Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Year In Review 2022 - Favorite Archival Releases

Each year the music industry dips into the past to deliver box sets, live albums, re-masters and outtake collections to sell to the music loving masses (present company included). This look back will round up some of RtBE's favorite archival releases from the past year. 

Usually these releases can fall into the money grab category, not really adding much outside of revenue for the label and (hopefully) the artist. Every now and then though some spectacular collections are unearthed and are worth any price. 

RtBE includes live albums in this category, since they were recorded in the recent or distant past and thus fall into archival release status. 

With the increase in vinyl, and enhanced Record Store Days to help smaller sellers, there are more and more archival releases each year. RtBE are sure to miss a lot of them, but the quality and abundance is exciting. Post your favorites, or any we may have missed in the comments. 

These were our favorite archival releases of 2022, click the link in the title for full length reviews. 

The blues legend got this amazing release from Easy Eye Sound, and these recordings are fantastic, up there with the best of Son House's previous records. 



It is odd that RtBE had never checked out early Ornette Coleman, so this was a hell of find.  Good stuff from Craft Recordings. 



A damn good live album from these two legends and friends. While it focuses more on the Gospel than Rock and Roll (Levon was in rough shape) Mavis does a bang up job carrying the proverbial weight. 



A multi-year spanning effort and an excellent companion piece to the documentary film, Take Me To The River New Orleans is a wide ranging sampling of the cities current sound and beyond. 



A really unique entry to the amazing Dave's Picks series, one that has a little bit of everything for each kind of Dead Head.  Acoustic songs, rarities, psychedelia freak-outs, two crazy peak era "Dark Stars", all occurring over two shows during a transitional phase in the Grateful Dead's career. A very solid entry into this long running series. (Not the official audio from Dave's 43):



A much more recent live album than others on this list, the double live album was captured on a 2020 tour, but Wand bring their true style (mixing jamband/noise/prog/garage) to the forefront on Spiders in the Rain.  


RtBE proudly pay to me members of Tipitina's Record Club, for one reason, they are amazing. Every year they put out fantastic vinyl (last year the live Dirty Dozen release made this same list) and 2022 was no different. This was our favorite of the year, but they were all great. Here is to more excellence in 2023.   (Not the official audio, but same show)


Those are some of the highlights, let us know what we missed and as always thanks for checking in. 

No comments:

Post a Comment