yea,i love these things..i have a completist mentality and like to explore every album in an artists' discography and this is a cheap way to fill the gaps.i have way too many to list but i have noticed there arent a lot of new ones coming out the past few years,sadly. the last two new ones i remember are the second Carole King one and The New Riders Of The Purple Sage one...anyone know why theyve slowed. and i wish some would get "sequels"...i'd love another Poco and America set,among others
Why they haven't released an Original Album Series containing the first several Epic albums by Ricky Skaggs is beyond my comprehension.
I have all 5 of Elvis Presley's (someone implied there were only two, but there are actually 5. Two have been reissued however) both of Fleetwood Mac Harry Chapin Seals and Crofts Elton John Electric Light Orchestra both of The Byrds America Linda Ronstadt Bonnie Rait Karla Bonoff both of the Doobie Brothers Alan Parsons Project Thomas Dolby Bic Runga Joan Armatrading Warren Zevon Carly Simon Carole King Stevie Ray Vaughn Traffic 10,000 Maniacs Susan Vega REM Graham Parker both of Dave Edmunds I am sure I have others I am not thinking of right now. I love the concept, for the price of a 2 disc hits collection you can often get most of the hits with these 5 disc collections. And they take up about the same space as a 2 disc collection. And depending on the mastering, you can sell off a lot of individual CDs. I KEEP the individual titles that have the superior mastering. Sometimes it is the old, sometimes (less often) it is the remaster that is better. You can be playing one disc from a collection that sounds great and then pop in another that is brickwalled right after it and it blows your hair back and breaks your mind. I have bought a lot of music that I may never have bought otherwise because of these sets. Or they have allowed me to buy music that I used to own on LP record very economically. They fulfill various needs for me.
I've got this. I love the albums. Sounds pretty good. While I understand the whole sticking to 5 albums in a box concept, would it have hurt them to include the one other album he recorded for RCA (Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch Stash)? Might have been nice to have a box of all of his RCA albums in one place.
I recently got the Brinsley Schwarz Original Album Series box, since I've been having a hard time finding a listenable copy of Brinsley Schwarz's first album. A couple of the discs seem to be mastered a bit on the hot side, but they still sound better than the vinyl copies I've been able to grab. YMMV, of course.
Recently got both Al Stewart boxes-all good to great mastering, and a great way to get his early albums.
These are fair enough, and I have some. They're great on price, but in other respects they're low rent, as expected. I really dislike the generic CD's. I don't like not knowing which mastering they've used. I also check to see what the original CD's had included with them. For example, are the bonus tracks there? Also, the booklets - did the original release come with a good booklet or not? If the original booklet had an article, pictures, and lyrics - I'll get that. As for the covers - they're bad, imo. They could have done so much better, but the ones I have are kinda blurred, the colors are weak, and half the time you can't read the text on the back of them. Don't get me wrong, these sets are great for what they are, but if I really love the music I end up wanting it with better packaging.
...One I remember seeing was Elvis Presley's first 3 elpees - Eponymous Debut, Minus Last Name, and King Creole. With bonus tracks? In mono? I'd wanted the three-fer of Southside Johnny's three CBS releases...
I have several of these sets and love them. However, their website seems to be in its death throes. I don't think many of them, if any, are still in print. Grab them while you can!
I also have a few of these: B-52s James Brown 2 different J. Geils Band sets Bootsy's Rubber Band Gene Loves Jezebel Love & Rockets
Just imagine the gold mine they could be sitting on, if only they took the opportunity to choose the right masters just to make these sets. Imagine if, upon springing for a brick of titles by some mid-'aughts band, you discovered somebody put non-brickwalled sources into these...and it zapped around the internet audio boards like a shot, and you suddenly had every budding audio freak on The Worlds' Largest Audio Community network, scouring the bricks-n-mortars for "accidentally-sonically-improved" collections. Drooling music heads, dipping into every budget set they could find, sight-unseen, just hoping to luck-into a band's catalog or two with masters that unexpectedly sounded like...music. Can you imagine the legions of mob-suited record execs jolting their heads up from their coke mirrors, wondering why their quarterly profits suddenly dipped into the right direction...?
I love these sets! I only collect them from artists that are not represented in my collection, or artists by whom I only have a Greatest Hits. There have been many out-of-print CDs that were made available in this format. It's a shame that these sets now appear to be going out-of-print... Here's my collection: Warner Brothers' Original Album Series: Kevin Ayers (I really wish they had done a Vol. 2) The Doobie Brothers (Vol. 1) The Hollies (Vol. 1) The Hollies (Vol. 2) Elvis Costello Country Rock Merseybeat Little Feat Tommy James & The Shondells Also from Warner Brothers: Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons The Classic Albums Box (18 CDs) Chicago The Studio Albums 1969-1978 (10 CDs) Sony/Legacy Original Album Classics: John Denver The Guess Who The Byrds (Vol. 1) The Byrds (Vol. 2) Cheap Trick Waylon Jennings Michael Nesmith Paul Simon Also from Sony/Legacy: Electric Light Orchestra Studio Albums 1973-1977 (5 CDs) Bruce Springsteen The Collection 1973-1984 (8 CDs) Harry Nilsson The RCA Albums Collection (17 CDs) Universal's 5 Classic Albums: Lynyrd Skynyrd (The sets aren't as good as Sony's and Warner's. They include a live album and a greatest hits, plus 3 studio albums.) Various Sets by Other Companies: Mungo Jerry The Dawn Albums Collection (5 CDs) Small Faces Immediate Album Collection (3 CDs) The Turtles The Complete Original Album Collection (6 CDs) The Complete Easybeats (6 CDs)
