Poison Double Dip with “Double Dose”

There comes a time in every music collector’s life where we utter, “Another (name of artist) compilation?!” The time has come to put Poison in those parentheses; their latest collection is due in stores on May 3.

Double Dose: Ultimate Hits does have a lot of worthy material for new fans. In addition to collating all the band’s notable singles, it includes a fair amount of album cuts and at least one or two non-LP tracks that were scooped up on reissues or prior compilations. But for hardcore fans, there’s nothing new – this is yet another in a long line of compilations, particularly after one that came out not too long ago. But if you need a primer for the band’s upcoming tour – or a reminder of something other than Bret Michaels’ questionable musical activities at present – here you go.

Double Dose is yours to buy at Amazon; check the track list after the jump.

Another “Promise” to Keep

Even though the Darkness on the Edge of Town box from last winter was as exhaustive as anyone could wish for a box set, there’s a last trickle of material coming to DVD with a forthcoming standalone release of the accompanying documentary, The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town.

The documentary, directed by Grammy and Emmy winner Thom Zimny, chronicled the making of one of The Boss’ most landmark albums through both new interviews with Bruce, The E Street Band and other principal associates and never-before-seen home movies of the album sessions. It was easily one of the many cherries on top of the sundae that was the Darkness box.

Now, it’s coming out on DVD on its own May 3, with a pair of new bonus features. One is “Songs from The Promise,” footage from Bruce’s smashing Asbury Park concert in December, where songs from the Darkness box were performed for the first time. The other, “Conversation with His Fans,” is an interview with Bruce conducted by Dave Marsh before an intimate audience. an intimate, 22-minute question-and-answer session featuring Springsteen discussing the album before a small audience of fans.

The disc is coming out May 3; read all about it here.

Brandeis, Twice as Nice? Dylan Bonus Disc Getting Standalone Release

Those who ordered Bob Dylan’s The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos 1962-1964 on Amazon got a special bonus alongside the two-disc set: a bonus disc of part of a show at Brandeis University in 1963. Culled from a reel-to-reel tape recorded and owned by Rolling Stone co-founder Ralph Gleeson, this seven-track disc is one of the earliest (if not the earliest) known live recording by the Bard.

And now, in case you missed out on it the first time around, Bob Dylan in Concert – Brandeis University, 1963 is coming out on its own April 12 from Columbia/Legacy. The set will feature the exact same audio contents as the initial disc, but with new track-by-track liner notes penned by Michael Gray, author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia and Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan.

The set will also be available in digital and vinyl formats. Order it here and hit the jump for track details.

New U.K. Black Sabbath Box Set: What’s to Be Cross About?

Since The Second Disc began, we’ve seen more than a bit of Black Sabbath reissues and remasters, all of them confined to the United Kingdom, where the band’s catalogue is distributed by Universal Music Group’s Sanctuary Records (Warner Bros. handles it in the U.S.). The latest British-only set has been announced, and it’s a doozy.

A new box, The Ozzy Years: Complete Albums Box Set, will make its way to U.K. record shops on November 15. It has exactly what it says: nine remastered Sabbath albums with Ozzy Osbourne as the lead vocalist (including the compilation We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘N’ Roll), along with the usual extra goodies (in this case, three radio documentaries of as-yet-undetermined origins, a 100-page booklet, a set of guitar picks and a poster). All of it is stored in one of the most delightfully unique box sets in recent memory – a large, black cross.

Now, this isn’t the first time such an undertaking has been released; Rhino did a Black Box: The Complete Original Black Sabbath 1970-1978 in 2004 compiling all the Ozzy-era LPs (minus the compilation) and adding a DVD. And this set isn’t much more thorough, as you might have guessed; none of the albums include the deluxe edition bonus discs that have been released in Europe between last year and this year (including outtakes discs for Black Sabbath (1970) and Master of Reality (1971) and the quadrophonic mix of Paranoid (1970) available on a DVD with the deluxe edition).

If you’re a collector who can see past those flaws, though, you’ll definitely want to click the link from a few paragraphs back. Skeptics can be further decisive after seeing the rundown after the jump.

Rarities Editions: Round Two

The Second Disc did a run-through earlier this month concerning Universal Music Enterprises’ “Rarities Editions,” repackagings of the second discs of various Universal Deluxe Editions. Some of them were worth it if you avoided buying the Deluxe Edition before, but a few lacked the bonus tracks that were on some of the deluxe titles’ first discs.

However, they must have been enough of a success for UMe, because another seven in the series have been announced for April 27. Thus, it would be worth taking a look at these titles and assessing their worth to you, the buyer. Read on after the jump.

Rarities Editions: Half of a Good Idea?

A few weeks before I started this blog, I kept seeing pre-order links for a bunch of catalogue titles from Universal Music Enterprises under the banner of “Rarities Edition.” By the time the first batch of them came out in January, I had found out that the sets were essentially the bonus discs from some of UMe’s unmistakable Deluxe Edition titles, priced to entice those collectors who wanted those bonus cuts on disc without purchasing (or re-purchasing) a more expensive set.

Now at first blush, these releases – which cover titles like Weezer’s first record, Diana Ross’ Diana, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and a forthcoming set for Bob Marley’s Legend compilation – seem kind of neat. After all, those Deluxe Editions can sometimes get expensive – usually $25-$30 for a new copy – and not everyone is infatuated with the idea of buying titles on CD more than once to get the best mastered version out there.

But when you really think about it, there are a couple of flaws inherent for some buyers. For one thing, despite the less expensive price tag, one of the biggest selling points of Universal’s Deluxe Editions is that slick packaging. That plastic O-card. Those thick, four-panel digipaks. Liner notes that you want to read more than once. I have no clue if there are liner notes in these sets or not, although it wouldn’t make sense since the album in question isn’t there.

The other trick is slightly more deceptive: some of the Deluxe Edition titles have bonus tracks on the first disc as well. Sometimes these are worth the price of admission; keeping them out of a mid-priced rarities set is a bit of a gyp for the uninformed consumer. And even for the sets that have all their bonus tracks on the second disc, you’ll still have to make sure you have a copy of the first disc proper. Otherwise, you’ll have to spend the same amount of cash on two separate releases, which isn’t as efficient to a guy like me.

So as a public service, I’ve established a bit of a buyer’s guide to all the current and forthcoming Rarities Editions after the jump. Some of them are actually worthwhile if you’ve missed the Deluxe Editions, but more than a few are sorely lacking.

Double Dip: Won’t Get Fooled Again

Here’s a feature I’d like to make as regular as possible: in Double Dip, I look at a catalogue title – perhaps a frequent re-release or a new compilation – and try to deconstruct its content. Think of it as a buyer’s guide for the newest releases.

This week, in anticipation of their upcoming Super Bowl gig, Geffen and Universal Music Enterprises have released a new compilation by The Who, Greatest Hits Live, exclusively on iTunes. The press release excitedly touts the set as “22 recordings of the band’s biggest and best-known hits–most of them never widely available or unreleased and 20 of them newly mixed by the band and its production team.”

I’m not that well-versed in The Who’s live output to determine how much these are “newly mixed.” But in an attempt to elaborate on the weaselly-worded description of “most of them never widely available or unreleased,” I decided to mine through the tracks (which are thankfully labeled with recording locations and dates) and try to figure out which are unreleased and which aren’t. And the results are…well, it depends who you ask. Take a look at the full list after the jump, and then some notes.