Greatest Hits?
by Jason Wilson
So it has come to this. The Foo Fighters are releasing a greatest hits album. In general, I have a disdain for greatest hits records. More often than not, all it is is a re-packaging of the singles heard round the world a million times over. It seems superfluous to the hardcore fan of the band as we likely have all their records anyway. Compilation records of a band rarely work unless they are a live album/dvd.
In this case fans will probably be swayed into buying it anyway because the catch is that two new songs will be released along with it. Wheels and Word Forward, the former will soon have a video. So the die hards like me will probably shell out the $20 for the deluxe edition just to make the purchase worthwhile (it comes with a DVD of live video).
To give you a little context. In 1997, I was in the eighth grade. Until that time my exposure to music was very limited. I had probably heard of Led Zeppelin and also heard them but to bring a song to the artist would be impossible at that time. Plus I had decided I would be a country music fan and to my current disdain I listened to Alan Jackson and Shania Twain (should have been listening to Michael Jackson while reading Mark Twain…I’m reaching a bit here).
Around this time, certain friends of mine decided to have an intervention. They forced me to sit down and listen to what they called “alternative rock”. They played Green Day’s Dookie and No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom. I liked them both after repeated listens in what is not quite a atmosphere from the classical conditioning sequence from A Clockwork Orange but it was close. Tragic Kingdom struck a chord specifically (though I thought what was soon to become their big hit single, Don’t Speak was the weakest track) due to the horns and poppy ska beat. To this day I love a good horn section. On a side note, check out The World Inferno Friendship Society.
While I had realized country music (or at least the pap of the country music world I was listening to) was not as good as I had once figured, I still hadn’t attached myself to a band in the rock world. I had missed the grunge movement by a few years but I was just on time to catch the Foo Fighters’ second album, The Colour and the Shape. Hanging out at my friend’s house one afternoon watching MuchMusic (when Bill Welychka was on…ah the good ole days) the video for Monkey Wrench came on and I was hooked. The song is raw and loud but with an incredibly catchy melody. It blended what I loved about ska with the hard rock sensibilities my friends were trying to force feed into me. The video was an odd and funny dreamlike vision about fighting with yourself and being your own worst enemy (or at least that’s what I took from it).
“They did that video Footos, right?” I asked my friend before I knew the name of that song to be Big Me.
“Yeah, they’re alright I guess,” he said.
It’s been that way for most of the 12 years since. I became a massive Foo Fighters fan while my friends all seemed rather apathetic. One friend loved the self titled record and has abhorred everything since. Another friend was on board for The Colour and the Shape and hasn’t cared since. A third friend adored There is Nothing Left to Lose and has been a fairly interested fan since, but not like me. Sure there are likely bigger Foo fans out there who have traveled long distance hundreds of times to see them (I’ve only seem them twice) but from my rinky dink small town I would bet dollars to donuts that I am the biggest fan of that band.
That said, a greatest hits record is not made for the hardcore fan. It’s made for the casual fan looking for all the hits they’ve already heard but with none of the effort it takes to get to know each album. That’s fine. In some cases it might even open the door to someone checking out the other lesser known tracks. It’s unlikely though as I have never once bought a CCR record since I acquired their Chronicle record.
On September 21, Rolling Stone’s website had an article (linked at the top) with the announcement of the tracklisting.
“All My Life”
“Best Of You”
“Everlong”
“The Pretender”
“My Hero”
“Learn To Fly”
“Times Like These”
“Monkeywrench”
“Big Me”
“Breakout”
“Long Road To Ruin”
“This is a Call”
“Skin and Bones”
“Wheels”
“Word Forward”
“Everlong (acoustic)”
Yep. Two versions of Everlong and not one of I’ll Stick Around, Alone and Easy Target, Hey Johnny Park, Stacked Actors, etc. Just once I think it’d be nice to see a greatest hits include some of the non-single favourites just to give it a little extra flavour or even an opportunity to surprise the casual fan who buys these cash grabs. I’d much rather have a new album but hey, two songs ain’t bad. For the hardcore fan it’s a disappointment, to the casual it probably doesn’t even register on the radar. At least Primus is re-releasing Frizzle Fry on vinyl in November, that might help me forget this. Okay, it’s not like this is a tragedy or anything, just a disappointment considering the Foo Fighters turned me into a rock and roll fan, it just seems cheap to me.
