TOP PICK
Woodstock – 40 Years On:
Back to Yasgur’s Farm
(Rhino)
This exhaustive CD set — six discs, 77 songs —
replicates the whole dirty-happy experience better than anything else
out there (along with the new Woodstock DVD). More than three
dozen cuts have never been released, including songs by the Grateful
Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the Who. Plus, there’s plenty of crowd
chatter for your next acid flashback.
CD
Midlife: A Beginner’s
Guide to Blur
(Capitol/EMI)
These ’90s Britpoppers were more arch, clever and British than most
of their contemporaries. This two-disc collection gathers 25 tracks
from all seven of their albums. The best of them — like “Girls
& Boys” and “Song 2” (the “woo-hoo!” song) — still thrill.
The rest reveal a band that wasn’t afraid to play around a little
inside the Britpop bubble.
DVD
Flight of the Conchords:
The Complete Second Season
(HBO)
Jemaine and Bret still can’t catch a break on the second season of
their hit HBO show. They’re still playing gigs in libraries. They still
bomb with the ladies. And they’re still writing some of the funniest
songs you’ve ever heard. The tunes aren’t as consistently great as the
first season’s, but “Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor” is a
straight-up classic.
VIDEOGAME
G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra
(EA)
The movie is one long videogame, so this tie-in (for pretty much
every console out there) makes much more sense than, say, the
Burger
King toys. It’s basically a third-person shooter with tons of big-ass
weapons and cool vehicles at your disposal. But we never get tired of
blowing up things. The two-player co-op mode is best.
VIDEOGAME
Wii Sports Resort
(Nintendo)
The Wii Sports game that came with the Wii still gets more
replay than any other game in our collection. So we totally love this
follow-up. The dozen games include archery, sword fighting, basketball
and canoeing. Most of them are as addictive as the first batch. Best of
all, the game includes the cool new Wii MotionPlus.
This article appears in Aug 19-25, 2009.