Even More Fantastic

Just last week I wrote about Elton John's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy as the best album of Elton's career. Now this week I have learned that it's been re-released--again.

Many of Elton's albums were reissued by his record company as part of a "classic years" series 10 years ago, and collected the various single-only releases and B-sides sprinkled through Elton's catalog. So there's already one Captain Fantastic reissue out there, featuring "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," "One Day at a Time," and "Philadelphia Freedom." Now Captain Fantastic is being reissued yet again, with a boatload of extras--all those tracks, plus the unissued B-side of "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," "House of Cards," and a second disc featuring a concert performance of the entire Captain Fantastic album, recorded in London shortly after its original release in 1975. The package includes reproductions of the album cover poster and other extras from the original release, plus new liner notes and comments from Elton and Bernie Taupin.

It's an album for the Christmas list if ever there was one.