Chuck Berry: pick only one.

Christgau's written a lot about Chuck Berry over the years--he's why I sought out the Motorvatin' compilation years ago, even though I had most of what was on there already--so his second recommendation here seems worth noting:

http://social.entertainment.msn.com/music/blogs/expert-witness-blogpost.aspx?post=afa691a5-619c-4909-8019-c531d23cdb86

(For the thread: "Come On.")

Sounds like a damn nice comp. Really hard to say that The Great Twenty-Eight needs much improving, but "You Never Can Tell" would be nice, it's true.

JOHHNY B. POLLED: chuck berry's great twenty-eight

I was lucky enough to find Golden Decade Vol. 2 as a cutout once, which has "Come On," "You Never Can Tell" (not really a favourite, though of course great in Pulp Fiction), "The Promised Land," and "Let It Rock." So I've got all three Golden Decades--can't remember a thing about the third--plus Motorvatin'. The Great Twenty-Eight showed up afterwards.

Volume three has one track that would also end up on Great Twenty-Eight ("Beautiful Delilah") a whole lot of the blues-oriented material, and a couple of really oddball rockers. Nice stab at "The House of Blue Lights," but the ones to cherry-pick IIRC are "Downbound Train" and the curious "Broken Arrow." It's definitely not essential, but it's always fun to open up the non-28 material for me, cause I know that stuff so deep down it's always a pleasant surprise to go, wait, dude had other songs!

It's gotta be 'Rock'n'Roll Music'...

I picked up Bear Family's "Chuck Rocks", with all uptempo songs, and it's perfect.

Brown Eyed Handsome Man

Havana Moon

these days for me it's "Club Nitty Gritty". Never fails to destroy to dancefloor when I dj out

Wow, don't think I've heard this one before.

No Particular Place to Go. The fills!

Never fail to be amused by the possessor of the Venus referred to in “Brown Eyed Handsome Man.” Sounds to me like Chuck sang “Marlowe’s Venus,” which I imagine as referring to Christopher Marlowe, whose Venus was a poxy quean for all I know, if not a non-being a la Wittgenstein’s Mistress. Sometimes it sounds like people, such as Carl Perkins, to name one, are singing about “Marvell’s Venus” in a nod to Andrew Marvell’s coy mistress and her problematic relationship to time’s winged Coupe de Ville.

It's "Milo de Venus," right? Or maybe "Marla de Venus" or something like that?

Online lyrics say Milo Venus but that’s not quite what I hear him singing. I am sure he meant to sing about the same Venus as Tom Verlaine, but something got a little mutated by a cosmic ray along the way.

I always heard “Milo’s Venus” which is a good translation tbh

It’s probably that but the vowel sounds still seem different.

I mean of course he meant Venus de Milo aka Aphrodite de Milos, it’s that he changed it to “Milo’s Venus” as if Milo was a person not a place, and then when someone else sings it sometimes the vowels widen and it seems like it’s a different person from the original “Milo.” Listen to Carl Perkins here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZRwhbOeBgE

See also that one song about “Pete’s Leaning Tower.”

Drifting Heart