Customer Reviews

James Gang - 15 Greatest Hits

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I've been a James Gang fan since the early 70s, and I still think Joe Walsh's work in that group rivals anything he's ever done on his own or with the Eagles. "Walk Away," "Funk #49," "Midnight Man," and "The Bomber" are all classics to me. Walsh, of course, has always been the consummate rock guitarist, and Jim Fox, with all his jazz technique, was one of the best rock drummers ever.

"The Bomber," a medley consisting of "Closet Queen" (the lyrics of which describe a nightmarish situation for a teenage boy) and "Cast Your Fate to the Wind," used to have an intervening quotation from "Bolero," which explains the "Bolero" beat behind "Cast Your Fate to the Wind." I bring it up because "Bolero" ended with some great guitar chords that made an extremely effective lead-in to "Cast Your Fate to the Wind." Why "Bolero" was removed from the me! dley in later pressings of "The Bomber" is something I can't understand, but anyone familiar with the tune will know what I'm talking about.

However, my favorite James Gang song will always be "Tend My Garden," with its lovely organ part, bouncy guitar rhythms (which later heavily influenced Boston in "More Than a Feeling"), and emotional guitar solo. For years it was my favorite song, and it's still greatly appealing to me.

15 GREATEST HITS (my copy says 16 GREATEST HITS) is a great anthology of the best moments by one of the premier American hard rock acts of the 70s. It opens with the one-two punch of "Walk Away" and "Funk #49", and then moves on to the epic rock suite "The Bomber", before moving through a series of diverse rockers and ballads that you never quite get to the bottom of. If you get this and THE JAMES GANG RIDES AGAIN, you have the essential James Gang library.

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.

I ordered the item pictured but that is not what the seller sent me. And, in what the seller did send, they included a hand-made cover. I returned it right away even though the seller wasn't exactly ... reasonable.

Had I gotten what I ordered, I am sure that I would have given it top ratings. This is one of my favorite CDs.

This older hits package has the version of "The Bomber" that only has "Closet Queen" and "Cast Your Fate To The Wind". That is a PLUS to me because I don't like the newer remastered versions of this song that contain Ravel's "Bolero" between these two other parts of the medley. The crescendo achieved at the end of "Closet Queen" that transitions into "Cast Your Fate" is remarkable and for me is THE BEST James Gang moment EVER. The addition of "Bolero" only slows this down to almost a dirge. I know this is how it was originally recorded but IMO this is a case where I think the shorter medley works better. Only trouble is, this is on an older generation CD and the sound quality is a little muddier and volume is certainly lower that the remastered CDs. Doubt if we will ever get a remastered version of this song without "Bolero" however.

Advance apologia for the "seedy" summary; James Gang had however been hailed by critics as a forerunner of what rock would become in the decade to follow. Pre-cogniscent man! The Eagles became mega stars, and these early jams persevere as evidence to the greatness that lay ahead (more misogyny?). "Walk Away" remains a touchstone work of classic rock.