RCA - BMG Heritage

This double set replaces both previously released RCA multi-disc overviews of Guess Who hits. As of its appearance in late 2003, both the flawed triple-CD 56-track The Ultimate Collection and 1988's excellent Track Record compilations were out of print. This release tries, and generally succeeds, as a comprehensive overview of the band's glory years. In fact, it's the only one to kick off with two pre-Burton Cummings nuggets: 1964's "Shakin' All Over" and a rare 1966 garage rocking psychedelic single, "It's My Pride." Collectors will also appreciate an early 1968 version of "When Friends Fall Out," a song re-recorded three years later for the American Woman album. From there on, this is a sturdy if unremarkable collection of fairly obvious selections, some of them, such as "Heartbroken Bopper," "Glamour Boy," and "Hang On to Your Life," reproduced in difficult to find single mixes. Of minor note, "Smoke Big Factory" from the underrated Rockin' makes its first appearance on a hits album, as do the Winter/Wallace co-penned "Cardboard Empire" from #10 and "Samantha's Living Room," an excellent cut written and sung by Don McDougal and culled from the terrific Artificial Paradise. Audio remastering, track annotation (with detailed recording dates, a helpful addition), and liner notes are all up to industry standards, something that could not be said of the muddled The Ultimate Collection. That leaves the 39- cut Anthology as an excellent introduction to the band for those who want to dig deeper than the many interchangeable single "best-of" discs that glut the market. © Hal Horowitz /TiVo

For a two-hit wonder with only a handful of records to her name, ex-Runaway guitar slinger Lita Ford has quite a few collections on the market. Sorting through them to find the best one isn't easy. They all include her two hits: "Kiss Me Deadly" and her duet with Ozzy, "Close My Eyes Forever." Beyond that they all have roughly the same songs with slight differences here and there. BMG's Platinum & Gold Collection is as good as any, featuring her cover of Alice Cooper's "Only Women Bleed" and the Nikki Sixx-co-penned "Falling in and Out of Love." The sound is fine, the liner notes adequate, and the photos are suitably trashy (though the cover shot is strangely sophisticated). If you need some Lita, you might as well start here. © Tim Sendra /TiVo

Controversial at the time, delayed because of fights with the record company over lyrical content and the original title (Volunteers of America), Volunteers was a powerful release that neatly closed out and wrapped up the '60s. Here, the Jefferson Airplane presents itself in full revolutionary rhetoric, issuing a call to "tear down the walls" and "get it on together." "We Can Be Together" and "Volunteers" bookend the album, offering musical variations on the same chord progression and lyrical variations on the same theme. Between these politically charged rock anthems, the band offers a mix of words and music that reflect the competing ideals of simplicity and getting "back to the earth," and overthrowing greed and exploitation through political activism, adding a healthy dollop of psychedelic sci-fi for texture. Guitarist Jorma Kaukonen's beautiful arrangement of the traditional "Good Shepherd" is a standout here, and Jerry Garcia's pedal steel guitar gives "The Farm" an appropriately rural feel. The band's version of "Wooden Ships" is much more eerie than that released earlier in the year by Crosby, Stills & Nash. Oblique psychedelia is offered here via Grace Slick's "Hey Frederick" and ecologically tinged "Eskimo Blue Day." Drummer Spencer Dryden gives an inside look at the state of the band in the country singalong "A Song for All Seasons." The musical arrangements here are quite potent. Nicky Hopkins' distinctive piano highlights a number of tracks, and Kaukonen's razor-toned lead guitar is the recording's unifying force, blazing through the mix, giving the album its distinctive sound. Although the political bent of the lyrics may seem dated to some, listening to Volunteers is like opening a time capsule on the end of an era, a time when young people still believed music had the power to change the world. © Jim Newsom /TiVo

Eurythmics' debut album, In the Garden, is the missing link between the work of the Tourists, who included both Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox, and 1983's commercial breakthrough, Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). Co-produced by Kraftwerk producer Conny Plank at his studio in Cologne, Germany, it has some of the distant, mechanistic feel of the European electronic music movement, but less of the pop sensibility of later Eurythmics. The chief difference is in Lennox's singing; even when the musical bed is appealing, Lennox floats ethereally over it, and the listener doesn't focus on her. As a result, In the Garden wasn't much of a success, though when Eurythmics streamlined their sound and emphasized Lennox's dominating voice on subsequent releases, they found mass popularity. © William Ruhlmann /TiVo

Like Kool & the Gang and a handful of other contemporaries, the Pointer Sisters' career can be divided in half, with popular success in the late '70s and '80s preceded by a lengthy period grounded in less-commercial roots. Just the same, it's the Pointers' pop-oriented phase that has been compiled the most. Their entry in the Platinum & Gold Collection series recycles all the hits that you'd expect -- "Jump (For My Love)," "I'm So Excited," "Neutron Dance," "Slow Hand," "He's So Shy," "Automatic" -- and includes 12" mixes of "Gold Mine" and "I Need You." The group was hardly in need of another set like this one. But as far as cheap introductions are considered, this is one of the best options available. © Andy Kellman /TiVo

Finally, a long overdue collection from vocalist/pianist Bruce Hornsby was issued in 2004. The superb Greatest Radio Hits compiles 15 songs, including his charted singles. Eight Bruce Hornsby & the Range numbers and seven solo tracks are featured. Adding "radio" to the greatest-hits title and Hornsby's comments in the liner notes indicate a strong belief in the unpredictability of what becomes a hit. Hornsby's jazz-influenced pop/rock, particularly with the Range, certainly stood out from the rest of the Top 40 pack in the late '80s. Each of his two finest songs, "The Way It Is" and "The Valley Road," packed a fine melodic wallop wrapped in socially conscious lyrics. The brilliant classic "The Way It Is" hit number one in 1986 arguably on the strength of its instantly memorable piano hooks, but who could have expected its heartfelt examination of racism, civil rights, and social inequality to top the charts at the height of the Reagan era? "The Valley Road" was an infectiously melodic number five single, yet its melody enveloped subtle lyrics about out-of-wedlock pregnancy, abortion, and class division set in rural, small-town America. Other hits with the Range are "Mandolin Rain," "Every Little Kiss," "Look Out Any Window," "Lost Soul" (with Shawn Colvin on vocals), the underrated "Across the River" (with Jerry Garcia on guitar), and "Set Me in Motion" from the Backdraft soundtrack. Solo songs include "Fields of Gray," "Walk in the Sun," "See the Same Way," "The Good Life," and three previously unreleased tracks: "Go Back to Your Woods" and fascinating live versions of "Jacob's Ladder" (which Huey Lewis & the News took to number one) and "The End of the Innocence" (co-written with Don Henley, who had a Top Ten hit with his take). Greatest Radio Hits is destined to be a perennial catalog best-seller, and deservedly so. © Bret Adams /TiVo

Henry Mancini's entry in BMG Heritage's Platinum & Gold series is a nifty but brief (30 minutes) collection of some of the great composer's most memorable melodies. Any disc that has "The Pink Panther Theme," "Peter Gunn," "Moon River," "A Shot in the Dark," and "Baby Elephant Walk" on it is going to be worth hearing. Throw in a few of his love songs ("Love Theme From Romeo & Juliet"), some moody film music ("Experiment in Terror"), lush film music ("Breakfast at Tiffany's"), a touch of jazzy film music ("Something for Cat" from the Breakfast at Tiffany's soundtrack), and you end up with a disc that throws a bright spotlight on just what an amazing songwriter Mancini was. You also hear how imaginative and unique his arrangements and use of instruments were. He was a master at combining instruments and sounds that on the surface may have seemed wrong but somehow worked perfectly. No doubt people from Brian Wilson to Bob Crewe to Holland-Dozier-Holland heard that too. There are collections out there that have more songs and paint a fuller picture of the man's music, but for a budget collection, Platinum & Gold Collection gets the job done quickly and quite nicely. © Tim Sendra /TiVo

This double set replaces both previously released RCA multi-disc overviews of Guess Who hits. As of its appearance in late 2003, both the flawed triple-CD 56-track The Ultimate Collection and 1988's excellent Track Record compilations were out of print. This release tries, and generally succeeds, as a comprehensive overview of the band's glory years. In fact, it's the only one to kick off with two pre-Burton Cummings nuggets: 1964's "Shakin' All Over" and a rare 1966 garage rocking psychedelic single, "It's My Pride." Collectors will also appreciate an early 1968 version of "When Friends Fall Out," a song re-recorded three years later for the American Woman album. From there on, this is a sturdy if unremarkable collection of fairly obvious selections, some of them, such as "Heartbroken Bopper," "Glamour Boy," and "Hang On to Your Life," reproduced in difficult to find single mixes. Of minor note, "Smoke Big Factory" from the underrated Rockin' makes its first appearance on a hits album, as do the Winter/Wallace co-penned "Cardboard Empire" from #10 and "Samantha's Living Room," an excellent cut written and sung by Don McDougal and culled from the terrific Artificial Paradise. Audio remastering, track annotation (with detailed recording dates, a helpful addition), and liner notes are all up to industry standards, something that could not be said of the muddled The Ultimate Collection. That leaves the 39- cut Anthology as an excellent introduction to the band for those who want to dig deeper than the many interchangeable single "best-of" discs that glut the market. © Hal Horowitz /TiVo

Henry Mancini's entry in BMG Heritage's Platinum & Gold series is a nifty but brief (30 minutes) collection of some of the great composer's most memorable melodies. Any disc that has "The Pink Panther Theme," "Peter Gunn," "Moon River," "A Shot in the Dark," and "Baby Elephant Walk" on it is going to be worth hearing. Throw in a few of his love songs ("Love Theme From Romeo & Juliet"), some moody film music ("Experiment in Terror"), lush film music ("Breakfast at Tiffany's"), a touch of jazzy film music ("Something for Cat" from the Breakfast at Tiffany's soundtrack), and you end up with a disc that throws a bright spotlight on just what an amazing songwriter Mancini was. You also hear how imaginative and unique his arrangements and use of instruments were. He was a master at combining instruments and sounds that on the surface may have seemed wrong but somehow worked perfectly. No doubt people from Brian Wilson to Bob Crewe to Holland-Dozier-Holland heard that too. There are collections out there that have more songs and paint a fuller picture of the man's music, but for a budget collection, Platinum & Gold Collection gets the job done quickly and quite nicely. © Tim Sendra /TiVo

A slighter version of 2001's Best of Cowboy Junkies, this compilation draws from four of their RCA releases (ignoring their first album, Whites Off Earth Now!!, and the band's admirable late-'90s and early-2000s catalog). Luckily, these earlier albums represent their strongest material, highlighting their lazy drifting melodies and Margo Timmins' sweetly smoldering voice. The nearly silent cover of Neil Young's "Powderfinger" is offset by the infectious joy of "Anniversary Song," while both are bound by the band's intimate shuffle and spacious production. While there are better Cowboy Junkies compilations out there, there is not a bad song on this album, making BMG's Platinum & Gold Collection a fine place for cautious investigators to begin. © Zac Johnson /TiVo

A slighter version of 2001's Best of Cowboy Junkies, this compilation draws from four of their RCA releases (ignoring their first album, Whites Off Earth Now!!, and the band's admirable late-'90s and early-2000s catalog). Luckily, these earlier albums represent their strongest material, highlighting their lazy drifting melodies and Margo Timmins' sweetly smoldering voice. The nearly silent cover of Neil Young's "Powderfinger" is offset by the infectious joy of "Anniversary Song," while both are bound by the band's intimate shuffle and spacious production. While there are better Cowboy Junkies compilations out there, there is not a bad song on this album, making BMG's Platinum & Gold Collection a fine place for cautious investigators to begin. © Zac Johnson /TiVo

Crown of Creation appeared ten months after their last album, After Bathing at Baxter's, and it doesn't take the same kind of leap forward that Baxter's did from Surrealistic Pillow. Indeed, in many ways, Crown of Creation is a more conservative album stylistically, opening with "Lather," a Grace Slick original that was one of the group's very last forays (and certainly their last prominent one) into a folk idiom. Much of what follows is a lot more based in electric rock, as well as steeped in elements of science fiction (specifically author John Wyndham's book The Chrysalids) in several places, but Crown of Creation was still deliberately more accessible musically than its predecessor, even as the playing became more bold and daring within more traditional song structures. Jack Casady by this time had developed one of the most prominent and distinctive bass sounds in American rock, as identifiable (if not quite as bracing) as John Entwistle's was with the Who, as demonstrated on "In Time," "Star Track," "Share a Little Joke," "If You Feel" (where he's practically a second lead instrument), and the title song, and Jorma Kaukonen's slashing, angular guitar attack was continually surprising as his snaking lead guitar parts wended their way through "Star Track" and "Share a Little Joke." The album also reflected the shifting landscape of West Coast music with its inclusion of "Triad," a David Crosby song that Crosby's own group, the Byrds, had refused to release -- its presence (the only extant version of the song for a number of years) was a forerunner of the sound that would later be heard on Crosby's own debut solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name (on which Slick, Paul Kantner, and Casady would appear). The overall album captured the group's rapidly evolving, very heavy live sound within the confines of some fairly traditional song structures, and left ample room for Slick and Marty Balin to express themselves vocally, with Balin turning in one of his most heartfelt and moving performances on "If You Feel." "Ice Cream Phoenix" pulses with energy and "Greasy Heart" became a concert standard for the group -- the studio original of the latter is notable for Slick's most powerful vocal performance since "Somebody to Love." And the album's big finish, "The House at Pooneil Corners," seemed to fire on all cylinders, their amps cranked up to ten (maybe 11 for Casady), and Balin, Slick, and Kantner stretching out on the disjointed yet oddly compelling tune and lyrics. It didn't work 100 percent of the time, but it made for a shattering finish to the album. © Bruce Eder & Al Campbell /TiVo

A brief 12-track collection of Perry Como's hits from his RCA period (1943-1987), Platinum & Gold Collection includes a few of his good-time '50s hits -- "Papa Loves Mambo," "Magic Moments," "Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom)" -- as well as two of the songs that made his career early on: "It's Impossible" and "Far Away Places." At barely a half-hour, though, this should be a choice for the budget-minded record-buyer. A few reluctant collectors may have their opinions altered when they notice the presence of the rare title "Somebody Up There Likes Me," and the even more obscure "Weave Me the Sunshine" (the latter a recording from 1974 which makes its CD debut here). © John Bush /TiVo

RCA's single-disc collection of Hot Tuna's early output isn't as expansive as their two-CD compilation, The Best of Hot Tuna, but provides a nice springboard for those looking to find out what they were all about. The majority of the focus is on the albums First Pull Up, Then Pull Down and Burgers, when leaders Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassidy joined up with fiddler Papa John Creach and drummer Sammy Piazza for electrified readings of classic blues numbers, but Platinum & Gold Collection also contains four tracks from Hot Tuna's heavy period and one from their early acoustic beginnings. © Gregory McIntosh /TiVo

A brief 12-track collection of Perry Como's hits from his RCA period (1943-1987), Platinum & Gold Collection includes a few of his good-time '50s hits -- "Papa Loves Mambo," "Magic Moments," "Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom)" -- as well as two of the songs that made his career early on: "It's Impossible" and "Far Away Places." At barely a half-hour, though, this should be a choice for the budget-minded record-buyer. A few reluctant collectors may have their opinions altered when they notice the presence of the rare title "Somebody Up There Likes Me," and the even more obscure "Weave Me the Sunshine" (the latter a recording from 1974 which makes its CD debut here). © John Bush /TiVo

RCA's single-disc collection of Hot Tuna's early output isn't as expansive as their two-CD compilation, The Best of Hot Tuna, but provides a nice springboard for those looking to find out what they were all about. The majority of the focus is on the albums First Pull Up, Then Pull Down and Burgers, when leaders Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassidy joined up with fiddler Papa John Creach and drummer Sammy Piazza for electrified readings of classic blues numbers, but Platinum & Gold Collection also contains four tracks from Hot Tuna's heavy period and one from their early acoustic beginnings. © Gregory McIntosh /TiVo

Puerto Rican singer and guitarist José Feliciano's 1970 Christmas album yielded not only the biggest hit of his career, but one of the most enduringly popular Christmas pop songs of all time in the eternal "Feliz Navidad." Originally released by RCA Victor under the title José Feliciano, it later bore the name of its signature track, Feliz Navidad, when BMG reissued it on CD in 2001 along with three additional tracks ("Las Posadas," "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," and "O Come All Ye Faithful") that hadn't made the cut the first time around. Leading off with "Feliz Navidad," Feliciano's only original song of the set, the album also includes versions of holiday carols and pop classics like "The First Noel," "Little Drummer Boy," and "White Christmas," all arranged in the guitarist's distinctive Latin pop style. © Timothy Monger /TiVo

Not quite as comprehensive a compilation of the Youngbloods' early years as Raven's Euphoria 1965-1969, which starts a few years earlier and has four more tracks, this 2002 release is still the best American collection from the seminal '60s folk/rock/jug band group's formative and most artistically vibrant period. It follows the quartet through their nascent days of the dated, whimsical psychedelic pop of "Merry-Go-Round" and the Jefferson Airplane rock of "Four in the Morning" (complete with a guitar solo that's a ringer for Jorma Kaukonen's style) to their final, mellower period as original member Jerry Corbitt's exit transferred the creative reins to Jesse Colin Young. Seven tracks are selected from each of their three RCA albums, with the only rarity being the previously mentioned "Merry-Go-Round," the B-side to "Foolin' Around (The Waltz)." Even with Corbitt in the band, it was Young's tender, yearning voice, exemplified best on "Get Together," that gave them their identity. Without that song and his singing, they would have likely faded into the mists of history as another '60s combo trying their hands at a moderately successful combination of folk, jazz, and jug band; a wannabe Lovin' Spoonful without a songwriter as memorable as John Sebastian. The Youngbloods' sound never really gelled until their third release, Elephant Mountain, not coincidentally the first album without Corbitt. Here, Young's songs like the ominous "Darkness, Darkness" -- arguably the band's finest moment -- the lovely "Sunlight," "Quicksand," and the beautiful "Ride the Wind" showed the melodic promise only hinted at on their first few discs. The group moved on to Warner Brothers, where they never fulfilled the promise Elephant Mountain hinted at, and they disbanded for good in 1972. © Hal Horowitz /TiVo

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