Madfish announces a massive Al Stewart box set

If you think Cherry Red had been spoiling Al Stewart fans with their reissue campaign, think again. The UK label’s 3CD/DVD box sets of both ‘Year of The Cat’ and ‘Time Passages’ were very smart, and a massively expanded ’24 Carrots’ appeared to be fairly comprehensive, but they’ve got nothing on the planned box set that’s due for release in June 2022.

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Elton John’s classic 1971 album ‘Madman Across The Water’ to get deluxe box set treatment

Elton John’s fourth album ‘Madman Across The Water’ is something of a fan favourite. The 1971 release didn’t score Elton any UK hits at the time, and beyond ‘Tiny Dancer’, most of its songs are largely unknown outside of his fan base, and yet the album has endured the decades. If anything, it’s found itself sounding better with each passing year.

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Black Sabbath set to release 50th Anniversary Edition of ‘Technical Ecstasy’ in October

Of all of Black Sabbath’s Ozzy era albums, ‘Technical Ecstasy’ is arguably the LP that splits fan opinion the most. It doesn’t contain any hits. It doesn’t even feature anything that could be considered classic. It often gets overlooked, sandwiched between 1976’s ‘Sabotage’ – a release with some very vocal champions – and 1979’s ‘Never Say Die’, an inventive work that really saw the band beginning to stretch out.

‘Technical Ecstasy’ has always deserved a place in the world purely for the brilliant ‘Back Street Kids’ and the live favourite ‘Dirty Women’ (or as Ozzy was heard to say on the ‘Reunion’ live disc, “Doooorty Wimmin”!).  It’s an album that’s overdue a reappraisal.

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