 Queen What might have been a pretty kick-ass package has actually resulted in one of the more frustrating rip-offs in recent CD history. The Crown Jewels collects Queen's first eight studio albums (the "classic years"–Queen, Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, News of the World, Jazz, and The Game) in a velour-covered box, with each individual album issued in a cardboard replica of its original sleeve. Trouble arises as soon as you open the box and see that the box is about four times as big as it needed to be, and the albums sit in the box spaced so as to actually make it look as though most of the set is missing. The sleeves themselves range from impressive (Jazz) to hideous (News of the World and The Game) – The Game in fact looks like it was made on a particularly bad or broken scanner, not too dissimilar to much of the child porn I've been downloading. Inexplicably, this cover uses an entirely different photo of the group than appeared on the original cover, and at any rate it looks like utter crap. Packaging-wise, this box is a huge disaster, even though its heart was in the right place. The discs (of course we'll review each individually, so start holding your breath) may or may not have been remastered for this release, though I couldn't tell any discernable difference between the sound on these and the original 1991 CD issues. Confusingly, the producers have chosen to omit all bonus tracks, offering instead the "thrill" of experiencing the albums in their original form. I wouldn't care so much if they just left off the redundant remixes added to the original '91 releases, but it's pointless to remove actual bonus tracks like "Mad the Swine" from Queen (the first album). In effect, this succeeds in making the box non-definitive – you actually get more music buying the discs separately, and probably cheaper, too (the box, I think, goes for over $120). Total rip-off. Diehard fans will certainly own all this music already, so all that's being offered is the velour box and the supposed advantage of the "faithful reproductions" of the original sleeves. But the box, as I said, is way too big and bulky, and the sleeves look like ass, and furthermore, you could probably buy all eight original albums on vinyl for less than $40. The booklet doesn't offer anything new except bland liner notes from Matt Pinfield, whose guilt by association with MTV actually marks his presence as a strike against the set. This could have been a great set if the producers had given the attention to detail that, say, the people at Legacy have done for Miles Davis, or something along the lines of the complete Led Zeppelin box – but unfortunately this is a big waste of money. Even if you own no Queen and desire to buy these albums, I'd advise against the set and for the individual CDs. Actually, it's about time they re-remastered those, but don't get me started.
Review by Freddie Frixenet |