CINDERELLA – Long Cold Winter [Bad Reputation remaster +5 prev. unreleased]

French reissue label Bad Reputation has been doing a great job releasing ‘Collector Series / Remastered with Bonus‘, with the main attraction being the addition of hard yo find extra material, making these reissues the ‘definitive expanded versions’. In a Rock Candy Records fashion, these are official remasters in arrangement with the original recording companies.
Now we have here, in my opinion, CINDERELLA‘s best album “Long Cold Winter“, including a bonus material previously unreleased on CD.

Philadelphia-based band Cinderella hit record stores and MTV in 1987, joining a crowded crop of hair metal hitmakers that included Bon Jovi, Poison, Europe, Stryper, Winger, Mötley Crüe and more.
The band’s debut album, Night Songs, hit No. 3 on the Billboard 200 album chart not because its songs were deep treatises on global conflicts or the socioeconomic repercussions of public policy like some other chart-toppers from the era; Night Songs was a hit because it rocked.

These guys melded AC/DC’s histrionics to Poison’s arena-ready spectacle and did so with a bluesy, guitar-swinging swagger. Singer and main songwriter Tom Keifer was a pouting pretty boy who also knew his way around the neck of a Les Paul.
They were the total package and, at first blush, also appeared to be as glammy and superficial as the other bands that looked just like them.

Keifer had more depth than that, though, and when it came time to write Cinderella’s second album, “Long Cold Winter”, he hoped to avoid the sophomore slump by taking stock of his surroundings and writing songs from the perspective of a young man uncertain of where he was at any given point or who was around him.
Because of the band’s brutal touring schedule, this meant writing the record on the road, using the technology available to him at the time.
One member of the band absent from both records was drummer Fred Coury, replaced on “Long Cold Winter” by master Cozy Powell and Denny Carmassi (Heart, Montrose and others).

The results were a cut above the salacious chicks-and-booze anthems or cowboys-on-steel-horses ballads their peers were churning out.
Keifer had riff-rock story songs like “Gypsy Road” and “The Last Mile.” He had road-weary sentiments in a rock song like “Comin’ Apart at the Seams” and in the ballad “Comin’ Home.”
Did someone say ballad? He had a monster power ballad called “Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone).” And he had straight-up blues songs in “Bad Seamstress Blues” and “Long Cold Winter.”
It was a varied collection of songs, some really high-quality stuff.

“Long Cold Winter” stands as one of the greatest pillars of ’80s American hard rock, eclipsing Night Songs (which is good in its own right) and annihilates everything else they ever did.
You probably already got a copy of this killer album, however this “Long Cold Winter remaster +5” is the definitive version, including five live tracks captured in Tokyo and Philadephia previously unreleased on CD .
A MUST HAVE

You’ve seen it first here, at 0dayrox

01 – Bad Seamstress Blues / Fallin’ Apart At The Seams
02 – Gypsy Road
03 – Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone)
04 – The Last Mile
05 – Second Wind
06 – Long Cold Winter
07 – If You Don’t Like It
08 – Coming Home
09 – Fire And Ice
10 – Take Me Back
BONUS TRACKS [Previously Unreleased on CD]:
11 – Push Push (Live in Tokyo ’87)
12 – Once Around The Ride (Live in Tokyo ’87)
13 – Shake Me (Live in Philadephia ’87)
14 – Galaxy Blues (Live in Philadephia ’87)
15 – Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Live ’89)

Tom Keifer – vocals, guitars, harmonica
Jeff LaBar – guitar
Eric Brittingham – bass, backing vocals
Fred Coury – drums (not on the album)
additional personnel:
Cozy Powell, Denny Carmassi, Joseph Starns – drums
Jay Levin – steel guitar
Rick Criniti – piano, organ, synthesizer
Kurt Shore, John Webster – keyboards
Paulinho Da Costa – percussion

BUY IT
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