Loud, Fast & Out Of Control: The Wild Sounds of '50s Rock

"Communist, Eastern European countries... may have come up with Karl Marx," punk entrepreneur Brett Gurewitz once said, "and they may have come up with Trotsky, but they'll never come up with Chuck Berry." The 1950s' rock revolution, this four-CD box is designed to remind us, led to more than just Happy Days and Grease; it was part and parcel of the movement for social change in racial and sexual terms that, like the music, was impossible to stop. Of course, it sounded great, too. ("That ain't no freight train that you hear rollin' down the railroad tracks," the Coasters remind us near the end of disc one. "That's a country-born piano man playin' in between the cracks.") Loud, Fast & Out of Control offers its share of the usual oldies-radio fodder, but also tosses in countless little-heard gems, from Gene Vincent's "B-I-Bickey-Bi, Bo-Bo-Go" (with Cliff Gallup serving up several of rockabilly's most inspired, unhinged guitar solos) and several Johnny Burnette Trio singles to Little Richard's towering title song for The Girl Can't Help It, the Johnny Otis Show's "Crazy Country Hop," and Carl Perkins's "Put Your Cat Clothes On." --Rickey Wright