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NOFX

The Greatest Songs Ever Written

(Epitaph)

Fat Mike’s Rock Against Bush crusade may have failed, but instead of hanging his head, he and his band NOFX are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the album Punk in Drublic with this 27-track greatest-hits set. As punk goes, this is deluxe: the time line in the booklet is both funny and informative, with loads of ridiculous photos and a handful of scathing press clips. On the one new song, "Wore Out the Soles of My Party Boots," Fat Mike’s humor turns black: "No one likes a quitter or an old punk’s bitterness/So I’m waiting for the tap on my shoulder."

Like any respectable punk group, NOFX pretty much make the same album over and over. But even with the disc’s scattershot song sequence, it’s hard to miss their progress from the hardcore adrenaline junkies of "Shut Up Already" to the gutter-pop maestros of "Leave It Alone." "Franco Un-American" was the most articulate anthem of this year’s anti-campaign, and they think enough of their recent material to start the comp with 2000’s catchy music biz rant "Dinosaurs Will Die." Mike may be right in calling himself a "fat fuck geriatric punk" in "Party Boots," but he’s got a few more rounds in him.

— Sean Richardson

Left of the Dial: Dispatches from the ’80s Underground

(Rhino)

Box sets don’t get much more vague in premise than this four-disc collection from Rhino, a sequel to last year’s ’70s-punk anthology No Thanks! The set brings together stuff that was sort of popular during the Me Decade, but not quite huge — what you might have heard on a college radio station. The set’s hazy focus is reflected in critic Karen Schoemer’s compelling if mystifying essay anchoring the handsome 62-page book: after describing the horror of watching a Madonna video on MTV during her freshman year, she declares, "Music now officially sucked" — and it could be saved only by . . . the Dream Syndicate and the Smithereens! So consider it a small miracle on the order of the hairdo on that dude from A Flock of Seagulls that Left of the Dial — which features gems from R.E.M. and the Raincoats and the Minutemen and the Feelies and Beat Happening — provides such a good time, even for those of us not old enough in the ’80s to know that Concrete Blonde were right and Duran Duran were wrong.

— Mikael Wood

The Velvet Underground

Live at Max’s Kansas City: Original Recordings Remastered

(Rhino)

When Brigid Berlin snuck a tape recorder into a well-known New York nightclub on a lazy summer evening in 1970, she couldn’t have known that she was about to record Lou Reed’s final performance with the Velvet Underground. Once Reed left the band, Atlantic tracked down her tape and released it as a double album. Purported to be the first-ever bootleg of a live performance sold as an official release, Live at Max’s Kansas City has been given the deluxe reissue treatment by Rhino. The result amounts to an uncut version of the show that includes six previously unreleased songs. Although "Who Loves the Sun" and "White Light White Heat" are welcome additions, no amount of remastering is going to eliminate the lo-fi, direct-from-tape-recorder sound of this set. And the casual fan will probably scratch his or her head at the poor sound. But Velvets completists, as well as anyone drawn to the historical significance of Reed’s last show, will salute Rhino’s reissue.

— David Boffa

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble

Live at Montreux: 1982 & 1985

(Epic/Legacy)

When Vaughan and his Austin cohort of bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton made their first trip to the Montreux International Jazz Festival, in 1982, they were an unsigned trio who practically had to hock their few belongings to make the flight. When they returned three years later, with keyboardist Reece Wynans added to the group, they were blues-rock stars. Indeed, Vaughan achieved the highest level of stardom of any blues-based performer since Jimi Hendrix. At first a bit reserved in the ’82 set, he’s brilliant after he settles in, and he delivers charging versions of "Dirty Pool," "Give Me Back My Wig," and "Collins Shuffle" (copped from one of his heroes and fellow Texans, Albert Collins) to close the show.

It’s clear why Vaughan and company thought they’d failed here. Acoustic-blues purists and jazz fans in the crowd booed their charging electric set, which at the time was a rarity at the festival. Nonetheless, Vaughan shared in a Grammy Award when a live recording of that year’s blues performances at Montreux was issued by Atlantic Records. In 1985, he came back to a fanatical reception and even shared the spotlight with another Texas compadre, Johnny Copeland, who lends his own biting licks to "Cold Shot" and plays and sings with Vaughan on the minor-key epic "Tin Pan Alley." This historic footage captures the man who in his prime restored blues’ place in the mainstream, at least in the ’80s and early ’90s, whether channeling Hendrix in a "Voodoo Chile" that segues into "Power of Soul" or displaying his own deft licksmanship in his signatures "Texas Flood" and the blues prayer "Life Without You." Indeed, for lovers of Vaughan’s soulful, committed live delivery, life hasn’t been the same since he died in a 1989 helicopter crash.

— Ted Drozdowski