Which Bette Midler album has Friday Music selected for reissue this April?
1977’s 2-LP Live at Last was the first live album from The Divine Miss M, Bette Midler, and her fourth album for Atlantic Records. Friday Music has announced that this title, currently out-of-print, will return to CD on April 10. Recorded in Ohio at The Cleveland Music Hall, Live at Lastpreserves all aspects of a Midler concert, from brassy vocals to bawdy routines and everything in between, including The Harlettes!
From her already-rich repertoire came such favorites as “Friends,” “Do You Wanna Dance” and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” but Midler also expressed her tender side via affecting songs like John Prine’s “Hello in There” and Tom Waits’ “Shiver Me Timbers.” Even Neil Young’s “Birds” gets the Midler treatment on this typically eclectic album.  Live at Last dedicated much of one LP side to The Vicki Eydie Show, Midler’s lounge spoof, and there’s also The Story of Nanette,a lengthy segment incorporating Kurt Weill and Johnny Mercer as filtered through Miss M’s unique sensibilities. Of course, no Midler concert to this very day is complete without a Sophie Tucker routine, and so “Soph” makes her obligatory appearance. Two studio recordings filled out the original Live at Last LP: Ashford and Simpson’s “Bang, You’re Dead” and Midler’s own, irresistible “You’re Moving Out Today,” co-written with Carole Bayer Sager and Bruce Roberts. (Sager recorded the song on her self-titled solo debut, and it actually topped the charts down under!)
Might there be more Midler on the way?   Friday Music has previously hinted that Songs from a New Depression, the 1976 studio album which preceded Live at Last, might be in the pipeline, as well; “Shiver Me Timbers” and “Mr. Rockefeller” both originated on that album. In the meantime, Live at Last, a Top 50 charting album upon its release, arrives from Friday Music in a remastered edition on April 10. It’s available for pre-order now from Amazon.
If the next CD re-issue is “Songs for the New Depression”, maybe we can get the originally intended “double disc”, with unissued and previously unreleased songs. I’d love to hear “Blue Rondo a la Turk”, “Young Americans”, and the original “I Don’t Want the Night to End”, among others. Wishful thinking, I know!
1977’s 2-LP Live at Last was the first live album from The Divine Miss M, Bette Midler, and her fourth album for Atlantic Records. Friday Music has announced that this title, currently out-of-print, will return to CD on April 10. Recorded in Ohio at The Cleveland Music Hall, Live at Lastpreserves all aspects of a Midler concert, from brassy vocals to bawdy routines and everything in between, including The Harlettes!
can someone explain me the difference? is the sound better than the last CD?
Ir should be better but my ears are not that attuned….
If the next CD re-issue is “Songs for the New Depression”, maybe we can get the originally intended “double disc”, with unissued and previously unreleased songs. I’d love to hear “Blue Rondo a la Turk”, “Young Americans”, and the original “I Don’t Want the Night to End”, among others. Wishful thinking, I know!
Well if there is anything I hate doing it’s bursting bubbles, but it’s out, too with no extras of course…..why, oh, why?