Reviews Roundup – Huey Lewis & The News vs. The Allman Brothers Band vs. Deep Purple

Reviews Roundup – Huey Lewis & The News vs. The Allman Brothers Band vs. Deep Purple

HUEY LEWIS & THE NEWS
Sports

If ever a record sums up the eighties for me, it’s this one.  “Sports” by Huey Lewis & The News.  All it takes is a few bars of any of the tunes, and I get the overwhelming urge to roll my sleeves up Miami Vice stylee and invite someone back to my loft with the intention of murdering them.

But psycho urges aside, this really is a classic album, and one that I can scarcely believe came out thirty years ago.  God, I’m old.  But Wikipedia say its so, so it must be true.  It’s a record that spawned 5 hit singles in the USA, and one that has sold nigh on 10 million copies.

Huey Lewis has personally overseen this expanded commemorative edition, which pairs each of the original album’s nine songs with live versions on a second disc, some of which have never before been released. It comes with an expanded booklet with photos and memorabilia from the band’s archive and new liner notes by music journalist and author Gary Graff.

Of course that means the bonus tracks from the 1999 reissue have gone walkabout, but when you’re dealing with hits of the calibre of ‘The Heart of Rock & Roll’, ‘Bad Is Bad’ and the Ghostbusters theme that is ‘I Want a New Drug’ it would be churlish to complain.  And let’s not forget my favourite, ‘Finally Found a Home’, a gem that only I seem to play on a weekly basis.  If you don’t have it, buy it.  SImple as that.

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THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND
Midnight Rider: The Essential Collection

Or how to condense over 40 years of music into a 15 track compilation.  Well you can’t.  It’s impossible when it comes to a band like The Allman Brothers Band.  Many have tried, all have failed.  But Universal are giving it another go with this release.

And to their credit, they’ve actually managed to get past 1973 for a couple of tunes.  Naturally, all the favourites are their.  ‘Jessica’, ‘Ramblin Man’, ‘Whipping Post’ etc.  But they do pluck a tune of “Enlightened Rogues” in the shape of ‘Pegasus’ and even get as far as “One Way Out” for the title tune.  Of course there are no extended jams here, as there just isn’t room, and you get no sense of excitement from the usual deathly dull Malcolm Dome sleevenotes, but if you are the only rock fan in the world who doesn’t have an Allmans best of, then this is out at a very reasonable price.

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DEEP PURPLE
Icon

You know, I can almost admire the brass neck of the folks over at BMG, who keep on punting out Deep Purple compilations soley based on the handful of albums that the reunited band made the mistake of releasing back in the eighties.  There must be a hundred at least, all rejigging the same songs.

Which means you get inessential live versions of their famous songs alongside tunes that should have stayed lost in the eighties.  Hello ‘Hungry Daze’.  This time around they’ve excised Joe Lynn Turner from history, bunged on a seventies photograph of the 1975 Mk IV lineup, of whom only the rhythm section appear here, and skipped liner notes or album credits.  It’s the kind of thing that gives the music industry a band name and should be avoided like the plague.

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