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Re: Greatest Hits: To Best of, or not to Best of ?
This is a debateable question to all those music lovers out there.
I recently picked up Soundgarden's glorious revival album, "King Animal" and was so thrown aback at it's quality that it caused me to want to dig back into their past catalog. Now I had nothing beyond old cassettes, and no single copy of the great reunion single "Black Rain", so I decided to buy the Telephantasm, Soundgarden's reunion 2-disc version with Videos DVD.
And lemme just say, Telephantasm has to be the COOLEST looking album art i've ever seen. King Animal's is pretty cool too.
Anyways, the tracklist is pretty stellar and really does a good job of spanning the band's history from inception, early-noise days to breakout period, to the MTV darling-era during the prime of Grunge. Black Rain is also a great new song, because being it's Badmotorfinger-era, it fits right in with earlier tracks.
So it's a great set. Missing a few, like Searching With My Good Eye Closed, Overfloater, I always liked Boot Camp, and a couple others, but it's good.
So the question is...
To do a Greatest Hits or not? Some people really can't stand the damn things. Some, like Guns N' Roses are horribly manufactured and put together without band-approval simply to move units at Christmas, while others like Poison and Motley Crue have went to the well SO MANY times with re-packaged Greatest Hits sets that it's pretty much the only thing the band does in the present day. Release Best-of sets, and tour them.
Then you get the Telephantasm. Or Rearviewmirror. Or Best of Both Worlds. Or Nirvana. Or CCR: Chronicles Vol. 1. Or Eagles: Greatest Hits Vol. 1. Or Aerosmith: Oh Yeah! etc. that are SO well put together that they are instantly a great album purchase not only for casuals, but for diehards as well who instead of re-buying the band's catalog, it's easier to just grab a Greatest Hits set, because for the busy diehard fan, sometimes life doesn't allow you the ease of listening to entire catalogs.
So what are you're opinions on it? The AC/DC excuse of "we make albums, no fucking way", and Greatest Hits dumb down and dillute a catalog? Or are they necessary when well put together with care? Or do you prefer Greatest Hits sets over albums? Case in point, a band like Motley Crue. Good band, but more of a singles band, and their superiority is shown in collections, not albums?
I say they are great for busy diehards who get older and just want quick reference of favorite bands. I'd much rather listen to Rearviewmirror (even though it doesn't have Garden) than to listen to all of Pearl Jam's funky-ass Vedder shit from the 90's. Because I love the band, but when you're on the go, it's just easier to grab Rearviewmirror. Same with Van Halen's Best of Both Worlds or Aerosmith's Oh Yeah.
Thoughts?
- Me_Wise_Magic
- Rep: 70
Re: Greatest Hits: To Best of, or not to Best of ?
It depends on how you look at it. There are great compilations out there for people that don't want to ship out that much cash; but there alot of cash grabs that don't feature a whole lot of songs and you get ripped off in the process. There a ton of bands that want more control over these releases. The worst offenders would have to be Van Halen with their GH not even scratching the surface of their music. I know for alot of people the reason to buy the 1996 GH was for the new Dave songs. 
The 2004 Best Of was unorganized and the new songs with Sammy weren't gripping and felt half assed.
For me I personally love Greatest Hits packages if I'm a big fan of that particular band or artist. I usually check the website where the GH is hold or wikipedia to see if the amount of songs on there I'm familiar with and want to to pay an amount to purchase it.
I sometimes go for the ICON releases at Walmart and Best Buy since it covers a good hub of that artist's career at a small price. Got Motorhead, Styx and The Who for like 7 or 8 bucks with the hits and i think a few live tracks; so I'm happy.
I personally think The Essential is the real deal if you want a great collection of hits/b sides or other content from a band. Got my Weird AL fix from that.
I know Dave Grohl wasn't happy with how the Foo Fighters and Nirvana GH and session work cuts were handled. I love the Foo Fighters GH cause it saved me a ton of money plus I get a bonus CD of music videos and other stuff. Just wish the record company waited until after Wasting Light came out to release it. Since Wasting Light has amazing tracks that rival most of their hits now. imo
Having a Pink Floyd Greatest Hits is just wrong because the whole point of their music is the whole album or specific songs if you don't have the time during the day to commit to a full album is the listening experience. It takes you on a musical journey. Joan Jett had an awesome compilation package that came out recently. Just the way it was designed feels a tad cluttered, alot of the songs are in the wrong order, and other factors. But hey they have my favorite songs of hers on there; so I'm pleased for the most part. Wish they would of thrown in a poster with it too. Oh well.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Greatest Hits: To Best of, or not to Best of ?
Greatest hits packages are risky....it's a bit like just skimming through some of the book then writing a test on it...you might score all the good bits....or you might miss the whole point of the band.
For me the deeper I like a band..the more likely the GH is to fail.
The GNR greatest hits is a joke to me, half my favourite tracks are just totally AWOL.
However there's a lot of bands I'm only mildly into, where the GH will cover the job.
But I think they're less relevant in the era of the playlist - I no longer need to pop in 1 cd and get a range of stuff - you can just get all the albums and make an uber list of your fav songs.
So I guess for my favourite acts I see them as an abomination as I never agree with the choices, but then I will accept that some acts - especially older acts from the era where albums had more filler - or acts that have LOTS of releases so it gets silly - do lend themselves to greatest hits.
For example I could construct an aerosmith or an Ac/Dc best off that would span their career and I'd enjoy more than listening to any one album front to back.
Re: Greatest Hits: To Best of, or not to Best of ?
To me if you're a die hard of a band, and there isn't much or any new material on it, you shouldn't bother.
Knowing how much you like the new Soundgarden album I'm going to guess that even if Telephantasm is great all it's going to do is whet your appetite more and you'll want to pick up the actual albums to get more tracks, then you'll just end up with multiple copies of the same songs.
Most of the greatest hits albums I have are from bands I don't plan on ever picking up many (or any) more albums from. I'm glad they exist because of that, but to me they're not for a band you love, they're for bands you kind of like, or want to check out.
Re: Greatest Hits: To Best of, or not to Best of ?
The 2004 Best Of was unorganized and the new songs with Sammy weren't gripping and felt half assed.
The problem with the Best of Both Worlds was that Disc 1 should've been Dave, and Disc 2 should've been Sammy. The going back and forth felt jarring, because the tone of those versions were just NOT the same.
The Sammy songs were obviously uninspired because they basically all hated each other and Eddie didn't want to even do it, but apparently needed money. There was one Sammy song that was pretty strong on there, but it was only one. The rest were literally trash.
But for someone like me, who just CAN-NOT get into VH album-to-album, but actually enjoy the band, but Roth and Van Hagar, it was a nice collection for me to get all of the basics that I wanted.
But i'll agree that songs like Drop Dead Legs, and there was another that escapes me on 5150 that was missing and it was noticeable, especially when the late album live tracks of Sammy performing Dave songs was completely unnecessary.
But like I said, for a non-fan like myself... it truely gave me 'the best of both worlds'. That's all I was looking for. Plus the album art was cool.
Re: Greatest Hits: To Best of, or not to Best of ?
To me if you're a die hard of a band, and there isn't much or any new material on it, you shouldn't bother.
Knowing how much you like the new Soundgarden album I'm going to guess that even if Telephantasm is great all it's going to do is whet your appetite more and you'll want to pick up the actual albums to get more tracks, then you'll just end up with multiple copies of the same songs.
Most of the greatest hits albums I have are from bands I don't plan on ever picking up many (or any) more albums from. I'm glad they exist because of that, but to me they're not for a band you love, they're for bands you kind of like, or want to check out.
You're exactly right, bwhahahaha.
Telephantasm was so fucking well done, all it's made me want to do and go re-buy the albums on CD. Badmotorfinger and Down On The Upside are only $5 bucks on Amazon, so i'm gonna hit that at least. The other day I listened to Telephantasm like 4 times in one day I dug it so much that I tried to put the tapes in a tape deck... it was all fucked up. They're too old.
But you're right in a way. There's no way I could put together a GN'R Best of without using two whole discs. Alice In Chains is another. I could do two whole discs just on Layne, and that's only three LP's and two EP's. Queen would be impossible. I put together a best-of awhile back, and it was literally 5 discs long. Same with the Stones. 5 discs. Some bands are just too hard.
Re: Greatest Hits: To Best of, or not to Best of ?
To me if you're a die hard of a band, and there isn't much or any new material on it, you shouldn't bother.
Which is the exact reason I don't own GNR's greatest hits, though I do love their version of "Sympathy for the Devil". But I do own versions of Tom Petty, Aerosmith, CCR, Boston, Poison, Motley Crue's greatest hits packages. I do own some other CD's by those bands, but the greatest hits covered enough for me for the most part.
Re: Greatest Hits: To Best of, or not to Best of ?
All that I don't like about them is tossed aside if they have cool bonus content with them. I got the Faith No More one because it came with a disc of bonus tracks plus a couple b-sides I hadn't gottten my hands on before. The dvd that comes with the Stone Temple Pilots greatest hits is more comprehensive than most dvds band release just to stand on their own.
That said, plenty of the illegal downloading I've done in my time was to get a few tracks that I couldn't get without buying an entire album of songs I already had or didn't want.
edit:
Which is the exact reason I don't own GNR's greatest hits, though I do love their version of "Sympathy for the Devil".
Haha. Sympathy For The Devil is one of those songs that I aquired outside the law, but to be fair, I did pay for the cassette single back in the day.
Re: Greatest Hits: To Best of, or not to Best of ?
Sympathy For The Devil I always liked and just ripped off the internet. I always assumed it'd be released on a nice best-of set one day as a bonus... I just never thought it'd be that shitacular 2004 release.
Motley Crue and Poison are good examples of best-of bands. I have the Crue's "Red White & Crue" set, and it's friggin' awesome. You really get all you need. There's some rarities on the front-end of Disc 1, love that version of "Too Fast For Love", then you literally get an absolutely stellar Disc 1 with not a single skippable track.
Disc 2 covers the 90's, and you get the deep cuts for when they weren't as popular. It's not as good as Disc 1 (the Corabi stuff is), but it's pretty doggone complete, not to mention I always dug that "If I Die Tomorrow" single, and that's on there too. Pretty complete.
Poison is another one. I have "The Very Best of Poison", and I think there's like 20 tracks on it, and from top-to-bottom it's a stellar listen. My only complaint was there was a couple of ballads missing, and ultimately I ended up buying the "Best of Ballads and Blues" set to try to compensate it.
Johnny Cash is another one. Here's an artist that was around for eons, so you just want to "get to the nuts n' bolts", and i've got that "Legend of Johnny Cash" set. Thing is fantastic and not only covers Cash's legendary hit singles, but also includes several tracks from his Rick Rubin days, including his Rusty Cage & Hurt covers.
