Repackaging and resuscitating the catalogues of endlessly reissued bands is fraught. By their nature, completists already have everything and the casually interested are not fussed by alternate versions of obscure tracks or disinterred lo-fi live recordings. It’s challenging to freshen up or put new spins on predominantly familiar material by endlessly reissued bands. Preaching to the converted is frequently the best which can be hoped for.

The Bill Evans Trio played London’s Ronnie Scott’s from 1 to 27 December 1969 as a co-billing with Blossom Dearie. The season would have remained less than a footnote if it were not for a French fan identified only as ”Jo” in Evans in England’s booklet. He took an Uher reel-to-reel tape recorder into the club and placed it under the stage-side table he and a friend occupied.

Abbey Road Studios and the anarcho-punk legends Crass seem an unlikely pairing. The new, vinyl-only reissues of The Feeding of the Five Thousand (The Second Sitting), Stations of the Crass and Best Before 1984 each bear a sticker saying “Remastered by Alex Gordon at Abbey Road Studios, as close as possible to the sound of the original release. ‘as it was in the beginning’.”

Torso Hell tells the story of an American soldier whose limbs were blown off in Vietnam. Amazingly, he and his buddies survived, and in the ensuing medical chaos his arms and legs were re-attached to them rather than him. The narrator says “At the hospital, it’s so crazy and confused that when these guys come in, the doctors and nurses don’t know what from what … they just start sewing. The main guy stays a torso, but they put his arms and legs back on the other guys.

The sticker on the sleeve says “Marvin Gaye’s Lost Album.” A prime internet sales site states “You’re The Man was the album that was proposed to follow-up the monumental What’s Going On.” According to the marketing and promotional material, You’re The Man is “Marvin Gaye’s never-released 1972 Tamla/Motown album” and that it’s the “music legend’s shelved follow-up to What’s

It begins with The Stone Roses’ “Don’t Stop”, the fourth track from their 1989 debut long player. A backwards though thoroughly remixed version of “Waterfall”, the album’s preceding track, it enthusiastically pushes the button labelled “psychedelic”.

This new collection, compiled by Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs of Saint Etienne, aurally delineates a period when much that was British had an edge of bleakness. Accordingly, Three Day Week – When the Lights Went Out 1972–1975 ought to be a grim listen, a slog during which the mind is improved and new outlooks are brought on board but is as lively as a tractor reversing through swiftly setting concrete.

Until now, Rema-Rema’s only release was a 12-inch EP released in August 1980. It had hit shops after the band fell apart at the end of the previous year. Negotiations with 4AD, a new offshoot of the Beggar’s Banquet label, were underway towards the end of 1979 but then guitarist and future Adam and the Ants-man Marco Pirroni left. They rehearsed without him but called it a day in November. Yet 4AD issued that EP, titled Wheel in the Roses.

The US music trade weekly Cashbox chose a picture of the then-hot Diana Ross & the Supremes and Temptations joint enterprise for the cover of its 14 December 1968 issue. On page 28, under the header “Best Bets”, a review of the “It’s the Loving Season” single by The Vareeations (pictured above) said “Standout female lead makes an especially fine showing on this blues-pop ballad side.

Writing in 1980, the musician and musical theorist Chris Cutler said that “without the support and patronage of the culture-establishment, The Residents were able to exist, continue to exist, grow, find their public, hold that public – and expand it – until the pop establishment was forced to take notice.” He contended that as they were neither musicians or part of music sub-culture they “exemplified a new type [of development], specialising in nothing, turning their hands to anything: a type whose aims were no longer conceived in terms of music, theatre, film, writing or the visual arts, b