Just like that, it’s that time again, where the holiday season is upon us and the mad scrambles down store aisles to find just the right gifts for friends and loved ones commences. It’s a yearly ritual that always seems to come sooner than later. It’s also a sign that the year is coming to a close, and of course there’s no question that 2016 will remain in memory and history as one of the most turbulent, challenging, and painful times ever seen. It is for that reason that the holiday time should hold even extra special positive emotional weight, as community and solidarity run high among people during this time, acting as sort of metaphoric concrete that fills in the gaps that division among many created. And music too, is an eternal, external, and ultimately internal healing agent for the soul, regardless if times are happy or sad, joyous or maudlin. Music also reflects those aforementioned emotions and more. Here’s some of the best released this past year that will for sure excite even the most hardened by the whirlwind of the times and warm someone’s soul like kindling a hearth on the coldest December nights.

Check out our 2016 Holiday Geek Gift Guide for Music…

Today’s Gold Box Deal spotlight deal of the day over at Amazon today is a sale on select Kindle ebooks for $2.99 or less, in honor of the company’s two-year anniversary of Kindle Daily Deals.

Here’s some select titles from the over 65 ebooks on sale today (most are only $1.99):

– The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
– The Host by Stephenie Meyer
– The Lightning Thief (Book 1 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians)
– Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
– 4:50 from Paddington Miss Marple Mysteries) by Agatha Christie

Note – this deal is valid only for today, Saturday, August 24, 2013, until 11:59pm PST.

Visit the main sale page to see all of today’s Kindle ebook deals. You can also browse the many titles on sale for $3.99 or less in the Monthly Deals, including the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age (which contains The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button) for $.99 and It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll: Thirty Years Married to a Rolling Stone by Jo Wood (wife of Stones guitarist Ron Wood) for $2.99.

This year, The Rolling Stones set a milestone as they celebrated their 50th anniversary. Now, another milestone gets set as it’s charismatic front man Mick Jagger celebrates his 70th birthday today.

Forty years ago, if you asked anyone, probably the band included, if the Stones, let alone Jagger, would still be performing in 2013, most people would have shook their collective heads in disbelief. In 1973, to imagine having not only that staying power, but the wherewithal and organic propensity to even WANT to continue playing rock and roll in what seems like an unofficial young man’s game, would have been scoffed at. But it’s precisely and exactly that which has happened, and from the looks of the success of the tour that just recently had a stint at London’s famed Hyde Park, in front of 65,000 plus adoring fans, there seems to be no sign of letting up.

Ravi Shankar, who in essence almost singlehandedly brought Eastern “raga” music to the American shores and wound up influencing scores of famous musicians and bands, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles to name two, passed away in San Diego, CA, on December 11, 2012, reports The New York Times. He was 92. Shankar had suffered from heart ailments and underwent heart valve replacement surgery it was reported in a statement released by Shankar’s family.

Excelling on the sitar, an eclectic string instrument in which neighboring strings on the neck in essence resonate when a melody string is played, gave off a sound that was instantaneously connected with Shankar’s style and musical language. Shankar played like an extension of his personality, soft spoken, well mannered, respectful, yet with an attitude and a verve almost akin to a Jimi Hendrix.

Lots of sonic platters of joy are ready to be served up this holiday season, and what better gift to give someone than the universal appeal of music? During this festive time, when credit card debts mount up, layaway plans become way too unmanageable, and the stress of owing money takes charge over one’s soul and wallet as the new year turns, it’s still worth the feeling one gets when one sees someone’s eyes light up when they tear the wrapping paper off a gift, positively effused with sincere delight at its contents. We all still do it, we all get by, we grumble as the new year rolls in, but it’s all worth it; gifts are cool, no doubt, gifts never go out of style, and the end result of giving someone a gift makes it all worth it. Music was no exception this year. There were some great collections for one to gnaw on, collections which run every genre and will turn even the most hard hardened curmudgeon of a Scrooge into the softest teddy bear imaginable, even if it’s only for one holiday. My holiday box set picks are below, this one goes to eleven:

August 12th was Vinyl Record Day, marked by the date Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, so it’s become a day to celebrate the old time traditions of sonic yesteryear, and spin your favorite tunes on those old 33 1/3, 45, and 78 sized spherical objects made out of wax called “records.” And I’m here to give you my Top 12 favorite vinyl records of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, along with a bunch of honorable mentions, but before we get to that, let’s talk a little bit about this thing called “vinyl.”

Up until the mid 1980s, when CDs started to become the musical norm in how one listened to their music proper, records were the norm of the people; not just a communally popular way to hear songs, but it became a giant subculture of the fabric of life, a hobby, a key element in creating parties, in creating gatherings and get-togethers, a source of fun competition in who would have more records than whom and who would have the rare cool records, in essence, vinyl hoarding was a collector’s and layman’s dream for decades upon decades.

With its outer cardboard casings known as “sleeves,” bands and musicians of all musical genres were able to express themselves not only in the music they created, but by the art that was presented on the front and back covers, which spawned an entire new artistic medium in a sense. In a way, every day should still be a Vinyl Record Day in some regard, and as the way music is bought and downloaded these days, in binary coded “bitted and byted” digital forms, not only has the way of the vinyl passed in essence, but also all the visual accoutrements that came with it. It has become a relic of the past like a rotary telephone or a CB radio, a dinosaur’s regime, which ultimately is hence even a more urgent reason to preserve the memory and image of the record alive in the 21st century.

Last night’s Saturday Night Live apparently marked Kristen Wiig‘s final episode as a regular cast member, and with a little help from host Mick Jagger, the comedian got an emotional, musical send-off from her fellow cast members and SNL producer Lorne Michaels.

The last skit of the episode showed the Rolling Stones frontman speaking at a high school graduation, where he calls up Wiig for a special farewell, congratulating her after “7 years.” As the Stones tune “She’s A Rainbow” begins to play, Wiig takes off her cap and gown, and her cast members one-by-one take the stage to dance with her. With the help of one of the musical guests, Arcade Fire, the cast and guests all sing “Ruby Tuesday,” with Wiig teary-eyed as people like former cast member Amy Poehler and her Bridesmaids co-star Mad Men‘s Jon Hamm came on stage.

You can watch the farewell here below.

Coming hot on the heels of the 40th anniversary of one of rock and roll’s all time greatest records, The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street, is the news that a dramatic movie highlighting the making of the record is at the inception of production for the silver screen.

The Playlist reports this week that Virgin Produced Productions, headed by mogul Richard Branson, has acquired the rights to Robert Greenfield’s concise tome Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones and plans to make a feature film about the making of this seminal record, with all of the drama and wild tales of rock and roll excess that went with that making of the 2-album set.

The Kindle ebook deal of the day over at Amazon today is 10 titles in the 33 1/3 book series that focuses on specific albums from artists like David Bowie, Public Enemy, The Beastie Boys, Bob Dylan, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, and more for just $.99 each.

Here’s are all 10 ebooks from the sale:

– David Bowie’s Low
– Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
– Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street
– Kinks’ The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
– The Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique
– Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited
– Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds
– The Pixies’ Doolittle
– Johnny Cash’s American Recordings
– Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

As part of Amazon’s monthly deal of 100 Kindle ebooks for $3.99 or less, What Would Keith Richards Do?: Daily Affirmations from a Rock and Roll Survivor is on sale for only $1.99 (that’s down from the original digital list price of $11.99).

If you’d like a physical copy of What Would Keith Richards Do?, the hardcover is available for the bargain price of $6.40. As with all bargain books, quantities are limited.