Prince Week Day 2: A Compilation Comparison

We continue our Prince week with a little something for the fans out there that may have never caught on to His Royal Badness enough to buy any of his music. Often times, in cases where you want to get a firm start on following an artist, a greatest-hits compilation is the way to go. But Prince, like many other rock legends, has more than one such set on the market. And money’s tight for a lot of folks.

So which one do you end up buying? Follow the jump for a detailed breakdown of each one.

It Might Be (The Soundtrack for) You

The Film Score Monthly label has prepped another two titles for release: two very different scores from two different composers, but winners both.

First up is Jerry Goldsmith’s in-demand score for the Sean Connery space Western Outland (1981). Goldsmith created a score that resembled his suspenseful approach to Alien from two years before, and it was augmented by some last-minute additions by Michael Boddicker (Buckaroo Banzai, Flashdance and session work for Michael Jackson) and Morton Stevens (who composed the Hawaii Five-O theme). This double-disc set, limited to 5000 copies, includes the premiere release of the complete original score plus alternates and outtakes alongside the original LP sequence (naturally featuring different takes from the film versions).

FSM has also prepped an expanded version of Dave Grusin’s score to Tootsie. Many remember the music of this gender-bending Dustin Hoffman comedy because of its theme, the pop classic “It Might Be You,” but the original album had a nice mix of songs and score – and it’s making its CD debut in the U.S. with an additional 18 bonus tracks. This disc is limited to 3000 copies.

Pre-order them here and here and get a look at the cover art and the full track listings for each after the jump.

Weezer Going Back to the Good Life

A hat tip to Pause & Play for posting the Amazon pre-order link for a Deluxe Edition of Pinkerton, the sophomore LP by alt-rock stalwarts Weezer, coming from Geffen and UMe.

When it was released in 1996, Pinkerton was ill-received by critics and fans expecting a traditional follow-up to the band’s excellent self-titled debut, which featured hooky garage-pop with Ric Ocasek of The Cars in the producer’s chair. By contrast, Pinkerton – initially conceived as a space-rock opera called Songs from the Black Hole and recorded between breaks in lead singer Rivers Cuomo’s first year at Harvard – was a darker affair with a less radio-friendly sound and an almost disturbing amount of lyrical introspection. Of course, since then, those flaws have been seen as high points (especially in the wake of the emo subgenre), and many of those same critics now consider Pinkerton a classic.

There’s no firm word on the material that will be added to this deluxe reissue – at least eight B-sides, live cuts and remixes were included on CD singles at the time, and many of those Black Hole demos were released on two demo compilations Cuomo oversaw some years ago – but hopefully the set will be as satisfying as Geffen’s reissue of Weezer’s first record was back in 2004. And The Second Disc will surely have a lot more to report before the expected release date of October 5.