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Excellent And Comprehensive

El Kabong | 02/04/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"....just what you want in a career-retrospective set like this one. Though the Gang were never my (or anybody else's) favorite, they had enough good moments to warrant this 2CD anthology, and all of them are here. Don't worry, Tommy Bolin fans aren't cheated as there's plenty of his material on hand (in my view, the Gang's single best album is BANG!). The chance to hear all the various lineups makes this a pretty cool historical document you can play air guitar to."

THE MUST-HAVE JAMES GANG SET YOU NEVER KNEW YOU NEEDED

BOB | LOS ANGELES, CA | 04/28/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"
In 2000, MCA re-issued all three Walsh-era James Gang albums in remastered format. Unfortunately, the remasters turned out to be particularly lackluster, suffering greatly in the clarity department.



However, the previous year, the German Repertoire label released this 2CD set, with their own dedicated remastering. All the muddy MCA sound is eliminated; the percussion is clear, the bass thunders and Walsh is there in all his distorted glory, with the dynamic range of the original albums perfectly intact.



Unfortunately, this set has the abbreviated (5:40) "Bomber Medley", which is an enormous sore point with JG fans. However, there's no other JG CD where The Bomber sounds this good; when A/B-compared to the MCA disc, the MCA version literally sounds like there's a heavy cloth over the speakers.



Repertoire allotted a major portion of the set to the non-Walsh JG lineups; only 14 of the 40 total tracks are Walsh-era material. On the second disc, 9 of the 19 Bolin-period tracks appear, also in far better audio than the never-remastered Atlantic "Bang" & "Miami" CD's.



I'm sure many JG fans will have their opinions over excluded tracks, but the selections were made with input from Jim Fox, who contributes a song-by-song historical synopsis of each in the booklet. There is also included probably the best essay on the history of the band of any JG CD ever released.



It's a shame that Repertoire didn't produce individual editions of the first three JG albums, because they would have blown away everything else available. Repertoire's logic was undoubtedly that since MCA and BGO both released each of the three JG/Walsh albums, there was no room in the market for a third set.



However, I've heard the MCA's & the BGO's, and just about every other JG CD; the Repertoire set towers above them all. Repertoire has been very aggressive over the past few years, often going head-to-head with Japanese mini-sleeve releases, again, with their own dedicated remastering, so perhaps they'll reconsider The James Gang in the future.



As for this set: While only half of the JG/Walsh tracks are here, no true JG's fan's collection is complete without it. You'll understand in the first 30 seconds of "Take A Look Around", track 1 on the first disc, of what you've been missing all these years."