Wednesday, September 26, 2007

DEL SHANNON RE-ISSUE

Thumbs down on the new Del Shannon Rock On! re-issue.  Unless you want the extra bonus tracks (which may or may not feature a few Wilburys) there's not much reason to own this.  It's not remastered and I'm told the booklet is nothing to write home about.

Del's official website promotes the bonus tracks (sans the end demo) as having three of the five Wilburys playing.  But that has long been a matter of dispute, namely with one of his former stuido musicians who claims to have played on them.

What I'm waiting for is a 70s era boxed set like the one they put out for his 60s material.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

FOR IPOD FANS

You know, if someone told me 10 years ago that our music collections will be on one device with artwork and all sorts of other things incorporated, the wait would have killed me.  If this sounds like a shameless plug for Apple, sorry.  But yesterday, I found myself at the Apple Store in SoHo and impractically and without much thought, purchased an iPod Touch. For the record, my sixth overall.  I've re-sold my previous models to friends.

After a few hours of sorting through, scanning and saving artwork (yes, it was a leisurely Saturday) and submitting to mp3 exclusivity (would rather full wav's) for this player, I started surfing through my ELO, Move, etc. collection on the iPod Touch and almost literally, the world stopped for about 2 solid hours.  The artwork pops like I've never seen and in cases where a collectible comes in, I inserted other appropriate picture sleeves.  Here are examples:

.

The Surrender artwork came from FTM and because it's practically from the source, the picture is stunning on the display.  Maybe more artwork, FTM?  It's very time consuming work to get all of these images right on iTunes, but it's worth it.  That's been the only downside to their Cover Flow feature, some of the artwork is old, wrong, or non-existent in their database. In those cases, you'll have to create it yourself.

I don't think Apple has figured out how to show multiple pages or lyrics on these yet.  But this is huge next step.  If you're going to jump on board the digital music bandwagon, this is where to do it.  Expensive for now, yes, but worth every penny.

Anyone interested an old(ish60GB photo iPod?  :-)

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

TRAVELING WILBURYS DELUXE EDITION

During my last schlep around New York last week, I wondered into the Virgin Megastore in Times Square.  I found at least 7 copies of the Traveling Wilburys deluxe edition in stock.  If you missed getting one and are close to New York, you can grab one there.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

... WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK AFTER THIS MESSAGE.

In the last 5 minutes, I saw/heard one Honda commercial with Hold On Tight (my fourth time today) and one film trailer for the (rather embarrassing-looking) Heartbreak Kid that features Don't Bring Me Down.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

NEW TOM PETTY

Clips from the new Fats Domino tribute CD are up at Amazon.com.  Included in that is I'm Walkin' from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.  Hard to say whether it's Jeff production work... it had shades of it, but again, not sure.

Anyone know for sure?

Don't forget, Tom Petty's new documentary film is out in a few weeks.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

UPCOMING FROM ELO

On top of a planned ELO comp, there's also apparently a 2CD Face The Music and A New World Record set coming September 17 and just released is ELO's Out Of The Blue (the 20 track remastered edition) in carbon neutral packaing.