First the good news. There is finally a release of the Damned's amazing BBC In Concert performance from May 1977, where the original quartet, at their musical peak, run through most of their debut album plus a few singles tracks. For those who've never heard the original Damned, they're generally described as a "punk" band, and they are. But this is primal, high-energy rock that belongs in the pantheon with the Stooges, MC5 and vintage Motorhead. And on this live set, they're faster and tighter than any of those bands. Simply incredible musicianship by what must have been, at the time, the fastest rock band ever. Kudos especially to drummer Rat Scabies--as wild as Keith Moon yet remarkably on the beat, always keeping the momentum up.

This package is worth the money just for that 24-minute live set. Unfortunately, it's a mess in every other way. The live set would make a perfect release on its own. There's also the (almost) complete Stiff Records studio recordings from 1976-77--one song is missing, a b-side version of Stretcher Case (but we get that song in three other versions on this set). The Damned Stiff recordings are a classic ouevre and would also be a great release on their own (fitting on one CD). The debut album is just as exciting as the live set I described above, with an even more powerful, amazingly raw studio sound.

Unfortunately this great music is watered down with already available BBC session recordings that repeat many titles in less exciting versions. And the BBC sessions are interspersed chronologically with the studio recordings, which means you get lots of repetition of songs, often very close to each other.

Finally, the mastering on the Stiff recordings is terrible. The drums come across better than ever, but the sound in some places is excessively bright. Yet in other places, there's distortion that sounds like nobody even did a quality-control check. "See Her Tonite", a highlight of the debut album, is unlistenable here, with "in the red" noise throughout and a horrible blast of static near the end.

There are also three unreleased demos from 1976. These sound terrible compared with the long available bootleg versions. The tape hiss is removed, but so is all the life in the guitar sound. And there's a live "bonus" disc from a 1976 concert that is probably the worst-sounding recording I've ever bought from a "legit" record company.

The package includes a seven-inch-size book with lots of nice photos and a long essay. I haven't read the essay, but just in scanning the basic track info and credits, I found countless typos and errors, more signs of a rush job with poor quality control.