15 Great Rock Albums That Need to Be Rereleased on Vinyl

Back in the days before the commercial advent of the compact disc, when vinyl records were the format of choice for purchasing and listening to music, albums would go out of print all the time, without warning. Some would not sell and be relegated to cutout bins or just tossed; others would sell out of their pressing, and would simply disappear, until a new run was pressed. If there were no further pressings, those records would just be gone.

Today, the advent of streaming services helps keep albums available for listening at the click of a link, but those who prefer to listen to music in spinning black circle format can once again find themselves out of luck, as the problems of the past – the dearth of some titles on vinyl – once again haunts the ever-growing hordes of record aficionados. Those collectors who turn to used-record markets (represented on sites like Discogs) or secondary sellers on Amazon, are often confronted with exorbitant prices for their desired LPs.

Below, we have collected 15 albums that are criminally out of print on vinyl in the U.S., and need to be issued or re-issued, to sate the hunger of rock (and folk and Americana) fans. These are records that should be available for spinning on a turntable near you immediately – it’s a wonder we’ve lived without them this long.

Beach Boys, The Smile Sessions

The Smile Sessions is a cobbling together of studio takes and outtakes, in an attempt to compile a legendarily classic Beach Boys album that never was – the follow-up to Pet Sounds, the album that sent Brian Wilson over the edge into psychosis, the collection of songs Mike Love still doesn’t understand (“Columnated ruins domino” – say what?). Wilson made his own solo version of the album decades later (Brian Wilson Presents Smile, in 2004), and that’s out of print, too. Will someone please reissue these records? Pretty please?

Amazon Prices: $299.99 (The Smile Sessions); $279.99 (Brian Wilson Presents Smile)

Buckingham Nicks, Buckingham Nicks

There are so many “unofficial” bootlegs of this record, so readily available, it’s a wonder no one in the Lindsey Buckingham and/or Stevie Nicks camps have seen fit to put together a proper reissue, regardless of whether the principals are speaking. This is a historical artifact – it’s the album Keith Olsen played for Mick Fleetwood at Sound City studios, which led Buckingham and Nicks to joining Fleetwood Mac. That it is a fine example of early-’70s California folk rock is almost beside the point.

Amazon Prices: $130.00 (original); $199.99 (undetermined issue)

Cheap Trick, Cheap Trick (1997)

By 1997, Cheap Trick was free from recording contracts and looking to re-establish themselves with a younger audience who were fans of artists who cited them as an influence. The album they made to accomplish this is a terrific blast of Rockford rock, with hooks aplenty, particularly on tracks like “Say Goodbye,” “Carnival Game,” and the breakneck “Baby No More.” Of course, the indie label they chose to facilitate their comeback (Red Ant/Alliance) shuttered its doors within a month of the album’s release. It was never issued on vinyl, and it is time for some enterprising organization to rectify that, and while they’re at it, maybe press 2009’s The Latest, as well.

Amazon Price: N/A (a “Vinyl” link on the 1997 record’s page leads to one for their debut album, also titled Cheap Trick)

Coverdale Page, Coverdale Page

This convergence of Whitesnake front man David Coverdale and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page divided fans upon its release, but has proven over time to be a solid contribution to both artists’ discographies. Both men have expressed a desire to see it reissued, perhaps with bonus tracks that didn’t make the record, but it remains mere CD bargain bin fodder and expensive “unofficial” bootleg title until they actually do something about it. Coverdale Page deserves better.

Amazon Price: $891.02

Hindu Love Gods, Hindu Love Gods

R.E.M., fronted by Warren Zevon, performing blues songs and a Prince cover. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did, and rather well. We would love to drop the needle on a nice, 180g vinyl reissue, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Amazon Price: $92.00

Indigo Girls, Rites of Passage

Of the albums the Indigo Girls released during their commercial peak (1989 through roughly 1997), only their self-titled major label debut has seen a vinyl reissue. We single out 1992’s Rites of Passage, because it contains some of our favorite of their songs (“Galileo,” “Ghost,” and their cover of Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet” among them), and also it has never been released on vinyl. As a consolation, we would also accept spinning black circle versions of Nomads – Indians – Saints (1990), Swamp Ophelia (1994), and/or 1995’s live 1200 Curfews.

Amazon Price: N/A

Not everyone dug this posthumous compilation when it was released in 1986, but we always enjoyed it, particularly Side 1, which contains outtakes from the Rock ‘n’ Roll sessions in 1973.

Amazon Price: $299.00

Jack Logan, Bulk

This album was a big deal in 1994, as it compiled a cache of lo-fi, home-recorded material released by Logan, a Georgia-based swimming pool installer by day and bar band performer by night and on weekends. At the time, Bulk was hailed as a revelation of sorts, a sort of Basement Tapes made by an unheralded, underground genius only the locals and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck knew anything about (R.E.M. had once considered covering Logan’s “Female Jesus”). To do justice to Bulk on vinyl would mean making a box set of its songs (all 42 of them ��� nearly two and a half hours of music), but it would be worth the extra green to be able to play them on a turntable.

Amazon Price: N/A

Van Morrison, Enlightenment 

None of a brace of Van Morrison records released in the early-to-mid-’90s have made their way to vinyl, denying us a number of hidden treasures. We chose 1990’s Enlightenment because of the single “Real, Real Gone” and terrific album cuts like the uplifting “Memories” and “Avalon of the Heart,” and the ruminative title track. Really, though, we could have just as easily listed the spiritually questing double album Hymns to the Silence (1991), the super-soulful Too Long in Exile (1993), or the songwriter’s songwriter exercise of Days Like This (1995). All of Morrison’s most recent records – some wonderful, some awful – have made it to vinyl; it’s time for his ‘90s catalog to be revisited.

Amazon Price: $109.72

Motley Crue, Motley Crue

Vince Neil left the Crue, then came back, so the band’s John Corabi-fronted 1994 record is absent from their official vinyl offerings (as is 2000’s New Tattoo, on which Randy Castillo replaced Tommy Lee on drums). It’s a shame – Corabi is a monster vocalist, the band’s overall sound is full with menace and volume, and the songs jettison any trace of glam tropes or riffs, hitting hard time and again. Neil claims to have never heard the record, but he should take a listen, and maybe recognize that Motley Crue represents a moment in his band’s history that’s worth saving, if not celebrating, with a vinyl issue.

Amazon Price: N/A

Robert Plant, Mighty ReArranger

It is the opinion of this publication that Mighty ReArranger – Robert Plant’s 2004 record with The Strange Sensation – is the Led Zeppelin singer’s finest solo offering. “Shine It All Around” sounds at once defiant and hopeful (and a little fearsome, thanks to drummer Clive Deamer), while “All the King’s Horses” is all folky acoustic gorgeousness. Between those two poles churns a collection of diverse, labels-be-damned cuts that please as well as challenge. This deserves a vinyl reissue, if for no other reason than the record’s warmth and dynamics would sound best in an analog format.

Amazon Price: N/A (though on Discogs, what few copies are available are going for $272.00 and up)

Prince, The Black Album

According to legend, Prince yanked this angry eight-song funkfest from release in 1987 shortly after God appeared to him in a vision and instructed him to. Feeling he had allowed “the dark side to create something evil” with the album, Prince quickly put together Lovesexy and released it in 1988, as something of a tonic. Some reports suggest Warner Bros. had pressed 500,000 copies of The Black Album, only to have Prince order them all (except, apparently for one) destroyed. It’s time for an official vinyl reissue.

Amazon Price: $386.36 (for the 1994 “limited edition” version)

Bob Seger, Back in ’72

Bob Seger hates this record. Really hates it. Hates it so much, it’s never been issued on compact disc, never been posted on any streaming site, and never been pressed to vinyl since its original run in 1973. But it has the original studio version of “Turn the Page”; quality covers of the Allman Brothers Band, Free, and Van Morrison; and one of his greatest ballads (“So I Wrote You a Song”). So, all due respect, Bob – this deserves a reissue.

Amazon Price: $199.98

Superdrag, In the Valley of Dying Stars

Go back into those memory banks you never switch on anymore, and you’ll remember Superdrag’s 1996 hit “Sucked Out,” and their debut LP, Regrettably Yours. Cool tune, decent album, right? They sounded great on the radio with other alterna-grunge one-hit wonders. Four years later, the band released In the Valley of Dying Stars, an out-of-nowhere classic on par with the best work of artists like Teenage Fanclub, Matthew Sweet, Fountains of Wayne, and other acts with aching melodies and loud guitars. It deserves loving treatment and an expansion of the cult of listeners who love it.

Amazon Price: $74.98

Velvet Crush, Teenage Symphonies to God

Brian Wilson once described the music he and the Beach Boys were making on Smile as his “teenage symphony to God.” A couple decades and change later, Rhode Island power pop trio Velvet Crush took that description and applied it to their Mitch Easter-produced sophomore effort, released in 1994. From originals like “Hold Me Up,” “Time Wraps Around You,” and “Weird Summer,” to covers of original Byrd Gene Clark (“Why Not Your Baby”) and Matthew Sweet (“Something’s Gotta Give”), these Teenage Symphonies are among the most unfairly overlooked gems in ‘90s rock. Original vinyl copies go for ridiculous money; it’s long overdue for some enterprising indie label to license and reissue this wonderful album.

Amazon Price: $599.00