I was on a very tight budget today, and saw this package at Best Buy. I came back home and I went on sonymusic.com and there are some pretty good song selections on there and I know that these 3 discs are good. Unlike the Essential Isley Brothers compilation that was released this year, I just need one complete and definitive collection on The Isleys. Oh yeah, is there still a blue rainbow-colored packaged version of this box set unlike the reissue that I saw at Best-Buy, which was paper made. So is the 3-disc really worth getting?

Well, it depends.... it's a good overview, particularly of the early stuff up through the beginning of the 3+3 period, but the versions of Groove with You, Don't Say Goodnight, and Voyage To Atlantis on here are Live versions that they did around 1980, not the album versions. If you already have copies of these, then this is a great bonus, but if you buy the package expecting the definitive album versions we've all grown up on, you'll probably be disappointed...It probably would've been better to have included the regular versions on there, and put the live stuff at the end of the third disc - It would've caused less confusion that way...

...Btw , it's great that they included the 1965 cut, "Move Over and Let Me Dance", featuring a young Jimi Hendrix on guitar --- even more than "Testify", this Isley song can be seen as a blueprint for a sound Jimi would later take on himself ---listen to Ron's playful vocals ..." C'mon baby, Move Overrrrr... "...IMO, this sound was definitely an important influence on Jimi...

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[Edited 11/11/04 6:38am]

The recent "Essential Isley Brothers" from Sony/Epic/Legacy is a nice collection:34 trax from 1962-1996...awesome sound