Release Round-Up: Week of July 10

Bananarama, 30 Years of Bananarama (Rhino U.K.)

The U.K. division of Rhino compiles the best of the “Venus” hitmakers in this CD/DVD package out today in the U.K. and next week stateside!  Read more here.

The Beat, I Just Can’t Stop It/Wha’ppen?/Special Beat Service (Demon/Edsel)

The complete studio output of The Beat (or The English Beat, if you prefer) gets the deluxe reissue treatment in the U.K. from Edsel as 2-CD/1-DVD sets chock-filled with extra material!  Don’t miss our review of all three sets!

The Beat, The Complete Beat/Keep the Beat: The Very Best of the English Beat (Shout! Factory)

For the U.S. market, Shout! Factory boxes the English Beat’s three studio albums, plus two discs of rarities!   In addition, the label is offering a single-disc distillation of the group’s greatest!  Read more here.

The Fat Boys, Fat Boys: Deluxe Edition (Tin Pan Apple Records)

The eponymous debut of Brooklyn’s Fat Boys gets boxed…pizza-boxed, that is.  Read more here.

Woody Guthrie, Woody at 100: The Woody Guthrie Centennial Collection (Smithsonian Folkways)

The legendary folk troubadour gets the box set treatment from Folkways with this career-spanning 3-CD anthology!  The box also includes a lavish hardcover tribute; read all about it here!

Jimi Hendrix, Jimi Plays Berkeley/Live at Berkeley/West Coast Seattle Boy: Voodoo Child (Legacy Recordings)

Legacy and Experience Hendrix are celebrating the icon’s 70^th birthday year with an extended DVD and Blu-ray release of Jimi Plays Berkeley plus the Blu-ray debut of the documentary Voodoo Child and a return to the catalogue for the CD edition of Live at Berkeley: The Second Show!  Read more here, and watch this space for Joe’s review of Jimi Plays Berkeley coming soon!

Carly Simon, Spoiled Girl: Expanded Edition (Hot Shot Records)

The songstress’ 1985 Epic Records album has been reissued and re-evaluated by the team at Hot Shot Records, and this expanded edition reveals a lost classic!  Read the review here.

All You Can Eat: The Fat Boys’ Out-of-Print Debut Gets Super-Sized

For a while, they were the biggest names in hip-hop, and their crossover success made many power players of the genre hungry for similar mainstream acceptance. Who else could prompt two eating puns in that sentence but The Fat Boys, whose debut album is coming out next month in a unique deluxe package.

First known as The Disco 3, the Brooklyn-based Fat Boys – Mark “Prince Markie Dee” Morales, Damon “Kool Rock-Ski” Wembley and Darren “Buff Love” Robinson – were at first glance the latest in a line of great clown princes in rap music. The Fat Boys not only tipped the scales, but they embraced it, appearing on the cover of their debut LP joyously considering a pizza. Their genial nature also led to a stunning amount of crossover success, not only with two hit singles, both covers (a 1987 take on The Surfari’s “Wipe Out,” featuring backing vocals by none other than The Beach Boys, hit No. 12 on the Billboard charts; the next year, they duetted on “The Twist” with Chubby Checker and peaked at No. 16), but in film as well (Krush Groove, the cult-classic comedy Disorderlies and the theme to A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, “Are You Ready for Freddy?”).

Gold and platinum records aside, The Fat Boys’ popularity waned as rap turned harder and urban, and they released their last LP, Mack Daddy, in 1991, recorded after Prince Markie Dee embarked on a solo career. Robinson, whose pioneering human beatboxing ranked next to Doug E. Fresh and Biz Markie, would die of a heart attack in 1995. But The Fat Boys’ legend never really died – and now, with the first-ever CD reissue of the group’s debut LP in July, there’s some music to rediscover.

And how will this album be served up? Hit the jump to find out!