No comments about 14 Things to Think About.

5 comments about The Very Best of Deep Purple.

1. How can the best music from one of the best bands of all time not make a fantastic Greatest Hits album? If you tamper with the music, that's how.
   I listened to this and somehow didn't feel right. The CD gathered dust for more than a year, and when I "rediscovered" it, didn't feel like playing it. "Made in Japan" however...
   
   The simple fact is that Deep Purple's music should be listened to the way it was intended to. I still maintain that their live albums are their best albums. Check out the excellent digitally remastered Made In Japan: The Remastered Edition, or check out the DVD section. This one is best avoided.



2. I just love this CD. This is the first Deep Purple CD I have owned and I got this one because it seemed to have all their hits on it and also becaus I think it was the only one that has "When a Blind Man Cries", which to me, is an incredible song. My 12 year old son loves the CD too and we have listened to it every morning this week while in the car driving to his school. People are very surprised to hear a 12 year old saying he loves Deep Purple!



3. THE BAND: Over the years - Rod Evans (vocals), Ian Gillan (vocals), David Coverdale (vocals), Joe Lynn Turner (vocals), Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), Tommy Bolin (guitar), Steve Morse (guitar), Nick Simpler (bass), Roger Glover (bass), Glenn Hughes (bass)..... Jon Lord (keyboards) and Ian Paice (drums & percussion) have appeared on every Deep Purple release.
   
   THE DISCS: (1998) 28 total tracks on 2 discs clocking in at approximately 138 minutes (70 minutes on disc-1, 68 on disc-2). Included with the discs is a 22-page heavy duty glossy purple booklet containing an extensive 15-page history of the band, song titles, and what songs came from which albums and year released (sadly no band photos or song lyrics). This compilation follows the band from 1968-98. Digitally remastered sound. Label - EMI Records.
   
   ALBUM REPRESENTATION: Shades Of Deep Purple (2 songs), Book Of Taliesyn (3), Deep Purple (1), A's & B's (2), In Rock (4), Fireball (2), Machine Head (3), Who Do We Think We Are (1), Burn (2), Stormbringer (1), Come Taste The Band (1), Perfect Strangers (2), Slaves & Masters (1), Purpendicular (1), Abandon (1), unreleased - "When A Blind Man Cries" from the "Machine Head" sessions - released on the 2-disc Anniversary edition only (1).
   
   COMMENTS: A collection like this has been a long time coming. A band with such a deep and rich rock history deserves such a tribute. There are several compilations out there, but this double disc set is worth the search (and I truly believe the single disc mixes simply can't do the band justice). Disc-1 concentrates on the early years, 1968-72 only... the sound is dated, but so much of the music from the late 60's is (the remastering helps a tad bit, but not much). Disc-2 has a much broader ranger - following Deep Purple from 1972 through 1998. THE GOOD: Most, if not all, the staples are here - "Hush", "Black Night", "Speed King", "Child In Time", "Strange Kind Of Woman", "Fireball", "Highway Star", "Smoke On The Water", "Woman From Tokyo", "Burn", "Perfect Strangers", "Knocking At Your Back Door", "King Of Dreams", "Ted The Mechanic", etc. The history contained in the liners notes is extensive. Chronological order is a plus - you can hear the band really mature over the years with their sound and line-up changes. Great remastered sound (especially) on the later era material. Many of the tracks are "Anniversary" remasters and/or remixes of which Roger Glover produced. THE NOT SO GOOD: Minor things really. I understand 6 songs from the early Rod Evans era is probably necessary here, but I was never a big fan of the 60's Deep Purple. Track 2, "Mandrake Root" - as much as it the liner notes say it's an early penned Blackmore treasure... I find it 6 minutes of absolute Hell to get through. "Hard Road (Wring That Neck)" sounds more like ELP than Deep Purple thanks to Jon Lord's overbearing keyboards. The crooning vocals in the middle of "The Bird Has Flown" are downright scary. This "DP 30 : Very Best Of" does a very good job taking songs from the wide catalog of Purple's albums over the years, but some albums were passed on - "Made In Japan" (and several other live albums), "House Of Blue Light", "The Battle Rages On"... and "Bananas (2003), "Rapture Of The Deep" (2006) released after the fact. No representation from one of the best live rock albums of the 1970's ("Made In Japan") is simply wrong. DP was always a great band live and there should have been at least 1 live track here. Several songs are missing - the most critical being - "Space Truckin'", "Mistreated", and "The Mule"; as well as some other deserving songs like ""Spanish Archer", "Anya", "Sail Away", "Lick It Up", "You Fool No One", and "Lazy". Utilize the space - between the 2 discs there is 22 unused minutes. OVERALL: "30" represents an excellent mix of Deep Purple tracks despite a few minor things wrong (and what compilation is perfect?). I firmly believe this is their best compilation to date - too bad it's now considerd an import. Lots of music from a legendary band, digitally remastered sound, classic Deep Purple songs (5 stars).



4. If all you're looking for a good place to start?, this is a very good Deep Purple greatest hits collection.
   
   I would say that this is by far you're best bet when it comes to a single disc hits package. It has classic purple as well as some of the newer stuff with Mr. Morse on guitar. It also sounds far superior to any of the other hits packages out there I've heard so far. Most of the bigger hits are found on here and for what it is, it's pretty darn good.
   
   Is it missing stuff?, you bet it is, lots of really good stuff like Lazy, Maybe I'm a Leo, Knocking At Your Back Door, The Mule, Space Trucking? etc, but it's still the best single disc yet!



5. Contains almost all standard Deep Purple listening, but for some reason, "Space Trucking" is missing! I understand including "You Keep on Moving" to represent Mk 4, but seriously, which would you rather have? Nothing against Bolin though. I'm disappointed that no best of compilation has included "Mistreated," which is often overlooked. Everything else is good. A good way to get started on Deep Purple, along with Made in Japan, Machine Head, and Burn.

5 comments about Stay Awhile/I Only Want To Be With You.

1. When one looks back on Dusty Springfield's momentous career, it still remains odd that she originally started out as simply Mary O'Brien in a group called the Springfields singing wholesome folk music. Indeed, their version of "Silver Threads & Golden Needles" was a huge hit, and certainly enough to build a career on. But supposedly when the group toured America, Mary was fascinated by the sounds of Motown & soul music, so much that she decided to change her singing style & go solo, keeping her Springfields stage name for the ride.
   
   Of course, even in the middle of a very liberal decade like the 1960s, the idea of a White singer singing soul music was an oddity & likely not very commercial. So instead Dusty simply decided to use her new style on the latest pop music of the time, giving them a lot more life & spice than they otherwise would have had from other singers. The 1960s was also the decade in which the album went from expensive novelty to the primary form of creative expression for artists, but in 1964, that transition was still in its early stages. Most often, albums were showcases for singles & some similarly-recorded filler. Dusty's early albums followed this format, and just from its title STAY AWHILE/I ONLY WANT TO BE WITH YOU, it was clear which songs were intended to push the album's sales. However, even with the latest pop material being given the Dusty treatment, it is nevertheless interesting to see just how well she succeeds at inhabiting songs made famous by others while at the same time turning two originals into her own.
   
   Yes, "I Only Want To Be With You" was the song that shot Dusty into the world pop stratosphere (reaching #4 in England, #12 in America), and it had all the hallmarks of a surefire hit, circa 1964: a good danceable beat, an enthusiastic vocal delivery & a chorus that would not leave your head even if you tried. However, while the song could have been recorded by any female singer & turned into just another run-of-the-mill girl-group hit, Dusty's fuller-bodied vocal leant it the right amount of soul one can expect from a White female. It has been covered countless times in the decades since, but it is safe to say the song remains Dusty's to the end.
   
   If you thought "I Only Want To Be With You" was a perfect pop song, "Stay Awhile" at least showed how to continue the formula successfully. Coming from the same writers of the former, "Stay Awhile" leans a little more towards the Wall Of Sound side of things with enough of a pounding backbeat & sweeping orchestra to make Phil Spector wonder if he had not recorded this song himself with the Ronettes or the Crystals. While not quite the opening salvo that was its predecessor (#13 U.K., #38 U.S.), it still packs quite a punch for a song just under 2 minutes.
   
   Naturally, those were the two songs the album set out to promote first & foremost (at least in America, while the British had an album called A GIRL CALLED DUSTY with which to first acquaint themselves with Dusty), but that did not mean the contemporary pop standards was one throwaway after another, since an artist like Dusty, who relied on material to be written for her, naturally had to turn to what was on the radio for songs to record. I am not sure if Dusty found Burt Bacharach, or vice versa, but just as he & Hal David were making Dionne Warwick into the living embodiment of their musical vision in America, Dusty began doing the same for her British audiences. "Wishin' & Hopin'" showed that Dusty could do more than just uptempo pop confections by slowing the beat down without sacrificing it altogether. Even with women's lib on the rise in the mid-1960s, such musical advice to women on how to snare a man was still commonplace, but where time has rendered most of these songs utterly sexist, Dusty's in-control delivery on this song hints at a more female-empowerment message. In other words, use your intuition to get your man, do not play hard to get. Only released as a single in America, it became Dusty's first top 10 hit (#6), and indicated just how far her creative range could extend.
   
   Dusty takes on two other Bacharach songs with "Anyone Who Had A Heart" (a not half-bad try at a Dionne impression) & "24 Hours From Tulsa" (which lends a unique female perspective on a song that Gene Pitney had made a hit). From there, the pop covers are just a matter of which one you listen to. The Shirelles' "Mama Said" is a good example of keeping the original beat & rhythm of a proven song, but just falling short of outright plagiarism. All there is to distinguish it is the fact that Dusty is the one singing. Charlie & Inez Foxx's "Mockingbird" may have sounded like a cute idea at the time, but it shows that even Dusty is not immune to artistic stumbling with a song that sounds good while playing, but leaves little impression after it is over.
   
   "When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes" is primarily known as The Supremes' first top 40 hit in America, but Dusty manages to create a winner for herself even while maintaining the note-for-note reproduction of most of the album's covers. It is Dusty's soulfulness & enthusiasm that wins the day. The same works for "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" (a better attempt at a Shirelles cover), Arthur Alexander's "Every Day I Have To Cry" & most especially Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me" (finally a White woman who can give this proto-feminist standard the kind of fire & brimstone it needed).
   
   For someone who had to keep her ear to the ground for the hottest pop songs on the scene, Dusty still proved she was game at trying to write herself. "Something Special" is actually surprisingly well done for a first original song, and it makes one wonder why Dusty did not explore songwriting that much afterwards. But I suppose that can be chalked up to the interview in the liner notes where Dusty said she can "only write occasionally & very slowly."
   
   The CD version of STAY AWHILE comes with three bonus tracks that did not make it onto the album for whatever reason. "Baby Don't You Know" & "If It Hadn't Been For You" are rather similar in sound & content, but they again show that Dusty was about more than uptempo dance-pop. Give her a chance, and she can make you feel loved. The former was released as a B-side, while the latter was canned until decades later. "Standing In The Need Of Love" is a traditional number that continues the "I Only Want To Be With You" formula, and maybe the reason it did not see the light of day at the time was because of that similarity. After two uptempo hits in a row, Dusty may have felt it was time to move on; hence, the slower, more romantic "Wishin' & Hopin'."
   
   While singles still had plenty of clout in the pop music of the mid-1960s, the commercial viability of albums was also being discovered, even if the idea of a fully-cohesive work was still in its infancy (we were still a year or two from RUBBER SOUL, REVOLVER & PET SOUNDS, and 5 from Dusty's first truly-cohesive album DUSTY IN MEMPHIS). Even after that, the old singles-and-filler format never really went away, and would be a Dusty album staple well into later part of the decade. But while finding what contemporary pop song suited her best would be a target-shooting proposition for her for the first few years of her career, STAY AWHILE even at its bum moments proves that Dusty can be more than just as good as her last single.



2. You will hear something on this album that you will never, ever hear on any other Dusty Springfield solo album. Dusty goes off-key at about 1:15 into "Anyone Who Had A Heart". It's amazing that this was released with that flaw considering Dust was an obsessive perfectionist when it came to her music. Albeit, she was very young and this was her first U.S. album, Dusty always had a gift for singing the nearly-impossible to sing Burt Bacharach song. In fact, from this writer's point of view, only Dusty & Dionne could do justice to those musically complex songs .
   
   The other songs on the album are Dusty's Top 40 hits from the mid-60's when she reigned as the one and only true Queen Of Pop! While her voice matured with her later, more sophisticated musical endeavors such as "Dusty In Memphis"(the Masterpiece) and "Brand New Me", the raw innocence and notable promise of the great things that were to come a little later make this album a "must have" for any Dusty Springfield fan of any age. She was simply the best pop singer of that era when pop singers were coming out of the woodwork.
   
   We lost Dusty way too soon. Thankfully, she left us with her gift of music.



3. After hearing Dusty sing "Every Day I Have To Cry" on England's TV show "Ready, Steady,Go" I knew I had to have this on CD. Steve Alaimo's original sounds so much better when Dusty sings it. The track is full stereo and wonderful. Most CD's have cuts that you file under delete but not this one. There are no clunkers on this CD. Let's face it. No one can do "Mama Said" like the Shirelles" but Dusty did a credible job. Her performance of "Anyone Who Had A Heart" was excellent. If you like Dusty Springfield you will treasure this CD.



4. Dusty Springfield is often thought of at her best in the soulful ballad genre and whilst I do not disagree with that point it is often forgotten what a great sixties pop star she was in the fast beat style. This album is a great reminder of her early days. As well as her famous early hits there is the classic recording of 24 Hours from Tulsa where she really sings not just the words but the emotion as well and is a real treasure. The other great track is Anyone Who Had a Heart where this song really comes to life compared to the version by Cilla Black which made number 1 in the UK. For anyone who wants to understand why Dusty was such a great star should listen to these tracks. Even the most banal numbers are sung with conviction and the unique Dusty sound is ever present.



5. This is a reissue of Dusty's fab first U.S. album from 1964. This album has her hits "I Only Want to Be with You", "Stay Awhile" and "Wishin' and Hopin", but also has two more classics: Dusty's versions of "24 Hours from Tulsa" and "Anyone Who Had a Heart"-this last song here is as powerful as any she sang. Listen and see why.Dusty rules! A great voice and a great album!

No comments about Beat, Beat, Beat, Vol. 2: Fab Gear -- More Mop Top Rarities.

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No comments about Georgie Does His Thing with Strings.

5 comments about The Best of the Moody Blues.

1. I THOUGHT THAT THIS WOULD BE HARD TO FIND. EASILY FOUND, ARRIVED IN A TIMELY MANNER. LOOKING FOREWARD TO DOING BUSINESS WITH THIS SELLER AGAIN.



2. It can be frustrating when you want to buy a 'best of' collection from one of your favorite recording artists and there are several to chose from. You want one that contains all of your favorite songs, but has the right blend of early, middle, and late material. "The Best Of The Moody Blues" is such a collection. It contains songs from nearly every point along their long and successful recording career. For those of us who are 'baby boomer' age, listening to this collection of songs is like taking a trip back in time. There are even some songs that are not exactly Moody Blues songs, like "Forever Autumn" (from the musical "War of the Worlds") sung by Justin Hayward, and "Blue Guitar" from a Justin Hayward / John Lodge collaboration during a period of time when The Moody Blues was inactive. My only complaint about this collection is the inclusion of their first UK hit "Go Now", which most Americans will not remember, and the exclusion of the song "You and Me". Aside from that, this is a great collection of their music and it deserves a space in your collection.



3. If you love The Moody Blues and you are a fan of great music, get this album.
   
   Enough said.



4. I got this CD by my own mistake. I meant to get another Moody Blues CD. So I gave this CD to a friend. When I called him up, he was listening to it. And He told me, "Thanks alot. I love this CD. I just love the Moody Blues!" It's a compilation of some of their earlier works. None of their newer stuff is on it.



5. As a die-hard Moody Blues fan, this is a good compilation that includes some of their earlier works as well as the more familiar and favourite hits for which they are associated. Well worth the purchase.

2 comments about La Beat en Francais.

1. Not only is this CD jammed packed with tunes, but they are mainly all good (2 1/2 bad tracks out of 50 is amazing!). You get a feel for Petula's French stuff and it is eye-opening. She had so many hits and they're all for our enjoyment. I cannot recommend this CD enough.



2. This is an excellent compilation of Petula's French recordings. It concentrates almost exclusively on her uptempo rocking songs, the exception being Un enfant, so anybody looking for her romantic songs should look elsewhere. Among the uptempo songs, there is one very obvious omission - Dans le temps (Downtown). So if you want a French greatest hits, Ses plus belles chansons is still the strongest collection available at the time of this review.
   
   So what songs are here? There are French versions of Nobody I know, Hello Mary Lou, No go showboat, I know a place, A sign of the times, Round every corner, Gotta tell the world, A well respected man, Time for love, Please please me, Second fiddle girl, They call my guy a tiger, What do you want?, Save the last dance for me, Heart, Dance with me, Needles and pins, Calendar girl, She's a fool, Dance on, Judy Judy Judy, It's party time, You're the one, Hold on to what you've got, My love, This is goodbye, Foot tapper, Where do you go?, Cottonfields (a #1 hit for her in Singapore, this is a briiliant recording - I've heard many great versions of this song, but none better than Petula's - - pity she didn't do an English version), Anyone who had a heart and There goes my love there goes my life, also Ya ya twist (a translation of a Lee Dorsey song which was a #1 hit for her in France) and many other excellent songs. Many of these songs were never recorded by Petula in English.
   
   I hope enough people buy this compilation to encourage the record company to release another 50 of her French tracks, this time concentrating on the ballads, although anybody who wants a comprehensive collection of her French recordings should go for the Anthologie series (nine volumes so far, with enough songs left for at least a tenth volume).
   
   To sum up, this collection of songs shows that Petula could rock and roll with the best. You don't need to understand French to enjoy this collection - enough of the songs will be familiar to you already in their English language versions. Buy now - you won't regret it.

4 comments about Herman's Hermits - Greatest Hits.

1. I have this herman's hermits collection on cassette.I bought it at a record store a few years ago i think. The songs on this herman's hermits collection are not the original recordings but are the original artists . I would say that i like this album even though there not the original songs. Because it's still music i would recomend you buy this album even though there not the original songs. Original hits are better but this album is good too.



2. I recently tried to listen to this album and was sickened to hear that it is horrible rerecordings and not the original hits that I have heard on the oldies radio stations and it doesn't even sound like Herman's Hermits, I'm just so glad that I didn't buy this and the person I know who did was at least lucky that she got it at a garage sale and didn't pay too much for it. I have listened to rerecordings that were good but this one is lousy!



3. I accidentally bought this at a record store, thinking I was getting a good deal. It was actually re-recordings of very poor quality. Do NOT buy this. At least I was able to get my money back. Lesson, if it seems to good to be true...... I think Amazon would help its customers if they could clearly specify which cd's are original recordings and which are remakes. In fact, even better, don't sell this stuff.



4. This record company is obviously just out for your buck. The CD itself is defective, with severely messed up tracks, tracks starting after a song has begun, etc. To add insult to injury, the songs are not even the original hits--they're completely rerecorded! The singing is awful, and the bass has been strangely enhanced, and nothing sounds right. These aren't the hits you know & love.