Search - Peter Paul & Mary :: Very Best of Peter Paul & Mary

The one to have

Rory Coker | Austin, TX USA | 08/22/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I'll have to agree with all the other 100 reviewers here. This is the best compilation of PP&M material available... best selection, and best mastering to CD. For not much money you get 25 tracks. about the first 16 consisting of their best-known releases from the 1960s, and the final 9 bringing their careers up to the present day. Although, cynically speaking, PP&M were a group formed and packaged by Bob Dylan's manager partially in order to bring Dylan's songs to a wider audience, their immense musical talent quickly overshadowed any initial artificiality. Not being a fan of popular music at any time during my 70-odd years on this sad planet, I had never heard at least half of the songs collected here.All are worth hearing, except one. Particularly moving are "The Great Mandala" (concerning a pacifist's hunger strike) and "El Salvador" (concerning one of the USA's very many military misadventures). One track, "I Dig Rock and Roll Music," even celebrates (with tongue in cheek) a trend that ultimately led to the death of all legitimate genres of popular music... so that today we are left only with Country/Western crap and Ghetto Rap.



I have lived to see the healthy activism of the 1960s dwindle away into the crazy constrictions of the era of Political Correctness, and this is even represented on the collection by its last and worst song, "Don't Laugh at Me." This isn't a song at all, but just a chanted listing of all the categories of people we shouldn't laugh at. I am happy to report that Bozo the Clown is not listed, but alas we are told we shouldn't otherwise laugh at anything or anybody.



Highly recommended. Indeed, the incredibly powerful voice of Mary Travers brought tears to these old eyes time after time as I played this CD on my car player, whilst running errands."