DON'T BOX ME in! This season's fancifully packaged, multi-disc music sets are all over the artistic map, from the hippest of jazz to the heaviest of rockers to the strangest of old-timey folk.
Many of the gift-worthy boxes offer valuable career or stylistic overviews.
And most sets are mixed-media affairs, with DVD concerts or documentaries expanding our understanding and appreciation of the spotlighted artist or musical genre.
"Frank Sinatra..
. Vegas" (Reprise, A): This is the "desert island" classic of this year's bunch - four discs of rock 'em, sock 'em swagger and swoon as the king of the saloon singers rules at his gamblin' town palaces.
All the concert discs are dynamite.
But the extra-long (18 tunes) and most richly orchestrated '61 date at the Sands (which Sinatra co-owned) that opens the series is Uber-Frank - from "Without a Song" to "Here's That Rainy Day" to the Sinatra national anthem, "The Lady Is a Tramp."
Also killer-diller is a bonus DVD capturing a complete 1978 performance at Caesar's Palace, even packing before- and after-show backstage footage. (Who is that guy Sinatra keeps hugging and kissing?
Former middleweight contender Vinnie Curto.)
Sound is mostly monaural but respectable, keeping Sinatra's vocals ever in front of those walloping horn- and strings-endowed bands.
"The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong" (Time Life, B): This set captures another music icon in multimedia form.
Aimed at a populist audience, two CDs emphasize Armstrong the raspy, irascible singer who also played trumpet, rather than the inverse, with short-'n'-sweet (mostly singles-derived) performances of signature tunes like "I'm in the Mood for Love," "When It's Sleepy Time Down South," "Mack the Knife" and "What a Wonderful World" - the latter an Armstrong hit 17 years after his death.
The bonus DVD backpedals through his life, with looser, jazzier performances.
"The Harry Smith Project Anthology of American Folk Music Revisited" (Shout!
Factory, B+): When the nation started melting down old, shellac-based 78 rpm records for the World War II war effort, eccentric collector and musicologist Harry Smith rescued thousands of early, earthy, 20th-century folk, country and blues recordings.
Later, his anthology of the best became a cultural touchstone and inspiration for music lovers and makers, first on its release in the 1950s and then again with its CD re-issue in the late 1990s. Now comes this celebration of those Appalachian ballads and rural blues by contemporary interpreters including Beck, Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, Richard Thompson, Nick Cave, Beth Orton and Steve Earle.
The modernized takes come from concerts staged and recorded by producer Hal Willner (a Philly guy). They're yours to enjoy in video as well as audio form on this two-CD/two-DVD box set. Rani Singh's fascinating, 90-minute video documentary on Smith is a true plus.
"Friends of Old Time Music" (Smithsonian, B+): A gathering of recordings from three NYC concerts of the 1960s, re-introducing long-lost but still vital rural talents like Dock Boggs, Mother Maybelle Carter and Mississippi John Hurt, and then-newcomers to the city like Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley. Recording quality is very good; the tracks by Hurt, Bill Monroe and one-man-band Jesse Fuller are especially juicy.
Weather Report, "Forecast: Tomorrow" (Columbia/Legacy, A): When rock turned progressive in the late 1960s, many a jazz artist turned on and tuned in to the electric currents.
None achieved better fusion or moved the music further than Weather Report, built around saxophonist/composer Wayne Shorter (from the Miles Davis Quintet) and keyboardist/composer Joe Zawinul (ex-Cannonball Adderly), and reaching peak powers when Norristown native Jaco Pastorius was blazing away on the fretless bass.
Traversing a sonic universe from spacey electronica to nu-bebop, with haunting ballads and Third World-flavored percolators, Weather Report's work from 1970 to '85 remains remarkably distinctive and forward-thinking. And the never-before-released '78 concert we get to watch on DVD is a revelation.
"What It Is! Funky Soul and Rare Grooves" (Rhino, B+): There was a whole lot more to the pumpin', sweatin', instrumental-driven soul of the '60s and '70s than James Brown and Parliament/Funkadelic. Return with us now to those glory days, to scoop up feel-good hits like the Bar-Kays' "Soul Finger," protest gems like Curtis Mayfield's "If There's a Hell Below We're All Going to Go" and many obscure but surprisingly vital contributions by the likes of Don Covay, the Watts 103d Street Rhythm Band and Titus Turner.
Some of these lean toward jazz or Latin, others to rock-funk crossover. A sampler's paradise.
"Legends of Country Music: Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys" (Columbia/Legacy, B+): This surprisingly hip package confounds presumptions that these stars of the 1930s to '70s were cartoonish cowboy hokums.
Fiddler Wills kept the band swinging and urbane, not withstanding the signature "yahoos" worked into almost every tune (and almost driving a listener crazy by the final, fourth disc).
Devotees of Lyle Lovett and Brad Paisley, Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel will find this quite appealing.
Waylon Jennings, "Nashville Rebel" (BMG/Legacy, B): Here's a different kind of shocker, as it reveals that the king of the "outlaw" singers actually started his solo career as a pretty smooth, mainstream country crooner.
Then the '60s folk protest scene kicked in and the drugs started taking effect. A thick, scrapbook-style booklet accompanies.
"Johnny Cash at San Quentin" (Columbia Legacy, A-): The Man in Black's best-selling and most image-enhancing album is fleshed out in double CD + DVD form, adding warm-up appearances by Carl Perkins, the Statler Brothers and the Carter Family.
June Carter's double-entendre comments to the captive audience are a special stitch: "Sit back and relax, and get your hands out of each others' pockets." The bonus DVD carries a British documentary about the concert.
Sufjan Stevens presents "Songs for Christmas" (Asthmatic Kitty, B+): Track the noted alt-popster's growth in ambition, confidence and artful vision in this charming, five-CD gathering of the holiday EPs which he's been creating and distributing almost annually to fans.
Yeah, just like the Beatles used to do.
The earliest "Noel" set from 2001 is the most stripped-down, with winsome, banjo-flecked, folky arrangements of old carols dominating. The 2005 "Joy" and 2006 "Peace" sets are most ambitious in production flourishes and holiday-themed originals.
Bonus points for the booklet with sing-along lyrics and guitar chording notations, a sheet of stickers and a poster.
"Moments to Remember: The Golden Hits of the '50s and '60s" (Shout! Factory, B+): If you remember hula hoops and poodle skirts, Ike and Khrushchev and Dick Clark in his youth, this thorough and well-engineered three-disc time capsule of period pop will really take you back.
The syrupy ballads of the DeCastro Sisters, Patti Page, Connie Francis and the McGuire Sisters haven't aged well, but there's still pure poetry in Lenny Welch's "Since I Fell For You," Patsy Cline's "Crazy" and the Platters' rendering of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." And there's great fun in novelty tunes like the Diamonds' "Little Darlin' " and Louis Prima and Keely Smith's "That Old Black Magic."
"Chicago: The Musical" (Masterworks Broadway, B): Much bigger in its current, 10 years' running revival than its original production, the sardonic Broadway musical "Chicago" is celebrated in this two-CD-plus-DVD anniversary edition.
The first disc holds the original cast album; the second carries audio snippets from short-term revival stars like Brooke Shields, Liza Minnelli and Lynda Carter. A bonus DVD explains why the show's proven more popular the second time around.
Tori Amos, "A Piano: The Collection" (Rhino Atlantic, B); "The Clash: The Singles" Epic/Legacy, B+), and the Doors, "Perception" (Rhino, A-): What brings this pretentious piano chanteuse, Britain's godfathers of protest punk and the drama kings of progressive rock together in the same paragraph?
Superior packaging jobs, that extra level of visual appeal that makes some box sets seem important and collectible.
The lid of Ms. Amos' set is a raised, 24-key plastic keyboard - non-functioning, drat.
Inside, the five-disc set leans heavily on alternate mixes and remixes, with lots of rare B-sides and a demo medley at the end.
As its name suggests, the 19-disc Clash set delivers all of their UK singles on separate CDs and in replicas of their original artwork sleeves, with some B-sides never put on CD before. Plus there's a well-annotated, 44-page book.
(For purists, the package also is available on vinyl 45s.)
Look through the brass keyhole on the cover of the Doors box set to perceive the art within (and tiny photos of the band). Heavy, Huxley.
All six of the jazz-, blues- and cabaret-tinged Cali-prog rockers' albums are here on CDs, each newly expanded up with leftovers and jams. Plus, separate DVDs carry atmospheric, 5.1 surround sound mixes (Dolby Digital/DTS) of each album ("Riders in the Storm" rains all around yah) and music videos.
Robert Plant, "Nine Lives" (Rhino, A): Lotsa life after Led Zep.
"American Music: The Hightone Records Story" (Hightone, B): Rootsy blues, country and rock gems.
Bruce Hornsby, "Intersections (1985-2005)" (RCA/Legacy, A-): His songs bloom improvisationally in concert form.
"A Life Less Lived: The Gothic Box" (Rhino, B):Leather-clad box of gloom and doom.
"The Byrds, There Is a Season" (Columbia/Legacy, B+) and David Crosby, "Voyage" (Atlantic/Rhino, B+). At the crossroads of California folk rock.
Bee Gees, "The Studio Albums 1967-1968" (Reprise, A-): Australia's answer to the Beatles in their pre-disco prime.
Tony Joe White, "Swamp Music: The Complete Monument Recordings" (Rhino, B): Growlin' polecat gets down and greasy.
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