Reviews
 Keep It Simple
Van Morrison
Roger McGuinn @ the Huntington IMAC, Long Island, NY - April 4, 2008
Emily Saxe @ the Allen Room/Jazz at Lincoln Center - April 5, 2008
Another Country
Tift Merritt
Be Your Own Pet
Get Awkward
Paul McCartney – The McCartney Years (DVD)
Juno – Music from the Motion Picture
Various Artists
Yes - Their Definitive Story
Day and Night Driving
Seven Mary Three
InterMedia Arts Center 2/2/08
Huntington, NY
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The Who
The funny thing about most box sets is that it is difficult to determine for whom it is intended. Is it for the rabid fan who needs everything? If so, then they probably own most of what is already available, so you need to include unreleased and/or rare material to capture them. Is it for someone who wants to have a handy reference of the artist’s greatest hits? Then you need to be sure that you don’t weigh the set down with too many obscurities. Whichever side of this fence you fall will be what determines a listener’s opinion of any collection. A critic’s job is to wade through the collection and convey whether the multi-disk set is valuable or extraneous, but each of the two camps above will have distinct opinions on this. Thirty Years of Maximum R&B tries very, very hard to straddle this fence, which by definition means it will be somewhat objectionable to everybody while never fully satisfying anyone.
The Who have had one of the most colorful, glorious careers of any artist. In the annals of rock and roll, few people or bands could claim to have had so much success and so much variation. Their hits are incredibly concise and entertaining, while their thematic work is extraordinarily complex. Seeing these two extremes together is half the fun on Thirty Years of Maximum R&B, and it is also half of the problem. The early hits sound great here, especially with the boost of being re-mixed, but the rarities interrupt the flow of genius that they could otherwise have sparked, while the theme-based works Tommy and Quadrophenia suffer from being excerpted.
In my opinion, the solution is simple as to what you ought to do here. Owning this box without owning these albums is like owning a bunch of bicycle parts without a proper frame to hold them together. If you like the Who, then you must buy their best albums first. The Who Sell Out, Tommy, Who’s Next and Quadrophenia should all be heard in their entirety. This box is no substitute for these albums, and buying them will provide the continuity they demand while setting you back only a few bucks more than the 4-disk box set. Once that is achieved, you may still feel the need for more. Okay, then. Now it is appropriate to digest this box, if you’re so inclined. This way, you’ll get the best bits from their marginal albums ("Face Dances", "A Quick One," etc.), plus the few extras that are genuinely worthwhile, like the re-mixes and their take on Elton John’s "Saturday Night" – a weird way to end the box, but a killer version of the song.
Grade: 
 
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