To me, box sets are something that I play one time and file away.
Most of the time box sets have the best moments plus album cuts or
alternative or live versions and you get a decent booklet. Sometimes a
box set can be worthwhile but the catch remains if you can find it used
so it doesn't cost you a second mortage on your home. And sometimes a
box set can be too much.
Revolutions in Sound: Warner Bros.
Records - The First 50 Years is a mammoth 10 cd box set that glorifies
fifty years of the WB being a record label but in the first ten years,
Warner Brothers Records was laughable. In fact, their biggest selling
albums at that time were comedy albums from the likes of Bob Newhart,
Allan Sherman, Bill Cosby (who somehow doesn't have a track on this set)
and Tom Lehner. Warner Brothers managed to get the Everly Brothers
from Cadance Records for a million bucks but the Everly's, despite
getting a number one hit with Cathy's Clown had more misses than hits
for the WB. Warner Brothers also did fairly well with folk music with
Peter Paul And Mary getting top ten hits likewise although The Folk
Quintet and The Mitchell Trio (featuring John Denver) are not on this
box set. Fact of the matter was that Reprise (formed by Frank Sinarta)
was the place that had the hits although mostly pop from the likes of
the Rat Pack (Frank, Sammy and Dean) and gritty girl pop from Nancy
Sinarta and other oddites from Don Ho and Napoloen XIV. It's strange to
hear Tiny Bubbles and then They're Coming To Take Me Away Ha Haa! on
one disc.
Hearing the first three disc of this big 10 cd set you
can trace the beginnings of a Label spinning in the mud and finally
getting a groove but the majority of the early year cuts come from
Reprise to which Mo Ostin gave the artist creative freedom to do their
type of music, long before the corporate stuffsuits changed the rules
and mergers cheapen the music to being nothing more than videos rather
than videos in the mind. With the beginning of Jimi Hendrix and the
Electric Prunes and Grateful Dead, Warner/Reprise became the cool label
to be on, and even more cooler when Fleetwood Mac came over from Epic
(if you remember back that far) or Jethro Tull (Originally on the Big R
label)or even Roxy Music (first album on Reprise, second came out on
WB). You can feel the change after Sammy Davis Jr's I Gotta Be Me going
into Oh Well by The Mac and Peter Green. If nothing else, the first
two CDs of this set remain the best definite collection of what made
Warner Brother Records great. The diversity and the ability to go from schmaltz (Tiny Tim's Tip Toe) to soul (JJ Jackson's But It's Alright) to psychedelia (Norman Greenbaum's Spirit In the Sky) to prog rock
(Locomotive Breath) to boogie (Face's Stay With Me) although Black
Sabbath is nowhere to be found on this compilation.
Disc three
begins the drive from classic hard rock to corporate rock beginning with
Smoke On The Water to School's Out to Captian Beefheart to Little Feet
and then goes south. Classic rock is the theme with Hello It's Me (Todd
Rungren) to Summer Breeze (Seals And Croft) and the unescapeable China
Grove. But for all good songs, there's schmaltz (Midnight At The
Oasis). But we get satallite labels from Bearsville (Todd Rungren,
Foghat), Curtom (The Staple Singers yucky Let's Do It Again) Capricorn
when they were WB distrubted (Allman Brothers Blue Sky, Elvin Bishop
Fooled Around And Fell In Love), Geffen (Asia), Sire (Talking Heads,
Yaz, Modern English, Ramones), Island (Grace Jones, Steve Winwood),
Slash (Violent Femmes, Los Lobos) and even Def American (Sir Mix A Lot).
For
every good song, we are reminded why WB sucked at times (You Light Up
My Life-Debby Boone's insufferable 1978 hit), (Take On Me-A Ha) (The
Taste Of Ink by The Used), and why they are revered (Someday Somewhere,
Marshall Crenshaw), (Once In A Lifetime-Talking Heads), (Alex Chilton by
The Replacement). You get jazz (Tutu-Miles Davis, IGY, Donald Fagen),
country (Big and Rich, Travis Tritt, John Anderson), new wave (B 52s),
alternative (Uncle Tupelo, Green Day), Nu-Metal (Disturbed, Faith No
More), Girl singers (Michelle Branch, Alanis Morrisette, Paula Cole) and
Rock and roll hall of famers past their prime (Elton John, Eric
Clapton, John Fogerty, Tom Petty) and of course, Metallica with a new
track off their WB album to sum things up.
In other words, this
is a big mammoth 10 cd box set with loads of your favorite tunes and a
shitload of crappy songs but it does put in perspective that Warner
Brothers does have a rightful place in the history of music. From Tab
Hunter to Metallica, even I couldn't program such a massive stock of
musical things. Certainly there are artists who were left out of the
fold (The Music Man, Jennifer Trynin, Husker Du, Chicago), and there are
some that should have been forgotten but Revolutions In Sound does get
it right in what made the WB label the coolest label this side of
Atlantic. But nobody can afford this.
But it's worth four stars just reading the titles alone.
http://50th.warnerbrosrecords.com/
Bettie Page, the original pin up naughty girl of the fifites has died
from a heart attack. She was 85. Funny how fifty years ago she was the
sex bomb of that era and her pictures, though bawdy still were
tasteful. Unlike the so called pop tart sex bombouts of today such as
Britney, or Paris or Jessica Simpson. Bettie Page was sexy and smart
unlike the Brits or Paris or Jessica who are sexy and just plain dumb. A
quote from her... "God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden
of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds."
