REAL GONE MUSIC'S FEBRUARY: SHORT MONTH, BIG RELEASE
SCHEDULE
February 26 Releases Include Titles from Fanny, Freddie
King, Rod McKuen, Cat Mother & the All Night Newsboys, the Hello People and
Grateful Dead
Los Angeles, California-Real Gone Music's February
releases, due out on the 26th of the month, continue to cut a wide swath through
the various genres of popular music, with entries ranging from to folk cabaret
to electric blues to chick rock to even mime rock! At the front of the line is
the first-ever standalone CD release of the debut album from Fanny, the
first-ever all-female group signed to a major label, and a thundering,
54-track double-CD set from blues guitar legend Freddie King featuring all of
his King and Federal label singles, both A and B-sides. And Real Gone is, by
exclusive arrangement with the artist himself, releasing what are arguably the
two signature albums of poet-singer-songwriter-actor Rod McKuen's career with
copious bonus tracks.
The focus
shifts firmly to rock for the label's other February releases, featuring the
debut album by Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys, which was co-produced by
none other than Jimi Hendrix. The unique "mime-rock" of The Hello People, who
later collaborated with Todd Rundgren, sees its first-ever reissue of any kind
with the release of their album Fusion. And Real Gone continues its dance
through the Grateful Dead's Dick's Picks catalog of rare live recordings with
another first-time-ever retail release of Dick's Picks Vol. 25.
It's hard
to overstate the importance of Fanny's
self-titled 1970 debut album. For the first time, a group of women (sisters June
and Jean Millington, Alice De Buhr and Nickey Barclay) wrote and sang their own
songs, played their own instruments and, perhaps most importantly, rocked just
as hard as any male band out there. And, as the first all female band signed to
a major label (Reprise) and with superstar producer Richard Perry at the board,
these four women seemed poised for stardom. But, without a reference point with
which to review them, the rock press was less than kind, often dismissing them
as a novelty act. Fanny would have to become that reference point, and so
they did for the generations of female rockers to come after them, from Joan
Jett to Girlschool to Courtney Love and beyond. They were truly the Godmothers
of Chick Rock. Now, Real Gone Music is proud to reissue, for the first time on a
stand-alone CD, the self-titled debut release from Fanny, complete with the
original gatefold album art and sporting new liner notes from none other than
June Millington with contributions from Alice De Buhr and Jean Millington, whose
tales will take you inside the studio and out to the front lines of rock's
feminist makeover. Grrl power starts here!
Rolling
Stone ranked him the #15 greatest guitarist of all time. His sharp
treble tone, hooky melodic licks and innovative fingerpicking style-using metal
banjo picks on electric guitar-were a profound influence on such British guitar
gods as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Peter Green and Mick Taylor. And his live
performances were so incendiary, so unstoppable-and his build so imposing-that
he was nicknamed "The Texas Cannonball." Yet to date, no collection has focused
on the original single sides Freddie King cut
for the King and Federal labels in the '60s, the blistering tracks that made his
reputation and continue to be the centerpiece of his recorded legacy.
The Complete King Federal
Singles rounds up all 54 of those original single sides and
carefully packed them on to two CDs for about 155 minutes of pure blues guitar
heat, featuring such hits as "Hideaway," "Lonesome Whistle Blues," "San-Ho-Zay!"
and "I'm Tore Down." Notes by Freddie King expert Bill Dahl, photos and pristine
mastering complete as concentrated a dose of blues guitar greatness as you will
ever find.
Poet,
writer, performer, songwriter, singer, producer, actor-Rod McKuen was the
true Renaissance man of the '60s generation. However, despite having notched a
number of charting albums, almost all of McKuen's recorded work remains out of
print. Now, by special arrangement with the artist himself, Real Gone Music is
releasing two signature albums from Rod McKuen's career, complete with a bounty
of bonus tracks from his private archive, personally annotated and remastered
under his supervision. Recorded on his 36th birthday on April 29, 1969, the
double live album Sold Out At Carnegie
Hall was the highest-charting (double platinum) release of Rod
McKuen's career, and exposed a whole new audience to the man's multifaceted
talent. This Real Gone reissue of this landmark live recording adds an
unreleased track, marking the most complete version of this legendary concert
that has ever been released, and also offers 13 tracks from his triumphant,
platinum-selling Back to Carnegie Hall album, recorded on his 40th birthday in
1973. And McKuen's 1967 release Listen to the
Warm, which was based on his poetry book of the
same name-then the bestselling poetry book of all time-was his first charting
album. Our Real Gone reissue presents over a dozen bonus tracks-all never before
available in the U.S.-that in effect create an unreleased Listen To The Warm
Volume Two.
Though the
1969 debut release from Cat Mother and the All Night
Newsboys was co-produced by none other than Jimi Hendrix (they were
long-time friends, the band opened for the Experience on tour, and had the
misfortune of sharing the same manager, Mike Jeffrey), Cat Mother was far more
than a footnote to a superstar's career. Not only did The Street Giveth...and the
Street Taketh Away score a Top 40 hit with "Good Old Rock 'N
Roll," but it's also a marvelously eclectic affair beloved by record collectors
of every stripe-just do a quick Google search-with elements of folk, country and
late '60s riff rock alongside the hit's tongue-in-cheek revivalism. This album's
been briefly reissued on CD twice before and commands huge sums online; it's not
JUST for Hendrix completists (though they will want it, too).
There was a
lot more to The Hello People
than just whiteface. Their roots actually trace back to the father of French
mime, Etienne Decroux. During the '60s, Decroux taught painting to a group of
musicians, who learned to paint so quickly that Decroux reasoned
that musicians could also learn mime and apply it in some new way to create a
new form. Thus inspired, the manager of the musicians Decroux had taught, Lou
Futterman, then put together The Hello People, who went on to appear on The
Tonight Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, tour with Todd Rundgren
during the '70s, and release four albums for Philips and ABC-Dunhill during the
late '60s and early '70s. Fusion, their
second (1968) album for Philips, is easily their best; it features "Anthem,"
whose stark, antiwar lyrics ("So I'm going to prison for what I believe/I'm
going to prison so I can be free") penned by band songwriter W.S. "Sonny" Tongue
(who had been incarcerated for resisting the draft) led to its being banned in a
number of radio markets. Our Real Gone reissue includes the original gatefold
art and adds new liner notes; it's the first album from this one-of-a-kind group
ever released on CD.
The latest
august addition to Real Gone's reissues of Grateful Dead live
shows, Dick's Picks 25-May 10, 1978
New Haven, CT May 11, 1978 Springfield, MA hails from an
extended East Coast run in the Spring of 1978, offering a pair of Dead shows
that, with the loving touch of Bear and Betty Cantor-Jackson at the controls,
rank as one of the most beautifully recorded entries in the Dick's Picks series.
Both concerts-which appear here minus just two and three songs,
respectively-find the group in exceptionally lyrical form on ballads like
"Loser," "Stella Blue," "Looks Like Rain" and "They Love Each Other." Also not
to be missed is a superlative, slowed-down version of "Friend of the Devil" and
the rare performance of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" as an encore (the
band only played it about a dozen times live). Full of diamonds for
Deadheads.
February 26 Releases from Real Gone
Music
Rescheduled
from January:
