Last November, we noted how Record Store Day’s Black Friday edition had finally come into its own as a place where new, instant-rarity vinyl provocateurs such as Billie Eilish and Talking Heads had thrown in their lot with RSD elders such as Todd Rundgren, Elton John, and the Grateful Dead. For 2025’s RSDBF, although there’s still not enough hip-hop or country packages, the likes of GloRilla, Dwight Yoakam, and unique Dr. Dre collections have taken up some of the slack.
The top-40 of vinyl-devoted artists below will aid your post-turkey digestion this Friday with fresh rarities from Eilish, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Billy Joel, Bad Brains, and late-greats Robbie Robertson and Warren Zevon. Take a look at our picks for the most interesting packages—across genres and decades—from this year’s RSDBF event. See you in line at your favorite vinyl shop on Friday morning (or Thursday night with a thermos full of coffee or bourbon, if you’re smart).
Albert Ayler & Don Cherry, Europe 1964 (ORG)
That which burns the brightest blazes out the fastest—that’s the premise of this mad compilation embracing the short (well, four LPs, so not that short) but incendiary collaboration between two of free jazz’s genius lions: saxophonist Albert Ayler with Don Cherry on cornet, acting as part of the former’s quartet featuring Gary Peacock on double bass and Sunny Murray on drums. Considering that in 1964 Ayler still had the voodoo-blues devil on his back, there’s something grooving between Peacock and Murray. But don’t mistake that for stricture or convention, certainly not where or when Cherry and Ayler come to play. Including live gigs at Copenhagen’s Jazzhus Montmartre and a thought-lost VARA radio session in the Netherlands, this box set is ripe with Ayler and Cherry tackling surprisingly blunt yet manic versions of songs such as “Ghosts” and “Angels” as if they’re acting through the famous shootout scene in Heat—hypnotically, dangerously, with bullets flying everywhere.
Alice Cooper, Welcome to My Nightmare Live from the Forum 6/17/75 (RHINO)
Though currently on a reminiscing family reunion with the membership of the original Alice Cooper band (Michael Bruce, etc.), this first-ever-released live recording from the black heart of Los Angeles is where the solo Alice made his debut as a full-blown showman who didn’t have to chop his head off, kill chickens, or hang himself for attention. Instead, he let the brassy, ballsy, then-new music from his solo debut, Welcome to My Nightmare, do the loud talking for him. So, indeed, you get his top-10 ballad “Only Women Bleed” handsomely paired with full-band classics such as “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” “Billion Dollar Babies,” and “I’m Eighteen” played by nearly the same heavy musicians who Lou Reed used for Rock ’n’ Roll Animal with the same clean, cutting guitar army sound that made “Sweet Jane” an FM radio smash.
B.B. King, Broadcasting the Blues: Live from Germany and Sweden (TIME TRAVELER)
B.B. and his Lucille have long been America’s Ambassadors for the Blues, and the never-before-released concerts from Germany’s Swing In television program and a Swedish live concert presentation prove that nothing was lost in translation between the Delta and Europe. Doubly fascinating, however, is that these live shows came between 1968 and 1974, the very moment that psychedelic guitar masters Beck, Hendrix, Clapton, and Page were at their most uproarious. All that and B.B. still wins, beating down a righteous R&B groove of “Night Time,” finding space for hit melodies such as “The Thrill Is Gone,” and reinventing brawny blues psychedelia beyond what his progeny had in store on hypnotic live tracks such as the back-to-back brilliance of “Don’t Answer the Door” and “Move to the Jungle,” along with “Going Out of My Mind” next door to “I Got Some Outside Help (I Don’t Really Need).”
Bad Brains, Live at the Bayou: Washington D.C. July 14, 1980/March 15, 1981 (TIME TRAVELER)
Jazz Detective Zev Feldman moves away from his nickname-sake job title into more varied (and, frankly, freaky) fare in his findings of the rarest-ever tapes from the ragga-hardcore genius ensemble Bad Brains right before H.R. & Company dropped their self-titled debut disc in 1982. The best thing about this live package is how frigging committed the unit sounds on every beat, hoot, and toast, and how freshly alive and crisp these newly found tapes sound and sizzle.
Billie Eilish, Live (INTERSCOPE)
Billie Eilish might not love Elon Musk, but she and FINNEAS did inaugurate 2024’s live Songline video series for Jeff Bezos and Amazon, which is dedicated to the craft of songwriting and track-making. The sibling twosome dissected and reconfigured four songs from their third album Hit Me Hard and Soft, like Victor Frankenstein packing fat and muscle onto his monster. The whole Songline show was cool in terms of processing the likes of “Skinny” and “Wildflower,” and understanding how both sibs got to which “Birds” flapped what “Feather.” Never before released physically, I wouldn’t mind hearing more of the same from the Eilish brain trust.
Billy Joel, Live From Long Island (LEGACY)
In a year when Billy Joel has been celebrated by one of the best-ever music documentaries at HBO, it’s essential to take note of his concert recordings, as “live” was the ideal setting for the Tin Pan Alley piano man, the Jerry Lee Lewis–like rocker, and the guy with a chip on his shoulder from all of the lousy criticism of the time. You’d have to be all three to pull off this—or any—live version of “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant,” the “Bohemian Rhapsody” of the New York boroughs. This three-album package comes from a 1982 show on his home turf, even though it leads off with a better-than-it-should-be take on “Allentown.”
Bob Dylan, The Original Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan + Masters of War (Live in Alan Lomax’s Apartment) (LEGACY)
Sold separately, fans of T. Chalamet’s A Complete Unknown will be thrilled to see these earliest of Dylan rarities. The 7-inch 45 of Bob the Bard’s spindly, spiney recording of his protest classic “Masters of War” was taped solo in ethnomusicology legend Alan Lomax’s apartment in 1962, with its B-side being the conversation that the folky pair held after the recording. This rare gem is all but topped by the 1963 Freewheelin’ album as it was meant to be: conceived with four additional tracks (beloved and oft-bootlegged Dylan oddities “Rocks and Gravel,” “Let Me Die in My Footsteps,” “Rambling, Gambling Willie,” and another of his socio-conscious epics, “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues”) and featuring the sophomore LP’s original, never-before-seen liner notes.
Bobby Womack, Live in London (PRESTIGE ELITE)
While ’60s and ’70s vintage soul and R&B records have always found a home as part of Record Store Day’s revivalism, the ’90s have usually missed out on the celebration. Live in London hits both eras with this 1991 live recording from London’s Town & Country Club starring the growly legend Bobby Womack in his self-proclaimed What’s Going On period. This means Womack and his fine-as-wine, slick-but-sticky live band was cough-crooning through the cuts of his then-newly released Save the Children album (“Baby I’m Back”) and looking backward to hits such as the psychedelic shack-soul of “Harry Hippie” and his Stones-y smash “It’s All Over Now.”
Charley Patton, The Father of Delta Blues: Selections from Paramount Recordings, Vol. 2 (ORG)
When you’ve won the reputation of being a Daddy of the Delta during the Great Depression as a rurally set bluesman, you’ve got a lot of proving to do. Luckily, Patton was unslowed and unbowed as a writer and as a singer, and since the release of the historic Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton box set and the first volume of Org Music’s Paramount Recordings, novices and longtime aficionados of the man behind “Pony Blues” have been amply rewarded. This deeper dive into Patton’s Mississippi-scented songcraft holds a bounty of rich oddities, twisted linguistics, parochial storytelling, and passionate soul on tracks such as “When Your Ways Get Dark,” “You Gonna Need Somebody When You Die,” and a worrisome “Troubled ’Bout My Mother.”
Curtis Mayfield, Curtis (RHINO RESERVE)
Audiences at the top of the 1970s were dazzled by Curtis Mayfield’s first soundtrack effort for Superfly and his detailed street character portraits of life in the American ghetto that included “Pusherman” and “Freddie’s Dead.” But upon leaving his socially conscious Impressions in 1969, Mayfield was set to make maximum impact as a songwriter whose fine, lined funk was as clinical and incisive as his smart-and-savvy lyrics. The topics of African-American pride (“Move on Up,” “Miss Black America”) and daily struggle (“(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go,” “The Other Side of Town”) were Mayfield’s wordy hood playground, and to these subjects he created wah-wah-infused symphonies guided by his own gorgeous falsetto croon.
Danny Elfman, Big Top Pee-wee: The Original Soundtrack Album (LEGACY)
Everyone is so used to celebrating all things Pee-wee’s Big Adventure that it’s easy to forget that Danny Elfman also wrote and recorded equally adventurous, Tim-Burton-worthy compositions for Herman’s second, not-so-well-received film. Even if Big Top Pee-wee wasn’t as absurdly funny and fresh as its predecessor, Elfman’s music was—even more grand, goofy, and aptly carnival-esque. And in a year where Paul Reubens got his daring documentary due at HBO, it’s nice to see a picture disc dedicated to the 1988 film and the work of its magical star and majestically silly soundtrack maker.
The Doors, Live in Copenhagen (RHINO)
Pressed on crystal-ship-clear vinyl, Rhino’s ongoing and truly incisive dive—Record Store Days and beyond—into never-before-released Doors concert documentation leaps backward from its recent look into the quartet’s end-days live sets with this September 1968 Denmark showcase. Though the studio Doors were knee-deep in their winning pop period (hello to a freak-out version of “Hello, I Love You” here), Morrison & Company made “Break on Through (To the Other Side)” into a swinging blues suite, brought out the unwieldy booziness of “Alabama Song” and “The Wasp (Texas Radio & The Big Beat),” and closed the Denmark concert with an unearthly back-to-back capture of “A Little Game” into a dire “Unknown Soldier.”
Dr. Dre, Compton: A Soundtrack by Dr. Dre [Instrumentals] (INTERSCOPE)
Anyone who believes that cinematic hip-hop maker Dr. Dre got a raw deal by critics and listeners alike expecting The Chronic Part 3 must take pause and listen to the nuances and hidden crevices of his 2015 neo-orchestral instrumental album, Compton. Like the LA County space itself, there’s inner-city bucolic spots such as Wilson Park alongside the hip-hop capital that is Rosecrans Avenue to be found stretched across two albums of the good (“It’s All on Me,” “Deep Water”), the bad (“Loose Cannons,” “Issues”), and the smoke-and-smolderingly apocalyptic (“Genocide,” “Darkside/Gone”).
Dwight Yoakam, And Then I Wrote… The First Three Albums of the ’90s (REPRISE)
The only thing that was as Bakersfield-great-Buck-Owens-worthy as Dwight Yoakam’s first three albums of the 1980s—the triple twang of Guitars, Cadillacs, etc. etc., Hillbilly Deluxe, and Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room—were his next three: If There Was a Way, This Time, and Gone, all of which were released by 1995. As far as original outlaw country with a cunning smile and an unbridled heart filled with deep emotion went, no one did it better or bolder than ’90s Yoakam-penned songs such as “Sad, Sad Music,” “A Thousand Miles From Nowhere,” and “Sorry You Asked?” Also, smart and sassy are the many tracks that Yoakam co-wrote across these three LPs with Greek country songsmith Kostas such as “King of Fools.” Plus, an entire album of era-appropriate rarities such as a woozy cover of Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” and the Dead’s “Truckin’,” along with Kelly Willis duets such as “Golden Ring” and “Take Me,” make this all-vinyl box set a golden purchase.
Elton John & Brandi Carlile, Who Believes in Angels: Live at the London Palladium (INTERSCOPE)
To celebrate their then-newly released duets album of original material with a handful of the musicians who produced and played on Who Believes in Angels? (Andrew Watt, Chad Smith, Josh Klinghoffer), Elton John and Brandi Carlile hit the London Palladium on March 26 of this year to run through old and current favorites. I’m always happy to hear Carlile’s “The Joke” and John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” but I can’t ignore that this Angels-cobbled band overdid their solo selections. That said, the group backing Bran-ton made bigger, brawnier work of new duets such as “Little Richard’s Bible” and “Swing for the Fences,” so it’s a bit of a give-and-take package.
Eric Burdon & War, The Very Best of Eric Burdon & War (RHINO)
I usually avoid vinyl “greatest hits” or “best of” packages, but if it’s the first fruits of Britain’s brawling, blues-bawling Eric Burdon in tandem with the Bay Area’s funkiest, jazziest biker crew, War—paired for 1970's Eric Burdon Declares “War” and The Black-Man's Burdon—packaged with recently found bonus cuts and pressed on two army-fatigues-inspired color vinyl slabs, I say “Spill the Wine.”
GloRilla, Ehhthang Ehhthang (INTERSCOPE)
Ever since I first spied the cheerleading rap of GloRilla and her dance team, everything that this crew has done has been golden—quite literally now, as their breakout mixtape is released for RSDBF on neon golden-yellow vinyl. Blast the “Wanna Be” remix with Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B loud, and the good feeling of “WAP” inspiration just sails across the room.
Grateful Dead, The Warfield, San Francisco, CA Oct 4 & 6, 1980 + On a Back Porch Vol. 2 (RHINO)
For the 60th anniversary of the Dead’s birth, Grateful archive key-master/producer David Lemieux looks back on the band’s 15th anniversary and that autumn’s “Acoustic and Electric” tour where long acoustic sets preceded two electric sets every night, and highlighted the talents of their newest member, pianist Brent Mydland. This deep dive into the group’s living history book offers ambitious takes on the Dead’s post-Beat brand of urban folk and wiry blues with classics such as “Dire Wolf” and “Cassidy,” as well as a cool, searing, set-ending performance of “Ripple.” In a truly slick move, Rhino offers the two-LP Warfield in a heavy cardboard sleeve with a printed “slick” paper glued on. This second Back Porch volume is cool for collectors, as well, as it celebrates the Dead’s relationship with Dogfish Head Brewery, with each brand’s symbols forever tied into one weird design.
Joni Mitchell, Rolling Thunder Revue (RHINO)
Bob Dylan’s famously rambling, ramshackle, mid-1970s multi-artist tour welcomed names such as Roger McGuinn, Joan Baez, Kinky Friedman, and Mick Ronson under his big tent. But only Joni Mitchell would dare to get her own Rolling Thunder Revue album out of Dylan’s live tour. Then again, equally famous is the fact that Mitchell is the only songwriter whose melodic and lyrical prowess could intimidate Dylan. Though there is her usual klatch of folkie moments (“Harry’s House,” “A Case of You”) and jazzy interludes (“Edith and the Kingpin”) on display here, Mitchell’s best vocals and a feel for deep rumination is reserved for looming, roomy Hejira tracks such as “Coyote” from the Revue’s Montreal stop and “Black Crow” fresh from Fort Worth.
Karly Hartzman & MJ Lenderman, Live at Third Man Records (THIRD MAN)
Of course Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman and MJ Lenderman did their erstwhile- and future-bent and rubbery Americana best in 2024 when pulling from their collaborative catalog, as well as from Lenderman’s solo output, to record this live release (turn “TLC Cagematch” and “Formula One” up loud). But as it stands with any Third Man pressing, it’s the process which equally amazes, recorded as this was all in one shot, direct to acetate, while the twosome stared into each other’s eyes at Third Man Records’ Blue Room in Nashville. With no overdubs, no redos, no starting-and-stopping, this RSD token is as live and lithe as they come.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Live in ’24 (HAVING FUN)
If any prog-jam-metal-etc.-centric ensemble of wizards, lizards, and/or gizzards was going to have an album designed to be shaped as a paper airplane while focusing its sound on the band’s return to bar blues and boogie, it would be these kings, and with this in-concert, four-lengthy-songs-filled record.
Larry Mullins + Mike Watt, We Will Fall (ORG)
Mike Watt has landed his boat in many harbors throughout his longtime naval commission as America’s punk-rock/weird-jazz tugboat captain. The one that made the most and the least sense simultaneously is when he helped steer his bass engine through Iggy Pop and the Asheton brothers’ Stooges reunion at sea. Here, with avant-garde drummer/MOOG owner/gong-banger Larry Mullins (known to most as Toby Dammit), Watt turns—or, rather, reroutes—The Stooges’ “We Will Fall” into a nearly 40-minute drone tone poem (20 minutes on each side) with more low end than a bilge barge, and more prayerful, mantra-like fervor than a Sunday mass. As creepy, serene, and holy as this is as an exclusive RSD commission, I’d give a million in prizes to hear Iggy try out “We Will Fall” in this manner, and with these two sailors.
Love, The Complete Elektra Albums (ELEKTRA)
In a time when Black 1960s psychedelic soul icons are lionized, finally, in death for their innovations (RIP Sly Stone), quadrophonic, high-ceiling garage-rock/R&B godhead, guitarist, singer, and composer Arthur Lee died too early in the Instagram/TikTok cycle to get the hero treatment. This vinyl box, however, does hero worship’s necessary heavy lifting by bundling Lee’s Love’s essentials—the full blossom of Elektra label output that was 1966’s double dare of Love and the experimental expressionism of Da Capo, 1967’s still-bold Forever Changes, and 1969’s magnetically strange Four Sail—into a one-buy-takes-all proposition.
Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Shimmy Shimmy Ya/Brooklyn Zoo (ELEKTRA)
Twelve-inch singles released on Record Store Day usually don’t float my boat, but any opportunity to celebrate ODB’s solo album, Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version, on its 30th anniversary is reason enough to whip out your wallet for six versions each of “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” and “Brooklyn Zoo”—extended, instrumental, stripped, and all.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Vibrations in the Village: Live at the Village Gate + Seek & Listen: Live at The Penthouse (RESONANCE)
Though live recordings such as Kirk in Copenhagen, I, Eye, Aye, and Brotherman in the Fatherland are soulful, silly, and alluring things, there’s forever been the issue of how blind multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk interacted with his music on stage, and how that was captured on tape: as everything all at once. Wearing three or more instruments around his neck, Kirk blew, sang, and hummed into flutes, recorders, clarinets, and saxophones—even self-modified saxes such as the manzello. What’s most astounding about this funky feat is how Kirk brought separate, unequaled emotions to each reed, horn, and breath, as if he was his own gospel chorus with its glorious soloists up front, loudly and proudly. The Resonance label’s newest live Kirk offerings have an over-the-top fleshiness to their fuzzy logic, their heavy breathing, and their weird griot’s grooviness that all comes out on moments such as “Baritone Oboe Blues” in New York City and “Ode to Billie Joe” in Seattle. How over-the-top? You can almost see him playing, laughing, and humming—all at the same time, of course.
Ray Barretto, Together (CRAFT)
If Craft only concentrated on their controlling interest in Fania Records’ Latin continuum catalog of the 1960s and ’70s, they’d be sainted. This one is from label all-star percussion god and bandleader Ray Barretto, a tasty treat from 1969 that ties together his fiery Afro-Cuban soul-and-jazz sound with the traditions of salsa and the decade’s beloved boogaloo pulse with singer Adalberto Santiago, bassist Andy Gonzalez, pianist Louis Cruz, trumpeter Roberto Rodriguez, and Barretto’s brothers in the beat Orestes Vilato and Tony Fuentes. Open the shrink wrap and play “Vive y Vacila” loud.
Robbie Robertson, Filmworks: Insomnia (OMINVORE)
Paired with a second, similarly named autobiography dedicated to his dedication to director Martin Scorsese, this volume of Robertson-composed songs and scores concentrates on the start of their cinematic relationship, as well as his work on Carny, a 1980 film that Robbie produced, co-wrote, and starred in with Gary Busey and Jodie Foster. Pulling on the staged heartstrings of The Band’s early retirement, Robertson’s Last Waltz theme with orchestra, its instrumental refrain, and “Out of the Blue” are rich, manicured, and massaged new tracks performed by The Band on an MGM soundstage as opposed to their live Thanksgiving Day 1976 farewell at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom. The rest of Filmworks: Insomnia finds Robertson in a jazzy but bruised big-band mode as he zig-zags across the bloody ring of Raging Bull and its snazzy period songs, as well as the aptly kaleidoscopic, lesser-known, loop-de-loop music of Carny (including the previously unreleased tune “Carnival Ride”). Here’s hoping that Omnivore and the Robbie Robertson Estate keep up the good work that existed between this mutual admiration society up through Scorsese’s 2023 epic Killers of the Flower Moon.
Ronnie D'Addario, Written by Ronnie D'Addario (OMINVORE)
If Billy Joel isn’t Long Island enough for you, try this: Guitarist-songwriter Ronnie D’Addario is the toast of that area’s Irish music scene thanks to his work with Tommy Makem, and his songwriting credits range from having The Carpenters cover his tracks in the 1980s to being a regular soundtrack presence on streaming television in the 21st century. It also just so happens that his two sons make up the power psych-pop duo The Lemon Twigs. So the whole family got together, brought in pop fellaheen from Todd Rundgren (who pulls a Runt and multi-layers every voice on “I See the Patterns”), quirky mastermind Mac DeMarco, Sean Lennon Ono, and singing members of the Wondermints (Brian Wilson’s backing band) to tackle dad-D’Addario’s best songs, backed by his boys. Still, all three D’Addario men save pop’s best tracks for themselves, with “Tree Stumps,” “Heavenly Night,” and “If I Were You” being the perfect three-song close to a perfect album.
Sleigh Bells, Treats (MOM + POP)
The toast of Brooklyn’s noise-pop/metal-hop/electro-punk scene (which, in 2010, was pretty much just Sleigh Bells, as Fischerspooner were out of the picture) just released their first new album in a minute with April’s Bunky Becky Birthday Boy. Still, dreamy vocalist Alexis Krauss and clang-happy guitarist/producer Derek Miller chose to return to the scene of the crime for RSDBF with their distortion-heavy debut disc and apt-titled tracks such as “Riot Rhythm,” “Infinity Guitars,” and “Machines.”
Slo Burn, Amusing the Amazing (ORG)
The flames of post-Kyuss stoner rock blazed highest (literally and figuratively) for sludge icon John Garcia between 1996 and 1997 when the songwriter released a handful of dirge-y demos and this four-track EP. Though not quite as spaced-out and thrash-jammy as the Big Ky, the short, sharp “The Prizefighter” and the tautly frenetic “Muezli” are still intense.
The Stranglers, Rattus Norvegicus [2025 Remaster] (RHINO)
There are so many reasons to be excited by The Stranglers’ inclusion in the RSD hamster wheel, the least of which is having their first-ever LP released now in cleared, cutting sound on neon-green vinyl. When UK punk’s first wave hit, The Stranglers were already the old men in the club, having been in what was likely a Doors cover band since 1974. Yet their pre-goth, art-rocking guitars, wheezing Manzarek-like organ (RIP Dave Greenfield), melody-driven bass lines, and icily mankind-hating lyrics of moody Morrison-esque singers/lyricists Hugh Cornwell and Jean-Jacques Burnel were a fascinating counterpoint to the simple three-chord tracks of the movement from The Damned to the Sex Pistols (plus, they had their stuff released in the US by A&M before anyone else got American label deals). Because The Stranglers were always just a little more misanthropic or had lousy legacy management, you never hear how “Peaches” should be a classic, or how a box set of rarities should be on every critic’s must-want list. Let this be the start of a Stranglers renaissance.
Talking Heads, Tentative Decisions: Demos & Live (SIRE/RHINO)
At a time when David Byrne’s current tour marks the first time he’s playing “Psycho Killer” live in over 20 years, a collection of Byrne and Chris Frantz’s pre-Heads demos (as The Artistics, the toast of RISD’s frat parties) featuring the spindliest proto-punk prototypes of that song and “Warning Sign” are essential to the canon. So, too, is the summer 1976 live at the Ocean Club version of “Artists Only” at its spikiest, recorded weeks after Byrne leveled himself as the biggest and talkingest of Heads at the same club in the presence of Lou Reed, John Cale, and Patti Smith. So, too, is the raw yet shockingly sophisticated demos of the Heads’ unheralded “Tentative Decisions” and “No Compassion” (from 1975) and “I Wish You Wouldn’t Say That” and “Happy Day” (from 1976, with a nascent Tina Weymouth trying out her liquid bass waves early on in the process). Oh, so the whole LP is essential? Yes.
Todd Rundgren, A Capella (WARNER/RHINO)
How experimental was pop’s most experimental pop-maker’s most experimental album? Rundgren’s manager and Bearsville label boss Albert Grossman—the man behind Bob Dylan’s Dont Look Back—claimed bankruptcy over this 1984 album made strictly solo with Todd’s voice alone. Every noise, note, beat, and melody line was the producer-mixer-composer’s own, including a salty, smooth, harmony-driven cover of The Spinners’ “Mighty Love.” Now, 40 years after its release, A Capella’s best moments—the dark, dreamy “Blue Orpheus,” the cracked R&B rhythms of “Lockjaw”—show where the present-day likes of Björk and Jacob Collier may have gotten some of their best ideas.
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, The Live Anthology: From the Vaults Vol. 1 (WARNER)
It’s about time that Petty became part of Record Store Day, and what better a fashion than by riffing through his and his Heartbreakers’ boxes and bins of live tapes? A slow, slinky version of “Don’t Come Around Here No More” from Saratoga Springs, a quickly punkish “I Need to Know” recorded in Los Angeles, a carousing “No Second Thoughts” done in Philadelphia, and “Born in Chicago” taped (duh) in Chi-town are just four of the highlights from Petty and the Heartbreakers’ first Vault volume. And, sold separately, there’s also a T-shirt of Shepard Fairey’s artwork for the RSD album cover to be had.
Vince Guaraldi Trio, A Charlie Brown Christmas [60th Anniversary] (CRAFT)
Pianist Vince Guaraldi’s spry holiday music boom has been happily exploited to its nth degree in the last 10 years—yet how so few have found his Arbor Day mix or his Indigenous Peoples’ Day theme song is unfathomable. Oddly enough, though, throughout its anniversary celebrations, the only audience not to be given the due of Guaraldi’s supple jazz is that of the kids who the cartoons of Snoopy and Linus were designed for in the first place. So welcome illustrator Charles Schulz back to the party as this collection of holiday favorites such as “Christmas Time Is Here” get housed in a special pop-up gatefold sleeve like those books we had when I was a kid, released to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Peanuts comics.
Warren Zevon, Epilogue: Live at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival (OMNIVORE)
After David Letterman’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction salute to his old friend and musical hero Warren Zevon earlier this month, there’s little else that would give the Werewolf of London’s devoted audience a lump in their collective throats. Save for this: The first-ever release of Zevon’s final concert, recorded August 2002 at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, and featuring everything from the snarky hits (“Poor Poor Pitiful Me,” “Lawyers, Guns and Money”) to the wordily ruminative rarities (“A Tune with No Name,” “Dirty Life and Times”), all played with precision, glee, and tear-inducing sadness. Every sandwich, indeed.
Ween, Shinola, Vol. 1 (ELEKTRA)
The cold, dark woods of Pennsylvania that yielded experimental brothers-in-smarm Gene and Dean Ween have happily opened for business again with this messy host of rarities, B-sides (did they have A-sides?), alternative versions of album favorites, and remastered demos of their test-pattern-pop that the boys recorded between 1990 and 2003. The fidelity is low and the creepiness is at its highest on winningly weird cuts such as “Tastes Good on Th’ Bun,” “Big Fat Fuck,” and “Israel.” Famously, no matter how goofy or bleak Ween was, they always found time for blissfully catchy melodies (at least to my ears) such as those filling “I Fell in Love Today” and the psychedelic masterpiece “How High Can You Fly” like helium to balloons.
Wilco/Jeff Tweedy/Daniel Johnston, dBpm 15 (DBPM)
With Jeff Tweedy on a record-releasing roll, it’s necessary to remember that in 2011, he and the rest of his Wilco brain trust started a label in Chicago for their oddities and invited the oddest and fairest of them all—the late-great primitive abstractionist Daniel Johnston—to their dBpm Records party. For their 14th (or 15th, according to its title) anniversary, on red vinyl, dBpm celebrates its own frantic-folksy ways, the upcoming holy holidays (Tweedy’s winsome “Christmas Must Be Tonight”), the songcraft of Lennon & McCartney and Costello (“Don’t Let Me Down,” “(What's So Funny ’Bout) Peace Love and Understanding”), and, with Johnston, the theme music to Casper the Friendly Ghost.
Various artists, Flowers in the Afternoon: Late 1960’s Sunshine (CRAFT)
The only curated various-artists packages that the Craft label does better (and more rarely) than its Jazz Dispensary series is its psych/garage records produced by psilocybin archivist Alec Palao. And how better to hazily present the halcyon days of the Summer of Love than with sunshine-orange translucent vinyl and the sun-dappled harmonies of The Rock ’n’ Roll Gypsies’ “(It’s a) Love In,” the strangled and wiry guitars of Jefferson Lee’s “Pancake Trees,” and Jeff Monn’s spooky shadow-seasonal “Walking Around in Your Disguise”?
Various artists, Metal Machine Music: Power to Consume, Vol. 1 (LEGACY)
So popular was RSD’s silver-sleeved reissue of Lou Reed’s 1975 anti-music tribute to white noise and feedback (to say nothing of its original necessity: breaking his then-contract with RCA) that the reissue-mostly label Legacy went wild and curated “a formidable lineup of sonic provocateurs” to take inspiration from the mess that Lou made and make it their own, with all of its sine-wave-shattering sound designed to test the limits of their artistry and our patience. The weird thing is that individual tracks such as Thurston Moore’s “Drone Cognizance,” The Rita’s “109 90,” or anything else here by Aaron Dilloway, Drew McDowall, or Pharmakon don’t sound a thing like Reed’s originals (don’t think I didn’t compare the two). So does this mean there’s a second volume to follow?
