Though digital downloads are now the preferred format for many music listeners, you still can’t beat the extras that come with a well-conceived box set. Here’s a guide to some of the more notable multi-disc packages released this year (listed alphabetically by artist):

David Bowie, “Station to Station -- Deluxe Edition: The Ultimate Fan Experience” (EMI, $165.98): This over-stuffed box is for hardcore Bowie-philes only, a trove of music and memorabilia from his brilliant if drug-zonked “Thin White Duke” phase. In 1976, Bowie released “Station to Station,” a futuristic mix of space-rock, funk and electronic music, bridging “Ziggy Stardust” glam and his experimental Berlin albums. Two differently mastered CDs are included, plus DVD and vinyl incarnations (Where’s the cassette and eight-track versions?). The prize is a previously unreleased ’76 concert, with Bowie in top form with a killer band. Fans on a budget can get the essentials in a more affordable three-CD format.

Bob Dylan, “The Original Mono Recordings” (Sony, $129.98): This is Dylan as he intended to be heard on his first eight, game-changing studio albums, from “Bob Dylan” (1962) through “John Wesley Harding” (1967). “Original Mono Recordings” is a long overdue addition to his official catalog; bootlegs and used vinyl copies of the original mono recordings have been selling at exorbitant prices for years. During most of the ‘60s, mono was the preferred format, and Dylan and his engineers focused most of their energies on getting the mixes just right. That’s especially apparent on the classic “Blonde on Blonde” (1966). Though fans may prefer the sharper separation of the instruments on the stereo mixes, the mono versions get at the heart of Dylan’s rough and tumble sound, with the vocals in the midst of the instrumental fray rather than pushed out in front of it. The rockers especially sound more menacing than ever; “Like a Rolling Stone” has never sounded better.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 4)

    In between the game-changing albums “Born to Run” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” Bruce Springsteen’s career was derailed by legal turmoil and artistic indecisiveness.

    The struggle is documented on a six-disc box set, “The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story” (Columbia), which presents the original 1978 album in remastered form and supplements it with dozens of outtakes and three DVDs containing live performances and a documentary. 

        
Bruce Springsteen, second from right, performs in 2002 with members of the E Street Band.

“Darkness” was not Springsteen’s most popular album, yielding only one minor top-40 hit (it was far outsold by Springsteen’s 1984 blockbuster “Born in the U.S.A.” and the 1975 “Born to Run”). But “Darkness” stands as his leanest, hardest-hitting album with the E Street Band, and – at least for this listener -- his best. The tour that followed, as captured on a DVD of a typically galvanizing Houston concert, was even better. Springsteen’s ascent to stadium-rock icon hit over-drive.

    What’s less appreciated about the era chronicled on “Promise” is the large volume of exceptional music that didn’t make the final cut, left to languish unheard except for a few live performances and covers by other artists -- until now. The box set’s most crucial addition to the Springsteen canon is the album that might have been (available separately as a two-CD set, “The Promise”); one completely different in tone and intent than “Darkness” but well worth hearing.

For Bruce Springsteen fans, Nov. 16 is shaping up as a banner day. That’s when Columbia Records will release “The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story,” a box set focusing on what many Springsteen aficionados consider his most vital period as a recording and touring artist.

The box will include three CDs, including a remastered version of the original album plus a bevy of outtakes, 21 unreleased songs among them, according to an announcement Thursday from the Springsteen camp. It also will hold three DVDs containing six hours of live and studio footage, including a 1978 Houston concert when Springsteen and the E Street Band were in the midst of their most storied tour and a 90-minute documentary that will debut at the Toronto Film Festival next month. An 80-page book containing images of Springsteen’s original lyrics and notes from the sessions will also be part of the package. The set will also be available in vinyl and Blu-Ray configurations.

"Darkness" marked the centerpiece of a particularly prolific era for Springsteen, with more than 70 songs in play for the eventual 10-song album. Some of the outtakes made it on to later albums, but a few are surfacing only now, including "Save My Love for You," which is being streamed on Springsteen's Web site HERE. It's the type of song that could've been a career-starter for many artists, but for Springsteen it was just another day in the studio.

Here’s a list of the bonus songs to be included in the set, including Springsteen’s version of “Because of the Night,” which became a hit for its coauthor, Patti Smith:

3 stars (out of 4)

Talk about late bloomers. Alejendro Escovedo is a much-admired Texas-based rocker who has been around since the late ‘70s. But only in the last two years has he seen a significant uptick in his mainstream recognition, thanks to a number of high-profile endorsements, most notably the embrace of Bruce Springsteen and his management team.

The marketing buzz has been accompanied by two of the most straight-forward and instantly accessible albums of Escovedo’s long career, “Real Animal” in 2008 and, on Tuesday, “Street Songs of Love” (Concord Music).

Escovedo started out in the ‘70s as a would-be filmmaker who found himself in one of America’s first punk bands, the San Francisco-based Nuns, opening act for the Sex Pistols’ final concert. From there he went on to cofound two great but ill-fated ‘80s bands, Rank and File and the True Believers, then settled into the Austin, Texas, singer-songwriter scene, where he’s been a fixture for the last two decades.

Along the way he’s accumulated numerous high-profile fans – John Cale, Ian Hunter, Springsteen -- fond of the way he blends his literate, lacerating lyrics into a stew of garage rock, folk, glam, punk and even avant-classical (Escovedo’s had a few excellent string sections in his past). Then came “Real Animal,” the feistiest rock album of his solo career, produced by Tony Visconti, who has worked with David Bowie and T Rex.

If “Real Animal” put Escovedo back in close touch with his hardest-edged ‘70s influences (Iggy Pop, Johnny Thunders, Lou Reed), “Street Songs of Love” is even more stripped down and hard-hitting. Recorded with Escovedo’s four-piece road band, the album is heavy on big guitars and big choruses. His lyrics strive for grand, universal statements about the most universal, if also most elusive, emotion. They teeter between flashes of the poetic and the generic, sometimes within the same song. These songs don’t call for insight, they demand boldness.

What makes it work is the sheer exuberance of the performances, the roar coming from the speakers. This is an album about the heart, but it hits below the belt – it wants to make you move. Escovedo and the band throw themselves into the melodies, and Visconti nails the details: the hand-claps in “This Bed is Getting Crowded,” the visceral impact of the booming back beats and subterranean bass on “Tender Heart,” the way Escovedo shouts, “C’mon, fool me!” before the guitar solo in “Silver Cloud.”

After all the bravado, the instrumental “Fort Worth Blue” brings it all home with a lovely, melancholy shimmer. Coming after understated cameos by Springsteen and Hunter, “Fort Worth Blue” puts the focus back where it should be: on a road-tested band that kicks out the jams and then closes down the bar.

greg@gregkot.com

Sponsored Link: Amazon's Alejandro Escovedo Store

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band came to the United Center Sunday promising to give only the second public performance of the “Born to Run” album. They delivered and then some in a concert that had twice the energy of their performance at the same venue last May. 

The 1975 album has held up well — six of its eight songs are in regular rotation at Springsteen concerts, and I’ve yet to see one of his shows where the iconic title track hasn’t been a highlight. But there was an undeniable cumulative power in seeing the album performed in sequence, its arch of youthful possibility traced from the promise of “Thunder Road” to the desperate rituals of “Jungleland.”

Springsteen, who turns 60 on Wednesday, was not pacing himself. He had no stories to tell, no shtick to indulge, no time to waste. He slammed songs together like bumper cars, barely pausing for breath and changing guitars on the fly as he played it hard and fast for nearly three hours. He made sure the E Streeters followed suit.

They looked tired the last time through town, with only a cameo appearance by Max Weinberg’s teenage son Jay making much of an impression. But this time Springsteen put the band, which expanded to as many as 11 pieces for some songs, through its paces with James Brown-like rigor. He laughingly chided the band for messing up “Working on a Dream,” then later acknowledged that he missed a verse. He urged on solos and orchestrated the interplay, part cheerleader, part taskmaster. The band responded with an inspired performance, in particular Clarence Clemons, who appeared to be sinking into the shadows last May. This time he was engaged from the get-go, even discarding his fedora to beam a few smiles in between sax solos. The rhythm section had a great night. Garry Tallent’s bass boomed out a clarion call to dance, and Max Weinberg channeled ‘60s session great Hal Blaine on a powerhouse cover of the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron.”

Though the “Born to Run” songs are part of any Springsteen fan’s DNA by now, the familiarity hardly diminished the impact — particularly when the band swung into the album’s formidable midsection: “Backstreets,” “Born to Run” and “She’s the One,” complete with Yardbirds-style rave-up. With its dramatic introductions and ebb and flow arrangements, the album served as a fine showcase for the orchestral possibilities of the band, notably Weinberg’s timpani-style drumming and the keyboard interplay of Roy Bittan and Charles Giordano. Particularly effective was “Meeting Across the River,” one of the few mood pieces of the night, with Curt Ramm’s lonely trumpet and Richard Davis’ upright bass spearheading a smoky, cabaret quartet treatment.

There was a danger that everything after “Born to Run” would be anti-climactic, and frankly some of it was. But Springsteen wouldn’t allow any let-up. He closed the main set with a roaring “Badlands,” and the seven-song encore was performed with house lights up. There have been times when “Rosalita” closed shows out of obligation. On this night, it was a deserved celebration.

greg@gregkot.com

View more photos from the Springsteen concert.

Bruce Springsteen set list Sunday at United Center
1 Seeds 
2 No Surrender
3 Johnny 99
4 Cover Me
5 Outlaw Pete
6 Hungry Heart
7 Working on a Dream 

Born to Run album (8-15)
8 Thunder Road
9 Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
10 Night 
11 Backstreets
12 Born to Run
13 She’s the One
14 Meeting Across the River
15 Jungleland 

16 Waitin’ on a Sunny Day
17 Promised Land
18 Radio Nowhere
19 Lonesome Day
20 The Rising
21 Badlands

Encore
22 Hard Times Come Again No More (Stephen Foster)
23 Da Doo Ron Ron (Crystals hit)
24 Rockin’ Robin (Bobby Day hit)
25 I'm Going Down
26 American Land
27 Dancing in the Dark
28 Rosalita

Video by Kevin Pang / Tribune photos by Scott Strazzante 

Sponsored Link: Amazon's Bruce Springsteen Store

    Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are returning to play the United Center on Sept. 20, but this time with a twist: They’ll perform his 1975 album “Born to Run” in its entirety (plus other songs from throughout Springsteen's career).

    Tickets ($98 and $65 plus service fees) go on sale at 11 a.m. Saturday through Ticketmaster, concert promoters Jam Productions announced Monday. Springsteen headlined the venue last May as part of a world tour.

    “Born to Run” is Springsteen’s breakthrough album. Its release was heralded by simultaneous cover stories in Time and Newsweek. Though it produced only one top-40 single (the iconic title song), many tracks have long been concert staples, including “Thunder Road,” “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” “Backstreets,” “She’s the One” and “Jungleland.”

    The gambit makes Springsteen the latest artist to jump on the trend of playing a classic album from start to finish in concert. Other performers who have done it in recent years or are about to do it are Sonic Youth, Public Enemy, the Pixies, Judas Priest, Aerosmith, Genesis, Brian Wilson, Van Morrison and Steely Dan.

    I think it’s a great idea to hear a truly great album played live, especially because it gives the fans a chance to hear tracks that have rarely, if ever, been performed. But what do you think? Is the prospect of Springsteen playing “Born to Run” a reason to see him, or a reason to stay away because you might not hear some of his better-known songs from other albums?

    greg@gregkot.com    

Sponsored Link: Amazon's Bruce Springsteen Store

All hail Jay Weinberg.

Familiar name, new face. He’s the teenage son of longtime E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg, and he and dad have been sharing timekeeping duties on the current Bruce Springsteen tour, which played to a sold-out house Tuesday at the United Center.

With the younger Weinberg in the drum chair for the final two-thirds of the three-hour show, the band’s chemistry was slightly unsettled for the better. Jay Weinberg hits just as hard as his father, and is touch looser, less predictable. His fills during “Radio Nowhere” kicked the song, and the concert, into a higher gear, and galvanized a band that was starting to pace itself.

Springsteen smiled in approval. He had to love the kid’s energy.   

Springsteen is about as consistent as a performer gets. You pay, he plays until he drops. You may not love all the songs, you may wish he’d play "Glory Days" or that obscure B side no one else knows except you, but Springsteen always works his tail off.

All of that was still true Tuesday, but his longtime E Street Band is in transition. They’re a band of pros, and they do their jobs well, but they lack the physicality, the sustained urgency of their prime. Slowly, the band is being retooled. Stellar organist Danny Federici died last year, and has been replaced by Charles Giordano. Patti Scialfa, Springsteen’s wife and backing vocalist, was back home in New Jersey with their three children. Violinist Soozie Tyrell, a relative newcomer, has assumed a larger role, and longtime saxophonist Clarence Clemons a smaller one, in part because he’s been hobbled by ailing hips (he had double hip replacement surgery in 1998).

Springsteen has always played his band like a small orchestra, and their versatility allowed him to explore the widest contours of his catalog. He ranged from the stark blues of “Seeds” to the Celtic celebration of “American Land.” The E Streeters expertly negotiated the ebb and surge of Jimmy Cliff’s “Trapped” and the gospel drama of “The Rising.” And they figured out the chord changes for Tommy James and the Shondells’ 1968 garage-rock classic “Mony, Mony” during the audience-request portion of the concert.

“Doesn’t it have some weird bridge?” Springsteen asked guitarist Steve Van Zandt. It did, and they crossed it unscathed, in one of those smile-inducing moments that echoed the band’s early days, when Springsteen used to shout out impromptu covers with mischievous regularity.

If there was a disappointment, it was that Springsteen didn’t make a stronger case for his latest album, “Working on a Dream.” I’m not a fan of the album, but I always look forward to how the singer reinvents his studio work on the stage. In this case, however, he barely touched the new material, which was a shame, because he did a marvelous job of turning “Outlaw Pete” into a theatrical, Old West showpiece while doffing a black cowboy hat with Spaghetti Western guitars, Tyrell’s campfire fiddle and Grand Canyon reverb on the vocals.

As usual, Springsteen divvied up the show into thematic sections. Among the strongest was the topical trinity of “Seeds,” “Johnny 99” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” a seething commentary on blue-collar citizens brought to the brink of desperation by hard times. Each was punctuated by nasty guitar solo: Springsteen channeling the mantra of “It’s gone, gone, it’s all gone” on “Seeds” with a vengeance through his instrument, then Van Zandt riding hard with “Johnny 99” and Nils Lofgren spinning out from Max Weinberg’s surging drums on “Joad.”   

The show started to settle a bit after the midway point, but Jay Weinberg took care of that problem. During “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day,” one of his more enthusiastic fills brought an arched eyebrow and a smile from bassist Garry Tallent. The newcomer wanted to run, and the band had no choice but to rise to the challenge.

greg@gregkot.com

Springsteen set list Tuesday at the United Center

1 Badlands
2 Spirit in the Night
3 Outlaw Pete
4 She’s the One
5 Working on a Dream
6 Seeds
7 Johnny 99
8 The Ghost of Tom Joad
9 Raise Your Hand

Audience request
10 Trapped (Jimmy Cliff)
11 Candy’s Room
12 Mony, Mony (Tommy James and the Shondells)

13 Waitin' on a  Sunny Day
14 The Promised Land
15 The Wrestler
16 Kingdom of  Days
17 Radio Nowhere
18 Lonesome Day
19 The Rising
20 Born to Run

Encore
21 Hard Times Come Again No More (Stephen Foster)
22 Jungleland
23 Land of Hope and Dreams
24 American Land
25 Dancing in the Dark
26 Rosalita

Photo: Bruce Springsteen and Max Weinberg of the E Street Band play the United Center in Chicago. (Scott Strazzante/Tribune)

Check out a photo gallery of Tuesday night's Springsteen show.