Pop music gift guide part 2: Music gifts that will move the recipient to the beat

Among the off-the-beaten-path ideas are biographies of Keith Richards, Frank Sinatra, Rosanne Cash and Patti Smith, a Michael Jackson video collection, Coachella and Warped Tour-related gifts, and the ultimate Miles Davis collection.

Keith Richards, "Life" (Little, Brown, $29.99)
James Kaplan, "Frank: The Voice" (Doubleday, $35)
Kristin Hersh, "Rat Girl" (Penguin, $15)
Rosanne Cash, "Composed" (Viking Adult, $26.95)
Patti Smith, "Just Kids" (Ecco, $27)

It used to be easier to pick out music for your tune-obsessed relatives. There were far fewer releases than there are now, and unless it was a hot album, chances are good that with enough research one could find sounds desired yet unpurchased. No more. With the instant gratification of iTunes, Amazon and miscellaneous pirate portals, a music freak who wants a particular set of tunes probably already has it, and if not, doesn't want it.

Still, that leaves a ton of music-centric gift options that aren't run-of-the-mill compact discs. Below is a list of ideas for the melodically inclined.

In a year full of excellent music books, artists' biographies and memoirs stand out, and Keith Richards' "Life"

is a high point. Between dishing dirt and co-dependently bashing Mick, the rock god's doorstop reminds us that a passionate (and borderline nerdy) love of jamming is what makes the rock-and-roll lifestyle meaningful. The equally bulky "Frank: The Voice," by James Kaplan, reveals something similar about singing: This hard-boiled, heavily detailed biography reveals that Sinatra's delicate pursuit of vocal refinement was the practice that kept him sane during the rocky first half of his titanic career.

"Rat Girl" by Kristin Hersh, leader of the groundbreaking Throwing Muses, expands upon her teen diaries to confront one cataclysmic year: At 18, Hersh recorded the band's first album, discovered she suffered from bipolar disorder and had a baby. "Composed," by Rosanne Cash, takes a longer view, gracefully exploring how this song-fed daughter of country music royalty learned to take, and give, her own nourishment. And the National Book Award-winning "Just Kids" by Patti Smith, the punk priestess' account of her early romance with New York and with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe, describes the way artists give birth to themselves with more love and courage than any book I can remember. — Ann Powers

"Michael Jackson's Vision" DVD box set (Epic, $39.98)

Fans wary of the controversial posthumous album hitting stores can pick up "Michael Jackson's Vision," a DVD box set featuring nearly five hours of remastered Jackson videos and including a 60-page hard-bound book with behind-the-scenes photos. "Vision" is heavy on Jackson's legendary short films, including Martin Scorsese's full 18-minute cut of "Bad" and the groundbreaking short for "Thriller." Ten videos, including the previously unreleased "One More Chance," make their DVD debut here, resulting in quite a comprehensive gift for any MJ fanatic.

— Gerrick D. Kennedy

Critic’s Notebook: Grammy nominations pull from a wide world

Eminem, Bruno Mars and Lady Antebellum are no surprises while Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’ is a pleasant one. Some choices, though, are from left field.

The roll call of top nominations for the 53rd annual Grammy Awards, broadcast live on CBS on Wednesday during a cheerful if typically frantic show at Club Nokia in downtown Los Angeles, reads like a playlist created by someone with a very itchy finger. It’s all over the place, and likely to provoke both excitement and horror among music loyalists.

Some of what’s on the list — the 10 nods for comeback hero Eminem, the promising numbers for music industry-friendly newcomers Bruno Mars and Lady Antebellum — fulfill expectations. The voting members of the Recording Academy, who come from all facets of the corporate music industry, tend to reward such artists: rebels who’ve matured enough to behave well in public and fresh-faced kids chasing the pop dream of making good music that sells.

The Grammys always has been an insider’s game, and though its view has broadened in recent years to reflect an ever more scattershot music culture, artists with the magic combination of high visibility and classiness (which, in pop, is a constantly shifting variable) tend to win out. That has resulted in some truly regrettable nominations in the past, but also in many fine lobs from left field.
This year, that’s where all the meaningful action 

Every top category has at least one entry worthy of a hearty cheer, and another that will likely inspire much wincing. The biggest milestone, industry-wise, is right up top: the inclusion of “The Suburbs” by Arcade Fire in the album of the year pile.

A genuine indie rock triumph, recorded by a Canadian art collective and released on the utterly unaffiliated North Carolina label Merge, “The Suburbs” represents the future for the kind of ardently ambitious, crowd-inspiring rock that once required the support of a major label. Following the album’s rise to the top of the Billboard Top 100 last summer, this chance for a red-carpet victory lends hope to those who still believe that music — preferably with guitars and shouted choruses — can move mountains.

Pop music gift guide: Because it's hard to wrap MP3s

If you want to give the gift of music, these impressive new deluxe packages include some of the greatest sounds around. 

Syl Johnson “Complete Mythology” (Numero Group) $75

A four-CD, six-LP set, this collection spans more than a decade of Johnson's career, showcasing the work of the Mississippi-born artist throughout and just beyond the ‘60s. A criminally unheralded stylist of urban funk and Southern soul, this detailed and annotated set provides a snapshot of Johnson's expansiveness, and a voice — one that can wail with heartache just as easily as it can rip up the floorboards — that is long overdue for rediscovery. (Todd Martens)

Feist “Look at What the Light Did Now” (Interscope) $26.98

Bruce Springsteen's “The Promise” may be stealing all the thunder on the archival-set road, but this film about the process of making and touring the Grammy-nominated album “The Reminder” is, in a quieter way, an equally powerful statement about art and community. Leslie Feist graciously shares space with her team — a puppeteer, a photographer, her producer Chilly Gonzales — to show how even solo albums are anything but. The DVD comes with a bonus CD of songs from the film. (Ann Powers)

“Matador at 21” Various Artists, (Matador Records) $35

Though this set showcases just one label, this economically priced six-CD collection provides a rather thorough lesson in American underground rock for the last two decades. Be it the slacker sarcasm of Pavement, the pop experiments of Yo La Tengo or the earnestly left-of-center folk-pop of Cat Power, Matador, as well as Sub Pop in Seattle and Touch & Go in Chicago, set the stage for the Shins, the Arcade Fires and the Interpols to come. (TM)

Pink: I would have loved to have been the new Ani DiFranco

 
Is geography destiny? Pink, the pop diva obsessed with daring to be different, would be wise to think so. In a recent chat with this critic timed to celebrate the release of her career-spanning compilation "Greatest Hits...So Far!" the powerful vocalist and ace acrobat remembered that as a teen fan she dreamed of following in some very singular footsteps.

"I wish!" she said in response to the question, could you have been more like Ani DiFranco? "That's why my first record (the R&B-influenced "Can't Take Me Home," released in 2000) was so hard for me to swallow. Yes, I was the only white girl [growing up] in Philly singing in an all-black gospel church -- so I can hang with the best of ‘em. But I also had a punk rock group. I sang opera. I played acoustic guitar with my dad at Vietnam vet benefits. And I loved Madonna. Love Ani DiFranco. PJ Harvey was one of my first records I ever bought."

Pink's youth learning hip hop moves from her African American friends in Philadelphia may have primed her to become a part of the same teen-idol class that included Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, instead of entering the purist world of 1990s indie rock. It was Atlanta, though, that really put her on that path. She moved there while still a kid as part of the short-lived girl group Choice and made her first solo steps under the guidance of the R&B-fusion trailblazer L.A. Reid.

Nicki Minaj's 'Pink Friday': Super-savvy or super-lame?

In the last few days, pop fans in the media have occasionally stepped away from the frenzy surrounding Kanye's new album and made note of the imminent release of another crucial album of 2010: "Pink Friday," the debut long-player from mixtape empress and guest rapper extraordinaire Nicki Minaj.

Maybe it's inevitable, but a backlash against this fresh female artist has begun, primarily caused by her decision to include several R&B-style tracks -- structured around Minaj's very Latin freestyle-influenced and often computer-manipulated singing -- to offset the harder, Eminem-style flow on monsters such as  "Roman's Revenge."

I appreciate the argument made by writers such as Judy Berman in Flavorwire -- that women rappers are so generally unmarketable that even this extraordinary one has to soften herself up and croon to please her label and, ostensibly, her ever-growing public. But I disagree that Minaj's embrace of softer, more romantic -- and more melodic -- material is weakening her tea.

Minaj caught everybody's eye with her costume drama: Like Lady Gaga, to whom she's been compared, she is an intelligent manipulator of the visual, using wild costumes to present herself in ways that challenge the conventional images of female rappers as either strict sex kittens or hardy homegirls. But this daughter of Queens, the most culturally diverse neighborhood in America, obviously spent her youth listening to all those accents on the subway. She takes the art of the fluid self into new territory by cultivating multiple vocal personalities, making her not just another fashion plate but a true spokeswoman for the split and shattered female self.

With several alter egos helping her define her rhyming style, from the nastily aggressive Roman Zolanski to the coquettish (but never dumb) Barbie, Minaj has not just set herself up to be a necessarily versatile pop star -- she has taken on the very complicated subject of how any woman, artist or not, manipulates her own consciousness to adjust to what life within a still-sexist society demands of her.

Minaj doesn't always succeed on "Pink Friday," and I'm not even sure how thought out her split-personality approach is. But I for one admire her attempts to show range, vocally and emotionally, and to confront how confusing life for young women can be.

Many women in pop are currently struggling to reconcile how to be both (Sasha) fierce and tender; ambitious and open-hearted; hard and soft. Many, in fact, are already incorporating rapping into their vocal palettes, though only a few critics have dared to call Ke$ha or Lady Gaga "rappers."

By showing her formidable skills as an emcee, Minaj risked becoming the designated savior in the criminally unbalanced, frankly sexist world of hardcore rap. But as Tina Turner said so long ago, we don't need another hero. We need well-rounded artists who can be in this game for the long haul. I think that's what Nicki Minaj is trying to become, and despite a few stumbles on her debut album, she is on the right path.

I'll be writing more on Nicki Minaj, Kanye West and the fantasy life of hip-hop next week.

-- Ann Powers

Photo: Nicki Minaj. Credit: Business Wire

Beatles catalog on iTunes: Let's do the '15 Meme' for the Fabs!

The Beatles catalog coming to iTunes may not save anybody real money -- as one astute blogger tweeted, Amazon is selling the beautiful "Beatles Stereo Box Set" for twenty bucks cheaper than Apple's download version -- and whether a rush of Fab fan purchases will knock "Glee" and Taylor off the top of the service's charts remains to be seen. But one thing is for certain: Fab Four fans, from the original Beatlemaniacs to their "Across the Universe"-converted grandkids, can now access Beatles music more quickly than ever before.

Which says to me: Internet meme! Finally, John, Paul, George and Ringo can vie with LOLCats and that kid who went to the dentist as a source of wasted time, lifted spirits and social-media conviviality.

I never do those "15" lists my Facebook friends post -- you know the ones that ask you to not think too hard, and just list the top films-albums-books-china pattern that have shaped your identity? I hate lists! No one can reduce me to a number! And yet ... somehow today such impromptu classifications seem appropriate.

So without further "Love Me Do," you'll find my 15 Beatles songs meme after the jump.

Review: Bruce Springsteen's 'The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story'

The boxed set shows a young Bruce Springsteen reaching for greatness his own way.

Let the broken hearts stand as the price you gotta pay — Bruce Springsteen, "Badlands"

You'd better be some kind of genius to ask the world to admire your spiral notebooks. Bruce Springsteen, who's spent a quarter-century-plus absorbing the love of people who feel his music changed their lives, can afford to be that presumptuous. "The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story" is a boxed set disguised as a scrapbook, its packaging full of scribbled lyrics and tentative track listings and notes revealing — celebrating — the painful process of making a masterpiece.

The masterwork in question was the album that, Springsteen writes in the set's liner notes, granted him an adult voice. "More than rich, more than famous, more than happy, I wanted to be great," the 61-year-old admits, chuckling at the twentysomething egotist he was then, in Thom Zimny's fine film about the making of his 1978 album "Darkness on the Edge of Town."

This archival set goes to exhaustive lengths to prove that Springsteen accomplished his goal, though "Darkness" was neither breakthrough (that was 1975's "Born to Run") nor blockbuster (1984's "Born in the U.S.A.," icon jeans-clad derriere and all).

In three DVDs (the making-of film and two live sets, one vintage and one contemporary), a double album of rejected material, and the remastered original album, "The Promise" set illustrates how Springsteen used the circumstances surrounding "Darkness" to hone in on his Monument Valley, to reference his cinematic influence John Ford: a setting, both sonic and lyrical, that could hold the stories he needed to tell.

An ex-manager's lawsuit and the pressure to follow up the hit "Born to Run" put restrictions on the creative process; a monster writing streak, and the dedication of his E Street Band and longtime producer Jon Landau, broke it open. "What we had were our relationships and the music Bruce was writing," says the drummer Max Weinberg. This detailed, ruminative look back is not just an attempt to nab the shrinking music-buying public with a commemorative plaque; it's more like self-analysis, a long-standing creative team's attempt to understand the process it's come to take for granted.

One Song: John Hawkes brings a slice of Americana to 'Winter's Bone'

One Song is a new Pop & Hiss series in which an overlooked track is given a second look.

The indie film “Winter's Bone” is a fairy tale with a cold wind running through it -- a stark and realistic representation of rural poverty today that resonates with the timelessness of an ancient hero's quest. Young Ree Dolly must fight her own family of Missouri meth dealers to claim the birthright left by the father who's vanished on her.

Supervised by Ozarks preservationist Marideth Sisco, and featuring mostly Missouri musicians, the film's soundtrack is a slice of Americana free of any artificial toppings.

One outstanding song, though, comes from a surprising source: actor John Hawkes, who formerly played with Austin, Texas, band Meat Joy and still enjoys writing songs. He penned “Bred and Buttered” as a gift to “Winter's Bone” director Debra Granik. She loved it and put it on the soundtrack. It's a fine example of a murder ballad that needs no fake patina to feel as old as death, as intimate as family love.

Listen below:

Live Review: Elton John and Leon Russell at the Hollywood Palladium

The Hollywood Palladium is bigger than the Troubadour, but it’s a living room compared to the Staples Center. Elton John settled into the relatively small venue on Sunset Boulevard on Wednesday and made it the grounds for a long-anticipated party — a fete for an old ally as well as a kind of reunion with himself.

The evening served as both a slightly overdue commemoration of the 63-year-old John’s career-shaping August 1970 Troubadour shows and a release party for “The Union,” his album with the 68-year-old Leon Russell, whom he introduced as “my friend and idol.”

Russell is one of those musical characters whose influence permeates many corners of the music world, and his boogie-woogie-infused 1970s albums were a major influence on the young John. Forty years later, the lovable Lion King is in a period of personal reassessment. Repaying his debt to Russell, John is getting in touch with the rawer roots of his own almost universally appealing sound. Their album “The Union,” produced by the golden-fingered T Bone Burnett, is a critical and commercial success that’s gotten John saying that from now on, he’ll be making “real music” instead of the Top 40 fodder that made him a household name.

Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire talks collaborating with Cee Lo, electronic music and new video

Kanye West likes to think of himself as unique, and I'd never hate on the hip-hop art star for that. 'Ye's 15-round wrestling match with his own ego makes him prolific and ambitious, resulting in work like the long-form music film (we used to call them videos) for "Runaway" --  a beautiful and provocative effort that builds on the legacy of such audiovisual geniuses as Michael Jackson and Madonna.

It's always good to remember, though, that forward-thinking artists operate on all levels of the pop game: the mainstream, where Kanye lives; the underground; and even in corners where you might not think to look. Consider Philip Bailey. As the angelic falsetto in Earth, Wind & Fire, Bailey co-created some of the funkiest, most innovative and beautiful sounds of soul fusion's golden era. He had a hot '80s moment dueting with Phil Collins on "Easy Lover." Since those days, like many veteran stars, Bailey has continued to move forward with music loved by his core fan base, while bringing home the bacon by touring with Earth, Wind & Fire on the revival circuit.

What connects Bailey to Kanye right now is that the elder star has also made an artistic music film to expand upon themes within his recent music. Unlike West, Bailey didn't direct the film; he enlisted the young multi-talent Tishaun Dawson to follow him on tour in Europe and film segments in three cities: Venice, Paris and London. The film, "Love Is Real," is viewable on Bailey's website. Starring the model and UC Santa Barbara film studies graduate Sherina Manning as a contemporary Dorothy moving through a fashionable Oz, it's a lovely counterpart to Bailey's new music, which is unexpectedly adventurous.