MELANIE is back, aboard what has been described, by Goldmine magazine, as one of the most significant reissue campaigns of recent years. 

And it’s hard to argue with that. 

After years lost in the wilderness of deleted discs, budget compilations and bootleg downloads, Melanie’s entire post-1971catalog has at last returned to the shelves, in both its original form and across a slew of previously unissued archive releases.  And a new digital publication, the 60 page, full color Deluxe Editions, tells the story.

In just two years, since the program launched in late 2023, Cleopatra Records in the US, and their UK licensee Easy Action/The Wintergarden, have remastered, repackaged and, in some cases, reinvented some 50 different albums. 

Overflowing with studio rarities, live recordings, home demos and even a handful of song sketches, it’s a campaign that completely up-ends the industry norm of just two or three “archive” albums a year. “If we’d followed that,” Cleopatra head Brian Perera told Quillette in early 2025, “we’d still be releasing old Melanie albums in 2050.” 

Deluxe Editions is a one stop catalog of this astonishing body of work, detailing not only the albums that have already been released, but also a clutch more scheduled for the future. These include a breathtaking collection of traditional songs recorded when Melanie was still in her mid-teens; a live recording of her epochal 1971 Broadway concert; and a deluxe remastering of her 1996 Christmas album Antlers, appropriately retitled Melanie’s Christmas Treasury.

Melanie left very firm instructions for how she wanted the series to proceed. Long before the reissues began, she began planning how her catalog ought to be presented, going through every album one by one, picking bonus tracks , discussing artwork and so on. The first reissue, 1984’s live One Night Only – The Eagle Mountain House, was released in early January 2024, just weeks before Melanie’s death.

In addition to the CDs and vinyl, Digital Editions also documents a wealth of digital singles, as a host of admirers stepped forward to record completely new versions of some of her best loved numbers – among then, Cactus, Ozric Tentacles, Terry Reid, Linda Gail Lewis, Charming Disaster, The Courettes and the Pink Fairies.

Download Deluxe Editions here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/ files/1/0868/3379/1287/files/ melanieDeluxeEditions.pdf

There’s a lot to digest, but Cleopatra are definitely making it easier for anyone who wants to dive in. 

To coincide with the publication of Digital Editions, Cleopatra’s own Pirate Radio Cleopatra counts down Melanie’s Top 20 albums with guests including her children Leilah and Beau Jarred, and archive commentary from Melanie herself.  Listen on Mixcloud, Apple Podcasts,  Spotify,  YouTube and  Cleorecs.com.

In addition, the label’s Cleorecs.com website this weekend launches a three day 30% off sale on all Melanie CDs and vinyl.  It’s not quite Buy Two, Get One Free, but it’s close.

Happy shopping!

CLEOPATRA RECORDS, INC.: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube | Spotify | Cleopatra Records Store | www.CleopatraRecords.com

Melanie at Crystal Palace, 1972. Photo Barry Plummer

A lot of artists complain bitterly when they find their music being bootlegged – think of that famous footage (available on YouTube) of Neil Young walking into a Hollywood record store in 1971, to discover an unauthorized live album sitting on the shelves!

Melanie felt the same way. The latter part of her career was positively plagued by fans trading, selling and posting online her unreleased out-takes and live shows, a flood that ultimately led her to authorize the wholesale emptying of her archive by Cleopatra Records for a marathon series of releases and bonus track-stacked reissues.  Check them out here: https://cleorecs.com/search?q=Melanie&options%5Bprefix%5D=last

But she also regretted never having been “properly” bootlegged – that is, having a concert pressed on vinyl, slipped into a plain white sleeve with photocopied art gummed to the front, given a bizarre title, and sold through the underground network of mon-and-pop stores that once proliferated.

So we did it for her.

From The Banks of the River Effra – Crystal Palace 1972 was recorded at the Crystal Palace Garden Party in London, and is released today resplendent with its own bootleg-style art insert, white label and a suitably obscure title – the River Effra is one of London’s so-called “lost rivers,” flowing through the area now occupied by the Crystal Palace site.

The gig was a truly heavyweight occasion.  Melanie was a festival veteran by now; Woodstock in 1969 was followed by the Isle Of Wight Festival in 1970, Glastonbury Fayre and the Montreux Jazz Festival (also available from Cleopatra Records) in 1971, and many more.

Crystal Palace itself was a veritable Woodstock reunion.  Staged on June 3, 1972, Melanie headlined a bill that also featured Joe Cocker, Richie Havens and Sha Na Na, alongside the Beach Boys.  

Unfortunately, the day didn’t really live up to its billing. It rained for most of the afternoon, the PA was problematic, and delays plagued the show – including a 90 minute wait for the Beach Boys. By the time Keith Moon and Legs Larry Smith introduced Melanie (who flew in specifically to play the show), even the rain-soaked faithful were grumbling. 

But 16,000 people welcomed her all the same; and, by the time her set was over, maybe… just maybe… they’d forgotten how miserable the rest of the day had been.

The album does not feature the complete performance. Although the entire festival was filmed, and excerpts (including three Melanie songs) were broadcast on US TV the following month, the whereabouts of the footage today is unknown. 

At some point, however, an edit of the event seems to have been made, leaking out on a bootleg cassette a couple of years later, and then vanishing from view.  From The Banks of the River Effra – Crystal Palace 1972 is its first ever official release, and while the fidelity – like the artwork – could be described as bootleg quality, it is nevertheless a powerful, and joyous performance.

Track Listing

1. Someday I’ll Be A Farmer
2. Beautiful People
3. Ring The Living Bell
4. What Have They Done To My Song Ma
5. Bitter Bad
6. Peace Will Come (According To Plan)
7. Together Alone
8. Psychotherapy

ALBUM: https://cleorecs.com/products/melanie-crystal-palace-white-label-vinyl

What Goldmine magazine ranked among “the most significant reissue campaigns” of recent years continues apace with the release of one of the most legendary projects in Melanie’s vast catalog of work.

Previewed by a single of one of Melanie’s most remarkable performances, the darkly Brechtian “The Champagne Song,” Ace o’Diamonds was conceived in the late 1970s as a Broadway musical, co-written by Melanie and author and journalist Ed Kelleher.

SINGLE: https://orcd.co/melanie_thechampagnesong

The musical was based around a cache of letters purportedly written by the western legend Calamity Jane to the daughter, Janey, she and her lover, the equally legendary Wild Bill Hickok, had given up, in 1873, to be raised by a sea captain named James O’Neill. 

A glorious slice of Wild West lore, the musical not only brought Janey’s story to life, but also vividly painted her parents, Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok, such friends as Annie Oakley and Teddy Blue Abbott, and frontier life in general.  Broadway giant Seymour Vall came on board as producer; directors Tommy Walsh and, later, Sparkle Finley too. 

And, of course Melanie composed the music and lyrics, some 30 songs that included several destined to become classics of her later catalog: “Golden Chains,” “Running After Love,” “Wear It Like A Flag,” and the hilarious “Taking A Bath” – opening line, “Oh I feel grotty, the scent of my body reminds me of dishwater left over night.”

Of note, too, are such offerings as “You Could Have Had Me For A Nickel,” “Slop ‘Er Up Over The Rim” and “Teddy Blue’s Song,” whose final line is so unexpected that you can hear the audience gasp as it is delivered.

It was all a long way from “Brand New Key”!

At the time, sadly, the majority of thee songs went unheard, the death of producer Vall sounding the demise of the project before it had even escaped workshops and occasional public readings around New York.   

Few of the songs were recorded at the time, while the one “live” recording to have surfaced was taped from the audience by a fan who cared only to capture the songs performed by Melanie herself.  When Melanie was asked, back in 2023, what she thought of preparing Ace o’Diamonds for CD release, she simply laughed. “It can’t be done.”

It could. Across two CDs, Ace o’Diamonds not only recreates the full show, but also the songs that were written for, but ultimately omitted from the final script.  Plus onstage dialogue, performed by Melanie herself.

Copious liner notes detail not only the short life of the musical itself, but also the year-plus of work that went into tracking down (and cleaning up) the material; deluxe packaging, too, marks this release out as something special, even amidst the 30+ Melanie albums that have so far been released as this marathon project takes shape.

Melanie’s daughter Leilah Safka, who grew up with Ace o’Diamonds forever percolating in the background, is available for interview.

DIGITAL ALBUM: https://orcd.co/melanie_aceodiamonds
CD: https://cleorecs.com/products/melanie-ace-odiamonds-2-cd

When Woodstock legend Melanie passed away on January 23 last year, we not only lost one of the most distinctive voices and songwriters of the last 60 years. We lost, too, what promised to be one of the most audacious albums of her entire career – and with 30-plus others to choose from, that was a very high bar to clear.  

Secondhand Smoke, as she called it, was to be a collection of covers chosen precisely because nobody would have expected her to choose them.

Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, Depeche Mode, Morrissey, The Adverts, Britpop heroes Ash (their “Uncle Pat” had been in and out of Melanie’s live set since the 1990s) and more were lined up, and so was David Bowie, whose “Everyone Says Hi,” she admitted, resonated particularly deeply within her.

Indeed, it is one of the most emotionally affecting songs Bowie ever wrote. Taken from Bowie’s 2002 album Heathen, it is effectively a greeting to someone who has been loved and lost. And in the weeks and months following Melanie’s death, her son and long-time musical collaborator Beau Jarred found his thoughts increasingly returning to Bowie’s simple, but so moving lyric.

“Said you took a big trip, they said you moved away
“Happened oh so quietly, they say.”

Although nothing had been recorded, Beau Jarred and Melanie had already started working on the song’s arrangement; now he returned to it, laying down a vocal in one sleepless night, and initially intending it simply as a gift to his family and friends. 

But the more people who heard it, the more the performance took on a life of its own – until finally, with the first anniversary of Melanie’s departure looming, he was persuaded to release it to the world, a tribute not only to his mom, but also to Bowie, whose own death, in 2016, was also remembered this month; and to Melanie’s myriad fans, whose messages of support and love have done so much to sustain Beau and his family across these last 12 months.

The accompanying video, made up from a subtly sync-ed collage of photographs and press cuttings, adds further emphasis to the song’s emotional impact, as Beau explains.

“It’s for everyone. There’s nothing any of us would like more than to be able to say ‘hi’ to her, ask her how she’s doing, tell her to call sometime.  And wherever she is, I know she can hear us.  Hi mom, hi dad.  And hi to David Bowie as well.  We miss you all.”

SINGLE: https://orcd.co/beaujarred_everyonesayshi

Cleopatra’s marathon Melanie reissue campaign continues apace with the earliest known professional recording of Melanie in concert.

Taped by her husband/producer Peter Schekeryk at the famed Troubadour in Los Angeles, Take Me Home – Live at the Troubadour 1969 features five songs recorded a full four months before Melanie’s epochal Woodstock appearance in August 1969, and captures the young chansonnier as she transfixed audience and watching media alike.

Reviewing the show, journalist Stephen MH Braitman wrote,  “Her shining quality is a voice that literally weeps with huskiness. Melanie is an original, and what spouts from [her songs is a curiously compelling style….”

Elsewhere, Melody Maker called her as “a cross between Mother Courage and Judy Garland.”

Melanie, on the other hand, described herself as “A loose cannon.” In 2003, she reflected, “I don’t believe Woodstock changed me in the slightest, but it did alter my record label’s perception of me, and the media’s, and the public’s. And that bled into everything else – promotion, photo sessions, and I guess the songs I was writing, because as an artist you can’t help but write for your audience as much as you do for yourself.

“A lot of my earlier songs, my first two albums especially, I think got lost – there were certain songs I’d written, like ‘Beautiful People,’ that resonated with what the label wanted from me, but there were others, like ‘Deep Down Low’ and ‘Take Me Home With You’ [both included here] that were allowed to fall by the wayside.”

Here, they cannot help but demand attention.

Also included on the album is a rare recording of Melanie on tour in fall 1971, with her monster hit “Brand New Key” yet to commence its rise to #1.  The response (or total lack thereof) to its appearance testifies to that.

Recorded at the California State College in California, Pennsylvania, it offers a fascinating glimpse of Melanie actually “on the road.” While other live recordings from this 1970-1971 period focus on the most prestigious venues in her itinerary, be they Carnegie Hall, the Montreux Festival or Glastonbury Fayre, here we hear her at what surely felt like just another venue in another town, as she wove her way around the country. 

Yet her commitment to her performance is no less wholehearted than any of those better-known shows.

FIND IT HERE:  https://orcd.co/melanie_takemehome

Track listing

1. Deep Down Low (excerpt)
2. I Really Loved Harold
3. Tuning My Guitar
4. Psychotherapy
5. Take Me Home With You
6. The Nickel Song
7. Alexander Beetle
8. Sign on the Window
9. Steppin’
10. Brand New Key
11. The Good Guys
12. Ruby Tuesday