The Year in Music DVDs: 40 Years Later, It’s Still Beatles vs. Who vs. Stones

Even as the boxed set phenomenon is starting to look exhausted, there seems to be no shortage of classic rock material that music archivists are finding to bring out on DVD and Blu-Ray. If you have a needy music buff on your gift list — by which we mean, of course, yourself — here are 10 home video releases from 2015 that will sate the musical appetite as well as stuff the stocking.

1. The Beatles: 1+ Deluxe

While Beatles fans thought we were waiting for Let It Be to finally be issued on DVD, it turns out that what we were all really anticipating and just never realized was a collection of film clips spanning the Fabs’ entire career. The deluxe edition includes two video discs with 50 clips, in addition to a remastered greatest-hits CD component. Paul McCartney does voiceover commentary on some of the short films, while Ringo Starr filmed video introductions for a few. The drummer notes that the “Hello Goodbye” video was “us trying to get another wear out of our Pepper suits” — and helpfully points out something you might miss: that he’s miming playing a miniature kit in most of the “Hello” shots, but it’s replaced by a giant, oversized set in the shot where he’s playing a drum fill. Elsewhere, a “Penny Lane” video that put the Beatles on steeds is a chance for Paul to tell tales out of school about how Ringo was the worst horseman out of a group of pretty terrible horsemen. That might not be essential information if you aren’t a serious Beatlemaniac, but buffs understandably prize the chance to finally have all these goofy little would-be art films and TV one-offs in one place.

2. Queen: A Night at the Odeon

There can’t be many better ways to celebrate Christmas Eve 2015 than to relive Christmas Eve 1975 as it occurred in London, where thousands of fans were seeing Queen at the Odeon and untold tens of thousands more were tuned in to a live broadcast on the telly. The show has been so extensively bootlegged and/or coveted over the years that it’s a mystery why the gatekeepers held it back from a legit release for three decades. This is Queen toward the tail end of what most fans would consider their peak period, with plenty of the louder, prog-gier material from their first two albums still in the set, even as they had just reached No. 1 on the UK charts with “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Interestingly, only the beginning and end of “Bohemian” are heard here, bookending a medley that included “Killer Queen” and “March of the Black Queen” — because the band didn’t think they could do the ornate middle sections justice. Now, of course, they’d probably just go to the tape. But what’s phenomenal is just how much of the records the band did reproduce in concert, with the harmonies sounding more stacked than possible, and Mercury backed by what it’s easy to forget was a mere power trio. Plus, you get the vintage sight of Mercury and Brian May in angelic white one-pieces that are scarily snug everywhere except around the flared ankles. It’s not exactly a timeless look, but then, it’s not as if it hurts to have one more reminder that rock ‘n’ roll this grand isn’t necessarily being made in the present day.

3. The Decline of Western Civilization Collection

Not only has Penelope Spheeris’s documentary trilogy about the L.A. rock scene finally been collected in one place, but the boxed set marks the first-ever DVD/Blu release for the underrated Decline III, which may have languished in the vaults because the bands represented stayed truly underground, unlike the breakouts of the first two movies. The original Decline remains one of the great rock docs ever, detailing a SoCal punk scene that, with X at the spiritual forefront, matched anything London or New York had to offer. If it’s comedy you favor, you could make an equal case for the greatness of Decline II: The Metal Years, which was nearly as slapstick as Spheeris’s later fiction effort, Wayne’s World. The third movie moved back to punk, not in its ecstatic beginnings, but its eventual pathos as a haven for runaways and miscreants who adopted it because they had no place else to go, not because it was an art movement. If you haven’t died of overexposure to Dave Grohl yet, he provides a fan’s audio commentary on the original movie in addition to the director’s own, and a terrific booklet provides still more context for all this historic roughhousing.

4. Robert Trujillo Presents: Jaco

There aren’t many independent film companies lining up to finance serious documentaries about long-dead jazz musicians, so a tip of the hat is due Metallica’s bassist for putting his earnings to good use to produce a feature-length doc about Jaco Pastorius, whom Flea calls “the greatest electric bass player ever to play.” Or, as Mars Volta bassist Juan Alderete puts it in the film, “We all say it: He’s our Hendrix.” Among the others offering testimonials are Sting, Geddy Lee, Carlos Santana, Bootsy Collins, and Ian Hunter, who remarks that Pastorius struck him as having “an enormous ego” while also being “innocent.” Joni Mitchell, presumably captured in one of her last interviews before falling ill, doesn’t always make Jaco sound so innocent, as he alternately enlivens and sabotages her sessions and live shows in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. That he turned out to be bipolar as well as having a substance abuse problem comes as no surprise to anyone who watched virtually any music documentary in 2015. But his pioneering of the bass outweighs the predictably pitiable sections that take up the back half of his rise and fall. Trujillo doesn’t give himself too much screen time in his own movie, but he gets one of the best visual shots, as the Metallica man gets some assistance in picking the frets off his own bass.

5. The Who: Live in Hyde Park

Do you really want to see a Who show that was filmed in the summer of this year, as opposed to 40 years ago, like Queen’s? The answer is yes, if you have any interest at all in seeing seniors who can still bring it. Roger Daltrey has come back quite surprisingly since his throat surgery last decade, and Pete Townshend is actually playing electric guitar for entire shows again. A DVD also allows time to do freeze-frames to consider how much Zak Starkey, their drummer for decades now, resembles his dad, Ringo Starr, even as pictures of Keith Moon in drag flash on a giant background screen during “Pictures of Lily.” Was this massive outdoor show in London part of a last waltz? In brief interview segments, you get very differing accounts from Roger and Pete of how they might go out. Daltrey: “I really do feel we’re on top of our game now… and it’s coming time to close that chapter. That’s why I say it’s the long goodbye… And hopefully it’s a really long goodbye. But, equally, it might be the end of the year… [But] there’s so many opportunities there for us, We might set ourselves up in a theater somewhere and play to a small audience.” Townsend, in contrast: “I hear a lot of people say, ‘You could go out and you can play in small theaters and tell stories.’ And I think, ‘Oh my God’” — making an ugh face. These two may not agree on their retirement plan, but it’s a miracle they find enough harmony to pull off this strong a show at this point in the calendar, a miracle you’d be churlish to take lightly.

6. Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck / 7. Amy

What a year it’s been for tragic musician documentaries. While we’ve also had feature-length films on Janis Joplin and Nina Simone hitting theaters, these are the captivating two that happen to be already out in expanded home-video editions. Brett Morgen’s Cobain documentary may have been too popular or too visceral to make the short list for the Oscars’ documentary category, but fans with a superior home entertainment center will enjoy what a “play it loud” experience Montage of Heck is, even if the Oscar folks didn’t. Bonus features include additional interviews with many of Kurt’s family members… including, yes, more Courtney. The Amy DVD piles on even more bonuses and outtakes, including not just a filmmakers’ commentary track and extra interviews but additional Winehouse performance footage.

8. A MusiCares Tribute to Carole King

Thank you, Carole King, for not succumbing to drugs before the age of 30, because tributes are so much more fun when the subject is vertical and participatory. It’s no surprise just how eminently cover-able King’s songs are, given that she spent a decade writing for other people before finding any success as a recording artist. Maybe that’s why this is an even better MusiCares salute than most. Maybe it’s not a shock at this late date that Lady Gaga kills with a solo-piano “You’ve Got a Friend.” More surprising: just what an exceptional pairing Kacey Musgraves and Miguel turn out to be on “Crying in the Rain.” Could someone please book them an odd-bedfellows tour? Alicia Keys, Pink, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, the backup-singer stars of Twenty Feet from Stardom, and even a few dudes round out a guest list you’ll still love tomorrow.

9. Bob Marley & the Wailers: Easy Skanking in Boston ‘78

There’s a big caveat with this one, and it’s one that should have been flagged in the packaging: All the footage on the DVD comes from a single 8mm camera wielded by a fan who was in the front row for this 1978 show. And the anonymous cameraman didn’t have his camera on the entire time, either: Maybe he had to reload a lot, or his arm just got tired. But if you know that going in, there’s something hypnotic about the combination of crude footage and modern interstitial animation that makes up the video component. Is “hypnotic” code for “goes better with ganja”? We’ll let you be the judge of that. But if you get frustrated by the DVD (or the admittedly unnecessary, even higher-def Blu-Ray), you can just put on the CD that comes with it, which is worth the price itself just as a live album. Honestly, though, we’ll take the crude photography in this curio over some of the flashy filming and editing we see in some freshly filmed music DVDs.

10. The Rolling Stones: From the Vault: Hyde Park 1969

This one had a few fan complaints, too, because unlike other entries in the Stones’ acclaimed From the Vault series, it consists entirely of a previously seen British TV documentary centered around the group’s mammoth free show in London. It would have been nice if the DVD’s producers had dug up some additional material from the set, but it’s quite worthy as a historical document anyway. If you ever wanted to see the Stones as a garage band, this is the opportunity: It’s the first show they ever did with new member Mick Taylor (the recently ousted Brian Jones had died just two days earlier), and in some ways it shows, with a lack of rehearsal and guitars that aren’t always finely in tune. But Mick Jagger never seemed more feral than he does onstage here, right before Altamont maybe scared some of the evil out of him. On the first live version of “Midnight Rambler” ever, Taylor sounds almost as great as he ever would — and if you can’t say that for “Satisfaction,” it’s actually quite satisfying hearing a version that raggedy, in contrast to the polished road-show rendition everyone heard in stadiums this past summer.