Rolling Stone put it succinctly when they said this album is a welcome sight, but that it's too short...and not without its gems. If you're a completist like I am and searched long and hard to get all of his now-out-of-print releases like Noah, Mongreal, Brand New morning, Back in '72 and so on, there are only four tracks that you will find completely new to your ears. The first six tracks are from some of those releases. The other four range from the early 70s to the mid 80s, and suond just fine. Rolling Stone and I both asked the same question: why wait so long to release them? Bob Seger has more than enough unreleased material for a good-sized boxed set that would also include all the hit songs he's had over the past 35 years. The extra tracks on both of his greatest hits CDs were fine, and his 2006 "Face the Promise" disc was full of proof that Seger hasn't missed a beat in the eleven years between that album and its predecessor. In other words, it's all good, but a boxed set while Bob Seger is still around to do the job right would be a wondrous thing and would make a lot of people very happy. On the plus side, the booklet included with the CD version of this package has some amazing photos of a very young Seger that will amaze his fans. If not a boxed set just yet, then please bring on volume two ASAP. There's a lot of material we'd all love to hear!

But this will do for now.

After all, this is primal American rock; the sorta stuff we should have all grown up on. But like everyone else, there's just not enough here. In fact, it's downright skimpy.

The post-Night Moves outtakes are fine (Days When The Rain Would Come just shines) but of course it's the long lost stuff from the wilderness years that's the real meat. Get Out of Denver and U.M.C. are just stone-cold shoulda been classics that bad luck and bonehead decisions kept away from us for far too long. But in both cases, I suspect the real roadblock to any sort of decent career retrospective is record companies, not Bob himself.

In the first phase of his career, Bob recorded singles and albums for several different labels, so coordinating rights, particularly from defunct labels, is one problem. But I suspect a bigger stumbling block is that the vast majority of his recorded output is on Capitol, possibly the worst record label in the world when it comes to treating their older, legacy artists with any sort of respect. I mean, look how shabbily they're treated their biggest cash cow, The Beatles, over the years. Shoddy packaging, minimal documentation (if any), dubious push-button "remastering" -- the litany of sins goes on. It's not that they're "all about the music"; it's just that they're apparently dirt cheap. And if that's how they treat the Fab Four, how do you think they'll treat some Midwestern boy on his own?

Does Rhino still do retrospectives? Now there was a company that did it right, both with box sets and their 2-CD best-ofs. They'd wrangle all the rights, search out lost gems, involve the artist and package it with a booklet that was respectful, honest, sharp and actually worth reading. That's the sort of thing the fans want, and that Bob deserves.

If, on the other hand, the hold-up is Bob itself, well, gee, Bob, the only reason I finally gave in and started downloading your pirated early stuff a few years back is because I'd given up on it ever becoming available legally again. Ever. I mean, some of it's been unavailable for thirty years or more.

The fact I bought this CD even though I now own almost all of it already should be proof enough that there's a market for this stuff.

Finally Bob agrees to join us! This is a great CD, classic rock and roll at it's best. Hopefully if we all buy this he will release some more!!

Two of these tracks are somewhat known, thanks to their presence on the excellent Live Bullet album, but most of this stuff is a mere sniff of what was to come. I'm buying this primarily to show Bob that he should join us in the 21st century. We aren't pirates. We're working stiffs who miss him and wish he'd end his holdout from the number one medium for distributing music. C'mon, Bob, let's turn on a new generation to true songcraft and the wonders of Rock 'n Roll. Release that incredible body of work to Amazon and iTunes so we can rock the world again! My vinyl is worn out and I'm tired of ripping from dinosaur CDs!

Early Seger Volume 1 is a great start in the exploration of the vault of "lost" Bob Seger songs that have either been out of circulation (i.e., not previously released on CD or digitally) or never released at all. This collection includes six hard-to-find songs, including the blistering Chuck Berry-esque "Get Out of Denver" and the newly re-worked "Long Song Comin'" both of which originally appeared on Seger's 1974 "Seven" album. Also included in the Early Seger Volume 1 collection are 4 songs that were never before released, including the melodic Seger medium "Star Tonight" and the uptempo "Wildfire." All ten songs on Early Seger Volume 1 are little gems from the 1970s and 1980s. But there is so much more that should be released, hopefully on future volumes of Early Seger collections, including "Ramblin, Gamlbin' Man," "Back in '72," and "Rosalie." Let's hope that Volume 1 is just the start of things to come for a much under-appreciated singer songwriter.