Release Round-Up: Week of March 22

Aretha Franklin, Take a Look: Complete on Columbia (Columbia/Legacy)

Before she was the Queen of Soul on Atlantic, she cut her teeth in the genre on Columbia. Eleven CDs and a DVD tell the tale. (Official site)

Soundgarden, Live on I-5 (A&M/UMe)

The recently-reunited grunge band commemorates their 1996 tour on this disc. (Official site)

Sam the Sham and The Pharoahs, The MGM Singles (Sundazed)

Every A and B-side by the “Wooly Bully” band in remastered monaural sound. (Sundazed)

A Flock of Seagulls, A Flock of Seagulls / Dream Come True: Expanded Editions (Cherry Pop)

The first and last albums by the original lineup of the band are expanded with B-sides and remixes by Cherry Pop in the United Kingdom. The first one has the songs everybody loves, including “I Ran” and “Space Age Love Song.” (Cherry Pop)

Sir Douglas Quintet, The Mono Singles ’68-’72 (Sundazed)

Another Sundazed mono singles compilation for the week, compiling the Sir Douglas Quartet’s single sides on the Smash, Philips and Mercury labels, including hits “She’s About a Woman” and “Mendocino.” (Sundazed)

Suzi Quatro, Suzi Quatro / Quatro: Expanded Editions (7Ts)

The one-time Leather Tuscadero’s first two albums, produced by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, are expanded by U.K. label 7Ts to include non-LP single sides and more. (7Ts)

Josh Turner/Billy Currington, ICON (MCA Nashville/Mercury/UMe)

Two modern country stars get their own entries in Universal’s budget compilation. (Amazon: Turner, Currington)

James Taylor, Walking Man: 24 KT Gold CD (Audio Fidelity)

One of Taylor’s lesser-known albums is remastered by Steve Hoffman. (Audio Fidelity)

Chicago, Chicago VI (Vinyl) (Friday Music)

A 180-gram audiophile reissue of the band’s 1973 album, featuring “Feeling Stronger Every Day” and “Just You N’ Me.” (Friday Music)

Cherry Red Reissues A-Plenty in March

As if the impressive release schedule from Big Break Records wasn’t enough to excite catalogue fans, next month will see another impressive wave of reissues from other labels in the Cherry Red family. 7Ts, Cherry Pop and Soul Music are all planning some impressive remastered and expanded discs which will bring some pop, rock and R&B acts from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s back into print.

From 7Ts comes expansions of the first two LPs by singer/actress Suzi Quatro. While these two glam-rock LPs attracted little attention in the U.S., they were both considerably successful in Europe. (Quatro’s Stateside success began with a guest role as Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days and culminated in the Top 5 hit “Stumblin’ In” in 1979.) These reissues of Suzi Quatro (1973) and Quatro (1974) are augmented with non-LP singles and B-sides, which along with the albums themselves were largely written and produced by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn (who wrote another big hit around the same time, Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz,” and would write or co-write plenty of hits in the ’80s for Pat Benatar, Huey Lewis and The News and Tina Turner).

Cherry Pop has prepped reissues of both the first and last albums by the classic line-up of A Flock of Seagulls. The quintessential ’80s band, known for both the worldwide (except for the band’s native U.K.) hit “I Ran” and lead singer/keyboardist Mike Score’s distinctive haircut, will see expanded versions of the band’s self-titled 1982 debut and 1986’s Dream Come True, all augmented with bonus B-sides and remixes. (The band released one last album in 1995, The Light at the End of the World, but Mike Score was the only original member involved.)

Finally, the Soul Music label has four albums coming back into print. Peabo Bryson’s first two albums for Capitol (his second and third overall), Reaching for the Sky (1977) and Crosswinds (1978), will be released together as a two-disc set with three U.S. single edits as bonus tracks. The label will also issue straight remasters of Everybody Likes Some Kind of Music, the 1973 LP by Billy Preston, and I’m on Your Side (1991), the most recent pop album by Jennifer Holliday, famed for her Tony-winning turn in Dreamgirls and the hit “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.”

The Soul Music titles have a U.K. release date of March 14, while the rest hit U.K. shops a week later. Full track lists and order links are after the jump.

Better Tending to the Flock

The U.K.-based reissue label Cherry Pop Records announced an upcoming reissue of Listen, the sophomore LP by seminal New Wave band A Flock of Seagulls, for a June 22 release. The set features the original album plus two remixes and three B-sides.

Now, a lot of catalogue fans have taken issue with Cherry Pop reissues – some of their reissues (as is regrettably the case with other smaller labels) don’t sound like they’re even mastered from the original tapes, and the bonus track situations sometimes confuse completists looking for every commercially released track. This post is not about those issues (although there are some non-LP tracks that seem to be missing from this set).

Listen is Cherry Pop’s second A Flock of Seagulls reissue, after an expanded version of the band’s 1984 record The Story of a Young Heart. That begs the question: where is the reissue of the band’s self-titled debut – you know, the one with “I Ran (So Far Away),” the band’s most enduring hit?

The Second Disc is all for reissue labels digging up curiosities from bigger labels. But let’s not forget the impact of those hits, too. Ponder that as you hit the jump and check out not only the track list for the new edition of Listen but a special Reissue Theory look at how that first record might look from Cherry Pop.