Status Quo Deliver Expanded “Piledriver” in March

To commemorate the forthcoming live dates from Status Quo’s “Frantic Four” reunion, the British boogie-rockers’ first release for Vertigo Records, Piledriver, is getting reissued and expanded in March.

The classic lineup of Status Quo – guitarist/vocalists Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt, bassist Alan Lancaster and drummer John Coghlan had existed in one shape or another since 1967, five years after schoolmates Rossi and Lancaster decided to start a band. Their first three albums, which included early favorites like “Pictures of Matchstick Men” and “Ice in the Sun,” were recorded with a fifth member, keyboardist Roy Lynes, and on a different label, Pye Records. With Piledriver, a move to Vertigo and further away from their early semi-psychedelia toward straightforward boogie rock, the band found themselves back on top of the charts with the No. 8 single “Paper Plane.” (It would be the band’s first of 33 Top 40 singles in the U.K. between 1972 and 1988.)

The deluxe Piledriver comes with a new bonus disc of 15 live bonus tracks, including BBC sessions with John Peel and a live show recorded at London’s Paris Theatre for BBC in Concert. Dave Ling of Classic Rock Magazine contributes new liner notes, which feature rare photos from former Quo tour manager Bob Young. Look for the set on March 24, four days before the tour kicks off.

Full track specs and order links are after the jump!

Reissue Theory: Live Aid on CD

Twenty-six years ago today, on two different continents, the music world came together for a worthy cause: to raise awareness of famine in Ethiopia. Live Aid, a pair of concerts organized by Bob Geldof in London and Philadelphia on July 13, 1985 and broadcasted live on the BBC, ABC and MTV, was seen in person by some 172,000 people and on television by nearly 2 billion across the globe.

And, if you can believe it, none of it has ever been released on LP or CD.

Granted, it’s not entirely unsurprising. Geldof promised artists that the performances were very much a one-off, never to be seen past the initial broadcast. (That of course turned out to be untrue, with the release of a four-disc DVD set in 2004.) But you have to wonder, given not only the fiercely charitable nature of the organization as well as the capitalistic nature of the music industry, why a commemorative album was never put out to raise even more money for charities.

But if they did, this is how it might go down.