The Best we Could do

Practically everything we do in life involves negotiation. Many important issues—the political future of nations, the scope of business, the purchase of a house—hinge on negotiation. But negotiation is also an integral part of our everyday lives, whether you are resolving a quarrel, creating a family budget, or simply deciding where to eat lunch. Yet it’s easy to believe we’re usually at a disadvantage—that others are born negotiators, while we are not.

This title was initially issued in 1976 as a two-LP compilation of the Canterbury progressive rockers' output between the years 1970 and 1974. Additionally, as a "value for money" enticement for those who had already purchased Caravan's back catalog, the set also included a previously vaulted live version of "For Richard" taken from the band's U.S. tour warmup gig on September 1, 1974, at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon, U.K. Fast-forward nearly two decades to the advent and subsequent proliferation of the extended and sonically superior compact disc medium. In those early days, the band was haphazardly represented by only a few difficult-to-locate and sonically disappointing European best-of titles that not only poorly characterized the band's work, but in a few cases were actually mastered from vinyl…

The sad fact about box sets is that there's always a fan out there who thinks they could have compiled a better one. An even sadder fact is that they're often correct, and the very notion of anthologizing Van Der Graaf Generator was a fraught one for that very reason. More, perhaps, than any other band of the early-'70s prog era, VDGG polarized their fans as much as the band's blatantly inhospitable sound outraged outsiders. They cut just eight studio albums, and all eight possess a wholly different character, all the more so since the band actually broke up midway through the sequence…

Sixteen classic original albums by Frank Sinatra, one of the most influential and popular singers of all time, with album sales in excess of 150 million. These albums from the 1950s and early 60s have all been digitally remastered and are now available in one inexpensive 10 CD box set.