Top 5 best of clichés
Posted by Chief Kamanawanalea on 22 August 2008 - 5:49pm.
Ok readers, what are the most annoying things that happen when you buy a 'best of...' album? Here are my top 5, but I'm sure there's plenty more where this lot came from: -
1). Free bonus tracks (er... like thanks).
2). Uneccessary remixes.
3). Missing favourite singles off for no reason.
4). Tracks placed out of chronology.
5). Live versions
I have a copy of U2's 1990 - 2000 that does most of the above. Are there any more that Word readers can come up with???
Bookmark/Search this post with:
- More from Chief Kamanawanalea.
- Login or register to post comments
And.........
Replica cardboard sleeve
"Digipack" (whatever that is)
Live DVD of exactly the same songs
Postcards
Stickers
Poster (usually 9" x 5")
Annoyingly shaped cardboard box which won't sit with all the others properly.
I love
those Japanese replica CD's though. Expensive and completely unnecessary so, naturally, I buy them whenever I can afford them.
And ...
Little silver holographic stickers, usually accompanied by 'Special Edition' tag. Special because it has a little silver holographic sticker presumably?
But yes, yes, yes to the Japanese repro sleeves!
Rerecorded versions
of old favourites. Usually included as a way of circumventing the fact that the artist's earlier (and best) output was recorded for another label. Legal reasons prohibit the inclusion of these tracks, so they are rerecorded, usually vastly inferior versions, marketed as "exclusive, 2008 version."
I like extras
I like the extras most of the time, I'm only gutted if I get the standard edition then find out I missed the one with a disc of b-sides!
and there's nothing better
than finding amongst the rack in HMV a Special Edition Double CD mistakenly priced as the single one
Demo versions
This was the original raw inspiration. Why ever would you want to listen to the version you know and love, that has a full band, a producer, where the singing is in tune (and may well be by the vocalist rather than the author) and it just sounds like the real deal?
I acknowledge you've listed live versions but there is the whole sub-genre of BBC / Peel sessions.
However my bete noire (again already noted) is the unecessary remix, but they are often credited to some DJ / producer whose name means nothing to me.
Or when...
...you find that there are actually five or six 'Best of' albums for that artist, all with slight variations of the same tracklisting.
(Or that at least one of them appears to be quite affordable, then turns out to be called something like 'The Collection', is on one of those Spectrum-type labels and only contains rubbish.)
Makes my blood boil, etc.
Elvis Costello
Or, rather, his past record companies are constantly releasing the same songs from the old boy's catalogue repackaged. There've been at least seven different albums when two would suffice. He's even beefed about it himself in the past. Surely, it must only be deep-pocketed completists and the odd indie kid doing his History homework buying them these days?
Bands deemed good enough (or deeming themselves good enough)...
to warrant releasing a greatest hits Vol 2. Very few are...
I
don't see the point of single-disc 'best offs', full-stop. If an artist's high points can be collected on one CD, they don't warrant a compilation in the first place.
So...
Does that mean that first Stone Roses album is null and void?
more importantly does it make
The Beatles 'One' collection pointless? I've rarely put it on myself, being more an 'album' man myself, but as in introduction it does *just* the job. No extra tracks. No bonus discs. Chronological order, although granted one or two iffy selections, but i think a statement as sweeping as 'one disc best ofs are pointless' deserves a level of scrutiny.
It depends on the criteria for what makes a 'best of'. In this case it was 'singles that went to Number 1' They could have chosen 'legenary non-album tracks' and filled another.
I picked 'One' there as merely an example. One disc "best of" collections are, if correctly done, the best distillation of a bands highpoints, but obviously they'll miss out on the more subtle parts. They're not released for the benefit of the fans, though, are they. They're solely intended to be bought as Christmas presents.
Beatles One
Actually shouldn't The Beatles 'One' include 'Free as a bird'? Didn't that top the chart???
nope it made number 2
kept off number 1 by Michael Jacksons Earth Song. Apple/EMI made the classic mistake of releasing the Anthology 1 album *before* the Free as a Bird Single. When they did get around to releasing it two weeks later, it only came out as one format single (insofar as the vinyl and CD single had the same tracks, and there was only one CD single released)
Meanwhile, as was the custom at the time, Jacko released Earth Song on two cds so (in a manner similar to Country House v Roll with it) the MJ fans had twice the incentive, i suppose, to buy the two singles.
Hello Christmas Number 1, Mr Jackson.
It's said that the head honcho of Sony sent the head of EMI a christmas gift of a Turkey with a representation of the Beatles/Free as a bird somewhere on it around that time.
No.
Their first album can stand as a singular monument to their magnificence, but the many subsequent best-offs are pretty much redundant.
Tracks placed out of chronology
A major bug bear for me...
Surely only designed to distract from the artist's paucity of latter period output.
Live tracks
I think the thing about 'live' tracks is that you really just want the definative version (eg: 'No Woman, No Cry' - the live version is the one most people know)?
Re: The Beatles' 'One'
It includes neither Please Please Me nor Strawberry Fields Forever, so as an attempted 'best of', it fails spectacularly (it also doesn't include the best thing they ever recorded, namely Tomorrow Never Knows, but that's another point).
My belief that single-disc 'best ofs' are ultimately worthless comes from both mine and brer Blast's futile attempts to distil The Who's Maximum R & B box into only one CD without coming up with the obvious choices - try it, it just can't be done...
you can if you lay down parameters.
Opinions as to what constitutes the 'best' of an artist are always gonna be largely subjective. "One" was a compilation of tracks that went to Number 1 in either America or the UK.
Please Please Me is one of those unofficial number ones - if i recall correctly, there were something like 4 separate charts at the time and PPM didn't make number 1 in the 'important' one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please_Please_Me_(song)
(second paragraph)
as for Strawberry Fields - it was kept off #1 by Englebert Humperdinck.
Paolo - I don't claim that the One compilation represents the best outbut of the band - if i were choosing, i'd put on Strawberry Fields, And Your Bird Can Sing, Tomorrow Never Knows. And you know what, I'd get rid of The Long and Winding Road. And Let it Be!
Here's the thing - if you got asked as many Beatles fans as you liked to compile their own best of (limited to 74 minutes) then it's almost a given that each and every one would differ. Subjective, see. Personal taste and all that.
When i say 'best of' i suppose they're all 'flawed' in that way, and that they should really be all relabelled 'Greatest Hits' or 'complete singles' or something.
We're possibly at cross purposes. I just disagree with you that a one disc distillation is of itself useless. For a lot of peoplee its an introduction to a band. It's inevitable with a band with a canon as impressive as The 'oo or Beatles that distilling the entire output into a representative 74 minutes is a nigh impossible task. Hence you don't try. You *can* justifiably put out a greatest hits.
Wrong.
It's Rain.
Single disc 'best of' CDs
I take the point about it being a bit embarrassing for a band to be able to fit all their best stuff on one CD. But I think it also depends on how much material they actually put out.
For example, if you wanted a Smiths best of (by which I mean a decent one, which I believe we are still waiting for) - having a double CD would be pointless. You could probably fit over half the material they ever recorded in the package. Whereas one CD would be perfect.
Or Cream. The single CD best of that came out a while back is majestic. Longer ones have been padded out.
There is another Smiths Best Of out
before the end of the year. Entitled "Hang The DJ" it is available in one and two disc versions. The two discer including most of the b-sides, I think. Which would actually be quite good, as many Smiths b-sides never made it onto albums, and some of the earler ones were as good as, if not better than the a-sides
Intriguing!
Thanks, Futurenoir.
Maybe this will be the one, then...
I hadn't realised there were that many B-sides that weren't hoovered up by 'Hatful of Hollow' and 'The World Won't Listen'. If so - brilliant.
I hope they don't do that thing of having two CDs that together come to something like 82 minutes - just enough to necessitate two discs, in other words. You could probably get 40 or 50 Smiths tracks onto a two-disc release, no bother.
(But - sigh - I suppose that brings me back to my original point... 40 or 50 Smiths tracks is probably at least half of their entire body of work, so would that be a 'true' Best Of? Disappears in downward spiral of own logic, etc.)
Here's the tracklisting
it's by no means perfect and misses off some terrific extra tracks from the old 12 inch singles, but it'll do until the much rumoured box set appears.
CD 1
Hand In Glove
This Charming Man
What Difference Does It Make?
Still Ill
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
William, It Was Really Nothing
How Soon Is Now
I Want the One I Can't Have
Shakespeare's Sister
Barbarism Begins At Home
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
The Headmaster Ritual
The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
Bigmouth Strikes Again
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
Panic
Ask
You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby
Shoplifters Of The World Unite
Sheila Take A Bow
Girlfriend In A Coma
I Started Something I Couldn't Finish
Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me
CD 2
Jeane
Handsome Devil (Live at Manchester Hacienda
This Charming Man (New York Vocal)
Wonderful Woman
Back To The Old House
These Things Take Time
Girl Afraid
Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want
Stretch Out And Wait
Oscillate Wildly (Instrumental)
Meat Is Murder (Live at Oxford Apollo 18/3/85)
Asleep
Money Changes Everything
The Queen Is Dead
Vicar In A Tutu
Cemetery Gates
Half A Person
Sweet And Tender Hooligan
I Keep Mine Hidden
Pretty Girls Make Graves
Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before
What's The World? (Recorded Live in 1985)
London (Live at National Ballroom, Kilburn,