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Well, for starters, none of these recordings are from his days as a crewcut teenage singing idol; these are all recordings from his later career as Rick Nelson, not Ricky, so the packaging is very misleading. Those who only want to hear teenybop tunes like "Be Bop Baby" and "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You" will be very disappointed with this set. The quality of the recordings is all over the place - some are clearly taken from scratchy vinyl records, while others are muffled band bassy. That said, it's a pretty good comp of some rare and unreleased (at the time) Rick Nelson material. Nearly all of it has been released on better sounding CD's since this set came out; the exceptions being three songs from his final 1985 sessions, "One After 909", "Singing the Blues" and "So Long". It's worth having just for those 3 songs. The second disc is an excellent 1985 BBC interview focusing on Rick's early days.

"Youngblood" is a hard rocking album from a man known mostly for sweet, summery sounds. It's not a retro-60s sounding album, it's solidly contemporary for it's time. As on his first solo album, Carl again wrote with his partner Myrna Smith, and they have a strong collection of songs here. Producer Jeff Baxter said "Carl was the best singer who ever walked"; I agree. In the Beach Boys, his role tended to be more laid back. Here, he gets to show all that he can do as a singer. The support includes members of his touring band, along with notables like Burton Cummings and Timothy b. Schmit.