Omnivore Succeeds with Reissue of The Posies’ “Failure”

Last week Omnivore Recordings announced their latest title for the late summer: an expansion of the debut album by power-pop idols The Posies.

The Washington-based group, built around singers/songwriters/guitarists Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow, earned immediate indie acclaim when first album Failure was released on the PopLlama label in 1988 after Scott McCaughey – leader of The Minus 5 and a constant collaborator with R.E.M. since the mid-1990s – was given a self-released copy of the album on cassette. The album opened the band up for widespread success in the next decade; The Posies ultimately signed with DGC Records, had their modern rock hit “Golden Blunders” covered by Ringo Starr and (perhaps the highest level of power pop ascension you can get) became part of the Big Star story when Auer and Stringfellow were recruited to join a new lineup of the group with Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens in the 1990s and 2000s. The Posies continue to record and tour to this day, no doubt inspiring countless fans of gorgeous hooks and beautiful harmonies to continue the tradition.

Omnivore’s expanded Failure restores the album’s original 12-track running order (preserved on cassette but cut down by one song on vinyl) and adds eight bonus tracks. Many of these are sourced from a long out-of-print 2000 box set and a 2004 reissue of the album proper, but one, a demo of “At Least for Now,” is being heard for the first time on this disc.

The power-pop goodness of Failure is reintroduced on August 19 on both CD and LP (which will feature the original 12-track playlist with the bonus tracks available on a download card). The first pressing of the LP edition will be on green vinyl – hence that green square you see above! Amazon links currently only exist for CD versions, but you can find those, as well as the full track list, below.

Failure: Expanded Edition (Omnivore Recordings, 2014)

CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

1. Blind Eyes Open
2. The Longest Line
3. Under Easy
4. Like Me Too
5. I May Hate You Sometimes
6. Ironing Tuesdays
7. Paint Me
8. Believe in Something (Other Than Yourself)
9. Compliment?
10. At Least for Now
11. Uncombined
12. What Little Remains
13. Believe in Something Other (Than Yourself) (Live)
14. I May Hate You Sometimes (Demo)
15. Paint Me (Demo)
16. Like Me Too (Demo)
17. Alison Hubbard (Instrumental)
18. After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (Instrumental)
19. Blind Eyes Open (Instrumental Demo)
20. At Least for Now (Demo)

Tracks 1-12 released PopLLama PL-2323, 1988
Track 13 from At Least At Last box set – Not Lame Recordings NLA-006, 2000
Tracks 14-19 from 15th anniversary expanded edition – Houston Party HPR091, 2004
Track 20 previously unreleased

Review: Hank Williams, “The Garden Spot Programs 1950”

Hello everybody, Garden Spot is on the air/So just relax and listen in your easy rocking chair/Music for the family in the good old-fashioned way/I hope that we can please you, bring you sunshine every day!

That bucolic, peppy introduction opened Naughton Farms’ Garden Spot radio program, “the show that brings you all your favorite folk music singers.”  One such “folk music singer” in 1950 was Hank Williams.  Omnivore Recordings’ new The Garden Spot Programs, 1950 (OVCD-87, 2014) preserves 24 tracks from four of these programs which haven’t been heard since their initial broadcasts.  In fact, nobody even knew these recordings existed until a deejay and author, George Gimarc, found them on transcription disks from Creston, Iowa’s KSIB radio station in 2013.  With the cooperation of the Williams estate, Omnivore has issued these lost treasures on a splendid single-disc presentation.

Radio has always played a key role in the country music story, largely due to the popularity of WSM’s Grand Ole Opry.  Williams was no stranger to sponsored radio programs; he had been pitching items on radio since 1937.  Many of these performances made their way to records, including for Johnnie Fair Syrup and patent medicine Hadacol.  His 1951 shows for Mother’s Best, a flour and farm feed company, also famously survived.  The Garden Spot Programs of 1950 were sponsored by Naughton Farms, a mail-order plant nursery in Waxahachie, Texas.  Despite the company’s Texan origins, the programs were recorded in Nashville, Tennessee.  The format was simple – Williams would perform, and during breaks, a local announcer would appear on-air.  He would inform the audience of the plants for sale and provide instructions to write the station to buy them.  Radio station personnel would process the C.O.D. orders and pass them onto Naughton Farms for fulfillment.

Williams made the recordings featured here at Castle Recording Laboratories in Nashville’s Tulane Hotel, not far from Opry flagship WSM.  Once the recordings were made, they were transferred to the 16-inch transcription disks and sent to radio stations across the country for broadcast; only the KSIB disks discovered by Gimarc are known to survive.  The station apparently preserved the disks well, too.  The clarity of these recordings, as restored and mastered by Michael Graves, is shockingly good.  For the Garden Spot sessions, Williams wasn’t joined by his usual Drifting Cowboy Band, and indeed, there’s no evidence as to who was performing alongside Williams.  Longtime Williams historian Colin Escott, in his typically erudite liner notes, surmises that the steel guitarist could be Don Davis (rather than Don Helms) or more likely, Clell Sumney, and takes a reasoned guess that the fiddler might be Dale Potter.  In any event, though, these musicians bring a different sound to Williams’ songs than the Drifting Cowboys.

This disc, produced by Escott and Omnivore’s Cheryl Pawelski, recreates what it must have been like to listen to the original programs with jingles and between-song banter.  Of the disc’s 24 cuts, 12 are proper songs – other tracks are jingles, brief, hoedown-ready instrumental fiddle tunes, and finale performances of Stephen Foster’s 1848 American standard “Oh! Susanna.”  Stick around after the final listed track, too, to hear a three-minute commercial for Naughton Farms’ rose bushes “that will make your yard the beauty spot this spring!”

We have plenty more after the jump, so stick around, won’t you?

Audio Fidelity In Surround: Label Premieres Kooper’s Multichannel “Super Session,” Reissues Benson’s “Breezin'” In 5.1

Thanks to the dedication of audiophile specialty labels like Audio Fidelity, Analogue Productions, and Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, the high-resolution Super Audio CD (SACD) format remains alive and well.   Yet most of these labels’ recent releases have featured stereo mixes only.  Audio Fidelity is finally making its first major leap into the world of 5.1 multi-channel surround sound with two upcoming reissues of classic albums including one long-coveted title.  On August 5, the label will premiere Al Kooper’s never-before-issued surround mix of his seminal 1968 Super Session album, a collaborative effort with Michael Bloomfield and Stephen Stills.  The label also restores to print the surround mix of George Benson’s 1976 commercial breakthrough Breezin’, which topped the U.S. Pop, Jazz and R&B Albums charts.  In addition, both of these hybrid CD releases will also happily feature the albums’ original stereo mixes as newly remastered by Steve Hoffman.  (The stereo mixes will be playable on both the SACD and standard CD layers whereas the surround mixes, of course, can only be played on SACD-compatible players.)

Having departed his group Blood, Sweat and Tears, Al Kooper was working in A&R (Artists and Repertoire) for the band’s label Columbia Records when he conceived of a blues-rock jam session record with Mike Bloomfield of The Electric Flag and Paul Butterfield Blues Band fame.  Enlisting Barry Goldberg and Harvey Brooks (both of The Electric Flag) and “Fast” Eddie Hoh for support, producer-keyboardist Kooper booked two days of studio time in Los Angeles in May 1968.  The group jammed on a number of songs the first day, including Kooper/Bloomfield originals “Albert’s Shuffle,” “Really” and the John Coltrane tribute “His Holy Modal Majesty.”  When Bloomfield failed to show up for the second day of the session, however, Kooper called in young gun Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield.  The guitar slinger joined Kooper for songs by Bob Dylan (“It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”), Donovan (“Season of the Witch”), bluesman Willie Cobb and bassist Brooks.  With both Bloomfield and Stills firing on all cylinders, Kooper’s Super Session, issued in July 1968, went on to a Gold certification.

Kooper revisited Super Session early in the 2000s for a 5.1 surround mix to be issued by Legacy Recordings alongside a new surround mix of BS&T’s Child is Father of the Man.  Unfortunately with the label abandoning the SACD format, both titles were relegated to the vaults.  Kooper confirmed this in 2004: “They both came out incredible and so I mastered them with Bob Ludwig. Now it seems they will languish on the shelves…”  Audio Fidelity has belatedly come to the rescue.  The label’s deluxe Super Session reissue will feature new liner notes by the great raconteur Kooper chronicling both the making of the album and the 5.1 mix.  Kooper’s mix, mastered by Ludwig, will be joined by a new mastering of the stereo tracks for SACD Stereo and CD Stereo by engineer Steve Hoffman.

After the jump: details on the new edition of George Benson’s Breezin’, and more!

Soundtrack Watch: La-La Land Rebuilds “Empire,” Gets Creepy and Kooky

Two heavy-hitters were announced for release from La-La Land Records this week, including a major expansion in the Spielberg-Williams canon worthy of the label’s 300th release.

First up, LLL has a single-disc expansion of Marc Shaiman’s score to the 1991 hit comedy The Addams Family. Based on Charles Addams’ iconic New Yorker cartoon strips, The Addams Family film features Gomez and Morticia (Raul Julia and Angelica Huston) and their brood welcoming the return of Gomez’s long-lost brother Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd). But is Fester really part of a plot by Gomez’s lawyer (Dan Hedaya) to embezzle the vast Addams family fortune? Shaiman, a composer/arranger who would earn international acclaim writing the Tony-winning score for a Broadway adaptation of John Waters’ Hairspray, turns in a delightfully macabre score that makes good use of Vic Mizzy’s iconic theme to the 1960s television series.

For their 300th release, La-La Land have returned to the Steven Spielberg-John Williams partnership that served them so well before with an expansion of Williams’ score to Empire of the Sun (1987). Based on J.G. Ballard’s autobiographical novel, Empire told the tale of Jim (Christian Bale), a wealthy British boy in Shanghai who ends up in an internment camp in Japan during World War II. As one of Spielberg’s first “serious movies,” and the first which Williams worked on with his longtime friend (Quincy Jones scored Spielberg’s 1985 drama The Color Purple), the score is an underrated triumph, alternately full of wonder and wartime bravado (choral-based piece “Exsultate Justi” remains a staple of Williams’ live conducting). It’s been greatly expanded for this two-disc set, featuring both the original film score and a half hour of unheard alternate cues.

Addams is limited to 3,000 copies, while Empire is 4,000 copies strong. Both can be previewed and ordered after the jump!

The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy Returns: Raven Collects David Allan Coe Albums

If “outlaw country” has a face, it’s likely that of David Allan Coe. Though many have been associated with the rabble-rousing, convention-defying, honky tonk-embracing genre, including Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard, Coe has been a perennial “bad boy” since bursting onto the music scene in the late 1960s fresh out of prison. In fact, many attribute the term “outlaw country” itself to Coe, who was a member of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club and certainly lived his life on the edge. (Waylon Jennings could also stake a claim to the phrase, having recorded Lee Clayton’s song “Ladies Love Outlaws” in 1972 and furthering the notion of country singers bucking the slick, sweetened Nashville Sound trend in favor of rootsy, raw, and rough-and-tumble music.) Australia’s Raven Records label has collected eight of Coe’s earliest major-label albums, all released on Columbia Records between 1974 and 1979, on two 2-CD sets containing four albums apiece.

The Mysterious David Allan Coe brings together Coe’s first four long-players for Columbia: The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy (1974), Once Upon a Rhyme (1975), Longhaired Redneck (1976) and Rides Again (1977). The title of his Columbia debut was derived from his outrageous, masked onstage get-up, and predated Glen Campbell’s 1975 pop hit “Rhinestone Cowboy.” On the set produced by Ron Bledsoe (a Nashville vet with credits ranging from Vikki Carr to Ray Price), Coe featured his own songs alongside traditionals and those composed by Mickey Newbury, Guy Clark and others.   Heavily inspired by the back-to-basics approach of Merle Haggard and his Bakersfield, CA kin, Coe took an artistic leap forward with his sophomore LP, Once Upon a Rhyme. The album featured his own version of his song “Would You Lie with Me (In a Field of Stone)” which Tanya Tucker had already taken to No.1 Country. It kicked off Side One’s set of Coe originals; the second side was ceded to covers from sources both likely (Texan singer-songwriter Richard Dobson) and unlikely (Tom Jans and pop hitmaker Jeff Barry). But the album’s most enduring track was its closer. “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” was purloined from an album by Steve Goodman, who originally co-wrote it with another folk hero, John Prine. But Coe inserted himself into the satirical final verse with a delicious, country-spoofing twist. He was rewarded with his first Top 10 C&W single; the LP also placed among the Top 10 C&W Albums.

The title song to 1976’s Longhaired Redneck made the C&W Top 20. Written by Coe with Jimmy Rabbitt, it featured him making direct reference to the outlaw movement of which he was now a major part, as well as paying homage to Haggard, Ernest Tubb and “Whisperin’” Bill Anderson. The prolific artist followed Redneck, on which he wrote or co-wrote every track, the next year with Rides Again. Its opening track and single, “Willie, Waylon and Me,” again found Coe addressing the company he was keeping. He also name-checked country-rockers The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers and The Eagles as well as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Janis Joplin in the No. 25-charting single. On Rides Again, his songwriting also took precedence, and he had a credit on every track except for the cover of Donnie Murphy’s “Laid Back and Wasted.”

Raven’s collection features new liner notes from Keith Glass and remastering from Warren Barnett. It adds five bonus tracks: the non-LP sides “(If I Could Climb) The Walls of the Bottle” and “Please Come to Boston” as well as two songs from 1977’s Tattoo and two more from 1978’s Family Album including “Take This Job and Shove It” which became a smash hit for Johnny Paycheck. However, those albums can be heard in full on Raven’s next collection.  Hit the jump for much more!

Practically Perfect: Disney’s Legacy Collection Announces Next Volume

In every job that must be done
There is an element of fun
You find the fun, and – SNAP!
The job’s a game!

-Julie Andrews, “A Spoonful of Sugar,” Mary Poppins (song written by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman)

There’s certainly an element of fun in catalog music, particularly catalog soundtracks, particularly the somehow oft-ignored discography of The Walt Disney Company. Disney’s somewhat passive approach to a catalog initiative (tempered by their licensing deal with the Intrada label) finally made an about face this spring with the announcement of several titles in “The Legacy Collection”: expanded anniversary editions of classic Disney film soundtracks with gorgeous artwork to match. The Lion King was the first title in the line, released this week, and August will see the release of the next: a 50th anniversary edition of the music to Mary Poppins.

As dramatized in last year’s Saving Mr. Banks, Walt Disney was an unabashed fan of P.L. Travers’ series of children’s books about a magical nanny. Travers was reticent to allow her books to be adapted, but ultimately allowed Disney to pursue the idea. The result, though somewhat deviated from the books, was pure Disney magic: Julie Andrews (star of My Fair Lady and Camelot on Broadway but untested enough onscreen to be replaced for the My Fair Lady film adaptation by Audrey Hepburn) as the practically perfect heroine, bona-fide TV star Dick Van Dyke as the everyman/one man band/pavement artist/chimney sweep Bert, great supporting turns by David Tomlinson, Glynis Johns and Ed Wynn, a stunning multimedia presentation (that deftly mixed live action with animation in several key sequences)…and the songs.

Brothers Richard and Robert Sherman were already known quantities in both the songwriting world (“You’re Sixteen”) and on the Disney backlot (Annette Funicello’s Top 10 hit “Tall Paul,” simple, singable and sincere tunes for 1964 World’s Fair and Disneyland attractions) when Walt asked “the boys” to compose a song score for Poppins. But who could have imagined just what a triumph it would be? With instant standards like “A Spoonful of Sugar,” “Jolly Holiday,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” (a song this author is proud to have typed from memory) and “Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag)” – a song that Walt would often ask the Shermans to play for him, just because – Mary Poppins remains one of the brightest works of art in the Disney canon. Ultimately, the film won five Oscars, including two trophies for the Sherman Brothers and one for Julie Andrews, winning Best Actress over – you guessed it – Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. (Disney passed away in 1966, leaving Poppins as the company’s last major work he lived to see to completion.)

So how is Disney’s Legacy Collection celebrating this soundtrack masterpiece? Hit the jump to find out!

Lovely Day: Aretha, Sly, Andy, Marvin and Billie Headline “The Brazil Connection”

Well, summer is officially upon us! Already there’s talk about which songs will be anointed the perfect summer jams for 2014 – songs by artists like Ariana Grande, Iggy Azalea and the ubiquitous Pharrell Williams. If those names don’t set your pulse racing, however, Legacy Recordings has an alternative that’s bound to conjure up images of tropical sunsets, refreshing drinks and summer breeze. Studio Rio Presents The Brazil Connection makes over 12 pop classics from the Sony vaults by melding the original vocals with new bossa nova and samba arrangements written and/or played by some of Brazil’s top musicians including Torcuato Mariano, Paulo Braga, and bossa legends Marcos Valle and Roberto Menescal. The artists represent a cross-section of genres such as R&B (Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye) to jazz (Billie Holiday, Dave Brubeck and Carmen McRae), and traditional pop (Andy Williams, Mel Torme). The Brazil Connection arrives in stores today, just in time to coincide with the 2014 World Cup being held in Brazil.

Producers Frank and Christian Berman’s Studio Rio aggregation is successful in retaining an organic sound for most of these familiar recordings in their new, chill Brazilian settings. One can fairly question the practice of grafting new productions around vintage tracks – especially from deceased artists, whether Williams, Holiday, Gaye or Brubeck, just to name a few – but these Rio de Janeiro-made recordings are fun, tasteful and faithful to the spirit, if not the style, of the originals.

Most radical – and one of the album’s undisputed highlights – is the transformation of Sly and the Family Stone’s 1971 chart-topper “Family Affair” from lean, dark funk to soft and sensual tropicalia. Gone are the electric piano, bass and early drum machine; in their place is a lush and mellow complement of guitar, piano, bass, drums, flugelhorn, tenor and alto saxophones and trombone. The Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing” and Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” both get rousing, lively reinventions from co-arrangers Mariano and The Berman Brothers. (“It’s Your Thing” is also featured on Sony’s official World Cup 2014 album, One Love, One Rhythm.) Another R&B great, Bill Withers, sees his 1977 “Lovely Day” shorn of its sleek R&B rhythm and replaced with a brassy yet contemporary Brazilian groove. One misses the iconic original backing of Johnny Nash’s 1972 No. 1 hit “I Can See Clearly Now,” though the new, cheerful backing is a perfect match for the song’s lyrical sentiments.

Unsurprisingly, Aretha Franklin’s 1964 recording of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Walk on By” lends itself well to the treatment here. One of the Queen of Soul’s Columbia tracks that most anticipates her soulful direction at the Atlantic label, “Walk on By” thrives in Roberto Menescal’s alluring arrangement, as Latin rhythms are in the DNA of a Bacharach melody. Similarly, Mel Torme’s 1965 rendition of Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” is a natural for Studio Rio, with arranger Mario Adnet seemingly channeling Claus Ogerman’s work on the seminal Sinatra/Jobim collaboration between another great American singer and Brazil’s answer to George Gershwin. Marcos Valle turns in a fun chart (and also plays Fender Rhodes) on Andy Williams’ hard-swinging “Music to Watch Girls By.” Williams was no stranger to Valle’s music, making this a particularly inspired choice. Roberto Menescal joins Valle on guitar for this upbeat samba.

We have more after the jump – including the complete track listing and order links!  

“Pin Ups” In Reverse: Ace Explores The Roots of Ziggy Stardust With “Bowie Heard Them Here First”

David Bowie did the unthinkable in this media-obsessed age when, on the date of his sixty-sixth birthday (January 8, 2013), he managed to catch the world off-guard to announce his first new album in a decade.  Bowie and his cohorts had kept The Next Day a secret, proving that the iconoclastic artist could still do things his way.  In six decades, from the 1960s through the present, David Bowie has kept his fans guessing what might come next.  And while Bowie’s sound is one of the most distinctive in popular music, it was shaped from a myriad of influences.  Many of those artists are represented on Ace Records’ recent release Bowie Heard Them Here First.  Following similar volumes for Ramones, Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, The New York Dolls, and Dusty Springfield, this compilation features the original versions of songs recorded by Bowie over the years.

Bowie’s status as a songwriter par excellence has rarely been in doubt, so it’s no surprise that he’s felt comfortable enough to pay tribute to his colleagues over the years.  The songs on Bowie Heard Them Here First are presented in the sequence which Bowie recorded them.  The earliest pair of songs on the compilation, however, date from the period before Bowie had blossomed as a songwriter.  The opening cut, Paul Revere and the Raiders’ honking garage rocker “Louie, Go Home,” appeared on the B-side of Bowie’s very first record with his R&B group Davie Jones and The King Bees.  It’s followed by Bobby Bland’s torrid original recording of “I Pity the Fool,” which he had recorded with his second band, The Manish Boys – named, like The Rolling Stones, after a Muddy Waters song.

From there, Bowie Heard Them Here First surprises by addressing just how many of Bowie’s albums have featured cover songs in integral roles.  Though his first three albums – the 1967 self-titled Deram debut, 1969’s David Bowie a.k.a. Space Oddity and 1970’s The Man Who Sold the World – all eschewed others’ songs, Bowie surprisingly opened the second side of his 1971 LP Hunky Dory with a song by Biff Rose and Paul Williams.  The latter had already achieved major fame with smash hits like “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays” (both via The Carpenters) when Bowie interpreted “Fill Your Heart” which co-writer Rose had recorded in 1968.  Rose’s recording is included here, but Tiny Tim also recorded the sweetly twee ballad in 1968 for his debut album and the B-side of “Tip-Toe Thru the Tulips.”

Bowie’s glam breakthrough The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars had one choice cover version, too, closing its first side with singer-songwriter Ron Davies’ ‘It Ain’t Easy” (also covered by Three Dog Night, Shelby Lynne and Dave Edmunds.)  Davies’ A&M single from 1969 is featured here.  The cover tradition continued on the Ziggy follow-up Aladdin Sane with The Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” which likely was unavailable for licensing to Ace.  Hence, Bowie Heard Them Here First continues with a brace of five tracks representing Bowie’s first and only all-covers album, 1973’s Pin Ups.  Bowie intended the album to celebrate the period of 1964-1967 in London when pop, rock and roll and R&B all merged into a whole thanks to groups like The Kinks (“Where Have All the Good Times Gone”), The Mojos (“Everything’s Alright”), The Pretty Things (“Rosalyn”), The Easybeats (“Friday on My Mind”) and The Merseys (“Sorrow”).  The B-side of Bowie’s single release of the catchy “Sorrow” was from the same period but in a very different style: Jacques Brel’s 1964 chanson “Port of Amsterdam.”  Brel’s French original is included by Ace.  Brel’s louche story-songs also inspired another prime influence on Bowie, the romantic balladeer-turned-avant garde hero Scott Walker.  It took Bowie until 1993 to get around to recording one of Walker’s songs; the dark disco-styled “Nite Flights” from The Walker Brothers’ final album in 1978 is reprised on this collection.

Don’t miss a thing – hit the jump for more including the complete track listing with discography!

Real Gone’s Sizzling Summer Features Cass Elliot, Peggy Lipton, Annette, The Shirelles, Dee Dee Warwick and More

Summer is finally here, and Real Gone Music has a bevy of offerings due on July 29 which should make your vacation even sunnier!  The label is throwing a beach party, sixties-style, with the original stereo soundtrack to How to Stuff a Wild Bikini featuring screen legends Annette Funicello and Mickey Rooney and “Louie, Louie” rockers The Kingsmen; celebrating true California royalty with an expanded edition of “Mama” Cass Elliot’s Don’t Call Me Mama Anymore (sorry, Cass!) featuring previously unreleased music from the powerhouse singer; and going tropical with the perfect tunes for your Tiki party via an anthology from vibraphonist and exotica hero Gene Rains!

If New York-style soul is more your thing, Real Gone hasn’t left you out, either.  Two titles stem from the partnership with the SoulMusic Records label. Dee Dee Warwick’s The Complete Atco Recordings boasts the late, great vocalist’s entire 1970 Atco album Turning Around, the As and Bs of three non-album singles, eight tracks previously released on various compilations, and 12 previously unissued songs!  Real Gone and SoulMusic also have The Shirelles’ two RCA albums from 1971-1972 for the first time on CD!

We’ve already filled you in on the first-ever authorized retrospective from The Dream Academy.  And that’s not all.  Last month, we announced the release of Peggy Lipton’s The Complete Ode Recordings which expanded the Mod Squad star’s Ode solo album with her complete singles and two previously unissued songs.  You might have noticed that this release – which features liner notes from yours truly, with the input of, and fresh quotes from, Ms. Lipton – has been delayed to July 29.  Why?  We’ve found even more music!  The Complete Ode Recordings now boasts a whopping eight bonus tracks: four 45s and four never-before-released tracks from the pens of Carole King and Toni Stern (“Now That Everything’s Been Said,” which Peggy performed on The Mod Squad), Brian Wilson and Tony Asher (“I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”), Burt Bacharach and Hal David (“Wanting Things” from their musical Promises, Promises) and Peggy herself (“I Know Where I’m Going”).  Trust me: this lost California pop gem, produced by Lou Adler and featuring the powers of the Los Angeles Wrecking Crew, will be worth the wait.

After the jump, we have Real Gone’s press release with many more details on every title plus pre-order links!

And Now for Something Completely Different: A Monty Python Box Set (and More)

Here’s something that’ll hit your doorstep like a giant animated foot: Virgin is releasing a CD and vinyl box set of albums by the iconic comedy troupe Monty Python.

The classic BBC comedy sketch series, which ran from 1969 to 1974 and made stars of John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, has had an immeasurable influence on pop culture ever since, from films (Monty Python and The Holy Grail, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life) to instant quotables and images (dead parrots, silly walks), to music (“Lumberjack Song,” “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life“) and stage (Holy Grail was adapted into the smash Broadway musical SPAMalot). The five surviving members (sans Chapman, who died in 1989) will reunite at London’s O2 Arena for a limited run of sold-out reunion shows (despite some public protests from Gilliam).

Fans who can’t make the shows can at least enjoy a new nine-disc compilation encompassing all of the band’s original U.K. albums from 1970 to 1983. (The U.S. only Live At City Center (1976) is omitted.) Both boxes (the CD edition featuring a folder to keep all the discs in, and the vinyl version replicating each original LP sleeve), according to an official statement,
were cut with an all analogue signal path from the original 1/4″ master tapes where available. Both editions also contain a case bound book with new liner notes with a foreword by Michael Palin, original Monty Python artwork, archive photos and an original Terry Gilliam-designed full colour slipcase.” (The CD edition also features all the included bonus tracks from a series of U.K. reissues in 2006.)

As a special bonus, each version contains a 45 RPM single of Monty Python’s Tiny Black Round Thing, originally released as a flexidisc in 1974 to promote the release of Monty Python Live At Drury Lane.

If this is too much Python for you, however, there’s still products to pique your interest after the jump!