Customer Reviews

Original Bad Company Anthology

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Bad Company was the band Paul Rodgers formed after the breakup of the highly underrated band Free and his decision to decline the invitation to join Deep Purple. This 2 cd set contains music from only the original line up (not the mid eighties line up without Rodgers) with the addition of four new tracks by the original members. The original line up consisted of Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke from Free, Mick Ralphs on guitar from Mott The Hoople, and Boz Burrell on bass from King Crimson. The band was a supergroup of sorts. The band's music was much more commercial and less blues oriented than that of Free. Bad Company's music also had a more polished, less chaotic feel than that of either Mott The Hoople or King Crimson. Rodgers was in excellent form while Ralph's guitar playing while not flashy was economical. Kirke was always a powerhouse drummer while Burrell's bass playing was solid.

The band gained immmediate acceptance when they hired Peter Grant of Led Zeppelin fame to manage them and released their first and best lp "Bad Company" on Led Zeppelin's own Swan Song label. This lp contained many of Bad Company's best songs such as "Can't Get Enough", "Rock Steady" "Movin' On" "Bad Company" and "Ready For Love" which Ralphs originally wrote while in Mott The Hoople. Other familiar cuts include "Feel Like Makin' Love", "Shooting Star" and "Rock And Roll Fantasy". The set also contains a few rarities such as alternate takes, unissued tracks, and a few non-lp b-sides like "Little Miss Fortune" and "Easy On My Soul" which was originally written by Rodgers while in Free. The four new tracks sound like classic Bad Company with a slightly more updated sound. Some personal favorites include "Good Lovin' Gone Bad" and "Burnin' Sky" among others.

There are a few reasons why I did not give this set a definitive 5 star rating. The first reason is the disk length. The first disk is approximately 66 minutes while the second disk is around 71 minutes. This extra time could have been used to add such essential cuts as "Live For The Music", "Young Blood", "Gone Gone Gone", and "Electric Land." However, this remastered set is the most representative anthology available for the hugely popular Bad Company. It also provides a good summation their sometimes erratic albums. Fans of Paul Rodgers and seventies era arena rock will find much to savor.

Unless you're a very devoted fan, this is pretty much all you'll ever need from Bad Company.
"The Original Bad Co. Anthology" collects twenty-three of their best singles and album tracks. It draws from all their records, yet the compilers have wisely chosen to lean heavily towards the group's first two albums, which were also their best.

Their eponymous debut album is represented by no fewer than six tracks (out of eight!), and five are culled from "Straight Shooter". Elektra Records have even managed to find two pretty good songs from the awful "Rough Diamonds" album, and it's actually very hard to find anything to say against the track selection, which is one of the best and most thorough I've ever seen.

Six B-sides and unissued songs are also included, as well as four brand new songs which make their debut here...and believe it or not, they're really good!
Most of this is lean, mid-tempo rock music, bordering on hard rock. Bad Company had the ability to combine cruchy hard-rock riffs with great melodies, and they had a magnficent front man in Paul Rodgers, and a fine lead guitarist in Mick Ralphs.

This music is somewhat less bluesy and more mainstream than Paul Rodgers' previous band, Free, but it has a timeless sound that makes you wonder just why Bad Company ended up being lumped in with all the stale 70s rock dinosaurs, and all but forgotten in later years. They certainly deserve better, as this collection demonstrates.

Highlights include the slow, groovy rockers "Ready For Love" and "Feel Like Makin' Love", the tough, guitar-driven (but exquisitely melodious) "Movin' On" and "Rock And Roll Fantasy", the ballad "Shooting Star", the bluesy hard rock of "Deal With The Preacher" and "Rock Steady", and Bad Company's remake of Paul Rodgers' "Easy On My Soul", in a funky rendition that blows the Free version out of the water.
And the new tracks! Well, it's such a rare thing for a thirty-year old band to come up with truly credibly new material, but just listen to the swaggering blues-rock number "Tracking Down A Runaway" and the blustery rocker "Hey, Hey". They won't take the place of "Ready For Love", sure, but they're really good.

Almost everything is worth a listen, actually, even though the material on the first CD is slightly stronger than on the second.
"The Original Bad Co. Anthology" is a fine collection for the fan who wants a little more - and it virtually eliminates the need to pick up the group's original albums.
4 1/4 stars - definitely recommended.

Where in the heck are some of their other best songs? One of the best (if not THE best) songs they recorded was LIVE FOR THE MUSIC, which is not present on ANTHOLOGY. Some other great missing tracks include: SIMPLE MAN; SWEET LIL' SISTER; CRAZY CIRCLES; GONE, GONE, GONE; LONELY FOR YOUR LOVE; ELECTRIC LAND; PAINTED FACE. With a total running time of less than 138 minutes on ANTHOLOGY, they EASILY could have added just about all of the above tracks, and even left out some that they did put on ANTHOLOGY. Do like I did and copy all the remaining tracks on their first 6 CDs, that are not on ANTHOLOGY to 2 CD-R's and file next to your original of ANTHOLOGY. Now that is a great collection...

Over all a pretty good selection of tunes here, but they are missing some essentials in my book. It is nice to hear some of the 'previously unreleased' songs, but do you ever wonder why they didn't release them at the time they wrote the songs - because typically they weren't all that strong. There are one or two pretty good 'unreleased' songs here ("Hey Hey" and "Superstar Woman"), but the rest are below average. Classic songs missing are: "Live for the Music", "Simple Man", "Sweet Lil Sister", "Crazy Cirlces" and "Morning Sun" (a gem from their weakest album 'Burning Sky'). They hit all the good tunes from their first two releases on 'Anthology', but disc 2 is wildly inconsistent. If you are just getting into this 1970-80's classic rock band, this is a good place to start. If you want their best album or two, start with their first, "Bad Co", or second "Straight Shooter".

I absolutley love this collection. I grew up with my mom blasting this on the stereo and we would dance all around. Plus my brother and I played a mean air guitar! From "Can't get enough" to "Feel like makin' love" you have it all. My personal favorites is "Seagull and Silver, Blue and Gold" Buy this if you are a classic rock fan it rocks!

There'a warning on the cover: this is a compilation of the "classic" Bad Co. lineup (Burrell/Kirke/Ralphs/Rodgers), dubbed as the "original" band. And to make the point, the cover resembles the one of their very first LP. So, forget to find tracks of the Brian Howe era (1986 and beyond), this only goes from 1974 to 1982, plus 4 new tracks recorded in 1998 (what a hook!).
Anyway, the compilation is by far superior than the 10 FROM 6 edited a long time ago, curiously by the time the band was coming back in the mid-80's with a different lineup. Here you have plenty of the classic tunes and popular album tracks; 3/4 of their self-titled debut album is included; 3 songs from the BURNIN' SKY LP say "present" here (not even one song from that album appeared on the previous compilation); there's an alternate version of "Do Right By Your Woman"; and what's most interesting, a respectable bunch of B-sides and forgotten tracks have been rescued from the vaults to see the light -and the CD player- again. Of these tracks, the one that shines above them all is "Superstar Woman". I don't understand why it hadn't been included in their debut album, being such a strong song with great melodies, straight drumming and intense piano...
About the 4 new tracks, the lead-off single "Hey, Hey", with its hummable chorus and positive vibe, should be a #1 hit in the charts (as it did in some countries). With its energic guitar intro and cowboy feeling, "Hammer Of Love" is the best of the 4.
And the musicians can still deliver the goods: from Boz Burrell's enhancing bass lines with a heavy sound in the mix, to the exact beats of Simon Kirke, never out of place or overloading the tunes, the fine riffs and licks of Mick Ralphs, and Paul Rodgers' voice, although darkened a bit, is passionate and unmatchable.
I give this double CD a 5 stars rating because it has a lot of virtues that compilations of this kind should imitate: it combines greatest hits with classic non-single tracks, satisfying casual fans; includes non-LP songs, also keeping happy hardcore fans; and the 4 new tracks are the cherry on the cake. And beside the music (which sounds great thanks to the digital mastering), the cardboard that contains the jewel box is cool, and the accompanying booklet is plenty of rare band photos and memorabilia, a family tree, and lyrics of all songs.
Maybe some will complain that there aren't more songs and some unreleased tracks from the DESOLATION ANGELS and ROUGH DIAMONDS albums and recording sessions, but overall I think and feel this double CD is a complete affair.

Next thing we wanna hear and have in our hands is a double CD compilation of The "Other" Bad Company Anthology (1986-1995). Their record company has the word, hear the fans!

Bad Company to me is one step below Led Zepplin, maybe thats why
they used to tour together and be on the same record label. They
are without one of the best rock and roll bands ever, song for
song they can roll them out and they did just that in thier hey
day, they sold gold and platium records when no one else did,
Paul Rogers voice his great and the band played together like
one fine car running on a full tank of gas, no one could match them and many other bands got there sound because of them.
This is all my opinion but who else than, or now ,has sounded as
rough and a real rock and roll band with out teased hair or all the other grab ? if you want a great cd to rock out to and hear
some great songs with hard driving sounds than this is it! , I cut my grass once a week and this is what I cut it to,other bands wish that they could have this many hits and hope after all this time someone still listens to them ,

This compilation was a long time coming, but well worth the wait. The previous Bad Company "hits" compilation simply cannot hold a candle to this Anthology. In addition to the generous helping of 33 songs (compared to the 10 [obviously] tracks on "10 from 6"), the remastering job brings new life to classic tunes such as "Can't Get Enough" and "Feel Like Makin' Love" -- they have never sounded better. On "10 From 6" these tracks all sounded muddy.

I only have one complaint about the mastering -- there is still a fair amount of tape hiss evident, particularly at the beginning of some of the more quiet songs (such as "Rock Steady" and "Bad Company"). I guess that's what can happen when working with recordings almost 30 years old.

Remastering aside, this is still a 4-star collection because of the omission of some of Bad Company's chart hits. With so much extra room on these discs, it's amazing that tracks such as "Young Blood" (which reached #20 on the Pop charts in 1976) and "Gone, Gone, Gone" (which reached #56 in 1979) were left off. In fact, 2 tracks from "10 From 6" are missing (the excellent "Live For The Music" and "Electricland"), yet were definitely worthy of inclusion.

Finally, as the title "Original Bad Company Anthology" implies, this set includes tracks only from the Paul Rodgers days. Bad Company fans from the late 1980s and early 1990s will be disappointed to learn that there are no tracks from "Dangerous Age", "Holy Water" or "Here Comes Trouble", when the band was arguably at the height of its commercial popularity. The tunes on these discs also deserve a remastering job -- and I remain hopeful that a "Second Generation Bad Company Anthology" containing tracks from the Brian Howe years is forthcoming.

For now, this the best that you can get of Bad Company. Unless, of course, you are a huge fan of the group -- in which case you probably have all of the original albums which were remastered in 1994. Happy listening!

This is a fairly comprehensive box set. Bad Company was a very good band from the Seventies. Except for the strange ommission of Youngblood and possibly Crazy Circles, all the essential hits are here. I would have preferred to have a few more rarities or even alternative versions included on this compilation. A couple of Free or Mott The Hoople traacks would have been nice isntead of some of the shlock from Rough Diamonds. The new tracks are pretty good but don't compare to classics such as Shooting Star, Burning Sky, Movin On, and others. Despite a few ares of criticism, this is a comprehensive collection for most fans of the band.

The single-disc 10 from 6 has the major Bad Company hits PLUS "Electric Land," one of their strongest songs. Come on, folks...how do you start with TWO CDs as your blank canvas and exclude a song as strong as "Electric Land?"

This collection was a bit of a reconciliatory gesture among the band members...Paul Rodgers, in particular (after years of a Rodgers-less BadCo cleaning up on the tour circuit) made a lot of noise about the purity of the "original" band. So how did he follow up on that?

He did the In Concert: Merchants of Cool DVD and CD with Dave "Bucket" Colwell on guitar in place of Mick Ralphs and Jaz Lochrie on bass in place of Boz Burrell.

So much for principles. And don't even get me started on the Queen thing.

Get "10 from 6." It's all the Bad Company you'll ever need, and it costs less..."all killer, no filler."