The greatest Greatest Hits collection

The flipside of that is when a stinker is plopped onto a disc to be memoralized alongside a bunch of classics.

One that people don’t usually think of is Bob Marley - Legend

madness have had a LOT of compilations over the years, however, for a full rundown of the a-sides/b-sides and some extras, then (other than getting each of the expanded editions of the albums) this is the best option :

https://www.discogs.com/Madness-The-Business-The-Definitive-Singles-Collection/release/490961

only problem is that inbetween each track are vocal snippets from interviews with the lads.

Eclipse records in England did a series of complete a’s and b’s CD comps. Impressions, Dusty Springfield, some others. Don’t know about sound quality.

gotta say I really love those greatest hits/anthology comps that are half hits/great album tracks and half B-sides

There have been a few notable ones from artists whose best work wasn't necessarily hits - especially when many of the hits weren't that good. I know I've got at least a handful of these, but the only one I can remember right now is Artie Shaw's box set from the '90s which he personally selected himself. It's far better than any straight collection of his biggest sellers could ever be.

Bob Dylan doesn't quite have a "best of" comp like this - the standards and hits usually outnumber the deep cuts and previously unreleased material by a huge margin - but his catalog would be perfect for such a compilation. If I made one concentrating on his absolute greatest recordings from the '70s or the '80s, I'm certain half of it would consist of bootleg material, including stuff that wasn't officially released until the '90s or beyond.

those greatest hits/anthology comps that are half hits/great album tracks and half B-sides, unreleased and rare stuff

jethro tull 20th anniversary box (three discs) is like this

there are at least 1000 yes collections; presumably at least one fits the bill

Sabbaths’s We Sold our Souls for Rock and Roll is pretty great though it misses a lot of the later weirdness

Yes don't really have a lot of rare tracks or B-sides though

Devo's Pioneers Who Got Scalped probably counts here, loads of non-album tracks on that one. The trouble is the thing turns to shit a third of the way through 2nd disc, you really do not need to hear Devo cover "Head Like a Hole"

oh and Planet Jarre, iirc he remixed a lot of his tunes for it & there's half an hour of early & rare stuff

Need to hear that ^

Some of the albums named are desperately in need of an update - Kate Bush's "The Whole Story" is 34 years old! I created my own addendum. Others are too skimpy - Siouxsie & The Banshees really could use a proper anthology, not just the pair of singles comps. And then there's folks like Comsat Angels - no best of at all (though the Peel session comp functions as such).

I've created a folder of best greatest hits for my favorite artists. I try to find the best single disc, double disc and (sometimes) box set. It's not always easy - sometimes there's too many choices, or some that have some but not all the tracks you'd want. But it beats making custom playlists for everyone.

Bob Dylan doesn't quite have a "best of" comp like this - the standards and hits usually outnumber the deep cuts and previously unreleased material by a huge margin - but his catalog would be perfect for such a compilation.

Biograph was right in this mold, tho it's a big ol' box set

oh and Planet Jarre, iirc he remixed a lot of his tunes for it & there's half an hour of early & rare stuff

― frogbs, Thursday, 1 October 2020 18:09 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Need to hear that ^

― calstars,

or, just get the insanely brilliant AERO album/mixtape which JMJ morphs/blends all the classics into an insanely brilliant 70+ minute session.

Dylan's second greatest hits collection is the shit.

Others are too skimpy - Siouxsie & The Banshees really could use a proper anthology, not just the pair of singles comps

The Banshees do have a Best Of, but I prefer the singles comps (nothing from A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, really ?).

the talking heads sand in the vaseline comp is a good one of these, 8 or 10 bsides and rarities across 2 discs iirc

Yeah, that's a good example

disc 1 of that set is maybe the best collection of a prolific band/artist I can think of (and it's largely thanks to the two demos + single that lead it off).

(the best collection that fits on a single disc)

its one of those comps where the extra tracks do a good job of feeling like a natural part of the bands history & catalog, rather than seeming like value-added bonus tracks dug up to sell the comp

gotta say I really love those greatest hits/anthology comps that are half hits/great album tracks and half B-sides, unreleased and rare stuff. like The Kink Kronikles or Sound of Science by Beastie Boys. what other comps are like that?

― frogbs, Thursday, October 1, 2020 9:05 AM (three hours ago)

Eno Box I & II

Early '90s CD era was good for those 2-discers. Legacy was on a roll: The Legend of Paul Revere; Poco's The Forgotten Trail; Moby Grape's Vintage and Spirit's Time Circle come to mind.

Not to mention Rhino's Anthology sets, particularly the Sparks installment.

I thought I had mentioned the Sparks one in this thread, guess not. Yeah, it hits pretty much all the high points (at that time) of a long and varied career.

Lately I’ve been playing ZZ Top’s Rancho Texicano a lot. Does a similarly great job, and I like the way it divides between the straight ahead blues rock on disc 1 and the MTV years on disc 2. Listening to the latter as I type!

Biograph was right in this mold, tho it's a big ol' box set

In terms of unreleased material, it seemed a little stingy, especially when Ten of Swords came out around the same time.

But to be fair, "I'll Keep It With Mine," "Percy's Song," "Lay Down Your Weary Tune," "Quinn the Eskimo," "You're a Big Girl Now," "Abandoned Love," "Up To Me" and the Dec. 4, 1975 performances of "Romance in Durango" and "Isis" were indeed lost classics that SHOULD have been released soon after they were recorded.

"Baby, I'm in the Mood for You," "I Wanna Be Your Lover" and the "Forever Young" demo were all pretty good, very enjoyable.

The live 1966 cuts of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "I Don't Believe You" and "Visions of Johanna" were great, but not really the best representation of that epochal tour in terms of performance and song selection (for starters, two acoustic performances and just one electric?) - they really should have put out the Free Trade Hall or the Liverpool show in their entirety much earlier.

The heavily edited "Jet Pilot," "Caribbean Wind" and the live "Heart of Mine" were poor choices. "Caribbean Wind" was especially disappointing because it is definitely a great lost song, but they picked a thoroughly crappy version plagued by bad rewrites, a bad arrangement and a bad performance - they should have used the live version (the only live performance it's ever gotten), which was finally included in the Trouble No More Bootleg Series installment.

In Australia this was the standard Dylan best-of for many 80s households, which has a bit of a grab-bag quality - leaning heavily towards the hits natch but some curious selections in there

Interesting. Here is a playlist of that as far as I can tell: https://open.spotify.com/user/nickgino/playlist/1a4jYPZuLAtYtuwlgBCODb?si=FBQm6Kx1Sh-pNlMcloycOA

You should definitely own at least the first four LPs as well, but Bjork's GH is a phenomenal album.

agreed, it has brilliant sequencing and choice of tracks

apparently the sequence is the results of the online fan poll that chose the tracks, in descending order?? don't remember that factoid, wow.

apparently the sequence is the results of the online fan poll that chose the tracks, in descending order?? don't remember that factoid, wow.

Forgot about that poll, but that probably helped. While I'm at it, Kate Bush's The Whole Story is an excellent LP-sized compilation too. For anyone who needs a good introduction or who's not entirely sold on Björk or Kate Bush, those compilations pretty much hit the spot.

Re: some of the curious selections on Dylan's Biograph, I noticed later on that some of them were originally released as singles, which may explain why there were picked for the box set. It's too bad because sometimes when the label needed to put out a single, they didn't pick great much less the best songs from the respective albums. So instead of "Going Going Gone," we get both sides of the single for Planet Waves which also happen to be two of the most disposable songs on there, "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" instead of "Highway 61 Revisited" from Before the Flood, etc.

I’ve been jamming Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits album (the green album cover with the flower) and it really is fucking incredible. Just killer pop song after killer pop song all the way through.

^ college dorm room staple

That Dylan Masterpieces collection is a lot of fun.

https://i.imgur.com/3HoiENf.jpg

my man

While exploring Thin Lizzy, I came across this compilation.

(Hoping this image displays properly:)

https://img.discogs.com/E4E5QN9aEofnVTWyPVt66GHvugc=/fit-in/589x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1437904-1261145046.jpeg.jpg

Originally released in 1981, I believe it's the first hits/best-of that was authorized by Lynott, and it fell out-of-print a long time ago, never getting a reissue during the CD era or later. A shame because I really dig the cover - far better than the unimaginative cookie-cutter designs that were for the posthumous compilations.

I wasn't entirely sold on Thin Lizzy - their recording career feels wildly uneven - but outside of their celebrated live double-LP and Jailbreak, this might be the best place to hear them first. It feels like their best, most concise LP-length compilation. Great introduction and a great summation.

The cover concept is a good idea, but I’m not sold on the “multiple equine asscrack” execution.

Hah! Now that I think about it, I guess those aren't rocks, and they're not getting kicked up.

One that people don’t usually think of is Bob Marley - Legend

― All cars are bad (Euler)

Geir did 13 years ago in this thread.

I think I agree with Legend. Marley is quite frankly the most recognized figure worldwide in reggae music and the album everyone seems to own is Legend.

it should also serve as the only full-length by the artist you need. But feel free to disregard the last part if you like.

It may be interesting to focus on this particular criterion. Though I guess you’d have to set a certain bar, to exclude obvious/inarguable cases of one/two/three-hit wonders, etc.

(and I guess it would probably just turn into the usual round of, “Here’s another band I think sucks...”)

Btw - a great comp not mentioned on this thread (surprisingly, considering its vintage) is ESG’s A South Bronx Story.

Two posters mentioned the Go-Betweens - 1978-1990 above, but this is another compilation where the first disc is a greatest hits and the second is rarities, one side each chosen by Forster and McLennan.

Eric Weisbard in The Spin Alternative Record Guide says that this album "never leaves the stereos" of certain Go-Betweens fans who "become obsessive" for the band as the fans age out of "the conceptual games of alternative". It's a strange image of Go-Betweens worshippers superglueing their copies into the cassette deck.

Now I have the image of a really dense fan supergluing his CD in the tray, only to hear the motor grind to pieces when it fails to spin the disc for playback. But even in jest, that doesn't remotely align with the intellect of a Go-Betweens fan.

These are some 1 or 2-disc compilations of artists (hits or otherwise) that have served me well as either all I need or something good enough to spin when I need a fix of their work:

Fats Domino - My Blue Heaven: The Best of Fats Domino (EMI)
The Carter Family - Wildwood Flower (Living Era)
Mississippi John Hurt - Avalon Blues: The Complete 1928 OKeh Recordings (Columbia)
Blind Lemon Jefferson - The Best of Blind Lemon Jefferson (Yazoo)
Little Richard - The Georgia Peach (Specialty)
Ennio Morricone - The Ennio Morricone Anthology: A Fistful of Film Music (Rhino)
ABBA - ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits (Polar)
Leonard Cohen - The Best of Leonard Cohen (Columbia)
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Ooo Baby Baby: The Anthology (Motown)

Hard to pick a favorite of those. Probably whichever I am listening to at that moment.

"The Best of Leonard Cohen" definitely checks all the boxes

I have The Essential Leonard Cohen but i don't listen to it much. I usually listen to the first album or watch the Live in London DVD. The latter is probably my favorite Leonard Cohen.

Greatest Live Essential Best Hits

Greatest Live Essential Best Hits: The Anthology

is meaty, beaty big & bouncy still the best who compilation? there's quite a few others (i think i've owned at least three besides that one), but it's hard to argue with the selection, and it flows pretty well.