PFM - 10 ANNI LIVE 1971-81

A couple of weeks ago I could place my hands on the last CD of this collection, because the store owner sold the 4 disks individually, it took me almost 6 months to complete the box set and to be honest I don't know if it was worth the effort and the price paid.

A real box set ot collection IMO must combine studio classics, rare B-sides or radio sessions, and some live performances, but in this case it's only a compilation of 10 years of live concerts.

The individual songs are excellent, taken from the best PFM era 1971 - 1981 we can listen many classic masterpieces by a band who were always strong on stage, but on the other hand, the production sucks, some of the CD's have bootleg quality and many tracks are repeated 2 or even 3 times which could be acceptable if we were talking about different versions in English and Italian, but tracks as "La Carroza di Hans" are sung only in Italian and "William Tell Overture" is a short instrumental repeated almost exactly in three CD's, it's really a waste of money to have almost identical versions.

The sound is almost in an excellent bootleg quality, but this is not enough for such an ambitious project as a 4 CD Live Anthology.

The best CD IMHO is N° 2 "L'Experienza Americana", recorded in New York and Cleveland in 1973-1974 from "The World Became the World Tour", album in which can be appreciated the effort that the band had to do in order to be accepted in USA, daring to play "La Carroza di Hans" in Italian, something not very common in the early 70's and of course the excellent version of "Four Holes in the Ground".

It's great to have the complete 4 disks set for a compulsive collector like myself, but I'm not sure many fans are willing to expend 100 hard earned bucks in a box that doesn't represent a clear perspective of the band because it's limited to live concerts.

Very hard to rate because the music is outstanding, but would be better for the band to break the box and sell the CD's separated or make a two CD compilation, so I'll give 3 stars even when I don't recommend this set to everybody.

If you are a PFM newbie, stay away from this box and buy the first three classics before anything (Storia di un Minuto, Per un Amico and Photos of Ghosts), then if you really like the band you can go with later albums like "Chocolate Kings", Jet Lag"or "Passpartú", if this is not enough for you, only then buy this collection ideal for die hard fans and obsessive collectors.