Tom Petty & Heartbreakers - Anthology: Through the Years
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Free Music Notes for Anthology: Through the Years
Free Music Review: Outstanding Petty anthology covering the MCA years
Hit: 5 Stars
THE BAND: Tom Petty (vocals, guitar, keyboards, harmonica), Mike Campbell (lead guitar), Benmont Tench (keyboards), Howie Epstein (bass), Ron Blair (bass), Stan Lynch (drums & percussion). Guest appearances include, George Harrison, Stevie Nicks, Jeff Lynne.
THE DISCS: (2000) 34 tracks on two discs clocking in at approximately 124 minutes (disc-1 with 57:37 minutes, and disc-2 with 66:16). Included with the discs is a 10-page booklet containing song titles/credits, band photos, a 1-page intro from Cameron Crowe, what songs came from which albums and the year released. This compilation follows Petty from his debut in 1976 through this 2000 "Anthology". Digitally remastered sound. Label - UTV Records / MCA.
ALBUM REPRESENTATION: Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers (4 songs), You're Gonna Get It (3), Damn The Torpedoes (4), Hard Promises (2), Long After Dark (3), Southern Accents (3), Pack Up The Plantation (1), Let Me Up - I've Had Enough (2), Full Moon Fever (5), Into The Great Wide Open (3), Greatest Hits (1), Playback (1), Anthology (1), Bella Donna - Stevie Nicks 1981 solo album (1).
COMMENTS: Every music listener needs some Tom Petty in his/her collection. "Damn The Torpedoes" (1979) and "Full Moon Fever" (1989) are essential studio recordings of his. Other albums like his self titled debut, "Long After Dark", "Southern Accents" and "Into The Great Wide Open" are great albums, but I wouldn't classify them as essential Petty necessarily. Petty's "Greatest Hits" (1993) is still a fine representation on one disc, but with this more recent 2-disc "Anthology", the '93 disc is now obsolete. 17 of the 18 songs from his "Greatest Hits" album are here, minus the skippable last track "Something In The Air". THE GOOD: All the staples are here - "Breakdown", "American Girl", "I Need To Know", "Refugee", "Here Comes My Girl", "Don't Do Me Like That", "Even The Losers", "You Got Lucky", "Don't Come Around Here No More", "Free Fallin'", "I Won't Back Down", "Runnin' Down A Dream", "Learning To Fly", "Mary Jane's Last Dance", etc. The minor successes absent from his '93 "Greatest Hits" are here - "Change Of Heart", "A Woman In Love (It's Not Me)", "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around", "So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star", "Jammin' Me", "Love Is A Long Road", and "Yer So Bad". There are several deep album cuts (i.e. "Hometown Blues", "The Wild One, Forever", "Too Much Ain't Enough", etc) that are nice inclusions. Chronological order is a bonus here - showcasing Petty's slight changes over the decades. Song selection is top notch. The remastered sound is crisp. THE NOT SO GOOD: Only two things stick out here. First and foremost, there are no tracks from his "Wildflowers" (1994) or "Echos" (1999) albums... most likely due to these 2 albums being on the 'Warner Bros' label (and everything prior on MCA's label). This is a shame because I really feel the songs "You Wreck Me", "Cabin Down Below" and "It's Good To Be King" deserve to be on "Anthology". Perhaps this should've been titled "Anthology - Through The MCA Years". In the same vein, there are no selections from Petty's soundtrack to the movie "She's The One" (1996). Many of Petty's early songs are short (out of the first 8 tracks, the longest song is three-and-a-half minutes), and with that being said why not throw a few more songs on both discs and utilize the free space (22 unused minutes alone on disc-1). OVERALL: A ton of music and all the major hits (despite the 2 omitted albums from Warner Bros). To date, this is the best Tom Petty compilation... period (5 stars).
Free Music Review: Despite Some Glaring Flaws, An Excellent Tom Petty Retrospective
Hit: 5 Stars
One of the rock bands of the latter half of the 20th century was without a doubt Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. One of the most consistent artists of the decade, the band could always be counted on to deliver quality music on everyone of their albums. In 1993, the band's first compilation was released, simply entitled "Greatest Hits", it failed to capture a lot of the group's best songs and left many fans disappointed. Fast forward to the year 2000. The two disc "Anthology: Through The Years" was released. It was a two disc cd containing all the tracks on "Greatest Hits" as well as many others. How is this collection? Read on for the positives and the negatives.
Positives:
-If you're a casual fan of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and are only interested in having one of their albums in your cd collection, than "Anthology: Through The Years" is perfect. All the Petty essentials are here: "Breakdown", "American Girl", "Refugee", "Don't Do Me Like That", "The Waiting", "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" (a Stevie Nicks duet available for the first time on a Petty collection), "You Got Lucky", "Don't Come Around Here No More", "Free Fallin'" and many more classic tunes are all on this collection.
-The songs sound excellent thanks to superb digital remastering job.
-The songs are in chronological order, a rarity with a lot of today's compilations.
-We get a great (then) new track entitled "Surrender". It holds its own against even the most classic tracks on this collection.
Negatives:
-My biggest complaint is that neither of the cds fills the eighty minute time limit that cds allow. The first disc isn't even an hour long, meaning nearly 25 more minutes worth of songs could have been added. The second one is about 66 minutes in length, meaning almost 15 more minutes of music could have been included.
-"You Don't Know How It Feels" was a Top 15 hit (# 13 on the Hot 100), and yet it is not included. That stinks. Also, as one review pointed out, nothing from the Travelling Wilburrys are here. That is disappointing since I can't seem to be able to locate that song "Handle Me With Care", and I really like that song.
-The liner notes are pretty unspectacular. It's basically Cameron Crowe rambling on and on about how hard it its to make a Tom Petty mix tape, then saying a few nice things about the band. There are also a few pictures not worth looking at. I expected something a little more concise and enjoyable.
-This cd isn't as easy to find as I thought it would to be. It took me over a year to find it.
Despite these negative, this is still an excellent Tom Petty collection that no fan of classic rock should be without.
Free Music Review: Really good collection with almost all the Petty you need
Hit: 5 Stars
It's funny how labels find ways to repackage a band's music long after they've departed for another company, and that's exactly what we have here. Petty left MCA for Warner, leaving the concise and almost perfect "Greatest Hits" collection as his final release. Then, they opened up the vaults and released a massive 6-CD set, "Playback," which had 3 CD's of hits and favorites, plus another 3 CD's of B-sides, live cuts, and rarities. Now, they've come out with this 2-CD set that's something of a compromise between the two.It collects most of the stuff from "Greatest Hits" (except for the nice but unessential cover of "Something In The Air"), and adds on another 17 songs. Petty's made enough great enough music to fit a comprehensive and definitive two disc collection, and this comes close to being that. There are plenty of welcome additions, mostly songs that, while lesser-known, stand as some of his best work: "A Woman In Love," "Rebels," "Best of Everything," "Straight Into Darkness," "Jammin' Me," and "It'll All Work Out" are included, and such solid albums as "Hard Promises," the really good but underrated "Southern Accents," and "Let Me Up" (which was completely overlooked in the "Greatest Hits" CD) finally get decent representation.
However, there are a few great songs that were missed ("Louisiana Rain," his first great ballad, should be here), and what's a bit more bothersome is the inclusion of a few lesser songs that, while aren't bad, don't really sustain the high standard set by those classic singles. There's also the 'previously unreleased' song, which is often a scam to get fans to buy a CD that already repeats material they already own. Petty pulled the neat trick of making one of the two new tracks on "Greatest Hits" into a great hit in it's own right. However, while "Surrender" on this set isn't bad, it's no "Mary Jane's Last Dance," and I don't think it's worth buying this set just to get "Surrender."
Still, if you're looking for a bit more than one CD of hits, and aren't willing to look through some his better albums (most of which are good, but all of which have a little filler), then this may be the best bet for you.
Free Music Review: Great Compilation, Great Sound, Great Track Selections!
Hit: 5 Stars
The problem with anthologies, especially those of still-performing artistes, is that you have to have a cut-off point and unless everything post cut-off totally sucks, you're bound to leave off some of the artiste's best work. That's why this album doesn't even pretend to call itself "Best of", "Greatest" etc; firstly because such an album title already exists for Tom Petty and secondly, this album very appropriately calls itself "Anthology" for that's what it is: a chronological representation of what Tom Petty has done up to a point in time.
What's the solution? Either wait for "Anthology Part 2" or like me, get this brilliant album and get the whole albums after this. You won't be doing justice to yourself being satisfied with only 2 or 3 tracks from "Wildflowers" anyway as that brilliant album is already a rock classic in the making and you really need to hear the whole album to appreciate just how good it is.
As for this album, the 34 tracks that are on 2 discs are very well selected and you even get the hard to find duet with Stevie Nicks, "Stop Dragging My Heart Around" here too. The sound quality of this remastered album is also very good seeing as how especially on disc one, the state of the old original masters cannot have been very good and you can only improve upon the master which is also why the sound quality on the later tracks on disc two sound a lot better.
The one downer seems to be the cardboard packaging that opens out into 3 folds with a booklet pasted on the second fold. It seems to me that they could have come up with a better quality design for such a great compilation and thankfully the old adage, "you can't judge a book by it's cover" certainly holds true here.
I see one reviewer complained about 2 discs being more expensive than one but unless you can tell me how you are going to fit 34 tracks onto one disc and seeing as how there are no filler tracks here which would make a second disc superfluous, I really don't know what there is to complain about except for the great value for money that this album really is.
Highly recommended for all Petty fans who want a sampler of what Petty has done before they became fans because of his work after "Full Moon Fever" but don't want to go back and get all the old albums.
Free Music Review: Great overview of Petty and Heartbreakers 1976-1993 era
Hit: 5 Stars
This is an anthology that "works"; that is, even though the songs are drawn from different time periods, they sound great together. One reviewer here said this should be called Anthology 1976-87, actually the years covered are 1976-93; it DOES include several tracks from (1989's) "Full Moon Fever". Because this is on the MCA label, there are no songs from the 3 recent Warner Brothers (Rick Rubin produced) albums. Personally I consider Petty and the band's best work (by far) to have been with MCA, so it's no loss as far as I'm concerned to be missing the (very lame compared to the pre-1994 work) Rick Rubin/Warner Bros. songs. But if you want to get a "best of" the Warner Bros. albums, you'll just have to wait (or buy those albums individually). The 11 (MCA) albums from which this album is drawn are all terrific on their own, but anyone not familiar with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers should enjoy this abreviated version. You'll hear a variety of strong rockers and some more mellow/acoustic type work, often accurately described as sounding a bit like the Byrds/Rolling Stones/Beatles combined. And the lyrics are even a step above the usual from those bands, being very thoughtful and interesting. Great lyrics, great melodies, wonderful musicianship pretty much sums up this music. Don't think though that they've managed to include all the great songs from this period; they actually haven't come close - which you'll discover if you get the original albums.
In fact, that's probably the only "bad" thing about this collection - if you like these songs as much as you "should", then you'll eventually want to get ALL the albums from which this collection is drawn. So eventually this album will become redundant, other than the one unique song "Surrender" (which actually was written about the same time as "Breakdown", and is similar lyrically to it, probably why they didn't release it at that time). In that case, this album would have been a great "introduction" to this music. And if you wind up buying all the original albums, you can always give this collection to someone else. So either buy this album, or buy a few of the originals like "Damn the Torpedoes", "Full Moon Fever", etc. - you'll be glad you did.