Customer Reviews

The Definitive Pop Collection

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
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The CD as listed on Amazon.com gets a 4-5 star rating, but beware there is another edition of this compilation that is also 2 discs, but has 16 songs per disc, not 14 on the first and 16 on the second. This sounds like a bonus (2 extra cuts, right?), but missing is the lengthy, notorious "Love Chronicles", as well as ten, yes, ten other songs from earlier in his career. So, beware of the other "Definitive Pop Collection": exact same name , different contents. While, the other version is still decent, it is not nearly as good.

These packages never do justice to the artist. Ultimately you have to get his albums and listen to all the tracks. His masterpeices such as "Carol," "Roads to Moscow," "Valentina Way" (which I saw Al perform live with a full band including Peter White before the Time Passages album was released, and it was incredible), "Sand in your Shoes," "What's Going on," "The Dark and the Rolling Sea," and of course "Modern Times," and on and on - they need to be discovered if the record companies choose not to bundle them in these packages. And these are all accessable tunes, not unlistenable folk prose.
Al surrounded himself with the best musicians, notably Tim Renwick, who is/was one of the best sessionists and also toured with Pink Floyd. For you electric and acoustic guitar enthusiasts, load up MODERN TIMES and crank up the volume and enjoy the guitar virtuosity on just about every track - including incredible solos on the bookending tracks "CAROL" and the title track at the end. If the Rhino edition of Modern Times is still available, read Al's funny story about mixing the title track, AFTER you listen to it.

I bought Rhino's single-CD Greatest Hits last year, mainly out of curiosity--I hadn't heard any of Al's pre-Year of the Cat material before, and as nearly half the tracks were drawn from his first six studio albums, I was naturally curious to hear what they'd sound like. I was pleasantly surprised--those early tracks, especially from Love Chronicles (1969), Zero She Flies (1970), Orange (1972) and Modern Times (1974), had a good deal more edge than the slicker YOTC and Time Passages tracks that were included, and really whetted my appetite for Al's music, which I had rediscovered after hearing A Beach Full of Shells, his 2005 release for the Philly-based Appleseed label (and one I highly recommend).

That said, The Definitive Pop Collection goes into a bit more detail than Greatest Hits, notably reaching beyond Last Days of the Century, Al's 1988 release for Enigma (which also features a young Tori Amos singing backup on some of the tracks), to Between the Wars, one of his releases for the now-defunct Mesa/Bluemoon label, one of three labels to go bankrupt on him (the others being Enigma, which filed Chapter 11 in 1990, and Janus, which went belly-up in 1977 and led to his being signed by Arista). Significantly, it includes all of the tracks on Greatest Hits, plus a few more album cuts from his early releases. For those seeking out a wider selection of Al Stewart's songbook, this should be more satisfying even than Greatest Hits (it includes the title cut from Love Chronicles, notorious for its use of the F-word).

I am a new Al Stewart fan. I just discovered him a few weeks ago, actually. But I really do like him. 'The Definitive Pop Collection' features 2 CDs worth of some of Al's best, and includes mostly everything a casual fan will need, really. Sure, you get 'Year of the Cat' and 'Time Passages' here, but you also get several other gems, including the early 'Bedsitter Images' (from 1967), and 'Lord Grenville' from the classic 1976 album 'Year of the Cat' (where the famous title cut comes from).

This is a great set, and it's very well-compiled. However, if you listen to it, it's been what you might say "over-remastered." Yes, it's loud, and at times it sounds somewhat distorted. Everything has been enhanced somewhat, but too much of something isn't always good, if you know what I mean. Al Stewart is a very talented artist and an incredible songwriter, and should be appreciated. But do yourself a favor and buy an earlier set (c.1993 to 1994) where the remastering was still great, but not overdone like this set.

Overall, if you are a budget minded fan who wants some Al Stewart for their iPod and is not an audophile (which I confess, I am), then 'The Definitive Pop Collection' is all you'll need. You get the bulk of Al's classics on two CDs stuffed with music. If Rhino had done less remastering, this could have been an easy 5 stars. However, as it is, I am going to say this: a million stars for the music, two-and-a-half stars for the remastering. For purposes of Amazon's rating system, let's average this down to about 3.5 stars.

If you are an audophile, try Arista's 1992 'The Best of Al Stewart: Songs from the Radio' (which is the same as an earlier album, 1986's 'The Best of Al Stewart,' but remastered -- and perfectly, might I add), which has a crisp and clear sound that still sounds great today, in 2011. However, that one has been out of print for years, so if you want a readily available Al Stewart compilation, 'The Definitive Pop Collection' should satisfy your needs just fine.

Recommended for a curious Al Stewart fan and a non-audophile.

i`ve gone on to buy most of his catalog,since even the box set lacks many songs that i like.this is the best anthology i`ve found short of buying the box.many of the "definitve(pop,rock,soul)" series of cds are skimpy on the music but this is an exception.a couple of the albums excerpted here are also hard to find,which is why i bought this even though i have nearly all of his albums now.some of the amazon vendors offer this at an extremely low price,which is another plus.