Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fitting tribute to a seminal band, 15 Aug 2001
Emerging from the early '60's Crawdaddy scene, The Yardbirds quickly established themselves as an R&B outfit to be reckoned with. Fronted by Keith Relf and featuring ol'Slowhand himself, they simply stormed through classics like "Honey in your Hips", "I ain't got you" & "Good morning little schoolgirl" before scoring a top three hit with "For your love" After this, Clapton left & the young Jeff Beck was recruited as the band entered a new phase as psychedelic adventurers. A succession of classic singles, "Still I'm sad","Evil hearted you", "Shapes of things" and, at last on CD,"Over,under,sideways,down" plus underrated winners like "Mr.you're a better man than I" or "Paff-boum" kept them in the charts as Jeff now joined by Jimmy Page,flew the flag for guitar pyrotechnics.They were simply wonderful and surviving live clips display a fierce live outfit. Just about everything you could wish for from one of Rock's seminal bands. "
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ultimate? Certainly, 16 Jun 2009
Words such as "ultimate" and "essential" frequently appear in the titles of single-artist compilations, many of which turn out to offer neither the "ultimate" nor the "essential" canons of their works. In the case of this excellent-as-ever Rhino release, the title is completely justified. A better collection than this of this much-anthologised group's catalogue is unlikely ever to surface.
This two-CD, 52-track set covers all the periods of this truly progressive British sixties group: the orgasmic R&B club years, the unsettling search for pop chart stardom, the blissed-out trip through psychedelia and the early moves towards the thunderous blues-rock which became Led Zep. Indeed, the different periods are all highlighted in the track listing, which discerns the Georgio Gomelsky, Simon Napier-Bell and Peter Grant eras. The ragged and inadvisable partnership with Mickie Most is also well documented.
And documentation is the name of the game: the included 56-page booklet is of the highest order, with numerous well-reproduced photographs, a concise yet entertaining band history from an American perspective and excellent track summaries by the late Cub Koda, who does a job for the Yardbirds comparable to that of Andrew Sandoval for the Monkees. The splendid production quality is continued in the heavy slipcase and twin library cases for the discs.
I won't dwell too long on the contents, as the track list speaks for itself, but to highlight a few items: the live rendition of Smokestack Lightning is surely the best white-boy garage band blues performance ever committed to record; Beck's Jeff's Boogie is the craziest and most accomplished spoof on Les Paul's playing you're ever likely to hear - and no sped-up tape effects required, either; Happenings Ten Years Time Ago is perhaps the best psych single ever, even beating Dantalion's Chariot's wondrous Madman Running Through The Fields. There are even a few turkeys deliberately included, which make for interesting, if less inspiring listening: the turgid single in Italian (why?), Questa Volta, and Relf's unnecessary cover of Ha Ha Said The Clown with Rick Nielsen (yes, that one) on organ (really!).
As for those three guitarists, it's Beck's stellar contributions throughout his tenure with the Yardbirds that strengthen the case for him as the most inventive and gifted guitarist of the era. Clapton's early playing comes across as more diffident and often shaded by the ferocious harp work of Keith Relf, while the offerings of the erstwhile session player Page sometimes come across as rather too tasteful, the full-blown gutsy renditions of the Zep era only occasionally starting to surface.
In my opinion, again, the Yardbirds were probably the second most influential band of the sixties, after those Moptops - and that influence went well beyond the contributions of their three stellar guitarists. Notwithstanding the obvious limitations of the vocalist and the solid, workmanlike qualities of the other three band members, the quality and energy of their records and of their live act were clearly contagious. Cub Koda describes in detail how the Yardbirds inspired, more than any other act, the American garage bands of the mid-sixties; how these lesser souls achieved local status in relation to the quality of their covers of Heart Full Of Soul and Over, Under, Sideways, Down. His summaries of the tracks are social literature in themselves - never have I read descriptions containing so much enthusiasm and sheer love for their subject.
All in all one of the best "best of's" I've ever encountered, and unreservedly recommended.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stupendous double retrospective!, 16 Jan 2009
It really does seem appropriate to corroborate what an tremendous Yardbirds anthology this is. It comes in a very appealing package, with an excellent booklet and a generous running time.
It covers the early r&b period with Eric Clapton, through to "For Your Love", before going into orbit with the more psychedelic and experimental Jeff Beck phase. This period supplies about half of the set's contents, and includes virtually all of the brilliant "Roger The Engineer" album. All of the vital stuff is there, it would seem, including both "Train Kept A Rollin'" and the "Stroll On" rework. The brief Beck/Page period features, prior to things moving into the home straight with the Jimmy Page era.
This double also contains a few oddity tracks, like the"Questa...Volta"/"Paff Bum" single and some less-than-vital solo Keith Relf tracks. The latter could have been replaced with more "superior" selections, but this remains a thoroughly worthwhile compilation of this vital group.
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