Customer Reviews

30 Years Of Rock N Roll: Happy Together

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My CD collection has grown to more than 2500 over the last 16 years. Back in 1984, the Rhino 20 Greatest Hits was one of the first CDs I ever bought. It still holds up as a great collection and is probably all the Turtles most will ever need. However, if 20 Turtles cuts is not enough for you, then is a good collection with detailed notes and good remastering (Rhino's 16 year old remastering seems to sound just as good). These 60 songs could easily fit on three discs and have been less cumbersome, but that is picking nits. Can't complain about the price. Sixty songs for 20 bucks, 33 cents per song. Also, there are quite a few unreleased cuts from their unreleased last album, and other curios.

If it's just the great stuff you want to hear, though, the Rhino collection is still the best buy.

My guess being that Laserlight specializes in budget-line CD releases was what prompted them to create 5 individual short (12 song) titles by the Turtles and sell them each individually. The confusion is: why did Laserlight wait for unreleased material to show up first then release the box set at a discount long before releasing the titles individually, plus why on earth was Laserlight choosen in the first place as the company to release this Turtles "Anthology"? Don't get me wrong...there's plenty of great stuff here at a great price. And the fact that a Turtle lover like me could finally get those unreleased gems was a definate plus. I just wish my box set was parred down to 2 or 3 jam-packed discs with the songs in chronological order instead of the chopped up, haphazard way Laserlight chose to do it.

Following the liner notes with each song was cool. As little insider tidbits,the notes,with the songs,painted a fair picture of the times and trials of Turtledom. If you Turtle at all, this set is a Command-BUY!

I personally find this to be a good set. It has a whole lot of good stuff on it --- the group's hits as well as a ton of songs that are lesser-known and hard if not impossible to find elsewhere (at least on CD). However, I wouldn't have complained if the set had been somewhat smaller. It has 60 songs spread across 5 12-track, 30-something-minute discs, which is kind of pushing it, if you ask me (and I'm a Turtle-head!). It would have been more reasonable to limit the set to maybe 3 CDs, with 20 songs or so on each one. Even if a few songs had to be left off of the collection, it would still have made more sense to do it that way. The reason (or one of the reasons, anyway) that I bought this set to begin with was because it had a lot of stuff on it that I didn't have at the time. I don't regret buying it, but like I said, it wouldn't have hurt if it had been a bit smaller. A couple bits of advice: This set isn't exactly cheap these days. If you want it, you'd probably come out better buying all of the CDs in it singly if you can find them, at least if they're used copies. (The only thing that you'd really be missing for sure would be the slipcase.) Also, the CDs weren't intended to be five individual best-of CDs, at least not originally. Thus, the CDs work best as the "set"; none of them would really be all that good own its own, at least not in my opinion.

Me thinks dat dis CD box set blows the doors of such no name bands as AHHA, Lovin' Spoonful, and the legendary Smokin' Popes. Once again I would like to say BOO YAH