Open Our Eyes: The Anthology

An anthology is usually understood to be a selection of material, but Sanctuary's compilation of recordings by the Nazz, Open Our Eyes: The Anthology, actually collects all of the band's legitimately released tracks on two CDs with a running time of over two hours and ten minutes. That's the 34 songs that made up the albums Nazz, Nazz Nazz, and Nazz III, plus an outtake cover of "Train Kept a Rollin'" first released on the 1985 LP Best of the Nazz and making its CD debut here. But if compiler Kieron Tyler exercises no judgment about what to include, he does take it upon himself to provide a new sequence rather than just running one album after another in the order they were released originally in 1968-1970. There is some justification for this. Nazz Nazz was first intended to be a double album but truncated into a single one, with the extra material being released as Nazz III 20 months later. So, Tyler, after extracting the novelty song "Loosen Up" (a parody of the Archie Bell & the Drells hit "Tighten Up") from Nazz III to lead off the compilation, takes a shot, in the last seven tracks of the first disc and all of the second disc, at assembling a version of that never-released double album. This does not explain, however, why he also finds it necessary to re-sequence the ten songs from the first album. The new sequencing is not an improvement on the old, and for Nazz fans accustomed to the running order of the old LPs after 30 years, it will sound odd. But in whatever order, the package contains all of the group's recordings on one album. Tyler's liner notes, detailing the band's history with the help of Todd Rundgren, are excellent and contain new information. ~ William Ruhlmann