Record Store Day, round 2

Back in April as part of Record Store Day, Merge Records released a split 7" single that was available for free to patrons of various indie record stores across the country. Now, for those of us not fortunate enough to have a record store close by who participated, Merge has posted MP3s from that split single on their website. The split single included the track "Madame Butterfiles" by Destroyer on one side and "Prodigy" by Wye Oak on the other side.

Also, currently Merge is offering free downloads of the vinyl bonus tracks from M. Ward's Transfiguration of Vincent.

Pennies on the dollar

Paul Westerberg has quickly released a new digital only album called 49:00 that was made availble for download from Amazon.com this week. The album is on MP3 file that contains a mix of about 18 songs mashed together (that is about 43 minutes long). And the cost to download the MP3 is only 49 cents! Some from the Man Without Ties message board have already tried to come up with the number of songs and possible song titles.

Blink and You'll Miss It

From the blink and you'll miss it category, to borrow a lyric from Weller's last album, comes a very limited release of his new 22 Dreams album which was released last month in Britain and this month in the USA. The deluxe UK edition, which is already difficult to track down and is now running about $70 (it originally listed for about $40) comes packaged like a hard bound book. It has 32 pages of text and pictures, most of which are lyrics from the album. But, it does have a short story by poet Simon Armitage called The Missing Dream. The real bonus is an extra disc with eight tracks of demos, instrumentals, and tracks not on the record. The track listing for the bonus disc is;

1. 22 Dreams (original demo)
   
2. Rip Up the Pages
   
3. Light Nights (original demo)
   
4. Cold Moments (original demo)
   
5. Love's Got Me Crazy
   
6. Invisible (Marco version)
   
7. Big Brass Buttons (instrumental)
   
8. 22 Dreams (instrumental)
   

Are you sure Waylon done it that way?

From the category of "How did I miss this one?" comes a record by Chuck Prophet called Dreaming Waylon's Dreams. I've been a big fan of the former Green on Red guitarist and for this record, which was quietly released several months ago, he decided to record one of Waylon Jenning's records song by song. The original record by Waylon was called Dreaming My Dreams and was released in 1975. The CD release of this work by Prophet is limited to 1000 copies, is hand numbered, and has artwork that was created by hand on letterpress by Bruce Licher (famous for his album artwork done for releases on his Independent Project Records). You can order the CD from theconneXtion.com.

Live from an Apple

A live digital album by R.E.M. has been released and is available on iTunes. It is part of the iTunes Live from London sessions and it was recorded at the Regent Street Apple store in London on March 26th. The band played a number of songs from their current album Accelerate as well as some much older songs like 'Fall on Me', 'Auctioneer' and 'West of the Fields.'