Rarebird's Rock and Roll Nest

Last week I received the second 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, the records were sent on December 18th. I received mine on the 22nd. This second set of items consists of a 2-LP live album from the Raconteurs on 180g vinyl, and a White Stripes single featuring alternate versions of two early songs. The package also included a screen-print poster of the Dead Weather’s Horehound album cover image, designed by Rob Jones, which fits neatly inside the LP’s 12-inch sleeve. The White Stripes single contains alternate takes of the two songs which were released on the duo’s first single in 1998 (Italy Record...

Rarebird’s Rock and Roll Rarity Reviews would like to wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, or whatever you personally call this time of year. I’m sure that most of you have been hearing plenty of holiday music lately. I’d like to share with you a Christmas song that most of you probably haven’t heard lately, if ever: “Christmas On The Block” by Alan Mann, from 1983. This song was released only as a 7” single by a small indie label, and it is now very hard to find. However, the miracle of YouTube enables you and me to hear the song and watch its video right here and now. Alan Mann was a musician based in the Philadelphia, PA area who was little-known outside of that region. But he did gain wider fame during the Christmas seasons in the mid-1980’s, when the then-young MTV network would air the video for “Christmas On The Block”. It’s a moving, one-of-a-kind song inspired by the people who then lived in a group house for the blind in the Philadelphia suburb of Upper D...

The first single Bryan Adams recorded as a solo artist (following his departure from the Canadian band Sweeney Todd) was called “Let Me Take You Dancing”. The surprising thing is that it was a disco single! The original version of the song, released in Canada in 1978, sounded much like a recording by Nick “Hot Child In The City” Gilder. (Adams had replaced Gilder in Sweeney Todd). The 18-year-old Adams sang in a higher pitch than he did in his later recordings. For the single’s 1979 American release, the song was given a disco remix by John Luongo. Luongo sped up Adams’ vocals to the point where he sounded like a chipmunk! (Luongo was probably aiming to make Adams sound like Off The Wall -era Michael Jackson). For that reason, Adams has always distanced himself from the song, even though it was a minor disco hit, and soon led to Adams being fully signed to A&M Records. Adams has refused to allow the song to be included on any of his subsequent releases. The single was released in b...

Rarebird's Spotlight Album Review #19 is complete. The subject: the self-titled 1970 album by Attila, a heavy metal duo featuring singer/organist Billy Joel. (You read that right). The review is here: http://rarebird9.net/attila.html

For those who are extreme lovers of vinyl and extreme lovers of the Cure, the Vinyl Lovers label is serving up a pricey limited edition package called Fade Away: The Early Years Vinyl Box Set on December 15th. The 7-LP set is limited to 1,000 copies, and contains 180g vinyl discs of the first four Cure albums: Three Imaginary Boys (1979), Seventeen Seconds (1980), Faith (1981), and Pornography (1982). The other three discs in the set contain a total of 29 bonus tracks (including the epic instrumental Carnage Visors ), all of which are available on the 2-CD Deluxe Editions of the three latter albums which were released in 2005. A complete track listing for the Fade Away box set can be found here . For those who intend to shell out nearly $200 USD for the set, it can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com .

There seems to be a general consensus that the most valuable record in existence is the original acetate copy of the first Velvet Underground album, The Velvet Underground and Nico , from 1966. This acetate was originally presented to Columbia Records, who rejected it. (The album was released by the Verve label in 1967). Earlier this decade, the acetate was purchased at a yard sale in New York for 75 cents, and was sold on eBay for a whopping $25,000! The full story is here . The fragile acetate is now reportedly stored in a safe place. But, thanks to this blog entry by New York indie radio station WFMU (91.1 FM), the rest of us can listen to it online. The acetate contained rougher mixes of 9 of the album’s 11 tracks. (“Sunday Morning” and “There She Goes Again” are absent). One thing that is odd is the sequence of the tracks, which is virtually in reverse order from that of the finished album. Placing the bizarre “European Son” at the beginning was an ill-advised idea, and it probab...

Several years before she scored a controversial worldwide smash hit about kissing a girl and liking it, brash pop singer Katy Perry recorded something that is arguably the polar opposite: a Christian music album, under her real name Katy Hudson. (She has since changed her name to avoid confusion with the actress Kate Hudson). The self-titled 2001 CD Katy Hudson was released on the now-defunct Red Hill label. The singer was 16 years old at the time of its recording. Perry’s hit 2008 album One Of The Boys is a generally repellent collection of noisy, in-your-face pop songs, long on attitude and short on song craft. Perry is essentially the Alanis Morissette of the late ‘00’s, having been mentored by Glen Ballard on creating angst-ridden songs which are unlike the ones she recorded as a teenager. At first, the Katy Hudson album doesn’t sound completely different from her newer work; the first two tracks have a similarly edgy pop sound with recognizable vocals. Also, the message of “Spi...

A new AC/DC box set titled Backtracks is being released this week. It contains 2 CDs and one DVD. The first CD contains 12 rare studio tracks, while the second CD contains 15 live cuts recorded between 1977 and 2000. Although my hobby of searching out rare rock recordings did not fully develop until I was 20 or so, my first Rarebird moment came when I was a teenage metal-head in 1983. Although I owned every American-issued AC/DC album released up to that point (up until Flick of the Switch , to be exact), I still made a habit of flipping through the AC/DC bins every time I walked into record stores. One night, I came across an import copy of the band’s 1976 album High Voltage with different cover art . I had heard that the Australian versions of most of the Bon Scott-era albums contained at least one different track apiece. I was quite surprised when I examined the Australian High Voltage track listing, and found that it contained six songs which were unavailable in the States! (Mos...