Record Store Day

Record Store Day, celebrated worldwide on Saturday 22 April 2017, marks its tenth anniversary this year. The "revenge" of record shops over digital music has always been the perfect occasion to release all sorts of titles: reissues, special editions, limited runs, tapes that never made it out of the warehouse, booklet unreleased material, formats never seen before, and so on. There's something for every taste, quite literally, and we also invite you to check out the list of Italian titles available on the official Italian website for the event. Among vinyl records, picture discs, CDs and cassette tapes, this year too we've chosen – in collaboration with the staff of Stampaprint – 10 titles to tell you about their content, their history and theirartwork.

 

Big Star – "Complete Third: Vol 3: Final Masters" A recovery effort that can only be called titanic, carried out in three moves by Omnivore Recordings. Let's recap for a moment: last November the Californian label released "Complete Third: Vol 1: Demoes to Sessions to Rough", then in February "Complete Third: Vol 2: Roughs To Mixes", and for Record Store Day, "Complete Third: Vol 3: Final Masters", the release that completes a trilogy for true… completists. The double LP (on vinyl, of course) contains every version ever mastered of the tracks from "Third", the final studio album by the Memphis power-pop outfit, released not without upheavals, assorted problems and changes in the tracklist before the long diaspora that would last until the early Nineties. Across three sides, then, we find all the recordings of the songs, while the fourth holds the cryptic ghost-track available until now only on the CD version. In case you've bought the first two volumes of the retrospective (or plan to), it's possible to request the packaging limited edition of Volume 3 with specially made sleeves designed to hold the entire collection. As if that weren't enough, twenty pages of booklet gather all the photographic material and the comments of those involved, alongside the album's recordings.

 

Dave Matthews Band – "Live At Red Rocks" The Dave Matthews Band discography boasts a truly high number of titles, but "Live At Red Rocks", recorded in 1995 and released on October 28, 1997, is one of the best known and most beloved, if only because it was the American band's first official live release after a series of bootlegs that had been proliferating hand to hand in the early years of the band's career, a band that, for its part, had a reputation as a great acts live acts. The fact remains that it sold two million copies. The cover shot was taken by Sam Erickson, a Charlottesville photographer who owes his start in rock photography precisely to the Dave Matthews Band (among other artists, he has also worked with Jon Bon Jovi). Erickson followed the group on its world tours, documenting their live exploits and the places they passed through along the way. The reissue produced for Record Store Day by Sony comes as a quadruple LP on 150-gram silver vinyl, remastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering and packaged in a case with four individual sleeves. 2,500 copies in total.

 

David Bowie – "Cracked Actor (Live Los Angeles 74)" Record Store Day never fails to properly pay tribute to the Thin White Duke, and this year is no exception, with two releases. One is "Bowpromo", a promo that David Bowie had shared in 1971 with label mate Dana Gillespie: Side A for him, Side B for her, 500 copies in total, of which very few people have ever been able to confirm the existence. For Record Store Day, the 7 songs contained in that promo ("Oh! You Pretty Things", "Eight Line Poem", "Kooks", "It Ain't Easy", "Queen Bitch", "Quicksand" and "Bombers") are being released in their original mixes, along with just as many prints depicting the late British artist. An early imprint of the "Hunky Dory" still to come. Even more interesting is the second release on the schedule, not least because it's entirely unreleased. It's "Cracked Actor", the document of the live show Bowie gave on September 5, 1974, one of seven consecutive dates held at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles during the transition between the Diamond Dogs Tour and the American Philly Dogs Tour. Behind the mixing desk is the legendary right-hand man Tony Visconti, who mixed the tracks at Human Studios in New York between October and November 2016. Limited pressing of 17,000 copies, a triple Lp with five sides of music and, on the sixth, the logo from Bowie's "Diamond Dogs" era. The cover photos and those of the entire artwork depict Bowie on the evening of the concert, in shots by Terry O'Neill and Jamie Andrews.

 

Iggy Pop – “Post Pop Depression: Live At The Royal Albert Hall” This photograph of Iggy Pop, back in fine form just as he's turning seventy these very days (happy birthday!), actually already came out last autumn in a double cd and Dvd edition, containing the live show held in London on 13 March 2016 (in the backing band of the concert there's also Josh Homme, who incidentally also produced theself-titled album). But, as always, the edition released to coincide with Record Store Day has something special to offer. Twelve hundred copies in total, all numbered and printed for the occasion by Loma Vista Recordings, with a cover depicting the unmistakable profile of the Iguana under the Royal Albert Hall's spotlights, not in the classic form of a cd or Dvd, but as a book with sixteen flip-through pages containing various unreleased photos of the indestructible Iggy. A truly precious and thoroughly enjoyable product from every point of view, though getting hold of one of the copies of this "relic" designed for the most die-hard fans certainly won't be easy. Trying, however, is more than fair game.

 

Ramones – "76-79 Singles Box" Ten seven-inch records, each with its own sleeve, housed in a box shaped like a traditional cigarette pack. Released by Rhino/Warner, this is one of the most desirable titles of this Record Store Day, a small work of art that any rocker would love to show off in their collection or simply admire for the pleasure of owning a series that, while perhaps not unique, is undoubtedly rare and precious. Shame the pressing is limited to just 6,500 copies, but that's the standard for Record Store Day releases. And who knows, maybe more will be pressed in the future. Numbered one by one, the copies contain a selection of the Ramones' most famous singles, from "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" to "Rock'n'Roll High School", from "Blitzkrieg Bop" to "Rockaway Beach", and so on. All songs already heard and overheard a thousand times, sure, but here released in a format and on a medium that's truly tempting. Oh, just for the record, the starting price is almost eighty dollars. Ready to break the bank?

 

Sex Pistols – “Anarchy In The UK – The UK & US Singles” Five thousand copies at fifty dollars each. It's the "usual" Rhino and Warner putting out this gem aimed at fans of punk's first wave – and at the collectors and assorted completists out there. Here's the deal: four 7-inches presented in the same packaging as the 1977 UK release, plus another 7-inch that came out the same year for the American market, also presented here as a "replica of the original." All of it packaged inside a box created especially for the occasion (after all, it's the fortieth anniversary of "Never Mind The Bollocks”," isn't it?). The same point made above about the Ramones applies here too: there's obviously nothing new on the musical front – the singles in question are "Anarchy In The UK," "God Save The Queen," "Pretty Vacant" (in both its UK and US versions) and "Holidays In The Sun" – but the packaging put together for this limited edition is truly spectacular.

 

Sting – “Live At The Bataclan” This is a rather special release, for obvious reasons. Six songs recorded on the evening of November 12, 2016 at Le Bataclan, the Parisian live music venue that sadly made headlines because of the attack carried out on the night of the concert by Eagles Of Death Metal while other attacks were taking place at bistros in the Marais district and at the Stade de France. Exactly one year after those events, it was Sting himself who reopened the doors of the venue on the Rive Droite with a concert in memory of the many victims of the attack. The cover of the LP, a 12-inch vinyl pressed in 3,500 copies by Interscope, shows the entrance of the Parisian venue with one of its windows shattered by gunfire. A shot that clearly speaks louder than a thousand words. Getting back to the music, the record features six tracks by the formerPolice: nell’ordine “Fragile”, “Message In A Bottle”, “I Can’t Stop Thinking About You”, “One Fine Day”, “Englishman In New York (reggae remix)” ed “Every Breath You Take”.

 

Patti Smith – "Hey Joe" A reissue limited to just 4,500 numbered copies of one of the very first recordings, as well as the very first single, by Patti Smith, already reissued once before – though in a different form – three years ago for Record Store Day and now offered again... by popular demand. In June 1974, a young Patti found herself in the studio with Lenny Kaye (wearing the dual hat of producer and guitarist) and Tom Verlaine, future guitarist of the TelevisionOnly two songs feature on this extremely limited 7-inch vinyl release, but there's plenty to talk about. The cover of "Hey Joe", featuring both Kaye and Verlaine, showcases all the talent and charisma Patti Smith already possessed at this early stage of her career, and comes accompanied by a delightful monologue from the "high priestess of rock". The other track included – this time an original – is "Piss Factory", a classic from the American artist's early days. As for theartwork, it's the original one: Patti Smith, headphones on, is pictured in a shot where she appears serious – almost menacing – in front of Sandy Daley's lens.

 

Superchunk – “Cup Of Sand” It seems there's never a Record Store Day edition where Superchunk don't come up. "Blame" – or rather, credit – goes to the American band who, throughout their history, have never made artwork anything less than great records. "Cup Of Sand", originally released in 2003, is a collection of singles and rarities now getting a vinyl release too (a triple LP), but limited to just a thousand copies. Alongside the beautiful cover art by Laura Ballance – a member of the band – depicting a black cat surrounded by animals and fantastical shapes, the package also includes other works by the painter inside, but that's not all: band conversations about the tracks included and three previously unreleased songs added to the tracklist are further distinctive features of this edition. Released once again, as one would expect, on the band's own label Merge. Twenty-eight songs make up this special tracklist, across six sides in total. In short, there's plenty on the plate.

 

U2 – "Red Hill Mining Town" As we know, it's celebration time in the U2 camp: the fortieth anniversary of the Irish band's formation was marked a few months ago, and the more imminent thirtieth anniversary of the release of "The Joshua Tree" was marked in recent weeks. Right on the heels of these latest celebrations comes a new Record Store Day version of the track "Red Hill Mining Town", a different mix from the original one included on the 1987 album and produced at the time by longtime collaborator Steve Lillywhite, who had already produced "Boy". "Red Hill Mining Town" was meant to be the album's second single, but at the last minute "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" was chosen instead. The unreleased edition on picture discs 12-inch is released by Island Records in just seven thousand copies. The cover image, depicting the full U2 lineup, is... a work of art in itself: it was taken by Anton Corbijn during the photo sessions for "The Joshua Tree", and is presented here in its color version.