It is never an easy job to put together a greatest hits compilation, especially for an artist who has been around as long, as had as many releases, and has been as versatile as Gary Moore. Indeed, for the different styles he has recorded over the years, how could a compilation of this type possibly please all of his fans? Even when you decide to release it as a double CD, you are really going to struggle to include everything to please everyone. Therein lies the problem.
In the long run, this really doesn’t quite please anyone to the degree they would have liked. The song selection was always the toughest hurdle, but in the end I don’t think they even got near to being ‘the best of Gary Moore’, and that’s with two discs!! Apart from a couple of notable selections, the first disc is a write off for me. Of course, that is because I’m not as big a fan of his latter day blues material, but even the selection of tracks there was a bit ordinary. The choice of some live tracks there was fine – but then when it came to putting on “Wishing Well” on the second disc, they chose the dreadfully dull and lethargic studio version over the brilliant live version! What the hell was with that?! Not only that, there are so many songs missing here that just had to be first choices – “Back on the Streets”, “Hiroshima”, Nuclear Attack”, “Led Clones”, “Run to Your Mama” – that this is almost a complete joke.
As it turns out, I could cut these selections down to one disc, call it “Partly The Best of Gary Moore”, and then add another disc of all the great songs they ignored, and sold it off with a better, truer title than this should surely carry.
Do yourself a favour – go out and purchase Dirty Fingers, Victims of the Future and Live in Japan and you will have a better collection than is found here.
Rating: Listenable enough, but for a fan, a tad disappointing. 3/5.
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