Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

A new edition of Queen's 1974 sophomore album Queen II is expected before the end of 2026. While speaking about the reissue on his Planet Rock Christmas radio special in the U.K. on December 22nd, Queen guitarist Brian May played a previously unreleased outtake from the album, titled "Not For Sale (Polar Bear)", which will be one of the bonus tracks on the new edition of Queen II . Here is the snippet of the program during which May played the song: The song is a sensitive ballad about a Christmas decoration in a store window, written by May in 1969. May commented that the song was originally recorded by his pre-Queen band called Smile, and that the Smile version has been heard on bootlegs. However, the Smile version of the song was actually issued in Japan and the Netherlands on legitimate, if not exactly band-approved, releases. First of all, who were Smile? Smile were a British progressive rock trio formed by college students Brian May and singer/bassist Tim ...

You may have heard about the upcoming Beach Boys box set titled We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years , set to be released on February 13th. Among many other tracks recorded between 1974 and 1977, the 3-CD set will include the entire 1977 album Beach Boys Love You , which is generally considered a Brian Wilson solo album with some participation from the other Beach Boys. And included among the box set's bonus material is most of the unreleased 1977-recorded album Adult/Child , which was the intended follow-up to Beach Boys Love You , and was also mainly a Brian Wilson solo project with some help from other Beach Boys. That album was shelved in favor of the weaker 1978 M.I.U. album, which was a discouraging work by middle-aged "boys" who were seemingly pretending it was 1963. Some Beach Boys fans describe Adult/Child as "another lost masterpiece", in allusion to the legendary unfinished Smile album which was expected to be revealed to the world a decade...

Bob Weir, the guitarist and vocalist who co-founded the Grateful Dead in 1965, has died at age 78. Weir reportedly overcame cancer, but then died from underlying lung issues. Weir had certainly kept himself busy for 60 years, doing plenty of touring from the time he was a teenager until his final years. Even after the demise of the Dead in 1995, Weir had toured and recorded with numerous bands, some of whom featured other former members of the Dead. And when the Grateful Dead went on hiatus during their existence, Weir would then also find time to work with other bands, or record solo albums. Weir's second solo recording, Heaven Help The Fool from 1978, is currently unavailable. Heaven Help The Fool was produced by Keith Olsen, who had recently worked with the Dead on their 1977 Terrapin Station album. Six of the eight songs on Heaven Help The Fool were co-written by Weir and sometime Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow. Weir was supported by such musicians as Waddy Wachtel, To...

For Record Store Day Black Friday 2025, the dBpm music label -- founded by the band Wilco in 2011 -- issued an LP titled dBpm 15 , to mark the 15th year of the label's operation. The LP was limited to 3,400 copies, and was pressed in red vinyl. The LP contained 12 tracks, mostly rarities from the label's history, some of them previously unreleased. Seven of the tracks were recorded by Wilco, while four were Jeff Tweedy solo recordings. Also, it included a track which Tweedy recorded with the late Daniel Johnston. This compilation is not likely to make a household name of the dBpm label, but it certainly does Wilco proud. Their seven tracks are good ones, including a newfangled Neil Young-like ballad recorded in 2010 ("Art of Almost"), a dreamy retro-'60's folk-rocker ("Tell Your Friends"), a gentle country-rock Beatles cover ("Don't Let Me Down"), a quirky Sleater-Kinney cover ("Modern Girl"), and a live alt-country track re...

Donna Jean Godchaux, who was best known for singing with the Grateful Dead from 1972 until 1979, recently passed away at age 78 after battling cancer. Donna joined the Grateful Dead as a backup singer shortly after her late husband Keith Godchaux became the band's keyboardist in 1971. Keith's keyboard playing shifted the Dead in a different musical direction than before, as his influences were based on jazz and classical styles, in contrast to his predecessor Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, whose style was more blues-based. Donna certainly added something different to the Dead as well, having been their only official female member ever. Donna had previously worked as a studio session vocalist, notably having sung on Elvis' "Suspicious Minds" and Percy Sledge's "When A Man Loves A Woman". Despite her impressive credentials, Donna was not a great fit for the Grateful Dead, especially during their live shows, where her vocal pitch (and occasional waili...

While promoting her new studio album Here For It All , pop legend Mariah Carey has been answering questions about a "secret grunge album" that she recorded way back in 1995, under the pseudonym Chick. This is not the first time Carey has mentioned this long-lost recording, but she largely avoided talking about it publicly for 25 years after the fact. In her 2020 memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey , the singer finally began to share details about the alternative rock recording. More recently, Carey spoke with fellow r&b artist SZA on the debut episode of Apple Music's Flowers , during which SZA played snippets of two songs from the unreleased album and begged Carey to release it, saying, "We need it!". On The Tonight Show , Carey told Jimmy Fallon that she has "always regretted not putting it out", and Fallon played a snippet of the song "Prom Queen". Questlove went as far as to call it Carey's best record! Carey has teased a possibl...

An expanded edition of the Smashing Pumpkins album Machina / The Machines of God from the year 2000 is being sold exclusively through Billy Corgan's Madame ZuZu's website , in a limited-edition pressing of 3,500 units. The shipping date was set for today, September 5, 2025. As of this writing, the set is not yet available digitally, or in any other format through any other distributors. Subtitled as the Aranea Alba Edition , the 8-LP box set contains a staggering 80 tracks, 48 of them making up the full Machina album in the form which Corgan had originally envisioned, along with 32 bonus tracks. Where did all of those tracks come from? The original Machina CD issued in 2000 consisted of just 15 tracks. Corgan's original plan was to release Machina as a 2-CD set, like the earlier Pumpkins classic Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness . But the folks at Virgin Records did not think this idea was feasible, after the band's 1998 album Adore was considered a commerci...