The quality here is almost indescribable. So many great episodes, so much fine acting from the entire cast to match the top-notch writing and production. Fortunately, much of the quality is sustained through Season 5, so I'm waiting for the DVD release of it and Season 6 (which was still better than 99.99% of the other stuff on US TV at the time).

As a gritty realistic drama about what prison life is like, this macho melodrama makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. However, an average episode has better acting among all players than just about any Hollywood film. I watch it basically as a very dark comedy. One way you might interpret it is this: the people involved in the 'rehabilitation' of the prisoners are like the managers who run a company, and the prisoners are like the employees.

This is the DEFINITIVE version of their last studio album. It contains more tracks and has a slightly different mix. None of the extra tracks are throwaway and some are arguably better than the songs on the original 'Driving to Damascus'. Is it their best album? I think it has more depth with the lyrics than anything Stuart Adamson has done, and he was always a great lyricist (these things being relative). If you don't yet have 'Driving to Damascus', buy this version instead. If you already have DTD, consider getting this one for the extra songs and the slightly different mix courtesy of Tony Butler, the band's bassist. It all works for me. Great melodic guitar rock, some of it very hard-driving while some of it very soft. Great, great lyrics. These are truly Stuart's last artistic statement.

If you were a fan in the 80s perhaps you remember all those extended remixes they'd put out on e.p.s and singles. Of course BC was no exception in doing this--and a lot of diehard fans loved it.

Well, this is an obvious CD to get if you are a BC fan.

Or if you are a fan of the 80s rock. The songs really are re-mixed and put back together in such a way that they are quite different songs from the source material.

These are really cool to listen for the bass and drum sounds. You can't call it dance music, but Tony's bass and Mark's drums do get more prominence.

Most of this stuff is done by Steve Lillywhite, who U2 fans will know well. I don't know if he ever did anything like this with any other group, but then again there never has been another group like BC.

Critics divide over this. In the UK he is a rock n roll god. In the US, they just don't get it.

First a few admissions: I don't usually like live albums. Also, I don't usually like acoustic unplugged albums (most have been just godawful, especially the MTV efforts). And, true fans self-select and write reviews with 5 stars, which distorts the rating scale; I am a true fan but I'm not exaggerating this one.

I thought this would be something like what the Amazon review said. But I found myself absolutely taken with this CD. Somehow, using just voice and guitar (usually acoustic, sometimes subdued electric) he manages to capture the essence of some of his best songs from the Jam, Style Council and later solo stuff. I wouldn't have thought it possible until I was about one third of the way into this. I kept waiting for it to sound 'wooden' or 'bloated' like some critics said. Instead, I relived all those songs from the Jam, Style Council and his solo stuff and actually felt like, at least a bit, that I was in the audience as he was doing.

Thanks again Mr. Weller.

I have this collection of Smiths' videos on videotape, so I can't comment on the DVD aspects, but I can
say whether or not I think it's worth getting this. The Top of the Pop videos are really awful unless you just want to see what the band looked like when they were young. Of course they were all pretty droll about it anyway. This collection, though, is a must-have for the Derek Jarman videos, none of which I ever got to see on MTV. Jarman was brilliant and the visuals go perfectly with the music. Buy!

When I first heard the Housemartins I thought they were trying a bit too hard to cash in on the Smiths, but then again, in the US, that would mean cashing in on nothing much. Still, like the Smiths--and the Beatles before either of these great 80s groups--this was an English band that tapped into US rock influences but drew equal amounts on English music hall and skiffle.

If you like melodic, guitar-driven rock in a popular presentation (accessible and memorable), this is the ticket. And this CD is a very large collection of songs for one disc.

If you were a Smiths fan and didn't notice the Housemartins, now is the time to discover them. There was apparently more songwriting talent in the HMs, much of the group could sing (better harmonies), and the politics were much more straightforward but most definitely old labor left.

The Smiths, in their heyday, were never considered a great album group--at least by my sampling of their critics in the US who never got the point. This album proves those critics wrong. In its own way as important as 'Never Mind the Bollocks' or 'London Calling'. Melodic, often dissonant, with many influences on display, but at a time when the band seemed in full control of their complementary powers. It's hard to find anything comparable to Morrissey and Marr. Not Lennon and McCartney nor Strummer and Jones, but such parallels come close.

Roddy Frame WAS Aztec Camera, so why this solo effort in his name instead of the Aztec Camera brand? Well, this album is good, I mean very, very good, and Roddy must have known that. For about twenty years Roddy F. had to live with the putdowns that nothing he ever did lived up to the brilliance of the debut 'High Land, Hard Rain'. Well, if you don't know either, pick up Aztec Camera 'High Land, Hard Rain' and Roddy Frame's 'North Star'. Both are 5 star works without a doubt.

This is brilliannt, panoramic, atmospheric pop rock that Scots seem to excel at. Americans might need a bit adjusting to the UK style production, but they are unlikely to hear anything so tuneful on their radio. It's great to hear Roddy in midlife putting out music that equals what he did in his youth.

There isn't a single weak cut on this l.p.

It's funny how the production sound of Steve Lillywhite, which worked so well for so many UK bands (most notably Big Country's The Crossing, the best l.p. of the 80s IMO), caused some people some problems in accepting it for this consumate US pop artist.

Well, the conversion to CD cleans up the sound a bit so all is not lost in the bass end of the echo chamber. The songwriting here is superb, often wistful. This should have sold millions (there are two or three songs here I'd put up against any of the great songwriters of melodic pop rock--Joel, Newman, etc.) , but , alas, not to be. Anyway, even if there are some songs on the whole l.p. you don't like (I don't have any), none of them are very long. The way Marshall takes you from one short pop song to another with an entirely different set of hooks is addictive. This is why I've never needed things like drugs I guess!