Release Round-Up: Week of December 7

ABBA, ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits – Special Edition / The Vinyl Collection (Polydor/UMe)

The most popular ABBA compilation ever gets expanded with a DVD of music videos, including a previously unreleased animated clip. Also, a deluxe box of the band’s eight LPs on vinyl alongside a ten-track record of single and non-LP tracks will be released the same day. (Official site)

Joy Division, +- (Rhino U.K.)

A box of ten partially fictional singles on vinyl to honor deceased frontman Ian Curtis, 30 years after his death. (Rhino U.K.)

Bob Dylan, The Original Mono Recordings (Vinyl) (Columbia/Legacy)

Dylan’s mono albums, just recently released to CD, get the same reissue treatment on vinyl. (Amazon)

The Search is Over: Two Survivor LPs Coming Back to CD

British indie label Rock Candy Records is putting two Survivor albums back in print: 1983’s Caught in the Game and 1984’s Vital Signs.

These two LPs followed Survivor’s 1982 smash “Eye of the Tiger,” famously featured on the soundtrack to Rocky III; interestingly, only one of them had any degree of success. Caught in the Game was mostly a stiff, only managing No. 82 on the Billboard charts (the same position as pre-success LP Premonition in 1981) and the title track, the only single, did not perform well. By contrast, Vital Signs was a hit: “I Can’t Hold Back” peaked at No. 13, while subsequent singles “High on You” and “The Search is Over” fared even better, respectively charting at No. 8 and No. 4 in the U.S.

Both discs are remastered from the original tapes and feature expanded liner notes. Vital Signs is extended by one track: “The Moment of Truth,” as heard on the soundtrack to The Karate Kid (1984). Both can be ordered on Amazon U.K.; they will be available to order in the U.S. on December 7. View the track lists after the jump.

Friday Feature: The Rocky Story

Today saw the release of the widely-hyped The Expendables, in which Sylvester Stallone gathered as many action movie heroes, past and present, and shoved them all into a film. By all accounts, it doesn’t seem to have worked as well as it could have. And that’s more or less latter-day Stallone for you. (Seriously, have you seen Rambo?)

With that in mind, this week’s Friday Feature takes you to a simpler time. A time where Stallone was a young actor with a dream, which he turned into a beautifully metaphoric script. That’s right: Rocky, the feature film Stallone wrote and starred in, as million-to-one boxer Rocky Balboa. The story spawned five sequels and became one of the most popular film scores in history, thanks to Bill Conti’s upbeat, infinitely inspirational theme, “Gonna Fly Now,” not to mention a few other testosterone-fueled tunes along the way.

Lace up your running shoes and run up the steps to the halls of Rocky music after the jump.