All too often we see a box set describing itself as ‘the definitive collection’. Sadly, not too many actually hit that target and we are left with a half-way house of unreleased demos, bootlegged live songs, and tracks that didn’t quite make the mark. Mix that together and you have your bog-standard box-set fare.
Setting out to release a five-CD set covering Family’s remarkable career could well have resulted in more of the same. Instead, what Mystic Records turned up is an absolute gem, a true collectors piece, and a ‘definitive’ set in the truest sense.
To cap it all, Family Old Songs New Songs: The Definitive Box Set contains the most informative account of the bands history I have seen in a long time. It is well worth taking a day out to read it through.
All in all, it is everything a box sets was originally intended to be: definitive, complete, ultimate, or any other overused word that often finds itself attached to their promotion. In this case, though, these words are fully justified.
Let’s face it, as far as a Family set is concerned, it can’t be easy. Here we have a band that often defies categorisation, are all too frequently overlooked by music historians when discussing the sixties and seventies, and are often criminally underrated.
As always you won’t please everyone. What I rate as important, representative, or just plain excellent is not necessarily how you would see it. However, this set clearly has the involvement of the band; it shows, and it is, as a result, all the better for it.
The superb 26-page booklet tells it all, using first hand accounts of those on the inside and actually ‘in the know’. That, of course, is where Family spent most of their career. They were in many ways one of the best kept secrets of the era. Ask most people who remember them and they will come up with “In My Own Time”, or maybe, “Burlesque”. Yet there was always so much to this band, and at long last this box set does their career justice.
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