SDEtv

Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons / Ultimate Collection – unboxed!

SDE explores Working Our Way Back To You: The Ultimate Collection, Madfish’s recent Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons mega-box which contains 800 tracks across 44 CDs and a vinyl LP. It comes with three books including a 144-page hardcover tome!

Working Our Way Back To You: The Ultimate Collection is available now and is limited to 2500 units worldwide. You can order a copy via the SDE shop using this link or the button below (full tracklisting is on the shop listing).

Related Content

29 Comments

29 thoughts on “Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons / Ultimate Collection – unboxed!”

  1. I got my boxset a few weeks ago from SDE. I put it aside for my retirement but the video is tempting me to unbox it now and listen this weekend.

  2. I’ve been looking at this on Burning Shed for ages and was hoping I’d read a review somewhere before pulling the trigger.
    So thank you Paul , the trigger is pulled !

  3. Another fantastic unboxing video Paul, gives me a chance to admire such a truly wonderful deluxe set, form a far…….. as I’m never going to able to afford this, or anything north of £100 ….to many other priorities and family members, depend on my income for essentials.

  4. Great set, and great unboxing video (as usual). But for those, like me, whose pockets are not deep enough for this, Rhino has released in 2014 a no-frills 18 CD set called “The Classic Albums Box”. It’s not nearly as exhaustive as this mega Madfish monument, obviously (no bonus tracks, no book, no liner notes), but hey, when I bought it two years ago on Amazon.com, it costed 53,72 US$. (That’s three dollars a CD.) And it sounds great.

    1. I have that too and it’s a nice set with fine sound and good value but the sound is nowhere as good as it is on this new one.

  5. I have owned this since it came out. Listened to every CD and read the book of liner notes. Have not gotten around to reading the hardback book yet (same thing with the Blondie book).

    Was very happy this came out because I really wanted some of the later albums on CD and they were expensive and hard to find. So it wasn’t a hard decision to just get them this way and have everything in one place in a great package.

    I was hoping there would be some gems in there that I hadn’t heard before and there were, mainly in the later albums. There are songs there that could have been hits if any radio station had played them.

    To anybody on the fence about this, trust me – just buy it if you can afford it. You’ve heard the concept of holding something in your hands and seeing if it sparks joy or not. This thing will spark a lot of joy in you.

  6. This is such a thorough and obviously well-presented set it makes me wish I was more of a fan. Although I suppose the advantage is that I don’t have to worry about paying for it.

    I was intrigued enough to learn that the “eighties” album Hope + Glory was apparently released as late as 1992. And it includes a version of non-hit Bucks Fizz single You And Your Heart so Blue.

    1. In the realms of “I never thought I was going there today”…..

      Had a lovely hour or more listening to Bucks Fizz on Tidal whilst cleaning cine film, all because of your post HP. Thank you for a most enjoyable morning.

      “Oh, the places you’ll go…” – Dr. Seuss.

  7. Bought this during the summer and have played everything at least twice. Fantastic set.

    One issue – no writing on the spine makes it look very bare on the shelf.

  8. For fans, these massive boxes are a wonderful keepsake. However, I find them a bit impenetrable – I bought the Caravan and Horslips sets (big fan of the latter) – and have hardly opened them – the experience is a bit overwhelming. If you just listened to 1 CD per week it would take nearly a year for this set. And the thoughts of ripping the whole lot to a server…….Great artists, great music, great musical, but the greatest hits does me fine.

    1. Same here. I bought the John Mayall set (36 cd’s) in February 2021. To this day i have listened about third of the contest and look the book few times. I also have two Grateful Dead box. They have 73 and 80 cd’s. I bought them in 2013 and 2016. It seems that i don’t find the time to listen them in this life!

    2. I think the key is “for fans.” I like single album boxed sets, and boxed sets of artists with short careers that I know, but I’ve learned my lesson with boxed sets of artists with long careers who I barely or only somewhat know. They just sit on the shelf, and I listen to other new things that grab my attention more. I rip them to a server, but its hard work gaining familiarity with so much new material.

  10. This is an amazing box set, by far the best non-classical box-set released this year (so far). When listening to this I can hear why pop music was invented and what the CD as a medium is capable of in terms of good sound. I believe that Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons is the only American band to have a number one hit before, during and after The Beatles.

    2. Possibly in America, although Elvis Presley is the obvious one who did it in the UK.
      Cliff Richard did too if you count his hits with the Shadows.

      1. Oh hello there Sir Cliff Richard! Do not worry Sir, this is easy to fix just give me a minute! There you go, it’s done :)

  11. What an amazing box set and a very good price for such a package. About as far removed from the recent Neil Young box set price fiasco as you can get.

    I got the 8cd box a few years ago, primarily for the “Heaven Above Me” album which at that point was going for silly money, but this is a serious upgrade.

  12. A nice box set for those who have got the money to buy it (“Let me just check my bank account. No, definitely not enough.”). Not great timing for such an expensive item with the cost of living crisis going on and on ands on. As for me, I will have to stick to the four disc boxset (3CDs / 1DVD) released by Rhino Records in 2007, ‘Jersey Beat…The Music Of Frankie Valli & The 4 Seasons’. Although not everyone’s favourite thing, I would have liked the CDs featuring the remixes.

  13. Wow. While certainly a fan, this is beyond my means. A beautiful product for sure. Curious though how long such a project would have taken between sourcing all the tapes, remastering, sourcing band photos, album art, old 45s, etc. Betting it took less time than TFF Sowing the Seeds SDE (LOL).

  15. Regardless of whether you like the band or not,you have to appreciate the effort put into this collection.A truly fabulous warts and all well presented archive of literally the whole of Valli’s career.To also put bonus tracks on most of the CD’s shows they really have tried to get as much content as they could find.Seems good value for such a huge archive of stuff.

    Just think if artists with much bigger fan bases offered their whole career with such care they would probably sell a huge number,as most of their hardcore fanbase( plus some who only own a little of their discography) would not be able to resist the sheer beauty of having everything their favourite artist has to offer in one beautiful box of delights!

  17. Thank you Paul, for this massive unboxing. It looks an amazing set. Out of my reach, but nevertheless a fitting tribute to a great band, who are sometimes under appreciated in the history of rock/pop. When you think of how many of their songs, written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio, were not only hits for themselves and Frankie Valli, but were also covered and were huge hits from the 60s through to the 90s, from the likes of The Walker Brothers, The Tremeloes, Bay City Rollers, Detroit Spinners, Divine, Boyzone, etc. Not to mention the numerous covers of Can’t Take my Eyes Off You. Nice to see gatefold sleeves.

Leave a Reply