TIME TRAVELLER (BOX SET)

You have four discs (plus one live bonus disc) into which to concentrate the discography of Moody Blues, up to Keys To Kingdom album. Probably any fan would want to dedicate three discs for the classic era. Well, here the third disc begins with tracks from Seventh Sojourn, and from that on it's downhill for this box. Except that of course it's a friendly move to include the Hayward & Lodge collaboration Blue Jays (1975), even if I can't give it an honour of being "the 8th Moodies album". One can't exactly say that those later albums would have been given very plenty of space, but frankly, the fourth disc offers no significant discoveries or surprises. Most of the chosen tracks are the radio-friendly hits already familiar.

As Easy Livin has measured, six albums are represented up to 75 % of their original contents (25-30 min). That's generous all right, but I agree with the other reviewer that there are totally bad choices too, and some good songs missing. The early line-up before arrivals of Hayward and Lodge is exluded, for good reason (they really were two completely different bands), but also the non-album songs from the classic era are very rare in this box. On that direction this would have had more value for collectors. On the other hand "Prelude" compilation does that very well, and if there weren't any forgotten gems to be included, can't help! Also live recordings have been decided to leave off (the bonus CD has live tracks excluded from the original Red Rocks live album), and that's fine by me.

If you already have the classic albums and you're not very much interested in their later pop hits, you have better things to do with the money, I presume. And to start here makes further collecting quite frustating because of that mentioned large percentage thing. But anyway, a fine package of great music.