Be Excellent To Each Other

Anyone think of any?

Bob Dylan's 'Theme Time Radio Hour' is superb, and a great primer for bluesgrass, rockabilly and that sort of thing. There's my current favourite song on it too, 'Cool Water' by Sons of the Pioneers.

You also can't go wrong with the Songs of a City series, molded to New York, New Orleans, LA etc. There's some excellent stuff on there. For international music, Putmayo have some quality releases for each country though they do have a couple of uninspired offerings.

Best of 'Young America: Motown' compilations are amazing, so I recommend them too. There's a brilliant 'Nam' one as well, featuring music popular with the troops in the warzone. Obvious candidates are there, but some surprise choices too.

At the Drive-In's "This Station Is Non-Operational"

The Roadrunner 'Best Of' series has a few gems if you like early to mid-90's metal.

Oh, and 'Coupled With' by The Wildhearts.

They Might Be Giants' Dial-A-Song, certainly. It contains their (surprisingly not that many in number of) singles, but packs in a load of their best album tracks, B-sides, tracks recorded for soundtracks that weren't available on 'proper' TMBG albums and in the only place to get the epic live version of "She's Actual Size". Animal! Animal! Animal!

The Best of Blur manages not to just be another collection of singles by not including Popscene. It as if the band seemed determined to make sure only the 376 people who bought it as a single (or the people who'd bought the entire limited edition boxset of their singles just to get it) are allowed to listen to it. Meanwhile, Fantastic Plastic Machine's "Les Plus (The Best of)" throws a curveball by including a selection of their best tracks, but only exclusive remixes of them, thus making it either a worthwhile purchase (if you've already got all their albums) or quite annoying (if you haven't got their albums but want to check them out).

My favourite Pixies album is Death To The Pixies, but that might just be because I want to annoy the sort of people who get overly precious about such things.

the very best of the smiths

capsule by ktichen of distinction

The holy bible by manic street preachers ( )

Das Capital - The Songwriting Genius of Luke Haines

New recordings of his best songs.

Yeah, but that was a 'normal' album, wasn't it (albeit the final one to have any meaningful input from Richey Manic)? Or have I messed up the entire meaning of this thread? In which case I'm going to meekly put forward "Behaviour" by the Pet Shop Boys and retire quietly.

Although if you can't afford it, then the Starter's Guide seems to also be quite a nifty compilation.

If anyone has heard of They Might Be Giants, and has ever thought they might be interested, I cannot urge you strongly enough to either buy a best of, or download some of their stuff. Mostly people only know them through birdhouse in Your Soul, or the theme tune to Malcolm in the Middle.

no i was being a bit sarcastic in that I think that album contains all of their best songs.

Except 'Sleepflower'.

I was just meaning albums that have been released as a best of compilation that aren't just compilations of singles. Which they usually are. Why can't they just call them singles collections instead?

Also with TMBG you can probably fit all their singles into about 10 minutes with them being that short so you'd need more to fill the gaps..

Yeah, but with them having such a wealth of brilliance, you could easily claim They're deliberately trying to hide their better songs under some kind of musical rock.
TMBW lists a total of 803(!) songs, with majesty such as Robert Lowell, One Dozen Monkeys and Kiss Me, Son Of God (Alternate Version) criminally tucked away outside the top 200. And that's before live versions or remixes. Essentually, TMBG rocks all of our collective asses.

Stating the obvious perhaps but The Beatles' Blue Album gives a great introduction to their later output.

You know, I look like Jesus, so they say.

Though it may derail the thread somewhat, which is okay because I started it, there's quite a lot of high rated TMBG stuff which I don't care for so much. A lot of it is just too obvious which is WHY PEOPLE SHOULDN'T HAVE THE VOTE. Democracy is overrated. I know what's best for everyone.

Yeah, but would you say "Man, It's So Loud In Here" is really the sixth best TMBG song of the last twenty-five years? And do you think it is correct that "Cyclops Rock" is at 157th on the same list? If so, you're quite wrong, and it is in fact me who should have the ultimate say on what happens to mankind from hereon in. It has guest vocals from Cerys Matthews, for flip's sake!

Whales and Dolphins - The Best of Terrorvision doesn't have too much of their single output on it.

It doesn't have too much of their best stuff either.

Um. As you were. Post count +1, at least.

Fela Kuti - Best of the Black President. Although he didn't ever release singles, so again as you were.

It does have Zombie on it - so remains awesome.

The Divine Comedy's Secret History.

Mostly as it was put out when they'd only 'done' 8 singles, so there's a bunch of other stuff on there.

Isn't that just his singles, though? Looking through the CD booklet, I think I'm right.

The clue's in the thread title.

You might say that you're an absolute beginner when it comes to forums.

I'm now under pressure to try to keep this rubbish joke going.

maybe the one from Nick Cave & the bad seeds. It was my first nick cave album, and i played it much more that almost any other, and i still think it's a good selection of songs

Does "Your New Favourite Band" count?

I reckon so. Used to love The Hives... not so keen on their later stuff.

they were good for the 1st 2 albums. Every song of them sounds the same to me.

Ooh, almost forgot: Baby Bird - Greatest Hits. The last of his self-released limited-to-1000-copies albums, released a few months before BabyBird (then without a space, but with a full band) released their first actual single, Goodnight. It really is good, too. And anyway, albums featuring track titles like "Grandma Begs to Be 18 Again", "Petrol Cigarette" and "KW Jesus TV Roof Appeal" just have to be hunted down and listen to, it's the law.

I'd just like to say that anyone that releases a 'best of' album with 'exclusive brand new tracks' on it is an utter cunt, and shits on the face of their loyal fans.

Yup. Even worse when it's just the one new song on an entire two-disc "best of", which then isn't even available as a single. And there's a special circle of hell reserved for bands who tack on an "exclusive remix" as the extra track.