Exciting is never a word I would likely have used in conjunction with John Lennon’s 1973 album “Mind Games.”

At the time, Lennon’s life was a bit of a mess – his immigration status in the U.S. was a battle to avoid deportation, he was targeted by President Nixon, and his relationship with Yoko Ono was on the rocks. The murky sound on his third solo album suggested maybe his music was in a similar state.

Reviews were all over the place. Some hated it, a few praised it, but even Robert Christgau, who called it, “a step in the right direction” for Lennon also suggested the songs sounded like outtakes from its predecessor, “Imagine.”

But now, listening with fresh ears to the “Mind Games” ultimate collection, produced by Sean Ono Lennon, puts a new spin on the record thanks not only to a new, clearer and more dynamic mix, but to five more CDs and two Blu-Ray discs of supporting material that amplifies the album’s positive qualities and helps put what many believed to be the album’s “confusion” into context.

The six-CD, two Blu-Ray edition has the original LP, plus elemental mixes without drums that highlight Lennon’s voice, elements mixes that spotlight the contributions of individual musicians on the sessions, raw studio mixes, outtakes and a disc of mini documentaries for each song.

The Blu-Rays add high-res 24-96 stereo, 5.1 and Dolby Atmos versions of pretty much everything, along with a couple videos.

There are also two postcards, a poster and a Citizen of Nutopia identity card that you can fill out and register online.

To me, the most important “extra,” however, is the 128-page hardcover book filled with photos, recording information, interviews with all of the musicians and much more that really provides perspective, background and context for the music.

It all slips neatly into a really handsome 9.5-inch square box that seems like the perfect size.

As is the case with these sorts of releases these days, there are a variety of options.

A double-LP/two-CD version is available that includes the new mix of the LP plus the outtakes, the poster, the Nutopia card and a booklet (eight pages in the LP set, 20 pages in the CD).

There’s also an extremely limited and extremely expensive Super Deluxe Box Set, limited to 1,100 copies worldwide, but already sold out.

You can find details on all the versions here.

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The year after “Mind Games,” Paul McCartney was flying high with Wings, whose “Band on the Run” was 11th on the bestselling albums of 1973 list (“Mind Games” was No. 62). During that big boost – “Band on the Run” was topping the charts at that moment – McCartney took Wings into Abbey Road Studios to film the latest iteration of the band with an eye toward a documentary and, potentially, a live album. In the end, very few ever saw the footage and the only folks who heard the music found it on bootleg releases.

McCartney has rectified that now with this 26-track double album set that also includes a six-song seven-inch EP, along with an insert reprint of an original promotional brochure for the film.

The recordings feature Wings stalwarts McCartney, Linda McCartney and Denny Laine along with the two newest members of the band, young guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and Geoff Britton, and this was a formidable unit, as evidenced by high energy versions of “Junior’s Farm,” “Jet,” “Live and Let Die,” “Let Me Roll It,” “Band on the Run” and other McCartney/Wings tunes.

They also did “Go Now,” a song Laine made a hit with the Moody Blues, and, perhaps because enough time had passed since the breakup of the Beatles, a handful of Fab Four hits like “Let It Be,” “Blackbird,” “The Long and Winding Road” and “Lady Madonna.”

The EP includes a number of solo McCartney recordings from the same sessions, including “Blackbird,” covers of Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue” and Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock,” which was the first song McCartney played to impress Lennon on the day they met: July 6, 1957.

While it’s a slimmer set than the exhaustive reissue of “Mind Games,” this first official release of “One Hand Clapping” is, to me, no less rewarding.

New on the vinyl reissue stack:

Hampton Hawes – “For Real!” and Howard McGhee – “Maggie’s Back in Town!!” (Contemporary/Craft)

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I admit that for a long time my vintage jazz ears were focused on the East Coast: Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, Impulse! and other labels based in New York, releasing music mostly recorded in New Jersey. Thanks to Craft Recordings’ Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds Series, I’ve been spending more time than ever (not literally, just in terms of listening) on the West Coast.

These two latest installments help me understand what I’ve been missing. There was a lot of great talent in L.A. in the 1950s and ‘60s and Contemporary captured much of it, as is evidenced by these two 1961 releases, performed by pianist Hawes and trumpeter McGhee with bassists Scott La Faro and Leroy Vinegar, drummers Shelly Manne and Frank Butler, pianist Phineas Newborn, Jr. and tenor saxophonist Harold Land.

It might be a tired generalization but it’s definitely true that these records often had a more naturally relaxed vibe than their New York counterparts, with even the uptempo numbers loping in a less frenetic, but no less masterful and exciting way.

John Lee Hooker – “Burning Hell” (Riverside/Craft) and Skip James  – “Today!” (Vanguard/Craft)

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For a long time if you were a fan of classic blues – acoustic or electric – your listening choices were greatest hits discs and other compilations, with many of the original LPs, even reissues of them, long out of print. But Craft Recordings, which is really unparalleled these days in top-notch reissues of amazing classic LPs in a number of genres, has been bringing back blues gems like two of the latest: Skip James’ 1966 “Today!” and John Lee Hooker’s 1959 almost frightening “Burning Hell,” with its flaming cover and song titles like “Graveyard Blues” and “I rolled and turned and cried the whole night long.”

In heavy duty cardboard tip-on covers with obi strips are 180-gram vinyl in poly sleeves, pressed in the U.S. by QRP. In September, two more Bluesville releases arrive, including a live Albert King LP on Stax and a 1961 collab between no less than Lightnin’ Hopkins and Sonny Terry.

Hank Mobley – “Workout” and Stanley Turrrentine with The 3 Sounds – “Blue Hour” (Blue Note)

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When Blue Note started reissuing its classic 1950s and ‘60s jazz LPs on vinyl in the 1980s – the earliest ones were ahead of their time in the reissue game with heavy duty cardboard tip-on sleeves and pressings held in poly-lined sleeves – it helped me discover some amazing bop, hard bop and post-bop music, which I still love today.

The series lasted for years and brought back dozens of great releases, before the CD revolution shifted even the reissues to tiny digital discs (though it was still great to hear all that amazing music). In recent years, Blue Note has been again mining its incredible catalog for a number of different vinyl reissue series. The Classic Vinyl Reissue Series is an ongoing one that features new all-analog cuts by Kevin Gray pressed on 180-gram vinyl.

There are two scheduled each month through the end of the year, including Donald Byrd’s “Royal Flush,” Wayne Shorter’s “Juju” and Dexter Gordon’s “Getting Around,” among others. The May releases were ones that I’d only previously experienced on CD, so it was refreshing to hear the warmer vinyl versions of Stanley Turrentine and the Three Sounds’ classic “Blue Hour” from 1960 and 1961’s “Workout” by one of my favorite tenor men, Hank Mobley. The series also includes some more recent work, too, like reissues of Aaron Parks’ 2008 “Invisible Cinema” and Jason Moran’s “TEN” from two years later.

The Motown Sound Collection (Motown/Elemental)

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There was also a time when it seemed like pretty much the entire Motown catalog was still available on vinyl – with some exceptions – but those days have long since passed. So, it’s refreshing to see that Elemental Music has kicked of the Motown Sound Collection, which will release two or three classic soul LPs each month through the end of the year – 22 in all.

Records by The Temptations, The Supremes, The Four Tops and Smokey Robinson were issued in May and June and the July batch features three great LPs: The Supremes’ “I Hear A Symphony” (on green vinyl!), The Temps’ landmark 1969 “Cloud Nine” and Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells’ 1964 “Together” duet disc (the first of a number of mono releases in the series). These are new cuts, pressed on 140-gram vinyl slipped into poly-lined sleeves and with an insert that replicates one of the label’s original inner sleeves advertising catalog releases.

I can’t wait to hear more of these and I hope the series will continue at least into 2025 and bring even more classic soul back onto our turntables.

“The Westbound Sound: Westbound Records: Curated by Record Store Day” (Org Music)

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OK, so I’m a little late with this one, which was a special release for Record Store Day in April, but I expect if you want it, you’ll be able to find it. I couldn’t resist, however, because despite having released some of the most exciting funk of the 1970s, Detroit’s Westbound Records seems to have fallen off the radar of all but the most devoted followers.

But this was the label that released the first eight classic Funkadelic LPs, plus a string of great Ohio Players albums in iconic sleeves. Plus there were releases by Denise LaSalle, Detroit Emeralds, Fantastic Four and many others that deserve to be remembered, which is just what the folks behind RSD have tried to do with this 11-song comp with tracks by all the aforementioned artists, as well as Fuzzy Haskins, Dennis Coffey and others.

Dancing about architecture

“Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tone Records Story,” by Daniel Rachel (Akashic Books)

On one of my regular record-buying visits to Greenwich Village when I was in high school, I picked up a book called, “The 2-Tone Book for Rude Boys,” which back in 1981 was like manna from heaven. But while it was heavy on photos, it was rather light on the details of the rise of this musical phenomenon from Coventry, England. And, of course, published at the height of the label’s success, it had nothing about the fall. Other books followed, but I doubt any of them were as in-depth as this one by Daniel Rachel.

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Across 500 pages, Rachel – as the sub-subtitle “Rude Boys, Racism and the Soundtrack of a Generation” suggests – not only explores how the interracial musical mashup of Jamaican and British music by bands like The Specials, Madness, The Selecter and The Beat came to be, but how it was nestled into the youth subcultures and its social and political times.

So, there’s lots about internecine battles in some of the bands (most notably The Selecter, but also The Specials and Bodysnatchers), and about the music, but also about Britain at the dawn of Thatcherism. I can’t recommend this book highly enough for fans of the music but also those interested in modern British history.

"It Came From Aquarius" (The Scourge)

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There is no shortage of documentaries about record stores in recent years, and I'm here for them all. I'm a product of an era when record stores were the places to be, where you heard new music, where you uncovered incredible gems, where you met like-minded people, where you were in your happy place, your third space, your place of wonder, where you explored new worlds. This nearly two-hour doc focuses on the importance of San Francisco's long-lived Aquarius Records, which was a classic record shop in the Castro (though it occupied a number of locations over time, including the Mission) that endured for nearly a half-century, selling prog rock, helping to introduce SF to punk rock and influencing what seems like everyone who walked through the door. The doc also explores the pressures that have led to the closings of so many of these influential businesses. You can and should stream it starting on Aug. 13 on Amazon Prime, Google Play, Tubi, Fandango, Night Flight Plus and other sources.