This Lucky 7 compilation detailing the activities around Memphis' famed Ardent Studios during the late '60s and early '70s is amazing and a complete tease. Here are the obscure tracks you knew existed but never heard, and some you've heard but never in this way. Set producer Terry Manning was the man in charge at Ardent when this music was made, roughly between 1968-1978, with the majority of the tracks registering the span of 1972-1975. Yes, Big Star is here with "September Gurls," but more importantly even than that are works by Chris Bell and Jody Stephens working as sidemen with Manning and in their own band called Rock City. So there is the price of admission right there: the fact that Bell and Stephens are featured on a total of three cuts. But the first-ever Hot Dogs tracks -- an amazingly woolly garage version of "I Walk the Line" and "Just Can't Take It Anymore" -- also surface here for the first time on CD (an entire album is due from Lucky 7 later). One of the few Manning solo tracks is a cover of Lennon and McCartney's "One After 909" before they ever recorded it! The version here is revised with a bridge to the song that did not exist in the original Beatles demo and was later added for the Let It Be sessions. Manning re-recorded it with a killer guitar break -- and bridge -- by Bell. And sacrilege be damned, it lays waste to the Beatles' version. Manning's version of the Star Trek theme is also amazing, full of camp and satire and some of the most unusual synth sounds west of Germany. On Rock City bassist Thomas Dean Eubanks' "Oh Babe," listeners hear the Ardent Studios cats trying on their best Marc Bolan. In addition to Big Star obscurities, there is the first-ever musical comedy A-side by Martin Mull and various appearances by great studio musicians who would become well-known later, such as Barry Beckett, Rocky Hill, and Doyle Bramhall. Featuring 22 tracks in all, this is a hell of a way to kick off a series of solid garage and psychedelic rock, boogie, country-rock, and Memphis blue-eyed soul, all from the cradle of the indie rock sound. This is one of the best compilations to come out in the early 21st century, bar none. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide