Bad Medicine is What You Need: Bon Jovi Expands “New Jersey”

With the summer fast approaching, New Jersey stalwarts Bon Jovi are celebrating their 30th anniversary by, 25 years later, revisiting one of their biggest hits: fourth album New Jersey.

Released in the fall of 1988, New Jersey was the follow-up to 1986’s Slippery When Wet, the band’s commercial breakthrough which spun off the No. 1 hits “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Livin’ on a Prayer,” plus the Top 10 stadium classic “Wanted Dead or Alive.” Working again with producer Bruce Fairbairn and songwriters Desmond Child, Holly Knight and Diane Warren, New Jersey – originally conceived as a double album called Sons of Beaches – was an expert repetition of the emotional and musical beats that made its predecessor such a touchstone of ’80s rock. And the results were even more stellar: the album spawned five Top 10 singles – “Bad Medicine” (No. 1), “Born to Be My Baby” (No. 3), “I’ll Be There for You” (No. 1), “Lay Your Hands on Me” (No. 7) and “Living in Sin” (No. 9) – and was certified seven times platinum.

To commemorate this milestone, New Jersey is being remastered and expanded in two different formats: a standard double-disc deluxe edition includes three original B-sides and 13 unreleased demos and outtakes from the Sons of Beaches sessions, and a super deluxe box adding expanded book packaging and a DVD of two rare features: Access All Areas: A Rock & Roll Odyssey, a Wayne Isham-directed feature on the band from 1990, and seven promo videos, including a live version of album cut “Blood on Blood” and two versions of “Bad Medicine.” (A single-disc straight remaster will also be available.)

The New Jersey celebration kicks off July 1. Hit the jump to check out the track list and pre-order your copies!

“It’s A Wonderful” Soundtrack: Score to Frank Capra’s Classic “Life” Gets First-Ever Release

“You see, George, you’ve really had a wonderful life.  Don’t you see what a mistake it would be to throw it away?”

Each year, director Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life continues to lend a note of hope and inspiration to those discovering it for the first time.  The story of suicidal George Bailey (James Stewart) and the guardian angel (Henry Travers) who shows him what life would have been like had he never been born, It’s a Wonderful Life has transcended its modest origins to become an all-time staple of American cinema.  Yet curiously, the music to Capra’s beloved film, composed by the legendary Dimitri Tiomkin (High Noon, The Alamo), has never before appeared on an authentic soundtrack release.  The Kritzerland label has come to the rescue with a landmark release: the first-ever Original Soundtrack Recording for It’s a Wonderful Life.

Though nominated for five Academy Awards and recipient of one special Oscar for technical achievement, Capra’s film (based on a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern and featuring a screenplay by Capra, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett with contributions by Jo Swerling) was not a box office success upon its initial release.  It’s said to have lost more than half a million dollars for its distributor, RKO, despite placing 26th in box office revenues for 1947 out of over 400 movies.  The reputation of It’s a Wonderful Life was burnished in the era of television, when the movie became a staple of each holiday season.

When enlisted to provide the score for the picture, Russian-born composer Dimitri Tiomkin (1894-1979) was in the midst of an illustrious career that would net him four Academy Awards and 22 nominations.  Tiomkin’s original score for the fantasy blended original themes with quotes of popular music, but underwent great alterations at the hands of the master director Capra.  He cut several cues, preferring those scenes to play without music, and rearranged the sequence of other cues.  Furthermore, Capra edited sections of cues, and even added cues from the scores of other films.  Though the end result was still memorable, it didn’t represent the composer’s original vision.  Kritzerland producer Bruce Kimmel describes the effect of hearing the newly-restored complete score as “a special treat…filled with Tiomkin’s wonderful sense of film and character and drama.”

After the jump, we have more details plus the full track listing and pre-order link!

They’re Bad, They’re Nationwide: ZZ Top to Release New Hits Compilation

More than 40 years after they burst onto the scene with an instantly recognizable brand of Texas-fried blues – and on the eve of a European tour – Rhino is preparing a new compilation for ZZ Top.

The Very Baddest of ZZ Top follows vocalist/guitarist Billy F. Gibbons, bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard through their career in full; from their self-titled debut in 1971 to their bluesy breakthrough Tres Hombres in 1973, all the way to their MTV-era pop-rock renaissance with 1983’s Eliminator and beyond. Tracks from all of the group’s London/Warner Bros. albums (compiled last year in a great box set that featured all of them in their original mixes on CD, several for the first time), as well as cuts from the band’s four albums recorded for RCA Records between 1993 and 2003, make up this set, some 40 tracks in all.

Usage of those original mixes, as well as eight rare single edits, make this a fitting update from the band’s last double-disc compilation, 2004’s Rancho Texicano: The Very Best of ZZ Top. (For casual fans, or hardcore fans who want the edits on CD without paying double-disc prices, a single-disc version is also available, too.)

The party (on the patio or otherwise) begins July 22; hit the jump for a full track list for each version and pre-order links!