Christmaswatch 2008: CDs

CDs may be a great gift idea this year because they're relatively affordable. They also hearken back to an era when music purchase was a serious part of being a music fan.

For some of us, it still is.

Here are a couple of CDs on my Amazon.com Wishlist, and I think that they're good for fans of certain types of music. They're released as of this year, I believe:



Little Willie John, Nineteen Sixty Six: The David Axelrod & HB Barnum Sessions.

These are unreleased album sessions that Little Willie John cut at some point before he began serving a lengthy prison sentence, which cost him his life. His King compilation appears to have gone out of print, but I highly recommend this artist to fans of the young James Brown, Please Please Please era. This is high-energy R&B.



The Nerves: One Way Ticket

There are three ways to be familiar with the Nerves without knowing them: The first is that their frontman, Peter Case, wrote and performed "Hanging on the Telephone" which Blondie covered on Parallel Lines. The second is that Peter Case went on to form the Plimsouls, which had the hit, "A Million Miles Away." The third is that the Plimsouls were in the movie "Valley Girl" (Nicholas Cage's first), playing themselves in a seedy Hollywood bar. High-powered LA punk or power pop. Any fan of male-led retro rock should dig this.

More to come! If you have compact disk recommendations, feel free to let me know. Christmas isn't the same without some gifts under the tree!