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Thread: Why the Death of Greatest Hits Albums and Reissues Is Worth Mourning

  1. #51
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    ....because we can make our own. our own collections are better because WE make them our way, not a label that thinks they know better. there are always songs on Best Of Collections that don't belong, songs that re not included & songs that are edited.

  2. #52
    cunning linguist 3LockBox's Avatar
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    Many corporate comps contain radio or single edits. I rarely like that.
    Compact Disk brought high fidelity to the masses and audiophiles will never forgive it for that

  3. #53
    Member Jay.Dee's Avatar
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    Is Pitchfork already pu(bli)shing advertorials ahead of the busy Xmas period? I almost started to miss supermarket aisles flooded with 'best of', 'greatest hits' and 'golden collection' titles.... Good ol' times.

    Last edited by Jay.Dee; 10-11-2019 at 10:36 PM.

  4. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by 3LockBox View Post
    Many corporate comps contain radio or single edits. I rarely like that.
    Good point, Pandora keeps throwing the Aerosmith's Greatest Hits version of Sweet Emotion, which cuts the intro off. BLASPHEMY! Of course, that particular record allows one to acquire their version of Come Together, without having to spend money on the mostly unlistenable soundtrack to the Sgt Pepper movie.

  5. #55
    That's Mr. to you, Sir!! Trane's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by 3LockBox View Post
    I like the ones I make better
    I'm olympic gold medal for the last 40 years in that category

    Grounds for divorce in my house
    Well making comps from many 60's jazz artistes (including some giants) were a bit of a specialty. I'd take out everything that was too Bee-bopppppyyyy for me out a a few albums (Andrew Hill was a prime example for that) and collate the rest

    Quote Originally Posted by Halmyre View Post
    Deep Purple - 24 Carat Purple. My intro to the band.
    Purple really damaged their aura permanently with those gazillions of best of and other shaky/shady compilation releases.

    Quote Originally Posted by 3LockBox View Post
    Many corporate comps contain radio or single edits. I rarely like that.
    The worst example (that totally turned me off the single-market) was Seger's Night Moves, which the better part of the song (the finale) is edited. I mean even the radios didn't use it and played the album version.

    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarGeek View Post
    Good point, Pandora keeps throwing the Aerosmith's Greatest Hits version of Sweet Emotion, which cuts the intro off. BLASPHEMY! Of course, that particular record allows one to acquire their version of Come Together, without having to spend money on the mostly unlistenable soundtrack to the Sgt Pepper movie.
    I just went for Live Bootleg, where their CT is even better. (typical example of how a live album served me as a compilation (though I had made an XL-II S compilation with borrowed albums)>> the only other album of theirs I ever owned is Get Your Wings

    But omitting the intro has been done on LPs as well...
    North Americans may want to hear the rest of the world's in Rock and discover Speed King's intro (which echoes Child In Time's Outro)
    I'm still planning a revenge (bloody if possible ) against EMI for stealing away from me for decades (well two of them) that phenomenal minute-long raucus opening the albim
    my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.

  6. #56
    Man of repute progmatist's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Halmyre View Post
    Deep Purple - 24 Carat Purple. My intro to the band.
    Quote Originally Posted by Vic2012 View Post
    I have Deep Purple CD called.....The Very Best of Deep Purple. It has all the usual hits, Smoke, Hush, Highway Star, Space Truckin.'
    I bought Deepest Purple in the early 80s specifically for Black Night and Demon's Eye, both previously released only as singles. Interestingly, this record put back half the intro to Speed King, Jon's part, which was totally removed when Warner Bros. release In Rock in the US.

    Quote Originally Posted by Trane View Post
    Purple really damaged their aura permanently with those gazillions of best of and other shaky/shady compilation releases.
    Most of those recompilations were release by 3rd parties, which the band was powerless to stop. Pretty much all of the Mark II songs were credited to Blackmore, Gillian, Glover, Lord, Paice. In order to sue for copyright infringement, all the guys would have to be together as a unit. That was a primary reason for the band reforming in 84: so they could sue Rod Evans for touring with a bunch of L.A. musicians, calling themselves "Deep Purple," and performing Mark II material.
    Last edited by progmatist; 10-12-2019 at 01:02 PM.
    "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama

  7. #57
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    Deepest Purple is the best of their 'best ofs' if you just want Mark II/III 'hits'. Only drawback is the intro of 'Speed King' is shortened.

  8. #58
    Member Vic2012's Avatar
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    I have a King Crimson compilation titled ....The Compact King Crimson. Pretty good. It contains almost all of ITCOTCK and tracks from Discipline, Beat, and 3oaPP. I think it's oop.

  9. #59
    That's Mr. to you, Sir!! Trane's Avatar
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    Come to think of it, I did once own Purple Passages compilation, which allowed me to discover MkI, but I got rid of it once I'd bought the first three albums.

    And I did own too Young Man's Guide to KC as well (I still have it, I think)
    my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.

  10. #60
    [QUOTE=progmatist;932539]
    Most of those recompilations were release by 3rd parties, which the band was powerless to stop.
    That's the way it is with most compilations. The'yre not out by the band, but by record company people who've figured there's still some "exploitation value" left in the act. That's why there used to be so many different versions of the first Genesis album out there, because Jonathan King was trying to make a fast buck off the band's subsequent success. Same thing with all those Hawkwind comps that used to be out there too.


    Pretty much all of the Mark II songs were credited to Blackmore, Gillian, Glover, Lord, Paice. In order to sue for copyright infringement, all the guys would have to be together as a unit. That was a primary reason for the band reforming in 84: so they could sue Rod Evans for touring with a bunch of L.A. musicians, calling themselves "Deep Purple," and performing Mark II material.
    Well, the Rod Evans deal was more like 1980, not 1984, so I'm not sure if the two things were related or not. But the logic does sort of make sense, given Jon Lord's assertion that the reunion was Ritchie's idea.

  11. #61
    Parrots Ripped My Flesh Dave (in MA)'s Avatar
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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_W..._Roll,_We_Roll

    This, Concerto for Group & Orchestra and Made in Japan were my Deep Purple vinyl collection 40 years ago. I later added
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobody..._Purple_album) which never did much for me.

  12. #62
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    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarGeek View Post
    Really? THere's an Eagles best of that has Journey Of The Sorcerer on it? There's a Billy Joel comp that has Scandinavian Skies?
    .
    Yes. I was not a huge fan of either artist. I’ve heard all of Billy Joel’s albums because my friend was a huge fan. For me, he has some fantastic music and an excellent album or two but I didn’t need everything by him. Sure you may miss a song here and there but I didn’t need his catalog.

    I’m a big Elton John fan. I have most everything he has released and I treasure most of it. My friend and I had a lot of Billy vs Elton arguments as a kid. YMMV

    So the Greatest Hits and an album or two of the Eagles and Billy Joel (and many groups) was all I needed from them.
    Last edited by Tangram; 10-13-2019 at 09:00 AM.

  13. #63
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    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarGeek View Post
    Yeah, it took Pink Floyd a long time (a very long time) to do a proper overview of all their rare stuff. I can't believe they never put something out in the 80's or 90's that had all the early singles on it. I think there's only boxsets that have all of them. And then there's things like Moonhead, the Zabriskie Point outtakes, etc.

    Is the version of Embyro on Works the same one that was on the Picnic various artists comp? The Picnic version is on the Early Years set, I believe.

    As far as I'm concerned, Relics really should have had Apples And Oranges, It Would Be So Nice, and Point Me At The Sky on it.
    Pink Floyd’s ‘Shine On’ boxset also had the 10 track ‘The Early Singles’ CD. 5 of the songs are also on Relics. I believe it eventually got its own release.

    But it did take PF a while to get it right.

  14. #64
    Man of repute progmatist's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarGeek View Post
    Well, the Rod Evans deal was more like 1980, not 1984, so I'm not sure if the two things were related or not. But the logic does sort of make sense, given Jon Lord's assertion that the reunion was Ritchie's idea.
    The 4 year gap between Evans' fake tour and the band reuniting was the logistics and negotiations to actually make that reunion happen. Just as a random example: while Gillan was a member of Black Sabbath, Richie asked him and them not to perform Smoke on the Water. Richie in kind stopped performing it with Rainbow. BTW: that the Evans matter was only one of several factors leading to the reunion.
    "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama

  15. #65
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    RE; Eagles. The 2cd Complete Greatest Hits expands greatly on the first two Greatest Hits albums whilst including all of what was on them.

    I have a soft spot for the early 90s 2cd The Very Best Of Elton John, which is UK-biased so you don't get things like 'Empty Garden' or even 'Island Girl'. However, it's one of few places you can find the full 'Philadelphia Freedom'...for no apparent reason, most other CDs hacked twenty seconds off the end. It also has 'Part Time Love' which doesn't appear on too many other collections, but it was a hit.
    Last edited by JJ88; 10-13-2019 at 02:59 PM.

  16. #66
    When I were a young lad I had a four-vinyl-disc set called The Beatles Alpha Omega, which was not exactly a best-of, more of a random sampling. The sixty songs (eight on all sides one, seven on sides two) were not in any discernable order - not chronological, not alphabetical, not by theme or anything... I saw it on TV and my parents got it for me, either for my birthday or Christmas, I can't recall which. It included some solos stuff ("Bangladesh", "Uncle Albert", "Imagine", and "Maybe I'm Amazed"), and things ranging from all their albums and some singles.

    I sold it during my late highschool "the Beatles are irrelevant" period, when I was into prog, punk, and the Who, and nothing else. I regret that now, because I'm pretty sure it would today be quite the collector's item. (I just looked: it runs about $65-75 on eBay for the vinyl, a little less for the eight-track(!))

    Because, you see, it turns out to have been of ... questionable ... origins. A company called Audiotape, Inc. found a loophole in the copyright laws (something like the one that allowed Ace books to publish an edition of The Lord of the Rings in the '60s) that let them try this. There was no legally-available Beatles compilation album on the market (it would be a couple of years before the Red and Blue compilations were released), and this, advertised on radio and television, was quite the commodity. So successful was it that two volume 2s were released, with different sets of songs.

    The Beatles (and Alan Klein) responded with a $15M lawsuit - to put this in perspective, the Beatles had in all earned $19M in royalties in the three and a half years prior to the filing of the suit; money was worth more in 1972. The suit was settled, but the court documents don't exist to tell how.
    Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.

  17. #67
    Quote Originally Posted by Tangram View Post
    Pink Floyd’s ‘Shine On’ boxset also had the 10 track ‘The Early Singles’ CD. 5 of the songs are also on Relics. I believe it eventually got its own release.
    If I'm not mistaken, The Early Years was exclusive to the Shine On box. Wiki says there were promo copies sent out to radio stations, though.

    My memory of Relics seems to be very skewed because I don't remember Biding My Time or Paintbox being on it. I do somehow remember The Scarecrow being on it, but apparently it's not there. Mandela Effect?! Who knows? (shrug)

    And apparently, there was 30th anniversary release called 1967: The First Three Singles, and between that and the 40th anniversary version of Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Candy And A Currant Bun and Apples And Orange have been available since the mid 90's, albeit only intermittently.

    But if you ask me those two songs, along with Point Me At The Sky and It Would Be So Nice should have been included on Relics, or there should have at least been a Relics Vol II or something or whatever. But it's all a moot point. You can probably find all the songs in question on Youtube now, for free, so if you can't afford the Early Years box, you can hear the songs, albeit at lower sound quality.
    The 4 year gap between Evans' fake tour and the band reuniting was the logistics and negotiations to actually make that reunion happen. Just as a random example: while Gillan was a member of Black Sabbath, Richie asked him and them not to perform Smoke on the Water. Richie in kind stopped performing it with Rainbow. BTW: that the Evans matter was only one of several factors leading to the reunion.
    Well, Black Sabbath definitely played Smoke On The Water on the Born Again tour, it's on at least one of the bootlegs. I do remember reading, though, that the reason Ian dropped out of Sabbath was because of the Purple reunion, or at least the anticipation of said reunion. So that would suggest that they were talking about it at least a year before it actually happened.

  18. #68
    That's Mr. to you, Sir!! Trane's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tangram View Post
    I’m a big Elton John fan. I have most everything he has released and I treasure most of it. My friend and I had a lot of Billy vs Elton arguments as a kid. YMMV

    So the Greatest Hits and an album or two of the Eagles and Billy Joel (and many groups) was all I needed from them.
    Had to check out for Scand Skies

    had never SS from BJ (I could've sworn that The Stranger was his debut album), but TBH I never carted for him, outside being the first Unitedstatian playing behind the Iron Curtain....
    he flew under my radar until 77 and has gone back under Glass House
    But SS is really close to plagiarism to the Fab Four


    As for Elton, I own Madman (still in vinyl) and Yellow Brick, but finding a best of or GH that I would agree with is impossible (my fave tracls are unlikely to ever find a spot on one of those anyways), cos either I don't think much of many of his biggest hits or I'm totally sick of hearing them. I wouldn't need a compilation anyways, since all I have to do is tune in to my CR station, and whithin two days, I've heard all of his 70's hits anyways (couldn't care less for his post-70's stuff either).



    Quote Originally Posted by progmatist View Post
    The 4 year gap between Evans' fake tour and the band reuniting was the logistics and negotiations to actually make that reunion happen. Just as a random example: while Gillan was a member of Black Sabbath, Richie asked him and them not to perform Smoke on the Water. Richie in kind stopped performing it with Rainbow. BTW: that the Evans matter was only one of several factors leading to the reunion.
    didn't know, thx
    my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.

  19. #69
    Quote Originally Posted by Trane View Post
    Had to check out for Scand Skies

    had never SS from BJ (I could've sworn that The Stranger was his debut album), but TBH I never carted for him, outside being the first Unitedstatian playing behind the Iron Curtain....
    he flew under my radar until 77 and has gone back under Glass House
    But SS is really close to plagiarism to the Fab Four
    1. The Stranger was Billy Joel's fifth album, but it was the first one that did "big" business. His second album, Piano Man did well, but the next two were kinda flops, and Columbia were thinking of dropping him before The Stranger was released.

    2. If you're thinking "Fab Four" when you listen to Scandinavian Skies, it's deliberate. He said once that he was trying to capture the spirit of Strawberry Fields Forever.

    3. Joel much hyped trip "behind the Iron Curtain" becomes a lot less impressive when thing about all the legit rock groups who preceded him, namely Deep Purple (they were the first, believe it or not, back in the 70's), Iron Maiden, Queen, and Uriah Heep. I believe Heep were the first Western rock group to play in Russia proper, I think the other bands only played the Eastern European countries that were under Soviet rule (well, I know Queen and Maiden didn't play Russia, I'm not sure about Purple).

  20. #70
    Member Jerjo's Avatar
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    The Rolling Stones played a show in Poland in 1967 - I read where Mick said the front rows were all kids of communist party officials and they sat on their hands. He supposedly encouraged them to get the hell out and got some more enthusiastic folks up front. Pretty ballsy if that's what really happened.
    I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart

  21. #71
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    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarGeek View Post
    If I'm not mistaken, The Early Years was exclusive to the Shine On box. Wiki says there were promo copies sent out to radio stations, though.

    My memory of Relics seems to be very skewed because I don't remember Biding My Time or Paintbox being on it. I do somehow remember The Scarecrow being on it, but apparently it's not there. Mandela Effect?! Who knows? (shrug)

    And apparently, there was 30th anniversary release called 1967: The First Three Singles, and between that and the 40th anniversary version of Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Candy And A Currant Bun and Apples And Orange have been available since the mid 90's, albeit only intermittently.

    But if you ask me those two songs, along with Point Me At The Sky and It Would Be So Nice should have been included on Relics, or there should have at least been a Relics Vol II or something or whatever. But it's all a moot point. You can probably find all the songs in question on Youtube now, for free, so if you can't afford the Early Years box, you can hear the songs,
    I remember seeing a copy of The Early Singles a few years after the Shine On box was released. It sticks in my head because it was supposed to be exclusive to the box set. But it wouldn't surprise me if it was a promo or someone just sold their copy as this store was always coming up with CD's you couldn't normally find.

    TBH they only reason I bought the Relics cd, I have had the album for decades, but is its the only place to find 'Biding My Time'. I don't have a turntable anymore and I have a real soft spot for that song. Nothing like an accompanied trombone solo by Richard Wright!

  22. #72
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    I quite like both 'Biding My Time' and 'Embryo'. I sort of group them together because they are exclusive to compilations!

    I think my favourite boxes by any artist are the three Elvis 'decade' ones from the 90s. This was the first and last time that this sprawling catalogue was coherently presented at a relatively affordable price. There were also two accompanying double CDs with the best of his movie/gospel recordings...again, these were very well sequenced.

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