Echo Times

Issue date: 2/8/10 Section: A&E

Loitering won't add rocker Tom Waits' (above) latest compilation to your collection. He's one of several prominent artists to recently release a box set.

2009 was a year full of bands exploiting their back catalogues, often by issuing high price deluxe editions along with more consumer friendly priced options, usually with less material. Here is a list of this listener's picks for some of the past year's best box set reissues and live offerings.

R.E.M.:
"Reckoning" Deluxe Edition and "39 Songs Live At the Olympia in Dublin"

Coming on the heels of 2008's deluxe reissue of their stellar debut album "Murmer," R.E.M. continued with their deluxe reissue series last year, releasing a two disc edition of their fantastic follow up, "Reckoning". Disc one contains the album with such classics as "So. Central Rain" and "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville". Disc two contains a live show from 1984's Little America tour. The band also released a two disc live album culled from a five-night run of dress rehearsal shows in Dublin during the recording of 2008's "Up". The set includes the band running through several then unreleased tracks from that album, as well as a large number of rarely played tracks from the bands first few albums. It includes classics like "Driver 8" and "Gardening at Night," to name a few, and captures one of America's great rock bands returning to the rock music that defined them.

Tom Waits:
"Glitter & Doom Live" and "Orphans" LP

Tom Waits gave fans an early Christmas present this year by releasing both a live album and a vinyl box set last November. "Glitter & Doom Live" takes 16 songs recorded during his 2008 tour and pairs this with a bonus CD that delivers 30 minutes of Waits unique onstage banter, titled "Tom Tales." He followed this release a couple of weeks later with the long anticipated vinyl release of his 2007 three CD set "Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards." This deluxe LP set contains seven 180 gram LP's, spreading each of the originals discs over two LP's. It also includes a seventh LP containing six tracks not found on the CD version, like the beautiful "Diamond in Your Mind," previously only available as a live version on a charity record.

The Stone Roses:
20th Anniversary Edition

This classic album has been remastered by its original producer, John Leckie, and singer Ian Brown. It can be purchased as a single CD or a three disc "Legacy Edition" that includes the album, a CD of lost demos and a DVD with a live show and the music videos from their Silvertone Records era. However the mother load is the import only "Deluxe Edition" that contains the aforementioned discs, a third CD containing all of the non-album singles and b-sides released on Silvertone, many of which are as good as anything on the album, along with three 180 gram vinyl LP's containing the classic album and the singles/b-sides. All of this is topped off with a lemon shaped USB drive containing digital versions of all the content, five unreleased "backwards tracks," photos, ringtones and unreleased video footage shot by producer John Leckie. It is all housed in a beautiful box and accompanied by five prints of guitarist John Squire's paintings for the band's singles and a 64 page book featuring essays and comments from a who's who of the last 20 years of British music.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: The Live Anthology

If you want bang for your buck the best set of last year was this four disc live set that lists for around $25 and features 48 tracks culled from hours of live recordings, spanning 1980 to 2007. It includes several classics plus rarely performed Petty songs, along with a generous helping of covers. For hardcore fans there is a $125 deluxe edition available exclusively through Best Buy that includes a fifth CD that brings the set to 62 tracks, a LP reissue of an early Petty live promo record recorded in 1978, two DVD's and a Blue Ray DVD that contains all of the audio from the set in the highest possible audio resolution. Add to that a journal, poster LP sized book and sheet of backstage passes from past tours and you have a beautiful document of America's greatest Rock 'n Roll band.

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