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I Am the Greatest!

The summer of 1996 was probably the oddest summer break I ever had growing up. I was headed into my freshman year of high school and didn’t want to spend three months just hanging around, so I was eager to go out and get a job. Being only 14, I couldn’t legally work at a local record store (the job I really wanted), so I had to settle for a farm job, which consisted of getting up at four o’clock in the morning and picking tomatoes for a guy who owned a local vegetable stand. I did this seven days a week. I’ve never been very good at being on vacation.

Standing alone in a field at four in the morning is exceptionally boring, so I always brought along some tunes with me. Since I didn’t want to dirty up my portable CD player, I used to bring along an old Walkman. This was my first experience with the narrow scope of radio programming: Morning after morning, in between bits of my local modern rock station’s wacky morning show, they played the same songs constantly (the songs I remember from that summer’s playlist were Sponge’s “Wax Ecstatic,” Weezer’s “El Scorcho,” Alanis Morrissette’s “You Learn,” “Fearless” by Solution A.D. (it was pounded into my head that they were produced by the guitarist from Live; in 1996, this fact must have been incredibly impressive), and that song about a phone booth with the long song title and the B.B. King sample). It wasn’t a total waste, but it’s also not a collection of songs you can really pin anything on. So one day, I went into a Coconuts and shopped around for some cassettes. I had not bought a cassette since acquiring a CD player; I remember being amazed that cassettes were still being sold when I went shopping for them. I picked up a couple of titles that day (and since they were cassettes and no one was buying them anymore, they could be had for about seven bucks a piece, if I remember correctly). I picked up the first Rage Against the Machine album (Evil Empire had just been released and I was just getting into them), Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine (which I already owned on CD but could listen to from start to finish quite easily), and Blind Melon’s Soup.

Sadly, the reasoning behind my Blind Melon purchase has been lost to history. Originally, I thought that it was because Shannon Hoon had just died and I was curious about this supposedly “dark” album he had left behind. But Hoon overdosed in October of 1995, a solid eight months before I would have made these purchases, so his death was not fresh in my mind. I vaguely recall seeing the video for “Galaxie,” Soup‘s lead single, and thinking it was sort of wacky, but at the same time, I have no idea when I might have seen it. Soup hadn’t broken any other singles, and come to think of it, I downright hated “No Rain.”

My point is, I have no idea why I would have bought Soup, but I’m glad I did. It is by no means a lost classic, but it’s definitely underrated. “Galaxie” is a good song but probably not the best choice as a single; I would have gone with “Toes Across the Floor.” While it’s certainly an acquired taste, Shannon Hoon’s voice is pretty awesome, full of expression and pain and acrobatics.

Which brings us to last week when Tones of Home: The Best of Blind Melon landed on my desk. The album does have one genuine “hit” in “No Rain,” but the rest is pretty much based on the judgment of whoever compiled it. While I am something of a Blind Melon defender, I cannot fathom the logic behind this release (especially considering another Blind Melon compilation already exists).

Of course, “greatest hits” albums have lost almost all their meaning. Hilary Duff has one. Mandy Moore has one. The Backstreet Boys have one. But it’s not just the pop stars who are taking down the best-of establishment. Belly, a band I wholeheartedly enjoy, has a greatest hits album; they had even fewer albums than Backstreet did. But outside of “Feed the Tree,” what else in the Belly catalogue could be considered a hit? While “Gepetto” and “Sweet Ride” are fine songs, they would be totally unknown to anybody who didn’t already own both Belly albums; why would you try to sell a compilation to people who clearly wouldn’t buy it because they already own Star and King? Also (and this applies to Blind Melon as well): There is no way you can’t walk into a used record store and purchase the entire Belly back catalogue for about ten bucks. Buying them from Half.com would cost you a whopping $6.48 (and that includes shipping!). The length of Blind Melon’s musical contributions (including their b-sides compilation, Nico) can be had for $15.96, while Tones of Home retails for $18.99. So what’s the point?

Perhaps these albums do serve a purpose. Perhaps there are people who always liked “No Rain” but for some reason didn’t want to invest in Blind Melon’s self-titled debut. I know that a lot of these releases are about contractual obligation (see Green Day’s International Superhits or the forthcoming blink-182 best-of) or simply about milking a dead band (see the several thousand Jimi Hendrix hits collections out there), but you have to figure that it’s got to be a losing proposition for the labels putting out these albums. Sure, Britney’s My Prerogative sold several million copies and is the ideal vehicle for listening to Mrs. Federline (no one has ever accused her of being an album artist anyway), and there will always be an audience for Guns N’ Roses’ Greatest Hits (though serious rock fans should own everything the Gunners ever put out, save for The Speghetti Incident?), but how many people really lined up for Tones of Home?

In the meantime, ponder this: What band needs or deserves a “best of” compilation? Personally, I’m amazed that Bush doesn’t have a hits record yet. They were a phenomenal singles band whose albums are hard to listen to straight through. If I could get “Glycerine,” “Swallowed,” and “The Chemicals Between Us” all on one disc, that would be the album of the year.

Well, maybe not. But it would still be better than listening to all of Golden State straight through.