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| From | William Rabeneck <largro13@yahoo.com> |
| Subject | Re: audities-digest V5 #283 (13 msgs) |
| Date | Tue, 1 May 2007 11:18:27 -0700 (PDT) |
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Hi Sam,
I have to agree with Cheap Trick, whoever brought them up was on target. In fact, I've made myself a couple of mix tapes of Cheap Trick over the years, and my mix tapes always vary greatly from their official "Greatest Hits" packages.
And I'll agree with your assessment of Queen too; their "Greatest Hits Vol. 1" doesn't necessarily match what I would consider to be their best songs, though they did correct that somewhat by eventually branching to adding "Greatest Hits Vol. 2" and "Greatest Hits Vol. 3".
I'm wondering, however, if this split between best songs and greatest hits doesn't exist because of some kind of perception by the band or the band's management of what would be most playable on the radio? Because now that I think about it, there are a handful of bands, that I can think of off the top of my head, whose songs that are "left as album tracks" have traditionally been a lot more interesting than their singles. So therefore, you have interesting songs, from the individual albums, that were never given the chance to become hits.
One odd thing that I've noticed happening in the 2000s, that I never percieved happening before the 2000s, is that the few "Greatest Hit's"/ "Best of Albums" that I've bought that have been released in the 2000s (regardless of when the material on the CD was really new) are much better, and I'm in much more agreement with the material chosen for them, than I am with "Greatest Hit's"/"Best of Albums" that I bought in the 1980s and 1990s. It's almost as though due to declining sales from the competition of on-line download stores, and illegal free music trading sites, that bands or the band's management (whoever really makes these decisions) have become more cooperative about really putting the best of on the "Best of..." CD.
I can remember in the 80s and 90s, they would screw you on most "Greatest Hits"/"Best of..." albums by putting a live version of one or two of the biggest songs (Or in the case of Cheap Trick and KISS, they would screw you by putting studio versions of songs where the live version was actually the hit). And they would also, it seemed, knowingly not include a couple of the lesser hits or popular in-concert album tracks.
Some of it may even be the decline of the vinyl album and the cassette which limited space on albums to more like 45 minutes to an hour, and the pick up in CDs which can hold more like 70 to 80 minutes of music. And another factor may even be that the double CD "Greatest Hits"/"Best of..." has become more common. But it seems like now on "Greatest Hits" you (or I anyway) pretty well get everything you expected, here in the 2000s.
I've recently bought best ofs by: Guns & Roses; INXS; Def Leppard; Great White; and KISS, and I can honestly say that I don't feel screwed by any of them, though KISS has enough material out there, that I could argue that they actually need to add a third CD to get all of their good stuff covered. But overall I'd say these are a lot better than the ones that I bought in the 80s and 90s; I can remember a 38-Special; a Foreigner; a Foghat; and others that were ruined by having live versions of one or two of their 2 or 3 most popular songs; and these albums would cut off at ten songs when they could have extend to twelve or thirteen and had "everything a fan could want" (as far as I was concerned anyway) on the album.
Peace,
W.D.
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 13:29:53 -0600
From: Sam Smith
To: Audities
Subject: Best Of vs Greatest Hits
Message-ID: <463643B1.2070501@lullabypit.com>
When you love a band and the greatest hits CD comes out, you probably
hate that some songs are on it instead of others. The point for me has
always been that the "greatest hits" aren't necessarily the "best of." In
some cases those two playlists might vary significantly.
So I got to wondering - what bands out there, if you did a greatest hits
and a best of, would have the least overlap between the two? (And yeah, I
know, how do we judge "best"? But let's pretend for a moment...)
I might nominate Queen - a lot of what I thought was their most brilliant
work never even got released as a single (much to Brian May's detriment,
I think) let alone became a best seller. My U2 best of would take issues
with the greatest hits list, and the same for The Police and REM, I
suspect....
--
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Sam Smith
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