Holiday Gift Guide Review: “International Pop Overthrow volume 17” written by Ted Frank and originally posted in The Second Disc on December 18, 2014   We’d like to extend a big welcome to the newest member of our Second Disc family, author Ted Frank. Ted, a self-described “power pop-a-holic,” kicks off his contributions to The Second Disc with a review of the latest collection from the fine folks at The International...

My Top 10 Songs of All Time by David Bash   Without any ado, and with no reservations whatsoever…   10. Chalkhills and Children-XTC (1989): The first of two “last song on their album” in my Top 10. Andy Partridge and company had recently tackled that “Beach Boys influenced thing” on their Dukes of Stratosphear guise with “Pale and Precious”, and while I think that one is great as well, I love this...

  Hi Everyone, Here are my lists of favorite albums of 2013. As is my usual custom, I’ve broken this down into several categories, as I’m just not comfortable ranking unlike entities on one list.   Contemporary Categories   Those marked with an * are LP-only releases, those with a **are download-only.   I. Top 100 Albums   As always, I listened to a lot of albums this year, and there were significantly more...

The Greatest Thing: 20 Must-Hear Elvis Costello Tracks by John M. Borack and Olivia Frain   As co-producers of the upcoming tribute collection Beyond Belief: A Tribute to Elvis Costello, we are obviously dyed-in-the-wool Costello fanatics. Many a day has been spent burning up the phone lines discussing and spinning Elvis discs, with each of us interjecting a “Listen to this lyric!” or a “How does he DO that?” as...

Hi Everyone, Here are my lists of favorite albums of 2012. As is my usual custom, I’ve broken this down into several categories, as I’m just not comfortable ranking unlike entities on one list.   Contemporary Categories   Those marked with an * are LP-only releases and those marked with an ** are download-only releases.  I’m hoping I didn’t forget to include some of the download-onlies: my filing system for them isn’t...