This authorized Hendrix family edition contains four CDs, including one of Jimi’s work pre-experience supporting acts like The Isley Brothers and Little Richard. There are more than 45 previously unreleased tracks to create four hours of very groovy Hendrix music. The set includes a DVD of the critically acclaimed documentary Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child, and a 60-page booklet with never before seen photos and detailed liner notes. If that’s not enough of the Jimi Hendrix experience, then get ready to feel the Christmas cheer, Hendrix style with Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. The EP contains Jimi’s versions of holiday classics such as “Little Drummer Boy”, “Silent Night”, and “Auld Lang Syne”. You can be sure, you haven’t had a rockin’ Christmas until you’ve had a Hendrix Christmas.

Barking represents the first Underworld album in three years, and their first to be constructed with a cast of co-conspirators. After writing all of the tracks in their Essex Studio, the band turned the material over to handpicked studio heads from the dance world, resulting in jacked-up Underworld record. Housed in eclectic packaging, this limited box set contains the original album, as well as a DVD of videos and an extra disc of alternate versions of all nine Barking tracks.

This limited edition Bob Dylan box set is a must have for any true Bob Dylan fan. It consist of eight classic Dylan albums, including Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changing, Another Side of Bob Dylan, Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, and John Wesley Harding. All of the albums are restored to the way Dylan originally recorded them: in mono. These are Dylan’s first songs the way you first heard them; “one speaker, one voice, one powerhouse of a sound.”

Harmonia Mundi is well known for elegant and comprehensive classical box sets and their new Sacred Music limited edition is no exception. Plus, given the subject matter, it’s perfectly timed for this part of the year. Spanning a staggering 29 discs, the set covers all manner of, you guessed it, sacred music from the Gregorian chants of early music up to the 20th century masses of Leonard Bernstein and Francis Poulenc. There’s also an in-depth book and a PDF disc containing all the tests of the music. Highlights include the full Handel’s “Messiah” and Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis”, but the star of the collection is an utterly transcendent version of Mozart’s “Requiem” that argues the case for this being among the finest works of music ever created by a human being.

What do you get when you add 22 Billboard Top 20 singles, six number ones, six platinum albums, plus another six gold LPs? You get the pop music duo, Daryl Hall and John Oates, of course. Their sweet rock ‘n’ roll / rhythm ‘n’ blues, ‘chicken soup for the soul’ sound is captured here in 74 songs on four disks (including 16 previously unreleased cuts). Hall and Oates provide commentary from their interviews with Ken Sharp. Between the Mileys and Lil’ Waynes, the music of Daryl Hall and John Oates has made a come-back of sorts as new fans discover their tunes, but this is for the ‘mid-lifer on your list who really knows what good music is.