#477

Impressions: Oh, man. A FOUR DISC BOX SET?!? Rolling Stone! GRRR, why are you busting my chops like this and, to top it all off, SPOTIFY doesn’t have it! So, I could buy it ($40!) or just cobble it together track-by-track online. Ugh, time to get to cobbling. I’m sure most people who have tried listening to the entire list have crashed and burned here, but I’m determined to continue for some reason. Let’s listen…”Skid Row” is a nice snappy opener. (CUT TO: 20 songs later) Okay, so far, these tunes are really listenable, in a well-crafted early days of rock ‘n’ roll sort of way, you know, where blues, country and rock all seemed to come from the same place, but man, it’s too much music to digest for me, especially coming right off the Loretta Lynn collection (which was much shorter!) This set is Merle Haggard delivered with both barrels, or similar to the binge watching people do for Battlestar Galactica or Breaking Bad. This is going to take a few days to take in. (CUT TO: a few days later.) The consistency of the earlier work is admirable here, many songs have a pretty high quality of production, songwriting and playing.  Songs like “Branded Man” show off his clear, straightforward voice and his down-on-his-luck lyrics. I like the early Capitol years songs that veer into other territory like the fancy flamenco style guitar of “You Don’t Have Very Far To Go” or Western swing like “Swinging Doors.” As his career went on, sometimes the music fell victim to the trends of the time. His duet with Willie Nelson,”Pancho and Lefty,” sounds like every bit the 1983 soft-rock/country hit that it was and “It’s All In The Movies” has a gentle late-era Van Morrison sheen (complete with tasteful saxophone!) But, in the end (which I frankly never thought would arrive,) his guitar and voice keep everything from getting too mushy and makes this a solid, if seemingly endless portrait of the Hag.