God bless the BBC for dusting off its rock archives and releasing them all on CD. This latest batch of goodies is a collection of performances by the Kinks, which were recorded for various BBC radio programs during the band's creative peak. The thirty-five tracks take a broad sweep across the band's history up until the release of Sleepwalker in 1977: The early breakout hits — "You Really Got Me," "All Day and All of the Night," "Tired of Waiting for You" — are chrome-wheeled and fuel-injected, while sublime Ray Davies cultural manifestoes like "Waterloo Sunset" and "The Village Green Preservation Society" rumble with drummer Mick Avory's four-square furor. For initiates, this is an excellent primer; for supplicants who have endured the band's desultory live albums in recent years, it's an embarrassment of riches.

“Oh Sherrie”

Steve Perry's girlfriend Sherrie Swafford was actually in the studio when Perry began writing this song--his lone Top Ten hit as a solo act--with two co-writers. The trio began at midnight one night with just "Oh, Sherrie!" and "hold on, hold on." Three hours later, they had a complete song. Swafford, however, had to wait until the next day to hear it. "Sherrie actually got tired and went to bed," Perry said. She also appeared in the video, but their relationship did not hold on for long.