There's a lot of wonderful music on here but there's a fair bit that isn't.
The earliest tracks are basically juvenilia. Neil isn't even trying to find his voice, though he does manage to find Hank Marvin's. But no-one with any sense expected it to be otherwise; they are an historical curio and that's about it. Once we get past those and the Buffalo Springfield material we start to find the real Neil Young even then there are a number of so-so songs. But then there are also a lot of the great ones too. I suppose the big disappointment is that there are no unheard of unreleased gems. Bruce Springsteen could issue a massive box set of unreleased brilliant material but not, it would appear, our Neil.
However, my biggest grouch, my only real one to be honest, isn't the music, it's the presentation and the cost.
Basically it's a disgustingly shoddy package for the price.
A long box which folds into two to reveal four discs in each compartment. Anyone care to guess how long it will be before the hinge splits and we're left with two smaller boxes? Mine is starting to tear already.
Then's there's bits of adhesive from the binding which has got onto the discs themselves. (I got my copy from the States, if the UK box wasn't produced there, you may not find this.) It doesn't stop the CDs from playing perfectly but it doesn't look very good. But then neither do the cheapo individual CD cases themselves -a bit cardboard with just the disc and nothing to protect it.
As for documentation, there's this pointless long sheet of paper with a handwritten list of titles on the top of files. The booklet is cramped and difficult to read, consisting purely of text about track details, just hard factual details. The most clear list of contents, which provides basic useful track details, is on the cellophane wrapper and I nearly threw that away. Even then it omits running times which is something I always like to see.
There is no biographical material at all.
For this we're expected to pay around £90.00? And just to add insult to injury, as other reviewers have pointed out, the set includes two previously released live CDs which anyone remotely interested in this box set will already have. So effectively we're only getting 6 CDs for our money.
At even half the price this would be overpriced. Still, the music remains mostly pretty damned good. I just wish I didn't have this sour taste in my mouth.
Post Script
A slightly different version of this review was submitted to Amazon.
No comments:
Post a Comment