Larry Norman - Rebel Poet, Jukebox Balladeer: The Anthology

Reviewed by Mike Rimmer

Here's a posthumous collection of the best of Larry's music designed to belatedly introduce a mainstream audience to a selection of the late great's output. From his earliest music recorded with the West Coast band People! in the late '60s through to choice cuts from his biggest albums of the '70s, there are plenty of top songs here like "Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music", "I Wish We'd All Been Ready" and "Moses". Other classics are "The Outlaw" - one of the best critiques of the life of Christ - and "Nightmare" - a surreal masterpiece that contains his best writing ever. One quibble from me would be the lack of "Why Don't You Look Into Jesus" which should be on here instead of fluff like "The Sun Began To Rain" and the inferior "Baroquen Spirits". Having endured the endless compilation albums released by Larry in the last 10 years of his life, it's hard to get excited about another one but this does effectively introduce his music to a new audience. Despite the recent revelations about his personal life, there is no doubt that Larry was, at his height, a creative tour-de-force who wrote and recorded some of the most enduring music of the era. Larry was certainly at his creative peak in the '70s and it's interesting to note that there is no material included here that was recorded after 1977. He may have continued performing and recording until ill health slowed him down in his final years but he had lost his defining creative edge after this first decade. Although this compilation was released a few months after he died, effectively as a recording artist and creative force Larry had sadly died long before that.