I have been involved in a number of bar bands myself (nothing even close to the par that Fanny obtained) and it amazes me that to this day how much crap we cram into our rehearsal rooms and how really crappy most band rehearsal rooms are.

The contents of the 4 CD's include only stuff recorded on the first four Reprise/Warner albums plus a bunch of extras.  The fifth album is touched on briefly in description, but no tracks, which is fine by me since it didn't seem like Fanny anyway.  The sonic content is awesome. I took their recommendation and played these CD's good and loud in my vehicle's CD changer. Guess what?  No more record scratches and pops!  The re-mastering sounds excellent and luckily no one decided to try and remix anything, for I love these songs exactly the way they were released originally.  Some groups today remix stuff and damn, it's just not right!  The thing that strikes me the most is how much more I enjoy these albums today.  In years past, my memories of the albums Charity Ball and Mother's Pride were that they were not as good as the first album and Fanny Hill. But now, these things rock.  They show a depth Fanny had that few, if any, groups really possessed.

The extra tracks, and there are a ton of them, will make you yearn for more. You can see them sitting in a small studio rockin' out these great tunes in your imagination as you listen, you are that close at times.  The Reprise Records promos with the male voice over doing the wacky late '60's early '70's stoner act will make you wet your pants as you laugh. I knew guys that talked like that. You'll also notice the "get behind Fanny" promo is as degrading now as it should have been then. Advertising folks, I never figured them out.

Some of the gems are the many versions of "Charity Ball" included, including the single version (thank you).  I love hearing how songs come to fruition in the studio. The other one is the original vocal for "Rock Bottom Blues" sung by Alice.  Sing it girl!  She actually sounds better in this take and comes through with the "so f*ckin' hard" bit much better.  You even get a chance to sing it yourself as they include the backing track for it (and don't think we recording geeks won't do just that!).  I don't even miss the horn section dubbed in for the album version.  The blues influenced "Lonesome Pine" from Nickey is just damn good too.

The rough studio tracks and the live tracks shows Fanny at its best, just jammin' and playing their souls out on every tune. The great thing about hearing these "basic" tracks is that Fanny sounds great "raw" or fully produced.  It is a true testament to their talent as a band and individuals.  June's guitar just rocks and she is one of the more versatile guitarists from that era.  If the recording industry took women seriously and stopped treating them as a piece of ass, today we be saying June was a guitar legend equal to or greater than Clapton and others.

For all you eBay folks looking for the Canadian version of the first album, quit looking, every track is here and you'll save a bundle.  Criticisms?  Yes, there's tape hiss, and thank you for that.  Applying modern techniques to get rid of this "anomaly" I think would have ruined the sonic power of Fanny.  The booklet could have gone into a lot more detail of the background of the extra tracks, like why they were excluded from the original sessions, or inspirations for some lyrics, etc.  The booklet would have been twice as thick probably, or they can't remember.  A little of both I'd say.

My only real disappointment is that Nickey was not more involved in this set, but that's life, right? Other than that, why are reading this? Go buy the CD before it's gone!