Recorded in December at the Westfalenhalle Arena (Dortmund, Germany) during the band's 2003 Dance of Death tour, the two-disc Death on the Road deviates little from Iron Maiden's countless other live albums. While blissfully heavy on the group's excellent - and suitably theatrical - new material, longtime fans do not need any more live versions of "Number of the Beast," "Hallowed Be Thy Name," "Run to the Hills," or "The Trooper." All that said, Iron Maiden do not disappoint, laying to waste any notions that they can't hold themselves to the performance standards of their younger days. Even Bruce Dickinson, despite a voice that's now often more choked than feral, can barely keep himself from leaping into the crowd, and it's that kind of enthusiasm that makes each and every live release - and there are a lot of them - worthwhile to some degree.
There are already so many "best-of" collections of Gerry & the Pacemakers – including previous releases from EMI, Capitol, and Collectables – that this double-CD set from EMI's U.K. division probably won't seem very impressive or important. Actually, very little of the band's history is left out, at least in terms of the various facets of their music – the hits are all present, along with a brace of engaging B-sides and LP and EP tracks that greatly broaden the range of music at hand. The quartet's best-known songs are well-crafted pop/rock in a Merseybeat mode, but they had a harder side as well, and even traded in some R&B and country sounds, and those aspects are represented here in between the hits. Some listeners who like their more rocking sides, such as "Jambalaya," "Maybellene" or "Pretend," may not appreciate the presence of such string-laden pop as "Walk Hand in Hand" or "Girl on a Swing," but this is a valid representation of their sound. And the sound is optimal, to put it mildly, with lots of presence on all of the instruments.
Behind The Legend is a UK two CD set featuring a 20-track collection of rare and previously unreleased recordings from the Lee Perry period including versions of 'Mr Brown', 'All In One', 'Keep On Moving' and a superb version of 'Soul Shakedown Party'.
Weighing in at 19 tracks, Repertoire's 2005 collection Ayla: The Best of Flash and the Pan is the most generous compilation yet assembled of Harry Vanda and George Young's impish post-Easybeats new wave creation, Flash and the Pan. Not only is it four tracks longer than the previous best F&P comp, 1994's plainly titled Collection, but it's more carefully assembled too, boasting good liner notes from Chris Welch and eye-catching comic book artwork. If F&P didn't have any other song as immediate or memorable as "Hey St. Peter," their gloriously ridiculous new wave novelty, they did have a number of good oddities and robotic new wave pop before sinking into coldly slick anthemic pop at the end of the decade.