Band on the Run should have been a disaster. Two of Wings' original members quit in a huff just before its production. The whimsical decision to record in Lagos, Nigeria, became a nightmare when McCartney and company found themselves in a decaying studio, then had many of the project's demos stolen by armed bandits. Despite these hardships--perhaps because of them--Band on the Run remains the most focused and consistently satisfying record of McCartney's wildly uneven post-Beatles career. This mini box set contains the original album, a well-written booklet by Mark Lewisohn, and a bonus disc featuring outtake snippets and interviews with all the album's participants (including its cover crew, which includes actors James Coburn and Christopher Lee) and Dustin Hoffman, who recounts how he spurred McCartney to spontaneously write "Picasso's Last Words" on a dare. This second disc would make a fine radio show; it comes up short where it matters most--in music. Time spent detailing the album-cover photo session could have been more gratifyingly devoted to more contemporary outtakes (much of the bonus Band material is culled from live performances from as recently as the mid '90s; perhaps McCartney wants us to know how important the record has been to him over the years) or to a pair of single B-sides, which are curiously absent here. --Jerry McCulley
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