Release Round-Up: Week of September 20

Miles Davis Quintet, Live in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1 (Columbia/Legacy)

A three-CD/one-DVD collection of live stints from Belgium, Germany, France and Sweden, and the inaugural title in a new series of archival material for Miles. And Joe’s got the review this week! (Official site)

DeBarge, Time Will Reveal: The Complete Motown Albums (Hip-o Select/Motown)

All four of DeBarge’s classic ’80s R&B LPs on two discs, with a further bonus disc of remixes and rarities. (Hip-o Select)

Twisted Sister, Live at the Marquee Club (Rhino Handmade)

Go under the blade with this down-and-dirty live set from the band’s early days on Atlantic. The unique TS-logo-shaped sleeve is worth the price of purchase if you’re a hardcore fan. (Rhino)

The Grateful Dead, Europe ’72 Vol. 2 (Rhino)

For those of you who are fine with just a small sample of the mega-box from the whole tour. (Official site)

Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty (Epic)

Live tracks and studio rarities make up the soundtrack for the new documentary (which your humble catalogue correspondent is absolutely anxious to see). (Official site)

The Jesus and Mary Chain, Psychocandy / Darklands: Deluxe Editions (Edsel)

The revered Scottish alt-rock outfit, celebrated in definitive two-CD/one-DVD reissues with bonus audiovisual content. (The next four of the band’s albums will be reissued in the next two weeks.) (Official site)

Madness, A Guided Tour of Madness (Salvo)

After a heap of great expanded Madness reissues, Salvo releases a career-spanning box set with a brand-new track and the DVD debut of the band’s Madstock 1992 performance. (Official site)

Various Artists, Divine Hair/Mass in F, By Jupiter: Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording, Paris ’90: Original Broadway Cast Recording, Noël Coward in Las Vegas, Noël Coward in New York (Masterworks Broadway)

The latest crop of Arkiv/Masterworks downloads and reissues features a special find in particular: Divine Hair/Mass in F, a sacred piece featuring songs from the Broadway musical! (Masterworks)

You Can’t Stop Twisted Sister: Live Set Coming From Rhino Handmade

Do you wanna rock?  Then the latest release from Rhino Handmade might just be for you!  Following stellar sets from the 1960s (The Beau Brummels’ Bradley’s Barn) and the 1970s (Bobby Charles’ self-titled album), the label jumps into the glam world of the 1980s with a vengeance!  Twisted Sister’s Live at the Marquee Club captures the Long Island band taking London by storm in March 1983.

At the time of the Marquee Club gigs, Twisted Sister had only released one studio album, 1982’s Under the Blade, and the breakthrough success of Stay Hungry (which introduced “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock”) was still more than a year in the future.  But Live at the Marquee Club preserves the Dee Snider-fronted quintet at their most raw and powerful.  According to the label, “recordings from those legendary nights reveal the Long Island quintet raw, hungry and catching fire just a few months before it achieved breakout success on radio and MTV.”  The concert album features thirteen rare and unreleased performances from two March evenings on a single disc.  It features the quintessential line-up of Snider, guitarists Jay Jay French and Eddie “Fingers” Ojeda, bassist Mark “The Animal” Mendoza and drummer A.J. Pero.

Rhino continues: “Until now, the only way to hear bits and bobs of this historic two-night stand was through a series of 7” and 12” records released in 1983 exclusively in the U.K.  Live at the Marquee Club combines these hard-to-find cuts with five previously unreleased songs, including the title track from the band’s hard-rocking debut, Under the Blade, and covers of the Shangri-Las’ ‘Leader Of The Pack’ and the Slade version of the R&B staple ‘Let The Good Times Roll.’  The live album also includes the first ever public performance of ‘You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll,’ which would surface just three months later on the band’s second album. Snider’s legendary stage banter – also unreleased – can be heard interspersed between a few songs.”  And suffice to say you’ve never heard Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich’s classic death disc “Leader” quite like this before!

You can look forward to a creatively-designed package that reflects the band’s iconic logo in a striking way.  The disc is housed in a gatefold made from heavy-duty cardstock and die-cut into the shape of the Twisted Sister logo. Metal journalist Malcolm Dome contributes the new liner notes.  Live at the Marquee Club ships mid-September.  In addition, all pre-orders placed before 11:59 p.m. PST on September 18 will be automatically entered to win one of 50 copies signed by the entire band.

Hit the jump for the complete track listing plus pre-order link directly at Rhino Handmade.  Live at the Marquee Club arrives September 20 and retails for $19.98.  Are you gonna take it?

Release Round-Up: Week of May 31

Ozzy Osbourne, Blizzard of Ozz / Diary of a Madman: Legacy Edition (Epic/Legacy)

The Prince of Darkness’ first two LPs, finally put back into print with the original drum and bass tracks and expanded with bonus material (including a previously unreleased live disc for Diary). A box set packs all the CDs in with vinyl, a commemorative book and the new documentary Thirty Years After the Blizzard. (Official site)

Twisted Sister, Under the Blade: Deluxe Edition (Eagle)

Another welcome hard-rock reissue that restores the original mix of Twisted Sister’s debut LP to CD and adds some bonus EP tracks and a DVD of the band’s gig at the Reading Festival in 1982. (Official site)

Kate Bush, Director’s Cut (Fish People/EMI)

The magnificent singer/songwriter’s latest album project – her first in six years, and already released in the U.K., where it hit No. 2 – features remixed and re-recorded versions of tracks from The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993). A deluxe set features those original albums remastered as well. (Official site)

James Taylor, JT (Mobile Fidelity)

One of Taylor’s most satisfying albums gets the hybrid SACD treatment. (Mobile Fidelity)

The Guess Who, Flavours: Expanded Edition (Iconoclassic)

The Guess Who reissue series continues with the band’s penultimate LP for RCA. (Iconoclassic)

The O’Jays, Back Stabbers: Expanded Edition / Jon Lucien, Song for My Lady: Expanded Edition / Linda Lewis, Woman Overboard: Expanded Edition / Linx, Intuition: Expanded Edition (Big Break Records)

The latest crop of BBR reissues makes its way to U.S. shores. Back Stabbers looks like it’s gonna be a good one, what with one of the best Philly soul songs ever in “Love Train.” (Big Break Records)

The Weekend Wround-Up: Twisted Sister, Mayfield Updates and More

• Curt Smith, vocalist/bassist for Tears for Fears, is set to reissue one of his earlier solo projects this summer. Mayfield (1998) was Smith’s second album, recorded under the same name as the record (Curt is Mayfield – get it?). It’ll feature a new track, a new recording of the song “Trees.” Smith talks about the album and other projects in this interview with social networking site Flavors.
• Demon Music Group’s Harmless imprint is releasing another compilation of rare grooves mixed by one Tom Moulton. Some of the disco legend’s earliest works are covered here, some obscure (First Choice, The Quickest Way Out), others less so (the Loose Change and TJM albums were recently reissued by Big Break Records). The track list is after the jump of this post.
• Looking for some more background on the deluxe edition of Twisted Sister’s Under the Blade? Addicted to Vinyl has you covered.
• Here’s one we totally overlooked from our friends at MusicTAP: this Tuesday, Virgin is reissuing Australian rockers Sick Puppies’ latest album, 2009’s Tri-Polar. The album will be expanded with a bonus disc featuring this year’s unplugged EP Polar Opposite, three non-LP B-sides and a new track. That’s quite a package!
• And finally, some music geek-intensive notes you may have missed: check out the Library of Congress’ National Jukebox, which features rare masters owned by Sony Music from their entire catalogue (Columbia, OKeh, Victor and other labels) up to 1925. And Rhino’s famed RMAT (Rhino Musical Aptitude Test), issued to record stores across the country long ago, is back as an app! Better get those trivia muscles flexing; it looks like there’ll be a contest soon…

Twisted Sister Goes Back “Under the Blade”

For years, fans of Twisted Sister have rightfully complained about the less-than-ideal treatment of the band’s catalogue on CD. Rhino Records, who’d have first crack at the band’s output for Atlantic Records, largely stayed away even after a great 25th anniversary deluxe edition of the band’s classic Stay Hungry, which yielded the metal-pop classics “I Wanna Rock” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” And recent releases through Eagle Rock Entertainment have been nothing more than straight reissues.

Now, however, Eagle Rock is coming through in a major way with a deluxe edition of the band’s debut album, 1982’s Under the Blade, at the end of the month. This CD/DVD set will feature a few great things that TS collectors have been waiting for: the album features the original track listing, mix and album sleeve as released by British label Secret Records (a 1985 Atlantic reissue added one track, “I’ll Never Grow Up, Now!”, and remixed the album), the CD debut of the Ruff Cuts EP, which featured three alternate versions of tracks from Blade and a cover of the The Shangri-La’s classic “Leader of the Pack” and a live track from the band’s performance at the famed Reading Festival in 1982. That performance is captured in full for the first time ever on the accompanying DVD, and features not only powerhouse performances from the band (with guest appearances from rock bassist Pete Way and Motörhead’s Fast Eddie Clarke and Lemmy Kilmister) but 40 minutes of new interview footage from the band regarding the record and the subsequent performance.

It looks like Eagle Rock may be the label to give Twisted Sister fans the deluxe sets they deserve. It’ll be out on May 31 and the track list is after the jump.

Eagle Rock is Still Twisted

Fans were hoping for a decent set of remasters for the ’80s shock-rockers Twisted Sister at some point in the near future. (A previous set of reissues on the Spitfire label were of intensely dubious quality.) Unfortunately, Warner Music Group seems to have bestowed the remaster task not to Rhino but to Eagle Rock Entertainment, who’ve put out a steady stream of TS product in the past few months.

Now, on January 25, Eagle Rock has another two reissues coming out: the band’s sophomore album You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll (1983) and the first volume in the Club Daze series from 1999, collating various tracks the band recorded in the decade before being signed to Atlantic Records. These sets have the same track listings as the Spitfire versions (Club Daze was of course only ever released on that label), but one hopes they will be presented in superior quality.

Track lists and order information are after the jump.

I Wanna Rock! Eagle Rock Reissues Twisted Sister Reunion Show, Latter-Day Albums

As rock fans sit about and wonder if and when the Twisted Sister discography is ever going to be remastered and expanded in full, Eagle Rock Entertainment attempts to satiate TS fans’ appetites by reissuing Live at Wacken: The Reunion (2006).

Recorded at the Wacken Open Air Festival in 2003, the set was one of the biggest venues Dee Snider, Eddie Ojeda, Jay Jay French, Mark Mendoza and A.J. Pero had performed at since intermittently reuniting the seminal ’80s glam metal band with all of its classic members in 2001. It was filmed in full and released by Eagle Rock in 2006 on a hybrid CD/DVD set that featured not only the Wacken performance but interviews with the band and bonus live audio from the band’s early club years in 1980 and 1982.

Eagle Rock will reissue the set on two discs (a separate CD and DVD) on October 26 – a nice addition of “shock” to your required dose of rock this Halloween. Additionally, they’re also prepping straight reissues of the band’s last two albums, Come Out and Play (1985) (which features mind-bending guest appearances by Don Dokken, Alice Cooper, Brian Setzer, Clarence Clemons of The E Street Band and Billy Joel) and Love is for Suckers (1987), technically a Dee Snider solo album without contributions from the rest of the band but released under the TS name.

Read the full press release for Live at Wacken here and hit the jump to view the specs for all three titles.