The Not-So-Finer Things

The announcement of Revelutions: The Very Best of Steve Winwood – a new compilation from Island available as either a single-disc compilation or a four-disc box set – should be exciting. Winwood is a hell of a musician whose illustrious career has seen him work with Blind Faith, Traffic and The Spencer Davis Group, not to mention his own successful solo work.

But this set is boring, not just for its lack of vault content but because it’s essentially been released before. The Finer Things was a 1995 box set that covered Winwood’s career just as well; the choice to regurgitate much of the same material from the earlier set on Revolutions is kind of sad. (All told, about 40 of the 63 tracks from The Finer Things end up on this set.) You’d think the money could be better spent by at least repressing some of his material back on CD (a lot of those solo albums before “Higher Love” are hard to come by.)

Then of course, there’s the inexplicable omission of “Roll with It,” a four-week No. 1 hit in the U.S., from the box set track list. (It is included on the single-disc Revolutions – here’s hoping for a typo).

Anyway, if you’d at least like to see what’s going to be on the box set, you can have a go at the jump.

In Case You Missed It: Monsieur Hathaway

A little bit of old news for you, but a must-know if you didn’t already: the folks at Rhino have put together Someday We’ll All Be Free, a four-disc overview of soul singer Donny Hathaway’s brief but powerful career. The set includes all four studio albums, a heap of live tracks, and seven previously unreleased recordings.

Here’s the catch, though: it seems that it’s only available – as a 5,000-copy limited edition, at that – in France. While I had little to no idea of Hathaway’s apparently strong French fanbase (strong enough to warrant such a set, at least), I suppose there’s a first time for everything – and hopefully the seven vault tracks will make their way to our shores before too long.

In the meantime, fans who need to fully flesh out their collection can take a look at the set’s Amazon page or hit the jump for the specs.