When an iTunes gift card just doesn’t cut it: Box sets and great rock records for the perfect holiday gifts

Posted 12/23/10

by Pete Mazzaccaro If you haven’t gone completely digital with your media intake -- mp3s, e-books, Snapfish, Netlflix etc. -- you’re not simply behind the times, you’re obsolete. I’ve always …

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When an iTunes gift card just doesn’t cut it: Box sets and great rock records for the perfect holiday gifts

Posted

by Pete Mazzaccaro

If you haven’t gone completely digital with your media intake -- mp3s, e-books, Snapfish, Netlflix etc. -- you’re not simply behind the times, you’re obsolete.

I’ve always been a gadget fan and have embraced a lot of the changes as they came. From my first digital camera to an iPod, I’ve reduced many square yards of boxed storage space into a few hundred gigs of info stored in a hard drive.

Despite this, I’ve long been a hold out when it came to music. For music fans, there’s just something about album cover art, liner notes, the color photos - the whole package. The digital album just isn’t the whole piece of art.

And a digital album doesn’t really make a great gift. What are you going to wrap? A new Rolling Stones boxed set of their original 11 U.K releases on vinyl? Or an iTunes gift card? It’s neat to have an entire music collection stashed on your iPod classic, but mp3s (or AAC’s) are not collectibles. They’re just digital files.

Chestnut Hill happens to boast one of the best destinations for a genuine audiophile: Brian Reisman’s Hideaway Music, 8612 Germantown Ave.

Reisman’s small shop has a great assortment of CDs, from classic rock and jazz to contemporary singer songwriter fare and indie rock. But his shop is a great place for serious rock memorabilia.

Hideaway has a great stock of classic rock posters and books, and it’s an actual record shop.  One third of all his business is vinyl. He carries used classics and latest in indie rock and stocks turntables and refurbished amplifiers and speakers on which to spin them.

Rock Hall of Fame-worthy records

Notable collectors items right now are vinyl pressings of Bob Dylan’s “Whitmark Demos,” a four-record (or two-CD) set of 47 early recordings including 15 never-officially released songs.

Another big vinyl set is a five record rerelease of the Grateful Dead’s first five studio albums: 'The Grateful Dead,” 'Workingman's Dead” and “American Beauty,” as well as original mixes of  “Anthem Of The Sun” and “Aoxomoxoa,” the first reprints of these records in vinyl in 40 years.

Don’t have a record collector? Other big boxed sets out right now include “West Coast Seattle Boy Boy,” a collection of unreleased Jimi Hendrix recordings and early sideman recordings as a guitarist with other acts like the Isley Bothers and Little Richard.

Another big one is Bruce Springsteen’s deluxe “Darkness on the Outside of Town” anniversary 3-CD set, which includes a remastered rerelease of the 1978 original recording, a 2 CD set of session work for that album called “The Promise,” a DVD containing the documentary about the making of the record and two DVDs of live performances.

If you’re looking for a classic gift, Hideaway has these. Give them a call, 215-248-4434 or stop by and check out their selection.

For a list of recommended rock records, check out my blog, Liner Notes, here . (See the recommended for '10 list in the right-hand bar with links to reviews and essays).

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