Rory Gallagher Big Guns: The Very Best Of (2cd, 2005) [re Up]

Emmylou Harris is an artist whose body of work is so consistently strong one could almost pull 20 songs at random from her catalog, string them together, and end up with a pretty listenable disc – which suggests that the real choices in putting together a "best of Emmylou" album has as much to do with what not to include as what should be on hand.

The U.K. collection The Very Best of Michael Bolton – initially released in 2005, repackaged as a slide pack in 2007 – is a good overview of the singer's peak years, containing all the big hits except "Love Is a Wonderful Thing" (only natural, considering the lawsuit surrounding the song) in a 17-track compilation that should give most listeners all the Bolton they need.

Since Rhino released an exhaustive four-disc ZZ Top box in October 2003, some may question the appearance of a double-disc retrospective in June 2004, a mere eight months after the box set. The two may be released awfully close to each other, but they do play to different audiences – in other words, there are a bunch of fans who want all the hits, but not a full box set, and that's what the 38-track Rancho Texicano: The Very Best of ZZ Top delivers…

Aerosmith greatest-hits compilations can be sorted into three categories: ones that compile the band's 1970s prime with Columbia Records (of which Greatest Hits [1980] and Gems [1988] are the benchmarks, especially the former); ones that compile the band's subsequent run with Geffen Records (Big Ones [1994]); and ones that ostensibly span both eras via cross-licensing (O, Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits [2002]). Devil's Got a New Disguise falls into the final category, as it spans Aerosmith's entire career to date, from "Dream On" and "Mama Kin" (from the band's 1973 eponymous debut) to a pair of new studio recordings ("Sedona Sunrise" and "Devil's Got a New Disguise")…

It speaks well for the continued viability of their catalog (probably second only to Bob Dylan's among '60s folk artists) that this is only the sixth compilation ever done on Peter, Paul & Mary's music in four decades of musical activity - and since one of the others was a Readers' Digest mail-order release and two of the others were done for special markets outside of the United States, that low number is downright astonishing. This release effectively supplants the perennially popular Ten Years Together: The Best of Peter, Paul & Mary, from 1970, and also outdoes the 2003 WEA International Very Best Of, with more songs drawn from a much wider chunk of their history as well. The material at hand covers not only most of the key singles and a handful of important album tracks by the trio from the 1960s, but also acknowledges their less widely heard solo material from the 1970s and their much more directly provocative work from the 1980s…

Live archive release from the American R&B/Soul/Funk outfit. On the occasion of their 40th anniversary, Kool & The Gang gave a concert in Denver, Colorado in the summer of 2005 to celebrate four decades of success all over the world…