War
The Vinyl: 1971-1975

Listening notes

Avenue Records issued The Vinyl: 1971-1975 in 2021, a five-LP box set collecting material from War across four years of studio work. The catalog number is RCV1 645869. The set draws from five albums — War, All Day Music, The World Is a Ghetto, Deliver the Word, and Why Can't We Be Friends — presenting each in sequence across ten sides of vinyl, labeled A through J.

The tracklist spans 40 individual titles. Running times vary considerably across the set. Side B closes with "Fidel's Fantasy" at just over eleven minutes, and Side E includes "City, Country, City" at 13:18, among the longest single entries here. Side G opens the Deliver the Word portion with "H₂ Overture" before moving through "Gypsy Man" at 11:35. The Why Can't We Be Friends material occupies the final two sides, concluding with "Why Can't We Be Friends?" and, within what the tracklist identifies as a medley segment labeled "Leroy's Latin Lament," entries including "Low Rider" and "In Mazatlan."

The genres listed for this release — funk, funk/soul, jazz, jazz-rock, Latin, and soul — reflect the breadth of the source recordings rather than any single descriptor that would adequately cover the set.

The box gathers work the band produced between 1971 and 1975, a span represented here in full-album sequence rather than as a curated compilation. Whether this format suits a particular collector's needs will depend on familiarity with the individual albums and preference for box set presentation over standalone pressings. No personnel, mastering, or pressing details are confirmed in the available data for this draft and should be verified before publication.