Subject: Review: Free Reed Box Sets
From:
irishenglish
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 03:49 PM
I own several of the Free Reed Box Sets-Carthy Chronicles, Swarb, 2 Fairport sets, Ashley Hutchings, etc. What's anyones thoughts on how well these are put together? I have to say, I applaud the effort, but they are riddled with so many mistakes in places, and are arranged rather strangely sometimes. The Carthy set is pretty solid, but the Hutchings set is a mess. I was loading some on my ipod last night, and there were many errors-saying one thing is a live version, while something else was labeled as being from the early 90's which was in fact the original version from 1978! The Cropredy Chronicles one repeats entire passages in the book from the Fairport Unconventional set, and is a complete mess-errors all over the place. It also is the one that the booklet is the worst, with fan stories written in tiny,ugly pink lettering.
It really irked me that with the Hutchings set, here was a man who deserved to have a chronological order to his music-that's how much he has done, but instead Nigel Schofield decides to arrange things in his own rambling style, with albums grouped thematically. The Swarb set had "inspirations" on one side of the book and an overview of his life on the other side-throughout the whole book! I love the photographs in all the books, and I definitely applaud the effort. But part of me is really pissed that after plunking down so much money, the sets are of an uneven quality. And if I can list error after error either on the cd's themselves, or in the booklet, than surely Free Reed with access to everyone involved can make a little better product. What does anyone else say?
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sj
