Sound + Vision

In 1989, not all major artists had their catalog available on CD, and one of the most notable absences was . When the format was in its infancy, had issued several of his classics, but those pressings were notoriously awful and were pulled from the market in 1985 when acquired the rights to the recordings. Sharp businessman that he is, he took the catalog to market, and after an intense bidding war, he chose to reissue his classic work through , an independent CD-only label that had earned acclaim for its work with 's catalog. Instead of dumping all the discs on the market at once, the titles were slowly rolled out, beginning with a series-encompassing , a three-CD/one-CD-ROM box set released to great fanfare in the fall of 1989. At the time, box sets were all the rage, following the template of 's -- an exhaustive career overview that offered all the basics, peppered with some revealing rarities. Upon its release, was reviewed as if it belonged to this tradition, when it really inverted the formula, offering a series, not career, overview by showcasing alternate versions and rarities, along with album tracks, with a few familiar hits tossed in here and there to provide context. This was a tantalizing way to begin a reissue campaign, and it did receive gushing reviews -- the CD-era publication breathlessly claimed "Suffice to say that the sound quality will give your ears an orgasm" -- but once the reissue series completed and once lost the rights to the catalog, looked more like a curiosity, an artifact of its time, than a major statement. Much of the problem stems from its design -- it was intended to show off the sound quality, which was a marked improvement over the discs, and to show the depth and breadth of rarities within the vaults. It was not a career-capper; it was a teaser. It was enticing upon its release, and some of it remains so. There's a clutch of early rarities that lead off the set -- the original demo of alternate single versions of and -- that are quite good, alternate takes on that manage to be notably different without changing the feel, excellent outtakes from (a medley of ), (a glittery, lush cover of ), and (the superb a - song that should have been on the album and is hands down the best rarity here). These suggested the great unearthed treasures that lay ahead, and they remain necessary additions to any serious collection, particularly because they never showed up on another disc. If they were placed in a better forum, they would function like the rarities on either or -- rarities that helped fill in the details of an artist's story -- but since they're in a set that's intended to showcase what the series would do, not what had done, they're the main attraction instead of feeding into the greater narrative. And that narrative, while certainly capturing the sometimes bewildering twists and turns in 's career, is an alternate-universe narrative, lacking defining songs, from to and presenting many familiar songs in odd, not particularly interesting variations (a live 1974 version of a German version of presented in a 1989 remix). Though it succeeds in conveying 's ever-changing moods, it lacks the substance and sense of a great box set, which this surely could have been. Instead, it's an interesting artifact of the early days of CDs, right down to its overly elaborate packaging, and only those who want to relive that time, or need those rarities, will need this in their collection. [ was re-released in 2014.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine