Review By G. Sawaged
After his stint as leader of The Raspberries, Eric Carmen had a succesful solo career. "All by myself" is from Carmen's solo debut album from 1975. One of his most successful songs, it has since been covered by numerous artists. All of the songs on this album were written by Carmen except "Hungry Eyes" from the movie 'Dirty Dancing'. Eric Carmen has an unerring sense of melody and songcraft that has resulted in some of the best pop rock ever. Just try not to dance to "That's Rock 'n Roll"...impossible. "She Did It" is the greatest Beach Boy song that Brian Wilson never wrote, and "It hurts Too Much" has a Phil Spector-like power to it. This album is a must for music lovers. If you're a fan of Billy Joel and/or Barry Manilow, you will love this album.–-Amazon
Sounds of the Seventies was a 38-volume series issued by Time-Life during the late 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s, spotlighting pop music of the 1970s. Much like Time-Life's other series chronicling popular music, volumes in the "Sounds of the Seventies" series covered a specific time period, including individual years in some volumes, and different parts of the decade (for instance, the early 1970s) in others; in addition, some volumes covered specific trends, such as music popular on album-oriented rock stations on the FM band. Each volume was issued on either compact disc, cassette or (with volumes issued prior to 1991) vinyl record.
One has a tendency to think of acts like the Pretty Things in terms of their albums, primarily because most of their singles simply never charted, even in England (and many were never even heard of in the United States), and the albums have been easier to find over the decades since. Actually, it was singles that best defined what most bands were about at the point that the Pretty Things first got together, and they never stopped neglecting that category of release – hence, this three-CD set containing the product of 33 singles (66 sides) over a period of 35 years, from 1964 through 1999.
It may not be the "ultimate" collection of hits from the 1970's, but this ten disc set does indeed offer 198 of the songs that helped define the decade. Happily, they are all original recordings by the original artists, as they were heard on the radio. True, in a few cases that means the selections are "radio edits" (Rod Stewart's 1971 hit "Maggie May", for example, is missing the 30 second instrumental introduction that was included on the original album, but rarely played over the airwaves), but why quibble? The songs, though not necessarily remastered, all sound great, and the set includes some genuine treasures that have not (yet) been offered on other compilations. Highly recommended!
"…An amazing SACD. As interpretations, both of these are in a class of their own, the Franck having strong claims of being the best ever performance of this greatest French late romantic orchestral work. Almost certainly they will never be equalled let alone bettered on SACD." ~SA-CD.net
"…An amazing SACD. As interpretations, both of these are in a class of their own, the Franck having strong claims of being the best ever performance of this greatest French late romantic orchestral work. Almost certainly they will never be equalled let alone bettered on SACD." ~SA-CD.net