The Throwaways

There never was a supergroup more super than the Traveling Wilburys. They had Jeff Lynne, the leader of ELO; they had Roy Orbison, the best pop singer of the '60s; they had Tom Petty, the best roots rocker this side of Bruce Springsteen; they had a Beatle and Bob Dylan, for crying out loud! It's impossible to picture a supergroup with a stronger pedigree than that (all that's missing is a Rolling Stone), but in another sense it's hard to call the Wilburys a true supergroup, since they arrived nearly two decades after the all-star craze of the '70s peaked, and they never had the self-important air of nearly all the other supergroups.

Increasingly, and especially in a day and age where music is so widely and readily available thanks to advanced technologies, when a company or act wants to make a good box set, it had better deliver. To its credit, Beggars Banquet did just that with Rare Cult, an astoundingly comprehensive and entertaining collection that packs in 90 tracks over the course of six discs…

In 1990, the duo of Steve Waddington and Jon Marsh released its debut album Happiness under the name the Beloved, and found modest success by combining light, Erasure-style dance-pop with Marsh's breathy vocals and atmospheric arrangements. Following the release of a remix album Blissed Out (also from 1990), Waddington left the band, and was replaced by Jon Marsh's wife Helena Marsh just in time for the recording of the group's follow-up, the lifeless Conscience. The 1993 release largely abandoned the Beloved's pop approach in favor of more ambient soundscapes, limiting the album's appeal. (Jon Marsh's distant, uninvolved vocal style certainly didn't help, making the album sound cold and uninviting.) Unfortunately, the Beloved's third album X continues in this tradition…