What do you do when you want to honor the music of multiple bands from one era of Rock or Metal music? The answer is simple: release a compilation that honors this era of Rock or Metal music with bands and artists from that era but make sure you remaster them so they sound more punchy for the modern day listeners. Confused? You shouldn't be, as the subject of today's review is a compilation that honors music from the 80's and 90's with the main focus being bands from the LA Sunset Strip era of Rock music.

Spanning across four discs of music, the "Rock 'n' Roll Rebels & the Sunset Strip Volume 1" album features music from a total of 36 bands from the LA Sunset Strip era of Rock music from the 80's and 90's with each band having two of their songs featured on this compilation and today I am going to review it and this will mark my first compilation review for this website featuring various artists from different years.

Usually I cover some history about the band in a review before talking about their music but because there's such a large number of bands here, I won't bother, so I'll talk about the music instead. Each disc features a total of 9 bands who each have 2 of their songs featured, totalling 18 songs on each disc with some of them being officially released on albums, whereas others were made for promotional purposes only in order to attract record labels, and although I was able to find information on some for the personnel section of this review, some were more harder to find given the fact that some of the songs featured on this compilation were made for promotional purposes only and that some of these bands probably split up before the search engine was invented for the internet.

The production on each song varies, as each band used a different recording studio, a different producer and obviously, a different range of production, mixing and recording techniques to get the sound they have on their music. The quality on some is quite good and surprisingly clear for Classic Rock music, whereas the quality is bit iffy on others, but when you bear in mind this was back in the 80's and 90's where musicians didn't really have high access to top notch production tools for their music that are used today so we can overlook any quality issues when we take this into consideration even if some of the music and the lyrics of each song is a bit hard to make out at times.

Just like with the production, the sound on this four disc set varies from band to band with some sounding very hard and heavy, some sounding upbeat and energetic and some sounding soft and mellow to name a few. The same production principal applies here with the quality of each songs sound, especially when you bear in mind that the songs have been remastered for this release, which is quite hard to do what with taking a song that's a few decades old and using magic on it to make it sound top notch sweet for the modern day and age so I will give the remaster guys props for what they were able to do, as there are some moments when I did enjoy listening to some of the music, as the talent of some of the Classic Rock and Metal stars in each band featured made itself known to me.

Because there is such a wide variety of different songs, bands and styles here, it's really hard to pick an absolute favourite, as there were some I enjoyed and others I was a bit unsure of even though I did take the sound and production principals into mind when listening to them as some classic tunes can still sound good to this day no matter what level of quality the production or sound may be at so I can't really nitpick or complain about that.

Bottom line, I may have been born in the early 90's and not really discovered Rock music until the mid 2000's and spending most of my time listening to modern music but I did enjoy listening to some of the songs on this four disc set which is an essential addition to anyone who likes listening to a wide variety of Classic Rock and Metal, especially for those who were around during the LA Sunset Strip era when these bands were kicking ass, but even if you weren't around during that time, it's still worth checking out anyway so you can play these songs on your car stereo while cruising on the Sunset Strip itself and just picturing in your mind what it looked like back in the day. I know I sure would and if you want more Sunset Strip music then a volume 2 compilation is being compiled and released, although details on that are a bit vague at the moment, so it may be worth looking into if you're interested.