album tracks called Side Tracks. It’s available on a USB stick at higher resolution too.
The Next Day Extra from David Bowie comprises his acclaimed 2013 album, with a bonus CD featuring four new tracks, remixes and bonus songs from previous deluxe editions. A DVD offers all the videos.
This video shows an unboxing of the Super Deluxe Edition of The Best Of Keane.
This edition contains two CDs, a DVD and a 100-page hardcover ‘photo scrapbook’. The first disc is a 20-track hits collection while the second CD contains 17 B-sides. The DVD features an August 2013 acoustic gig, where the setlist was chosen by Keane fans.
The Best Of Keane is released on 11 November 2013
Super Deluxe Edition (2CD+DVD+Book)
Live From KCRW is a ten-track collection of live sessions from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds recorded at the Santa Monica radio station in April 2013.
Continue reading “Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds / Live From KCRW / radio sessions”
It seems that the appeal of a simple 12-track greatest hits album has long since waned. Record labels these days are offering more for less. Rhino’s format of choice in the lead up to Christmas 2013, is the 4CD set, compacted into a ‘fatbox’ CD package with a slipcase. They are releasing the Simply Red Songbook collection in exactly this format and here they do the same for The Eagles.
Continue reading “The Eagles / Selected Works 1972-1999 / four-CD box set”
In Germany, Universal Music have just released Queen‘s Platinum Collection three-CD greatest hits set in the kind of limited edition packaging normally reserved for home cinema releases on DVD and blu-ray.
Continue reading “Queen / “The Platinum Collection” special steelbook edition”
