Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nice to have, but nothing terribly exciting..., 16 Jun 2009
The second installment of this collection of Queen's CD singles takes us up to (halfway through, curiously) the singles from 1984's The Works, and thus includes A Human Body (left off The Game in favour of Coming Soon), Soul Brother and I Go Crazy, b-sides that lots of fans will perhaps have only heard via clips on YouTube. The individual CD's look pretty enough with their original artwork but let's remember that, as these are replicas of the original 7" releases, we only get two tracks per disc, which is perhaps an opportunity missed and some fans, especially those who either already own (or do not care about) the non-album b-sides might well decide that this collection is not worth their hard-earned pennies. Queen, or whoever it is that decides what is released under the Queen name at least, are guilty of missing the point with all this sort of thing. The VAST majority of Queen's biggest fans are not the least bit interested in repackaged releases of their already available material and are certainly not interested in yet another damn Queen + Paul Rodgers live album/DVD...how many of those does the world actually need or want, exactly? Fans are desperate to see some unreleased, rare material, something that offers an insight into Queen's long studio career in the form of out-takes and demo recordings, or some live material taken from the 1970's, rather than endless live DVD's from 1981-1986. It's time to change the strategy, chaps. Freddie Mercury has been gone for the best part of two decades and STILL the remaining members haven't managed to deliver the kind of box set or collection that the real fans actually really want. Do they not realise their errors or are they just being stubborn? Discuss.
|
|
|
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Missed opportunity, 22 May 2009
I'm dinging this 3 stars for 2 reasons. One, the price: for what it is, this should be at least £10 cheaper. Two, the completely missed opportunity to finally release the tracks that are only available (still) on vinyl. I'm talking about the last 3 disks of the set, which were all released on 12-inch formats with extended or alternative mixes. We're missing the extended versions of Backchat and Staying Power plus the instrumental Radio Ga Ga (which remain available only on the original 12-inch vinyls) plus the extended mixes of Radio Ga Ga and I Want To Break Free plus the instrumental version of Machines (which, whilst having been released before on CD, are either on import only or very hard to find).
EMI released the vastly superior Marillion singles box sets which compiled ALL the mixes and B-sides from ALL the formats released for the various singles, which represented a fantastic collection and at only £25 per box. Pity they're deleted now...
So why we've got another set of 7-inch replicas here is a mystery to me. We may have tolerated it on volume 1 because they were a true representation of what was originally released, but this is just not on.
The only truly new track you'll get here is A Human Body. Everything else has been released before on CD somewhere, although unless you've got the 3" CD singles set you won't have got Soul Brother. (I Go Crazy isn't hard to get... it's been on the USA import of The Works for years.)
So, a massivley missed opportunity to do these old singles justice. I hope EMI do much better on volume 3, and even replace disks 11-13 here with decent versions. Until then, us Queen fans will continue to be short changed.
|
|
|
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You can't argue with the music, 10 Jun 2009
Whilst people may be dissapointed with the lack of lots of rarities, you cannot argue that this set contains absolutely brilliant music, unsurpassed by any other group. Yes, i am desperate for an archive of rare releases, but, i still have to give the set 5 out of 5 due to the quality of the music.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|