FROM THE VAULTS : Better the Sources Than Band Box

THE BAND, “Across the Great Divide” ( Capitol ) **

How do you turn a 5-star body of work into a 2-star boxed set? Here’s a case study.

The Band’s first two albums--1968’s “Music From Big Pink” and 1969’s “The Band”--are musts in any library of rock.

In those landmark collections, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame quintet of Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel celebrated the vitality of the American spirit with music so pure that it seemed drawn from the most soulful streams of country, blues and rock.

For anyone who already has those albums, the problem with this set is it gives you 15 of the 23 songs again--along with tracks from other Band albums plus 20 rarities, many of the latter interesting but hardly essential to the appreciation of the group’s music.

If you don’t have the two albums, buy them instead of this set because those 23 songs are best heard in context--and then petition Capitol to release the rarities as a single disc. Giving you only part of the original albums is akin to condensing two great novels. There is much great music here, but you don’t feel like you have the real goods.