Jan and Dean: The Complete Liberty Singles

The meticulous way in which the Collector's Choice label sifted through the historic tapes of Jan and Dean to find the best versions of these classics and then utilized the latest technology to recreate their pristine 45 sound is pretty impressive stuff -- but there are no sonic revelations here to change your mind about this doo-wop gone surf-pop duo.

For far too long, fans of this surf-pop duo -- who, let's not forget, were peers of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys who slightly preceded their rise on the charts -- had to make do with awful CD copies of their classic hits, terrible echo-laden reprocessed-for-stereo stuff. Now that compression makes any mono song able to sound jukebox-perfect, Collector's Choice has taken the pains to extract the best available copies of these a- and b-sides (representing 26 singles in a four-year recording period!) and remaster them to their former glory.

Whether or not they deserve the attention is another story: certainly hardcore Jan and Dean fans will rate this one a must-have, but rock critics are largely going to remain unmoved about the duo's place just outside the pantheon. Their esrly non-Liberty experiments (unfortunately not replicated here, but that's fair) were jacked-up doo-wop with a rock band flair, but by the time they'd landed on Liberty, they were reeling off uninspired covers ("A Sunday Kind Of Love" and "Who Put The Bomp") and trite ballads ("Your Heart Has Changed Its Mind").

The collection picks up with "Linda," their first minor hit, and then cruises through several surf/hot-rod classics, but Jan Berry's muse matured just a little too late: too much of their output was taken up by novelties like "Sidewalk Surfin'" and "Honolulu Lulu," and gorgeous latter-day ballads like "When It's Over" and "It's As Easy As 1-2-3" suffer by sitting next to instantly dated flops like "Batman" and "Folk City," a misguided attempt to marry the exact sound of "Surf City" to lyrics like "I'm gonna sing every song like Bob Dylan does." Still, this collection might be worth it just to get your hands on Jan's bizarre solo 1966 single "The Universal Coward," his pro-Vietnam answer to "Universal Soldier."