Archival Posts 2003 May 04-10

May 9, 2003

I've nosed in with a special review on the upcoming B.B. King disc that releases on June 10 with it's SACD counterpart showing up on June 24. It's a sweet disc and one that you should pay attention to. Do yourself a favour and order this one for your library.

Here's the scoop on the upcoming Bob Dylan SACDs as provided by Brian Moura. It appears, according to his article on High Fidelity News, that Sony has changed the issue of earlier reported Bob Dylan discs. The new issue is as follows:

Another Side of Bob Dylan

Blonde on Blonde

Blood On The Tracks

Bringing It All Back Home

Desire

Free Wheelin’

Highway 61 Revisited

Infidels

John Wesley Harding

Love and Theft

Nashville Skyline

Oh Mercy

Planet Waves

Slow Train Coming

Street Legal

Of that number, 6 will be SACD MultiChannel. They are:

Blonde on Blonde

Another side of Bob Dylan

Bringing it All Back Home

Blood on the Tracks

Slow Train Coming

Love and Theft

Expected release dates are "mid-summer". Many thanks to Brian Moura for his emailed clarifications. It's nice to have you as a reader, Brian.

We talked earlier about the 4 upcoming Sam Cooke discs that are going to be released by Abkco Records on SACD. But here's a little more with some art to gander at.

Sam Cooke's "Ain't That Good News" represents the first time on CD. It, along with the other discs, have been restored and remastered. "Portrait of a Legend" is a new greatest hits compilation that boasts 30 plus tracks. there is also the reissued "Keep Movin' On" and "Sam Cooke at the Copa". All of these are done up in SACD glory. Pencil your calendars for your copies on June 17. But there is more than that coming for Sam Cooke. Abkco is also releasing a DVD, "Legend". Legend is an extended version of the VH1 special that contains additional interviews with Aretha Franklin, Bobby Womack, Lou Adler, and others. If you're a Sam Cooke fan, you're about to enter Heaven.

From Roadrunner Records for June 17 is the anticipated new Type O Negative album, "Life is Killing Me".

An interesting 'Winning Combinations' series disc from Universal is coming out on June 17. The disc is a Deep Purple/Rainbow set that provides live music for a comparative brand of continuity. Obviously, the set is centred in on Ritchie Blackmore's contributions. It's not a bad set but is only for completists and has a nice price attached.

Duane is back with his latest Pit Stop edition and guess what?! He ain't pickin' on me. Methinks that he's hard at work on some reviews for upcoming Victory Records releases of Freya and Darkest Hour who both have discs coming out on May 20. He also has the Deluxe Edition of Sonic Youth's "Dirty". Watch for those.

We're off for the weekend. I'll be slaving under Mrs TAP's tyrannical rule so give me emails of comfort; something to make it easier. Come back Monday for the winners of the Steve Miller Band XRCD limted edition discs. These discs sell for $30 retail...if you can get them. That makes these discs collector items. WooHoo!! Enjoy this weekend.

May 8, 2003

Good Morning folks. Maybe it's just me but I'm completely surprised at how fast these weeks are just flying by. It could be that I feel as if I'm Fred Flintstone walking around on earthen floors (cement in reality) and it could be that I'm dreading the upcoming weekend and the impending wall removal fun awaiting me. I can't wait til it's over. Oh well...

Here we go.

Many of you are very eager for the Elvis set arriving in July. So I thought that I'd look a little closer at "Elvis:Close Up" for you. This set is a followup to last year's "Today, Tomorrow, & Forever" set that sold very well. "Elvis: Close Up" is a 4CD Box that contains 89 previously unreleased songs. That's 89 tunes unreleased! All of these tracks are digitally remastered. the box also comes with a 48 page booklet with photos, detailed track listings, and written remembrances.

Disc One offers a look at stereo masters from the 50s as well as outtakes. There are songs from Jailhouse Rock and others on this disc.

Disc Two features unreleased movie songs from his post Army days including Blue Hawaii and Flaming Star.

Disc Three offers a close look at Elvis' 60s Nashville sessions. This disc contains outtakes from those sessions.

Disc Four provides a completely unreleased live concert from San Antonio TX in 1972. The bonus here is a performance of "Burning Love", at the time unreleased on record.

This collection arrives near the 26th anniversary of Elvis' death.

4AD checked in today with some great news for Dead Can Dance fans. 4AD is releasing a condensed 2CD set from 2001's limited edition boxed set. The new set is called "Wake" and contain songs from that earlier box, chosen by Brendan Perry. The enclosed 24 page booklet has lyrics and notes. The very unfortunate thing here is that this will not be available in the US, at least not yet. I understand that the box set may still be available in the US from Rhino/Warner. Personally, I'd love to get ahold of this set. Here is mailorder info for you.

Rounder gets set to release Bruce Cockburn's first original album in 4 years, "You've Never Seen Everything". This album includes a wealth of guest artists including EmmyLou Harris, Jackson Browne, Sam Phillips, and Sarah Harmer. The first single from the album will be "Open" but I'm sure that every song of this 13 song disc will be exemplary. This disc swings into stores on June 10.

Also on June 10, one of my favourite blues guitarists, Peter Green, has an album coming out. The album, "Blues by Green" is a collection of some excellent Green cuts including a few from his Fleetwood Mac years. This 14 cut disc features a remake of FMac's "Fool No More" and FMac's original "Man of the World".

Finally, that Johnny Winter release expected on June 17, "Johnny Winter: Winter Essentials 1960-1967" is a 2CD collection of remastered early Winter songs. This set chronicles his times as a hot young blues guitarist who had made his start in Texas. On a personal note, Johnny has always been my numero uno favourite blues guitarist. I'm looking forward to this one.

Daniel Wolfson of MusicTAP recently discovered that Columbia intends to transform 6 Dylan titles into multi channel SACD. I don't believe that this impacts the 15 stereo SACD titles. Known titles include "Another Side of Bob Dylan"; "Slow Train Coming"; "Blonde on Blonde"; and "Bringing it all Back Home".

I'm calling this is a day for us here at MusicTAP. Check back tomorrow because I have a ton more stuff to talk about from Universal. And it's the weekend...but do I care? Not this time. See you tomorrow.

May 7, 2003

Just a quick note to let you know I'm still around. We have still been working on our house a bit but getting near the point where we can take a nice breather. So I'm going to jump into a few upcomings and then get off for the day.

Warner Brothers is issuing a new R.E.M. Greatest Hits package scheduled for October 28. That's a pretty cool issue. There will also be a Tori Amos Greatest Hits that's scheduled for October 7.

And Neil Young is STILL on the schedule (June 24).

Sanctuary has a Robert Cray album scheduled for July 1 and will be titled "Time Will Tell". Arista is prepping an Aretha Franklin disc with a title TBA for release on September 17.

I've had plenty of requests for info on the upcoming Elvis "Close Up" 4CD album coming up on July 1 with a list price of $69.98. I have access to a track list so if you have to have it, I'll email it to you. While I'm here, I'll post the cover art for the package. You Elvis fans.

Tomorrow, we're going to look at upcoming discs from Universal and go into a little depth on some of them. Thanks for stopping by. We'll see you back here.

May 6, 2003

Projekt Records is heralding a new act recently signed to their label that they are sure you'll be all excited about. We like Projekt Records. And so we are slapping a teaser banner at the top here for a short period. Go and check out Projekt's site. Their music releases are highly evocative and very cool.

Short post tonight as it's back to the drudgery of wallpaper stripping and panel removal, stuff like that.

We have Marco Passarelli's views on the newest Queen DVD-Audio, "The Game" disc from DTS Entertainment. You'll want to stop in and read that for sure.

I want to start with something that I seen in a Tower Records circular that made me kind of excited. They were selling, and very cheaply I might add, a combo SACD/Progressive Scan DVD/CD player for $250. Now, if that isn't an aggressive Sony push to get SACD hardware into consumer hands, I don't know what is. For those of you who have been hesitant to take the plunge, this is a golden opportunity to update your audio systems and find out what the rest of us loudmouths are crowing about. That's $250 bucks and an update to your DVD player scan ability. It rocks.

I have an update on the new, upcoming J Records release of Annie Lennox's "Bare", whose rendition of Marley's "Wait in Vain" still leaves a soft spot in this old ticker. The street date for the disc is June 10. The set features the new disc with 11 Annie Lennox originals and a bonus DVD of 2 acoustic performances of songs from the CD. The DVD is mixed in 5.1 surround. There is also a video interview with Annie Lennox talking about the making of "Bare". The new album also will be made available in a CD only format for those who don't care about the extra material. The art is culled from a PDF so the art isn't gonna win any contests. But it does give you a chance to see what the cover will look like.

For those of you who remember the post punk band, The Fall, Sanctuary Records is releasing, on June 3, a 20 song compilation disc that revisits the band's early output. The songs are digitally remastered from the original masters and should sound great. The disc is called "The Fall- It's a New Thing:The Step Forward Years".

And while we have our eyes in Sanctuary's vaults, the Foghat "Decades Live" has been bumped to July 22. This title was something that we spoke of some time ago, originally expected to street on April 1. But that April Fool's Day really bit a lot of people as many releases got pushed back, some way back. One such disappearance, which has not yet rematerialized is the SinE DVD from Jeff Buckley. Of course, we're still awaiting that but this Foghat title was shuffled as well and now hopefully will be in our hands soon.

We have a string of artist appearances on the telly for this week. There's The Ataris on The Craig Kilborn this Thursday late night while the Opera Babes are on Fox Morning this very AM. Hopefully, some of you saw Good Charlotte on The David Letterman show last night.

I'm going to close with this cover shot of Heart's upcoming June 10 live album, "Alive in Seattle" which wil be a 2CD affair with 4 new Heart songs. This set will come from Epic/Legacy and will complement their "Alive in Seattle" DVD.

Tomorrow, we'll look at some Universal product in depth including the upcoming Johnny Winter disc, amongst others. Come back for that. See you then.

May 5, 2003

I hope that everyone had a great weekend. But, as you know, I spent the weekend popping tiles and scrapping glue off floors. And now, I get to walk around the house on cement floors. but it gets better. It appears that the prior occupants of this house decided that it was better to just cover over all the previous configurations. So, Mrs TAP takes off the wallpaper and finds paneling. She finds multiple pasteups of wallpaper. And I do mean multiple. However, phase one of house restoration is nearing some kind of completion. Cool.

I got a swarm of email for the Steve Miller "The Joker" XRCD contest. As much as I'd like to declare the winners now, there are some questionable answers. But I'm going to make the next one much much more challenging. Our John Nelson offered up a question that was good. I'll throw it in here and you folks who like answering questions can answer it for the helluvit.

What was the name of Steve Miller's first Band?

We'll have some reviews for you tomorrow.

OK...let's get dwon to brass tacks here. Now, we've mentioned this before so this is a reminder. Capitol Records is readying a Duran Duran box set, "Singles Box Set: 1981-1985" which will street on June 10 and will list at $46.98. This set will be joined on the shelves by another 80s band, The Stranglers, with "Stranglers-The UA Singles: 1979-1982" from EMI and will list for $50.98. But wait...another box set coming in from EMI. This one is for another 80s classic, The Buzzcocks. This set,"Inventory-Singles Box Set" will also price for $50.98 and street on June 10. For me, the order of preference is Stranglers, Buzzcocks, and Duran Duran. The Stranglers ruled.

This must be the date (June 10) for getting out all the box sets. From EMI and for $99.98 list is a set from Queensryche, "Revolution Calling Box".

'Best of' sets are coming out for Peggy Lee, "Best of the Singles Collection", and The Beach Boys with "Sounds of Summer, The Very Best of The Beach Boys". These discs are scheduled for June 10.

Let me tell you, I really blew it on this one. I didn't know what the heck the Radiohead title, "7 Television Commercials", was but you can bet fans corrected me. It is a re-release of a VHS title that features videos from the band. We're assuming at this point that it's a DVD issue of that title. It arrives in store on August 5. Of course, their new "Hail to the Thief" arrives on June 10. As if you didn't know already. While we're here, here's the funky cover for "Hail to the Thief".

We have a few interesting titles coming from Universal. On July 15 there will be five Millennium Collection titles. The artists getting the treatment are:

Peter Frampton
Grace Jones
Delbert McClinton
Gerald Alstan
Pat Travers

Receiving the same treatment on July 29 is Marianne Faithfull and Paul Weller. With those two are 3 new Deluxe Editions. The titles are "Bad Girls" from Donna Summer, Joe Jackson with "Night and Day", and Marvin Gaye's "I Want You". Those Deluxe Editions, as always, are 2CD sets. That Joe Jackson title sounds great. check back with us as time draws nearer the release for a rundown of the packages.

Thanks to reader, Brian Erickson, for supplying us with a link for free Dead downloads. You have to first download a small application but the claim is lossless files. In any case, head off to the Dead's official site right here and get your music...for free. Thanks, Brian!!

We're closing out Monday's post with a look at the cover of the new Steely Dan disc, "Everything Must Go", expected out on June 10 (that's some date, eh?! All those available discs..). Check back tomorrow for more.

Oh..and many congratulations to Noelle.