the accompanying music sounded like a group of drunken old men flailing around in a kitchen as a truck crashed through the wall.

I hate this time of the year. My family is not Christian but for some reason they celebrated Christmas every year. The whole extended family would gather to eat horrible food and exchange presents. I came from the ‘poor relations’ and that meant every year I’d watch my cousins get radio-controlled race cars or ponies (we didn’t have video games back then but we did have electricity, okay!) while one year I got a box of paper clips.

I did have one kindly old aunt who would buy me a boxed Gilbert & Sullivan operetta every year. When I was 13 and she called me up to ask which record I wanted next, instead of saying HMS Pinafore, I blurted out, “Their Satanic Majesties Request by the Rolling Stones!” I can’t begin to imagine the look on her face when I said that. (And before I go any further, I don’t need any wise-ass to remind me Satanic Majesties was the Stones’ worst record up to that point. I was a kid. And I got it with the original 3D cover. Bite me.)

A couple of years later, someone made the mistake of giving me actual cash – enough for me to buy my first album. My choice, naturally, was Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart. At the time, I had this typical cheap stereo. The base had the turntable, amp and one speaker built in, the lid was the second speaker. Every time I wanted to play it, I had to lift off the lid and put it somewhere on the other side of the room and then run a cable back to the base.

So there I was in my room, sticking Trout Mask Replica on my kiddy stereo, really excited, no idea what to expect. Midway through the first song, the amplifier blew out and the needle broke in half. It was like my record player was saying, “Oh Lawdy! Help me! This ain’t Three Little Maids From School.” That was some powerful shit! I was hooked. My aunt never bought me any record that did that! (Actually she never bought me any more records after Satanic Majesties. She moved on to ties. And three-ring binders.)

Fast forward to the present. People who want to buy me something usually go for a CD or DVD (except for my boss, who every year lets me order a box of paper clips). The problem is that I’m such a compulsive collector that, if they make a good guess, I’ve already bought it myself. And if they have little or no taste, then I never wanted it in the first place. Two words, folks, ‘gift certificates’.

This time of year, a ton of new boxed sets out there are just ripe for gift giving, but one stands head and shoulders above the rest. I know this because I’ve already bought it. So there’s no need to buy it for me, but do get one for yourself. It’s called Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards by Tom Waits.
Fifty four tracks spread across three discs, it’s not even close to a greatest hits because 30 tracks are previously unreleased and the remainder come from a variety of sources. Brawlers features some straight ahead roots rock and blues, Bawlers
has a variety of ballads, and Bastards – well, that one’s just plain weird.

I guess the set has some conceptual continuity, because if you think about Waits’ career, he started off relatively mainstream, writing songs that got covered by the Eagles and Bette Midler. He was a little bit weird to start. But he kept getting weirder. And weirder. In the ’80s, Beefheart became a huge influence on his sound. His singing sounded like someone who had died 30 years previous and was screaming from inside a coffin, mouth filled with gravel: he made Leonard Cohen sound like Jimmy Somerville. Meanwhile, the accompanying music sounded like a group of drunken old men flailing around in a kitchen as a truck crashed through the wall. Clearly this was not mainstream stuff and I confess that even I found it difficult to follow to some of the places he was leading.

So I approached Orphans a bit slowly, wondering just what I was getting into. And it’s great. It’s diverse, entertaining, challenging and unique. Even though this is mostly new stuff, it covers such a wide spectrum it functions as a kind of bizarre world greatest hits. The rock stuff rocks as hard as any juke joint on some back road in the Deep South and the ballads are more mainstream than anything I’ve heard from him in years. The weird stuff is… still weird. And that’s not a bad thing.

But if Waits is not your cup of tea, I could recommend some other vaguely reasonable choices. A nice boxed set from Weather Report includes a DVD of a complete concert from the Jaco years. Forever Changing is a beautiful five-disc set that takes you back to a time when a record company, in this case Elektra, could be a nurturing home for rare talent. The set includes a truckload of obscurities alongside crucial tracks from artists running the gamut from Judy Collins and Phil Ochs to the Doors, the Stooges, the MC5, Queen and, er, uh, Bread. Then a nice Robert Plant box shows how he managed to create some worthwhile music after Led Zeppelin, though nine discs may be a bit too much for all but the most rabid fans. And for the real rocker, grab the 19-disc box of all The Clash’s original singles.

If you want to buy a mainstream gift and stand out from the crowd, your best choice is Keith Jarrett’s The Carnegie Hall Concert, a two-disc set on the ECM label. Yes, you can play this in your office or at a cocktail party and people will admire your taste. But you also need to play it when you have absolutely nothing to do except concentrate on it. Sorry new Hong Kong ‘quality migrant’ Lang Lang. Go to the back of the line, Maksim. This is the true master class in the art of the piano.