For Shadows fans, this is an awesome and detailed reference book to everything released worldwide on CD, between 1984 and February 1999. There’s a mind-blowing amount of product (in excess of 700 different titles) for an instrumental group - surpassed, I’d imagine, only by The Ventures. And this is obviously a labour of love by Malcolm Campbell, assisted with input by Shadows experts, such as Tony Hoffman, Ulrich Sasu and Rob Bradford (whose Shads articles have appeared periodically in RC since 1983).
It’s a fairly easy reference book to follow. Pick a track from the A-Z such as ‘Apache’, and the reader will find it has appeared on no less than 67 CDs - all named! The book is essential to the Shads fan who must have that final bit of information. But, for the non-fanatic, I would have liked to see a background history and, also, some anecdotes or studio stories, interspersed with some photographs to break up the text. Nevertheless, this is a handy A4, 300+-page book, with a typeface that you don’t need Hank Marvin-style glasses to read! It covers all the CD info you’d ever need to know, except: can anybody tell me why, on the Japanese CD, ‘Live in Japan/ Pops in Japan’, ‘Evening Glow’ is called* ‘Domei Suzuki’?!
* "called" should read "credited to" MC
