Hey tell ya what, this Bob Dylan guy's pretty good, I predict big things for this young man.

To be honest and serious, I'm always a bit sceptical about compliation releases such as these. Time and again it seems like a shameless exercise from the label to milk their ownership of an artists' material to the hilt and capitalise on floating fans, father's day, or father christmas.
At the same time....I do personally recall buying a handy 'introduction' compilation of Led Zeppelin many years ago which well and truly got me into them and made me thirst for more. So maybe I'm being a complete hypocrite. And maybe, in this snipetty myspace-hopping age, a compilation of an artist's best work can serve in the same way as checking someone out online, and can prompt further interest.

Disregarding the fact that ample Dylan compliations are already out there, this release provides a concise and (almost) chronological guide to the legendary singer. It's a bit like humanity has chosen Bob Dylan to solely represent 20th century music in a time capsule to be sent into space, but has faced the challenge of having just one CD-R left to whack all the best bits onto. (For those wanting a slightly larger collection, a 3-disk box set has been put out at the same time).

This 18 track release contains his best-known works and it's fascinating to listen to all back to back, and hear his style unravelling and unfolding before your ears. In a way almost every other track stands for a particular aspect on the road of Dylan's development: from the young Guthrie worshipper ('Blowin in the Wind'); to the plugged-in judas ('Like a Rolling Stone'); through the pensive balladeer ('Lay Lady Lay', 'Knockin on Heaven's Door') to the music industry's silver fox (Someday Baby). For the millions of Dylanites worldwide, this release is probably more notable for the many personal favourites it doesn't include rather than what it does include (the lack of any 'Oh Mercy' tracks, for example). But given the veteran's extraordinary output, it is of course impossible for a retrospective like this to even come close to satisfying everyone.

Accompanying the disk is a handy glossy sleave with intriguing commentary on each of the tracks by Bill Flanagan (Vice Pres of VH1). As he states in summation at the end of his piece, Dylan is rightly ackowleged as one of the best songwriters of his age. Yet as readers of the artist's "Chronicles: volume one" will attest, the man himself is the first to admit his own place in a developing lineage. In that literary release Dylan self-consciously and openly sits himself at a dinnertable eating off the plates of the likes of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, and fellow former Greenwich Villageites like Dave van Ronk. But the point is, and the reason he's seen in such groundbreaking terms, is that he regurgitated all of the latter and many more into something which ultimately sounded timeless and new at the same time.

And in a sense the conciseness of this career-spanning short compilation makes this all the more evident, and so well worth popping in the christmas stocking after all.