Release Round-Up: Week of April 1

Cyndi Lauper, She’s So Unusual: A 30th Anniversary Celebration (Portrait/Epic/Legacy)

One of MTV’s first queens wears the crown anew on this deluxe set featuring new remixes, rarities from the vault, rare photographs and a fun expanded package with a diorama and reusable sticker set.

Amazon U.S.: 1CD / 2CD / LP
Amazon U.K.: 1CD / 2CD / LP

Real Gone slate: Doris Day, Music, Movies & Memories / Doris Day, Sings Her Great Movie Hits / Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles, The Complete Atlantic Sides Plus (2-CD Set) / Cowboy, Reach for the Sky / Keith Allison, In Action — The Complete Columbia Sides and More!/ The Ohio Express, Beg, Borrow and Steal — The Complete Cameo Recordings / Eddie Kendricks, Love Keys / Vicki Lawrence, The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia — The Complete Bell Recordings / The Grateful Dead, Dick’s Picks Vol. 19 — 10/19/73 Oklahoma City Fairgrounds Arena, Oklahoma City, OK

The latest Real Gone slate includes two compilations to celebrate Doris Day’s 90th birthday, soul rarities from Eddie Kendricks and Patti LaBelle and a great new Keith Allison set featuring new liner notes from Joe!

Doris Day/Music, Movies & Memories: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Doris Day/Great Movie Hits: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Patti LaBelle: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Cowboy: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Keith Allison: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Ohio Express: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Eddie Kendricks: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Vicki Lawrence: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Grateful Dead: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

The Alan Parsons Project, The Complete Albums Collection (Arista/Legacy)

The complete Alan Parsons Project discography in one box, including their non-Arista debut, 1976’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination: Edgar Allen Poe and the unreleased 1981 instrumental album The Sicilian Defence. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

The Brothers and Sisters, Dylan’s Gospel (Ode/Light in the Attic)

Ten gospel-fied covers of Bob Dylan tunes, featuring singers from Merry Clayton to Patrice Holloway, arrangements from Gene Page and contributions from Ode artists and friends including Carole King and John Phillips. First time in print in more than a decade!

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

Andy Capp: Original West End Cast Recording (Stage Door Records)

Stage Door revives the original London cast recording of the 1982 musical based on Reg Smythe’s long-running comic strip. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Various Artists, Play It Again: The Classic Sound of Hollywood (TCM/Masterworks)

Joe will have a full rundown of the latest title in Masterworks and TCM’s vintage Hollywood series later this week! (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Wanna Have Fun: Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual” Revisited for 30th Anniversary

She’s So Unusual!  On October 14, 1983, the world discovered that of Cyndi Lauper, catapulting the artist’s debut album to Top 5 status.  The native New Yorker picked up two Grammy Awards for She’s So Unusual, and over the years has remained in the limelight as a recording star, club favorite, Broadway composer, fashion icon and LGBT rights activist.  On April 1, Legacy Recordings will celebrate the 30th anniversary of Lauper’s first album with a reissue available in 1-CD, 2-CD and 1-LP formats.  The centerpiece of the campaign is the 2-CD edition, which will feature never-before-released demos, rehearsals, live performances and more.  All three editions will also boast three new remixes, hardly an unusual move for an artist whose music still reverberates on the dancefloor.  Lauper’s “Sex is in the Heel,” from her Tony Award-winning musical Kinky Boots, was a Top 10 Dance hit in the U.S. even before the show opened on Broadway.

She’s So Unusual marked Lauper’s creative freedom following the break-up of her band Blue Angel.  In addition to four tracks co-written by Lauper including “Time After Time,” the LP repertoire included tracks by Prince (“When You Were Mine”), Robert Hazard (“Girls Just Want to Have Fun”), Jules Shear (“All Through the Night” and Lauper co-write “I’ll Kiss You”), former Hollies member Mikael Rickfors (“Yeah, Yeah”) and even the late Al Sherman, father of Disney Legends Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman (the brief title track, written as “He’s So Unusual” in the 1920s!).

Five singles were released from the Portrait Records album, and all five reached the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 30 – “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Time After Time,” “She Bop,” “All Through the Night” and “Money Changes Everything.”  The first four all shot to the Top 5, with “Time After Time” reaching the coveted No. 1 spot and “Girls” not far behind at No. 2.  Produced by Rick Chertoff and featuring Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian of the band The Hooters as well as Brill Building legend Ellie Greenwich on background vocals, She’s So Unusual made Lauper the first female artist to have four Top 10 singles on a debut album. It went on to sell over 16 million copies worldwide and netted Grammys for Best Album Package as well as for Lauper as Best New Artist.  Her unique fashion sense and bold, colorful personality also made her a natural for the nascent music video form, and she picked up an MTV Video Music Award for Best Female Video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

All formats of She’s So Unusual include three new remixes of album tracks – the Yolanda Be Cool remix of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and Nervo and Bent Collective remixes of “Time After Time.”  (On the LP, these remixes will be included on a download card.)  The 2-CD edition includes a nine-track second disc, with demos of “Girls” (two different versions) and “Money Changes Everything” plus rehearsal recordings of “Rules and Regulations” and “All Through the Night,” a 1984 live performance from Boston of “Witness,” Arthur Baker’s remix of “She-Bop,” a rough mix of “Time After Time,” and the non-LP B-side “Right Train, Wrong Track,” co-written by Lauper, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Kent.

In addition to these additional recordings, the physical deluxe edition includes a rather unusual surprise from the team at Legacy. It includes a reusable sticker set, including vinyl cut outs of Lauper’s cutting-edge outfits and accessories that can be arranged in different combinations on a 3-D fold-out backdrop of the bedroom featured in her “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” music video.   Author Jancee Dunn, who worked with Lauper on her 2012 autobiography A Memoir, penned the new liner notes.  The upcoming releases do not carry over the live bonus tracks (“All Through the Night,” “Money Changes Everything” and “She Bop”) appended to the 2000 reissue.

There’s more on She’s So Unusual after the jump, including the full track listing and pre-order links!

Reissue Theory: Cyndi Lauper’s Odds and Ends

There’s nothing harder, as a reissue fan, than realizing that sometimes stuff just falls through the cracks and might have a tough time coming back up.

How many times have we all bought a compilation, expanded reissue or box set only to find that a few tracks were regrettably missing from the checklist? Few feelings are worse; you don’t want to hope for another reissue because that would be wasteful. You can just hope and hope that they’ll come out in some way, shape or form – and with any luck, they will.

A perfect example of this might be Cyndi Lauper, one of the most underrated female vocalists of the 1980s. You can see and hear her over-the-top but rather talented style in a lot of current female pop acts if you look hard enough (sure, Lady Gaga or Katy Perry might get the Madonna comparison a lot, but Madge had neither Lauper’s vocal range nor kooky fashion sense).

With that in mind, it’s odd to consider how little of her catalogue has been mined past the basic compilation approach. Legacy reissued She’s So Unusual some years ago with a bunch of live, vinyl-only bonus tracks. But Lauper was a staple in the mid-’80s, when dance remixes were perhaps at their most creative. Why the reissue of Unusual failed to include any of those mixes is beyond the comprehension of this catalogue correspondent. As Lauper’s career wore on, none of her ’80s records (True Colors (1986) and A Night to Remember (1989)) had the impact of her solo debut, so it’s hard to imagine those getting an expansion anytime soon.

So what’s the next step? A compilation probably makes sense, although you’re more likely to see such clearinghouse sets in Japan (such as Lauper’s own The Best Remixes in 1989). Still, Reissue Theory is all about the hope that some of the catalogue gatekeepers will make such a decision to free B-sides, remixes and rarities from obscurity. So in honor of that idea, here’s a look at some of Cyndi Lauper’s best single tracks, worthy for release on CD someday. Have fun (you know you wanna) after the jump.