The five CDs in this box set comprise 106 wonderful songs from what truly are the greatest musicals of the 20th Century. While the artists are not the ones you'd immediately recognize from the movie versions of these productions, they are nevertheless top-notch and probably were in the casts of the stage shows. So far, I haven't heard a single one that wasn't excellent. For those who love songs from great musicals, this is surely one of the great bargains of the 20th Century.
This is the second (and final) bootleg-gone-legit box that was actually sanctioned by Frank Zappa. But rather than go to the expense and time to use better sources – which the artist presumably had access to – he simply ripped off the illicit recordings that had been doing the same to him for decades. And voila, Beat the Boots was born. Zappa enlisted Rhino Records to manufacture and distribute the anthologies – which were packaged to appear as if the contents were being sold in a low budget cardboard box. However once inside Beat the Boots!, Vol. 2 (1992), consumers were treated to a full LP jacket-sized 40-page memorabilia scrapbook, a black felt beret and a red pin/badge bearing the hammer-in-fist artwork emblazoned on it.