July 13, 1999
Lightfoot collection could have made room for better tunes
Rick Shefchik, Knight Ridder
taken from National
Post
Gordon Lightfoot (Warner Archives, Rhino)
Combining as it does one disc of Lightfoot's early output on United
Artists (1965-1969), three discs' worth of his Warner/Reprise material
and a number of previously unreleased songs from both eras, Songbook is
the box set for all but the most hard-core Lightfoot fan.
Yet even at 88 tracks, it misses too many songs that the Lightfoot
completist must have. His first four studio albums are more thoroughly
compiled on a 1993 two-disc set, The United Artists Collection, which
includes the studio versions of Softly, Ribbon of Darkness and I'm Not
Sayin', rather than the live versions included here. The United Artists
Collection also has favourites such as If You Got It, Wherefor & Why
and If I Could, among other solid album tracks.
From the Reprise years, this collection inexplicably leaves out the
haunting love song Looking at the Rain from Don Quixote; Saturday
Clothes, Approaching Lavender and Minstrel of the Dawn from If You Could
Read My Mind; and Go My Way and the minor hit Talking in Your Sleep from
Summer Side of Life.
This box set could easily have made room for the above by editing out
most of the songs from the final disc, devoted to his weaker material
from the years 1982-1998. The drop-off in quality is undeniable. Rick
Shefchik, Knight Ridder
