ELP “Works” Hard on Vintage Live Set from Shout! Factory, “Boys Club” Set Makes CD Debut

Fans of Emerson, Lake & Palmer – not to mention fans of Keith Emerson’s live work with Marc Bonilla and Deep Purple’s Glenn Hughes – have got two new sets to look forward to this season.

Shout! Factory will release Live in Montreal 1977 on November 12. Recorded in support of Works Volume 1 – a double album which featured Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer each taking the reins on writing and production on three sides and two lengthy tracks (“Fanfare for the Common Man,” “Pirates”) on the fourth – Live in Montreal 1977 features tracks from all sides of that set, plus a healthy selection of prog-oriented fan favorites from the band’s discography up to that point (“Karn Evil 9,” “Pictures At an Exhibition,” “Nutrocker”). This tour (and possibly this date), which also featured an intricate but costly orchestral accompaniment, has been represented on record before as 1979’s In Concert album, released after the band’s ill-received Love Beach (1978) and subsequent breakup, and by Castle in the U.K. as the double-disc Works Live in 1993.

Recently, Varese Sarabande has also taken to releasing a live show featuring one of the ELP members. At San Francisco’s Maritime Hall on May 15, 1998, Keith Emerson took the stage with Glenn Hughes, former bassist/vocalist for the Mk. III and Mk. IV lineups of Deep Purple (the pair first met when Deep Purple and ELP co-headlined the California Jam in 1974), and guitarist Marc Bonilla (who would later join Emerson’s backing band). The trio tackled tunes popularized by ELP (“Tarkus,” “Fanfare for the Common Man”), solo tracks by Bonilla (“Afterburner,” “White Noise”) and a Hughes-led rendition of Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” Released on CD by a U.K. label in 2009, Varese’s release marks the premiere release of the full show across two discs.

Boys Club Live in California is available now; you can order it (and pre-order ELP’s Live in Montreal 1977) after the jump.

RPM Rescues “The Sixties Sounds of Tim Andrews” On New Anthology

Will the real Chris Andrews please stand up?

Well, that’s easier said than done.  Singer/songwriter Chris Andrews is known for penning hits such as Sandie Shaw’s “Girl Don’t Come” and “Long Live Love,” but there’s another Chris Andrews who rose to prominence during the same era – and also did so in Swingin’ London.  This man of the same name recorded with The Gremlins and The Fleur de Lys, and sang the lead on the 1967 hit U.K. single “Reflections of Charles Brown,” issued under the name of Rupert’s People.  This “other” Chris Andrews is the subject of RPM’s Something About Suburbia, credited to Tim Andrews – the name he took on to avoid confusion with his contemporary.   (Wikipedia – among other online sources – is still mixed up, crediting the Sandie Shaw-associated Chris with the Tim Andrews recordings.)  This 16-track anthology brings together a number of singles released under the Tim Andrews name, as well as tracks from The Gremlins, The Fleur de Lys and Rupert’s People.

Reissue co-producer Stefan Granados tells the whole Chris/Tim Andrews story in the liner notes of Something About Suburbia.  Andrews, born in London, entered show business at an early age, replacing a certain David Jones as the Artful Dodger in the London production of Lionel Bart’s musical Oliver! and eventually appearing in the American touring company, as well.  When Andrews returned to London in late 1965, he joined the Spencer Davis Group-esque band The Gremlins, represented here with their 1966 garage-style rendition of that band’s “High Time Baby.”  It was childhood friend Phil Sawyer – a future member of the Spencer Davis Group, in fact – who enlisted Andrews into the Fleur de Lys.  With Sawyer, he co-wrote the energetic, snarling “Mud in Your Eye,” but it soon, Sawyer departed the band ranks to join Shotgun Express.  (Trivia fans, take note: Rod Stewart is another alumnus of Shotgun Express.)

Andrews stayed onboard, recording the psychedelic Columbia single “Reflections of Charles Brown” b/w “Hold On” as a side project with members of Fleur de Lys for producer Howard Conder.  “Reflections,” however, was quickly recognized as being rather derivative of Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” so the decision was made to release it under the pseudonym of Rupert’s People.  (“Whiter Shade” was released in May 1967 and charted the following month; “Reflections” also arrived that summer.  It’s been mooted that “Reflections” may have been recorded earlier than the Procol Harum song, but “Whiter Shade” was released first, causing the trouble.)  The single was a minor hit, charting in Australia and receiving frequent play on pirate radio, but its success backfired on the Fleur de Lys.  Soon, Conder was recruiting another band to perform as Rupert’s People.  Andrews reveals to Granados that the situation “in a sense, broke the band up in a way.”  Both sides of Columbia DB 8226 are included here.

You’ll find the rest of the story after the jump, including the full track listing with discography and order links!

Everything is (More Than) Everything: Unreleased Donny Hathaway Works Compiled on New Box Set (UPDATED 9/26)

UPDATE (9/26/2013): After initially posting this was to be released in France, we were pleased to receive confirmation that this box, in fact, will be released stateside as well! We have amended the release date and pre-order links accordingly.

AMENDED POST (9/23/2013): Several years after a great career-spanning box set from France, Rhino is releasing another new box by the late soul legend Donny Hathaway, with two discs of unreleased studio and live content.

Never My Love: The Anthology takes its name from the classic Donald and Richard Addrisi composition, taken to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967. As we discovered this year thanks to a 45RPM single released for Record Store Day, Hathaway cut his own soulful version, one of 13 tracks on a disc of unreleased studio material. Though much of the material on this disc never made it past the demo/work-in-progress stage, it makes for an intriguing look at the scope of Hathaway’s ambition – particularly the disc’s closing “ZYXYGY Concerto,” a 20-minute, multi-movement piece recorded in the fall of 1973 after a summer touring with the Newport Jazz Festival.

Hathaway’s live prowess takes hold of Disc 3, compiled from nine sets at New York’s historic Bitter End between October 27 and 29, 1971. Donny tackles both his signature hits (“Voices Inside (Everything is Everything),” “Little Ghetto Boy”) and killer covers (Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy”) with equal aplomb.  (Of course, four songs from those sets made up the second side of Hathaway’s Live album in 1972, but the songs replicated here – “Everything is Everything” and “Jealous Guy” – are alternate to what’s on the original album.)

And what will you find on the other two discs? Hit the jump to find out.

Positively Bob Dylan: “Complete Album Collection” Box Set Arrives In November

Is it rolling, Bob?

Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings certainly have the ball rolling on the remarkable ouevre of Bob Dylan.  Hot on the heels of Another Self Portrait, the rapturously-received tenth installment of The Bootleg Series, the labels have just confirmed the November 5 release of a Dylanologist’s dream: The Complete Album Collection Volume One.  Yes, they’re all here – each one of the core, full-length live and studio albums released by the former Robert Allen Zimmerman on the Columbia and Asylum labels between 1962 and 2012.  It’s a tour of people and places, real and imagined, all filtered through one singular perspective.  By the numbers, that’s 35 studio albums (including the much-maligned 1973 LP Dylan in its first North American CD reissue), six live albums, and a new 2-CD collection of odds and ends entitled Side Tracks for a total of 47 discs.  It, of course, adds up to a visit with Silvio, Isis, the Jokerman, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, and even the man who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat – by way of Brownsville, Duquesne and Highway 61.

Following similar sets for Tony Bennett and Johnny Cash, Dylan’s whole career arc can be found on The Complete Album Collection Volume One.  And what an arc it’s been, from convention-defying, folk-singing, protest-slinging “voice of a generation” to electric rocker to country crooner to born-again musical preacher to elder statesman to self-described “song and dance man.”   Along the way, Dylan challenged notions of what a song could express, and paved the way for every young kid with a guitar and a dream to make his voice heard.  Even today, there may be “another side of Bob Dylan” waiting to be revealed on record.  Who else would have followed a genuine tribute to the Tin Pan Alley tunesmiths of yore on 2009’s Christmas in the Heart with 2012’s dark, brooding and very appropriately-named Tempest?  Even as he criss-crosses the world over and over again on a so-called “never-ending tour,” Dylan remains the epitome of an enigma.  But if there are answers to be revealed, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better place to start than The Complete Album Collection Volume One.

After the jump, we’ll explore exactly what you’ll find here!  Plus: pre-order links and a complete album listing with discography!