Massive Live Dead Box Coming in Fall

Do you love The Grateful Dead? I mean really love-with-capital-letters-bold-italicized-and-underlined LOVE The Grateful Dead? Well, there’s a massive box set coming your way to help you express that love.

In its newest issue, Rolling Stone reports a box is coming from Rhino that will chronicle The Dead’s European tour of 1972 in its entirety, all from original 16-track recordings. It’s going to be 60 discs of 22 shows, in their entirety, unedited and bursting at the seams with liner notes and other bonus material. (This tour has been previously anthologized on the overdubbed Warner Bros. triple album Europe ’72 (1972), the four-disc Arista box Steppin’ Out: England ’72 (2002) and Rhino’s Rockin’ the Rhein with The Grateful Dead (2004).)

Now, the set is available for pre-order through the band’s Web site. But there is sort of a catch. “This individually numbered boxed set will be limited to orders placed with a maximum of 7,200 boxes produced. As a special bonus, the first 3,000 orders will receive a personalized copy,” the site says. “Due to the huge manufacturing costs…we need to hit 3,000 sales before we even go into production.” So make plans for this $450 set soon if you’re a fan.

The box will be due in September. Order it here and hit the jump to see the gigs that will be captured in the set.

Reissue Theory: Sammy Davis, Jr., Compiled: “Sammy in the Seventies”

Welcome to another installment of Reissue Theory, here we reflect on well-known albums of the past and the reissues they could someday see. Today, we look at a beloved American icon and one of the least anthologized periods of his lengthy career.

There may be no figure in American popular culture more maligned in death than Sammy Davis, Jr. The image of the diminutive entertainer, clad in open shirts and bell-bottoms, wearing beads and gold chains, and with an ever-present cigarette dangling from his mouth has superseded that of the incendiary talent, a triple-threat actor, singer and dancer who could hold his own opposite Frank Sinatra (and best him in the dancing department, natch). Davis was also a best-selling author, an impressionist par excellence, a civil rights crusader who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and not a bad drummer, either. Luckily for his fans as well as for those first introducing themselves to this once-in-a-lifetime talent, the best of Sammy Davis, Jr. was preserved for posterity on disc.

One era of Davis’ recording history, however, is mostly nonexistent on CD, and that is the 1970s. Between 1970 and 1979, Davis recorded primarily for the Motown, MGM and 20th Century labels, with a handful of solo tracks also recorded for Warner Bros. and some live material released on RCA Victor and Warner Bros. (MGM also recorded a live LP in September 1971 from the Sands in Las Vegas which remains unreleased.) None of his 1970s LPs have been reissued, and while this period is full of contradictions – it yielded Davis’ biggest ever hit, “The Candy Man,” as well as renditions of television themes and the Alka-Seltzer jingle, perhaps the nadir of his singing career  – there is a wealth of wonderful material waiting to be rediscovered. Even deep in the throes of substance abuse and addiction, Davis was capable of turning out quality work, and it’s a strange irony that of the CD collections compiling this period, most feature only its lesser achievements.

As Davis’ recordings for Motown, MGM and 20th Century now reside in the Universal vaults, a compilation of his 1970s studio oeuvre is within the realm of possibility, and so today’s Reissue Theory imagines a four-disc compilation, Sammy in the Seventies: The Studio Recordings. The core LPs include Something for Everyone (1970), Now (1972), Portrait of Sammy Davis, Jr. (1972), Sammy Davis Jr. and Count Basie (1973), That’s Entertainment (1974), The Song and Dance Man (1976) and Sings the Great TV Tunes (1978), basically a repackage of The Song and Dance Man. (We have omitted 1974’s Sammy: The Original Television Soundtrack and 1978’s original cast recording of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse’s Stop the World, I Want to Get Off as they both fall out of the purview of this collection.  That said, both are fine candidates for reissue.)

Hit the jump as we explore Sammy’s discography and see what a near-complete Sammy in the Seventies: The Studio Recordings would look like, with full discographical details!

Zombies LPs to Be Revived As Double-Disc Sets

Repertoire Records is releasing double-disc editions of the original two albums by The Zombies.

The British group, acclaimed for such singles as “She’s Not There” and “Time of the Season,” only cut two albums in the late ’60s – Begin Here for Decca and Odessy and Oracle for CBS – before splitting up. But there was plenty of material to be had; there were quite a few non-LP singles and a host of material for a third, never-released album. This work has been anthologized before – perhaps most notably in the 1997 box set Zombie Heaven on the Big Beat label in the U.K. – but these discs feature new remasters by John Astley and original artwork in a digipak case.

Both sets can be ordered from Repertoire’s site here and here (they’re expected to ship on January 21). Hit the jump for track info.

La La Land Goes Live with First Releases of 2011

La La Land Records’ first titles of 2011 were promised earlier this month, and they’re now available to order. Two television shows, the ’60s war program The Rat Patrol and the late ’80s Western The Young Riders, are being presented in premiere releases (1,200 units each), alongside a straight, unlimited reissue of the original soundtrack to Solaris (2002) with improved sound quality.

It’s a smaller-scale start, but La La Land also recently promised they’re again appearing at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con – and we all know how that turned out last year. Order links are here, here and here and track info is after the jump.