the good news: this is a really nice box set from a great band.

the bad news: although all the tracks represented in the track line up are technically on the physical CDs - they are not all in CD audio, therefore not playable on a CD player... and some of these are the BEST singles.

these CDs combine CD audio with CD-ROM data, enabling the ability to view the videos on a computer.

however, many of the videos included in the CD-ROM section are omitted from the CD audio. The result: an incomplete reissue of these great albums. when you listen to this on your CD player, you will NOT hear: house of fun, driving in my car, it must be love, the sun and the rain, wings of dove, waiting for the ghost train.

if you are a fan who wants to purchase a CD version of all these great albums convienantly: this ain't it. the highly compressed computer videos are cute, but the sound utterly sucks and you can only experience them on your computer.

it's too bad amazon didn't catch this and take these songs out of the track line up.

the record company (virgin) took a GREAT idea ("the lot") and made it kind of suck. too bad.

In this collection of the first six 'original' Madness albums, you get a lot of material heretofore missing from American releases. The tracks from "Rise and Fall" and "Seven" are worth the full price of the box set alone. A lot of these tracks have often been hard to track down in the US (especially the RaF material) and are greatly improved on with remastering. While Madness is often viewed as a simple cog in the Ska-revival wheel, the tracks on discs 3-6 prove that they were quality songwriters in their own right and even the overproduced, far too depressing "Mad Not Mad" tracks turn out to be good material on a 5th or 6th listen. Combine this with "The Business" CD set and you have all the Madness your heart could desire.

on the packaging. Great tunes and contains many videos that I haven't seen before. My only complaint is the packaging. While the cardboard cd sleeves look great, they tend to be abrade the hard to remove cd's. The liner notes seemed skimpy as well.

One of the most underrated bands of all time, Madness incorporated elements of reggae,ska,music hall and big band in their marvellous catalogue. All of you who remember Dan Akroyd's "Blues Brothers" dance routine, take a look at the early Madness videos and see what you have been missing. What seperated this group from their peers, was the ability to write and perform in a multitude of styles, with a touch of humor and soul. My daughter and her friends love to dance to the early hits. I hope that Virgin will get around to releasing all their great videos on one DVD shortly as it is a pain having to constantly change discs - my only complaint.

If your a MADNESS fan then you need to buy this. Its totaly right on. Granted its the original 7 albums but its even got the videos for the singles off of the specific album. Its totaly kick @$$