Robin Lane and the Chartbusters

Blixa Sounds has compiled a one-stop-shop collection of tracks by Robin Lane & The Chartbusters with Many Years Ago: The Complete Robin Lane & The Chartbusters Collection. The 3-CD set is released on March 1 and brings together a whopping 52 tracks, spanning all of the group's official albums, as well as demos, rare singles and EP tracks, and unreleased session takes. The result is the most comprehensive compilation of classic Robin Lane tracks thus far!

Robin Lane got her start as a folk-rock artist in the Laurel Canyon scene and can even be heard on Neil Young's second album, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. But after moving to the East Coast of the U.S. in the late '70s, she embraced the punk and new wave music around her and formed a band with Leroy Radcliffe and Asa Brebner, formerly of the Modern Lovers. In 1980, Robin Lane & The Chartbusters released their first album, a self-titled effort for Warner Brothers Records. It featured Lane's first Billboard Hot 100-charting single, "When Things Go Wrong" (#87, July 1980.) The track garnered significant airplay and its music video was a fixture on early MTV. The band followed up their debut with 5 Live, an EP that featured live versions of three Chartbusters originals ("When Things Go Wrong," the new tracks "8.3," "Lost My Mind," and "When You Compromise") as well as a cover of the rock standard "Shaking All Over." The following year, Robin Lane & The Chartbusters released Imitation Life, which was to be their final album on Warner Brothers. Lane then released Heart Connection independently in 1984, before entering a hiatus to being a family.

Blixa Sounds collects all those classic '80s tracks and more. Disc Two also includes seven unreleased session recordings recorded during the making of Heart Connection. Two of Lane's pre-Chartbusters demos also feature: "Rose for Sharon" and "Never Enough," the latter eventually rewritten as "When Things Go Wrong," alongside a 1979 demo of "I Found Out." There's also Robin Lane & The Chartbusters' lone pre-WB single for Deli Platters Records, which features early versions of "When Things Go Wrong," "Why Do You Tell Lies," and the original composition, "The Letter." The disc closes with a 1990 demo of "The Longest Thinnest Thread" and "Little Bird," from the group's 2002 reunion album. Disc Three, meanwhile, spotlights Robin Lane & The Chartbusters onstage. It kicks off with the 5 Live EP and also presents 17 previously unreleased live recordings recorded from 1979 to 1981, including covers of Del Shannon's "Keep Searchin' (We'll Follow the Sun)" and Willie Dixon's "Violent Love."  All of the audio has been remastered and is presented with a fully annotated booklet with liner notes by Brett Milano and rare photographs from Robin Lane's archive.