Entertainment For Lively Minds
Great greatest Hits
Posted by daddyclark on 2 December 2011 - 9:52pm.
When I was making my list on the favourite album thread it occurred to me that a lot of mine are greatest hits. There are quite a few artists in my collection who I really like but only own greatest hits collections not albums such as The Smiths (The Best 1 & 2),Best of David Bowie 1969 - 74, Rolling Stones Hot Rocks 1964 - 1971, Pet Shop Boys Discography and several more who I do own albums by like a-ha (the first band I loved as a 10 year old) and Blur. So as we all like a good list what's your favourite greatest hits?
But first this
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Must have hits though?
A very English six...
Divine Madness --- Madness
Snap! --- The Jam
Fossil Fuel --- XTC
Now We are 10 --- Supergrass
Juke Box Dury --- Ian Dury & The Blockheads
Hits --- Pulp
Squeeze - 'Singles 45s and Under'
But the version with Labelled with Love on it.
Squeeze too
but Big Squeeze with the collection of extra tracks ( B-sides ? )
Nah...
Less is more. Don't want extra tracks, B sides... give me the best stuff.
The original and still the best Squeeze compilation.
Ultravox - The Collection
I listened to this so often that the tracklisting is burnt into my brain, and when I hear the songs on the original albums I wonder why they are out of the 'correct' order...
Phil Spector's
Ike n Tina, The Ronettes etc. More top quality hittage than you can shake a stick at. And it still sounds great!
The 'Back To Mono' set is all the Spector you ever need...
When U2 release their career-spanning box set...
they should call it Back to Bono.
Sorry.
That's the stuff!
...(sound of Crowther cranking up to his best form...)
The Pretenders
The Singles
(pity about the UB40 abomination tho')
Pretenders
I got their best of last year and they were giving it away with their last album Breaking up the concrete which is surprisingly good.
As usual
David Bowie etc
On this occasion: The Singles Collection
The Zombies and Beyond
The 'and Beyond' is Rod Argent's and Colin Bluntsone's stuff
The Hollies..
The Who, Ink Spots, Creedence, Leo Kottke, Charles Mingus, Bacharach & David, (the old) Fleetwood Mac, and Abba Gold.
Wish there were proper collections of The Yardbirds and The Move.
If Gerry And The Pacemakers Had Read Shakespeare*
*(It's a play on the Wonder Stuff title, please don't attack me!)
Incidentally
That Stuffies Greatest Hits (If The Beatles Had Read Hunter) is a cracking album.
James,
Belly and Ash are my three faves.
The Free Story
19 tracks of quality.
Super furry Animals - Songbook
Greatest British band of the last 20 years.
Sweet - Very Best Of
It's a blockbuster.
Plus
Prefab Sprout - 38 Carat Collection
Fall - 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong
Nick Lowe
Nick Lowe - Quiet Please
49 Tracks of brilliance
What I'm currently listening to (a lot):
Graham Parker - You Can't Be Too Strong-An Introduction To Graham Parker
and surely no home is complete without a copy of Snap from The Jam
Can I nominate Leonard
Can I nominate Leonard Cohen's?
Blondie
But I wish it had Maria on it.
I've got one that does
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greatest_Hits_%28Blondie%29
And rightly so.
we've played this game before but it's a good one
and the answer remains Aretha's Greatest Hits.
Just this week
I listened to The Monkees Greatest Hits. Which is astonishing in so many ways. Davy Jones possibly has the greatest pop voice ever and when his wasn't quite right Mickey stood in like on "Randy Scouse Git" which is quite possibly the greatest pop song of the 60's if you exclude the ones that are so familiar as to be taken for granted to such degree that you forget how brilliant "I'm A Believer", "Daydream Believer" and "Last Train To Clarkesville" actually are. Throw in a dozen other gems and you have an album that for me at least defines the 60's better than any other. Yes, I think it's quite good.
The Monkees "Randy Scouse Git"
Dave
sometimes I think you really are me.
Ha ha
I'm not sure that's a good thing for you but it's good sometimes not to feel completely alone round here music wise.
They were brilliant
One of the first records I bought was a Monkees Music For Pleasure compilation which Wooolies sold for 1.99. This was around 1979. You could also get a really very good Beatles compilations for the same low low price. I recall Beatles/Monkees being very much a guilty pleasure in those radical, post-punk times.
Loved them
and loved the moment when Dolenz was told 'Daydream Believer' had featured in a Top 100 singles - 'Wow, that's like finding out Leonard Nimoy's really a Vulcan.'
His delivery of 'I'm a Believer' is stunningly evocative andI also loved the B-side -'Stepping Stone', which was later covered by another spiffy, manufactured band.
Crikey, I'm sensing a seriously overlapping Venn...
...Diagram with you on The Monkees, Amitrimerizer...
My fave 'best ofs' would have to be the 1970s comps 'Neil Diamond's 12 Greatest Hits' (yes, including his - superior - 1972 remakes of some 60s singles he didn't have the rights to) and Bread's 'Best Of Vol 2'. Vol 1 is a classic too, but I didn't hear it until later in life hence it isn't so formative, I guess. None of the many subsequent Bread best-ofs ever got the balance of EITHER of these two - usually they'd leave a couple of classics off, be too ballady or include David Gates solo tracks.
The essential starting point that so many Bread comps overlook is David Gates (non-single) masterpiece 'Been Too Long On The Road' - at 5 mins, its far beyond anything else he wrote/recorded in Bread (usually under 3 mins was his style), and is an epic in every sense:
I think The Monkees
would be the centre piece of all musical Venn diagrams, doesn't everyone love The Monkees?
Colin
sometimes I think you really are not me.
Ah, but have we been seen in the place...
....at the same time?
The only person who can claim such a thing is Carol From Luton - an individual who has a realness credibility on a par with Harvey the Giant Rabbit... :-D
Been Too Long On The Road
Colin, for that song, you really ARE me.
That's funny....
....suddenly I've discovered a load of Tintagel, Tomorrow and Dantalion's Chariot singles lying around my house... How did that happen? What's going on?!?
Interesting...
... any Dunhill folk rock as well? If there's a Grassroots single, then something Twilight Zone is going on...
Mmmmm, sorry...
...what was that you said? I didn't catch it - there was a Mr Serling at the door and some funny music was playing...
Decade
by Neil Young, particularly the last side of the double album when 'Hurricane' was followed by 'Long may you Run."
ok
the answer is The Carpenters: Gold
Buy it as a present for everyone in your family. Buy two for yourself. Karen Carpenter's voice will fill the place you are and the place they are. It sounds like summer. It sounds like Christmas. And everyone will remember that it may just be the most wonderful thing they have ever heard
Comp and circumstance
(sorry)
I think the Go Betweens' "1978-1990" comp is a thing of loveliness.
Better known and equally fine: "Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits" (the old, single vinyl one) - most of the Bob I want and none of the bits I don't.
Oh - almost forgot
Kevin Ayers - "Banana Productions" is a very fine thing indeed.
Hatful of Rain
aka The Best of Del Amitri. Just wonderful. And then some.
Make sure you pick up
"Lousy With Love" the B-sides at the same time, as good as if not better than HoR
The Chills
Kaleidoscope World: They never made a great album as such, but this collection of their singles is lovely.
Similarly, I'll give a special mention to The Blue Orchids, A Darker Bloom
Three I keep returning to
Faith No More - We Care A Lot
Faces - A Nod's As Good As A Wink
Frank Zappa - Strictly Commercial