Customer Reviews

Best of Joe Walsh

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Best of Joe Walsh was released back in the days when they never heard of packing a few extra songs onto a greatest hits album. As a result, this skimpy collection contains only nine songs, two of which are redundant if you already own a James Gang anthology album. Four more come from the classic album "So What," which is a better purchase in its own right. That leaves only three cuts from two classic albums, "Barnstorm" and "The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get." Overall, the music here is good. There is just far too little of it.

THE BEST OF JOE WALSH is just that. It features his best 70s cuts, with none of the clutter that affected his later work. "Turn To Stone" features lyrics that seem cautionary and a portent of trouble on the way, and "Rocky Mountain Way" is a sports anthem that still inspires me to set new records for myself in swimming and other exercise. It's missing some good songs like "Tend My Garden", but THE BEST OF JOE WALSH is still a great collection of early Joe Walsh.

1. Funk No. 48
2. Collage
3. Take a Look Around
4. The Bomber
5. Funk No. 49
6. Tend My Garden
7. Ashes, the Rain and I
8. Walk Away
9. Midnight Man
10. Yadig?
11. Mother Says
12. Comin' Down
13. Here We Go
14. Rocky Mountain Way
15. Bookends
16. Meadows
17. Turn to Stone
18. Time Out
Total running time - 77:26

Between Joe Walsh retrospectives and James Gang compilations, there are a plethora of "best of" CD's that have been released thru the decades. This is one of them.

However, strictly from an audio standpoint, all pale to the 1998 Repertoire remastered "Best Of" 2CD collection. This remaster is even superior to the individual MCA 1999 remasters, and the later BGO remasters.

Unfortunately, the Repertoire disc also has the abbreviated "Bomber Medley", which is an enormous sore point for JG fans. Also, Repertoire allotted a major portion of the set to the non-Walsh JG years; only 14 of the 40 tracks are Walsh-era material. I'm sure many JG fans will have their opinions over excluded tracks, but the selections were made with input from Jim Fox, who contributes a song-by-song synopsis of each track in the booklet. There is also probably the best essay on the history of the band of any JG CD ever released.

But what 14 tracks they are; the Repertoire set is the James Gang album you never knew you really wanted. All the muddy sound of the MCA discs is gone; the percussion is clear, the bass thunders and Walsh is there in all his distorted glory.

It's a shame that Repertoire didn't produce individual editions of the first three JG albums, because they would have blown away the lackluster MCA discs. I've heard just about every other JG "best of", and the Repertoire set towers above them all.

Obviously most of the other reviewers are so young that they do not realize that this short, nine-song compact disc is simply a re-issue of Joe Walsh's Greatest Hits that was originally released on VINYL! That's one of those 12" black plastic looking things that maybe your parents have some of. I still have my copy. That's how I recognised the cover. This was released in 1978, and yes it does concentrate on Joe's early '70's period. So quit complaining about how short it is, a long play (LP) record can only fit about 50 minutes of music on it. Just take it for it is. If you're like me, and wanted a wider selection of Joe's work, get the Compact-disc-only version of his Anthology.

Just tack on "Life's Been Good" (if you like that sort of thing).
That'll bring it to ten tracks and more reasonable (ie CD) length.
That song and album were released almost concurrently with this.

The Millenium Collection - 20th Century Masters" series rolls along with this wonderful ten track disc, this time we have "The Best of Joe Walsh". This album is "A Plus" from the very start, with this guitar legend hitting the mark everytime.

Walsh had different priorities than recording "Top Ten Hits", his style and recordings were not built upon a standard issue pop hook, but were always reliable and adventurous with layers of meat rhythm guitar figures. Good example from is "James Gang" tenure (1969-72) "FUNK 49", starts with a brief intentionally out-of-context guitar solo, mixed with exotic yet catchy guitar figure with a heavy rhythm that breaks into a romp in his musical jungle.

Of course there are stand outs - "COUNTY FAIR" a definite classic, and his dirty boogie, the pulsating "ROCKY MOUNTAIN WAY" one of his best, from this "Best of Joe Walsh". Go out and buy it, you'll be glad you did.

Total Time: 47:39 on 10 Tracks