Weekend News Round-Up: Doobies, Peter Gabriel, Stax and Kansas

It was such a busy week that reporting has spilled over into the weekend! Enjoy these tidbits from around the rest of the catalogue music world.

• Eagle Rock is releasing a vintage live CD/DVD by The Doobie Brothers, from their 1982 farewell tour. Live at the Greek 1982 sees a lineup that included sole original member Patrick Simmons on guitar, longtime co-drummer Keith Knudsen (who shared the kit with Chet McCracken, a member since 1980’s One Step Closer), guitarist/violinist John McFee, percussionist Bobby LaKind, sax/keyboard player Cornelius Bumpus, legendary session bassist Willie Weeks and the one and only Michael McDonald leading the band. Founding vocalist Tom Johnston sings guest lead on the penultimate song in the set, the always-great “China Grove,” and finale “Listen to the Music” features a few more classic Doobies, including original drummer John Hartman, bassist Tiran Porter and drummer Michael Hossack. Sixteen tracks feature on the DVD; the CD omits one track (McDonald’s soon-to-be-hit “I Keep Forgettin'”) but adds four more bonus cuts. The set’s out on June 28 and you can get the full breakdown from the always-great MusicTAP.
• Yesterday, in two sentences, Peter Gabriel’s website likely got fans to break out their copies of So – released 25 years ago yesterday – and speculate on when the promised “celebratory release” would hit shelves and what might be on it. (We’ve speculated too, naturally.)
• A little while ago we’d posted that there was a new series of Stax remasters coming from Concord Music Group, who owns the venerable label’s catalogue. Those albums are coming out on Tuesday, and there’s two things to note: one, that full track lists are after the jump on this post, and two, that our friends at Popdose are holding a contest through Tuesday to win these three reissues! What’s not to like about that?
• I always feel remiss about not giving more attention to Rock Candy Records, a U.K. label specializing in pretty well-done reissues and expansions of hard rock titles. Their latest releases, set for May 25, are remastered editions of Kansas’ final albums for Kirshner/Epic, Vinyl Confessions (1982) and Drastic Measures (1983). These albums saw the band in transition; guitarist/keyboardist Kerry Livgren and bassist Dave Hope had both become born-again Christians, and vocalist Steve Walsh had left the group, replaced by Jon Elefante. The albums – the first of which spawned a Top 20 hit in “Play the Game Tonight” – were remastered with the rest of the band’s Sony-controlled back catalogue by Legacy Recordings in 1996, but those have since fallen out of print, making these sets worth it if you’re a fan who missed these the last time around. Amazon U.K. links are after the jump as well.

Are You Hangin’ on the Edge of Your Seat? Second Round of Queen Remasters Have Track Lists

With all the excitement in and out of Second Disc HQ, we couldn’t dare let the revelation of confirmed bonus content on the second wave of Queen reissues pass you by. The track lists for each bonus EP for the next batch of remasters – News of the World, Jazz, The Game, Flash Gordon and Hot Space – were posted to Queen’s website Thursday. And they’re pretty much what you might expect, with a little bit of what you might not.

Once again, each EP has about five or six tracks, drawing from either live content, outtakes or rare non-LP B-sides. Each disc has something unreleased; all five of News‘ bonus cuts may be unreleased, drawn mostly from a 1977 BBC session and live sets recorded years after the original LP (one may have appeared on the 1979 set Live Killers, continuing the odd trend of including tracks from previously-released live albums in the mix). Many of those tracks are taken from two nights in Montreal in 1981 and a show at Milton Keynes Bowl months later in 1982, both of which were released in full as Queen on Fire: Live at the Bowl and Queen Rock Montreal.

Single mixes and edits of “Bicycle Race,” “Flash” and “Back Chat” as well as the two non-LP tracks from these albums – “A Human Body,” from the “Play the Game” single, and “Soul Brother” from the B-side to “Under Pressure” – are included. Some of the outtakes look particularly interesting, including different takes on some of the Flash Gordon soundtrack material and “It’s a Beautiful Day,” first recorded in 1980 and reworked for the posthumous Queen album Made in Heaven (1995).

These sets land in the U.K. on June 27, about a month after the first batch of remasters make their stateside appearance. There’s no timetable for when the new sets will appear in the U.S., but I’d bet by the time they do, we’ll know what bonus material will grace the next batch. Check it out after the jump.