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Rubber Soul (Deluxe Crate Edition with T-Shirt)
$34.00
Deluxe crate edition features the remastered Rubber Soul CD and t-shirt, all together in a black crate! Amazon.com Review Rank 'em how you like, Rubber Soul is an undeniable pivot point in the Fab Four's varied discography no matter where, or how, you first heard it. The album was softened up in its original 12-song American edition to jibe with the Dylan/Byrds folk-rock sound, as well as squeeze money from the Parlophone catalog. The 14-song U.K. edition--the version now available on compact disc--is a different, more dynamic, and ultimately more accomplished achievement. So many classics: "Drive My Car" and "Nowhere Man" (both omitted from the U.S. edition) merge the early combustible Beatifics to a burgeoning studio consciousness; "The Word" can be read as a pre-psych warning shot; the sitar-laden "Norwegian Wood" and the evocative "Girl" (the latter written on the last night of the sessions) stand as turning points in John Lennon's oeuvre. George finally emerges too, with the McGuinn-ish "If I Needed Someone." --Don Harrison Track listing: 1. Drive My Car 2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) 3. You Won't See Me 4. Nowhere Man 5. Think For Yourself 6. The Word / Michelle 7. What Goes On / Girl 8. I'm Looking Through You 9. In My Life / Wait 10. If I Needed Someone 11. Run For Your Life 12. Rubber Soul Documentary

Abbey Road (Deluxe Crate Edition with T-Shirt)
$38.95
Deluxe crate edition features the remastered Abbey Road CD and t-shirt, all together in a white crate! Amazon.com Review The Beatles' last days as a band were as productive as any major pop phenomenon that was about to split. After recording the ragged-but-right Let It Be, the group held on for this ambitious effort, an album that was to become their best-selling. Though all four contribute to the first side's writing, John Lennon's hard-rocking, "Come Together" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" make the strongest impression. A series of song fragments edited together in suite form dominates side two; its portentous, touching, official close ("Golden Slumbers"/"Carry That Weight"/"The End") is nicely undercut, in typical Beatles fashion, by Paul McCartney's cheeky "Her Majesty," which follows. --Rickey Wright Track listing: 1. Come Together 2. Something 3. Maxwell's Silver Hammer 4. Oh! Darling 5. Octopus's Garden 6. I Want You (She's So Heavy) 7. Here Comes The Sun 8. Because 9. You Never Give Me Your Money 10. Sun King 11. Mean Mr. Mustard 12. Polythene Pam 13. She Came In Through The Bathroom Window 14. Golden Slumbers 15. Carry That Weight 16. The End 17. Her Majesty 18. Abbey Road Documentary

Let It Be (Deluxe Crate Edition with T-Shirt)
$39.94
Deluxe crate edition features the remastered Let It Be CD and t-shirt, all together in a black crate! Amazon.com Review Sloppy in conception, and even sometimes in the playing, Let It Be often gets a bad rap. Unfairly, as it's often as charming, well written, and (oh yeah) rocking as the Beatles' "better" albums; it's also more outright fun than Abbey Road, the masterpiece it followed into the stores. With Lennon and McCartney working together on the perfect "I've Got a Feeling," "Two of Us," and "Dig a Pony," it's hard to believe these guys were about to implode. --Rickey Wright Track listing: 1. Two Of Us 2. Dig A Pony 3. Across The Universe 4. I Me Mine 5. Dig It 6. Let It Be 7. Maggie Mae 8. I've Got A Feeling 9. One After 909 10. The Long And Winding Road 11. For You Blue 12. Get Back 13. Let It Be Documentary

America Sings, Volume I: The Founding Years
$10.98
Wow, okay, to be fair, I haven't listened to every track on this album. But that is because I had to turn it off - I couldn't take much more.

Simply, this is just the wrong kind of music to be sung by "classical" voices. As a rule, it sounds terrible, unnatural and disingenuous. They have lovely voices, but they need to stick to true "choral" arrangements, which these are not. Their voices are too trained; too much technique is involved and as a result, the power of this raw music is lost. There have been numerous re-vampings of shapenote and early-American psalms which have been masterful, from choral/baroque styles to punk/rock/pop. This is not one of them.

Frankly, anyone putting together an early-american/shapenote album should know better than to try to class-up this music. It makes me think that they simply just don't know the material, history and tradition. Or worse yet, they do know it but feel in order to give the music true value they needed to repackage it for a more delicate ear. The most pardonable reason would be that it was an experiment which simply went bad.

Whatever the case may be, this album just doesn't work.