(Un)Changing All Those Changes.

Buddy Holly is one of the greatest humans to ever walk our planet.

Now that we're all in agreement on that, there's the matter of this CD, Down The Line: Rarities. It just came out a month or so ago, creepily timed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Buddy's death. It's a great great thing — Jennifer got it for me as an anniversary present.

For starters, there's "My Two-Timin' Woman," recorded when he was 13. Not great, but certainly interesting.

There's the "garage tapes" from late 1956. There's some session outtakes and stuff. And then there's the Apartment Tapes, recorded by Buddy in his New York apartment just a couple months before his death. All of these would be drug out, overdubbed and thrown onto the market well into the 60s.

Here, we get the unadorned, undubbed versions. And in my opinion, that's the way you want 'em.

It's hard to believe that classics like "Peggy Sue Got Married" were nothing more than demos when Buddy last touched them. Knowing he'd soon be gone, hearing him messing around at home with his new bride and coming up with new songs is a little hard to take. But it's great stuff.

A lot of this was available in the The Complete Buddy Holly vinyl set back in the late 70s. And most of this material has been heavily bootlegged for all us Buddy Holly nuts out there. But it's good to have them officially released again — they sound great — and it seems to mean that MCA and Maria Elena Holley have made amends. (There's also the new Memorial Collection, a pretty thorough best-of package.)

But I'm still waiting for the big fat massive boxed set of everything.

That'll be the day.