Reissue Theory: Stevie Nicks Solo – and Beyond

Welcome to another installment of Reissue Theory, where we reflect on notable albums and the reissues they could someday see. With anticipation running high for a new album from Stevie Nicks in a few months, we bring you a special look back at her first two solo albums – which have never been expanded – and that one record she’s on that fans have been anxiously waiting for an official CD release…

This post is dedicated with love to Stephen Sears, a good friend of The Second Disc. Today is his birthday! Wish him a good one at his blog.

Stephanie Lynn Nicks is many things to many people – an accomplished singer/songwriter both on her own and as a member of Fleetwood Mac, an icon of ’70s rock music and all its styles and excesses, a witch (just kidding!) – and she’s going to drop In Your Dreams, her first solo album in a decade, this coming May. This will come after a co-headlining tour with Rod Stewart slated to begin next week. (Of course, she toured with Fleetwood Mac in 2009 as well – but right now this is mostly Nicks’ time to shine!)

Clearly, this is a year to get your Nicks fix. With that in mind, we take a trip down memory lane through three of her earliest, most significant moments on record outside of Fleetwood Mac. Join us after the jump!

Short Takes: The Kinks are Koming Stateside, B.A.D. Reissues Planned, MBV Insanity, More Live Dead

• Those upcoming deluxe reissues of the first three Kinks LPs in the U.K. this April are coming to American record stores too! They’ve been set for April 12, one week after the British release date. (Thanks to MusicTAP for the tip!)
• Buried at the bottom of a press release touting the forthcoming Big Audio Dynamite reunion tour – no doubt spurred on in part by last year’s pretty great deluxe reissue of their first album – there’s a mention that Legacy is working with B.A.D. on more Legacy Editions of their catalogue. No word on what’s being planned specifically, but this was enough to get your catalogue correspondent to listen to “The Globe” a few times this morning.
• Slicing Up Eyeballs’ love-hate affair with remasters of the My Bloody Valentine catalogue continues, as remastered editions of Isn’t Anything and Loveless are delayed yet again. Even I didn’t have it that bad with the Duran Duran catalogue.
• It’s been awfully quiet from Rhino lately, but the label is putting out a soundtrack with some stuff that might be of interest to Deadheads. The Music Never Stopped, an upcoming father-son drama starring J.K. Simmons, will feature tracks by The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Steppenwolf and Crosby, Stills & Nash – and three of those Dead tracks are previously unreleased live cuts. The collection is out now digitally and will arrive in physical form on March 29. Hit the jump to check out the track list.

Five Disco Classics Coming from Big Break in April (UPDATED 3/16)

Big Break Records continues its busy schedule with five new disco and dance titles from the ’70s and ’80s coming to CD on April 25.

The records in question are Open Sesame by Kool & The Gang (which spawned several danceable hits in the title track – heard in Saturday Night Fever – and “Super Band”); Pennye Ford’s Pennye and Yarbrough & Peoples’ Be a Winner, both cut for the Total Experience label in the mid-’80s; and the sole albums by Loose Change and TJM, both of which were produced (and in the latter case, the only album performed) by legendary disco king Tom Moulton (pictured at left).

All the sets are augmented with non-LP tracks and single edits or remixes (although some of the discographical details have been incredibly difficult to nail down – let us know what we might be missing UPDATE: No wonder they were so hard to find! We had the wrong bonus tracks for some. Thanks to everyone who set us straight!) (Corrected) Track lists and pre-order links are after the jump!

Run for the Hills! New Iron Maiden Compilation Due in May

Iron Maiden’s latest studio release may be called The Final Frontier, but the band – whose latest leg of The Final Frontier World Tour is set to kick off tomorrow in Mexico and wind through South America and Europe through August – still have a few tricks up Eddie’s rotting sleeve. On May 23 in the U.K. (and a day later in the States), the band will release From Fear to Eternity: The Best of 1990-2010, a compilation spanning their most recent two decades.

Intended as a companion piece to 2008’s Somewhere Back in Time: The Best of 1980-1990, this new set differs in that it spans across two discs instead of one. Accordingly, many of the tracks span as long as 11 minutes or so; there’s quite a bit of material to get through on this set. Happily, the package is promised to retail for the cost of only one disc. There’s also, unlike the last compilation, one track that’s more difficult to find than most: a live take on “Man on the Edge,” from The X Factor (1996). As with several of the songs, this one was originally not recorded with vocalist Bruce Dickinson (at the time, he was out of the band and pursuing a solo career), but whereas the other three live tracks come from their 2002 Rock in Rio live set, this particular track comes from the CD single of “The Wicker Man” released in 2000. So that’s something for rarity hunters.

The official Iron Maiden website has posted the press release and a note from band manager Rod Smallwood on the album, and the official track list is after the jump.