You know that you're in the thick of the holiday buying season when the music industry starts rolling out the reissues and the remasters, faster than you can hum a few bars of "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town." In fact, nothing says Christmas quite like the ka-ching! of a fresh new batch of greatest hits and reissue packages.

And to think, it isn't even Thanksgiving yet.

In this week's fresh batch of new releases, what began as a trickle of such packages a few weeks ago, has now escalated to the point of the floodgates being thrown wide open. A trip to either your friendly neighborhood brick and mortar — or your favorite internet click and order — this week reveals a slew of new greatest-hits packages, as well as a few choice collections of rare or unreleased material from deep within the vaults.

Falling into the latter category would be this week's most interesting new entry, the intriguingly titled double-disc Gram Parsons Archive, Vol. 1. A convincing argument could be made (and probably won) that Parsons single-handedly invented the hybrid mix of country and rock that we nowadays refer to as "Americana," or even that he pioneered the sort of music commonly played on radio's modern day "Adult Alternative" format.

On this double album, two shows Parsons did with his original band The Flying Burrito Brothers, opening for the Grateful Dead — and reportedly taken from the taped concert vaults of the Dead themselves — are presented, in what has to be regarded as the sort of find that will have collectors licking their chops in anticipation.

Of the more traditional greatest-hits packages arriving this week, Van Morrison's Still On Top comes about as close to a complete single-disc retrospective as you are likely to get. As I noted in my original review, this one isn't perfect, but it does cover Van's career all the way from the sixties with Them to the present.

Other greatest-hits collections in stores this week include Nas Greatest Hits, from the man who once declared that Hip Hop Is Dead; as well as a "deluxe" (read: explicit) version of Dr. Dre's Chronicles: Death Row Classics. For "new country fans", Garth Brooks has The Ultimate Hits, while the traditionalists may prefer something like Merle Haggard's Legends of American Music: The Original Outlaw.