MattA75's Full Review: A Tribute to a Work in Progress: Greatest Hits 199...
At this point, there should be no shock at all when an artist releases a greatest hits or best of package. There just shouldn't be. It's part of the standard record contract, and the artist ends up making a ton of money off of songs that already made him a ton of money in the first place. Don't believe me? Ask Axl Rose how he feels about that Guns N Roses package now that it's been in the top ten for 5 weeks.
But that doesn't mean the greatest hits package is by any means correct. Oh, sure, with some artists (recently, Sheryl Crow's was right on), it actually comes out the way it is supposed to. With others however, fans are left scratching their heads.
A good example of the latter is the Black Crowes 2000 release A Tribute to a Work in Progress. Drawing tracks from the five studio albums the band recorded for American recordings in the 1990s, Tribute is a perfect example of bad track selection, bad track sequencing, and how not to plan out a greatest hits album.
The disc takes 16 tracks and plays them in order of release, meaning all the songs from the band's multiplatinum debut Shake Your Money Maker are up front, while all the songs from the band's 1999 album By Your Side (sales: 320,000) are in back. (For the sake of completion, 2001's Lions was the band's first release for V2 records under a new deal they signed in 2000.)
There were four large singles from Money Maker, and we begin with Jealous Again, what many people consider to be the Crowes' signature song. I don't quite agree, but I can see why it gets consideration. It's a stomping, deep fried southern rock track. There is also the famous Otis Redding cover Hard to Handle, which broke the band through to the mainstream. The gorgeous drug ballad She Talks to Angels and the anthemic arena rock of Twice as Hard complete the foursome.
The band's second album, The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, did not fare nearly as well as Money Maker in terms of sales. It still went double platinum, mostly on the strength of the hit single Remedy, but no other song really managed to catch fire. Only the lilting and uplifting Thorn in My Pride cracked the top 100. And here is where my track selection problem begins.
Bad Luck Blue Eyes Goodbye isn't a bad song, but its inclusion on this record is a total and complete joke. It was not a hit. Sting Me is not a bad song either, but its inclusion is also questionable at best (live favorite of the band or not). There is no Sometimes Salvation here, which may just be the band's true defining song. The lack of My Morning Song, one of the truly great rock songs ever put to wax, is also maddening. And don't sit there and tell me that they aren't there because they aren't hits. Hell, everything on this record post Wiser Time (and that's being generous) wasn't a hit either. For that matter, neither was Sting Me or Bad Luck.
We then hit the band's third record, 1994's Amorica. The first single from this record was A Conspiracy, a song that failed to catch on at MTV and radio. Whether this was due to how poor the song was, or the musical climate at the time, I'm not sure. Thankfully, the aforementioned Wiser Time is included here, although it too failed to light up the charts. It is a road weary song about life on tour, almost a mix of country and blues based rock. It works so well. And that is it from Amorica. Another travesty. How about this guys? How about you whack A Conspiracy, which is a weak song, and put in the excellent opener Gone? And then, how about you grab the two best ballads Chris Robinson ever wrote, Cursed Diamond and Descending, and throw those on here? No, they don't pass the hit test, but neither does anything post Amorica on here.
For the band's fourth album, Three Snakes and One Charm, we get only two tracks. We get the lush and lovely Good Friday, and the driving rock of Blackberry. I have no problem with Good Friday being on here, but I might have substituted Nebekanezer for Blackberry. With that being said, Three Snakes is the hardest album to fit into a greatest hits format, so I'll leave the band alone on this one.
Lastly, we have album number 5, 1999's By Your Side. For an album that sold the least copies of all of the Crowes' albums up to this point, it's amazing it managed to get 4 tracks worth of space. With that being said, 3 of the tracks are well worthwhile. Both Kickin My Heart Around and Go Faster are driving, kick you in the balls rockers, the type of rockers that the Crowes didn't write enough of post Southern Harmony. And By Your Side is a bluesy mid tempo track with a hell of a groove. None of these were hits, but hey, we've already discussed that. What I don't understand is the inclusion of Only a Fool. Now I like Only a Fool, but it has about as much business being on here as Bad Luck Blue Eyes Goodbye.
Thankfully, the band spared their fans the whole "add a new song" thing, meaning that this compilation only has value to those who only want the band's five biggest hits or who are just discovering the band (and to those I'd say buy the first three albums right away). Unfortunately, the album plays in chronological order, which I think actually takes away some of the cohesiveness that this disc could have had.
I would recommend this only to the most casual Black Crowes fan, or to a newbie who wanted to hear some of the band's best music. Below is the tracklisting I would have given this CD, complete with substitutions:
1.Remedy
2.Kickin My Heart Around
3.Go Faster
4.Nebekanezer
5.Cursed Diamond
6.My Morning Song
7.Descending
8.Thorn in My Pride
9.Hard to Handle
10.Twice as Hard
11.Good Friday
12.Sometimes Salvation
13.By Your Side
14.She Talks to Angels
15.Wiser Time
16.Jealous Again
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