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| 1 | Dennis Wilson PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE Epic/Caribou/Legacy |
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The most handsome Beach Boy was also, in 1977, the most daring. Dennis Wilson's only official solo album was the first by any member of the group, and is still the best: 12 songs of gripping need and tortured beauty, sung in a craggy, soulful voice by a surfer dreamboat for whom the California dream was real, but not enough. Pacific Ocean Blue is Dennis' version of his brother Brian's triumph, Pet Sounds — an intensely personal masterpiece — while the session material from Dennis' planned second album, Bambu, is his version of Brian's SMiLE: a promise aborted and, with his death in 1983, forever unfulfilled.
• View List: 2008 Reissues of the Year
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| 2 | Hank Williams THE UNRELEASED RECORDINGS Time Life |
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It is an unimaginable thrill today: the greatest singer in country music crooning to you over your oatmeal. But in 1951, Hank Williams and his band the Drifting Cowboys were on the radio every morning at 7:15 a.m., touting Mother's Best flour and rolling out an astonishing array of tunes: his own songs, old-time spirituals and covers of Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff. On this three-CD set, Williams' voice is crisp and virile, and there is a kitchen-table immediacy to the performances, as if he's right there sharing a cup of coffee.
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| 3 | Various Artists LET ME BE YOUR SIDETRACK: THE INFLUENCE OF JIMMIE RODGERS Bear Family |
"Skinner Blues" and "Miss the Mississippi in You" have been the bedrock repertoire of generations of country, folk and blues singers. Released on the 75th anniversary of his death, this six-CD set charts the force of that influence through the rest of the century, in covers by every major voice in country, as well as Pete Seeger, Rick Nelson, Bono and arguably Rodgers' biggest fan, Bob Dylan.
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| 4 | U2 BOY Interscope/Island |
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U2's near-perfect 1980 debut album — a precociously mature sunburst of spiritual optimism and the Edge's minimalist church-bell guitar — becomes an essential history lesson with a second CD of pre-LP singles and hellbent live recordings showing the Irish quartet's learning curve out of garage land. The club-on-fire versions of "Boy-Girl" and "11 O'Clock Tick Tock," from the Marquee in London, are a thrilling preview of how U2 would soon slay America. Also recommended: the two-CD reissue of 1981's October, a flawed follow-up made fuller with concert and BBC performances of a strong, united band on its way to 1983's War.
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| 5 | Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians LUMINOUS GROOVE Yep Roc |
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The mid-Eighties electric albums of England's most enduring psychedelic son — the studio LPs Fegmania and Element of Light and the live blast Gotta Let This Hen Out — finally get the box set they deserve, along with extra tracks and a bonus double CD of related trips wryly titled Bad Case of History. In fact, Robyn Hitchcock and his Egyptians (a slimmed-down version of his earlier band the Soft Boys) are in constant forward motion on this five-disc collection, combining the fifth-dimension wonder of Syd Barrett and the amplified vigor of the '66 Bob Dylan.
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| 6 | Various Artists BOOGIE WOOGIE AND BLUES PIANO Main Street |
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Boogie-woogie piano was the hip-hop of its day — a Chicago-born spin on the blues, charged with the fast syncopation of black urban life. Some of the tracks on this three-disc set come in tuxedos: Lionel Hampton and Benny Carter lead full bands (a young Nat "King" Cole rolls wild on Hampton's "Central Avenue Breakdown"). But many of these 1936-41 recordings are basically fisticuffs-with-ivories by original masters of the form such as Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, Jimmy Yancey and Cripple Clarence Lofton, whose "Strut That Thing" sounds like the granddad of Ray Charles' "Mess Around."
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| 7 | Nina Simone TO BE FREE: THE NINA SIMONE STORY RCA Legacy |
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The former Eunice Kathleen Waymon was the first R&B diva: a protean singer, equally gifted in jazz, folk and show tunes, who challenged racial injustice ("Mississippi Goddam") and laid her melancholy on the table ("My Man's Gone Now") with the same deep range and sensual vibrato. This set is the perfect entrance into her rich discography, covering multiple labels, with space for her transforming covers of Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Leonard Cohen, as well as her holy-warrior medley of George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" and the poem "Today Is a Killer" — from a 1971 show at Fort Dix.
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| 8 | Various Artists THE JERRY RAGOVOY STORY: TIME IS ON MY SIDE, 1953-2003 Ace |
The timeline covers Jerry Ragovoy's half-century, as a producer, writer and arranger, in the fine print of classic R&B and soul records, beginning with a 1953 doo-wop single by the Castelles. But most of these tracks were cut in the early and mid-Sixties, when Ragovoy made magic daily with mighty voices such as Howard Tate ("You're Lookin' Good"), Garnet Mimms ("Cry Baby"), Miriam Makeba ("Pata Pata"), Dusty Springfield ("What's It Gonna Be") and Lorraine Ellison (the ever-majestic "Stay With Me"). Ragovoy didn't sing a note on these sides, but these are his greatest hits all the same.
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| 9 | Rodriguez Cold Fact Light in the Attic |
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This remarkable artifact of Michigan hippie soul by singer-songwriter Sixto Diaz Rodriguez — a lost classic originally issued in 1970 — is what Bob Dylan's mid-Sixties electric records might have sounded like if he'd made them in Detroit at the dawn of funk. Rodriguez's strident acoustic strumming and period-argument lyrics ("Crucify Your Mind," "Rich Folks Hoax") are coated in brittle-fuzz guitars, while Rodriguez vocally recalls a young Cat Stevens — atop the Afro-acid strut of early Funkadelic. Ironically, some years after it bombed in the United States, Cold Fact became a hit — in South Africa. Now it finally gets another chance here.
• View List: 2008 Reissues of the Year
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| 10 | Augustus Pablo THE MYSTIC WORLD OF AUGUSTUS PABLO: THE ROCKERS STORY Shanachie |
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For the Jamaican producer, composer and keyboard player Augustus Pablo, reggae was not a music. It was a sacrament. Pablo, a devout Rastafarian, pursued the black heart and holy ecstasy of Jamaican rhythm and vocal soul in records he made not only under his own name ("East of the River Nile," "King David's Melody") but for great voices like Jacob Miller, the Heptones and Hugh Mundell. These four CDs (plus a DVD) go deep with a wise emphasis on Pablo's dub sorcery and his fascination with the plastic-church-organ sound of the melodica.
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Listen: The Mystic World of Augustus Pablo: The Rockers Story,
Volume 2
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Listen: The Mystic World of Augustus Pablo: The Rockers Story,
Volume 3
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Listen: The Mystic World of Augustus Pablo: The Rockers Story,
Volume 4
• View List: 2008 Reissues of the Year
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Albums of the Year
1 | Dennis Wilson: Pacific Ocean Blue
2 | Hank Williams: The Unreleased Recordings
3 | Various Artists: Let Me Be Your Sidetrack: The Influence of Jimmie Rodgers
4 | U2: Boy
5 | Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians: Luminous Groove
6 | Various Artists: Boogie Woogie and Blues Piano
7 | Nina Simone: To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story
8 | Various Artists: The Jerry Ragovoy Story: Time is on My Side, 1953-2003
10 | Augustus Pablo: The Mystic World of Augustus Pablo: The Rockers Story