It seems that I went to the All Music website & their New Releases section & it seems that Universal Japan is getting all of the Three Dog Night (except 1983 "It's A Jungle") & Steppenwolf (Dunhill ABC remasters) as well as the Pablo Cruise (A&M) collection only in Japan. So why won't the U.S. does not want to do this???? I got the Sneaker (self-titled) (1981) CD which has the song "More Than Just The Two Of Us" as well as "Loose In The World" (1982) which was released in U.S. as an album & did not charted in the U.S. from a Japan import CD which costs between $ 79 & $ 89 for both of them. I did not get "Early On" & "Live From Japan" though. Matt Clark Sanford, MI
Why Japan gets the remasters first than U.S.
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Dave
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It's in Japan that good ol' American pop music is cherished, the older the better!
For us--er, the US, it's one disposable commodity, after another, and yet, there are a still people out there in this country who love Backstreet Boys AND Menudo, and are still collecting both!
Or Justin Bieber and Shaun Cassidy--OK, David Cassidy... --And Donny Osmond?
But there are other foreign markets such as BGO in Great Britain and Bear Family in Germany, that also specialize in reissues of American artists, too!
I cite at least two Bobby Goldsboro two-fer's for the former, and some John Stewart two-fers for the latter...!
-- Dave
For us--er, the US, it's one disposable commodity, after another, and yet, there are a still people out there in this country who love Backstreet Boys AND Menudo, and are still collecting both!
Or Justin Bieber and Shaun Cassidy--OK, David Cassidy... --And Donny Osmond?
But there are other foreign markets such as BGO in Great Britain and Bear Family in Germany, that also specialize in reissues of American artists, too!
I cite at least two Bobby Goldsboro two-fer's for the former, and some John Stewart two-fers for the latter...!
-- Dave
Captain Bacardi
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Jazz is the same way. Japanese and European people crave American jazz and audiences are great there - probably better than US audiences, unfortunately.
Capt. Bacardi
Capt. Bacardi
jfiedler17
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Darn. I'd really love to see the Pablo Cruise catalog come out over here. Funny, in all the years I've been collecting music now, I can't say I've ever run across anything of theirs on a domestically-released CD other than their volume of the "Classics" series A&M did in the late '80s and the "20th Century Masters"-series budget-comp Universal released of them. I realize they don't have all that big a following in this country anymore, but I personally think they're an awfully underrated band and really love their original studio albums, especially Reflector. Easily one of my favorite soft-rock albums of the early '80s. I'd love to have that one on CD. Did that ever get an American CD release?
I'm surprised to hear that Sneaker got a Japanese release! I haven't heard "More Than Just the Two of Us" on the radio in over twenty years, and for all the years I've been collecting records, I've never managed to even stumble upon a 45 or a vinyl copy of the parent LP for that song, never mind actually see something of theirs on CD, so it's great to hear that it's getting a CD release, even if just overseas. I've unfortunately never heard any of their other songs, though; is their other material as good?
I still can hardly believe that Sergio Mendes' Stillness, Primal Roots and Pais Tropical came out in CD versions....not only in regular CD but in the mini-LP format. I had pretty much given up hope of EVER getting those albums on CD.
One of my favorite rock bands, Cheap Trick, has always been bigger in Japan than in the U.S. and you can't find a band more "homegrown" than those guys (from Illinois). Just different tastes, I guess. I think people tend to hang onto their musical habits longer in Japan, whereas here, people (except for us rabid fans, of course) tend to "grow out" of collecting music....they stop when they've got kids and jobs and such distracting them.
One of my favorite rock bands, Cheap Trick, has always been bigger in Japan than in the U.S. and you can't find a band more "homegrown" than those guys (from Illinois). Just different tastes, I guess. I think people tend to hang onto their musical habits longer in Japan, whereas here, people (except for us rabid fans, of course) tend to "grow out" of collecting music....they stop when they've got kids and jobs and such distracting them.
jfiedler17
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Nice!! I'm a huge Cheap Trick buff myself. They don't get nearly as much love in this country as they should (yeah, they've had a handful of hits, i.e. "I Want You to Want Me," "The Flame," etc., but they've also had an awful lot of equally superb singles that have missed the Top 40 entirely - "I Can't Help It" is one that immediately comes to mind; that is just an absolutely phenomenal single - probably my favorite of theirs, actually), but then, I think power-pop in general is a horribly underappeciated genre here in the U.S. So many of my top favorite acts tend to fall under or occasionally get lumped into that genre - i.e. Cheap Trick, Raspberries, Badfinger, Big Star, Marshall Crenshaw, Gin Blossoms, Elvis Costello, XTC, The Romantics, The Cars, The Knack, Smithereens, Todd Rundgren, Jimmy Eat World, Weezer, Fountains of Wayne, Del Amitri, etc. - and yet it's very rare for anybody specializing in that kind of sound to land anything more than one or two major singles on the American charts. For whatever reason, it's just not a genre that tends to get a love on American radio. I'm not sure why. Every few years or so, you'll see a power-pop-flavored single sneak through into the mainstream and become a major American radio hit, but that seems to be becoming rarer and rarer all the time, sadly. It's such a wonderful and amazing genre of music.
And one of the greatest power-pop albums I've ever heard by an American band, actually - Powerbill by The Semantics (an early '90s Geffen Records act whose members included Millard Powers, who's now bassist for Counting Crows, the late Will Owsley, formerly Amy Grant's guitarist, and Zak Starkey; Ben Folds was also briefly a member) - never even got released in this country on any format and can only be obtained as a Japanese import. But, then, power-pop seems to be much more popular over there than here. Even one of Japan's most successful homegrown acts, the female duo Puffy Amiyumi, benefitted a great deal from recruiting Andy Sturmer (formerly of the '90s American power-pop band Jellyfish) as their producer and songwriter at their peak.
And one of the greatest power-pop albums I've ever heard by an American band, actually - Powerbill by The Semantics (an early '90s Geffen Records act whose members included Millard Powers, who's now bassist for Counting Crows, the late Will Owsley, formerly Amy Grant's guitarist, and Zak Starkey; Ben Folds was also briefly a member) - never even got released in this country on any format and can only be obtained as a Japanese import. But, then, power-pop seems to be much more popular over there than here. Even one of Japan's most successful homegrown acts, the female duo Puffy Amiyumi, benefitted a great deal from recruiting Andy Sturmer (formerly of the '90s American power-pop band Jellyfish) as their producer and songwriter at their peak.
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