Customer Reviews

In Season: The Frankie Valli & 4 Seasons Anthology

5 star:		(55)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Condenses the 1988 Rhino Anthology from 3 discs to 2 discs by dropping four tracks ("Lucky Ladybug", "New Mexican Rose", "Alone", "Saturday's Father") and adding one ("Fallen Angel", a 1970s Frankie Valli solo track). "Alone" is missed, but "Saturday's Father" is available on the new (and highly recommended "Off Seasons" compilation). Otherwise the sound is perhaps slightly better, although the older set is pretty good, so if you have the older anthology you may elect to pass on this new one. For the unitiated, though, this set establishes the Seasons' place as a great band and not just an early 60s doo-wop phenomenon.

This collection is a Four Seasons/Frankie Valli fans dream come true. It included every charting single of the group (save 2 christmas songs) and also of Valli as a soloist. With 51 tracks in all amounting to over 2 hours of music, it is the definitive collection. Also of great notice is the A+ digital remastering job done by Rhino Records. If you have listened to the Four Seasons for a while, you will immediately notice the superior quality of this first ever digital remastering of Valli's music. I especially notice the remastering on "Save it For Me". All the songs sound exceptionally clearer, louder, and tighter. This is a perfect collection. If you have the 1988 Anthology which had 26 tracks, I still reccomend this collection, in fact I reccommend it even more if you already have that collection. Songs like "Little Boy in Grown Up Clothes" "The Proud One" and "Betrayed" which didn't appear on the 1988 record set all are here in their remastered glory. Also of note is the great 30+ page full color booklet it came with, which includes a detailed history of the group with color pictures, and also the chart positions of all the songs included, plus for LP's they released. It also details the group members all the way up to today. This is a GREAT collection and I reccomend it over any other Valli collection. Enjoy!

For those who listen to the radio in the '60s (and in the '70s for that matter) Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons needs no introduction here. They simply RULED the airways (at least until the Beatles came along). This collection from the Rhino label represents them well here and it's a Killer Collection. Don't kid yourselves here; these guys KNEW what they were doing and they did it well.

There are 51 tracks on this double CD and my favorites are too numerous to mention. (I was stunned to find out that "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore)" was originally done by Frankie Valli; I assumed that the Walker Brothers was the original).

For those who thought about buying the 25th Anniversary Collection I would recommend getting this package instead. First of all it's cheaper, although there are three less songs here. (The songs not on this collection are "Lucky Ladybug", "New Mexicali Rose", "Saturday's Father", and "Electric Stories". Frankie Valli's "Fallen Angel" is the one song included here that's not on the 25 Anniversary Collection.) Secondly, the sound quality is significantly better here. And third, the package is more attractive here. You can't go wrong.

If you like this anthology, don't forget to check out "Off Seasons", a companion piece that shows that the Four Season's b-sides and album tracks are just as worthy as their hits. (You can find "Saturday's Father" on that CD.)

Simply an essential collection.

The Four Seasons have always been one of my favorite groups. I think Frankie Valli has one of the best voices in the world and without the doubt the greatest falsetto in existence, and the rest of the group had harmonies that only The Beach Boys could match. nd for band that has had as any hits as them are destined to have a barrage of greatst hits collection. Up until now, I always felt the best way to obtain all the Four Seasons' best songs was by getting Rhino's single disc "The Very Best Of The Four Seasons". Well, I was wrong. "In Season: The Frankie Valli and the 4 Seasons Anthology" is the definitve Four Seasons collection.

On these two discs, you find all the essential Four Seasons songs, including "Sherry", "Big Girls Don't Cry", "Walk Like A Man", "Dawn (Go Away)", "Rag Doll", "Let's Hang On (To What We've Got)", "Working My Way Back To You", "Opus 17 (Don't You Worry 'Bout Me)", "Tell It To The Rain" (an often forgotten Top 10 hit and my favorite Four Seasons song ever), "Who Loves You" and "December 1963 (Oh, What A Night)". But the majority of the cd is a wealth of rarities, including many songs that were either album tracks, uncharted singles or Frankie Vali solo singles. Plus, you get it for about $25.00, which I consider fairly cheap for a cd with 51 songs.

The 30+ page booklet is excellent, filled with track information (chart positions, etc.), rare photos and an excellent essay written by Pat Sierchio. This is an absolute must have.

A must-have for every true 4 Seasons fan. I can't think of a single song they ever recorded that isn't on this CD. I was thrilled to find this collection all in 1 package.

Rhino has distilled its 25th Anniversary 4 Seasons set into a less expensive 2-CD piece losing only a few songs in the process. 54 songs become 51 resulting in little change in overall content. While the titles are correct, the Amazon track listings have a few minor errors in the order in which they are presented.

This compacted set includes a nice 30-page booklet and is packaged in a flopover digipak style case. No revelations in sound quality here and Rhino has taken no chances with the selection of versions for the songs. Most of them are in stereo with the exceptions of the titles that have always been presented in mono such as "Dawn", "Ronnie", "Let's Hang On" and "Rag Doll". Some of these are available in stereo versions elsewhere but the original single mixes were kept for this collection.

Overall, this new distillation of a previous set is a well-balanced, high-quality set that gives you most of the 4 Seasons singles and better known songs at an attractive price.

Frankie Valli and his group, the Four Seasons, were among the most successful of all of the many rising out of the sounds and excitement of the early 1960s. With a phenomenal string of top-ten hits, starting with "Sherry', they blazed a trail of unbroken follow-up recording that extended for years. I remember seeing them at the local Boys Club gym right after they had released one of their biggest numbers, "Dawn", and they were terrific. With songs like "Big Girls Don't Cry", "Walk Like A Man", Let's Hang On (To What We've Got)", and "Girl Come Running", they established themselves as one of the perennial favorites with the teen pop audience.

They just kept pumping out new releases, and with an amazing string of consecutive hits, they gave us everything from "Candy Girl" to "Bye, Bye, Baby", from "Toy Soldier" to "Working My Way Back To You". To a large extent the songs are quite similar, all very formulaic and with predictable subjects and life lessons to be learned. Yet the way they delivered these songs was indeed quite unique and quite impressive, that familiar falsetto booming in the forefront to a terrific chorale background, and a similarly great instrumental arrangement. There's quite a selection of great songs here, ranging from all of their work as a group to Frankie Valli's later solo career, and I can guarantee you will sit up and enjoy all of the numbers included here. Enjoy!

Set list is perfect. No useless bonus cuts that I won't listen to. All tracks are in perfect chronological order.

Great Sound. Volume and mixing is perfect. I even put this on a Wave Editor and the volume is near 0db with terrific dynamic range.

Great Packaging, with a nice booklet with photos, a detailed set list with dates and original stock numbers, and nice information about the group.

I wasn't a huge fan of the Four Seasons, but if you want to buy a really good sounding CD set of their stuff with a great set list and packaging, this one is for you.

....and not just 'cause I'm a card carrying member of the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons fan club.

This is the stuff, baby. Over two hours of the best from the Jersey Boys, including the pseudo-Vietnam War protest song, "Toy Soldier", jams with Wagnerian flavor ("Tell It To the Rain", "Beggin'", "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow"), novelty tunes from the Wonder Who? with Frankie's Rose Murphey imitations and those awesome Frankie Valli solo projects.

This set features a 30 page booklet of pictorial history and a fine essay by Pat Sierchio of the ups, ups, downs and ups of Frankie, Gaudio, Crewe, Callelo, Devito, Long, Massi and mention of pop tunesmiths like Randell/Linzer, Russell Brown/Bloodworth, Judy Parker, Jake Holmes....and Crewe/Gaudio--who don't nearly get enuff props as those Madmen Across the Water Lennon/McCartney, but they oughtta!

I can see Justin Timberlake singing "The Girl I'll Never Know" or he and his buds do "Patch of Blue"--that's how strong these jams are. They say more in 3 1/2 to 4 minutes than some artists' entire CD. That's because these dudes put so much more in 3 1/2 to 4 minutes of recording...

I am always awed when, in these tunes, Gaudio's Shy Boy from the Wrong Side of the Tracks runs right into Crewe's New Yawk Wise Bombastic Rebel and Frankie's vocal procedes to capture that je ne sais qua perfectly. Not necessarily the soaring falsetto he does but...well, just listen to the tunes, "I Make A Fool of Myself" or "Save it For Me" or "Big Man in Town"....

In a word, it is fastastic. Get it now, and enjoy the heck outta it.

The sound quality on this compilation is absolutely horrible. The people at Rhino usually do an excellent job, so I suspect that the original masters must have been in pretty bad shape. Whatever the case, the first cd is barely listenable. The second of the 2cd set is much better than the first, but I was hoping to get a good clean cd of their early hits as well as the 70s stuff. It's a good compilation spanning their whole career, but if you have the old scratchy 45s of the early hits, I'm sure that they sound better than this cd.