must every best of or greatest hits album be so long? buy a good old best of from the 60s or 70s or even 80s and most of them were just single disc comps, well sequenced, carefully, strictly selected, not too much middling stuff or unnecessary early songs just for the sake of covering every era.
today though, you have to wade through a lot of ignorable material spread over two full length CDs. i much prefer something like hendrix's smash hits comp any day to the 2-cd voodoo child. i do love hendrix but for a best of comp, which is meant to just represent a nice introductory distillation of an artist/band, its not pruned nearly enough.
― mr x, Thursday, 19 June 2008 14:08 (seventeen years ago)
dude just throw the 2nd cd in the trash
― Granny Dainger, Thursday, 19 June 2008 14:10 (seventeen years ago)
Mr X OTM -- Rock n Soul Pt 1 about a million times better than The Ultimate Hall and Oates, which is probably a million times better than whatever box set they inevitably have planned (unless one actually exists.) So yeah, it's a retarded state of affairs. Fortunately most bands from the '80s or earlier have a one-LP vinyl best-of that can probably be found for $1 somewhere. (Also, I'm lucky enough to get this shit for free, so I don't mind all that much that, say, Counting Crows/Black Crowes/Stone Temple Pilots/Spin Doctors/ Soul Asylum/Soundgarden [and maybe even Offspring/Destiny's Child/Backstreet Boys/NSync] best-of CDs would have been a lot more user friendly back in the vinyl era. But I feel sorry for anybody who actually has to pay money for the damn things.)
Related question: Does anybody ever have a use for "bonus DVDs"? Not just tacked on to best-of CDs; tacked on to plenty of regular CDs too, these days? It's been ages since I watched one of those things.
― xhuxk, Friday, 20 June 2008 15:13 (seventeen years ago)
I just wish AC/DC would put out a greatest hits comp of ANY description.
― Dingbod Kesterson, Friday, 20 June 2008 15:18 (seventeen years ago)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I have moaned about that on some other thread about best ofs
― Colonel Poo, Friday, 20 June 2008 15:31 (seventeen years ago)
i have to disagree. there's quite a few bands who I'd like to have both their hit singles, and the best album tracks. I find myself now filling in the gaps left from said Smash Hits and its ilk that I bought way back when.
― Granny Dainger, Friday, 20 June 2008 15:37 (seventeen years ago)
It also often seems like dodgy 'previously unreleased' stuff is tacked on to Best Ofs, which invalidates the very concept.
― President Keyes, Friday, 20 June 2008 19:16 (seventeen years ago)
Yeah, I'm curious about when that started. It seemed to become a standard practice for major label best ofs at least by the mid 80s, but I'm sure there were precedents going back forever. (The idea, obviously, is to con obsessive fans who already own all the band's albums into buying the best-of, too, just to get what are almost inevitably shitty outtakes.)
― xhuxk, Friday, 20 June 2008 19:36 (seventeen years ago)
bonus DVDs = useless
80 minute or double disc best-ofs = cool if the artist had more than 2-5 albums to draw from, since I'm probably not gonna buy that artists' albums if I'm getting the best-of anyway, so I might as well get a big serving
putting rare/deep cuts on best-ofs = fine if it's on a seperate disc like Prince's The Hits/B-Sides and Ultimate Prince
― some dude, Friday, 20 June 2008 19:48 (seventeen years ago)
plus, it seems like these days once a popular band passes a certain past-its-prime threshold, they put out a best-of between every new album, and among those you usually can find one tidy single-disc GH, and one big sloppy double-disc set, so it really doesn't need to be either/or.
― some dude, Friday, 20 June 2008 19:49 (seventeen years ago)
Most of the Bon albums in print actually are best-ofs, being resequenced compilations for the American market rather than the OG LPs.
― energy flash gordon, Saturday, 21 June 2008 06:22 (seventeen years ago)
'chronological' comps are almost as bad.
― mr x, Saturday, 21 June 2008 12:38 (seventeen years ago)