Hits

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Spencer Sings The Hits LP by Jon Spencer. That the fidelity, equalization and overall sound found on a vinyl recording is unmatched by any other musical mediumto date is a claim which has been proven several times over in many place by a great many people (including by several in this column, several times over too), and one of the great examples can be found on a vinyl copy of Spencer...

Jon Spencer Spencer Sings The Hits (In The Red Records) In Jon Spencer’s debut solo album, Spencer Sings The Hits, fans will find a genuine and true revelation about both the singer and his music. Here, they’ll finally get a sense of what portion of the music to which he has contributed over the years (with the Blues Explosion, Pussy Galore, Boss Hog, Heavy Trash, Spencer Dickinson and so on) is actually his; it will suddenly become easy to see...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into The Flaming Lips’ Greatest Hits Volume 1 LP. As a general rule, I must confess that Best-Of compilations seldom thrill me. While the odd set does prove to be the rule’s exception (like Nirvana’s black album, the set that Morphine released several years ago, ChangesoneBowie, Hot Rocks and All For Nothing/Nothing For All turned out to all be great sets) and which does present the band in question at its best, most...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2LP edition of Legacy by David Bowie. On the surface, the existence of Legacy – the newest compilation of the greatest hits from David Bowie’s songbook – likely comes off as a little confusing. The set arrived almost two years to the day after Nothing Has Changed (a.k.a. The greatest hits comp which was curated by the artist himself) and, name-for-name, features a very, very (very – it’s about 75% the...

Artist: David Bowie Album: Legacy (2CD) Label: Columbia/Legacy/Sony Music Over the last forty years, there have been a multitude of “Best of David Bowie” compilations to his new release racks. To date, this critic counts eleven good, sturdy ones, but the methodology for making them has always been the same: “ensure that the core of around ten classic tracks which appeared on ChangesOneBowie (the first Bowie hits comp) are present, then mix and match a list of singles which flow...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the reissued Smash Hits LP by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that I’m well-acquainted with Smash Hits by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was the first Hendrix album I ever purchased, to be honest; as a kid of (shall we say) a diminished bank account, Smash Hits looked like a wise buy because it had lots of songs on it that even the most unfamiliar...