This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen magazine #103 (December 2002 / January 2003). The magazine is available on newsstands and by subscription.

Unpacking the Panoply
A Compilation of Compilations
by Colleen Moore

Compilations are a hit-or-miss category of recordings like no other, with the true greats few and far between. Even the really good ones have that one annoying song you'd dearly love to eliminate. This issue brings a number of remarkable recordings that have a place in any serious music collection, as well as more than half a dozen CDs for which there is no call to activate the "skip" feature of your equipment even once.

Going Driftless: An Artist's Tribute to Greg Brown [Red House RHR CD 145 (2002)] is an outstanding CD on many levels. First, the royalties from the recording will go to the Breast Cancer Fund of San Francisco, a group that advocates the elimination of environmental and other preventable causes of breast cancer. (If you have been there, you know that the medical profession is not interested in how you got it.) Second, who better for an overdue tribute than Greg Brown? He is a prolific and profound songwriter whose Midwest sensibility marks the most essential facets of life. Finally, what makes this CD so good is that each song selected for the tribute is such a natural fit for the artist performing it. The 16 performers — all women, coincidentally or not — perform these songs with sensuousness both sultry and languorous. They so thoroughly inhabit the songs, it might seem that they had written them. Every performer is at her best. The spellbinders include Lucinda Williams ("Lately"), Ani DiFranco ("The Poet Game"), Iris DeMent ("The Train Carrying Jimmie Rodgers Home"), Eliza Gilkyson ("Sleeper"), Gillian Welch ("Summer Evening"), and Mary Chapin Carpenter ("Spring & All"). Brown's daughters, Pieta, Zoe, and Constie, pay a double tribute to their father and to their great-grandmother on "Ella Mae." The rest of the performers include Victoria Williams ("Early"), Shawn Colvin ("Say a Little Prayer"), Ferron ("Where is Maria?"), Karen Savoca ("Two Little Feet"), Robin Lee Berry ("Hey Baby Hey"), Leandra Peak ("Wash My Eyes"), and Lucy Kaplansky ("Small Dark Movie"), who also wrap their voices and instruments around these exquisite lyrics.

There are 19 more recordings discussed in this column from Dirty Linen #103 (Dec. '02/Jan. '03). Read the full text in the magazine, available via subscription or on newsstands and in bookstores.