The 20th Century Masters series is the best-selling single-artist line in music history and is being re-released by Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) in its ground-breaking, environmentally-friendly packaging format. A first for the music industry, the standard package (both sleeve and tray) will be completely paper-recyclable, continuing the company's long-standing commitment to being "green."To further reduce the amount of paper in the Eco-Pack, the CD booklet will no longer be offered. Official liner notes are easily accessible on the Internet at http://www.ilovethatsong.com/green.UMe is the first North American music company to replace the traditional jewel case with recycled paperboard sleeves and the plastic tray with trays made from PaperFoam®, a new packaging technology from Shorewood Packaging, a business of International Paper, that is paper-recyclable and biodegradable. Shorewood Packaging is the first North American packaging supplier to produce disc trays from PaperFoam®.
Steppenwolf earned its place in the rock pantheon thanks to "Born to Be Wild," the deathless classic immortalized in the 1969 counterculture flick Easy Rider. But there was more to John Kay & Co. than a theme song for motorcycle rallies. Steppenwolf also offered social commentary in the form of "Snowblind Friend" and "The Pusher," prime psychedelia ("Magic Carpet Ride"), and plenty of good-time hard rock ("Hey Lawdy Mama," "Rock Me"). In some ways, they were the thinking person's hard rock band (a specialty niche, to be sure, with Kay's band taking their name, after all, from a Hermann Hesse novel). Alas, like so many examples of MCA's 20th Century Masters collection, this Steppenwolf set contains some fine music, but is inferior to a previous package--1999's All-Time Greatest Hits, which offers many more tracks for just a couple more bucks. --Daniel Durchholz
