PROGRESSION

There are good compilations, and there are bad compilations. This is a bad compilation. It is immediately apparent that everything is not as it should be when the epic "Knocking on your back door", without any warning on in the track listing, turns out to be an edited.. no make that butchered version. "Perfect strangers" suffers the same fate, both being "single edits". The editing completely ruins both songs, being even harder to take when you notice that the running time of the CD is less than an hour.

At first glance, the track listing is quite respectable, focusing on the mid 1980's period when the classic line up reunited. The tracks are thus taken from "Perfect strangers", "The house of blue light" and the live album "Perfect strangers". They are grouped together so that all those from the same album appear together. Thus the three live tracks, "Black night", "Smoke on the water" (how imaginative!) and "Hush" act as an interlude between the selections form the studio albums.

As a brief sampler of how the mark 2 line up sounded in the mid 80's, this collection is passable. The unnecessary abbreviation of the two best tracks however renders this compilation entirely dispensable, and the lack of any notation that those tracks have been cut is a unforgivable deception.

P.S. Prog fans should not be misled by the title either!