Do you mean this album? It’s got Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. I’ve had that CD since probably around 1991 or so; maybe there was an earlier release without that track?
You mean Steve Perry isn’t Journey? Whoda thunk it?
Yup. Also, some band’s careers are so long that unless you have six discs to fill, you’ll never come up with a tracklist that satifies everybody. Good luck taking a band like the Beatles, Kinks, or Rolling Stones, and coming up with a list of “essential” songs with less than 40-50 entries!
I have three versions of Queen’s Greatest Hits. One was for England and has Radio Ga-Ga, IIRC. One was American and doesn’t. I gave up.
A couple of years ago I bought an Elivs number 1 compilation…it sucked. Not only did it not have all of the ‘hits’ you typically associate with Elivs, the quality was terrible. Like someone recorded a record that was playing.
Yes, there was; I got it when it came out, and it did not have Scenes on it. (I had the cassette, but I’m pretty sure the CD release at that time had the same track listing.)
I’ve got more than a thousand “best of” CDs. The others were right when they said that an artist who has recorded for multiple labels won’t have any CDs with all their songs you know, due to which label owns the material. The few and best reissue labels I know of that have been able to cut through the red tape are Rhino, and See For Miles (UK) and Ace (UK). Retrospectives on these labels will usually be from multiple companies. Rhino was a pioneer in this area. Now the company is another division of Time/Warner, and I don’t know if they’re still doing it the way they used to. The founders of Rhino have started another, similar label called “Shout Factory.” Anything on that label will still have the high standard of standardness (ten points to anyone who catches that reference!), but it’ll cost more.
Box sets are for hardcore fans. Previously unreleased bonus tracks and alternate mixes are actually their selling points. If you like an artist enough to buy the box set, they give you these extras because a) you may already have all their albums, and b) the company may have a conscience and not want you to buy ALL of the same tracks again for a higher price. (This isn’t always the case, though.) Plus, it’s new royalties for the artist.
For example, go to the allmusic.com page for Steely Dan. Look at their discography. Count the albums. Then go to the Compilations tab. Yowsah! They have more compilations than they do regular albums! “Gold” came out on vinyl and CD. Then later, they reissued it with a couple of solo Donald Fagen tracks, and called it the “Expanded Edition.” Get “Showbiz Kids” instead.
Some compilations feature the single edit of hit songs, because this is how most people heard them on the radio, and when they bought the 45s. Tracks like this would be otherwise unavailable in digital form. On any given '70s compilation, if it has Three Dog Night’s “Joy To The World,” it’s most likely the mono promo version sent to radio, which used to sell for big bucks. It’s drastically remixed and has different edits than the consumer, stereo single. The latter recording is actually the more scarce one now.
If you want compilations of the real thing, I suggest that you subscribe to Time-Life and get the “AM Gold” and “Sounds Of The Seventies” series. Allmusic is still your best source for information on what’s on which album. For most of them, the track times are listed so you can compare the same track on several albums. If you want the long version, look for the CD with that version on it.
I’m not familiar with Don McLean’s GH, but whoever decided to put an edit of “American Pie” on it should be shot and pissed on!
Note that your Amazon.com link says “Enhanced.” The version I had (which was on cassette, not CD, circa 1985) did not contain Captain Jack, Entertainer or Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.
That album contained exactly what it was intended to contain – 30 of Elvis’ songs that went to #1. Maybe the songs you wanted were not #1 hits?
Mindbogglingly enough, that particular compilation is still apparently being made and sold.
It’s not so much and edit, as… Well, I remember as a kid having “American Pie” as a 45 r.p.m. single (remember those?), and because the song was so long, it took up both sides of the 45. Side A was the first half of the song, Side B was the second half. Apparently, whoever put together this compilation only included Side A of “American Pie.” :smack:
I was about to comment on that. That was actually a pretty good retrospective, if that is indeed the one being cited. I’m not sure what the gripe about recording quality is, either. It’s solid.
Yes. How inconsiderate of them not to include a song that was released months after the Greatest Hits album was out! The record company had the time machine technology, but they refused to use it!
Really, the rule is check the track list! I guess I have no one to blame but myself when I don’t do this.
P.S. Michael McDonald’s GH has both his solo and Doobie Brothers hits on it. And yeah, every time I hear Ya Mo Be There I think “if I hear this song again, I’ma Ya Mo Burn this place to the ground!”
It’s solid, all right. If you could see the waveform for each of those tracks, you’d see that they are solid, all the way across. The whole mess has been amplified to blasphemous levels and chopped off at the top and bottom at -.01 dB. There are no dynamics whatsoever. Brickwall limiting has sucked all the life out of all the tracks on that CD. Fortunately for me, I know how to undo that garbage, and I remade my own CD of it that sounds natural and has both soft and loud parts. It sounds wonderful. I scanned the artwork and threw the original in the garbage, where it belongs.
I was coming in to say that very thing.
My Queen’s GH has Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s the 3 disc set that came out after Freddie Mercury died, though.
I don’t know about gypped, but when I bought Edward the Great, Iron Maiden’s greatest hits collection, and saw that it contained nothing from the pre-Bruce Dickinson era, I felt quite jewed.
Actually the story was that they were planning on doing covers of all their GH, but after recording “Don’t Stand”, Stewart Copeland broke his arm, so it wouldn’t be possible to get it done before the announced release date of the album, so it ended up being a more traditional compilation, with one “new” song thrown in.
Hmm…I don’t remember it as being one of those albums that was compressed to holy heaven (one of my modern recording peeves as well). I’ll have to check next time at my folks place. This is the one that a two-disc set? Or at least has a bonus disc? One is the live singles, and one is a bunch of unreleased studio monkeying around, right? Or am I conflating two different #1 compilations?
I’m referring to “30 #1 Hits” from 2002. The one that should be called “31 #1 Hits” because the JXL remix of “A Little Less Conversation” went to #1 after the CD was released. I haven’t seen a 2CD edition of it, but there may well be one.