The Yardbirds - Ultimate!

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Free Music Notes for Ultimate!

Free Music Review: Almost Ultimate--but could've been even better
Hit: 5 Stars

I would have deleted the early, primitive demos "Boom Boom" and
"Honey In Your Hips", the below-par b-sides "A Certain Girl", "I Ain't Got You" and "Steeled Blues", the novelty single "Questa Volta"/"Pafff...Bum", the mediocre album cuts "Rack My Mind" and "No Excess Baggage", and the three Relf solo tracks (this is a *Yardbirds* compilation, after all, and as much as I like Relf in the band, his solo outings were failures). In their place
would have gone some live BBC cuts of unusual numbers like
"My Girl Sloopy", "The Sun Is Shining" (with some exquisite
slide work from Beck), and "Most Likely You'll Go Your Way",
the superb outtake "De Lane Lea Lee", two Relf album tunes with a psychedelic flavor that remain quite popular ("Farewell" and
especially "Glimpses"--why they put "No Excess Baggage" in place of one of the few Page-era masterpieces is beyond comprehension),
and five cuts from the recent Page-era rarities comp "Cumular
Limit" (an excellent live "I'm A Man", a live "Dazed And Confused" which is totally essential, plus the stellar
tracks "Avron Knows", "My Baby" and "Spanish Blood" from their
last-ever session). Maybe Rhino didn't have access to the BBC
or "Cumular Limit" material, but if they took the time to
get all the other songs, these shouldn't have been too hard
to obtain, and would round out the set nicely ("Questa Volta"?
No thanks...).

The sound quality is mostly superb, but again there are a few
problems. Most of the tracks sound better than they ever have;
they are much louder and clearer, with a lot of muddiness and
hiss taken away but essentially the exact same mix fans know
and worship ("For Your Love", "Heart Full Of Soul", Shapes Of Things", "I'm A Man" and the "Five Live Yardbirds" cuts are
all sonic delights). However, there are some cuts which sound
like different mixes, or remixes: "You're A Better Man Than I"
is given a whole extra verse which is great, but all the reverb
has been taken out of Relf's vocal. The same goes for most of
the cuts from "Roger The Engineer" and a few from "Little Games"
--for some reason, whoever was in charge of the sound here
did not like reverb, but the lack of it takes a little getting
used to for someone who knows the original mixes by heart (I happen to be a fan of that 60s studio echo). At least they
were wise enough to include the mono mixes of "He's Always There"
and "Hot House Of Omagararshid", which contain better guitar
overdubs than their stereo counterparts.

Finally, though, whatever minor gripes one may have with the
song selection and the sound here and there, it's the music
that matters. And it continues to blow one away: the mix of
pioneering guitar wizardry--which sounds as fresh and original
as it did 35 years ago--along with Relf's socially conscious
lyrics and the distinctive McCarty/Smith/Dreja rhythm section,
get the endorphins buzzing at maximum. The set does contain
all the hits and is now by far the most complete collection available, so it should be the automatic first (and for many, only) purchase of any would-be fan. But I would suggest also getting the BBC sessions and "Cumular Limit" if you want to
explore further (aargh...the compilation could've been 100% perfect instead of 90% perfect if they had just thought of these releases...these almost-perfect Best-Ofs and anthologies, like the ones for Simon And Garfunkel, Pink Floyd, and The Small Faces, are a somewhat curious new development in the CD world as
of late).

Ultimate! Poster