Nobody did it better! The birth of the freeform vinyl compilation. There have been imitators but Warner Brothers are the inventors. If you were savvy enough to check out the inner sleeves of your old Neil Young, Jethro Tull and Mothers LPs (to name only a few) and send in the couple of bucks your reward would arrive in a couple of weeks. The "Joy of a Toy" as your treasure arrives! hours of exploration, cool cover art, incredible linner note (Dr. Denento) and a fantastic compilation of sonic treats. Some very familiar and some to discovery. Sometime a familiar song in a different mix or two.
I don't think we will ever see these compilations remastered and released. With all the mergers and aqusitions in the music industry and the slow death of the CD format these records will remain just that - "records." They are an indellable peek into the history of an incredibly creative time. A movement as brilliant as the Renaissance. A catalog of incredible versitility at that moment in time. Although Columbia tried with their Music People 3 LP set and the Different Strokes (single LP) Comps they couldn't compete with Warner Brothers sheer volume of artists.
Believe it or not there are some 36 plus Warner Brothers Compilations. If you were lucky enough to collect these at the time you paid just a few dollars for each of these national treasure. Collection them nowadays can be a hefty price to pay as they become rediscovered. I have 22 of the 36 plus. there are several that I have just become fimiliar with and still looking. If you are an old dust bin & dumpster diver like me you enjoy the hunt likewise.
The fun of these comps are digitizing them each side at a time and NOT tracking them. Listening to each side as if they were a radio show, loading them into the iPod and listening to them in the car on a long drive. A great way to pass the time on a road trip. If you bought them for $1.00, $2.00 or the $3.00 price tag at the time it can surely offset the price of your gas tank on that road trip. Definitely worth the $85.00 to fill your gas tank!
More on the Warner Bros loss Leaders later, just think about what you have lost with your leaders NOW!
Check out this link for more info on Loss Leaders:
http://home.clara.net/fil/rocksamplers/warner.htm
