Artist: Album (label, release date) 1-5 stars
Blind Melon: The Best of Blind Melon (Capitol, September 27, 2005) ****
The Yardbirds: Very Best of the Yardbirds (Metro, September 27, 2005) ****
Natalie Merchant: Retrospective 1995-2005 (Rhino, September 27, 2005) ****
The Clash: The Essential Plus (Legacy, September 27, 2005) *****
Blind Melon: The Best of Blind Melon
It's not easy to cobble together a best-of from a band that only released two albums in their lifetime. However, Capitol tries its best, taking six songs from Blind Melon, six from Soup, adds "Three is the Magic Number" from the Schoolhouse Rock Rocks! "tribute" album, and a handful of tunes from the posthumous Nico odds and sods collection. You can buy this with or without the bonus DVD of concert and video clips. The package is beautifully constructed, with revealing, and sometimes sad, liner notes by guitarist Roger Stevens. Blind Melon were an anomaly in their day; a product of late 80's Sunset Strip, which was all glam-metal in those days, Blind Melon kept an earthy rootsiness to their music that bore some metal influence, but also southern rock, jam-band, and traces of Neil Young; the doomed Shannon Hoon's high-pitched expressive voice remains one of the most distinctive of the 1990's. Soup, an excellent album, largely tanked when it was released in 1995, but it was a fine album, even though its sessions were famous for chaos, a drug arrest, and Hoon's downward spiral. Here's a chance to hear the full range of this band in one place; it's a pity things turned out as they did.
The Yardbirds: The Very Best of the Yardbirds
Nice try. No, this isn't the "very best" of the Yardbirds; it's mostly selections from the 1964 album Five Live Yardbirds, the 1965 album Having A Rave Up plus "For Your Love", Chuck Berry's "Talking 'Bout You" and Jimmy Reed's "Baby What's Wrong". Missing is anything from Roger The Engineer (Over Under Sideways Down in America) (1966) or Little Games (1967). Thus, this compilation touches on the Clapton era, and is weighted towards the Beck era; Jimmy Page's era is absent, unless "Stroll On" (from the film Blow Up) counts (Page isn't on it, but he appears with the band, as does Beck, in the film). Of the group's 9 singles to chart in America, 5 are missing. "Heart Full of Soul" is not the hit version, but the rarer version with sitar. Is this collection worth it? Not if you want a thorough overview on the band's notoriously confusing discography. However, there's nothing wrong with the 20 cuts it includes, and they do cover the band's best period. One wanting a complete picture should get Rhino's pricier 52-track Ultimate!, from 2001, which cross-licenses all Yardbirds material from the beginning to the end. If you want a cheap fix, this will do.
Article comments
1 - Scott Butki
I think I'm going to have to get that Clash item though I have the other ones you mention.
They really are the "Beatles of Punk."
2 - Matt
It is a complete fucking joke that Blind Melon has a best of. I'm speechless.
3 - Scott Butki
Possible new thread: Groups that should
not have greatest hits cds.
4 - uao
That's a brilliant idea Scott. If nobody takes it, I will.
5 - Scott Butki
Nah, I'm on it.
6 - Bob A. Booey
The Ramones were The Beach Boys of punk if The Clash were The Beatles.
Although, I get more of a Stones of punk vibe from The Clash than I do Beatles of punk.
Don't ask me who The Sex Pistols were. I'm not smart enough to have a good analogy for them.
I prefer Natalie's work with 10,000 Maniacs to her solo stuff.
That is all.
7 - uao
With you on Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs. In My Tribe remains a fond souvenir of the summer I spent with Natalie (in my head) back in '87.
Ramones surely were the Beach Boys of punk. Beatles isn't quite right for the Clash, but I can't think of another punk Beatles.
8 - vern halen
Buy the Peel Slowly & See box of the VU - you get the first three albums plus a whole lot of other essentials.
9 - Maniac
Oh give me a break and stop kissing Rhino's ass just because you got a free cd. They didn't do it right. They did it with their bottom line in mind. The right way to release Retrospective was to issue a single cd of the hits for those who don't have them. The rarities should be on a single CD too because anyone who wants them already has the greatest hits. Making the true fans pay more for the rarities (of which there are few) by buying the hits (and other extra album tracks) all over again is wasteful.
10 - uao
I considered the idea of two single-discs as perhaps being better, and perhaps it would've been. But nothing is perfect in this world of ours. This is better than an expensice 2-disc for newbies just wanting hits. And Rhino's specialty has always been anthologies-with-rarities, so the double disc would've come out anyway. The single disc is the "bonus" as I see it.
Didn't get the disc for free, though. Although I did buy a discounted promotional copy at my local CD emporium, Amoeba records.
Of the 1000's of records I've mentioned this year in various articles, I've only received one free CD (after the article was published), the debut from The Sharp Things.
If Rhino or anyone else would lake to put me in the free-CD loop, though, send me an email.
;-)