Mott The Hoople – Mental Train (The Island Years • 1969-1971)

the original five piece mott the hoople were unbelieveable. verdens organ and ians vocal really hit home. very sad to know the buffin and overend are no longer with us. next time you play mott raise a pint or more to them. i do all the time.

Let's get down to the bits you need to know;

Let me preface this with the comment that Virtually all of the bonus tracks are not at the right speed, Island seem not to care about this as I have written to them, they blame everyone but themselves for not listening to it, there is software that can rectify this but it wasn’t used, they justify themselves by referring to the five star reviews they have received on Amazon, by people who not actually listened to it in any detail.

The version of Midnight Lady is not the single version just a poor vocal free work in progress, If You Side With The Rebel is the instrumental version, why ?? there was a vocal on the track ??

It is true to say If you loved the original albums the sound quality here is excellent

The packaging and book are faultless

Don't get rid of your copies of the All The Young Dudes - The Anthology box set or Two Miles From Heaven as the versions and/or mixes on here are different

Worryingly any actual tracks from Two Miles From Heaven have been mastered from a cassette, it begs the question why did they just not use the digital version from the CD ?

So there we are, Universal have produced what could have been a brilliant box set but left it to idiots, I find it extremely worrying that because people have given this five star reviews on Amazon Universal Music use this point as artistic license to have put out what they want without any attention to detail or quality control over product, surely it should be anyone's goal when providing a career retrospect of the band to actually listen to it before releasing it, then when issuing a second pressing to correct the mistakes ?

I can only assume the people who have purchased this and given it five stars don't care about the quality of what they buy which is fine because Universal don't care about the quality of what they sell either, a misguided match made two miles from heaven.

Love Mott, hate this

The shop price stickers on the sleeves is a nice touch...quality release...

this is a really fantastic six cd box set that covers motts best era the island years, loads of bonus tracks, great live show from 1970, nice booklet and all six discs come housed in mini lp style sleeves. the remastering on all six discs makes the music sound fantastic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! great box set....