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Sounds Of Summer - The Very Best Of The Beach Boys
Release Date: 2003-06-10
Sales rank: 290
\NThe cynic may question just how many Beach Boys greatest hits albums are enough. Everyone else, however, will appreciate what makes Sounds of Summer unique. This is the first single-disc collection to feature such a large cross section of hits from the group's entire career, spanning 1962's "Surfin' Safari" through 1988's "Kokomo." All 30 tracks, spanning several label changes, were Billboard Top 40 hits and are probably now as identifiable as the national anthem to anyone with radio or TV access. The fact that the tracks aren't in chronological order helps make for a fresh listening experience, as does the crisp digital sound. And yet these songs--even those that are more than four decades old--always sound strangely fresh and will likely remain so as long as there are beaches, young people, and that symbolic season of freedom and dreams. Which is to say that the title here passes the "truth in advertising" test. Perfect for those casual fans not yet ready to spring for the individual albums, Sounds of Summer is in many ways a better representation of this legendary band's art than Elvis' 30 No. 1 Hits and The Beatles 1 were of the King and the Fab Four. --Bill Holdship |
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Death Proof
Release Date: 2007-04-03
Sales rank: 1060
Directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez spent $53 million to pay loving tribute to the vintage hundred-thousand-dollar exploitation fare that inspired Grindhouse's two-movies-for-the-price-of-one thrill ride. Tarantino's half of the exercise (which also includes Robert Rodriguez's self-scored Planet Terror) features another effusive slice of the director's eclectic musical sensibility to underscore its manic tale of stuntman/psycho-killer Kurt Russell and his muscle-car-fueled exploits. Tarantino works from a familiar formula that variously mixes evocative, semi-obscure Italian film cues from Morricone and Dinaggio, contrasting slices of '60s catalog from the great Jack Nitzsche and Brit Invasion also-rans DDDBM&T and some '70s fodder from both ends of the Top 40 via Smith and T. Rex, also stirring in a savory mid-disc run of R&B that stretches from PG&E's upbeat read of "Stagger Lee" through more familiar fare from Joe Tex, Eddie Floyd, and the Coasters. The director also serves up a couple of those deliciously off-kilter obscurities that have come to be his musical trademark as a coda: Eddie Beram's thumping "Riot in Thunder Alley" and April March's infectious ditz-pop take on Serge Gainsbourg's loopy "Chick Habit." --Jerry McCulley |
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Beach Boys - 20 Good Vibrations, The Greatest Hits (Volume 1)
Release Date: 1999-09-21
Sales rank: 1262
No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: BEACH BOYS
Title: VOL. 1-GREATEST HITS
Street Release Date: 09/21/1999
Domestic
Genre: ROCK/POPThe three-volume Good Vibrations series is designed with the hits-hungry fan in mind. Eschewing a strict chronological approach, the best-of sets are arranged according to charting position. Thus the initial collection is laden with the group's trademark tunes, ranging from the California boys' first top 10 charter, 1962's "Surfin' Safari," to their last, 1988's "Kokomo," a stray, post-Brian Wilson success. "Kokomo" is by far the newest selection included here; nothing else dates past 1966's No. 1 smash, "Good Vibrations." With the likes of "Fun, Fun, Fun," "I Get Around," "California Girls," and the incandescent "God Only Knows" rounding out the set, Greatest Hits Volume 1 is the ideal first pick for anyone looking for the Beach Boys at their commercial peak. --Steven Stolder |
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Pulp Fiction: Music From The Motion Picture
Release Date: 1994-09-27
Sales rank: 2263
1998 reissue on Simply Vinyl of MCA's smash soundtrack toQuentin Tarantino's 1994 film starring John Travolta, SamuelL. Jackson, Uma Thurman and Bruce Willis. Contains classicslike Urge Overkill's cover of 'Girl, You'll Be A WomanSoon', Dusty Springfield'Dick Dale's surf-guitar provided the memorable title theme ("Misirlou"), for Quentin Tarantino's 1994 smash, and although that sound runs throughout the soundtrack (along with bits and pieces of dialog from the movie), this is a pretty eclectic bunch of really terrific songs. I don't know how it all manages to hang together, but it does (you might say the same for the interwoven stories in the movie). Where else are you going to find Chuck Berry, Maria McKee, Al Green, The Statler Brothers, Kool & the Gang, Urge Overkill (singing a Neil Diamond ballad!), Ricky Nelson, Dusty Springfield, and the Tornadoes (among others) one album? McKee's beautiful "If Love is a Red Dress (Hang Me in Rags)" is a standout, partly because it's less familiar. One of the few soundtracks of the '90s that went into the CD player and stayed there for weeks and months thereafter. --Jim Emerson |
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The Complete Liberty Singles
Release Date: 2008-08-26
Sales rank: 2736
A big part of our job here at Collectors' Choice Music is to survey the pop music landscape (or in this case, seascape) for artists whose collections don't really do them justice, and we think there's a strong case to be made that Jan & Dean are at the head of the line. Sure, their classic Liberty recordings have been anthologized, but never comprehensively, and almost always in re-mixed stereo, NOT in their original mono. Well, not this time. We've gone back to the original mono single tapes of EVERY one of Jan & Dean's Liberty singles, both their A and B-sides, then checked and checked again to make sure they were the RIGHT tapes, to bring you the ORIGINAL MONO SINGLE VERSIONS of these songs, exactly as they were released and exactly as they sounded when they climbed the charts and blared out of your Woody's car radio. The package includes extensive liner notes by Ed Osborne and David Beard featuring interviews with those close to the action, like engineer/producer Bones Howe, Jan Berry friend/co-writer Don Altfeld and Dean Torrence himself, plus photos of Jan and Dean and shots of some of the single's label and jacket art. |
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Walk -- Don't Run: The Best of the Ventures
Release Date: 1991-07-01
Sales rank: 15119
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Venus on Earth
Release Date: 2008-01-22
Sales rank: 2731
"A unique and surprisingly danceable group that combines a beautiful Khmer-language vocalist from Cambodia and a quintet of seasoned locals with a knack for mixing Southeast Asian pop, Vietnam-war-era lounge music, klezmer, ska, surf rock, and Ethiopian jazz." -- SPIN psychedelic. They are world music. They are anything but mainstream. There is virtually no other band in the world playing "Khmer Rock," the style of 1960s Cambodian rock derived from Armed Forces Radio in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Sophomore album Venus On Earth features eleven original songs that expand on the band's sound but will please hardcore fans of both the group and the genre. There is no other band like Dengue Fever, which garners fans in everyone from indie kids to well-heeled world music consumers.At last, Dengue Fever has made an album that quite nearly matches their incredible live performances. The group began at least as a tribute to the playful yet heavy psychedelic pop scene that flourished in Cambodia before Pol Pot came to power and silenced countless suspected dissidents in that country's infamous killing fields in the mid-1970s. Like the Cambodian pop music that so enamored them, Dengue Fever began by revitalizing strong elements of '60s surf and garage rock in their sound. Over time, they've expanded their influences to Ethiopian funk and modern dance-rock. Once a multi-culti California band with a Cambodian-born singer paying homage to the past, Dengue Fever now plays original, swirling, psychedelic pop. With Western audiences ever more open to hybrid sounds, it will be a huge surprise if Venus on Earth doesn't allow Dengue Fever to quit their day jobs for good, especially after the film about their trip to Cambodia, Sleepwalking through the Mekong, hits the festival circuit in 2008. --Mike McGonigal |
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Billboard Top Pop Hits: 1963
Release Date: 1994-07-19
Sales rank: 18937
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Beach Boys - The Greatest Hits Vol. 2: 20 More Good Vibrations
Release Date: 1999-09-21
Sales rank: 4007
Beach Boys Photos More from The Beach Boys
Sounds of Summer | 
Pet Sounds | 
20 Good Vibrations, The Greatest Hits | 
Live in London | 
Endless Harmony | 
Hawthorne, CA | Only one title on the second volume of the three-volume Good Vibrations best-of series cracked the U.S. top 10, 1964's "When I Grow Up to Be a Man." (Five of the selections here made the U.K. charts--"Do It Again," "I Can Hear Music," "Break Away," "Darlin'," and "Cottonfields.") In contrast to its loaded-with-hits predecessor, Greatest Hits Volume 1: 20 Good Vibrations, Volume 2 serves up songs that stand as second-tier Beach Boys--but only in commercial terms. The likes of "In My Room," "Don't Worry, Baby," "Caroline, No," and "Heroes and Villains" stand well above Volume One's "409," "Little Deuce Coupe," and "Sloop John B" in their contribution to the group's incredible legacy. Those hungry for hits will want to stick with the earlier volume, but burgeoning Beach Boys boosters will find this 20-song set every bit the match--and arguably the subjugator--of its all-hits forerunner. --Steven Stolder |
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Little Deuce Coupe/ All Summer Long
Release Date: 2001-03-13
Sales rank: 16350
Released just one month after the Surfer Girl album, Little Deuce Coupe was, incredibly, the band's fourth album in less than a year. Brian Wilson and the band responded by turning in arguably their most consistent effort to date--and a concept album, to boot. Deuce Coupe expanded the band's subject matter to encompass 1963 America's burgeoning love affair with hot rods, surrounding previously released cuts such as the title track, "409," and others with strong new material (much of it cowritten by Wilson and a DJ, Roger Christian). A highpoint: the a cappella James Dean tribute "A Young Man Is Gone" (a reworking of Bobby Troup's beautiful "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring"), a prime example of Wilson's arranging genius and the band's vocal prowess. All Summer Long was notable not only for racheting up the band's standards and essentially bidding farewell to the surf songs that inspired both their name and reputation, but also for going toe-to-toe with one of rock's most explosive phenomena--Beatlemania--and coming away victorious, with the single "I Get Around" soaring to No. 1 in the spring of 1964. Essentially another loose concept record (revolving around the innocent hedonistic pursuits of an idyllic SoCal summer) that takes its cue from the effervescent title track, it also documents Brian's restless creativity pushing the band toward its performing peak. Bonus takes include the superior single take of band staple "Be True to Your School," alternate takes of "Little Honda" and "Don't Back Down," and the slightly salacious outtake "All Dressed Up for School." Both albums have also been sonically burnished via 24-bit digital remastering. --Jerry McCulley |
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