Best of k 3

Leave it to the French to show their cosmopolitan side with this wide-ranging five CDs that often resembles a whirlwind package tour of Paris. All in all, it's a spectacularly fun, occasionally chuckle-inducing collection.

There really are more War best-of packages than the situation warrants, and while the double-CD The Very Best of War is a fine compilation if you don't already have one in your collection, it's questionable whether it was a necessary addition to the band's discography. For one thing, it doesn't differ all that much from the previous two-CD War best-of on Rhino, Anthology (1970-1994). Sure, each has a few tracks not on the other, but both are built around their lengthy string of big hits. Even Barry Alfonso's accompanying essay was adapted from the liner notes to Anthology (1970-1994). Still, this does have all of the big chart hits and a few minor ones, as well as standout album tracks from throughout the 1970s and early '80s that illustrate the band's versatility. Reading the small print on the track listings, it's revealed that half a dozen of these cuts are edits that either appear here for the first time or were only available on previous anthologies or imports.

This 22-cut double-disc set finally gets at it. Issuing a single disc of Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler would be a silly thing at best and a hopelessly frustrating one at worst. When the band burst on the scene with "Sultans of Swing," there was a lot happening in rock music, but most of it was under the radar and remains forgotten except in the historic annals of music fanatics…