10. Smashing Pumpkins - Adore [Super Deluxe Edition] (Virgin)
The excellent, expansive Smashing Pumpkins reissue campaign rolls on to what many consider the start of the band's decline. I'd argue strongly against that categorization, because Adore is a much, much stronger album than a lot of people want to acknowledge. This mega package includes six audio discs and a DVD that contains a 1998 concert from the Fox Theatre in Georgia. Besides getting the album in both remastered and mono formats, you get three full discs of odds and sods and a disc of random live appearances and sessions. It's a lot, but Pumpkins diehards (as I am) are nothing if not completists. It's enough to have me anxious for the Machina era reissues too.
9. Various Artists - Warfaring Strangers: Darkscorch Canticles (Numero Group)
If you saw my number 1 reissue from 2013 (the excellent Purple Snow compilation of Minnesota R&B/funk), you'll know I'm already a fan of the deity's work the folks over at Numero Group are doing. This collection features 16 tracks from various proto-metal bands from mid-70s Middle America (plus one from Canada), showing the nascent metal ripples that were rumbling through garages and basements years before even the New Wave of British Heavy Metal helped to break things open wide.
8. David Bowie - Nothing Has Changed (Columbia)
David Bowie is probably one of rock and roll's most repackaged artists. Greatest hits and compilations have flowed out over the years, trying to refocus and reshape the man's chameleonic career or to collect an ever-changing musical vision. Did we need another one? Probably not, but the deluxe 3-disc version comes at a time when it can capture Bowie's resurgence, wrapping in his work on The Next Day comeback album, with even a hint of where things are going with "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)". It's also structured in reverse chronological order, a tactic I typically detest, but it works really well for this man's evolving career. If you haven't gotten on board yet, this isn't a bad place to start.
7. Game Theory - Blaze of Glory (Omnivore Recordings)
To a select group of Scott Miller acolytes, the praises for his criminally underrated bands Game Theory and Loud Family could never be sung enough. A difficult enough task made even more so by the virtual impossibility of actually finding their records. Omnivore Recordings is starting to remedy that, beginning in the obvious place with Game Theory's 1982 debut full-length. It's a bit of a rough and tumble affair, but Miller's songwriting is already to shine through. Toss in another 15 tracks worth of B-sides, demos and live cuts and you've got a fascinating historical document for a songwriter that deserves much wider recognition.
6. Songs: Ohia - Didn't It Rain (Secretly Canadian)
This album isn't that old, but with the depressing loss of Jason Molina back in 2013, any reason to keep his best music in circulation is fine by me. Didn't It Rain was actually my very first encounter with Molina's music and I was stuck immediately by how powerful his songwriting was. This record helped me through some rough times back in 2002 when it was originally released and I don't think it has lost even an ounce of emotional power. Add in another disc of equally haunting demos and this is a must hear.
5. Captain Beefheart - Sun Zoom Spark 1970-1972 (Rhino/Warner Bros.)
I've had Safe As Milk and Trout Mask Replica for years now, but I've never really delved much more deeply into Don Van Vilet's music, so I was really pleased to be able to make a deep dive into the three year period that followed the release of the seminal Trout Mask. This box contains the albums Lick My Decals Off, Baby, The Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot, as well as a fourth disc of rarities. It's a wealth of great material that hasn't always been in print, though be prepared to spend some time really digging in - this is stuff that rewards close listening.
4. Various Artists - Country Funk Volume II: 1967-1974 (Light in the Attic)
Light in the Attic is another label doing great reissue work, particularly when they are able to bring life to a genre that I don't typically spend much time with. This is the label's second dip into a newly defined sub-genre that captures a time when country music was stretching out a bit and taking in heavy, if not always cleanly acknowledged, influence from funk. This volume features some of the bigger names - Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Gene Clark, Townes Van Zandt - but is no less fascinating in documenting an unintentional scene.
3. Wilco - Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014 (Nonesuch)
As part of their year-long 20th anniversary celebration, Wilco released this fantastic four-disc compilation that picks up spare tracks from throughout both decades. Starting with A.M. demos and running right up through outtakes from The Whole Love, this is a wide-ranging and interesting document that helps make the case for Wilco being one of the most interesting rock bands of the last twenty years.
2. Miles Davis - Miles at the Fillmore 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3 (Legacy)
The excellent bootleg campaign from the Miles Davis estate keeps right on rolling, this time gathering up performances from four nights at the Fillmore East from mid-June 1970. Just a few months earlier, Miles had released the boundary smashing and genre creating classic Bitches Brew and much of that album's line-up can be found here (one notable exception being the loss of John McLaughlin's guitar work). It was a fertile period for Miles and this collection captures some really magical moments, capturing the moment when Miles horizons were breaking wide open before he'd even go further out.
1. Bob Dylan & The Band - The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11 (Legacy)
Speaking of a well received bootleg series, the eleventh entry in Bob Dylan's long running campaign could fairly be considered a holy grail for both Dylan obsessives and students of rock and roll history. Dylan's loose and raw sessions with his former backing band, now known as The Band, recorded in 1967 as Dylan was recuperating from a motorcycle accident. was legendary even before it got a somewhat official release in 1975. Rabid Dylan collectors have been trading bootlegs of various scope and quality that claimed to capture more of those sessions, but Dylan's people managed to one-up all of them by releasing this massive six-disc set that collects, allegedly, every scrap of material recorded during this period. Too much? Maybe. But it's an absolute joy to hear how much fun these guys were having and to hear how wide ranging their influences were. A long awaited treasure indeed.
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