Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

I've been informed that another album reviewed on my site has been reissued under the Extended Versions title, as part of BMG's Encore Collection. The Deep Purple Extended Versions CD is a truncated single-CD version of the double-disc import On The Wings Of A Russian Foxbat . (To confuse matters further, another version of the same live album was once available in the U.S. as King Biscuit Flower Hour: Deep Purple In Concert ). This album consists of concert performances by the 1975 lineup of Deep Purple: David Coverdale, Tommy Bolin, Glenn Hughes, Ian Paice, and Jon Lord. In any form and by any name, this album is only recommended for fans of the 1975 Purple album Come Taste The Band , and even that camp seems divided between those who love the live album and those who hate it.

BMG Music has recently reissued many live albums from artists too numerous to mention, each under the title Extended Versions. This series of reissues is called the Encore Collection, and the CDs are budget priced at $6.98 to $7.99. At least one of the albums reviewed on my site, Lou Reed's 1975 release Lou Reed Live , has been reissued as part of this series. Another CD that has fallen under this blanket is the 1993 reunion album by Big Star. This was originally titled Columbia: Live At Missouri University 4/25/93 . I had mistakenly thought that this album was out of print altogether, and it nearly became the subject of Rarebird's Spotlight Album Review #8. For those who are unfamiliar with Big Star, they were an early-'70's power-pop band led by Alex Chilton, who had formerly been the teenage lead singer of the Box Tops. The band received plenty of critical praise in its day, but they were a commercial failure. Part of the reason for this was that their distribut...

After recently listening to the 10,000 Maniacs compilation Campfire Songs , a solid 2-CD collection of singles and rarities from the band's Natalie Merchant era, I found that my John and Mary review page (which discusses the careers of sometime-Maniacs John Lombardo and Mary Ramsey) needed some updating. The Maniacs' 1997 album Love Among The Ruins (which featured Lombardo and Ramsey) is out of print. Since leaving that band in 2002, the duo have recorded a CD called The Pinwheel Galaxy , which they released without a record label and is therefore somewhat hard to find. I've added reviews of both to the John and Mary page: http://rarebird9.net/johnmary.html So what has become of 10,000 Maniacs? They have only recorded two studio albums since Merchant departed in 1993: Ruins and The Earth Pressed Flat (1999), both of which featured Lombardo and Ramsey. Since that pair departed in 2002, the Maniacs took on a new singer named Oskar Saville. (She has recorded her own album t...

There is an online petition for the release of the Buckingham Nicks album on CD. This is the album recorded in 1973 by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks before they joined Fleetwood Mac. The petition has been up for some time, but it looks as though it's not too late to sign: http://www.petitiononline.com/bncd/petition.html I hope that the petition will be forwarded to Mr. Buckingham when the time comes. Judging from what Nicks has said in interviews, Buckingham is the one who does not approve of a reissue of the album. As far as I know, he hasn't said why. Rarebird's Buckingham Nicks Review: http://rarebird9.net/bucknicks.html

The Hoodoo Gurus were a garage-rocking Australian band who gained a cult following in the '80's but never achieved widespread mainstream success, at least not in America. Of the seven studio albums the band released between 1984 and 1996, only the two albums released on Elektra -- Mars Needs Guitars (1985) and Blow Your Cool (1987) -- are currently available in the U.S. Both of them (especially the former) are worthwhile. Also, their 1989 album Magnum Cum Louder is worth searching out. Their combination of humor and hooks was almost always entertaining. The Gurus were declared defunct in 1998, but three-fourths of them (singer/guitarist Dave Faulkner, guitarist Brad Shepherd, and drummer Mark Kingsmill) reunited in 2002, and with bassist James Kendall formed the Persian Rugs. This band first released a five-song EP in Australia called Mr. Tripper in 2002. It sounds as though the Gurus had been listening to Rhino's Nuggets box set, because this EP consisted of '60...