Welcome to the final Purchases Wrap-Up of 2023 and we will go out with a bang. This month saw a trip to New York City to see the final Kiss show so of course we hit some record stores while there. It also saw Christmas and my Birthday so a lot of good stuff came my way. The month started off with the Kiss show and if you want to see all the Kiss stuff go read the review HERE!!!. Here, we will show the purchases I made while in New York. We hit four record stores and bought from three of them. First up is a couple from the first store and found the debut Kix album and Maneskin’s new one on vinyl. Good stuff…
And at the next one, we found a couple Whitesnake bootlegs of a couple radio broadcasts. And these are early 80’s which is the best stuff…
And I picked up a couple CDs as well including Eric Singers ESP album signed by Eric…
We have a lot of treats for you today. No tricks. I promise. It is all good stuff. October was another good month for the 2 Loud 2 Old Music Collection. We have box sets, CDs, Vinyl, Cassettes, books and I would say that is a good month. The month started off with a couple items that were supposed to arrive in September, but sadly did not come until after I had written the September Purchases post. It also ended with a new a new band from this album as well. A perfect booked. So, we have the two Night Ranger Rock Candy reissues and their new album that is a live album done with a Youth Orchestra. Great stuff…
Next up is a bunch of items I picked up when I went to visit a local store I hadn’t hit in a while. It is Repo Records. I dug through the CDs, the Cassettes and the Vinyl and found a lot of good things. First, I found another Kiss bootleg I didn’t have in my collection. That was an easy decisions…
And then I found some great 45’s from the 80’s with picture sleeves. I like picture sleeves. I picked up a Billy Idol, a Loverboy, a Billy Squire and a John Cougar Mellencamp single. All choice cuts…
Happy Friday the 13th!! Nothing unlucky for you this week, but we do have a scary amount of new releases with over 50 ready for your listening and purchasing pleasure. There is only one I am in to this week and it is the latest Whitesnake which is a Gold edition of The Purple Album which has demos from when David Coverdale auditioned for Deep Purple. How cool is that!! Other than that you have Crosses which will be the big one of the week probably and some old favorites with Ringo and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Hopefully there is something for you to hear this week. Thanks for stopping by and let us know what you want to hear this week or what we may have missed. Have a great weekend one and all!!
Whitesnake – The Purple Album: Special Gold Edition – (Saltburn / Rhino Records)
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Fyfty – (Geffen Records / UMG)
Ringo Starr – Rewind Forward E.P. – (Roccabella)
Marvelous 3 – IV – (Marvelous 3)
Crosses – Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete – (Warner Records)
Metric – Formentera II – (Metric Music International / Thirty Tigers)
David Coverdale has really outdone himself with these Super Deluxe Editions Box Sets. First was the ‘1987’ album, then an UnZipped Box Set, then ‘Slide It In’ and the 1989 album ‘Slip of the Tongue’. Heck, He even did the 25th Anniversary Edition of ‘Restless Heart’ which for some reason I have yet to review. I need to get on that. Now, to the surprise of everyone, he has done a 15th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition for ‘Good to Be Bad’ now called ‘Still…Good to Be Bad’. It doesn’t seem the album has been out long enough to deserve such a treatment and that might explain why it isn’t chock full of goodness the other ones gave us. More on that soon enough. The album was the band’s 10th studio album and the first one in over a decade which is way too long to go without a Whitesnake album. But they came back with a bang.
This special edition consists of 4 CDs, 1 DVD, 1 Book, 1 Tour Program replica and 1 Album Cover Poster. And it has over 58 tracks amongst all the CDs. Well…not really. It has 15 tracks done four different ways (minus 2 tracks done 3 ways). So, this is why I say this is for the diehard fans as it is very repetitive…this is for the diehard fans as it is very repetitive! Yes, I said this twice to prove a point and yes, I did this joke on pretty much every box set review for Whitesnake because its true. Here is everything you get.
If you had a 2 Loud 2 Old Music Mug, I’d tell you to sit back, fill it up with whatever you like and prepare yourself for what is to come. This was an interesting month and some incredible finds…for cheap!! And I mean cheap!! But before we get to the cheap stuff, let’s discuss what first showed up on our doorstep for May…well, it was actually April but it was the day I posted the April Purchases wrap-up so it missed that post. That is the boxset for the Whitesnake album ‘Good To Be Bad”…titled “Still…Good To Be Bad”. Another impressive boxset…or is it?…review to come.
And there was an album that came out months ago on CD and digital, but the album just showed up in May. It is for the lead singer of one of my favorite bands Needtobreathe. It is Bear Rinehart’s second solo album under the name Wilder Woods. It is different then NTB which it should be since he is the voice of NTB. If it sounded like NTB, it would be a NTB album…
I was watching Tim’s Vinyl Confessions a few week’s back and they were going through their Whitesnake vinyl and one of the guys had a Japanese Edition of Whitesnake’s ‘Live at Hammersmith’ and I don’t think I had seen it before. So, after the show ended, I went to Discogs and bought it from someone in Japan. I received a week later…yes, only a week from Japan. Heck, I can’t get things from the next town over that fast. And it lived up to expectations and then some. I mean just look at the cover with the deep rich green snake and the back cover is just as cool. This might be my favorite Whitesnake cover ever! It is so awesome.
‘Live at Hammersmith’ was recorded on November 23, 1978 at The Hammersmith Odeon in London. The album was only released in Japan back in November 1980 as a single disc vinyl. I say single disc vinyl, because this album is actually the 2nd LP on the 2LP edition of ‘Live…in the Heart of the City’. I don’t have the two LP version of that album. I have the single version which is the 1st LP which was recored in 1980 on June 23/24 at The Hammersmith Odeon in London as well. You can read that review at the links at the bottom of the page.
I have done two posts already on the Best & Worst songs from every Judas Priest album and also from Cheap Trick. I really enjoyed doing that so I thought I would continue that process and this time we would go through every Whitesnake album and see what is the best song and the worst one off each album as well. Whitesnake has 13 studio albums to go through so sit back and take it all in. Now, let’s preface this with the fact that these are my choices and not necessarily yours as we can have different opinions. If you watched the show you will see that sometimes my worst song was their favorite so you never know what people like and we all like different things or this would be a very dull world. I hope you enjoy!!
‘TROUBLE’ (1978)
BEST SONG –“Belgian Tom’s Hat Trick”: The coolest song on the album and probably the best is “Belgian Tom’s Hat Trick” which is a full assault of an instrumental with 3 different solos. One for Moody, One for Lord and One for Marsden. I don’t see it as out of place as Purple threw in an instrumental on ‘Burn’ and this one is way better. I really love when Jon Lord lays it down and he does just that. The guitar’s have a riff that plays through-out that is the main feel for the song and everything is played beautifully off of that riff. No David Coverdale on this one, so sorry, but this is too killer not to include.
WORST SONG – “Day Tripper”: The worst is this horrible cover of the Beatles’ “Day Tripper”. It is…let’s say…not good. It is uninspiring and bluh. The adding in of the Framptonesque Talk Box doesn’t help and I really can’t stand it. I hope that point is coming across. Skip/Delete whatever you do, just avoid it.
How is we are already to the end of April…crazy. Well, things are starting to heat up here and definitely in the new releases. We get another Whitesnake Box Set and I am thrilled as Coverdale knows how to do these right. This one is on order and hopefully will arrive today. I’m also looking forward to Disciple and Colton Dixon who both are Christian artists just at each end of the spectrum…one metal, one pop. And that is it for me. What do you want to hear this week? Let me know what it is and what we may have missed even though we have around 45 release for you, we might’ve missed something. It happens. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Whitesnake – Still…Good to Be Bad (Super Deluxe Edition) – (Rhino Entertainment / Saltburn / Warner Music)
I was out at a record show here in Charlotte and I love to go digging at them when they come around. You never know what you will find and this last trip was no different. If you’ve been on the site, you know I’m a huge David Coverdale fan and that of course means a Whitesnake fan as well. I love to find obscure Whitesnake stuff and I believe this fits the bill. I never knew this existed so of course I had to have it. It is a best of compilation out of Greece. It is on EMI, but this wasn’t compiled by the band, nope. I am sure this was done to capitalize on the success of their self-titled album or as some call it, “1987”. This was released only in Greece in 1987 and other than the band name and song titles, the notes on the back are written in Greek.
The cover art work is really bad, which is why I think it is really cool. Just Coverdale on the cover with a snake wrapping around it. That same snake is on the back as well. Not very original to say the least. The copy I have has a label that is different than what is on Discogs so I think I have a different variant. My label is the “Liberty” label, the one on discogs has the Whitesnake logo on top, no Liberty. I think that is pretty cool too. All around, I was quite pleased to pick this up and add it to the Whitesnake collection.
The songs only have one song from the new album, “Still of the Night”, and the rest are from the back catalog and it goes deep and wide. Honestly, it is an interesting track listing with the exception of “Day Tripper” which I hate Whitesnake’s version, but we will get to that. Production wise, it is okay. Nothing stellar. “Still of the Night” isn’t as impressive as on the CD which hurts it I believe. Otherwise, it is all fine. Glad to have a copy.
We are already at the end of March and can’t believe three months in to the year already as well. Time does fly. But it doesn’t fly fast enough that we can’t do a monthly summary of purchases here at 2 Loud 2 Old Music. And this month was another good one even though the vinyl purchases were down and overall purchases were down as well. I didn’t actually get out to a real record store this month so I will try and make up for that in April.
The month started off with Frontiers Records updating their $5 CD sale and adding a bunch more albums to the list. I, of course, took advantage of that sale. I was able to pick up albums from Inglorious, Night Ranger and Jorn as well as a live Blu-Ray from Dokken. All great stuff.
And then my wife and daughter wanted to go to 2nd & Charles as they had a book sale where you buy 5 books, you get 5 free…Sadly, there was not a CD sale at the time, but it didn’t stop me from picking up some great music while I was there. I did get 5 CDs, but since the next 5 weren’t free, I stuck with only my 5. I picked up some Metallica, Tesla, Halestorm, Aldo Nova (which I had already on vinyl) and the last great Queensryche album in my book, ‘Promised Land’.