My vinyl fetish (2024 box sets & old-media beauties)

Talking Heads. Charli. Dylan. Drive-By Truckers. Gillian Welch. Cindy Lee. Sonny Rollins. Margo Guryan. Robbie Basho. Tsunami.

I began buying LPs in the ‘70s. Over the years, I made mixtapes, and bought the occasional pre-recorded cassette. I purchased or otherwise acquired many, many CDs. I’m still fond of old-school physical media for a lot of reasons, though I don’t live in the past. I use streaming platforms, despite their many flaws. Plus, I’d renounced buying new albums 6 or 7 years ago — they cost too damn much; I’m maxed out on storage space; I flinched whenever I heard someone refer to them as “vinyls.”

But my renunciation didn’t stick. Mainly I blame my pal Harlan, an enthusiastic record collector, who insisted we team up for a tag-team vinyl DJ gig, which became our monthly International Vinyl Supper Club sessions at Darling’s in Tillson, NY. They’re tremendous fun, and the residency is nearly 2 years old now. Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.

Not that I’m complaining — few things give me such pure teenaged joy as slipping a new LP out of its sleeve, putting it on the turntable, dropping the needle on it, and settling in for a deep listen. If there are liner notes to peruse, all the better.

Since this is the time of year for gift-giving and year-end lists, here’s a talley of some physical music packages released in 2024 that gave me a lot of joy (plus a few I’m still waiting on).

The superduper deluxe reissue of Talking Heads ‘77, which I mentioned in a post earlier this year, is one of those cinder-block boxes that earns the shelfspace. It includes a handsome hardcover photo book with new essays from everyone in the band, and lots of bonus tracks, including a double-LP of a ‘77 set at CBGB’s, beautifully recorded/restored. I wrote about the original LP in my book Love Goes To Buildings On Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever (you can click here for a taste of the first chapter). And some of you might notice I took that book’s title from an excellent Talking Heads non-LP single, “Love > Building On Fire,” which is included in the box among the bonus cuts, and appears again in the live set.

My second Substack post, and a sizable portion of my Lou Reed biography (excerpt here) discuss John Cale, the enduring classical music upstart - turned - punk rock third uncle. In the interim between his departure from the Velvet Underground and his touchstone production of Patti Smith’s Horses (which I also wrote about in Love Goes…), he recorded a number of fine records himself. Paris 1919 (probably my all-time favorite Cale album, which features Lowell George (!)), and a more avant-classical set, The Academy In Peril , were reissued in handsome vinyl editions this year, with liner notes by the discerning and talented music journalist Grayson Haver Currin.

All I really need from a vinyl LP is a high-quality pressing with solid liner notes, and perhaps a lyric sheet. But I’m a sucker for great packaging. Charli XCX’s Brat was, besides being one of my top 10 favorite albums of the year, my hands-down my #1 favorite vinyl LP in terms of package design — unsurprising perhaps from an artist who made graphic design such an inextricable part of her entire creative project this year. From the 12” single-style peek-a-boo label die-cut on the back half of the gatefold, to the san-serif black-on-lurid-green branding, to the dot matrix liner note insert (with carbons!), to the clear-vinyl splattered with hot-pink blood or whatever, it was an item produced by true album fetishists, or at least designers who know what we like. And this was just the first edition. If I’m going to spend $30+ on a single goddamn LP, especially if you’re going to then release multiple versions, please come correct. Thanks, Charli, for showing people how it should be done.

Meanwhile, this 3LP repackaging of the Sonny Rollins Live at the Village Vanguard masters, taken from the original tapes, sounds and looks amazing, in a similarly minimalist way. With notes from Substack jazz guru Nate Chinen, Rollins biographer Aidan Levy, and a Rollins interview conducted by Don Was, it’s been a beautiful way to revisit some stone classics.

Here are some other covetable 2024 vinyl editions I’ve discussed in past posts:

• The Margo Guryan 3LP box set

• The 1974 Live Recordings: The Missing Songs From Before The Flood, the limited-edition 3LP Dylan set pressed by Jack White’s Third Man Records, appears to be sold out. But there’s still the 27 CD/431 track The 1974 Live Recordings documenting Dylan and The Band’s entire reunion tour (at least the Dylan songs) — and some of us did get to see Bob this year, as I wrote.

• The new Gillian Welch & David Rawlings LP

• The Galaxie 500 anthology Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90

• The Drive-By Truckers Southern Rock Opera vinyl re-master

• The entire International Anthem catalog, of which these were my two favorite LPs this year — a verdict strengthened by seeing both bands live in Brooklyn during a three-day label mini-fest (where I also heard the forthcoming Alabaster DePlume record, a likely contender for my 2025 best-of list).

Finally, here’s a few releases I’m coveting. I’ve already pre-ordered a triple LP gold vinyl copy of Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee, which should be pressed up by February. (It will be in the top tier of my 2024 best-of list, which will be coming soon.) If you haven’t heard it yet, here you go:

Snow Beneath the Belly of a White Swan is a motherlode of live recordings by the late great fingerstyle acoustic guitarist Robbie Basho — a college pal of John Fahey, with whom he shared a lot of musical ideas, though Basho grew very influenced by Indian classical music. The sound quality, to judge from the stream below, is remarkably good (with some exceptions, as the source tapes were not in the best shape). Tompkins Square has packaged them in a 5-CD box. As Pete Townshend put it: "I think anybody, any young guitar player that hears his music today, would be influenced by [his playing]. It's beautiful and eloquent and profound, and full of love and devotion and melancholy."

Finally, there’s Tsunami’s Loud Is As, a 5LP box collecting the work of the seminal DC post-punk band, via the Numero Group label. It comes with a book edited by my man Joe Gross, a Washington DC native who knew ‘em when, and includes a bunch of interviews and critical essays. It’s the first full-scale reissue they’ve ever done, and it’s the all here: 61 songs, including single, b-sides, and the three classic albums on the Simple Machines label, which are shelved just to the right of Tarnation in my CD archives: Deep End (1993), The Heart’s Tremolo (1994), and A Brilliant Mistake (1997). Potent stuff. Over & out. — Will