Greatest Hits

All | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 23, 1999)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Owned & Operated
• ASIN: B00000IAC4
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #156,172 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

"If ever there was a long-overdue compilation, this is it. As a singles band, ALL is one of the greats, with a long string of some of the best pop-punk tunes since, well, The Descendents ... the band's finest moments, a sonic resume impressive by anyone's standards, are finally collected and packaged in an easily accessible album." - AVERSION

"Manic energy and highly melodic thrash tunes recall Hüsker Dü in their heyday. Modern rockers will ignore this industrial-strength punkola at their own risk." - BILLBOARD

"This Descendents offshoot finds ALL spouting off about the ALL philosophy, featuring punk-pop odes to sexual abstinence [and] heartbreak ... contains enough pop hooks to win over the most jaded listener." - ALL MUSIC GUIDE

"ALL and its predecessor, The Descendents, had been playing the same kind of tuneful, high-powered punk-pop since 1978, recording on independent labels and building a cult-size following ... at Irving Plaza, it packed thirty-one songs into a seventy-five-minute set, driven by Stephen Egerton's fast-strummed power chords, Karl Alvarez's brisk bass lines, and Bill Stevenson's crisply vociferous drumming ... the set included bright, concise songs echoing the Ramones; longer-lined tunes akin to early Beatles; dissonant bursts of hardcore, muscular folk-rock; [and] even a few heavy-metal riffs, using the formulas of classic three-minute pop to keep everything catchy." - NY TIMES

A best of?! Originally released in 1999, Greatest Hits?! features twenty-two songs picked by the fans and remixed by the band. Includes a full-color sixteen-page booklet with rare photos illustrating the immense history of ALL.

Milo Aukerman went to college, and ALL was born. Rather than quietly lay down their tools and fade into legend, Bill Stevenson, Stephen Egerton, and Karl Alvarez formed an offshoot band from the Descendents called ALL. The band first enlisted singer Dave Smalley, then Scott Reynolds, and finally current singer Chad Price. Although ALL is mostly made up of members of the Descendents, and most of the songs are written by people in both bands, few can deny that ALL has its own distinct sound while still letting the Descendents bleed through.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars definitive collection of the greatest band on the planet, March 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Greatest Hits (Audio CD)

almost an hour of music spanning 3 singers and 10 years. the perfect cd to listen to while tearing it up on a bicycle. a collection that was put together by fans voting on their website, not a loser in the bunch. subjects covered include rejection, love, genetics, societal stereotypes, food, coffee, pet frogs, and history. once you buy this, you will be unable to resist their complete discography.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ALL?!, January 10, 2009

By 

N. Kent (Port St. Lucie, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Greatest Hits (Audio CD)

I'll try to keep this short. ALL's greatest hits disc is probably the absolute best that there is-period. The stand out track(no question about it) is "scary sad." If you're a fan of older mxpx, the ataris, and(duh) the descendents than order this NOW!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insert dumb "All" related pun here...., July 21, 2009

By 

Chach (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Greatest Hits (Audio CD)

I've been listening to this album a lot, even though I have all their actual albums. It's so different from most "remastering" jobs. Usually the difference in sound is subtle enough that you can't tell exactly what they did but it sounds more punched up, a little louder, maybe more bottom end or high end. With these remasters they sound like rerecording with better (also maybe a bit too high in the mix) guitar sounds. That's because they are. I found that to be an odd choice, and I didn't know that when I got this album, but it's most obvious on Pretty Little Girl - where the chords are just so much denser, and actually an improvement. I'd say this is a good start, it covers a lot of material [though a couple more Dave Smalley songs woulda been nice - where's "Alfredo's"? (I have trouble believing that "Alfredo's wasn't one of the fan picked top contendors - certainly if "Educated Idiot" made the cut). It isn't very representative of the actual albums though. If someone buys this, and decides to run out and get all their albums (especially the Dave Smalley/Scott Reynold's era ones) they are in for some surprises. Since this is mostly pop, they'll learn the hardway that each album has it's own personality with some very unexpected left turns (the almost glam metal detours on Percolator, the homophobic death metal detours of Pummel, the weird funk/punk/free jazz influenced work outs on their early albums - though Educated Idiot I guess is a good introduction for that), and the fidelity of the guitars, I'm affraid will sound awful if you buy - say - Alroy Sez after hearing the versions on here. The upside though of this introduction is there is still a wealth of great songs on each album too, so it won't be money wasted going out and getting the other albums if you like this - "Sex in the Way", "Alfredo's", "Sugar & Spice", "Don Quixote", "Breathe", "Charligan", "Guilty", "Birthday I.O.U.", "Miranda", "Getting There", "Broken". As well as all of Mass Nerder (the guitar sound is quite similar to the rerecordings here, and mostly covers the pop punk of the majority of the songs on this collection).
There's one other bonus to this - aside from a CD release with the song "Crazy" - is that the rerecording for "Just Like Them" features Milo on vocals - so it's basically a Descendents track in the middle of All. Obviously recorded sometime around Everything Sucks, the recording sounds like almost a B side from that era - and perhaps an improvement on the original.
So those are my 2,000 cents.