At the beginning of 2020, Porcupine Tree fans were given reason to celebrate when their popular ‘In Absentia’ album was given the box set treatment and a four disc super deluxe version of one of their best-known works hit the shelves.
The year hasn’t brought much to celebrate, but here’s ome more good news… On November 20th, Transmission Records will issue a massive thirteen disc set of Porcupine Tree’s early – and best material.
Following the tour for 2007’s ‘Reformation! Post TLC’ album, The Fall underwent yet another radical line up change. The hastily assembled American band were no more and by the time Mark E. Smith and keyboard player/vocalist/wife Eleni Poulou returned to the studio, they were joined by British musicians Dave Spurr (bass), Kieron Melling (drums) and Peter Greenway on guitar. It seemed, at first, that this was just yet another in a long line of rotating band members, but unbeknown to everyone at the time, this Fall line up was special. It would be the final line up – one that would go on to be the band’s most stable, lasting the next ten years.
Following on from Cherry Red’s Dinosaur Jr. reissue campaign, this December sees the band’s frontman’s acoustic works being given the box set treatment.
A three disc package, ‘Fed Up and Feeling Strange (Live and In Person 1992-1998)’ reissues the ‘Live At CBGB’s’ and ‘Martin + Me’ discs along with a Swedish date from 1988. The box set is great news for Mascis fans as it boasts fifteen unreleased performances.
When The Rolling Stones released ‘Steel Wheels’ at the end of the 80s, they’d spent the better part of a decade coasting off the back of some average albums and a lot of goodwill. Although when heard many years later the album now sounds like the Stones on autopilot, in 1989 it sounded sharp and vibrant; streets ahead of both 1983’s ‘Undercover’ and 1986’s absolutely turgid ‘Dirty Work’. The singles ‘Rock & A Hard Place’ and ‘Mixed Emotions’ harked back to solid rockers like ‘Start Me Up’ and ‘Little T&A’ from almost a decade earlier, while tracks like ‘Hold On To Your Hat’ proved the veteran rockers were still more than capable of cutting loose.
A great album deserves a great tour, and in that department, the Stones really didn’t short change their fans either. The ‘Steel Wheels Tour’ of ’89 – renamed the ‘Urban Jungle Tour’ in 1990 – took the band around the globe and saw them visiting the US shores for the first time since 1981. Fans have already been able to revisit the Steel Wheels tour via a widely circulated show filmed at the Tokyo Dome in 1990, but the earlier show from Atlantic City in December ‘89 outdoes that in almost every respect.
The Beatles can arguably claim to being the most covered band in the history of recorded music. Pretty much everything they released between 1962-1970 has been covered at some time, and by bands and artists from right across the musical spectrum. Dig deep enough into the internet, you’ll even find other people reinterpreting ‘Revolution 9’, surely the most marginal of Beatles recordings. Even while the band was still active – long before being considered of any real historical importance – their work was being reinterpreted by high profile artists in a disparate range of styles. Most notably, The Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, Booker T. & The MG’s, Otis Redding and Elvis Presley put their own stamp on various Fab Four classics, but for every hit interpretation, several dozen others could be found languishing on cult albums and under-bought singles.