Customer Rating:  
Summary: Great Fania collection with one major flaw
Comment: As written below, this is a great collection of Rubén's Fania work with excellent liner notes. One might argue an omission of a song here and there, but overall it covers a lot. The tracks are arranged in chronological order and the artwork includes album pictures, concert photos, and a hand-written page of the Pedro Navaja chart. The mastering made Rubén's Fania music sound the best I've heard so far, with a slight increase of the lows and highs and a matching in volume to today's music.
The tracks from Maestra Vida (Manuela, El nacimiento de ramiro, and Mestra vida) have all or part of their intro text (and intro music) taken out. It seems understandable because out of context they might sound weird. What seems unforgivable is the fact that they faded the ending of the song Maestra vida leaving out a minute and a half portion that includes a climactic mambo section. I understand that CD 2 is almost 80 minutes long, but they could have picked a shorter song from one of the "filler" LP's and left Maestra vida in its full length.
I would have given this double CD 5 stars, but given the importance of the Maestra Vida album, I gave it 4.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Truly the ULTIMATE Ruben Blades collection.
Comment: This 2-CD set is the most comprehensive collection of Ruben's Fania recordings issued to date. Of course, you get most of his big solo hits as well as some of his earlier ones with Ray Barretto, Willie Colon and even the Fania All Stars. The essay by Ernesto Lechner is also very informative and covers aspects of Ruben's entire career. Despite its being limited to Ruben's 1975-84 Fania recordings this package really deserves to be in your collection.
|
