Music

 

This series of posts are all about cool holiday gifts, for you or the people you care about. We’ll be including tons of cool stuff in the categories we cover on the site. Since this is our first year we’re going to not limit ourselves to just stuff that came out over the past few months, we’re going to include a bunch of other awesome stuff as well. Think of this as your definitive source for the coolest gifts for the coolest people you know. Our first post is all about music related goodies.

 

The Beatles Stereo Box Set This set collects all the Beatles albums plus the Past Masters in a wonderful black obelisk. All the albums have been re-mastered and contain both original liner notes as well as historical info about the albums in some great booklets. Also included is original album art, mini documentaries for each album, and a dvd that contains all of these documentaries collected together. If you know someone who even cares for the Beatles a little bit, then this is a must have. Also if you’re shopping for a lot of people each of the albums comes individually shrinkwrapped so hypothetically you could give each of the albums to different people, and buying them in this set would be cheaper than buying them separately. This thing looks great on a shelf too.
If you’ve got a particular music snob in your life you can pick them up the more expensive (and has less stuff) Mono Box Set

 

Speaking of The Beatles, one of the best games of the year is The Beatles Rock Band. It comes in many editions, if you have a version of Rock Band already you may want to just opt for the software for your system, but if not you’ll want to go with the premium set that includes recreations of the Beatles instruments to play the game with. The widget above contains all the versions so you can select the one that’s right for you. This is a fun game, with great music, that the whole family can enjoy. Plus with the PS3 and X-BOX versions you can purchase additional songs to play with.

 

The Best Of The Cardigans You might remember me strongly recommending The Cardigans album Super Extra Gravity and you could always go with thatbut this Best Of 2 disc collection is a wonderful set that is some of the band’s favorites of their songs and includes a bunch of b-sides and alternate versions.
You can also get Super Extra Gravity on iTunes

iTunes also has the awesome iTunes originals:

 

Pearl Jam – Ten Collectors Edition For a grunge fan or a Pearl Jam fan it doesn’t get any better than this. This is the super deluxe edition set. It comes with the cd version of the remastered Ten, the new remixed Ten with bonus tracks, DVD of Pearl Jam Unplugged (never before available unless you got a crappy bootleg vhs), Ten remastered on vinyl, Ten remixed on vinyl, Pearl Jam live at Drop in The Park Live at Magnuson Park in Seattle on September 20, 1992 on Vinyl, a cassette replica of original “Momma-Son” Pearl Jam demo cassette featuring “Alive,” “Once” and “Footsteps”, and an Eddie Vedder-style composition notebook filled with replica personal notes, images and mementos from the collections of Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament, a vellum envelope with replicated era-specific ephemera from Pearl Jam’s early work and a two-sided print commemorating the Drop in the Park concert.
You cannot get better than this. For those of you who don’t have the almost $200 to drop on this there is the much less expensive Deluxe Edition which is the remastered Ten, Remixed Ten, and Unplugged DVD. Both sets have been really lovingly put together and will take you right back to 1992.

 

Backspacer I’d be remiss if I didn’t also include Pearl Jam’s new album Backspacer here. It’s available on iTunes in their new iTunes LP format which includes some videos (one directed by Cameron Crowe). You can buy a hard copy directly from the Pearl Jam website

 

Garfunkel & Oates – Music Songs I wrote all about this comedy duo recently and if you’re looking to inject a little humor into your holidays this album is perfect. You can get it on

 

Sleater-Kinney – The Woods Not a new album, but one of my personal favorites and perfect for any girls who wanna rock. The Woods was Sleater-Kinney’s final album and a departure from their previous work. It was perhaps the closest to a return to Grunge we’ll see, with heavy riffs and crazy drums, The Woods straddles the line between classic rock and punk all with an edge and beauty that’s hard to compare. Also if you prefer on of course.

 

ON IN AT I wrote up a review of these when they came out and they’d make a great gift for the Tegan & Sara fan in your life. The books are available at Maple Music and come with the Sainthood CD. This is a kick ass set that will really make someone very happy. And if they have the cd you can keep that for yourself and just give them the books.

 

It’s Not Fun, Don’t Do It! Speaking of Tegan & Sara, they released this awesome DVD that features a concert from their So Jealous tour plus a ton of videos and 2 documentaries, one about the making of So Jealous, and one about the tour. The entire thing also features commentary on everything where you get a feel for some of the twins’ personality.

 

Sainthood Of course I’m adding all this Tegan and Sara stuff to the list I should put their new album on here as well. So here it is. Also available on

 

Pixies Doolittle Live Recordings Missed the Pixies recent Doolittle anniversary tour? Well you can relive it by buying any of the shows from Doolittle Live. Full concerts available in either 2 cd sets or digital downloads. You can check out my review of one of the shows here.

 

 

The Pixies – Minotaur Speaking of the Pixies, the band recently released this collectors box set that just screams gift. It’s all 5 of their studio albums in CD, Blu-Ray, and DVD along with a Blu-Ray and DVD of a previously unreleased 1991 live performance from Brixton, and a 51 page book.

 

iTunes Gift Certificates You can never go wrong with gift certificates, and one for iTunes is guaranteed to be a hit. Don’t know what kind of music they’re into? Let them decide what they want.

 

Playable Electric Guitar Shirt Rob from Media Junkyard showed me this and I gotta say it’s pretty awesome. It’s a t-shirt with a guitar on it that you can actually play. It’s available on Think Geek. Also available in a playable drum shirt.

 

So this could go on forever but I think I’ve given you some ideas and hopefully if you decide to buy any of this stuff you’ll buy it through the links here and help us pay the bills a little bit. But I’ve got one last item and it’s totally self-promotional:

 

Jessica Allyn – Nigeria single This is the first single off of my band’s next album and it’s only .99 cents. If you’re feeling generous buy a copy. You can listen to it beforehand. Support independent music.

 

Well that’s all for today. Check out the music section of the site for more and things I might have missed. And be sure to come back for the next parts of our Holiday Must Have list.