Music CD - Nick Lowe: Basher: The Best of Nick Lowe

	Music CD: Basher: The Best of Nick Lowe Artist: Nick Lowe List Price: $11.98 Our Price: $7.34 Your Save: $ 4.64 ( 39% ) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Manufacturer: Sony
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Tracks: 1. So It Goes 2. Heart Of The City 3. (I Love The Sound Of) Breaking Glass 4. Little Hitler 5. No Reason 6. 36 Inches High 7. Marie Provost 8. American Squirm 9. Cracking Up 10. Big Kick, Plain Scrap 11. Born Fighter 12. Switch Board Susan 13. Without Love 14. Cruel To Be Kind 15. When I Write The Book 16. Heart 17. Raging Eyes 18. Time Wounds All Heals 19. Maureen 20. Half A Boy And Half A Man 21. 7 Nights To Rock 22. She Don't Love Nobody 23. The Rose Of England 24. I Knew The Bride (When She Used To Rock 'N' Roll) 25. Lovers Jamboree
Binding: Audio CD EAN: 0074644531329 Label: Sony Manufacturer: Sony Number Of Discs: 1 Publisher: Sony Release Date: 1989-09-20 Studio: Sony
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Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Bashing Out the Pop Comment: Anyone delving into the evolution of power pop in the 70s, should do themselves a favor and grab this album. I ran into Nick as I was checking out the early, arguably best, Costello albums. Yeah as a child of the 70s, I was familiar with the cryptic yet smart hit Cruel To Be Kind but never followed up. I think one of the reasons that Nick has fallen under the radar is that he has always been a musician/songwriter over being a star. Rather than get hung up on image, as it seems from this best of collection, he has consistently focused on craft. Consistently over this album, he is not looking to impress but on offering good compositions with enough lyrical turns and musicianship to keep you coming back. And that is impressive enough for me! The first fourteen tracks are the highlight of the record, focusing on his first two records with Rockpile (Gotta get Minutes of Pleasure). After that things get a bit spotty. Things rise and fall on the characteristics of his collaborators. The low point for me is his slower material and the stuff which sounds way too 80s. "I Knew The Bride" has way too much Huey Lewis feel for my liking. Then again "Half a Boy" runs "? and The Mysterians" through new wave production to produce a catchy little number. So when I look back at it, two-thirds is a damn good hits to miss ratio. Atop of the 14(!) song winning streak, you get little gems like "7 Nights to Rock" and "Raging Eyes". Pretty good deal. Since I've bought this disc, I have come back numerous times. It totally offsets the lesser lights. So if you want, pop craft with hooks and smarts, come and get this! Customer Rating: Summary: Basher, Best Of Nick Lowe Comment: Really good compilation of his better songs. A few were omitted,but those are for others to find.Really good quality too,which is nice.worth owning.some awesome songs that i remember wondering who in heck sang that Customer Rating: Summary: Hall of Famer deserves better Comment: One of music's little indignities is that your greatest achievements wind up disappearing if the curators don't give a damn. Such is the case with Nick Lowe, a criminally underrated artist who helped shape the sound of the 80's. His production work with the likes of Elvis Costello and Graham Parker all but defined New Wave, his work with Rockpile is perfect and his solo albums always had reasons to actively listen. Alas, from that classic period, this is all that remains domestically available. "Basher" (a nickname he earned for his production methods, famously described by Elvis Costello as "a fader in one hand and a vodka bottle in the other") is 25 songs from 8 albums, the first 14 from "Jesus of Cool/Pure Pop For Now People" and "Labour Of Lust." His best known song, "Cruel to be Kind" is here in all its pure pop glory, along with such proto-punk material like "I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass" from the Stiff record days. There's the perversely witty "Marie Provost" ("she was a winner that became the doggie's dinner") and "Cracking Up" as well. After that, each album gets a slim pick or two (The Rose of England manages four) and only one solitary track from Rockpile's "Seconds of Pleasure" (and not even "Teacher Teacher!"). There's some cool pubrock/rockabilly like "Half a Boy and Half a Man" (should have been a hit!) and "7 Nights to Rock" which belies the depth of later albums. This leaves off a great deal of interesting songs ("Stick it Where The Sun Don't Shine" and "The Beast in Me" would have made my list) and stops when Lowe left Columbia for "Party of One." Lowe is one of those heritage artists who deserves a double "Essentials" collection, and his golden albums should be available to all. Which leads to my final comments: Why is Lowe yet to be even nominated for The Rock and Roll Hall of fame? He is the architect of a lot of the sound we came to identify as a decade, even to where Huey Lewis is a producer on "I Knew The Bride" (and once covered it) and such luminaries as John Hiatt and Paul Carrack make appearances. The other is that this album is a 1989 master of songs that you can't get anywhere else. Lowe deserves better. Customer Rating: Summary: Not bad but.... Comment: Some very poor selections on here. It also almost ignores his two best CDs-The Rose of England and Cowboy Outfit. (And what is "Maureen" doing on here? uggg--where are Wishing Well, I Got the Love, Luck Dog, LAFS, etc.) 14 of these songs are from his first two albums--too much in my opinion. But the real gripe is that the bulk of this man's CDs are unavailable. No one should have to settle for this collection when you think of what he did from about 1978 to 1990. Some truly great stuff is lost. I think he is the most underrated musician in all of rock. Bar none. Customer Rating: Summary: fantastic compilation Comment: This cd does a great job in sampling Nick Lowe. I was a fan of the Rockpile, Jesus of Cool and Labor of Lust albums (the 70's work). This compilation effectively takes the cream from all of the works and crams them onto a comprehensive work. There is a lot of music here. Before I bought this, I was only familiar w/the 70's work but now I have just as much of an appreciation for the 80's and 90's stuff as well. This cd does what a good compilation should do...give an overview of all the work, push the familiar and promote the new stuff. This is an underappreciated artist that is very worthy of a greatest hits package. More Reviews
Editorial Reviews: Having apprenticed with '60s band Kippington Lodge and '70s pub-rock pioneers Brinsley Schwarz, Nick Lowe became a shining beacon of traditional pop values--wit, concision, unbanishable tunes--amidst the punk furor of the late '70s. This collection is a generous 25-song single-CD selection from eight albums and a few stray singles spanning almost a decade. It may be too generous--the inclusion of a number of so-so songs and failed experiments hampers its playability. But there are still well over a dozen gems here, including his sole hit, the sparkling, textbook classic-pop masochist's anthem "Cruel to Be Kind;" the ominous voodoo breakdown "Cracking Up;" and the delightfully perverse "Marie Provost," a sumptuous power-pop tune affixed to the horrific tale of a silent-film actress who dies alone and is eaten by her starving dog. There are also at least two songs exploring Lowe's strange obsession with backstage guest lists (first single "So It Goes" and the stately "Little Hitler"), the best version of the pub-rock classic "Switchboard Susan" (containing every conceivable phone/sex double entendre), and a number of crisp rockers abetted by Rockpile, the brilliant band that, credited or not, played on much of members Lowe and Dave Edmunds's best work. --Ken Barnes