SUPERNATURAL FAIRY TALES - THE PROGRESSIVE ROCK ERA

All I can say is, thank god I bought this. It was about 1998 or so, and I was very curious as I had heard a few of the bands on it, but mostly it was bands I'd heard OF but had never listened to. I figured much of it would be hard to track down (I was wrong, but had no idea at the time). On the positive side, it was a nice intro to me to a lot of new bands. On the down side, many of the numbers are not representative of the respective bands. And I don't understand how Roxy Music and Golden Earring are prog (or why Roxy got not one, but TWO songs on the box set). Also, Siberian Khatru is actually an edited version of And You And I (on my version anyway). Not sure what happened there, as And You And I was edited to the length of Siberian oddly enough.

Overall though, I think this is an excellent collection. The booklet is good and informative, and I still pull this out every so often and listen to a couple or even all the CD's (skipping a few tracks though). I'm not sure nowadays who this would be good for, since so many of these bands albums are easily obtained and many of these tracks are not the most representative of their output. For me, at the time, it was perfect (plus I was getting into Schulze, and the two unreleased tracks of him solo and with Ashra Temple are fascinating if fairly primitive). So I guess 3 stars is appropriate, though I don't even think you can buy this new anymore.