Rise

Rebecca Records launch release — Rise was catalogue BEC 777, the debut release on the new Rebecca Records label. Marketed by The Liaison & Promotion Company (01-935 5988) and distributed through Pinnacle Records (0689-73146), the LP was positioned for the 1981 Christmas market with a full-page trade advertisement headed "Get a Rise for Christmas" — a Victorian engraving border of carol-singers and Father-Christmas scenes framing the order-now copy. The sleeve was billed as "RISE — The very best of FAMILY", with the promotional copy singling out Burlesque, In My Own Time and The Weaver's Answer as lead tracks.

Tracklist source weighting — the 11-track programme drew exclusively from the Reprise UK era: five cuts from A Song for Me / Anyway / Fearless / Bandstand (1970–72) and two late-period Raft sides (Banger, Boom Bang) from It's Only a Movie. No material was licensed from the Liberty-era Music in a Doll's House (1968), and neither Family Entertainment nor the Old Songs New Songs 1971 compilation contributed tracks.

Belsey's verdict — Evening Post (Bristol), early December 1981 — James Belsey's POPS column took the sleeve copy to task: "The album's sub-title is 'The Very Best Of Family,' which isn't strictly accurate. There are outstanding tracks like 'Burlesque,' 'In My Own Time' and 'The Weaver's Answer,' but this isn't a definitive study by any means. The lack of anything from their debut album is a particularly glaring omission." Belsey — the same Bristol-based writer who had called Family's November-1970 Colston Hall date the concert of the year a decade earlier — framed the compilation as worth having for the stronger latter-period cuts but stopping short of canonical. (See Press Archive: Incomplete set of Family favourites by James Belsey, POPS column, Evening Post (Bristol), c. early December 1981.)