Holiday Gift Guide Special: Our Favorite Stocking Stuffers
Most of our Holiday Gift Guide features this year have concentrated on large-scale releases, but today, we’re looking at three titles small enough to be last-minute stocking stuffers (get to your local indie record store now!) – and big enough to be favorites you’ll play all year long.
It’s more than All Right: Omnivore Recordings has revisited Christopher Cross’ early years for a first-ever collection of his original single releases from the U.S. and beyond. The Worldwide Singles 1980-1988 offers 31 cuts on 2 CDs – many in new-to-CD single edit or mix form – from the singer-songwriter’s tenure on the Warner Bros. and Reprise labels, along with a couple of cuts from soundtracks (Arthur, of course) and compilations (The Official Music of the XXIIIrd Olympiad Los Angeles 1984) for good measure. The A-sides are on Disc 1, with the B-sides on Disc 2. Cross’ 1979 self-titled debut was the rare album in which virtually every song was ready-made for single release; Warner Bros. duly obliged with the irresistible and enduring likes of “Ride Like the Wind,” “Sailing,” “Never Be the Same,” “All Right,” and the Nicolette Larson duet “Say You’ll Be Mine” on 45. (Shameless plug: TSD and Cherry Red’s Lemon Recordings have just issued Look in My Direction, a comprehensive set of all of the late Larson’s star-studded Warner Bros. albums.) Cross picked up an Academy Award with Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager, and Peter Allen for “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)” and five (!) Grammy Awards for his debut album including Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year. Though Cross’ subsequent releases weren’t met with the same success, his impeccable songcraft and musicianship remained intact. Naturally, both are in abundance on this set. (Co-writers here include John Bettis, Will Jennings, Michael Omartian, Steve Dorff, and Patrick Leonard.) Among the lesser-known highlights of this crackling collection are “I Will (Take You Forever),” a duet with Les Miserables star Frances Ruffelle; “A Chance for Heaven,” the Olympics Swimming Theme that reunited Cross with Bacharach and Sager; and “Swept Away,” from a memorable, Hawaiian-set episode of ABC-TV sitcom Growing Pains. Garrett Price, director of last year’s Yacht Rock: A DOCKumentary (in which Cross is prominently featured), provides liner notes to the collection, remastered by Michael Graves and produced by Omnivore’s Cheryl Pawelski and Brad Rosenberger. For all of the hits plus, you can’t do better than All Right.
Little Feat’s The Last Record Album (1975), the group’s fifth LP and penultimate studio release in Lowell George’s lifetime, has been expanded by Rhino in multiple formats. The 4CD set pairs the original album (which doffed its hat to the acclaimed film The Last Picture Show in its title and artwork) with a bonus disc of studio rarities (half of which are previously unreleased) and adds an unissued live set at Boston’s Orpheum Theater recorded on Halloween of 1975. A 2LP set includes all the studio material in the CD box. Though The Last Record Album was somewhat less cohesive, with fewer strong compositions, than the band’s previous efforts, there were flashes of classic Feat including Lowell George’s “Long Distance Love” (memorably covered by the aforementioned Nicolette Larson and later by Elvis Costello), “Down Below the Borderline,” and “One Love Stand”; Paul Barrere, Bill Payne, and Kenny Gradney’s “One Love Stand” (picked up by Carly Simon on her Another Passenger LP); and Payne and future wife Fran’s funky “Day or Night.” A dozen demos, alternate takes, rough mixes, outtakes, and single versions – more than half of which are never before heard – add richly to the album’s lore, as does the live show which finds the band, as per the norm, stretching out and immersing themselves in the groove even more freely and fully. The package includes new liner notes by Dennis McNally; the discs have been superbly remastered by Bill Inglot and Dan Hersch. Note that the 4CD package takes the form of a small slipcase, with the original album and bonus disc in a six-panel digipak and the live show in a gatefold sleeve.
Rhino’s series of deluxe Replacements reissues has continued with 3CD and 4LP expanded editions of the Minneapolis band’s seminal 1984 Twin/Tone album cheekily titled Let It Be. The deluxe Let It Be takes a different format than the previous reissues of Tim, Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, Pleased to Meet Me, and Dead Man’s Pop (an alternative presentation of Don’t Tell a Soul), all of which included both vinyl and CD in one package. This time, the formats are split into individual releases. Both the CD and LP packages feature a remastered version of the original album with previously unreleased live and studio material – in this case, a disc’s worth of rarities (including all of the bonuses on the 2008 expansion) and a live concert from 1984 in Chicago. The original album, freshly remastered by Justin Perkins, still impresses with its wide musical palette. The band’s punk ethos (still vibrant on tracks such as “Favorite Thing” and “We’re Comin’ Out”), broadens to take in pure pop (“I Will Dare,” featuring Peter Buck on guitar; the piano-led, lyrically forward-thinking “Androgynous”), beautiful angst (“Unsatisfied”), and even a KISS cover (“Black Diamond”). Paul Westerberg’s songwriting was maturing on tracks such as the poignant “Sixteen Blue” while the album also made room for the larks “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out” and “Gary’s Got a Boner.” But in its swagger and vulnerability, maturity and immaturity, pop and rock, Let It Be spoke powerfully to teens of all ages, then and now. The bonus disc adds 14 tracks including covers of Marc Bolan (“20th Century Boy”), The Grass Roots (“Temptation Eyes”), and Hank Williams (“Hey, Good Lookin'”) as well as demos, alternates, and outtakes. The live set is appropriately storming, with more fun musical detours (“Hitchin’ a Ride,” a medley of “Help Me Rhonda” and “Little GTO”) and energetic, wholly in-the-moment renditions of much of Let It Be. The 3CD set is housed in an eight-panel digipak, and Elizabeth Nelson and Peter Jesperson have penned the notes in the 24-page booklet.
Christopher Cross’ All Right: The Worldwide Singles 1980-1988 is available at:
2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
Little Feat’s The Last Record Album (Deluxe Edition) is available at:
4CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
The Replacements’ Let It Be (Deluxe Edition) is available at:
3CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
4LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
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“The Official Music of the XXIIIrd Olympiad Los Angeles 1984” has been my Holy Grail of CDs for 40 years. One might pop up on eBay every year, typically priced at $300-400.