Search - The Black Crowes :: Kaleidoscope

Great bonuses, but they were only a fraction of what existed

Bill M. | MA, USA | 01/15/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I've been a die-hard Black Crowes fan ever since I heard "Jealous Again" on the airwaves in 1990. Since then, I've bought every Black Crowes item I could get my hands on. I bought this box set when it came out, even though I already had the original discs. The multimedia and the bonus tracks made it well worth it, in my opinion.



The "Sho' Nuff" box set contains the first four studio albums in multimedia format (complete with music videos, screen savers, and bonus tracks), plus a live EP, and two big Black Crowes stickers (one round logo sticker, one big crow head). I'm not going to bother raving about how great the music is itself; if you didn't like a band's music enough to consider possibly buying a box set, then you wouldn't be reading this!



Multimedia discs have unfortunately become a rather dated "90s" thing, in this day and age of DVD-R drives, Flash, video podcasts, and high-speed internet. So for those who don't know, multimedia discs act as both an audio CD and a computer CD-Rom. But the multimedia part in these particular discs is a bit of a pain to navigate. You have to "install" the program from the disc, then use the installed shortcut to run the program. This brings you to a panel where you can turn on the given "screen saver". And I use that term in quotes because it isn't a screen saver you can install and use like regular screen savers. You can only run it from the main menu, which again only works when you have the disc in the drive! There are two links, one to Sony's store, and one to thetallest.com (long since dead, and bought by somebody else). The music videos are in Quicktime, 320x240 resolution. If you have trouble getting these or the disc can't recognize your updated version of quicktime, just exit the program, navigate the disc iteself, and look for the *.mov files.



Oh well, it all seemed excellent at the time, even if it looks dated by today's standards. So it goes with technology.



The music was also digitally remastered, though personally I didn't think the recordings needed it in the first place. Especially 3 Snakes and One Charm -- come on, just two years after the first release? I can't really tell too much of a difference, so no harm done.



The fifth disc, "The Black Crowes Live" (not to be confused with the double "Live" disc that was released years later in 2002) has five live tracks and runs about a half hour long. The songs were recorded over several nights in March 1995 at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. It was only released as part of this box set. It's a nice quality recording. Anybody who has seen the band perform live knows that they never play a direct recreation of the album recordings. I always preferred their live version of "No Speak No Slave" to the studio, and "Hard to Handle" here includes a horn section.



For those curious about the physical details, here you go. The five discs come in their own individual jewel cases, which snugly fit front-to-back in the box. The four studio albums have all the original sleeve artwork. I compared these to the originals, and aside from the bonus track listings and record company logos, there's no difference. The disc artwork on the last two are the same as the originals. Disc artwork has been added to the first two (they originally didn't have any, as was the norm for CDs in those days).



My only complaint I suppose is "Great, but we could use more of everything here!" They had more music videos than what was given here. They especially had TONS and tons of quality live recordings (thanks to the band's open-taping policy) which made fore just as many unreleased songs as "released" songs (yes, I took the time to count them and compare), in the form of B-sides, studio demos, live-only originals and especially live-only covers. Why the set was released the way it was, I don't know. But looking at the way other band's box sets have been released, I know they could have done it much worse! So with the music and the price, it's still a 5-star rating to me."