You sort of have to pity Decca Records after listening to this three-CD set -- the company, once the biggest label in England, started the 1950s with a technical leg up on all of its competition, jumped into skiffle and rock fast and early (and accidentally in the former case) with
Lonnie Donegan, and was still going strong at the dawn of the '60s with the likes of
Billy Fury on its roster. And then something went wrong, and even with
the Rolling Stones,
the Small Faces, and
the Moody Blues recording for them, Decca began coming up a day late and a dollar short on a regular basis, beginning a slow fade in the mid-'60s that led to its eclipse in the 1970s. After hearing
Legend of a Mind, you'll probably wonder why -- the three-CD set is devoted to Decca's "underground" side, which offered some