At 40 tracks, this two-disc collection is generous enough, and there are some awesome songs represented, songs that fall into a vague outlaw country/Southern rock ethos, but there are some problems, too. One wonders what's Southern or country about
Canned Heat's "On the Road Again," for instance, which is really a California band trying to reimagine the blues, or why it's
the Outlaws' doing "Sweet Home Alabama" and
Molly Hatchet doing "Free Bird" instead of
Lynyrd Skynyrd (most likely a licensing problem, with
Skynyrd's original and better versions costing more). The most serious problem with this set is that most of the tracks aren't the original version of the song but are instead live performances. The end result of all this is that a good idea -- assembling a compilation of country and Southern rock classics -- ends up being so haphazardly applied that everything feels kind of counterfeit.