Considering just sticking an iTunes gift card into someone’s stocking again this year? You can do better than that. Much, much better. Whether the music lovers on your list are teeny-boppers, road-hardened rock warriors, or fans of wheezy old folk icons, all it takes to please them is a little bit of imagination.

And if imagination is something you find yourself lacking, you can always crib ideas from this lovingly curated list of music-related gift items, which was absolutely not just thrown together while we were trying to get our own holiday shopping done. Failing all that, there’s always the iTunes-gift-card option. But you can do better than that.

Bob Dylan and the Band, The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11 Deluxe Edition

Hard as this might be to believe today, there was a time when Bob Dylan’s songs didn’t sound like he was singing “Heeez weeeer noooooood/Eeeeeeeeez zeeeeeeeee woooooooon” every time he stepped up to a mike. If you want to hear sheer goddamn timeless street poetry, log on to iTunes and spend $1.29 on “Subterranean Homesick Blues” or “Like a Rolling Stone”. His brilliance doesn’t stop there. Stuck in a job you can’t stand? Familiarize yourself with “Maggie’s Farm”, a song so punk that it’s been covered by everyone from Rage Against the Machine to the Residents. As you might deduce from the name, The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11 Deluxe Edition goes far beyond the hits. Packed with tracks so rare that even Dylan himself forgot they existed, the six-CD set includes a towering black-thunder rocker titled “Wild Wolf”, choice covers (Hank Williams’s “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It”), and countless originals that have previously only been found on shoddy bootlegs (“Sign on the Cross” and “Bourbon Street”). Add liner notes by former Long Ryder Sid Griffin and a treasure trove of classic photos, and you’ve got the next-best thing to a private house show with Dylan—translator included, of course. ($125.99 at hmv)

ION Tape Express cassette-to-MP3 converter

As much as we all love vinyl, there’s no disputing that it has become every bit as conformist as homeless-style hipster beards, rolled-up beanie toques, and oversize glasses in candy-apple red or toilet-enamel white. Truly cutting-edge music obsessives know full well that Maxell XLII 90 High Bias audiocassettes are now cooler than vinyl will ever be. The challenge is how to make your carefully curated ode to ’90s South Carolina postgrunge playable for friends during that long-weekend road trip to Portlandia. Unless your Nissan Cube comes retrofitted with a Craig T501 cassette stereo system, everyone is shit out of luck. Thank God, then, for the recent proliferation of cassette-to-MP3 converters. The ION Tape Express takes good old-fashioned tapes and turns them into digital files. Load those converted files into the device of your choice, enable Bluetooth, and you’re good to rock. Yes, sometimes the convenience of MP3s trumps style, no matter how attached you might be to that vintage Sony Walkman you picked up for 99 cents at the Sally Ann. ($49.96 at the Source) 

Kohler Moxie showerhead with wireless speaker

Everyone talks about the age-old tradition of singing in the shower, but who really does it? Unless you’re a card-carrying member of the Nylons, the last thing anyone wants to hear is you tackling “Stairway to Heaven”, “99 Problems”, or “I Kissed a Girl” bareback in the bathroom with zero musical accompaniment. Enterprising folks have spent years figuring out how to pipe music into home showers, popular options including splurging on a pair of X-1 Surge Sportwrap waterproof headphones and carefully placing the ol’ iPod in a Ziploc, the main problem there being that washing your hair is mission impossible. God bless the folks at the plumbing-fixture designer Kohler, who have come up with the greatest bathroom invention since the bidet: a showerhead that streams music from your iPod or similar Bluetooth-enabled device. The Moxie not only attaches to your showerhead, it looks like a showerhead, with a wireless speaker that detaches for recharging. Now you can belt out “Singin’ in the Rain” while lathering up with Head & Shoulders without sounding like the leader of Tone Deaf and the Hearing Aids. Or Britney Spears before Auto-Tune. ($185 at Artistic Baths, 2835 East 12th Avenue)

Link Wray tribute guitar

How badass was Link Wray? Put it this way: the man died with his guitar in his hands. And while we totally just made that up, he was still pretty badass. Wray was using power chords and distortion years before anyone else, and his song “Rumble” was banned by some radio stations out of fear that it would get juvenile delinquents unduly riled up. And it was an instrumental! Such was the power of his licks. You’ll never play like Link Wray, but you can at least fantasize about being as cool as he was with the Link Wray Tribute, a limited-edition Airline guitar adorned with drawings by U.K. artist and rock ’n’ roll obsessive Vince Ray. ($799 at www.eastwoodguitars.com/link-wray-tribute/)

Moog theremini

This scaled-down version of the instrument that made many an Atomic Age sci-fi flick freakier than shit has, as the good folks at Moog tell us, “a traditional heterodyning oscillator for pitch control”. And while that might not mean much to you, the key phrase is “pitch control”, because unless you’ve dedicated half your life to learning how, it’s damn near impossible to make a theremin actually sound like anything other than a flying saucer obliterating a field of cats with a heat ray. (US$319 at www.moogmusic.com/) 

Katy Perry Junglescope metal lunch box

Nothing says “unapologetic weirdo” like a pop-culture-indebted lunch box. Marilyn Manson—whose collection famously includes rarities from KISS to Gomer Pyle to H.R. Pufnstuf—figured this out years ago. If you’re going to sit at the freaks-and-geeks table—at school, at work, or at Continental Coffee on the Drive—you’ve got to have the right uniform. What better way to accessorize your cat’s-eye glasses, ’70s polyester leisure suit, and extensive collection of vintage punk and ska-band buttons than with a Katy Perry Junglescope metal lunch box? Emblazoned on the front is everyone’s favourite cheesecake princess channelling her inner Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, with Animal Planet guest stars including an assortment of monkeys, tigers, and elephants. In addition to serving as a sandwich transporter, the Katy Perry Junglescope metal lunch box is also suitable for use as a wacky purse, portable weed safe, or indestructible storage case for your lovingly curated collection of C-90 mixed cassette tapes. (US$35 at katyperry.shop.bravadousa.com/)

Pick Punch guitar pick maker

What do Slash, the Edge, Kim Mitchell, and Carlos Santana have in common, besides the fact that they never leave home without their favoured headwear? That would be the fact that their days of making the trek to buy guitar picks at Long & McQuade are long over. One of the many perks of being a rock star is that you get your gear for free, and not just the Gibsons, Fenders, and Marshalls. As for the rest of us, if you’re a struggling musician still waiting for that Ernie Ball sponsorship to come through, you can’t afford to be firing dozens of picks into the crowd every time you headline Funky Winker Beans. Enter the Pick Punch. The device is simple but effective: slide an old credit card, used Amazon gift card, or similar piece of plastic into the punch, press down, and presto, you’ve got an instant custom-made pick. Slash, the Edge, Mitchell, and Santana would be impressed. If, that is, they didn’t get their picks and, no doubt, Pick Punches for free. ($57.99 at amazon.ca) 

Sia Wet Dog perfume

We were hoping Sia would be hawking nude-tone leotards and blond-bob wigs so we could re-create every last twitchy step of the “Chandelier” video in the privacy of our own home. Then again, you can find those things at any half-decent dance shop. A perfume painstakingly engineered to convey the aroma of a pooch that has just come in from a torrential Wet Coast downpour, though? Now, that takes some doing. When it comes to pop-star-branded scents with house-pet themes, you can file this one right next to Katy Perry’s Purr and Meow (which presumably smell like the singer’s pussy). At $30 an ounce, Wet Dog doesn’t come cheap, but it’s undoubtedly the perfect perfume pick for yarn-bombing local parks or having long philosophical conversations with your collection of Beanie Boos. (US$30 at sia.gomerch.com/products/wet-dog-perfume/)

Ticket Stub Diary

Oh, sure, you could just keep your collection of One Direction concert-ticket stubs in your underwear drawer, along with those tearstained letters that you’ll never mail to Zayn, your ripped-up Bieber Fever fan-club membership card, and that cigarette you stole from your big sister’s purse. But why do that when you can keep a permanent record of every concert you’ve ever been to (except for the Justin Bieber ones, because you don’t love him anymore)? Beg Mom and Dad to put the smartly designed Ticket Stub Diary from Chronicle Books under the tree this year, and then file it lovingly next to your notebooks of Niall/Harry slash fiction. ($13.10 at amazon.ca) 

The Velvet Underground 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition

After the avant-garde noise fuckery of White Light/White Heat, the Velvet Underground got back to basics for its self-titled third album. The change in sound was inevitable, given that resident experimentalist John Cale had taken his leave, and—or so the legend goes—all the effects pedals that drove the cacophony of “Sister Ray” had been stolen at an airport. The result was some of the Velvet Underground’s most delicately wrought songs (like the Doug Yule–sung “Candy Says”), but also what is arguably Lou Reed’s greatest pop tune, the deathless “What Goes On”. Comprising six CDs, including alternate mixes, demos, and live recordings, this “super deluxe” set is a great gift to bestow upon the VU completist in your life—but only after you copy all the tracks into iTunes for yourself, because who needs six CDs cluttering up the place? ($120.99 at hmv)