"Best ofs" and "Greatest Hits" as an introduction

Reading the Kansas and Toto topic I saw that some of the members had trouble with Kansas due to the bad introduction to the band (the old Best of Kansas). This topic wants to colect references from the members about good and bad "best ofs" albums (no boxes) or, if there's no other reference available, live albums that can summarize to the newbie the style and work of a band.

Pink Floyds Echoes and Queensryche's Greatest Hits make for very good compilations that give a strong feel for the band as an overall, rather than just the obvious few songs.

Black Sabbath the very best of.... It's all Ozzy era (the best) and having almost the two first albums (the best ones) complete. It's great. Pink Floyd Echoes very good too.
I think Greatest Hits will never be good cause being Greatest Hits, meaning AOR songs from the band mainly. Except if you're talking of pop bands.

The best of.. alwawys depend, there maybe some very good like Sabbath's and other really bad like Genesis. And others that depends what you're looking for like Yes 35th anniversary, I think it's good cause it briefs all their period. Okay there not maybe some very good but still has some.

sleeper wrote: Pink Floyds Echoes and Queensryche's Greatest Hits make for very good compilations that give a strong feel for the band as an overall, rather than just the obvious few songs.

Seconded (I've got both albums).  However, in my humble opinion live albums can be a much more effective way to get introduced to a band. To make a recent example, Caravan's wonderful The Show of Our Lives, which features live recordings from 1969 to 1975 (the heyday of the band's career), is even better than a simple "Greatest Hits". Rush's numerous live albums are also an excellent means of introduction to the band's vast output.

When Im trying to get into a band I tend to listen to their most popular album first (looking at Lastfm or this website) as this tends to be the best mix between quality and accessibility. Hasnt failed me too badly so far. I usually only buy greatest hits of artists I would listen to once in a while rather than frequently.

Edited by mellors - February 27 2008 at 14:02

I think that it depends on the live album.  There are plenty of live albums where all the bands play are their greatest hits.  In the case of Rush, the bonus of a live album is that you also get a Neil Peart drum solo which doesn't appear on the regular albums or greatest hits albums.  The thing with a live album is that many times they are double albums and therefore cover more songs than a one CD greatest hits package.  There are some decent 2 CD greatest hit packages like Rush's Chronicles or their Retrospective, although one but not both would be required, since they cover most of the same songs.  Personally, I was introduced to some of the best known prog bands by greatest hits packages, and then expanded from there.  I bought the Best of ELP, Classic Yes, and 20 Years of Jethro Tull, liked what I heard and expanded to the rest of their discographies.  Granted I had heard many of the songs on the radio but having the songs on one disc  kind of put it together for me that they were good bands.  Sure the discs aren't "representative" of the band's most proggiest tracks, but most of those are too long to put onto a compilation album like that.  Box sets work better to this extent because it exposes the listener to more songs but that is generally an expensive investment for a band that you might not know anything about.

Edited by rushfan4 - February 27 2008 at 14:09

p0mt3 wrote: I hate all forms of compilations, best ofs and greatest hits. Now when I want to find a Genesis or Yes record in the store, all I find are greatest hit collections. Prog rock is an album-oriented genre, and should be experienced as such. If someone doesn't like it in that form, then they don't like prog rock.

I love strong opinions like these but I have to disagree. After having listened extensively to plenty of prog albums all the way through, I've grown dissatisfied with the make-up of certain albums, and so have made my own mixtapes from them. Gentle Giant work particularly well when you get to re-do their track orders.

I won't apologise for removing tracks from their original contexts because I don't care. ;P I much prefer songs to albums and concepts be damned, because at the last, concepts rarely affect the music *positively*. Secondly, bands like Floyd and ELP don't have entire albums that I like, so I reconstitute them at will.

PS, wasn't that Tool album deliberately distributed with the wrong track order? Or was that a joke? =P

That's true. =) I think Ghost Rider was right when she said that live CDs were a better account of a band's work, even for a newcomer.

I'm not a fan of compilations. Some work and some don't, but I prefer actual albums. Even if it isn't a concept, the songs were written together, so they belong together. Another issue is wasting money. I have had compilations that made me want to explore the band further. Once I had real albums, I never listened to the compilation. So I was stuck with it.

Edited by bhikkhu - February 27 2008 at 16:51