Capitol Records to Reissue I.R.S. Records By the dB's, Tom Verlaine

Starting February 10th, Capitol Records will dig deep into the I.R.S. Records vault and begin making some of the now-defunct label's most acclaimed music available digitally for the first time. Gary Numan, the Police's Stewart Copeland, Television's Tom Verlaine, Wall of Voodoo, Timbuk 3, Concrete Blonde and many more artists are slated to have their I.R.S. recordings released DRM-free. We're especially excited for the digital release of dada's alternative classics Puzzle and American Highway Flower.

But the really big news is that the digital world will finally, legally, be able to download the dB's influential first two albums, Stands For Decibels and Repurcussion, as well as their fourth album Sound of Music. Plus seven songs by the punk supergroup Lords of the New Church, featuring the Dead Boys' Stiv Bators, will also hit iTunes, Amazon and most other digital music providers. Capitol will release the I.R.S. albums over the course of six weeks, culminating on March 17th. Additionally, Capitol will release four Best of the I.R.S. Years collections dedicated to Over the Rhine, dada, Dread Zeppelin and the dB's. While CD sales continue to slump, we applaud Capitol for at least trying to bring classic records to a new generation, as evidenced by their mass reissue of vinyl records last year.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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