Boxing Day! 10 Boxed Sets for the Rock Fan on Your Holiday List

This may or may not be a great time for rock ‘n’ roll, but it’s certainly a great time for remembering great times, thanks to the proliferation of boxed sets from classic rock figures. Some resist outtakes and give us only the original recordings, as in the case of new multi-disc collections from Bruce Springsteen and Joni Mitchell. Others dredge up every outtake or rehearsal in existence from a certain era, as in the cases of Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley, as if to put to the test the theory that even hearing the veritable burps of the greats from the ’60s and ’70s trumps the best that today’s musicians have to offer.

How much boxing can you stand? We hope it’s a lot, because here, just in time for gift season, are 10 fresh boxed sets that every rock fan on your shopping list needs to help usher out pop’s Year of the Booty:

BOB DYLAN & THE BAND
The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11

Was it worth the wait to finally get an official, cleaned-up, all-encompassing release of what bootleggers have relished for nearly five decades? The words “I shall be released” never seemed so un-apropos. Yet the treasure trove of 1967 recordings that virtually invented the term “bootleg” has finally found its belated way into Dylan’s Bootleg Series, in toto, and it’s the essential purchase of 2014. Yes, Sony has issued two versions, and yes, if you’re on a budget, you could settle for the two-disc distillation instead of the full six-disc box. But you don’t really want the word “settled” rattling through your head on your deathbed, do you? Although these raggedy recordings with the Band were put down as publishing demos or jams, there’s nothing less than the invention of Americana happening in these grooves. Having thrown over his folk/protest phase for the sneering stream-of-consciousness rock of his mid-’60s period, Dylan was by 1967 outrageously throwing that over for rootsier sounds that felt simultaneously ancient and utterly ungrounded. It’s fun hearing him launch into Johnny Cash songs — at last, we know that Dylan, too, has shot men in Reno — but when he covers his own “Blowin’ in the Wind” as a cranky blues-rock rager, you’re reminded he reinvented himself almost as often as he reinvented rock. Two handsome pullout books offer plenty of archival photos as well as vintage newspaper clips that remind us just what a ruckus the tease of unreleased Dylanology could raise back in the ’60s.

JONI MITCHELL
Love Has Many Faces — A Quartet, a Ballet, Waiting to Be Danced

If you’re looking at the title and concept for this four-disc collection and feeling slightly puzzled, you’re not alone. It’s far from a strict hits compilation, although most of Mitchell’s more famous songs are represented (“Help Me” being one of the ones that is not). Her epic goal was try to piece songs from her roughly four decades of recording into a non-chronological, four-part suite, originally intended to be the soundtrack for a semi-narrative ballet that never came to fruition. “Try to notice how the end of one song leads into the next,” she urges listeners in the liner notes. And what notes these are: Her 16-page essay, though it jumps from topic to topic, is as close as we’re likely to get to a Mitchell autobiography, and it’s every bit as fascinating, high-minded, and blunt as you’d expect. She both praises and cajoles the brilliant musicians she’s worked with over the years — complaining, for example, that Herbie Hancock never listened to the words of her songs to think about how he might really augment them until he was urged to years later by a producer on a tribute project. You read how Rod Steiger came in to record an evangelistic cameo on a song and then refused to change it when she pointed out he’d read the wrong word — bellowing, “Get this woman out of here!” A lack of the proper respect is a running theme, as she remembers getting together with David Geffen and Bob Dylan to listen first to the latter’s Planet Waves (“not one of his best”) and then her own Court and Spark (“I was so proud of it!”). While everyone was “very effusive” about the lackluster Dylan album, when they got to Mitchell’s, “Bob pretended to fall asleep” and Geffen “nodded feebly.” Another woman in the studio asks Joni, “Why are they doing this to you?” Mitchell’s answer: “I don’t know. I think I’m Jackie Robinson.” Later, she writes, “This package is oozing with talent… The Grammys look like a porno convention! Is that the look? I’m 70 years old. It’s been 30 years since I was a cougar. Now there’s a look! What about the songs of a sabre tooth tiger?” You’d have to call her arrogant if it weren’t for how nearly every one of the 53 songs here proves her right. That settles it: We’re not getting off her lawn.

WINGS
Venus and Mars
At the Speed of Sound

Nobody does it better, when it comes to the design of boxed sets, than Paul McCartney, who makes each new release in his archival series into a fine-art-quality book. You could guess that he really, really wants the world to see the hundreds of unpublished Linda photos that have been accruing dust for decades, and spares no expense in making sure we see them in the best possible light. (And best possible scent; if you like the way different kinds of high-quality paper smell, opening a Macca boxed set is a treat just on that level.) As for the music itself, now that McCartney has gotten through universally beloved albums like Band on the Run, we’re getting into the more uneven years, when the releases might have suffered a bit for his charmingly naïve belief that Wings could be a democracy. But both Venus and Mars and Speed of Sound have charms galore — and yes, I’m including Linda’s weirdly rockabilly-flavored “Cook of the House” among them. More obviously, besides “Listen to What the Man Said,” there’s the Tennessee-inspired “Junior’s Farm,” a non-LP track that represented perhaps the very last vestige of a time when it seemed logical to leave your best singles off the album. McCartney’s outtakes are never as copious as you’d hope, but what music fan will pass up the chance to hear the lone moment when John Bonham joined Wings? Reading the copious historical essays about Wings’ aborted sojourns in Nashville and New Orleans, you might get the sense of some opportunity lost. Or, you could just enjoy flipping through photographs of Paul and Linda and their little buddies discovering America and focus on how their romance wasn’t silly… it wasn’t silly… it wasn’t silly at all.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
The Complete Album Collection Vol. 1, 1973-1984

Someday, perhaps, we will understand why it took so many eons for Springsteen’s early catalog albums to get the sonic upgrade that masterworks half their size would deserve. And that time will probably be in the afterlife, since there’s no sufficient explanation he or his record company could possibly offer us now. The point is that they’re here, and you can finally listen to “Incident on 57th Street” without feeling like you drove through some mud on 54th. No extras here; just the basics — which is kind of like saying that the Sistine Chapel doesn’t come with bonus material. So, your choice: the LP version of the box, which could cause a shelf or floor to collapse, or the handily miniaturized (and cheaper) CD version? It’s worth noting that both editions come with a download card, which shifts the weight thoroughly toward picking up the vinyl. Even if you don’t own a turntable like all your younger and hipper friends, you are going to want to flip open the meticulously recreated cover of Greetings from Asbury Park, or re-experience the gatefold revelation of Born to Run — remember when Bruce didn’t deliberately favor butt-ugly cover art? — or see the album inserts exactly as invented. The exterior box, a stickered and battered tour crate, also only makes sense in this format. With all due respects to ecology, massive amounts of cardboard really are your friend here.

ELVIS PRESLEY
That’s the Way It Is — Deluxe Edition

When you think of 1970s Elvis, you think of… karate chops. (We’re going to give you credit and assume you don’t just naturally go to “fat.”) But when was he last great? Was it really, as often popularly thought, the ‘68 Comeback special? The subsequent Memphis sessions that produced “Suspicious Minds,” his last real hurrah as a hit-maker? Sorry, but you’re off by a year or two. And Elvis in Vegas did not automatically equate with Elvis in hell. In 1970, Presley spent five nights in the studio in Nashville, and then six nights on stage at the International Hotel in Vegas, for what were arguably the last recordings that found him at his riveting vocal peak. Recordings of both an audio and video nature, thankfully, since the Vegas stint was captured for a feature film that got re-edited and expanded 14 years ago. Both versions of the movie are on DVD in this luxurious package, but the eight CDs in the set are what will really keep Elvis-ologists occupied. Six shows are presented in their entirety, with Elvis switching things up in a big way each night. The original That’s the Way It Is album is worthwhile, even if it leans a little too much on recreating the dated production majesty of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” (which, naturally, Presley covers). The raw sessions and rehearsal jams with James Burton and his other musicians let you hear how Elvis sounded with the rock ‘n’ roll band that was buried under all that countrypolitan orchestration. The whole thing wraps up with a muffled return to the raunchy bluesiness of “Santa Claus is Back in Town,” in which Elvis is inspired to take the Lord’s name in vain. If you need to be reminded that he was a spectacular tenor as well as a black belt — and we all do — this expansive reclamation of his last golden age will do the trick.

DAVID BOWIE
Nothing Has Changed [Deluxe Edition]

Bowie isn’t about to give up any copious Joni Mitchell-style liner notes — or even a sentence, since he’s refused to be anyone’s talking head in this latest and least gregarious of his comebacks. But what can we glean just from the title or track listings? That may depend on whether you’re looking at the two-CD or three-CD edition. The shorter version of the collection proceeds in chronological order, from “Space Oddity” to the sole newly recorded track, “Sue (or In a Season of Change).” The longer edition? Just the opposite — it starts with “Sue” and climaxes with “Liza Jane,” a song he cut exactly 50 years ago. Here’s a guy who really wants to have it both ways, and that probably extends to viewing the title both ironically and not: Rock’s favorite chameleon has never truly shed his skin. Be sure you do spring for the extended set, because while “Sue” is a kickoff that’s right in line with the excellence of his recent The Next Day album, you can never go wrong by climaxing with a whole disc’s worth of glam-rock.

CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG
CSNY 1974

Classic rock fans spent a lot of time this year thinking about two stars who will never, ever get back together — and it wasn’t Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal. Rather, it was Neil Young and David Crosby, with both acknowledging that Young had finally said a full-on CSNY reunion would never happen again, presumably because of Crosby’s candid comments about his ex-partner’s divorce from Pegi Young and alleged new romance with Daryl Hannah. So we’ll just have to live with our memories… and, thanks to the 40-years-on release of CSNY 1974, newly refreshed recollections of their peak moment. Not everyone remembers the ‘74 tour as uniformly great: Crosby has said he was reluctant to put three discs’ worth of material in this set when the recordings were so uneven. The liner notes in the nearly 200-page booklet quote Young’s contention from his recent memoir that “most of these big stadium shows were just no good. The technology was not there for the sound… [and] the group was more into showboating than the music.” Given all these caveats and mea culpas, is it any surprise that the music turns out to be… well, blissful, actually? As seems to be the standard now, you can buy this set in several different iterations, condensed and not. The longest — and you’ll want it for that epic booklet — combines one DVD of video footage with three compact discs of music… or with a single disc of Blu-Ray audio, probably in deference to the CD-hating Young.

MILES DAVIS
Miles at the Fillmore — Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3

If you’re wondering why a jazz collection is being named in a roundup of rock sets, you can be excused for not having a great memory for 1970, when there was a belief, however naïve, that a real fusion might be achieved among audiences. A poster included in this set reproduces the letter that Columbia Records chief Clive Davis wrote to the Fillmore chain’s impresario, Bill Graham, urging him to let Miles Davis onto one of his rock ‘n’ roll bills at the New York branch, confident that the mercurial trumpeter had counter-culture appeal to spare, now that he was branching into more mind-bending fare like Bitches Brew. The promoter acceded, even if Miles Davis himself was not thrilled by the idea of opening for Neil Young or the Steve Miller Band when he’d been a headliner for ages. Somehow, it worked — and it might have worked because of the sheer amount of weed in the room, since it’s difficult to imagine one of today’s typically more sober rock audiences eagerly giving in to music this challenging and difficult to find form within. Or maybe it really was that much more an accepting time, as the liner notes writer was on hand for one of the four Fillmore East shows and swears “the audiences on these nights were fully engaged and enthusiastic.” What the music sounds like, in these unedited performances, is the invention of a particularly virtuosic kind of proto-punk-rock.

GEORGE HARRISON
The Apple Years 1968-75

Beatlemaniacs with long memories may recall that this collection’s “sequel,” The Dark Horse Years 1976-1992, came out a decade ago, and that period of Harrison’s career wasn’t necessarily the one fans were clamoring to collect. Why’d it take another 10 years to box up what most devotees would consider the best stuff? Krishna only knows, but it’s a great chance for everyone who already owns the requisite copy of All Things Must Pass to consider the gems that popped up on the three mid-’70s albums that followed… as well as the pioneering weirdness of the two instrumental albums from the late ’60s that preceded it. While still in the Beatles, Harrison experimented with Indian music on the Wonderwall soundtrack, then realized he wasn’t a good enough sitar player and went electronic on the appropriately titled Electronic Sound, which has been cited by the Chemical Brothers as an influence. The box these six albums comes in is a handsome and handy thing indeed, with its flip top. The small, hardbound book within is beautifully printed on paper so glossy you’d swear your fingers are getting wet. And for packaging nostalgists, important details are observed, like recreating the very textural cover of 1995’s Extra Texture (Read All About It). Harrison was always, for lack of a better term, the most buffeted Beatle, and above all, the joy he found upon fully expressing himself in All Things is the sort of thing you wish somebody would box up and sell. Now, they have.