CD Albums - Comments / Reviews by 23skidoo

CD Albums - Comments / Reviews by 23skidoo

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Member	Item		Review/Comment
23skidoo 3rd Jul 2023		CD Album Sarah McLachlan - The Freedom Sessions (1994)	Same cat # as the version with the CD-ROM content.
23skidoo 7th Jun 2023		CD Album Bill Haley And The Comets - Rock The Joint! (1994)	A virtually-complete collection of Haley's recordings for Holiday and Essex Records between 1951 and 1954 (Track 24 is new to CD). Both versions of Yes, Indeed had been issued on Transworld Records after Haley moved to Decca Records. The set is still missing a single Haley and the then-Saddlemen recorded with Loretta Glendenning (I'm Crying/Pretty Baby) which were finally included when Bear Family put out the Rock n Roll Arrives box set years later.
23skidoo 7th Jun 2023		CD Album Bill Haley And The Comets - Everyone Can Rock And Roll (1994)	Track 1 is a longer version than on the original album; on this version, Haley begins singing "I'm Walkin'" during the closing part and the solos are longer. Tracks 01, 05 and 9 were recorded in London in the spring of 1979 with Haley's actual touring Comets (though they aren't credited on the record). Remaining tracks recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama with session musicians in the summer of 1979.
23skidoo 3rd Jun 2023		CD Album Olivia Newton-John - Physical [Deluxe Edition] (2021)	My memory is the Two of a Kind soundtrack was released as an EP not a full album, thus unlikely to ever get a standalone CD release, so having it included here is a handy bonus along with the standalone Heart Attack single which remains as weirdly off-piste for Olivia today as it was 40 years ago!
23skidoo 3rd Jun 2023		CD Album Olivia Newton-John - If Not For You [Deluxe Edition] (2022)	Quite poignant seeing Olivia's note dated March 2022- mere months before she died. Considering her involvement with the reissue of Physical the year before and some other material, clearly Primary Wave was engaged in a similar reissue programme to what Joni Mitchell is currently undertaking. I hope it continues even with her gone. This release is interesting for including some non-album singles (including her first from 1966) as well as the tracks she recorded with the group Toomorrow for a film no one saw for decades. I'm not doing a review here, but just like Physical as a bonus included her songs from the Two of a Kind EP, this is worth getting for the hard to find singles and Toomorrow tracks, even for those who might have the CD or vinyl versions of the original album.
23skidoo 16th Apr 2023		CD Album Bill Haley And His Comets - From The Original Master Tapes (1985)	I just obtained an apparent variant with an additional cat# - DIDY-202. Any ideas? Record club maybe?
23skidoo 15th Apr 2023		CD Album Texas - Careful What You Wish For (2003)	This is listed as a linked release for the main 12-track CD issue, but as it's a 6-track promo it shouldn't be linked. Correction submitted.
23skidoo 22nd Mar 2023		CD Album Chuck Berry - Greatest Hits (1997)	The inlay has an error on the timing for My Ding-a-Ling. It says 9:19 but the actual track on the CD is only 2:50.
23skidoo 10th Mar 2023		CD Album Johnny Cash - Country Christmas (1992)	Wikipedia filled in the blanks on this one. The first issue on LaserLight came out Sept. 20, 1991, and contained 2 tracks - "White Christmas" and "I'll be Home for Christmas" - that were removed for this reissue. A 3rd issue of the album added live versions of Ring of Fire and I Walk the Line for some reason. Incidentally, it looks like Cash was still affiliated with Mercury when he recorded this as it says "Johnny Cash appears courtesy of Mercury Records" in fine print on the back. The 1991 release had a different cover photo, too.
23skidoo 30th Jan 2023		CD Album Bill Haley And His Comets - The Hit Singles Collection (1985)	Appears to be the European version of the US release "From the Original Master Tapes" with some track differences, most notably the inclusion of the posthumously release Haley's Golden Medley, which made the charts in the UK has never been released in North America. Does anyone know if this used the same master tapes source as the MCA USA album? Easy way to tell is "Rock Around the Clock" in the "master tapes" version is preceded by a man's voice (not Haley) counting in "One...two..." before Haley starts. Rudy's Rock is also missing a handclap overdub midway through the song on "Master Tapes" versions.
23skidoo 27th Jan 2023		CD Album Bill Haley And His Comets - Vive La Rock N' Roll (2002)	Al Pompilli vocal on 04, 19; Billy Williamson vocal on 07, 09 (and on 08 he is heard trying to calm the audience down). The performance of Rock Around the Clock (track 12) ends abruptly, likely due to concerns about rioting. Tracks 1-13 were apparently recorded for radio. Tracks 14-19 come from a different concert.
23skidoo 21st Jan 2023		CD Album Sheena Easton - What Comes Naturally (1991)	Note Japanese pressing has an extra track.
23skidoo 6th Jan 2023		CD Album Sheena Easton - Live At The Palace, Hollywood: Deluxe Edition (2022)	(General comments, not intended as a review). I was very happy to see this finally released on DVD as I remember when it first aired and I think I wore out the VHS! (I remember getting it on RCA Selectavision!). I love the fact they included an audio CD (with bonus performances) along with the DVD. This is the type of thing I wish they'd done with the Linda Ronstadt Live in Hollywood release a few years back (coincidentally also taped at the Palace and also first broadcast on HBO!), but they just went with the audio for that one. The picture quality is what you'd expect from a 40-year-old videotape source (it probably looks like hell on a 4K TV but my plasma handles it well). Fortunately the DVD is Region 0 as well though I probably would have still bought this for the audio half had it not been playable in North America.
23skidoo 5th Jan 2023		CD Album Sheila E. - Sheila E. In The Glamorous Life (1985)	If Prince didn't have a hand in writing the tracks, Sheila definitely was inspired by him, as most of the tracks here wouldn't have been out of place on a Vanity 6 or Apollonia 6 album, not to mention an album by Prince himself. Same for her Romance 1600 followup album (especially A Love Bizarre). Still an excellent album and arguably my personal favorite of the Prince "family" albums.
23skidoo 3rd Jan 2023		CD Album Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner - Spaced Out! (1997)	Since branding has changed recently, "Space: The Imagination Station" is now known as CTV Sci-Fi. But it still airs Star Trek regularly (including series only available on streaming in the States).
23skidoo 9th Dec 2022		CD Album Julie London - Julie Is Her Name/Julie Is Her Name, Vol. 2 (1992)	Standard release. The label displays Liberty logo but EMI as copyright holder (EMI also shown as label on spine).
23skidoo 29th Nov 2022		CD Album Linda Ronstadt - Standing Room Only	A discussion at the entry for her official Live in Hollywood CD release (q.v.) has suggested this recording might be the complete set of her HBO concert special which was issued in edited form on the Live in Hollywood CD. Does anyone own both to compare to see if they are indeed from the same show? The images on the inlay certainly predate 1980 as by then Linda had short hair.
23skidoo 27th Nov 2022		CD Album Connie Kaldor - Wood River (Home Is Where The Heart Is) (1992)	Uploaded a clean version of the inlay cover, without the autograph.
23skidoo 25th Nov 2022		CD Album Tanita Tikaram - Closer To The People (2016)	This CD does something I think is unusual - in between tracks and on fades you hear "vinyl noise", simulating the sound of listening to a vinyl record. Someone is probably going to say it's common now, but for me this is a first. The irony is one of the reasons why CDs became a thing was because they did away with vinyl noise.
23skidoo 23rd Nov 2022		CD Album Tanita Tikaram - Closer To The People (2016)	Uploaded a second inlay front variant (all other details identical).
23skidoo 21st Nov 2022		CD Album The Stone Poneys - Evergreen Vol. 2/Vol. III (2020)	@PhilMH - I just checked the "official" list of artists with lost recordings published by the New York Times (and disputed by Universal) and you are correct, Ronstadt's name is not included.
23skidoo 18th Jul 2022		CD Album Glen Campbell - Glen Campbell Sings For The King (2018)	Review Glen Campbell was one of a number of artists who, aside from their solo work, also recorded demo recordings on behalf of various songwriters to present to Elvis for consideration for use on future albums or movie soundtracks. Campbell, who actually played for Elvis on the Viva Las Vegas soundtrack, was recruited by the Weisman-Wayne songwriting team to do some of their demos that were at the time almost exclusively intended for film soundtracks as Elvis pretty much was only focusing on that kind of work in the mid-60s. This album is a revelation. It may be a hot take to say this, but most of Campbell's versions are far superior to what Elvis ended up recording. That's not necessarily a knock on Elvis, but it does show that clearly something happened between, for example, Campbell recording "Clambake" which has extra verses and a completely different "middle eight" than what Elvis pretty much sleepwalked through on the Clambake soundtrack. "Easy Come, Easy Go" is a very strong rocker with surprisingly risque lyrics for the time and amazing guitar work by Campbell; none of this is reflected in what Elvis recorded (he is famously quoted as referring to the ECEG soundtrack music as "s*it"). Even the infamous "Do the Clam" from Girl Happy (described by some biographers as the nadir of his career) comes off much the better in the demo version. (Trivia note: although the CD spells her name wrong, "Do the Clam" was one of several songs Weisman and Wayne wrote with Dolores Fuller who is also remembered as the girlfriend of director Edward D. Wood Jr and appeared in several of his infamous films such as Plan 9 from Outer Space). The strongest tracks on the album are the Bobbie Gentry-influenced "All I Needed Was the Rain" (it has the same feel as Gentry's "Nicky Hoeky" from around the same time) and a remix of what appears to have been the only non-movie-intended demo of the bunch, the spiritual "We Call on Him" which was recorded by Elvis for a single as he started to pull out of just doing the soundtracks, and the CD effectively combines his vocals with Campbell's demo to make an effective duet (though I do wish they'd included the unedited Campbell demo for comparison). The CD also lets listeners play a game of "what if" as several songs that were rejected by Elvis (or the filmmakers) are also included. Some of them are quite good (and on a few of them Campbell really does sound like Elvis) and it's fun to guess what movies the unused songs were intended for (for example, "Magic Fire" sounds like it might have been intended for Harum Scarum). Campbell, of course, wasn't the only talented performer to record demos for Elvis (others include PJ Proby, as well as the songwriters themselves in a few cases). It would be interesting to see more such releases compiling these demos. 1 person found this review helpful. ✔︎ Helpful Review?
23skidoo 12th Jul 2022		CD Album Linda Ronstadt - Get Closer (1987)	For some reason this and the CD of Heart Like a Wheel are quite hard to find, and expensive if they do show up.
23skidoo 12th Jul 2022		CD Album The Stone Poneys - Evergreen Vol. 2/Vol. III (2020)	PhilMH: Not just Norway of course, which is why there are so many European CDs collecting Elvis, Beatles, etc. I ordered this through Amazon Canada and they had it in stock; in Canada, there seems to be no prohibition on public domain releases from Europe being sold at retail here. I have been told that is not the case in the US but I expect to be corrected on that. In fairness to whoever put this collection out, they took time to remaster the tracks as they sound as you would expect remastered 1960s recordings in the 2020s to sound - very good considering they probably could only work with the vinyl or another CD release assuming they had to access to master tapes (and weren't they believed destroyed in the big Universal fire anyway?)
23skidoo 10th Jul 2022		CD Album Bill Haley And His Comets - Bill Haley And His Comets (2001)	All tracks recorded January 1966 for Orfeon Records of Mexico, except (rather randomly) Track 11 which instead comes from an obscure fall 1968 recording session for United Artists.
23skidoo 4th Jul 2022		CD Album The Stone Poneys - Evergreen Vol. 2/Vol. III (2020)	Not certain if this should be considered a bootleg or not. As mentioned in the notes there's no indication of a record company on this, so that's one criteria met. But it's also available on Amazon so there's that. Any thoughts?
23skidoo 26th Jun 2022		CD Album Spike Jones - Spike Jones In Hi-Fi (2018)	Thanks to whoever clarified country of origin. I played it safe in initially indexing as "unknown". Track 3 lead vocals by Thurl Ravenscroft (a.k.a. voice of Tony the Tiger and also prominent in Disney's Haunted Mansion song).
23skidoo 13th Jun 2022		CD Album Various Artists - Merry Christmas: Bill Haley & Friends Vol. 1 (1998)	This set launched a long running occasional series by Hydra that featured performers with connections (sometimes remote) to Bill Haley. This Christmas-themed collection thus features recordings by Haley mixed in with two new perfomances by his Original 1954-55 Comets recorded in Europe, two tracks by Joey Welz (who played piano for a time in 1965 and later worked with some post-Haley versions of the Comets), Jack Howard (Haley's manager for a time and owner of the Arcade label for which members of the Comets recorded solo work and worked as session musicians before, during and after their time with Haley), Rex Zario (who became custodian of Howard's archive after Howard died, including many unreleased Haley tracks), Ian Fenn (a singer with no known Haley connection but his track has a strong Haley sound), and a few others who had connections with Arcade or Haley's pre-Comets group, the Saddlemen. The two Haley and Saddlemen recordings date from 1951 and this was their first release on CD; at the time only a very scatchy copy of the 78 could be located of this rare record, so the sound quality is poor; some years later, Bear Family obtained a much better-condition copy for a box set; the first two Haley tracks date from a 1968 recording session for United Artists but had only come to light a few years before this release.
23skidoo 13th Jun 2022		CD Album Bill Haley And His Comets - On Screen (1998)	Track source breakdown: 1-3: Round-Up of Rhythm (short film released in 1955; new performances) 4: Toast of the Town (Ed Sullivan Show), 1955 5-6: Washington Square TV show, c.early 1956 7: Off-air recording taken from Rock Around the Clock movie, 1956 8-11: Alan Freed radio show, 1956 12: Off-air recording taken from Don't Knock the Rock movie, 1956 13-14: Ed Sullivan Show, 1957 15-17: Newsreel recordings during the 1958 German tour 18-19: Off-air recordings taken from the German film Hier bin ich - hier bleib' ich, 1958 (18 features Caterina Valente). Studio-master-quality recordings of 7 and 12 (which feature versions of the two songs different from the records) have never been located. Studio masters of 18 and 19 were released by Bear Family in the 1990s.
23skidoo 13th Jun 2022		CD Album Bill Haley And His Comets - Seven Classic Albums Plus Bonus Singles (2012)	I can't believe such a major typo got past them. Note the misspelling of Haley's name on the cover!

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