21 can't miss holiday gifts for music fans

Price: $70The first official release of highlights from the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mixing Up The Medicine is a weighty coffee table book overflowing with treasures from the archives. Filled with handwritten lyrics, rare photos, stills from home movies, gig fliers and correspondence from nearly every era of his career—not to mention contributions from the likes of Greil Marcus, Greg Tate, Lee Ranaldo, and Amanda Petrusich—the book provides fresh insights into one of the most documented artists of the 20th Century.

Price: $31.50Barbra Streisand waited 81 years to spill the tea so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that her autobiography, My Name Is Barbra, is the veritable definition of a doorstop: nearly 1,000 pages of artistic process, score-settling, and romance. It’s an epic, but its length is earned, underscoring how Streisand touched upon every part of popular culture during her remarkable career.

Price: $28.99Sonic Youth guitarist/vocalist Thurston Moore generally avoids behind-the-scenes drama in his autobiography, choosing instead to celebrate the New York art scene that so greatly informed his brand of alternative rock. It’s as invaluable as a portrait of a particular period and aesthetic as it is a personal history.

Price: $20.87Finally free of the conservatorship that kept her in check for 13 years, Britney Spears offers her side of the story in The Woman In Me. Many of its revelations regarding her former flame Justin Timberlake earned tabloid headlines, but the book shouldn’t be seen as a reservoir of gossip: it’s a portrait of the cruelties of a dysfunctional family compounded by the demands and spoils of fame.

Price: $31.99A newly expanded and annotated—or “Amplified,” as the cover claims—edition of Come As You Are finds Michael Azerrad revisiting his classic 1993 biography of Nirvana by commenting on, expanding, and revising the original text. Azerrad offers clarifying details and context, turning his already excellent biography into the definitive word on Nirvana.

Price: $750At $750, this limited edition art book is indeed an indulgence, but this collection of images of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band by noted photographer Lynn Goldsmith captures the hungry heart of the group as they recorded and toured their 1978 masterpiece Darkness On The Edge Of Town. Sure, it’s a pricey splurge, but it’s cheaper than some tickets for Springsteen’s latest tour.

Price: $64.59The Replacements’ 1985 major label debut is given a deluxe expanded reissue anchored by a brand new remix of the album by Ed Stasium, one that strips away the layers of echo so its sound is more aligned with the band’s raw records for Twin/Tone Records. Equally appealing is a raucous concert captured at Chicago’s Cabaret Metro in January 1986.

Price: $174.98A limited edition set bundled into a mini replica of John Prine’s own 1935 Wurlitzer, The Oh Boy Singles Jukebox contains the eight singles released by the late, legendary singer/songwriter on his own label between 1981 and 2020. While the packaging is a stunner, this set also houses a few Prine rarities that make this worth seeking out.

Price: $146.26Prince’s self-styled commercial comeback of the early 1990s is given a lavish reissue, featuring B-sides, single mixes, a full live concert from 1992 and three discs of unreleased material from his vault. While there are no great surprises here—Prince was recording a psychedelic funk album in his spare time—this does illustrate how focused he was on having the New Power Generation be a cool, efficient R&B machine.

Price: $61.01The third volume of Joni Mitchell’s Archives chronicles her 1970s peak, a period where she broke through to the pop charts with “Help Me” and “Big Yellow Taxi.” There is plenty of live material here, plus studio outtakes where Joni is testing out material with Graham Nash and David Crosby, James Taylor, and Neil Young & the Stray Gators.

Price: $149.88The existence of a new Beatles track—a John Lennon demo from the late 1970s, slated for inclusion on the band’s 1995 Anthology 1 but recently completed by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr—has rightly eaten up all the Fab Four oxygen this fall. But the accompanying expanded reissues of the classic Red and Blue compilations are also noteworthy. The extra material rights some wrongs of the original versions—there are now George Harrison songs on 1962-1966, along with songs pulled from Revolver—but it’s the bold, dynamic new remixes from Giles Martin that make the greatest impression.

Price: $24.94Devo’s 50 years of iconoclastic new wave are distilled into a four-LP box set heavy on hits and not light on rarities. The extras on the deluxe edition are enticing—a Devo air freshener! a paper red energy dome!—but it’s the music that still packs a punch, especially their weird, nervy early singles “Mongoloid,” “Jocko Homo” and “Be Stiff.”

Price: $249.99The underappreciated 1990s indie-rock band Acetone get a thorough retrospective in the form of I’m Still Waiting, a handsome box set containing their four full-length albums—Cindy, If You Only Knew, Acetone, and York Blvd—along with the EPs Acetone and I Guess I Would, plus a bonus disc rounding up stray cuts. Accompanying the box is a book featuring liner notes from two of Acetone’s prominent fans: Matmos’ Drew Daniel and Jason Pierce of Spiritualized.

Price: $229.95A recent release in the company’s intricate Modular Buildings line, this LEGO set is meant for adults. Not only is the assembly challenging, but grown-ups are bound to appreciate the numerous jokes tucked away in the rooms of the jazz club, dressing room, and pizzeria in this set.

Price: $78A clever, stylish gift for vinyl enthusiasts, Uncommon Goods designed a cheeseboard to mimic a turntable. It looks good, plus it’s practical: the platter in the center is made of slate, then there’s a cheese slicer hidden underneath the turntable arm.

Price: $19.99A party game that takes full advantage of crowds being connected to streaming music services at all times, Game That Song asks a group to find the right song to match a topic—i.e., contestants are asked for “A Song to Play That Talks about ‘Time’” or “A Song You Hate But Admit is Really Catchy.” The clever thing about the game is that it can be played as easily over, say, long distance text as it can be in-person with two or more players.

Price: VariesAt long last, Stevie Nicks gets the ultimate honor: she’s now a Barbie doll. The long, flowing black dress Nicks wears on the cover of Fleetwood Mac’s classic Rumours provides the genesis for this striking Barbie, which also features a black tambourine.

Price: $31.99NECA celebrates the enduring legacy of Queen with an action figure capturing Freddie Mercury decked out in the yellow jacket he sported during the group’s tour supporting its 1986 album Magic—a jaunt that included the singer’s final performance. The mini Freddie comes with a microphone and interchangeable heads.

Price: $12.99Dolly Parton may be making her rockstar move in 2023, but Funko Pop is celebrating her country roots with a figure styled after the down-home look Parton sported in the days before she became a cross-platform superstar.

Price: $19Funko Pop has more than one Jimi Hendrix variation in their line of vinyl figures, but this particular exclusive may be the most attractive of them all. This mini-doll finds Hendrix sporting shades and a purple outfit, a look meant to stir memories of the guitarist’s early days with the Jimi Hendrix Experience.