quicklist # 347 - favorite "greatest hits" collections

[Clams]

Not live albums, not B- sides or outtakes (like Past Masters Vol II or The Fine Print), just good old fashioned "Best Of's"

The Who - Hooligans - one of my high school soundtracks. Combined Quadrophenia, Tommy and album cuts. Awesome.
The Doors Greatest Hits - another of my high school favorites. I learned how to write "The Doors" logo on my loose leaf notebook.
CCR - Chronicle - It's got about 25 perfect songs, each about 2 and a half minutes long, except for the extended Grapevine.
The Stones - Hot Rocks - the first one. No need to say more.
Flying Burrito Bros Anthology - so many great songs, one after another
Hank Williams - Ultimate Collection - 2 discs. It's got 'em all. Or at least a lot of 'em.



Honorable mention - Skynyrd's Gold & Platinum; Eponymous by REM; Neil's Decade; Steve Miller's greatest hits

[Slipkid42]

Great idea Clams, and good calls on several.
(in fact they would have to be in my top 5 too)

Decade - Neil Young
Hot Rocks - Stones
Kronikles - Kinks
Meaty, Beaty, Big & Bouncy - The Who
Chronicle - CCR

Also pretty good
Beatles 62-66 & 67-70 & 1
Staring At The Sea - The Cure
Smash Hits - Jimi Hendrix
16 Greatest Hits - Steppenwolf

[Clams]

Great idea Clams, and good calls on several.
(in fact they would have to be in my top 5 too)

Decade - Neil Young
Hot Rocks - Stones
Kronikles - Kinks
Meaty, Beaty, Big & Bouncy - The Who
Chronicle - CCR

Also pretty good
Beatles 62-66 & 67-70 & 1
Staring At The Sea - The Cure
Smash Hits - Jimi Hendrix
16 Greatest Hits - Steppenwolf

Meaty Beaty is alsum. Like Chronicle, it's got a ton of great, short songs. Love that one.

[Iowan]

"Chronicle" - CCR
"Anthology: 87-93" - Uncle Tupelo
"Legend" Bob Marley (the gold standard in this category)
"Skeletons In The Closet" Grateful Dead
"Decade" Neil Young

[cortez the killer]

Decade/Neil Young
Great Gonzos/Jerry Jeff Walker
RCA Country Legends/Waylon Jennings
The Best of Faces: Good Boys When They're Asleep
The Man in Black: His Greatest Hits/Johnny Cash

In general, the country music stars from the 60's & 70's tend to have the best "Greatest Hits" collections.

[Iowan]

Decade/Neil Young
Great Gonzos/Jerry Jeff Walker
RCA Country Legends/Waylon Jennings
The Best of Faces: Good Boys When They're Asleep
The Man in Black: His Greatest Hits/Johnny Cash

In general, the country music stars from the 60's & 70's tend to have the best "Greatest Hits" collections.

I limited myself to bands/artists whose full discoraphies I do not have, otherwise this would have been #1 on my list.

[beantownbubba]

Hypothesis: The greater the artist, the less relevant greatest hits albums are.
Corollary: Greatest hits albums make the most sense for either "singles artists" (i.e. artists who put out albums w/ 1 or 2 hits and lots of filler) or "2d level" artists who over the course of a career put out an album or two's worth of really good material. Motown artists are the quintessential "perfect for greatest hits albums" artists (w/ the exception of Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye).

Decade is great precisely because it's not a greatest hits collection. It's a retrospective intended to provide perspective on the artist's work over a defined period (and not incidentally to make the point that the guy had a phenomenal decade worthy of more respect than he was getting at the time). The Kink Kronikles is similar (and is intentionally not called "the kinks' greatest hits" for a reason). bob Marley's Legend is sort of a hybrid of the greatest hits and retrospective models and is inclusive enough that it also skirts the "how can u not have all the albums" issue. A really impressive effort.

Hot Rocks, Smash Hits, Ones (all of which i own, btw, either on vinyl or disc) are basically pointless. Of course they have great songs on them, it's the goddamn stones/hendrix/beatles!!! But any serious music enthusiast should really have the underlying albums and there's nothing about the packaging of those albums that makes them essential. I bought Chronicle when the world switched to cd's precisely because i didn't want to re-buy all the CCR albums and the disc was well thought out and had everything it should have had. But it was still a dumb decision.

Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy was great because it collected a bunch of stuff that was not readily available in the US. Even though most (all?) of it is now much more accessible, it's still a great way to hear those cuts.

Prince's The Hits/The B Sides is great both because it collects a bunch of worthwhile b sides and also implicitly acknowledges that he often buried nuggets in the midst of a lot of sludge that doesn't bear repeated listening.

I don't know if u had box sets in mind when u asked the question, but the best of them perform a bunch of worthwhile purposes - cover the essentials, collect rare &/or live tracks, bring together music usually not available in the same place because of rights issues, and attempt to provide some overview or perspective on the artist's career, usually including exhaustive and excellent notes. Crossroads and Biograph are tops to me, but there are any number of good ones. There are also boxes intended to be exhaustively complete, like the Stones' Singles box, which i think is terrific and supersedes all of their greatest hits albums to that point. Boxes devoted to genres or time periods or other multiple artist concepts aren't strictly speaking greatest hits albums either, but often serve that purpose for artists who would otherwise be totally forgotten. Rhino is the master of this sort of thing, but not the only worthwhile practitioner.

And, just for the record, i hate artists who drop a couple of new songs on to greatest hits albums, basically taking advantage of their most enthusiastic fans by "forcing" them to buy albums that are otherwise totally redundant and usually not as satisfying as the original albums (why else would u be that big a fan in the first place?).

[dime in the gutter]

Hypothesis: The greater the artist, the less relevant greatest hits albums are.
Corollary: Greatest hits albums make the most sense for either "singles artists" (i.e. artists who put out albums w/ 1 or 2 hits and lots of filler) or "2d level" artists who over the course of a career put out an album or two's worth of really good material. Motown artists are the quintessential "perfect for greatest hits albums" artists (w/ the exception of Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye).

Decade is great precisely because it's not a greatest hits collection. It's a retrospective intended to provide perspective on the artist's work over a defined period (and not incidentally to make the point that the guy had a phenomenal decade worthy of more respect than he was getting at the time). The Kink Kronikles is similar (and is intentionally not called "the kinks' greatest hits" for a reason). bob Marley's Legend is sort of a hybrid of the greatest hits and retrospective models and is inclusive enough that it also skirts the "how can u not have all the albums" issue. A really impressive effort.

Hot Rocks, Smash Hits, Ones (all of which i own, btw, either on vinyl or disc) are basically pointless. Of course they have great songs on them, it's the goddamn stones/hendrix/beatles!!! But any serious music enthusiast should really have the underlying albums and there's nothing about the packaging of those albums that makes them essential. I bought Chronicle when the world switched to cd's precisely because i didn't want to re-buy all the CCR albums and the disc was well thought out and had everything it should have had. But it was still a dumb decision.

Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy was great because it collected a bunch of stuff that was not readily available in the US. Even though most (all?) of it is now much more accessible, it's still a great way to hear those cuts.

Prince's The Hits/The B Sides is great both because it collects a bunch of worthwhile b sides and also implicitly acknowledges that he often buried nuggets in the midst of a lot of sludge that doesn't bear repeated listening.

I don't know if u had box sets in mind when u asked the question, but the best of them perform a bunch of worthwhile purposes - cover the essentials, collect rare &/or live tracks, bring together music usually not available in the same place because of rights issues, and attempt to provide some overview or perspective on the artist's career, usually including exhaustive and excellent notes. Crossroads and Biograph are tops to me, but there are any number of good ones. There are also boxes intended to be exhaustively complete, like the Stones' Singles box, which i think is terrific and supersedes all of their greatest hits albums to that point. Boxes devoted to genres or time periods or other multiple artist concepts aren't strictly speaking greatest hits albums either, but often serve that purpose for artists who would otherwise be totally forgotten. Rhino is the master of this sort of thing, but not the only worthwhile practitioner.

And, just for the record, i hate artists who drop a couple of new songs on to greatest hits albums, basically taking advantage of their most enthusiastic fans by "forcing" them to buy albums that are otherwise totally redundant and usually not as satisfying as the original albums (why else would u be that big a fan in the first place?).

i don't know about all that.....but dylan greatest hits vol 1 was damn fine.

[beantownbubba]

WTF was that? Wish I could blame it on drugs, but no such luck. Hey, it seemed to make sense at the time. Sorry.

[RevMatt]

Buddy Holly 20 Golden Greats
The Rolling Stones High Tides and Green Grass
Hank Williams 40 Greatest Hits
The Grateful Dead Skeletons in the Closet
Ted Nugent Great Gonzos

[Smitty]

Hank Williams - 40 Greatest
Neil - Decade
Changing Faces: The Best of Rod Stewart & The Faces
Forty Licks
Texan Troubadour: The Best of Townes Van Zandt
Souvenirs - John Prine (not really a greatest hits collection, but re-recordings of his best songs; Prime Prine is the GH collection, its great too)
Steve Miller Band - GH 1974-78