The Animals were one of the raunchiest and most uncompromisingly raw bands to come out of England in the Sixties and their reputation is sustained on the strength of the three songs that that start off this EMI collection of "Original Hits," namely: "The House Of The Rising Sun," "We've Gotta Get Out of This Place," and "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood." Before everybody knew how to play "Stairway to Heaven" on the guitar, we all knew how to play "The House Of The Rising Sun," and after the Animals covered the song nobody remembered that Pete Seeger sang it with the Weavers way back when. "We've Gotta Get Out of This Place" is one of the Top 10 songs from the Sixties for my money, and, to keep the theme of this review going, was what we played at the end of classes before Alice Cooper did "School's Out." "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" is one of the moodiest songs of that decade and is probably most representative of the blues-based rock 'n' roll that represented the Animals. This particular hits collection has the virtual of having almost three dozen tracks, about twice as many as most of the competing offerings. Most of these songs reflect the group's early repertoire taken from American Blues and R&B sources. For me, it is simply that those first three classic tracks are rock 'n' roll essentials that stack up against the best three songs the Rolling Stones put out in the same period. The problem was that beyond those three the pickings get relatively slim for the Animals. But those are still three really great songs that you absolutely have to have in music library.
