Disco Box [Box]

Performer: Various Artists
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: THE DISCO BOX includes a 60-page book featuring an essay by Brian Chin, liner notes by Vince Aletti, essential album discography by Michael Freedberg, and contributing remarks by various disco era DJs. Compilation producers: David McLees, Brian Chin. Digitally remastered by Bill Inglot, Ken Perry, Stewart Whitmore, Geoff Sykes. Audio Remasterers: Ken Perry; Stewart Whitmore; Bill Inglot. Liner Note Authors: Michael Freedberg; Barry Walters; Brian Chin. Arrangers: Gene Page; Tony Eyers; Greg Diamond; Harold Faltermeyer; Art Wright; Jack Faith; Andy Kahn; Mauro Malavasi; Michael Omartian; Norman Harris; Patrick Adams; Paul Sabu; Arthur Wright; Simon Soussan; Thor Baldursson; Van McCoy; Wade Marcus; Walter Murphy; Warren Schatz; Barry White; Terry Lewis; Bob Esty; Greg Mathieson; Bruce Miller. Rhino's four-CD Disco Box is the most impressive disco retrospective yet assembled, featuring 80 tracks and exhaustive liner notes which chronicle the music's history, artists, innovations, and subsequent influence. Like many of the best Rhino anthologies of this sort, The Disco Box is a mixture of acknowledged classics and neglected yet surprisingly high-quality lesser-knowns (although the emphasis here is more on the former). The result is an enormously infectious, entertaining package that makes the best case yet for the importance and creative viability of disco in its heyday. There are a couple of minor flaws -- most disco fans will be able to name a few absent favorites (none of the Bee Gees' historically crucial Saturday Night Fever tracks were available for licensing, for example), and others may bemoan the lack of extended 12" club versions, which simply wouldn't fit into a compilation of this scope. At any rate, The Disco Box is still as definitive and well-done an overview as we're ever likely to see, and even at four CDs, it's the perfect introduction. ~ Steve Huey The golden age of '70s disco was the last period of strictly AM radio-driven pop hits. (The MTV '80s hit parade led by Michael Jackson, Madonna and ZZ Top is another story altogether.) Disco records, therefore, had to sound fabulous on the air and they did, with production techniques that remain influential to this hip-hop driven day. On the outside of Rhino's super-deluxe 4-CD THE DISCO BOX, master remasterer Bill Inglot actually receives the simple and rather grand credit "Sound," as if to emphasize the special aural quality of these tracks. Rhino, Inglot and co. have done a characteristically superb job in assembling this definitive disco compilation. Every major hit is included, from the ridiculous (Disco-Tex & The Sex-O-Lettes' "Get Dancin'") to the sublime (Sister Sledge's "Lost In Music".) Though four discs may seem like too much of a good thing--an item for collectors only perhaps-- a mere glance at the track list reminds us just how many great songs came out of this allegedly tacky era.

Entertainment Weekly (2/19-2/26/99, pp.133-134) - "...You...couldn't find a more convincing defense of the form, in case anyone still needs one. The mere fact that the box collects 80 tracks without running into one bum patche makes the ultimate case for a style that once stood as the most maligned cultural expression since mime..." - Rating: B+

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