This double-disc overview collection of British super guitarist
Peter Green is unique only for the limit of its focus and its seeming willy-nilly sequenced expression of it. If you're a fan, there isn't anything here you don't already have. By concentrating on a 20-year period -- and for most of that
Green was lost in his own mind -- listeners get a solid selection of
Green's creative genius with
Fleetwood Mac, his spotty early solo records when his disintegration begins, and his tentative but still brilliant first return to music-making as well as a pair of sideman gigs with
Bob Brunning's Sunflower Blues Band tossed in for good measure. There are only two live cuts in the batch, Boston Tea Party-era versions of "Black Magic Woman" and a cover of
Duster Bennett's "Jumping at Shadows," and a wildly interspersed series of solo album cuts,
Mac singles, and LP grooves like the juxtaposition of
Green's "Lost My Love" with
FM's "Fast Talking Woman Blues." In all, the only new thing here is the packaging and the inventive if problematic assemblage. ~ Thom Jurek