Rock-a-billy 1954-1973 (The Definitive Collection Of Rare & Unissued Recordings) - Charlie Feathers

Advantages: A great album and great value to boot
Disadvantages: Why have "the rest" when "the rare" and "the raw" are so good?

..., a band will put out a collection of rare material. It’s not a greatest hits, as there aren’t often any hits on there. Although some of the material may have already appeared in other countries, or hidden away on the B-Sides of singles, the album-focussed UK public will probably not own them. Both Anthrax (“Attack of the Killer B’s”) and Def Leppard (“Retroactive”) used this idea in 1994. Giving new insights into the bands concerned and, in Def Leppard’s case, providing fans with a better album than some previous studio efforts, this was truly music for the fans. And then, in 1999, came Thunder’s “The Rare, The Raw and the Rest”. Beating both albums mentioned before out of sight, it's a great example of Thunder's work, and a fine pop-rock album with a distinctive blues influence. And with eleven tracks that had never been available... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Vocals, music, lyrics
Disadvantages: Hard to find, not to everyones taste (unlucky them)

...Keeping to the same formula as my past few music reviews this one might as well follow suit, despite it's much more obscure artist (compared with Katie Melua, The Streets and Arctic Monkeys, it's not really anything against Mr Baxter himself). After seeing Tom Baxter on www.myspace.com I actually wrote little blurb for my own private site about the young man: "The unsigned Londoner claims to sound like "Tom Baxter", so at least he's honest, he fails to mention he also sounds a bit like Elbow, with a dreamy sound of an apocolyptic future wearing down on his mind. A guy who has been compared to two artists I'm fans of (comparasions by The Evening Standard to Jeff Buckley and Nick Drake). After his first album, released in 2005 ("Feather and Stone), his follow up, has just recently been released on iTunes, "SKYBOUND". Check it out... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Diverse sampler for some of Vangelis' extensive discography.
Disadvantages: Lacks context, and ignores much classic material.

...2003 was an eventless year for the music of Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou. The FIFA World Cup anthem he recorded the previous year had been long forgotten, and doesn't even find its way onto this disc. It happened to be thirty years since his third-or-so album 'Earth,' which was quite good, but again doesn't donate any material. Some of the songs here have all been digitally mastered to be improvements on the originals, although this mastering was originally done about five or six best-ofs back. Perhaps it had simply been long enough since the last one to justify a repackaging and re-release under a bloated title. 'Odyssey,' despite its sub-title, has nothing of 'the definitive' about it. In the ceaseless line of best-of compilations for the one-time-Oscar-winning Greek composer, each release has to distinguish itself at least... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful