I am looking for one comprehensive box set that contains all of Al's best and unreleased stuff. A friend of mine said that Anthology is good, but personally, I think that The Immortal Soul Of Al Green is more essential than that one. Can anyone help me out?

silverchild said:

Good question - I've been kinda looking for the same thing myself. Just to complicate things a little (sorry!), there are two further box sets: one called Love & Happiness and another called Deep Shade of Green. Don't know which is best.....

I have the 1997 4 cd box set called Anthology, but since I don't know what the recent box set contains I can't compare the two. Some of the things it contains:

61 tracks

64 page color booklet with many never before seen photos, complete with annotation and discography.

Including interviews

Unreleased performances

Rare recordings

and

Live tracks


I lament one ommission from this set, the song, "For The Good Times," but overall I still wouldn't be without it.

Supernova said:

So, is it any good, and how is the packaging?

Years ago,I was gonna buy the 1997 box set,but I saw that it contains many spoken interviews in between the songs,and that kinda annoys me.I'd rather just have the songs,so I bought a few single-disc compilations instead.

I'm really thinking about giving up the box sets, because I'm really a first time Al listener. I have too many box sets anyway. I'm thinking of someting more simple like Greatest Hits or The Absolute Best. Which one is better-- Greatest Hits or The Absolute Best. I found out Anthology was too flawed and The Immortal Soul Of Al Green was too much.