The Year in Reissues: The 2012 Gold Bonus Disc Awards

Wow!  Was it just over a year ago when a rather dubious report began circulating (that, shockingly, was picked up by many otherwise-reputable publications) that proclaimed the death of the CD was secretly scheduled by the major labels for 2012?  Well, 2012 has come and (almost) gone, and it might have been the most super-sized year in recent memory for reissues, deluxe and otherwise, from labels new and old.  Here at the Second Disc, we consider our annual Gold Bonus Disc Awards a companion piece to Mike’s own round-up over at Popdose, and we endeavor to recognize as many of the year’s most amazing reissues as possible – over 80 worthy, unique titles.  We also hope to celebrate those labels, producers and artists who have raised the bar for great music throughout 2012. As we’re literally deluged with news around these parts, these ladies and gentlemen prove, week after week, the strength and health of the catalogue corner of the music world.  We dedicate The Gold Bonus Disc Awards to them, and to you, the readers.  After all, your interest is ultimately what keeps great music of the past alive and well.

With that in mind, don’t forget to share your own thoughts and comments below. What made your must-have list in 2012? Without further ado, let’s celebrate 2012′s best of the best. Welcome to the Gold Bonus Disc Awards!

Which releases take home the gold this year? Hit the jump below to find out!

Release Round-Up: Weeks of October 30 and November 6

Election Day is upon us today!  But if you’re looking to cast your vote for some music, too, we might be able to help!  Though we were able to keep the lights on each day at The Second Disc, Hurricane Sandy kept us from publishing a Release Round-Up last week.  So without further ado, here’s the best of the best for the weeks of October 30 and November 6!

Louis Armstrong, The Complete OKeh, Columbia and RCA Victor Recordings 1925-1933 (OKeh/Columbia/RCA/Legacy) (10 CDs) / Charlie Christian, The Genius of the Electric Guitar (Columbia/ Legacy) (4 CDs) / Duke Ellington, The Complete Columbia Studio Albums Collection 1951-1958 (Columbia/ Legacy) (9 CDs) / Bessie Smith, The Complete Columbia Recordings (Columbia/ Legacy) (10 CDs)

Four titans of jazz are celebrated with comprehensive box sets from Legacy Recordings!  Full details on each box can be found here!

Glen Campbell, Try a Little Kindness / The Glen Campbell Goodtime Album / The Last Time I Saw Her (BGO)

Three long-out-of-print albums from the country and pop legend arrive on two CDs from BGO!  Campbell’s renditions of “MacArthur Park,” “Honey, Come Back,” “Try a Little Kindness,” “Just Another Piece of Paper,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night” are among the great songs you’ll hear here!

Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ultimate Creedence Clearwater Revival: Greatest Hits & All-Time Classics (Fantasy, 2012)

You’ll find 3 CDs of hits, deep cuts and live tracks here from the Bay Area swamp-rock legends!  Full track listing and more can be found here.

El Topo Soundtrack (LP & CD)/ David Peel & the Lower East Side, Have a Marijuana / Perry Como, Complete RCA Christmas Collection / Doris Day, The Complete Christmas Collection / SSgt. Barry Sadler, Ballads of the Green Berets

Real Gone Music’s October 30 slate included a counterculture classic from David Peel, a lost Apple Records soundtrack, two Christmas collections from beloved vocalists and an expanded reissue of SSgt. Barry Sadler’s Ballads of the Green Berets!  Full details are here!

Bert Jansch, Heartbreak: 30^th Anniversary Edition (Omnivore) (CD / LP)

The great guitarist, singer and songwriter’s 1982 album arrives in an expanded edition on both CD and LP from Omnivore Recordings!  Track listing and all details are here.

Jethro Tull, Thick as a Brick: 40^th Anniversary Edition (Chrysalis) (CD/DVD Box and 2-LP Edition)

Extra!  Extra!  Jethro Tull’s 1971 album is celebrated in a CD/DVD box set and as a 2-LP vinyl edition!  Read all about it here.

Barbara Lewis, The Complete Atlantic Singles / Johnny Mathis, This Is Love/Olé / Johnny Mathis, The Sweetheart Tree/The Shadow of Your Smile

For November 6, Real Gone has released a 2-CD set of soulful singles from the “Baby, I’m Yours” singer, plus another two of Johnny Mathis’ long-unavailable Mercury Records albums! Full details are here!

Gary Lewis and the Playboys, (You Don’t Have To) Paint Me a Picture / New Directions / Now! (BGO)

Three albums circa 1967-1968 arrive on CD from the sixties’ pop sensations, including New Directions with its line-up of songs from the “Happy Together” team of Bonner and Gordon; and Now! with its Playboys takes on pop hits such as “Windy” and “I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight.”  You’ll also find contributions on this new 2-CD set from the young Leon Russell.

The Rolling Stones, Charlie is My Darling (Super Deluxe Box Set) (ABKCO, 2012)

The documentary Charlie is My Darling chronicles the early days of The Rolling Stones, and it’s arrived in a DVD/BD/CD/LP box set from ABKCO!  Track listing and full details are here.

James Taylor, James Taylor at Christmas (UMe)

JT’s 2004 Christmas collection arrives, with an altered track listing and a couple of newly-compiled tracks, in a new iteration from Universal!  Watch this space for full details!

Various Artists, Now That’s What I Call Disney (Sony/Universal/EMI/Walt Disney)

This 20-track collection reaches back as far as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and brings the Disney legacy up to date with songs from more recent classics like Toy Story and Tangled.  The title is derived from a 2011 3-CD compilation that arrived in the United Kingdom.

Various Artists, Rodgers & Hammerstein: The Complete Broadway Musicals (Masterworks Broadway, 2012)

Oh, what a beautiful box set!  This impressive 12-CD box set brings together one recording of each of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s groundbreaking Broadway musicals!  Full details are here.

The Velvet Underground and Nico: 45^th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Verve/UMe, 2012)

The Velvets’ debut album goes Super Deluxe in this 6-CD set.  Read more here!

Dionne Warwick, Now (Blue Horizon)

The legendary singer returns with an all-new studio set revisiting classics from Burt Bacharach and Hal David.  The Phil Ramone-produced album includes four songs (two penned by Bacharach and two by David) which Warwick had never previously recorded.  The whole story is here!

The Who, Live at Hull 1970 (Geffen/UMe)

The incendiary 2-CD concert from Pete, Roger, John and Keith arrives for the first time as a stand-alone edition; it was previously available as part of the 2010 Live at Leeds box set.  You’ll find the track listing here.

Bill Withers, The Complete Sussex and Columbia Masters (Columbia/Legacy)

You can rediscover the entire album catalogue of the “Ain’t No Sunshine”/Lean on Me” man with this 9-CD box set from Legacy Recordings!  Full track listing and more can be found here!

Frank Zappa, 11 catalogue reissues (UMe/Zappa Records)

Another round of Official Releases from the Frank Zappa camp has arrived, from 1984’s Francesco Zappa through 1991’s Make a Jazz Noise Here.  Plus: the 2012 compilation Understanding America makes its debut.  Read the full rundown with order links here!

Bert Jansch’s “Heartbreak” Reissued and Expanded by Omnivore on CD, LP and Digital

We first reported on this title back in August, but as the release date is nearing, we thought you might like a refresher, plus active order links!

Founding member of Pentangle and major exponent of the 1960s British folk music revival, the Scotland-born musician and songwriter Bert Jansch (1943-2011) left a tremendous musical mark before his untimely death last year, aged 67. Though Jansch’s first solo album was released in 1965, he remained a vital force on the folk scene, recording with regularity through the mid-2000s. One of Jansch’s most beloved albums is getting the deluxe treatment from Omnivore with the 30th Anniversary Edition of Heartbreak (1982), due on November 6. It will make a fitting reminder of the legacy of the often-unheralded folk figure, who received Lifetime Achievement Awards from BBC Radio, the MOJO Merit Award and was chosen as one of Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Long out of print, Heartbreak is returning in style. The first pressing of the vinyl edition will be issued on 1,500 pieces of clear vinyl (with subsequent pressings on black vinyl), while the 2-CD version includes the original Heartbreak album in its entirety plus 14 previously unreleased tracks recorded in June 1981 inside McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California. At McCabe’s, Jansch performed a handful of the Heartbreak tracks as well as other favorites such as Jackson C. Frank’s “Blues Run the Game” and Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Both the vinyl and CD versions will arrive near what would have been Jansch’s 69th on November 3. Folk legend Ralph McTell has provided new liner notes, as have the album’s original producers, Rick and John Chelew.

There’s more after the jump, including track listings and order links!

Tuesday Tidbits: Incubus Teams with Best Buy on Exclusive “HQ,” Bert Jansch’s “Heartbreak” Is Expanded, and Musicians Fight Epilepsy with “Joey’s Song”

Today is the day for a 2-CD/1-DVD set of previously unissued live performances from the band Incubus. Celebrating their twentieth year together, Incubus is launching a 4-week, 18-city tour co-headlining with Linkin Park. The tour kicks off tonight in Boston, Massachusetts, but the performances on Incubus HQ Live date from one year ago, recorded in West Hollywood, California.  That was when the band set up shop at a storefront on La Brea Avenue for seven special nights of performances.   HQ Live preserves performances from the six nights that were broadcast live online between June 30 and July 6, 2011, all featuring the line-up of Brandon Boyd (lead vocals/guitar), Mike Einziger (lead guitar/keys), Jose Pasillas II (drums), Ben Kenney (bass) and DJ Kilmore (DJ/keys).  The shows led up to the release of the band’s album If Not Now, When?, released on July 12, 2011.

The release is truly a celebration of a career that’s encompassed, in Brandon Boyd’s words, “twenty years, seven albums, multiple live albums, EPs, DVDs, somewhere in the ballpark of 1,500 live shows and an etcetera stint that would go on for a paragraph.”  All have been rendered in a style that’s often hard to describe, blending alternative rock, metal, funk, rap, hip-hop, techno and even jazz (and everything in between).  Four of Incubus’ songs have topped the top spot on the U.S. Alternative Songs chart, and all four are heard in live versions on HQ Live: “Drive,” “Megalomaniac,” “Anna Molly” and “Love Hurts.”  (The latter two songs first appeared on the band’s No. 1 album Light Grenades, from 2006.)

Incubus HQ Live is available in a variety of formats, as we reported back on June 28: a standard edition (16-track CD + DVD), a Special Edition (28-track double-CD + DVD); and a Limited Edition Box Set (4 LPs + 6 CDs + 2 DVD/Blu-ray, plus autographed swag). The Limited Edition box is exclusive to Incubus’ website, and was scheduled to ship on July 6. The other two configurations arrive today at retail. The DVD content is the same for all three versions, but the DVD contains a significantly different song sequence than the CDs. Lead singer Brandon Boyd supplies new, detailed liner notes for all three releases. Reuben Cohen at Lurssen Mastering has mastered the CDs, and the DVD – running at a whopping 130 minutes – is presented in 5.1 surround sound, mixed and mastered by Darren LaGroe at Sonic Frequencies.  The DVD concert was directed by Marc Scarpa.

The standard 1-CD/1-DVD edition can be ordered here, and the 2-CD/DVD edition here.   But that’s not all.  Retail giant Best Buy is also offering five exclusive CD bonus tracks on both versions sold at their stores: “Rebel Girls,” “Hold Me Down,” “Surface to Air,” “Defiance (Live)” and “The Original (Live).”  These tracks appear to be available with both the 1-CD/1-DVD and 2-CD/1-DVD configurations and can be ordered here or reserved in store!

After the jump: some of your favorite artists have teamed with Omnivore Recordings for a very special CD to benefit a terrific cause, and a folk classic is revisited.  Hit the jump, won’t you?