Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

Last week I received the third pair of exclusive vinyl items offered to platinum members of Third Man Records’ Vault service. For those who are unaware, Third Man Records is the label owned by Jack White, the leader of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather. The Vault service promises to deliver exclusive vinyl-only records (one full-length album and one 7” single) to its platinum members every three months. According to the postmark, my copies were sent on April 9th. I received them on the 12th. This third set of items consists of a 2-LP compilation of all Third Man Records singles released in 2009, and a Dead Weather single featuring first takes of two songs from their upcoming second album. The package also included a fold-out poster featuring the cover images for all of the singles, as well as three Third Man Records postcards, and a turntable slipmat designed by Rob Jones. The Dead Weather single contains first takes of the songs “No Horse” and “Jawbreaker” from ...

It has finally happened. The old location of my website Rarebird’s Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews has completely ceased to exist. In case you didn’t know, the site has been moved to http://rarebird9.net . From its creation in May 1999 up until this past February, the site was hosted by the AT&T Personal Web Pages service. I moved the site on February 20th, after AT&T notified its members that their web page service would be discontinued as of March 31st. For six weeks, I was able to use the pages of the old site as redirect pages which brought visitors to the new site. As of April 8th, the old AT&T-hosted site finally disappeared. One disadvantage to the site move is that many potential visitors may have a harder time finding the site, now that the redirecting pages are gone. The good news is that most of the major search engines have indexed the new site. The bad news is that many other websites on the internet have linked to the old site, and many of them will now have dea...

It recently came to my attention that the Wounded Bird label has reissued three long-lost Ace Frehley releases from the ‘80’s. This past January, the label released a 2-on-1 CD containing the full-length album Second Sighting and the EP Live + 1 , both of which are 1988 releases from the former Kiss guitarist’s ‘80’s band Frehley’s Comet. Also, Frehley’s 1989 solo album Trouble Walkin’ has been reissued. The main attraction of the 2-on-1 CD is the Live + 1 EP, which featured four worthwhile live tracks from Frehley and his band. Two other members of that quartet were drummer Anton Fig and vocalist/guitarist Tod Howarth. The entire band makes a good impression, including Howarth on his two vocal turns. The other track from that five-song EP was a studio outtake from the 1987 album Frehley’s Comet titled “Words Are Not Enough”; that song is as good as any of the songs on the album from which it was excluded. The full-length album Second Sighting is less exciting. It was recorded wi...