Originally released on 12th March 1993, the album hit the No.1 spot in both the UK and Ireland and sold over 6 million copies worldwide. The four disc box set contains the album on the first CD and bonus material spread over three further discs. Of course all of those previous bonus tracks are included, but so too are unreleased early demos, a live performance from 31 July 1994 at the Féile Festival in Ireland and a series of radio sessions from 1992-1993. The box includes a poster and four postcards.
To simplify my life considerably, I'm going to combine the "reviews" of all six Stage releases into a single entry, even though they were released individually. Also, to save a lot of time and effort, I'm not going to give complete track listings of the twelve discs, or do song-by-song reviews (hey, we're talking over 800 minutes of music here, give me a break). If you need to know the track listings, they're probably available through an on-line music sales site like CDNow, or an information site like the All Music Guide. There's probably a few other Zappa sites that list them as well. Maybe one day when I have the time, I'll come back and expand this section to really cover all twelve discs in detail. Until then, I'll just give some general facts and opinions, focusing on highlights and material unique to the Stage series.
A sequel to the 2015 box Five Years 1969-1973, 2016's Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976) covers just three years but this stretch in the mid-'70s happens to be the peak of David Bowie's superstardom. That much can be gleaned from the number of albums within the set: three studio albums – Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station, each released in a subsequent year – along with the double live album David Live from 1974…
B.B. King has cut a lot of albums since the success of Live at the Regal. And, like the live shows they document, none of them are any less than solid and professional, hallmarks of King's work aesthetic. But every so often B.B. truly catches fire; his playing and singing comes up an extra notch or two, and the result is a live album with some real sparks to it. Live in Cook County Jail is one of those great concerts that the record company was smart enough to be there to capture, documenting B.B. firing on all cylinders in front of an audience that's just damn happy for him to be there…
A sequel to the 2015 box Five Years 1969-1973, 2016's Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976) covers just three years but this stretch in the mid-'70s happens to be the peak of David Bowie's superstardom. That much can be gleaned from the number of albums within the set: three studio albums - Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station, each released in a subsequent year - along with the double live album David Live from 1974. Four albums in three years is plenty but to that core canon Who Can I Be Now? adds five additional alternate albums, each with varying degrees of rarities. There are full latter-day remixes of David Live and Station to Station - the former from 2005, the latter from 2010 - the concert album Live Nassau Coliseum '76, which was added to the super deluxe 2010 reissue of Station to Station, a bonus disc of single edits and stray songs entitled Re:Call, plus an early version of Young Americans called The Gouster.
The Rolling Stones Tour of Europe in 1982 was their first for six years and demand for tickets was huge. The two month tour began at Aberdeen’s Capital Theatre in late May and ended at the 700 acre Roundhay Park in Leeds, on 25 July. This is the show that you’re about to watch and listen to…
Continuing the very successful From The Vault series of classic, previously unreleased Rolling Stones live shows this release is taken from their performance at the Tokyo Dome in 1990, one of ten shows from the 14th to the 27th February at the venue which were the culmination of the Steel Wheels World Tour. These were the first concerts The Rolling Stones ever performed in Japan, their previous attempt to tour there in the early seventies having fallen through…