Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

The 62nd set of exclusive vinyl items offered to members of Third Man Records’ Vault service was mailed out to the members in December of 2024. For those who are unaware, Third Man Records is the label owned by Jack White, who was the leader of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather, and is now a solo artist. The Vault service promises to deliver exclusive vinyl-only records (usually one full-length album and one 7” single) to its members every three months. The 62nd Vault package featured a new vinyl edition of Raw Power , the raw and powerful 1973 pre-punk record by Iggy (Pop) and the Stooges. This edition utilized the 1973 David Bowie mixes of the album's eight tracks, as opposed to the 1997 mixes by Iggy Pop. But instead of being pressed on an LP, the eight tracks were pressed on four 7-inch colored-vinyl singles, packaged in a splendid silver-foil slipcase. The package also contained two additional 7-inch discs containing five outtakes from the Raw Power s...

In 1977, the jazz-rock collective known as Blood, Sweat and Tears released an album titled Brand New Day , which was their only release on the soon-to-be-defunct ABC Records. At this point in time, the band's nine-member lineup did not include one single member of the original Al Kooper-led octet which recorded the band's 1968 debut album Child Is Father to the Man . However, original percussionist Bobby Colomby is credited with playing on Brand New Day , and Colomby co-produced the album with Roy Halee. (The two men were also co-producers of the 1971 album BS&T; 4 ). But this album did feature David Clayton-Thomas, the robust lead vocalist who sang on the band's second-through-fourth albums, and who helped to propel Blood, Sweat and Tears to chart-topping and Grammy-winning success from 1969 until 1971. Clayton-Thomas was given star billing on the front cover of Brand New Day . He had left the band in early 1972, and the band's popularity quickly faded during his a...

2024 was the fourth year in a row in which Pink Floyd temporarily released numerous 50-year-old concert recordings on streaming services, for the purpose of extending their copyright ownership of the material. The previous two times, the concerts were only available on the streaming services for a matter of weeks. This time, they were apparently gone in a matter of days! In most cases, these recordings were sourced from fan-made bootlegs, and have varying sound quality, some of them very poor. These stealth-released live recordings were really not meant to actually be heard by the fans, and in this latest case, the fans missed the streams if they sneezed, let alone snoozed. I myself was not aware of this latest Floyd "copyright dump" until the recordings had already come and gone from the streaming services. According to information I was able to glean from the web, these recordings appeared on streaming services on or around December 6th, and disappeared around December 13...