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The July 2006 passing of legendary Pink Floyd founding frontman Roger “Syd” Barrett from complications due to his long, silent battle with diabetes, marked the sad end to a life equally shrouded in marvel and mystery. But while Barrett may have disappeared from the public eye following the release of his eponymous second solo album in 1970, his influence as a pioneer of progressive and psychedelic rock has given him a mythical stature far beyond his own physical form. And no album had sealed his epic iconoclasm as such more than Floyd’s 1967 debut Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which was beautifully packaged this year as a three-disc deluxe edition by Capitol Records to commemorate the 40th anniversary of its initial release, featuring the stereo and mono version and a third disc containing a variety of Syd-era outtakes that have been floating on the bootleg circuit for many a year. Little did anyone know that this essential reissue would also serve as an all-too-fitting last goodbye to its primary architect as well. Ron Hart

9

A deliciously satisfying gumbo of sensual funk, blues-drenched soul, and bad ass rock, Betty Davis’ They Say I’m Different brings the noise on the sonic and lyrical front. Living up to all of the hype surrounding its reissue, the 1974 recording proves why the reclusive musician’s significance extends beyond her marriage to and influence on Miles Davis. Leaving the topics of love and domesticity to Aretha and Gladys, Betty Davis chartered new lyrical waters by openly confronting the power of the erotic, flaunting her sexual prowess, and even signifying on former lovers (“He’s a Big Freak”). Such bold expressions carried numerous risks, but Davis readily engaged the freaky-deke with grace, power, and bravado. If you’re interested in the multidimensionality of black female sexuality or the historical links that connect audacious blues women like Bessie Smith to modern voices like Tennessee Slim Joi Gilliam, Betty Davis’ They Say I’m Different definitely deserves your attention. Claudrena N. Harold

8

Long before quiet got to be the new loud, the Moxham brothers, Stuart and Phillip, took post-punk down to a whisper. They crafted ominous, post-nuclear grooves out of scratchy, pick-heavy guitar, primitive drum machines and the icy pure singing of Allison Statton. Their Colossal Youth, released in 1980, was a dramatic rebuttal to late ‘70s sweaty, agitated, politically-charged post-punk, a record that Simon Reynolds (in his excellent notes to this three-album set) described as containing “some of the ‘rightness’ of things found in nature –- leaves, snowflakes, pebbles, sea-shells –- that are at once miraculous yet commonplace”. This superlative reissue makes the milestone Colossal Youth available again for the first time in decades, along with 26 tracks from singles and EPs and five Peel Session cuts, and a long passionate essay by Reynolds. It’s strange, wonderful music, masterfully presented to a new generation of admirers. Jennifer Kelly

7

Brothers Carter and Ralph Stanley made supreme American music together, a twangy confluence of banjo, guitar, and those two voices—Ralph’s high tenor teetering atop Carter’s anchor—that spoke of a profound lonesomeness and tangible countryside, of blue moons and midnight trains, of sins committed and penances sought, of life full of green grass and star-spotted night and of death, looming and indiscriminate. Time Life’s generous three-CD collection is the first to offer up a cross-section of all five labels that the Stanleys made seminal bluegrass recordings for, including Rich-R-Tone, Columbia, Mercury, King, and Starday. When you’re talking the roots of American music, think of these things as thick bits lodged below ground in some deep, dark expanse of soil. Zeth Lundy

6

Laurie Anderson’s debut album, Big Science, sounded like no other when first released in 1982 and remains a uniquely compelling work 25 years on. Not too many musicians change the way we look at the use of language, but Anderson is one of its great manipulators. She turns airplanes into comic nightmares on “From the Air” and her hit single, “O Superman”. Anderson also skewers relationships on “Let X = X” and “Sweaters”. Musically, Big Science is perfectly off-kilter, as well. Joining Laurie’s treated violin are jagged saxophone lines, eerie synths, and syncopated drums. All of this coalesces into adventurous pop music that extends beyond the fringes of art rock and new wave. With bonus tracks, new liner notes, and a warmer sound, the amazing Big Science is bigger than ever. Michael Keefe

5

In 1987, many Gen-Xers scoffed at the over the top nostalgia by the baby boomers over the 20th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper and the so-called “Summer of Love”, but fast forward to today, and my, how the shoe is on the other foot. Of course the expanded Daydream Nation is aimed at well-off folks in their 30s and 40s who can more easily afford to shell out 35 bucks for it, but if there was any album in this ongoing series of reissues that deserved such a treatment, it’s Sonic Youth’s groundbreaking 1988 masterpiece. Beautifully packaged, complete with well-written liner notes and a full second disc of key live performances and obscure covers, it’s still all about that great album, which has been tastefully remastered, and which still creates that twinge of euphoria upon hearing “Teen Age Riot” for the thousandth time. To hell with what the kids say; this nostalgia thing is fun. Adrien Begrand

4

Another short-lived, radically daring post-punk band resuscitated, this one revived, at least partly, by its vocal fans in Franz Ferdinand. This single CD repackages nearly everything that Fire Engines ever recorded during a brief period from 1980 to 1981: one album and a handful of singles. Abrasive, atonal, primitive, the Fire Engines were prone to feral grooves and sudden starts and stops, yelps and howls and off-tuned instruments. The CD traces their accelerated evolution from the guttural robot funk of “Get Up and Use Me” through the surprisingly slick, string embellished final single “Big Gold Dream”. The disc includes alternate takes and live versions of the band’s studio hits, as well as an extended historical essay by Bob Last. Still, it’s hard to imagine any amount of verbiage putting this band in context. They seemed to exist outside of any trend known to music fans. Jennifer Kelly

3

After many, many years of independent record shops ripping off their customers with shoddily manufactured live bootlegs, the mother of all mom and pops, California’s Amoeba Records, finally repents for the sins of its retail brethren. And how did they remedy that long-standing sting you felt from that screechy, hissy, alleged “soundboard” Pink Floyd ’72 show you picked up for $50, in spite of the cheesy Xeroxed cover art and CD-R-quality discs?  Well, at least for fans of Gram Parsons, by acquiring the soundboard tapes of two killer sets by the Flying Burrito Bros. back when they opened up for the Grateful Dead at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom in 1969 from legendary Dead archivist Owsley “Bear” Stanley and packaging them in a beautifully hardcover-bound case as a two-disc set with rare photos and insightful liner notes, as an officially released live document. Thanks to Amoeba, this wonderful find is as essential an addition to any fan of Gram, The Byrds, the Burrito Bros. or California country rock in general, as Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Gilded Palace of Sin and Grievous Angel, both in sound and packaging, which is a lot more than I can say for that copy of Outcesticide I got at Lloyd’s in Wantagh a few years back. Ron Hart

2

Preparing to hear a Miles Davis box set is like getting ready to see Michael Jordan play basketball: you know your going to have your brains blown out. Over six hours of material, ranging from the actual On the Corner recordings to unedited takes to tracks off of Get Up With It and Big Fun, plus unreleased pieces never before heard, not to mention it comes in citrus packaging and a shiny gold box. Sequenced chronologically, you could sit down with the whole thing and not realize you’ve just spent your day rolling in sewage. Oh, the music? Well, if you like your jazz charming and nimble, go somewhere else. The pieces contained in this box are the rawest bits of gutter funk this side of the Brooklyn Bridge. Miles’ trumpet squeals and skronks through distortion, guitars chew steel, and Michael Henderson’s bass oozes groove that would make Sly Stone snap out of his heroin daze. Tal Rosenberg

1

From the zoom-zoom drum pattern that propels “Underdog”, the opening track of 1967’s A Whole New Thing, to the complacent chamois-funk that closes out 1974’s Small Talk, Sly & the Family Stone’s seven-album discography is a decisive entry in the pantheon of contemporary musical hybrids. Sylvester “Sly Stone” Stewart and his multiracial band were pop alchemists, funk titans, and prescient advocates of the genre mash-up that continues to evolve today. They sang about social and cultural change, about falling victim to change’s disillusionment, and they sounded like change, a wild tuft of confidence that stuck out from the pack of progressives. It’s joyous and angry and triumphant and vanquished stuff, a roller coaster of highs and lows that breathes possibility and bleeds transcendence. After years of poor CD transfers and out-of-print titles, all seven albums have been reissued at last, and the music is as fresh and devastating as it ever was, even if the band’s choice of outfits has since gone out of style. Ain’t none higher, indeed. Zeth Lundy