Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

For Record Store Day 2026, Robert Plant's current band Saving Grace issued a limited edition vinyl EP containing four new studio tracks. The 12-inch, 45 rpm EP, titled All That Glitters... , was limited to 3,500 copies. Saving Grace was also the name of Plant's most recent album from 2025, recorded with the titular U.K.-based band, featuring co-vocalist and accordionist Suzi Dian. The sound of Saving Grace is mainly acoustic, and is inspired by folk, blues, Gospel, and Americana styles. Their mostly gentle sound is far more reminiscent of Plant's work with Alison Krauss than of his work with Led Zeppelin, but it has a more Celtic ambience, and an occasional touch of psychedelia. The 77-year-old Plant is no longer the heavy metal screamer that he once was. His vocals on Saving Grace are understated and controlled, and Dian's vocal accompaniment provides a "sweeter" counterpoint. The songs on the album are covers drawn from various genres, usually rendered w...

This past April 11th, the Rolling Stones released a limited edition, white-labeled 12-inch vinyl single titled "Rough and Twisted", under the pseudonym The Cockroaches. This one-sided single was limited to 1,000 numbered copies worldwide. As of four days later, the song has still not been released to streaming services, and the single is being sold for big bucks on eBay and Discogs. Why the fake name? The Cockroaches was a name that the superstar rock band sometimes used in the 1970's, when they wanted to secretly perform a gig in a low-profile venue away from the spotlight. The distribution of this single was done in a similarly secretive way. Signs began to appear around London, advertising a mysterious band called the Cockroaches, with a QR code that connected visitors to their official website . This website featured a graphic of the disc's plain white cover, and when a "flip" link was clicked, it listed GPS coordinates referring to locations of stores...

Cats were a rock band based in Philadelphia, who were active from 1976 until 1981, and released one self-titled new wave-era album in 1980. The band Cats had no connection to the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical; the very first stage performance of Webber's Cats took place one year after the Cats album was released. One of Cats' songs, "(He's Got) The Rest Of His Life", sounds lyrically similar to Billy Joel's hit "You May Be Right", which was released the same year. However, that Cats song had appeared the previous year on a 1979 various artists compilation which showcased Philadelphia musicians, so it predated the release of Joel's song. Also, since this band bore some musical similarity to Queen, you might suspect them of lifting the title of their album's opening track "On The Prowl" from Queen's "Man On The Prowl", but -- guess what? Cats predated that Queen song by four years. Considering the band's 1976 ori...

For Record Store Day 2026, Rhino Records is issuing a live album from the Cars, titled Heartbeat City Live . The album contains 17 songs performed by the new wave quintet on September 11, 1984 at The Summit in Houston, Texas. The 2-LP set will be limited to 3,500 copies. This concert was part of the tour to support the band's multi-platinum 1984 album Heartbeat City . The show was recorded for broadcast by the Westwood One radio network. The Record Store Day website previously stated (but no longer states) that the concert was "previously unreleased on any audio format - physical or digital". I'm glad that text was removed, because it is not quite accurate. All 17 of the tracks were included on the recent Deluxe Edition of Heartbeat City , issued in 2025 in both physical and digital formats. 13 of the songs were issued on a home video release of the concert in 1985 -- which, I realize, is considered a video format as opposed to an audio format. That videocassette w...

For Record Store Day 2026, Stewart Copeland's 1985 solo album titled The Rhythmatist is being reissued by Demon Records, in a limited vinyl edition which will be pressed in blue translucent vinyl, and limited to 1,200 copies. This edition has new cover art, and each copy will come with an exclusive art print signed by Copeland. The album will be also be reissued on CD on May 29th, with seven bonus tracks consisting of alternate versions of the album's singles "Koteja (Oh Bolilla)" and "Gong Rock". The first post-Police album by that band's former drummer, The Rhythmatist was the soundtrack album to Copeland's 1985 film of the same name, which was released on home video (A&M Video VC 61008). Directed and produced by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, that amusing 57-minute curio showed Copeland undertaking a series of National Geographic -like adventures in East and West Africa, with the stated intention of studying the influence of African rhythms on mu...

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...