Doobie Brothers

There have been plenty of single-disc Doobie Brothers collections released over the years. There have been two-part vinyl Best of the Doobies, there have been budget-line collections, and there have been OK overviews as well as excellent generous discs with all the big hits. There's even been a comprehensive four-disc box, but what there hasn't been is a double-disc set – something that falls between the conciseness of 2001's terrific Greatest Hits (the first CD to contain all the big hits on one CD) and 1999's four-disc Long Train Runnin' 1970-2000. That's what 2007's The Very Best of the Doobie Brothers is, a double-disc helping of the Doobies' biggest songs from "Listen to the Music" to "The Doctor."

The Doobies team up with the Memphis Horns for an even more Southern-flavored album than usual, although also a more uneven one. By this time, Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons, and company had pretty well inherited the mantle and the core (and then some) of the audience left behind by Creedence Clearwater Revival and John Fogerty, with Johnston songs like "Pursuit on 53rd Street," "Down in the Track," and "Road Angel" recalling pieces like "Travelin' Band," while Simmons' "Black Water" (their first number one hit) evoked the softer side of the "swamp rock" popularized by CCR…

The Doobies team up with the Memphis Horns for an even more Southern-flavored album than usual, although also a more uneven one. By this time, Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons, and company had pretty well inherited the mantle and the core (and then some) of the audience left behind by Creedence Clearwater Revival and John Fogerty, with Johnston songs like "Pursuit on 53rd Street," "Down in the Track," and "Road Angel" recalling pieces like "Travelin' Band," while Simmons' "Black Water" (their first number one hit) evoked the softer side of the "swamp rock" popularized by CCR. Actually, in some respects, given the range of instruments employed here, including an autoharp (courtesy of Arlo Guthrie) and viola, the songs on the original LP's first side suffer somewhat from a sameness that makes What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits a little less interesting than the albums that preceded it.

It's a Doobie delight as members of the veteran group's different eras convene for Rockin' Down the Highway, a 20-song concert recorded in '96 mainly in New York…

The Doobies team up with the Memphis Horns for an even more Southern-flavored album than usual, although also a more uneven one. By this time, Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons, and company had pretty well inherited the mantle and the core (and then some) of the audience left behind by Creedence Clearwater Revival and John Fogerty, with Johnston songs like "Pursuit on 53rd Street," "Down in the Track," and "Road Angel" recalling pieces like "Travelin' Band," while Simmons' "Black Water" (their first number one hit) evoked the softer side of the "swamp rock" popularized by CCR.

Farewell Tour is the first live album by American rock band The Doobie Brothers, released in 1983. It documents the group's 1982 Farewell Tour and is a double album set. By the early 1980s, the Doobie Brothers had evolved from the guitar-boogie sound under original band frontman Tom Johnston to a soulful keyboard-driven AOR sound under Michael McDonald. Despite the many personnel changes in the group, Patrick Simmons remained from the original incarnation of the group.

One would be hard-pressed to find a band more perfectly symbolic of the good-times politics-be-damned esprit de cannabis that symbolized a good chunk of 70's rock. While the Beach Boys were busy becoming an anachronism, the Doobs effectively took their mantle, fusing an array of musical Americana - be it blues, country, folk, or gospel - into a remarkably popular string of albums and radio hits by simply asking not much more of us than to "Listen to the Music." And if they didn't get much more controversial than to declare "Jesus Is Just Alright," well, that was kind of the point. This Rhino anthology is typically exhaustive. All the familiar radio hits are here, as well as a good sampling of deep catalog from the band's various line-ups, not to mention a few standout Tom Johnston and Patrick Simmons solo outings. Hardcore Doobie Bros. fans should be especially pleased by the fourth disc, which contains a wealth of outtakes and demos from the band's early '70s and '80s prime.