Customer Reviews

Greatest of

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a very satisfactory collection of The Guess Who's hit recordings, highlighted by the extended version of American Woman and the classic Clap for the Wolfman. The mastering is excellent. The only drawback is that a few of the group's popular earlier efforts, must notably, No Sugar Tonight, are missing. For a truly good collection of Guess Who hits, add both this disc and the Best of the Guess Who to your collection.

THE GUESS WHO-GREATEST OF THE GUESS WHO: Stupendous Mad magazine caricaturist Jack Davis' hilarious cartoon cover notwithstanding, this is not the BEST Guess Who anthology bucks can buy, but will suffice for the casual fan who won't mind (or possibly notice) a couple of missing classics. The Canadian supergroup's signature biggies, including put-down anthem AMERICAN WOMAN, melancholy slow dancer THESE EYES, and boot-stomper NO TIME, all penned by Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings, are the bedrock of the Guess Who's early popularity. After Bachman departed to form the equally successful Bachman-Turner Overdrive, the hits kept on comin' for a while, including campy novelty CLAP FOR THE WOLFMAN, and the intectious pop single STAR BABY. If you're wondering what those missing songs are, they're good un's...the NO SUGAR TONIHT/NEW MOTHER NATURE medley, and hopeful hymn SHARE THE LAND to name a couple. Even without 'em, THE GREATEST OF THE GUESS WHO comes reasonably close to truth in advertising.

RATING: FOUR STARS, BABY

The late 70's complation "The Greatest of the Guess Who" would make a fine introduction to the music of the Guess Who. It contains such hits as Undone, No Time, American Woman, and These Eyes. As well as a handfull of lesser known tracks. The Greatest of the Guess Who is good, but it is missing two songs that pop into my head when I think of The Guess Who, "No Sugar Tonight" and "Share the Land". The Greatest of the Guess Who is a good buy, but I would recommend getting a second cd of The Guess Who to fill in the gaps.

All the songs are good, and there are some rare ones like "Clap for the Wolfman". Of course, "American Woman" is superb! But the gaping hole in this album is the lack of "No Sugar Tonight". Arg!

This disc contains most of the Guess Who's hits, it's not really a bad disc. It's got the extended version of "American Woman" with the acoustic beginning, it's got the classic "Clap For The Wolfman" and a song I was happy to see "Albert Flasher". What I would change about it to possibly make it better would be to add "No Sugar Tonight" and to add the original version of "Shakin' All Over" instead of the track "When The Band Was Singin' Shakin' All Over". Other than this it's a good collection of Guess Who hits.

I bought this in the mid 80's when most of us were starving for our favorite bands and would by anything we could get our hands on. That is the ONLY reason this became a part of my collection.

The tracks are badly mastered; noisy and thin. Albert Flasher, which never appeared on a studio album, is mastered slightly fast here, which puts it in a micro-key, or a note that exists between tones on the 12 tone scale. That is no crime, I suppose, unless you want to play guitar along with it. It just shows careless, shoddy work that reveals a disrespect for these wonderful songs and this superb band. Further the silly red band on the cover shows that the record company couldn't even be bothered to reconfigure the ( wretched, IMHO ) original cover properly to fit the scale of the CD case.

Thankfully, these songs were soon available with better mastering and better art work, and eventually the entire GW catalog will be in our hands in it's 24bit/96Khz glory. Most of it is already, so don't waste your time with these silly singles collections. GW was a band who's wit, songwriting chops, instrumental punch and charm were administered in tanker-sized proportions on American Woman, Wheatfield Soul, Share The Land, So Long Bannatyne, Rockin' and especially Live At The Paramount, their biggest selling and most adventurous release.

If you are a wise music consumer, and if you like even a couple of the botched masters on this regrettable disc, just save your coins and get the albums I mentioned. You will not regret it. No one I have recommended these to, in 27 years as a musician and music writer, ever has !

This CD is a good overview of the Guess Who. However, it just misses too many good songs to be your best choice for a Guess Who collection. I much prefer either "The Guess Who - Greatest Hits" or "Guess Who - 36 All-Time Greatest Hits," though the latter collection is getting hard to find.

Some of the Guess Who's pop combined the mellow vocals of Bread with the more frenetic music of artists like Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. "These Eyes," "Laughing," and "Undun" all have these similar characteristics. However, this group had a range of musical styles well beyond these mellow songs. The faster pace of "No Time" and "American Woman" suggested the later, much faster paced music of Bachman Turner Overdrive, aka B.T.O, which would be formed but a few years down the road led by the efforts of Randy Bachman.

After Randy left the group, the Guess Who's music changed. The slower pace and peace and love feel of "Hand Me Down World" and similar music was quite a contrast to the Bachman years. This song in particular was a late entry into a class of music that was passe by 1970.

As the Guess Who lost their popular status they experimented with their music even more, with uneven results over the next few years. 1971s "Albert Flasher" is another rocker with a strong piano track that anticipates 10cc's music a few years down the road.

The last four songs seem to be attempts to move the Guess Who back into the direction from whence they originally came. "Clap for the Wolfman" is the best of these songs. An excellent tribute to disc jockey Wolfman Jack, this song uses the technique of speaking and singing. The suggestion of late 50s and early 60s music updated to 1974 made this song a winner and very popular for the time; one of The Guess Who's last successful efforts before their 1975 breakup.

The Guess Who ultimately became a victim of time. Their music was very mainstream and popular when it first came out. Their attempts to keep up with trends in the early 70s became less and less effective, and eventually the group must have realized that it was over. However, when the Guess Who was at their peak, and did the songs for which they were known, they were among the best groups of the day. Ultimately, they were followers, and not leaders, and when the leaders moved faster than they could follow, the Guess Who got left behind.

If you must have a greatest hits album get "The Best of The Guess Who." At least that is a brilliant collection. The Wheatfield Soul/Artificial Paradise album has far more brilliant moments.

Great songs by these witty, bluesy folks from Saskatoon, lots of their best and most popular songs, but this early CD quality of 1987 does not sound very good. Obtain the original recordings or later versions of this clever, happy, very musical group.

This is an album released in 1977, and it just has 12 songs due to the time limit of a vinyl. The guess who has lots of great songs, and it's a shame that not too many were included in this collection; but boy this album rocked my teen years.