It’s a cold and rainy and busy day, signifying … something. So instead of the usual filler, or four grim paragraphs about all of the leaves that have quite quit today, let’s just get back to the Re-Listening Project.
I’ve started working my way through all of my old CDs, but in chronological order of purchase. It’s a good way to pad the blog, which is what we’re shamelessly doing today. (But with some delightful music.) These aren’t reviews, there’s nothing new to say about today’s discs anyway, but they are fun, particularly if you like what is, today, classic rock.
This isn’t my genre, but the genre reaper comes for all of us, eventually. In fact, I’ve probably always thought of this first band as classic rock. They were on the AC stations of my youth, which meant the music of the adults in my world, which meant, and means, classic rock. Listening to it today, in a bit more isolation and years removed from hearing it on regular airplay, I am appreciating what I’m hearing.
Which is to say this is the Steve Miller Greatest Hits compilation. Given the above, this is surely this was a bulk purchase I made in my early days of CD collecting. Given the rest of the above, I’m glad for it today.
“Greatest Hits 1974-1978” made it to #18 on the Billboard chart, and #11 on the Top Rock Albums chart. Not bad for a record of contemporary hits that was released in 1978, essentially immediately as these songs fell out of heavy rotation. All but one song came from their previous two albums — it was a different time, musically speaking — and I’ll bet you can guess which one was the outlier there. Anyway, let’s listen in …
The first four tracks work about as well as you would expect for three top 20s and a number single. But the fifth track grabs your attention. “True Fine Love” manages to be a rock ‘n’ roll history lesson in just two minutes and 40 seconds.
I believe that if you just pulled out the guitar track here you could identify this as a Steve Miller song.
This sounds like a cover, but Steve Miller wrote this, with a Joseph and Brenda Cooper. They seemed to have just the one song. And if you’re wondering if I won’t spend a lot of time trying to find their collective story … well, then … you must be new here.
As an aside … there are a few interesting covers of “Dance, Dance, Dance.”
A capella intro!
There’s a lullaby version … which opens up a whole new world of options, really.
Is there a video of some dudes singing this in the bed of a pickup?
You really are new here.
(Those guys are from New Jersey.)
Play this song and see how many snippets and bits of other songs it reminds you of. That happens a lot to me in Steve Miller Band songs, for some reason.
My favorite song, this time through, was “Wild Mountain Honey.” I listened to it a few times. It was worth it. It’s trippy, which meets the mode of the moment, but it has some heart.
As I have said, probably over and over, in this section of the Re-Listening Project, I think we’re in a batch of CDs I bought all at once. It makes sense, given my tastes at the time, and the records in question. I don’t have a lot of memories or stories affiliated with this Steve Miller compilation. The problem might be my listening habits. Maybe bulk purchases become a sort of obligation. “OK, here it is. I have played it. Now I must listen to these other four.” It becomes, perhaps, more mechanical and obligatory, and there aren’t dozens or hundreds of plays like the regular CD purchased in isolation. So there aren’t strong anecdotes or even flashes of stretches of road, that come to mind as I re-listen to this CD, but I can say this, unequivocally: I bought this for one song.
Yeah.
I have, from time to time, thought of changing my name to Maurice, just so I could tell people “It means ‘Gangster of Love.'”
Now, I don’t have this record, but there’s a general consensus that the made up words of epismetology and pompatus can be traced back to “The Letter.”
My collection really needs some doo wop filled with nonce words.
That’s almost 750 words, and 11 videos, of filler masquerading as content. Let’s wrap this up. The next CD in the list is another greatest hits. Which one? Good question. I can hardly tell myself. It’s a version of The Police’s greatest hits. I say “a version” because they, and their label A&M, only released SEVEN versions of this thing over 23 years. That earned 23 platinum certifications in five countries and 10 golds in seven more, so clearly it worked. But, if Steve Miller is before me The Police are beyond me.
So, here, have “King of Pain.”
Try not to think about how much that reminds you of “Don’t Stand So Close to Me.”
Maybe “Wrapped Around Your Finger” is a better way to close this out.
Seven greatest hits compilations. They released five albums before they broke up.
Know what was the straw that broke the camel’s back?
This drum machine:
Because drummer Stewart Copeland had broken his collarbone and was unable to drum, he opted to use his Fairlight CMI to program the drum track for the single, while singer/bassist Sting pushed to use the drums on his Synclavier instead. The group’s engineer found the Synclavier’s programming interface difficult; it ended up taking him two days to complete the task. Copeland ultimately finished the drum programming and claimed that the Fairlight’s then-legendary “Page R” (the device’s sequencing page) saved his life and put him on the map as a composer. In a Qantas inflight radio program named “Reeling in the Years”, Copeland was quoted as saying that the argument over Synclavier versus Fairlight drums was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” and that this led to the group’s unravelling.[citation needed]
No, Wikipedia. No citation is needed. That would require a deep dive and, ultimately, another greatest hits release. (Here’s a less colorful version of the story from Andy Summers, if you must.) I’m fine with something between hyperbole and ambiguity. It’s The Police, after all.
