The Beatles - In Mono (Capital) $269.98 - NEW

No less an authority than EMI engineer Geoff Emerick writes in his Beatles memoir Here, There and Everywhere, “In contrast to the way they carefully oversaw the original mono mixes, the group had expressed no interest in even being present when we did the [stereo] ones; that’s how little thought we all gave stereo in those days.” Many Beatles connoisseurs prize the mono versions of the albums highly. The new limited-edition box contains 10 Beatles albums in their original mono configuration, plus two discs of non-album mono tracks (similar to Past Masters). These mono editions are available only in the boxed set. As a bonus, the set – which also features mini-LP packaging -- includes original 1965 stereo mixes of Help! and Rubber Soul.

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The Beatles - In Stereo (Capital) $239.98 - NEW

The stereo boxed set includes newly remastered editions of 13 original Beatles albums – 12 British releases and the expanded American LP version of the U.K. EP Magical Mystery Tour – plus a new set compiling 1988’s two Past Masters CDs of non-album tracks. A team of top engineers worked for four years on the remasters, carefully employing state-of-the-art technology to upgrade these cherished titles for the first time in more than two decades. The first four English albums appear on CD in stereo for the first time. Each of the original ‘60s albums, which are packaged in miniature renderings of the LP sleeves, is enhanced with a new mini-documentary created by Bob Smeaton, writer-director of THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY. The stereo albums will also be sold individually.

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Various Artists - Children of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era - 1976 - 1996 (Rhino) $39.99 - USED In a tip of the hat to Lenny Kaye’s original 1972 compilation, this four-CD set is subtitled “Original Artyfacts From the Second Psychedelic Era 1976-1996.” It was Rhino’s third box devoted to the garage-punk scene, following the label’s lavishly expanded reissue of Kaye’s groundbreaking two-LP Elektra album and a 2001 package of international garage noise.

Released in 2005, Children of Nuggets expanded the definition of what constituted garage-rock. As codified by Kaye, garage-punk was the creation of (mostly) white suburban kids who aped the blues/R&B borrowings of the British Invasion stars, with some late-blooming frissons of psychedelia ladled on. The artistes featured on Nuggets II stuck within that framework, though the music was in the main more acid-soaked than that heard on the classic ’72 collection. The game had changed by the late ‘70s, when the first shudderings of punk rock were heard throughout the land. While any rocker worth his or her salt was familiar with Nuggets and the various archival series that succeeded it (Pebbles, Boulders, Back From the Grave, etc.), the work that inspired the original garage musicians was also widely available, and it gained fresh currency in the mire of commerciality into which rock had sunk in the late ‘70s. Children of Nuggets also reflects the sensibilities of its compilers. Co-producer Gary Stewart, then head of Rhino’s A&R department, was an ardent champion of L.A.’s power-pop scene, and many of the selections display his fondness for the more melodic tip of the genre. On the other hand, Alec Palao is a hardcore garage enthusiast who has most recently been plumbing the sharp edge of Detroit garage in compilations devoted to the Motor City’s A-Square label and its blue-eyed soul stars the Rationals. The set naturally displays a pleasant and entirely justifiable Los Angeles bias. Proto-garage ‘70s units like the Nerves (featuring Peter Case, Jack Lee, and Paul Collins) and their successors the Plimsouls and Shelly Yakus’ Unclaimed are spotlighted, as are the multitudinous flag-wavers of the early ‘80s “Paisley Underground” – the Bangs/Bangles, the Salvation Army/Three O’Clock, the Droogs, the Dream Syndicate, the Rain Parade, Green On Red, the Long Ryders, the Pandoras, etc. Stewart’s all-time fave, the South Bay’s the Last, get their due with a couple of tracks. The national standard-bearers are also heard: New York’s Cramps, Fleshtones, Fuzztones, Chesterfield Kings, and Smithereens, Boston’s DMZ and the Lyres, San Francisco’s Flamin’ Groovies, North Carolina’s dB’s. There’s also international seasoning: Acts ranging from the U.K.’s Dukes of Stratosphere (XTC’s psyche-garage alter ego), Soft Boys, and Mickey & the Milkshakes to Sweden’s Nomads and Finland’s Laika and the Cosmonauts are included. Antipodean acts get major representation: Aussie and New Zealand bands heard here include the Lipstick Killers, the Chills, the Church, the Hoodoo Gurus, and the Lime Spiders. The tail end of the revival is present in tracks from Seattle’s Posies and Screaming Trees. The acts cut an astonishing swath through the garage sound, from die-hard Music Machine and Revels knockoffs to bristling appropriations of the MK I sound of the Stones, the Kinks, and the Who (whose ringing “I Can See For Miles” licks reappear with startling frequency). Children of Nuggets is a fond reminder of the richness of garage’s fertile second act. BACK TO TOP

John Lennon - Anthology (Capitol) $39.99 - USED

When I interviewed John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono in 1998 on the eve of the release of the boxed set Anthology, she explained her objective for the collection: “[…I]t was very important to show him as he was. He was always honest in his work, you know, and that was one caring point that I had, to be sort of three-dimensional.” Yoko succeeded in rigorously fulfilling her vision. The box surveys Lennon’s post-Beatles solo career, from his 1970 solo debut Plastic Ono Band to his final album Milk and Honey, released just weeks before his shooting death in December 1980. This body of work is seen through four CDs worth of hitherto unheard archival work – home recordings, demos, alternate takes, and live material. Lennon is revealed in all his aspects: angry, vulnerable, vengeful, loving, blissful, manic. It’s the audio equivalent of a great writer’s notebooks. The first disc, “Ascot” (named after John and Yoko’s English mansion), contains 1969 recordings from the couple’s Toronto “Bed-In For Peace” and the sessions for Plastic Ono Band and its successor Imagine. There are a number of striking early versions of songs from the solo debut; the highlight from the sessions for the sophomore album is a very different alternate run-through of the anthemic title track. Disc two, “New York City,” presents the politicized Lennon of the early ‘70s. During this period, backed by the New York rock band Elephant’s Memory, he wrote and recorded a number of caustic, accusatory songs on subjects ranging from women’s rights to Irish independence to the imprisonment of White Panther activist John Sinclair, many of which are heard live here. There are also a couple of surprising tracks on which John essays songs that ended up on Ringo Starr’s solo albums of the period. Lennon’s “Lost Weekend” of 1974, when he separated from Ono and caroused with Harry Nilsson in Los Angeles, is the source of the material for the third CD. It’s noteworthy for a number of truly beautiful and revealing alternates from the Walls & Bridges sessions, and for several addled and sometimes confrontational tracks produced by Phil Spector for the oldies album Rock & Roll. After his reconciliation with Ono, Lennon withdrew from music for more than five years. The last CD “Dakota” (named after the New York apartment building where he lived and died) is devoted to the songs he wrote and recorded upon his re-emergence in 1980. There are some real gems here – a version of “I’m Losing You” cut with the members of Cheap Trick, home demo recordings of “Watching the Wheels” and “Grow Old With Me.” The loveliest number of all may be a cover of the Platters’ 1955 hit “Only You,” with a guide vocal by Lennon, supplied for Ringo Starr. The songs are often afforded context by home recordings by Lennon, Ono, and their then-young son Sean, plus clips from contemporaneous TV appearances with David Frost, Geraldo Rivera, and even Jerry Lewis. A kind of alternative, warts-and-all portrait of a great rock artist emerges. Few compilations devoted to a major performer have been as candid, or as moving. BACK TO TOP

Heavy Metal (Limited Edition) (Rhino) $39.99 - USED

Here’s a boxed set that is exactly what it says it is. Aimed squarely at headbangers who want a batch of their favorites all in one place, Heavy Metal is an entertaining, cannily curated survey of the titular genre, from its beginnings in the late ‘60s through the advent of grunge in the early ‘90s. Though a couple of key acts are missing here due to licensing issues – Led Zeppelin for one, Def Leppard for another – most fans will find what they’re looking for. The Spinal Tap-referencing box cover depicts the head of a Marshall stack dialed up to 11; just like that amp, this set blows the doors down. The compilation begins with some necessary pre-history. Circa 1968, some rock bands began delving into a bottom-heavy sound laced with clanging, clamorous guitar; the music soon moved beyond the post-Yardbirds “heavy blooze” favored by Led Zeppelin into dark lyrical terrain that explored war, horror, demonism, and other subjects ignored by more conventional groups of the hippie era. The collection charts the evolution of the style from the work of such precursors as Iron Butterfly and Blue Cheer to the keystone work of KISS, Ted Nugent, the tongue-in-cheek Blue Öyster Cult (originators of the metal umlaut), and the universally influential Black Sabbath. Such Brit-metal originators as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden get their due, and the masters of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal – Saxon, Blitzkrieg, Venom, Diamond Head, Raven – appear in all their glory, harbingering the full-on thrash of such prophetic acts as Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer. Anyone who experienced the hair metal explosion of the ‘80s on L.A.’s Sunset Strip will enjoy a stroll down Memory Lane with the likes of Quiet Riot, W.A.S.P., Ratt, Great White, Faster Pussycat, and Poison. The set wraps up with some crucial tracks by new-look metal acts like Pantera and Prong. Many other genre permutations are on display: foreign metal (Switzerland’s Krokus, Germany’s Scorpions, Finland’s Hanoi Rocks, Sweden’s Yngwie Malmsteen, Japan’s Loudness, Australia’s Rose Tattoo, Denmark’s King Diamond, Brazil’s Sepultura), chick metal (Girlschool, Lita Ford), African-American metal (Living Colour), pop metal (Twisted Sister, Skid Row), Christian metal (Stryper), even faux metal (the inevitable Spinal Tap – comedians Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, and Christopher Guest, whose 1984 film parody mocked the excesses of the style). Whether your tastes run to Lemmy, Alice, or Ozzy, you’ll find something to your liking. Metal is considered as a thing unto itself here – the ultimate rite-of-passage music for teenage males – but its reach extends well beyond the genre’s well-defined boundaries. Compilers Mason Williams, Kenny Nemes, and Marc Salata end their overview with the arrival of Nirvana in 1991, but, while grunge eschewed metal’s themes and attack, it’s easy to see some of the major grunge acts – Soundgarden, Tad, Mother Love Bone and its successor Pearl Jam – as extensions of the metallurgists who came before them. Packed with top-flight music, observant track-by-track annotation, and entertaining interviews with everyone from Ronnie James Dio to Sunset Strip club godfather Mario Maglieri, Heavy Metal brings the rock in spades. BACK TO TOP

Where the Action Is! - Los Angeles Nuggets: 1965 - 1968 (Rhino) $52.98 - NEW

Rhino Records has gotten plenty of mileage out of the Nuggets franchise. The original Nuggets compilation, a two-LP 1972 package on Elektra Records curated by journalist/collector (and later Patti Smith Group charter member) Lenny Kaye, was the Dead Sea Scrolls of garage rock. Rhino, which held rights to the name thanks to its association with Warner Music Group, went on to produce a multi-volume Nuggets CD series during the ‘80s, succeeded by an expanded 1998 boxed-set version of the original collection and two more boxes focusing on non-U.S. garage-punk and the genre’s latter-day inheritors. In 2007, Nuggets shifted gears with Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970, which considered the Bay Area’s grooviest epoch through a garage/psyche prism. Where the Action Is! Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968 continues the geographical survey, moving south to survey L.A.’s diverse sonic styles during the Sunset Strip’s heyday. The L.A. package resembles the S.F. collection physically. It’s a book-style presentation containing vintage ads and pix; short illustrated track-by-track biographies of the anthologized groups; an overview by Lawrence Dietz, former editor of the ‘60s L.A. teenzine Cheetah); and a guided tour of local hotspots by Domenic Priore, author of the info-packed history Riot On Sunset Strip. But Where the Action Is! diverges from its predecessor for historical reasons. The San Francisco scene was largely an organic one, the product of the musical/cultural upheaval that flowed from the Bay Area’s era of acid tests, Be-Ins, and ballroom concerts. L.A., on the other hand, was a company town. While the Strip’s clubs served as a nexus for the psychedelic era’s explosive creativity, they existed cheek-to-jowl with the locally centered major labels, which swiftly co-opted the city’s emerging sound and placed it in a highly commercial matrix. The set’s first volume, focusing on Strip bands, is its most listenable. The big names– the Byrds, Love, Buffalo Springfield, the Doors – are here, represented by less-familiar tracks. Also on board are contemporaneous oddballs, like Captain Beefheart and Kaleidoscope, and the soon-to-be-famous, like the Rising Sons’ Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal and future Little Feat honcho Lowell George. Garage stalwarts the Seeds, the Music Machine, and the Standells are heard, alongside less-hip Strip denizens like pop hit-makers the Association. The suburbs are explored on disc two, comprising tracks from groups as diverse as East L.A.’s Thee Midniters and the Premiers and Riverside County’s the Bush. The compilation’s third disc is devoted to the products of L.A.’s studio scene. Some of the material remains vastly enjoyable – the Knickerbockers, Jan & Dean, the Mamas and the Papas, the punky October Country, even the Monkees. Many of the other tunes here are amusing of-the-times concoctions emphasizing trippy post-Beatles effects. (Electric sitar, anyone?) The fourth CD pulls together more psychedelia, early stabs at “canyon rock,” and top-flight stuff from the likes of Gene Clark, Van Dyke Parks, Tim Buckley, and Randy Newman. Where the Action Is! covers a great deal of aesthetic terrain. Digging deep to excavate music that remains wondrously creative and sometimes outright daffy, it’s a comprehensively culled, open-minded look at a vibrant epoch in the City of Angels’ rich musical history. BACK TO TOP

Woody Guthrie - My Dusty Road (Rounder) $74.98 - NEW

In the summer of 2003, a remarkable cache of recordings came to light in some basement storage bins of an apartment building in Brooklyn, New York. Tucked away in dusty cardboard barrels were dozens of metal masters for recordings dating back to the 1940s – including dozens of numbers, including several unreleased sides, cut by folk music legend Woody Guthrie for the Asch and Stinson labels in the spring of 1944. The significance of this trove’s discovery cannot really be overstated. Guthrie’s ’44 sessions had for years been available on LP and then CD in dim second-generation copies. Restored and remastered by engineer Doug Pomeroy for Rounder’s four-CD set My Dusty Road, this material is presented for the first time with its original presence and luster intact. Like The Live Wire, 2007’s breathtaking set of live Guthrie recordings from 1949, this new studio collection -- which includes half a dozen previously unheard selections -- is a crucial addition to the singer-songwriter’s library. Guthrie himself requires little introduction to folk enthusiasts. The Oklahoma-born musician’s homespun, biting, politically brittle compositions and footloose, impish persona had an impact on every folksinger from the ‘40s on, from Pete Seeger and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to Bob Dylan and a host of ‘60s folk movement acolytes. His best-known original songs have become the core of the American folk canon, and they are heard anew on “Woody’s ‘Greatest’ Hits,” the first CD in Rounder’s 54-track collection: “This Land is Your Land,” “Going Down the Road,” “Philadelphia Lawyer,” “Pretty Boy Floyd,” etc. The disc also includes a striking newly discovered song, “Bad Repetation” (sic). The box’s second volume reveals the sources of Guthrie’s music; unsurprisingly, the songs here include a number of energetic Carter Family covers – “Worried Man Blues,” “A Picture From Life’s Other Side,” “Little Darling Pal of Mine,” “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone” – plus several songs purloined from John A. Lomax’s influential 1910 compilation of cowboy songs. Disc three is titled “Woody the Agitator,” and takes in the hard political edge of Guthrie’s music. Throughout his career, he donated his time and energy to the causes of organized labor and racial equality, and these performances include a number of sizzling songs about union-busting and Southern injustice, as well as the Left’s ideologically see-sawing take on the Soviet Union’s anti-fascist role during World War II. During the April-May 1944 recording sessions heard here, Guthrie often performed solo, but on many tracks he was joined in duo and trio numbers by his onetime Merchant Marine shipmate Cisco Houston and the blind singer and harmonica player Sonny Terry. They are heard throughout the compilation, but the fourth CD in My Dusty Road focuses on their contributions, presenting a loose-jointed, jammy package of “the blues, hollers and dances.” These marvelous performances, in sparkling new transfers from the original metal parts, must really be heard if their full effect is to be appreciated. No less an authority than Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter, puts it perfectly in her introduction to the set: “It’s very, very strange. The more time goes by, the clearer Woody’s voice gets.” BACK TO TOP

Frank Sinatra - New York (Rhino) $69.98 - NEW “God, I love New York,” Frank Sinatra says on one of the previously unheard live recordings collected on this Rhino boxed set. The singer and the city enjoyed a special relationship, though Sinatra, originally nicknamed “the Kid From Hoboken,” was a native of nearby Jersey. It was in his beloved Apple that the vocalist found fame, first with the bands of Harry James and Tommy Dorsey and then on his own. He came to exemplify the swagger and the sentiment of the town. And, as one hears and sees in this revealing collection, New York adored him right back.

In its design and contents, the present compilation echoes its 2006 predecessor Las Vegas, which was devoted to Sinatra’s performances in the gambling capital’s showrooms. New York takes up four CDs and a DVD, and surveys live shows he played in Baghdad On the Hudson over the course of five decades. They contain a multitude of pleasures. The first brief date, from February 1955, finds Sinatra making a surprise appearance at a Manhattan Center show celebrating the 20th anniversary of Tommy Dorsey’s big band. The vocalist, whose solo career at Capitol Records was on a still newly ascendant trajectory, performs three vintage numbers with his old employer and musical mentor, including his huge wartime hit “I’ll Never Smile Again.” The collection then leaps to an intimate 1963 set with pianist Skitch Henderson for Staff Day at the United Nations. The first of two 1974 gigs, each of which takes up a CD by itself, finds Sinatra playing a charity event at Carnegie Hall; his generous set includes his distinctive ode to New York baseball, “There Used to Be a Ballpark.” The other ’74 date comprises a Madison Square Garden show, recorded at the same engagement as Sinatra’s expansive live album The Main Event. The fourth CD contains the highlights of a 1984 show at Carnegie Hall (where his rendition of “Luck Be a Lady” from Guys and Dolls sparks a very funny reminiscence about the vocal abilities of Marlon Brando, Sinatra’s co-star in the film), and a 1990 set at Radio City, recorded when Sinatra was 74 years old and still roaring. The latter climaxes with a typically forceful version of “Theme From New York, New York,” the Kander & Ebb anthem from Martin Scorsese’s like-titled film, which was definitively rendered by Sinatra. The highlight of the set may come on the DVD, a record of an entire Carnegie Hall concert in June 1980. It’s a straightforward, hard-hitting affair that begins with a punchy “I’ve Got the World On a String” and wraps with a heartfelt “New York, New York.” In between you get stirring versions of such mah-velous tunes as “When Your Lover Has Gone,” “Send In the Clowns,” and “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry.” In this case, we see as well as hear the audience, and love rolls out of the house and washes over the stage like a tidal wave. To the end, Sinatra and New York were joined as one, and New York is a testament to their unique coupling. Even if you’re not from the Apple, you won’t be able to resist it. BACK TO TOP

Richard Thompson - Walking On a Wire: 1968-2009 (Shout Factory) $49.98 - NEW As brilliant as he is, the English singer-songwriter-guitarist Richard Thompson still may be underestimated after more than four decades of performing. A great magus of the electric guitar, he has also crafted a canon of outstanding compositions. Yet he continues to stand somewhere outside the pantheon of rock masters. The four-CD boxed set Walking On a Wire, selected by Thompson himself with Shout! Factory’s David McLeese, handsomely addresses the scale of his artistic stature.

At the outset of the collection, Thompson duly receives his props as a founder of England’s folk-rock movement of the ‘60s. Just 17 when he joined Ashley Hutchings’ revivalist unit in 1966, he established himself as a guitar prodigy from the beginning: He tears into his instrument on the fiery Fairport track “Time Will Show the Wiser,” the very first number on the box. He recorded with the group for only two years before striking out on his own with the provocative album Henry the Human Fly, but its commercial failure put his solo career on hold for more than a decade. A generous 21 tracks are devoted to Thompson’s collaboration with his wife Linda, which resulted into such folk-rock classics as I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, Hokey Pokey, Pour Down Like Silver, and the brooding, climactic Shoot Out the Lights (which supplied the title track for the present compilation). This distinguished run of albums, which featured a poised mix of Linda’s crystalline vocals and Richard’s dour vocals and crushing guitars, ended with the couple’s split in 1982. Thompson’s solo career since then has remained rigorously unclassifiable. Though he has returned time and again to the folk roots of his style – often in tandem with the estimable acoustic bassist Danny Thompson – his music is beyond category. The set includes his interpretations of material as diverse as Duke Ellington’s “Rockin’ in Rhythm,” Wynonie Harris’ “Bloodshot Eyes,” and the Who’s “A Legal Matter.” He has never been easy to bag as a tunesmith – his sources extend from traditional folk and old-school rock ‘n’ roll to Middle Eastern drones and Tin Pan Alley saloon songs. The extent of Thompson’s reach as a writer is on view in the expressive songs anthologized on Walking On a Wire: tunes as unlike one another as “Tear Stained Letter,” “Valerie,” “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” “From Galway to Graceland,” “Taking My Business Elsewhere,” and “She Sang the Angels to Rest.” And then, of course, there is the guitar work. Let’s put it bluntly: Few living players can match Thompson in terms of chops and imagination. Solo after solo proves the point here, but no single track exemplifies his towering gifts better than a show-stopping 2002 live version of “Hard On Me,” on which he roars and soars through an ever-evolving six-minute solo that never lets up for an instant. For aficionados, Walking On a Wire serves as a welcome summary of a distinguished career. For the newcomer to Richard Thompson, the box will open the door to an astonishing and still-adventurous artist who continues to push back genre boundaries with every new release. BACK TO TOP

The Brit Box: U.K. Indie, Shoegaze, and Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millennium (Rounder) $39.99 - USED “British pop music never recovered from the Beatles,” former Select editor Andrew Perry writes in his knowing, typically tart introduction to Rhino’s The Brit Box. This 78-track compilation, which cuts across an astonishing assortment of bands that sprang up in England and environs in the years following the late’70s U.K. punk explosion, is a kind of post mortem for a second British Invasion that never quite happened.

You won’t hear bands echoing the Sex Pistols’ mocking “EMI” here, nor will you encounter groups likely to agree with the Clash’s prescription of “no Elvis, Beatles, and the Rolling Stones.” The musicians who arrived in the wake of punk’s contrarian outburst had no argument with success; they accepted rock music as an effective way to take the global stage. The sound one hears here is the sound of ambition. Unfortunately, only a few enjoyed fame outside of their native isles. A pity, because the music is glorious – as good as pop has ever been.

Taking in the period from the early ‘80s through the late ‘90s, The Brit Box collects, in the words of its subtitle, “U.K. indie, shoegaze, and Brit-pop gems.” The big names are all here. There are the Smiths, the first and possibly the greatest of the bands to emerge as punk’s embers cooled; the Cure, post-punk’s forefathers of Goth; New Order, the Manchester standard bearers who rose out of Joy Division’s ashes; the Jesus and Mary Chain, whose searing mix of guitar distortion and pop melody drew the blueprint for a host of so-called “shoegazers” (that lovely handle for a school of guitar-flailing groups that mixed performance introversion and full-on volume); the JAMC’s great successors, Kevin Shields’ My Bloody Valentine; the Stone Roses, a brilliant (and funky!) pop unit that never managed to live up it their “next big thing” status; and the biggest of all, Oasis, who aspired to nothing less than usurpation of the Beatles’ crown.

There are plenty of other bands that American listeners will recognize: Ride, Suede, Lush, Blur, Pulp, Supergrass, the Verve, Cocteau Twins, Primal Scream, Cornershop, the Sundays, Elastica, and many more. All of them boasted strong pop sensibilities, and none of them managed to break through the formidable barrier of American radio airplay to achieve the popularity they deserved outside their homeland. (As if to prove that U.S. DJs who supported Brit-pop were lonely voices in the broadcast wilderness, The Brit Box includes an interview with Rodney Bingenheimer, the Anglophile host of the long-running “Rodney On the Roq” on KROQ in Los Angeles.)

Like most Rhino compilations, this one digs deep, and some of the acts you’ll hear will be familiar only to the most rabid fans of latter-day English pop. Remember Moose? The Family Cat? Thousand Yard Stare? Five Thirty? Probably not, but their singles and album tracks fit in sweetly here. Personal laurels are awarded for the inclusion of Birdland, a great shoulda-been if there ever was one.

These U.K. acts may never have conquered the colonies, but they made splendid music. The Brit Box is a wonderful invitation to plunge further into a particularly fertile period of rock from olde Blighty.

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Big Star - Keep An Eye On the Sky (Rhino) $59.98 - NEW

Almost inevitably, critics bring up the Beatles when they write about their ill-fated American successors of the ‘70s, Big Star. However, had those gifted Memphians been nothing more than slavish Fab Four imitators, I wouldn’t be writing about them today. Certainly, Big Star’s original principals Chris Bell and Alex Chilton absorbed the melodic and harmonic influence of the Liverpool quartet. And, like their hit-making English models, the American Southerners were fortunate enough to have nearly unlimited access to a recording studio – in their case, Ardent, the state-of-the-art facility that was also home to the like-named indie label that issued their music. But Bell and Chilton’s music was in the end something utterly different and original. Reflecting their geographical birthplace, many – most – of Big Star’s songs move at humid half-speed, as if mired in Mississippi riverbank mud. There’s a melancholy undertow to their sound, a tug at the bottom you don’t hear in other contemporary pop. It’s the minor chords in their songs that you recall most vividly. The titles of their first two albums, #1 Record (1972) and Radio City (1974), were full of hope. But Big Star failed to take the commercial high ground, thanks to the financial disarray of Ardent’s first distributor, Stax Records, and the indifference of its second, CBS. By the time Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens entered the studio for the sessions that became the deranged, belatedly released Third/Sister Lovers (1978), the group was forgotten by all but a few. They’ve since had their day in the court of critical opinion, though, and their apotheosis came in 2009. Fantasy Records brought forth an improved two-fer edition of Big Star’s first two albums. Now Rhino Records has stepped up with Keep An Eye On the Sky, a jazzy four-CD box bursting with unreleased goodness. The box does not supersede the official versions of the first two albums, though it presents Third basically as it was released. Instead, its first two discs reconsider #1 Record and Radio City through a bounty of variants – alternate takes, alternate mixes, single versions. Some of the stuff has seen prior release – on the 2008 English anthology Thank You Friends: The Ardent Records Story and a 2003 collection of Bell’s pre-Big Star work with the bands Icewater and Rock City. But there’s enough that’s rare and previously unheard here to divert the most Star-struck of listeners. Over and above some tremendous demos (which include Big Star’s versions of tracks later unearthed on Bell’s album) and revealing, crystalline-sounding alternates, there’s a CD of hitherto unreleased live material. Drawn from shows at Lafayette’s Music Room in Memphis, in which the Radio City-era trio of Chilton, Stephens, and bassist Andy Hummel tried to entertain a disinterested crowd waiting for Archie Bell and the Drells, this stuff offers a rare glimpse of the group’s solid live chops. Long one of rock’s great woulda-shoulda-coulda-beens, Big Star finally receive supreme respect with Keep An Eye On the Sky. Whether you’re an enthusiastic newcomer to their music or a knowledgeable post-grad fan, you’ll find plenty to embrace and enjoy in this lovingly produced collection. And yes, it’s an ideal complement to those Beatles remasters. BACK TO TOP

Hall & Oates - Do What You Want, Be What You Are: The Music of Daryl Hall & John Oates (Sony Legacy) $39.98 - NEW Daryl Hall and John Oates were among the preeminent pop acts of the ‘80s. These peerless confectioners rang up a dozen top 10 hits during the decade, including five No. 1 singles. Few of them will be unfamiliar to anyone who cocked an ear to the radio during that era. And it wasn’t just luck that they were big. Hall and Oates mated a homegrown soulfulness with a keen ear for a hook. Listening to the new four-CD anthology Do What You Want, Be What You Are makes one realize that as huge as they were, we may have taken them for granted.

This collection neatly divvies up the duo’s career into four distinct periods. Disc one surveys their coming-of-age as blue-eyed soul practitioners in Philadelphia. After offering some rare tracks by their early bands, Hall’s the Temptones and Oates’ the Masters (both of which exhibited a debt to Smokey Robinson), it reconsiders their first work together for Atlantic Records. Produced by Arif Mardin and then Todd Rundgren, the pair crafted some earthily authentic white R&B – most notably 1973’s Abandoned Luncheonette, which contained the irresistible “She’s Gone” and the equally enticing “Las Vegas Turnaround” (the first tune to reference Hall’s girlfriend and frequent songwriting partner Sara Allen).

The second disc follows Hall and Oates to RCA, where they topped the charts for the first time in 1977 with the caustic “Rich Girl.” They went on to notch some middling top 40 entries through the decade under the direction of producers Christopher Bond and David Foster, but it wasn’t until they began producing themselves in the early ‘80s that they truly caught fire. The CD climaxes with a couple of hallmarks: 1981’s “Kiss On My List,” the first of those five No. 1 singles, and a mind-blowing live rendition of Hall’s “Everytime You Go Away,” which Paul Young took to the top in 1985.

The meat of Do What You Want is heard on CD Three. Beginning with the delectable No. 5 single “You Make My Dreams” from 1981, it runs through Hall and Oates’ massive, instantly recognizable smashes – “Private Eyes,” “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do),” “Maneater,” “Out of Touch.” These tunes still caress the ear, as do many lesser yet still memorable numbers here and a couple of selections from their concert collaboration with the Temptations’ David Ruffin and Eddie Kendrick.

For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to the twosome’s career since the pop hits began to wane in the mid-‘80s, the box’s fourth CD offers a bounty of marvelous surprises. In recent years, Hall and Oates have reached back to their roots, and the best material here is straight-up soul music. Hall, a singer of formidable chops no matter what the material, shines on covers of R&B oldies by hometown heroes the Volcanoes and Billy Paul, while the previously unreleased “All the Way From Philadelphia” is a lovely homage to Gamble and Huff, the City of Brotherly Love’s peerless production team.

In all, this is one of the most welcome and consistently illuminating musical retrospectives imaginable.

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